Author: Charles Hutchinson

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Do you fancy doing jury service…at York Barbican? Head to Tigerslane Studios’ Murder Trial Tonight – The Doorstep Case

In the dock: Tigerslane Studios’ cast for the prosecution and defence in Murder Trial Tonight III – The Doorstep Case at York Barbican and Sheffield City Hall

“THIS isn’t just a theatre play; it’s a social experiment,” says Graham Watts, West End director of the courtroom drama series Murder Trial Tonight. “We aim to challenge perceptions and engage our audience in a way that goes beyond traditional theatre.”

Welcome to Tigerslane Studios’ third season of Murder Trial Tonight – The Doorstep Case, wherein storytellers, technicians and performers break down the fourth wall and bring a true-crime story to life, on tour at York Barbican tomorrow night and Sheffield City Hall on Wednesday, both at 7pm.

In case number three, a mother returns home in the early hours of the morning after a night out celebrating her birthday, only to find her daughter murdered on her doorstep. The daughter’s boyfriend has been charged with the murder. Is he guilty of murder or is the killer still at large? Book your seat on jury service now to decide – and then learn if you were right.

The show begins on screen, giving the backdrop and opening to the case, followed by a live murder trial, immersing the audience in a fast-paced courtroom experience, wherein they play a crucial role as members of the jury.

What happens? Both the prosecution and defence will present their cases and cross-examine witnesses, whereupon the audience will deliberate and deliver their verdict: Guilty or Not Guilt? At the end of the trial, footage of the murder will be revealed. Did the jury deliver the right verdict? All will be revealed on the night.

Please note, each season’s trial is based on a true story, with a disclaimer that names, events and dates have been altered for dramatisation purposes.

Court is in session tomorrow in York, where the Tigerslane Studios cast will include Joshua Welch, who studied writing, directing and performance in the University of York’s department of theatre, film and television from 2013 to 2016 and later gained a Masters in acting from the Drama Centre, London.

“I was in the University of York Drama Society’s project at Clifford’s Tower , where we performed  a play by lecturer Lisa Peschel, based on research of theatrical performance in the Second World War Jewish ghetto at Theresienstadt,” he recalls.

Courtroom drama: True crime case plays out at York Barbican and Sheffield City Hall with the audience on jury service

“Recently I came back to the university to attend Michael Cordner’s farewell lecture and did a few performances on the campus but that’s the only time I’ve been back to York since leaving university.”

How did Joshua, 30, land a role in Murder Trial Tonight III? “One of my best friends, Lauren Moakes, who studied at York at the same time as me, was in last year’s cast for Murder Trial Tonight II and told me about the show,” he says. “I auditioned around Christmas and started rehearsals in January.”

Originally from Sheffield, Joshua lives in London, where he is an associate artist and performer for Kelly Hunter’s Flute Theatre, a company that makes Shakespeare shows adapted for performance to people with autism, with a focus on feeling and emotion. “We play to an audience of 12, who sit in a circle with the actors, who have met them that day,” he says.

“The whole play is acted out in a sensory drama game with each audience member getting a chance to play a part, and they age from seven to 70s.  

“The performance is more about the atmosphere in each scene, which can be lacking in some plays, but in Shakespeare, the feeling is so different between each scene.”

Now Joshua is entering the world of crime for Murder Trial Tonight III. “I’ve always loved Agatha Christie, but this is different because it’s based on true events, without the big Christie revelation at the end,” says Josh.

“The audience has the power to change the whole thing , which will vary from night to night because it’s a fully live court case, where you hear from the prosecution in the first half and the defence case in the second, followed by the closing case from the prosecution and the defence.

The poster for Tigerslane Studios’ Murder Trial Tonight III – The Doorstep Case

“Then it’s completely up to the audience to decide if the defendant is guilty or not guilty, and it makes you realise how difficult it is to decide when there’s a ten-minute deliberation after the case and you hear people discussing what they think has or hasn’t happened.

“At the end [after they each give their verdict with the aid of a QR code and app] the percentage of the vote is revealed – and we find out how many people got it right or wrong.”

Joshua, who takes the part of witness for the prosecution Eddie Harper, has never served on a jury. “Doing Murder Trial Tonight makes you aware what a big responsibility it is to be on a jury, and each case highlights how important it is for both the prosecution and defence to deliver the case so that a verdict can be reached beyond reasonable doubt.”

You will not that tomorrow’s performance is not in a traditional theatre – or court house, for that matter – but at York Barbican, a venue more associated with concerts and comedy. “It’s been a great acting experience, the ‘gig’ nature of it, where the venues are so different and you have to adjust to the space,” says Joshua.

“It’s fun to do, presenting the case, where my character has a way he wants the case to go where everyone will say ‘he’s telling the truth’, trying to convince people of that. Interestingly, some nights you find you’ll play it differently: sometimes you have to focus on what you’re saying, not on what the audience are thinking, how they’re reacting.

“I like playing the halls because the spaces are vast, so it feels intimidating, which matches how nervous people can be when they take the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in court.”

Joshua is delighted to be back on home Yorkshire soil at York Barbican tomorrow and Sheffield City Hall on Wednesday. “It will be a lovely walk down memory lane for me,” he says.

Tigerslane Studios presents Murder Trial Tonight III – The Doorstep Case, York Barbican, April 29, 7pm. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk. Also: Sheffield City Hall Oval Hall, April 30, 7pm. Box office: ticketmaster.co.uk/murder-trial-tonight-3-the-doorstep-sheffield-30-04-2025/.

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West End star Carrie Hope Fletcher cracks the whip in Western musical Calamity Jane on York return at Grand Opera House

Carrie Hope Fletcher’s Calamity Jane in Nikolai Foster’s touring production of Sammy Fain’s musical at the Grand Opera House, York

WEST End leading lady, author and vlogger Carrie Hope Fletcher returns to York from tomorrow to Saturday in the title role in Calamity Jane at the Grand Opera House – much to her mum’s delight.

Something about the gun-slingin’, tough-talkin’, hard-ridin’ frontierswoman immortalised by Doris Day in the 1953 film made her reckon it was a role that Carrie was born to play.

How could she say No when the offer came through to the 32-year-old South Harrow actress, whose credits include Éponine and Fantine in Les Misérables; Veronica Sawyer in the original West End production of Heathers: The Musical; Wednesday in The Addams Family; Beth in the arena tour of The War Of The Worlds  and originating the role of Cinderella in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella.

“My mum had always said I would be a good Calamity Jane, and through the entirety of my adult career she has always said she would love to see my playing the part,” says Carrie. “It’s her dream role for me. So I looked into it and listened to the songs and watched the movie starring Doris Day and fell in love with it. Doris is such an icon. Though I did have to prepare my mum not to get her hopes up as things do fall through and you never know what might happen.”

“It’s so wonderful Calamity is not just an ingenue or the soppy romantic or just a comedy character, she is all of it,” says Carrie Hope Fletcher

Mum knows best, however! Since January, Carrie has been leading North Yorkshireman Nikolai Foster’s cast in the good-hearted Western musical comedy, following the likes of Carol Burnett, Barbara Windsor, novelist Lynda La Plante, Toyah Willcox and Jodie Prenger, who played Calamity on its last Grand Opera House visit in February 2015.

Carrie loves how the fearless, feisty Calamity pushes her as a performer. “I am relatively new to the whole world of Calamity Jane, but it’s a dream role in terms of her as a character,” she says of a whip-crackin’ woman “prone to making a few blunders and mistakes”. “She is the romantic lead, gets a great love story, has an amazing female friendship with Katie Brown and gets all the cracking, belty numbers.

“She ticks all of those boxes and it’s so wonderful she’s not just an ingenue or the soppy romantic or just a comedy character, she is all of it. Parts like that are really rare and she has been great fun to get to know.”

The subject of femininity plays out in Calamity’s relationship with Wild Bill Hickok, the Howard Keel-originated role now played by Vinny Coyle. “There are conversations between her and Wild Bill where he says ‘Why can’t you be more feminine?’,” says Carrie. “She goes through a Cinderella story finding it, but ultimately ends up going back to who she is comfortable as, and being loved and accepted for it. And it’s all hidden within this funny, farcical story.”

Carrie Hope Fletcher: West End leading lady, musical theatre singer, author, vlogger and sister of McFly’s Tom Fletcher

She is not daunted by singing songs such as The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away) and Secret Love forever associated with Doris Day. “I have a good mindset about the pressure that comes with that,” she says. “You can’t please everyone as everyone has different versions of what they want the character to be. If you tried to please people, you would come up with this warped version that isn’t anyone’s dream version.

“I feel like I have been entrusted with the role and I need to be the one to decide who this version of Calamity Jane is. And if people don’t like it, they don’t like it. But if they do, it means all the more.”

Alongside her theatre work, Carrie has published a series of books for young people and accrued more than 500,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers. She last appeared in York last October in Love Letters, her exploration in song of all forms of love, from romantic to maternal, unrequited to obsessive, at York Barbican. 

As always, she found joy in singing, joy that transferred to the audience too. “That’s what people latch on to. Maybe the joy I get from it separates me from others. That’s what people connect to,” she says. “I do think that musical theatre is based in expressing emotion, and if you’re not feeling it one night, then it won’t transmit to the audience.”

The tour poster for Calamity Jane starring Carrie Hope Fletcher

Now her focus is on being on the road in Calamity Jane for the best part of a year, necessitating being away from her husband, fellow performer Joel Montague, and their daughter, Mabel, who will join her for some of the dates, however.

If juggling motherhood and appearing in a major tour were not enough, Carrie has mastered a new skill while working on Calamity Jane. Her cast cohorts are actor-musicians, and not one to be left out, she can be spotted picking up an instrument – a somewhat unusual one.

“I got the coconuts to play,” she says. “I am the horse! So while everyone else is incredibly talented with the saxophone and the trumpet and cello, I’ll be focusing on the coconuts.”

Calamity Jane, Grand Opera House, York, April 29 to May 3, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york

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REVIEW: Paul Rhodes’s verdict on Across The Evening Sky, Pocklington Arts Centre

Josienne Clarke: “Did a wonderful job bringing Sandy Denny’s much-loved songs back to an audience” at Pocklington Arts Centre. All pictures: Paul Rhodes

Across The Evening Sky: Josienne Clarke Sings the Songs of Sandy Denny, Pocklington Arts Centre, April 25

A NIGHT of Sandy Denny is not one to be missed. In the week of the 47th anniversary of Denny’s early death at 31, singer-songwriter Josienne Clarke did a wonderful job bringing these much-loved songs back to an audience.

Clarke has an affinity for Denny, whom she discovered when someone said she sounded like her. She has a voice capable of doing justice to the poetic melancholy that ran so deep. She doesn’t copy as such, but reinterprets the material faithfully in her own style. Clarke’s voice is more trained than Denny’s, adding an almost classical precision.

The voice and the lyrics took centre stage, accentuated by Clarke’s warm presence and her striking way of tilting her head to her left as she sings. Her top-notch four-piece band (Alec Bowman-Clarke on low-slung bass, Dave Hamblett on drums, Matt Robinson on keyboards, and the distinctive Lukas Drinkwater on lead guitar) provided sympathetic accompaniment, and they grew in confidence as the set progressed.

Josienne Clarke performing at Pocklington Arts Centre with band members Dave Hamblett, Alec Bowman-Clarke and Lukas Drinkwater

Running to 15 songs over 80 minutes, in a combination of “hard or very hard” material to sing and play, the setlist was skilfully chosen. There was barely a misstep, perhaps only Blackwaterside was a bridge too far. This reviewer can’t have been the only one who would happily have stayed for another set, or two, hopefully next time around.

Sandy Denny’s legacy is an unusual one. The audience were mostly of the same generation as Denny, as her flame still burns largely in darkness for younger listeners. Award winning but low selling in her lifetime, her legend now sits at the very apex of the folk pyramid.

Unlike her contemporary Nick Drake, her music has never really reached the mainstream. The exception is the standard Who Knows Where The Time Goes – our encore. Like many so-called standards (Song To The Siren, A Song For You), this is musically simple, but the lyrics somehow harness something universal. The evocative opening line provides the title of the evening’s performance.

Maybe much of Denny’s work is too private and melancholy to ever gain mass appeal. She liked to mask her feelings in complex metaphors. The other factor is, far more than Drake, her records were all flawed and marred by overproduction (“the string fur coats” as Denny called it) or poor song selection.

Josienne Clarke: “Spot on sticking to the slow ballads” in her April 25 concert

After Fairport, Denny’s up-tempo songs were always the weakest on any of her records (you would be wise not to Jump The Broomstick with Richard Thompson), and Clarke was spot on sticking to the slow ballads. Autopsy, Late November, The Pond And The Stream and the deathless Fotheringay were all present and beautifully, lovingly restored.

In the words of Old-Fashioned Waltz, one of her very finest (and the title track of her finest LP), Denny’s music will always be held dear. Clarke is aware of the weight of expectation that comes with the songs and this humility provided one of the most memorable moments. Towards the end of Matty Groves, she forgot the words momentarily, and her smiles and laughter were a joy to see – an echo of Denny’s own vibrant fragility.

It was always asking too much for Clarke to freeze time, but she and her band did a wonderful job of transporting Pocklington to Sandy’s musical mansion on the other side of the moon. Clarke is planning to release a new record of her own recordings, heavily influenced by Denny, and on this showing, that should be quite something.

Review by Paul Rhodes

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REVIEW:  Charles Hutchinson’s verdict on Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape, York Theatre Royal, until May 17 🍌🍌🍌🍌

Got it taped: Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape on his return to the York Theatre Royal stage after 45 years. Picture: Gisele Schmidt

HE last entered the York Theatre Royal stage on all fours in a hot, furry cat suit, mittens and nylon whiskers in Dick Whittington And His Wonderful Cat, the pantomime apogee to his debut repertory season of nine shows after graduating from Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama.

Forty-five years later, Gary Oldman re-enters with a cough from a stairway into a loft thick with dust, papers, boxes and tapes, woozy head stuffed with memories, locker full of bananas. Happy 69th birthday, Krapp, lothario, writer and recorder of fading memories and failing powers. Time to record that last tape, to consign life to the dustbin, like the discarded banana skins. A life that has turned to, well, krapp.

Oldman, now playing an old man, is full of memories too at 67 as he takes to the stage for the first time since 1989. “York, for me, is the completion of a cycle,” he said on announcing his Theatre Royal return in Samuel Beckett’s one-act monodrama of existential despair last October.

“It is the place ‘where it all began’. York, in a very real sense, for me, is coming home. The combination of York and Krapp’s Last Tape is all the more poignant because it is ‘a play about a man returning to his past of 30 years earlier’.” 

His appearance here comes with all the trappings and razzmatazz accorded to an Academy Award, BAFTA, SAG, BIFA and Golden Globe winner. Security on duty; the New York Times among the critics for the week of press shows; Sting and Trudie Styler making a last-minute entry to Tuesday’s audience; Slow Horses writer Mick Herron present too.

Polite request: “We kindly ask if you can refrain from applauding upon Gary’s entrance”

Oh, and that much publicised request, proclaimed on signs in gold, white and yellow  – to match the Krapp’s Last Tape T-shirts for sale and worn by multiple staff – to “refrain from applauding upon Gary’s entrance. Please hold all applause until the end of the performance.”

An entirely reasonable request, observed impeccably by Wednesday’s full house, not drawn to Broadway ways, even in our age of celebrity adulation. Silence is golden here, just as it was as Ralph Fiennes began T S Eliot’s Four Quartets on this very stage in July 2021. 

Let the actor choose the moment to break that silence, to cast the spell, to establish the rhythm, the mien. Or in Oldman’s case, to cough and splutter, to exhale exasperated air.

Rather than applause, ironically, it was audience coughs that threatened to disrupt the ambience. The silence, the feeling of waiting, the inaction, is a disconcerting feeling for an audience, coming to terms in the low light with screen icon Oldman being back on stage, staring blankly, downbeat rather than charismatic, as slouchy, unkempt and sour as Slow Horses’ Jackson Lamb. 

All the while, we are unsure whether to laugh or be baffled by Krapp working his way through three bananas, or two and a half, to be precise, as the birthday tape from 30 years ago reminds him that is not so much an errant  skin on the floor as an excess of the potassium-heavy fruit that puts his health at risk.

Still reeling after all these years: Gary Oldman’s Krapp with his reel-to-reel recorder, used previously by John Hurt and Michael Gambon. Picture: Gisele Schmidt

That moment feels like permission has been granted to laugh with confidence, amid that Beckett thing of playing, even toying, with his audience while making serious points, as he does in Waiting For Godot, as the tone turns ever more depressed.

Krapp’s Last Tape is a canny choice for a stage renaissance: a short solo play, played previously by such luminaries as Patrick Magee, Albert Finney, Harold Pinter, John Hurt, Michael Gambon, Stephen Rea and Kenneth Allan Taylor, the long-running Nottingham Playhouse pantomime dame, writer and director, in the play’s last performance at York Theatre Royal in the Studio in 2009.

It’s on an actor’s To Do list, like Hamlet and Lear, but more compact and certainly more divisive in audience reactions, and there is a sense of a baton being passed on in Oldman using the same reel-to-reel tape recorder that Gambon and Hurt did before him.

He directs himself, having been directed by Stephen Frears, Oliver Stone, Frances Ford Coppola, Luc Besson, Alfonso Curon, Chris Nolan, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, Paulo Sorrentino and…dame Berwick Kaler in that 1979 panto. The result is a performance of precise weight and balance, the dimming of Krapp’s light matched by the gradual fading of Douglas Urbanski’s lighting.

We spend time aplenty watching Oldman’s Krapp stopping and starting the tape machine as he listens back to the Krapp of 30 years ago, and one of the joys here is hearing how Oldman contrasts the resonant, confident, even arrogant voice of yore (newly recorded for this production) with Krapp’s weaker strains of today, where his only joy is in how he says the word spool as the bananas make way for sips from a bottle and melancholy suffuses his valedictory audio diary.

Gary Oldman at Krapp’s loft desk, placed at the front of the stage to facilitate seeing his facial expressions. Picture: Gisele Schmidt

Is a 55-minute exercise in brutal navel gazing, self-loathing and self-deception, more than half of it spent watching an exhausted husk of a lonely man listening to the ghost of his former self, worth all the buzz and the fuss?

Judge it as a play, not as event theatre – just as Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reuniting for Beckett’s Waiting For Godot on Broadway in September will want it to be more than Bill & Ted’s Existential Adventure  – and Oldman ekes out all the corners of a study of failed ambitions and foiled hopes that is ultimately far more tragedy than comedy.

There will be those who wish for a Studio staging, for a closer encounter with Krapp, rather than the bigger canvas of the Theatre Royal’s main house, but its expanse enhances Krapp’s loneliness and Oldman maximises facial expression, the grimaces, the physical tics, the pained bemusement, and his design fills the stage with life’s clutter behind the desk thrust to the front.

Krapp’s Last Tape remains a Marmite play; Oldman can’t change that, but more than anything it will provoke debate that goes deeper than whether he peels a banana the right way. Box office for returns: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

The poster artwork for Gary Oldman’s return to York Theatre Royal in Krapp’s Last Tape

Celebrity watch: Who has attended Krapp’s Last Tape?

Policeman Sting and Trudie Styler flew in from New York City for April 22 performance.

Clothes designer Paul Smith.

Slow Horses co-star Freddie Fox.

Slow Horses writer Mick Herron.

Did you know?

GARY Oldman’s production of Krapp’s Last Tape is not the only significant one running at present. Stephen Rea is appearing in Beckett’s monodrama at the Barbican, London, until May 3, then Pavilion Theatre, Dublin, from July 22 to 25.

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REVIEW: Badapple Theatre Company in Kate Bramley’s The Thankful Village, York Theatre Royal Studio ****

Pip Cook’s Edie/Tommy, left, Josie Morley’s Nellie/Sydney and Keeley Lane’s Victoria/Mr Proud in Kate Bramley’s The Thankful Village

THIS revival of Kate Bramley’s feminist wartime comedy-drama on the home front marks the 11th anniversary of its commission on the centenary of The Great War.

The Thankful Village has been toured nationally four times by Bramley’s “theatre on your doorstep” company from Green Hammerton, near York, and premiered in France, rather further from your doorstep, in 2018, when an original Badapple cast member joined an all-French cast and crew.

For this all-too-brief return that will conclude with sold-out performances in Whitechapel, Preston on May 2 and Wath on May 3, writer and artistic director Bramley takes to the stage herself in tails to play a live score for the first time in a Badapple show after 27 years, calling on her skills as an international touring musician from the age of 17 to perform Jez Lowe’s score of original songs and music.

Receiving news from the war front: Keeley Lane’s Victoria in Badapple Theatre Company’s The Thankful Village. Picture: Louise Grazia

Her presence, whether on instrumental underscoring duty or accompanying the cast of Keeley Lane, Josie Morley and Pip Cook in song, adds even more poignancy to her story of hope, humour and humanity inspired by her trip to Ypres and the Flanders battlefield and written in honour of three remarkable figures: Staff Nurse Nellie Spindler, Sister Edith Appleton, whose diaries were invaluable for Bramley’s research, and Chaplain Tubby Clayton, whose legacy lives on at Talbot House, Poperinge.

“Amid tragedy, I was struck by the glimpses of joy, beauty and humour found in the darkest moments,” says Kate in The Thankful Times theatrical notes. “We invite you to share in a few laughs and a few tall stories as we pay our respects, in our own way, to those who have gone before.”

In harmony in song in The Thankful Village: Pip Cook, left, Keeley Lane and Josie Morley. Picture: Louise Grazia

The Thankful Villages were those that lost no men in The Great War. Six such villages were in the north of Yorkshire, although Bramley chose to create the fictitious Thankful-in-the-Vale as her setting for a story seen through the eyes of three Yorkshire women from the same rural household, below and above stairs, from August 1914 to the war’s end.

She presents a recognisably Edwardian Yorkshire rural community, where superior, starchy, cold Victoria (Keeley Lane) is in charge of chatterbox house maid Nellie (Josie Morley) and daydreaming, wide-eyed scullery maid Edie (Pip Cook) in the White Horse coaching inn.

The village men – Victoria’s officer-class husband, Arthur, and the fresh-faced girls’ boyfriends, Sydney and Tommy – have signed up for the war effort, and to emphasise their absence, Bramley places her play in the gentlemen’s smoking room of the inn, designed in compact, fold-away travel-friendly Badapple tradition  by Catherine Dawn.

Founder, director and writer – and international musician – Kate Bramley playing live in a Badapple show for the first time in the Green Hammerton company’s 27-year history

As in Bramley’s two Land Girl plays from the Second World War, The Great War unfolds predominantly through the women’s eyes, with news sent home in letters and postcards from loved ones. This is complemented by interludes where the trio plays the men on the front, when Lowe’s songs reveal his customary ear for a folk tune and his witty, poignant way with a line.

They mirror the songs of the time with such elan that you would swear they must have originated from wartime. They add to the storytelling, provide commentary and context, and plenty have the defiant humour so necessary to survive in the field of battle or in the loneliness and fear of separation, all the better for Bramley’s live, undemonstrative accompaniment.

Each woman progresses and changes through the heightened experience of war, Edie losing her naive wonderment, if not her innocence; Nellie becoming a field nurse (in a storyline inspired by Nellie Spindler and Sister Edith Appleton); and Victoria finally breaking her cold front.

Josie Morley’s Nellie, left, and Pip Cook’s Edie on scrubbing duty at the White Horse in The Thankful Village. Picture: Louise Grazia

Bramley’s feminist undercurrent to these individual stories is the rising swell of the suffrage movement, as women took on roles previously the preserve of men, and so the play is a hymn of praise to suffragette activist Emmeline Pankhurst too.

Cook, who will spend the summer touring Twelfth Night as Viola and Maria with Miracle Theatre, draws on her talent for comedy, peppered with pathos too, as the ever-willing Edie.

Lane captures Victoria’s implacable, impervious, sometimes imperious nature, her frugality and winter-chill harshness, before a redemptive conversion at the close that would make Scrooge leap for joy. Her Victoria even says “We are not amused” at one point.

“A passion for living life in a fury”: Josie Morley’s Nellie in Badapple Theatre Company’s The The Thankful Village. Picture: Louise Grazia

The best-drawn character is Nellie, with her diarist turn of phrase in her journal despatches, performed so movingly by Morley, and it is her journey – and her passion for living life with a fury – that gives The Thankful Village its emotional clout and poignant final twist.

As in its 2014 premiere, and now amid the warmongering and rutting stags of today’s worsening  male domination, it makes you thankful for the under-appreciated Great War service of women, whose story too often has been drowned out by the fusillade of men’s deeds fired off  by history books. Bramley’s poetic work is more of a distaff companion piece to the War Poets.

Badapple Theatre Company in The Thankful Village, York Theatre Royal Studio, today at 2.30m and 7pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond when theatre goes on trial. Here’s Hutch’s List No. 18, from The York Press

Gary Oldman in the York Theatre Royal auditorium, where his production of Krapp’s Last Tape is in its second week. Picture: Gisele Schmidt

FANCY serving on a jury in a true crime thriller? Find out how in Charles Hutchinson’s guide to going out.

York theatre event of the year: Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape, York Theatre Royal, until May 17

OSCAR winner Gary Oldman returns to York Theatre Royal, where he made his professional debut in 1979,  to perform Samuel Beckett’s melancholic, tragicomic slice of theatre of the absurd Krapp’s Last Tape in his first stage appearance since 1989.

“York, for me, is the completion of a cycle,” says the Slow Horses leading man. “It is the place ‘where it all began’. York, in a very real sense, for me, is coming home. The combination of York and Krapp’s Last Tape is all the more poignant because it is ‘a play about a man returning to his past of 30 years earlier’.” Tickets update: check availability of returns on 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

James Bond Concert Spectacular: Celebrating the music of the long-running film series. Picture: Bryan Marshall

Film music event of the week James Bond Concert Spectacular, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday, 7.30pm

CAROLINE Bliss, who played Moneypenny in The Living Daylightsand Licence To Kill, will be the compere for Q The Music’s James Bond Concert Spectacular, sharing anecdotes from her film appearances.  

Focusing not only on Bond theme songs, such as Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die and Nobody Does It Better, the show also pays homage to the complete canon, covering chase music, incidental cues and suites from across the series. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

You are the jury: Murder Trial Tonight III, in court at York Barbican on Tuesday

Courtroom drama  of the week: Tigerslane Studios presents Murder Trial Tonight III – The Doorstep Case, York Barbican, April 29, 7pm

“THIS isn’t just a theatre play; it’s a social experiment,” says Murder Trial Tonight’s West End director, Graham Watts. “We aim to challenge perceptions and engage our audience in a way that goes beyond traditional theatre.”

Welcome to Tigerslane Studios’third season of  Murder Trial Tonight – The Doorstep Case, wherein storytellers, technicians and performers break down the fourth wall and bring true-crime stories to life. The show begins on screen, giving the backdrop to the case, followed by a live murder trial, with the audience as the jury. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Carrie Hope Fletcher: Shooting from the hip and lip in Calamity Jane at the Grand Opera House, York

Whip-cracking musical of the week: Calamity Jane, Grand Opera House, York, April 29 to May 3, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees

WEST End leading lady Carrie Hope Fletcher takes the title role of fearless, gun-slinging Calamity Jane, the biggest mouth in Dakota territory and always up for a fight, in North Yorkshireman Nikolai Foster’s touring production, based on the cherished 1953 Doris Day movie.

When the men of Deadwood fall hard for Chicago stage star Adelaid Adams, Calamity struggles to keep her jealousy holstered. Here come The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away), The Black Hills Of Dakota, Just Blew In From The Windy City and Secret Love in this Watermill Theatre production, choreographed by Nick Winston with musical supervision by Olivier, Grammy and Tony Award winner Catherine Jayes. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Karine Polwart’s poster artwork for her Feather & Ether Tour show at Pocklington Arts Centre

Folk gig of the week: Karine Polwart, Feather & Ether Tour, Pocklington Arts Centre, April 30, 8pm

THIS year marks 25 years since Karine Polwart embraced a full-time career as a Scottish folk singer and 20 years since she scooped three BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards with  her debut solo album Faultlines. 

Her Feather & Ether Tour is a rare chance to enjoy her in intimate, conversational solo performance. Expect a clutch of new songs and wonder tales and an night of curiosity and compassion from Polwart, songwriter, theatre-maker, broadcaster and storyteller, whose work evokes a richness of place, hidden histories, scientific enquiry and folklore. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

Learlike: King Lear re-told from the distaff side in the UK premiere at the York International Shakespeare Festival

Festival of the week: York International Shakespeare Festival presents Greensleeved in Learlike, York St John University Creative Centre Auditorium, May 3, 2pm

GREENSLEEVED, a female-led pan-European ensemble, premiere their show Learlike in York, presenting Shakespeare’s tragedy of King Lear but this time told by his daughters. These tyrant-children are newly in power but old in their ability for manipulation and deceit. Or are they? Even in the most corrupt homes the roots of resistance grow deep.

Greensleeved comprises performers who met at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland: Amber Frances (Belgium), Ariela Nazar-Rosen (Poland/USA), Lucy Doig (Scotland), Julia Vredenberg (Norway) and Cecilia Thoden van Velzen (Netherlands). For the full programme to May 4 and tickets, head to: yorkshakes.co.uk.

Rob Auton: Any eyeful tower of ocular comedy at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall

The eyes have it:  Rob Auton: The Eyes Open And Shut Show, Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, May 3, 7.30pm

“THE Eyes Open And Shut Show is a show about eyes when they are open and eyes when they are shut,” says surrealist York/Barmby Moor comedian, writer, artist, podcaster and actor Rob Auton. “With this show I wanted to explore what I could do to myself and others with language when eyes are open and shut…thinking about what makes me open my eyes and what makes me shut them.” Box office: 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.

Scouting For Girls: Heading for York and Leeds in 2026

Gig announcement of the week: Scouting For Girls, York Barbican, March 17 and Leeds O2 Academy, March 24 2026

LONDON trio Scouting For Girls will accompany the 2026 release of a new studio album with a 22-date tour that takes in York Barbican and Leeds O2 Academy next March. Fans who pre-order the Wolfcub Edition at scoutingforgirls.os.fan will receive access to a ticket pre-sale that opens at 10am on April 30. General sales follow from 10am on May 2 at yorkbarbican.co.uk and academymusicgroup.com.

Roy Stride, vocals, piano and guitar, Greg Churchouse, bass guitar, and James Rowlands, drums, last payed York Barbican in October 2021. Next year’s shows will mark the 15th anniversary of their Everybody Wants To Be On TV album too.

In Focus: NE Theatre York in The Sound Of Music, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, April 29 to May 3, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday

NE Theatre York’s cast for The Sound Of Music at the JoRo

TWO Marias, two Captain Von Trapps, three groups of Von Trapp children and multiple members of Strensall Women’s Institute, plus a dog, add up to NE Theatre York’s production of The Sound Of Music.

In its centenary year, Strensall Women’s Institute has accepted creative director Steve Tearle’s invitation to play the abbey nuns – and sing several big numbers – in the heartwarming Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

The show brings back special memories for Tearle, who played Kurt Von Trapp at the age of 11 in a professional tour in his first stage role.

NE Theatre York creative director Steve Tearle with his dog Millie Bell

“I’ve always loved this show, and remembering my experience of it always fills me with
joy. Fast forward to 2025 and I get to produce this famous musical and play my personal
favourite part in the show, Max Detweiler,” says Steve, whose dog, Millie Bell, will make an appearance in the canine role of Max’s dog.

Tearle’s cast features newcomers aplenty to the stage. “NE Theatre prides itself on giving
people of all ages the confidence to perform on stage, and this is the perfect
opportunity with more than 20 people who have never performed before,” he says.

NE Theatre York in rehearsal for The Sound Of Music

“We’re producing the show with all the elements that everyone loves but keeping with the
West End trend of scaled-back sets and using lighting effects to highlight the action. The
focus, as always, will be on the talent of the actors on stage and giving everyone a moment
to shine.”

Maia Beatrice and Rebecca Jackson will alternate the role of Maria while Matthew Clarke and Chris Hagyard will do likewise as Captain Von Trapp. NE Theatre stalwart Perri Anne Barley will play Mother Abbess; Ali Butler and Aileen Hall will take turns as Baroness Elsa. Tearle is joined in the production team by musical director Joe Allan.

NE Theatre’s production coincides with a brace of landmarks: the 60th anniversary of Robert Wise’s film starring Julie Andrews as the singing nun and the 90th anniversary of the Joseph Rowntree Theatre.

Rebecca Jackson in the role of Maria in Steve Tearle’s production of The Sound Of Music for NE Theatre York

Quick refresher course: The Sound Of Music is based on the real-life story of the Von Trapp family of singers, one of the world’s best known concert groups in the era immediately preceding the Second World War.

When Maria, a tomboyish postulant at an Austrian abbey, becomes governess to a widowed naval captain’s seven children, she brings a new love of life and music into the home. Among the much-loved songs are My Favourite Things, Climb Every Mountain, Do Re Mi, Sixteen Going On Seventeen, Edelweiss and The Sound of Music.

A number of tickets are being given to charities. Hurry, hurry to secure a seat as April 29, May 1 and May 2 are down to “last few tickets”, availability is limited for April 30 and both May 3 performances have sold out. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Leeds Song, Roderick Williams & Andrew West, Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, April 6

Baritone Roderick Williams

BRITAIN’S  favourite baritone, the ubiquitous Roderick Williams, brought a typically eclectic programme to the Leeds Song festival under the banner “A touch of the exotic”, with Andrew West as his deft collaborator at the piano.

It involved ten composers from Schubert to Sally Beamish, four of them female. It was right to begin with Schubert: he has always been the yardstick against whom song composers measure themselves. His setting of Goethe’s Kennst du das Land? distils the Romantic poets’ infatuation with Eastern climes. Sure enough, Williams’s quickened pulse at ‘Dahin!’ (it’s there!) captured that excitement.

Even more exotic, as more Debussyan, was Denis Browne’s last song, Walter de la Mare’s Arabia (1914), with its delicate piano and opiate aura, a timely reminder of a great talent snuffed out by war.

Arthur Bliss’s pithy Siege and Rebecca Clarke’s elegy A Dream were but preludes to Amy Woodforde-Finden’s much-loved Kashmiri song, where our duo conjured nostalgia without undue sentimentality.

Duparc’s only two settings of Baudelaire, arguably his best songs, were finely drawn. The shimmering impressionism of L’invitation au Voyage was balanced by his last mélodie, the sonnet La Vie Antérieure, which boiled up into a sensuous climax reflecting the flashing foam. The gradual return of the painful secret in the poetry was complemented by West’s beautifully poised postlude.

Sally Beamish’s Four Songs from Hafez were a commission from Leeds Lieder in 2007; it was good to hear them again. They centre on three birds and a fish as translated from 14th century Persian by Jill Peacock.

Much of the composer’s illustrative talent is found in the piano, birdsong of course but also watery undercurrents of excitement in ‘Fish’ where Williams accentuated Hafez’s “wine of creation”. ‘Hoopoe’, a love letter, had some delicate touches here.

Hafez’s wine also featured in Wolf’s Erschaffen und Beleben (Creation and Animation), as answer to a clodhopper’s problems. Williams was well attuned to Goethe’s sense of humour both here and in Wolf’s First Coptic Song.

The Jamaican-born composer Eleanor Alberga’s star has been rising rapidly in recent years. Her early years as a pianist and involvement with dance are both assimilated into The Soul’s Expression (2017), four settings of 19th century female poets. Described as a piano sonata with linking songs, it is through-composed (running without a break).

The songs are wonderfully evocative of nature, with piano interludes that take the place of strings in the original version. After an ecstatic glimpse of heaven in a cornfield, there are two calmer sections involving a gentle breeze at sunset and a shower of rose petals, before the title song, to an Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet, delves into more spiritual territory, with the baritone briefly using falsetto against whispering keyboard. It was a touching experience.

More light-hearted, although no less powerful, were Harry Burleigh’s Five songs of Laurence Hope –the pseudonym of Adela Florence Nicolson – which are much influenced by negro spirituals. They include ‘Kashmiri Song’, but using all three of its verses (unlike Woodforde-Finden’s version) and tellingly repeat its ‘Where are you now?’ at the close. There was a glorious climax to ‘Worth while’ and especially strong emotion in the final song, ‘Till I Wake’. Williams and West are a superb duo.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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Navigators Art are going underground for experimental Basement show of left-field music, words & performance on Sunday

Wire Worms: Performing their “Doom Folk” music at YO Underground on Sunday at The Basement

YORK arts collective Navigators Art will play host to its second YO Underground experimental night on Sunday at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York.

This weekend’s performance showcase will be feature Wire Worms, the Leeds Doom Folk five-piece, whose dark, folk-rooted but boundary-stretching debut album, The First To Come In, explores weird, supernatural and experimental notions, inspired by the traditions of Mumming and Guising found throughout the British Isles.

On the 6pm to 9pm bill too will be Fin O’Hare, who improvises with DIY mechanical devices and repurposed and recycled objects; Some Crew musician Si Micklethwaite; storyteller Lara McClure; Bobby Olley, Muttley and NDE Poetry. For tickets, go to: bit.ly/nav-YOU2.

“The YO Underground title is apt, not only because our venue is The Basement at City Screen Picturehouse,” says Navigators Art co-founder Richard Kitchen. “The format will be familiar from the group’s popular Basement Sessions but features original music, spoken word and comedy with a more experimental edge than usual.

Navigators Art’s poster artwork for YO Underground’s second night of live and left-field music, words and performance

“It’s a platform for local and regional performers whose work may wander off the beaten track but definitely deserves an audience. New and emerging artists will have equal billing with more established names.”

The first YO Underground bill on March 15 presented Say Owt Slam winner and Newcastle stand-up poet Cooper Robson; Leeds Conservatoire performance artist and writer Carrieanne Vivianette; inspiring young poet Oliver Lewis; University of York champion beatboxer Cast; genre-crossing psych-folk musical duo Gorgo, from York St John University,  and internationally renowned singer Loré Lixenberg.

“I first met Cooper at a Howlers open-mic night at the Blue Boar in York and he’s become extremely popular with his in-your-face style of performing,” says Richard. “It was a real coup to get Loré Lixenberg to do something so informal. That was major news for us.

“People were knocked out by the show, seeing performers trying out something different. What I liked was that it was very much a  platform for performers to experiment with something they might not have done elsewhere.

Bobby Olley: York poet and songwriter taking part in YO Underground on Sunday

“It’s a bit of a departure from the Basement Sessions, our music, comedy and spoken-word venture, which is doing fine and we’ll continue with that series, but it becomes more difficult to find new acts that haven’t been booked in elsewhere already, so we thought we should do something more left field as well and see how that goes.”

Buoyed by the success of the first night, Richard has pencilled in an October date, with the possibility of another night before then too. “We’re lining up York electronic musician John Tuffen and talking to Leeds musician Pefkin about taking part,” he says.

He does not want to pigeonhole the kind of acts that might play a YO Underground showcase. “I think definitive labels are a mistake, as there’ll be crossovers, but we have been trying to seek out acts who are obviously attempting something different in what they do, doing something that’s a little ‘wayward’,” he says.   

 “Maybe performers who are challenging to audiences in York, whereas Leeds and Sheffield already have an alternative scene for cutting-edge acts. We’ve been given good links to artists from Sheffield and Leeds, comedians from Newcastle, for example, who are edgy in terms of content or style of presentation.

Lara McClure: Spinning stories on the YO Underground bill

“Those links allow us to fill the next couple of events, and once word gets out about YO Underground, maybe it will also be a case of performers being courageous and saying, ‘well, I do this, how about me?’.”

Richard is delighted that Navigators Art has built up such a fruitful relationship with City Screen Picturehouse for events and exhibitions. “We’re thankful particularly thankful to [City Screen general manager] Cath Sharp and to all the staff, who are always very welcoming,” he says.

“We started using The Basement after Covid, when no-one else was using it, and we did our first event for the York Festival of Ideas there a couple of years ago. That going things rolling again in there, so it’s been mutually beneficial.”

On May 9, Navigators Art will present Opened Ground, A Creative Tribute To Seamus Heaney, devised and curated by Oliver Lewis at The Basement from 7pm to 10pm.

“We’re very big on spoken-word, and last October we held a creative exploration of York-born poet  W H Auden in our Co-Audenation night of spoken word, live music and performance art at The Basement,” says Richard.

Oliver Lewis: University of York poet curating Navigators Art’s Seamus Heaney night, Opened Ground, on May 9

“On the spur of the moment , we were talking about poets and reflecting on the Auden night, and we thought, ‘that went really well, let’s do another one’. This one is being curated by Oliver Lewis, an extremely promising writer, aged 20, who’s studying at York St John and has a couple of books out already.

“I came across him at Howlers, where we just got talking and I realised we had something in common, so he took part in the first YO Underground.”

Lewis has lined up a bill of Mexborough love poet Ian Parks; folk duo Where The Deer Go; York-based Irish poet and teacher Aimée Donnell, whose first collection, We Are All Creatures Of Struggle, was published by Olympia, on March 13; White Sail’s Jane Stockdale, setting Heaney poems to music, and York mythical/mystical duo Adderstone, performing a condensed version of Sweeney, their interpretation of Heaney’s work in music and song. Lewis himself will perform with musician Christian Bell in a collaboration premiering new works. 

“The idea of the evening is that it’s a creative response to Heaney’s writing, so there’ll be a combination of readings, interpretations of his poems and material inspired by his poetry,” says Richard. Box office: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/navigators-art-performance/opened-ground/.

Looking ahead, he adds: “Navigators Art encourages innovation, improvisation and collaboration, as well as excellence, and would like to hear from performers in any medium who might suit future events.” Email navigatorsart@gmail.com or follow @navigatorsart on Facebook and Instagram.

Jane Stockdale: Taking part in Opened Ground at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse on May 9

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What’s On in Ryedale, York and beyond. Hutch’s List No. 17, from Gazette & Herald

Gary Oldman in reflective mood in the dressing room as he returns to York Theatre Royal to perform Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, now into its week of press shows. Picture: Gisele Schmidt

YORK International Shakespeare Festival’s tenth anniversary programme is among Charles Hutchinson’s recommendations as April blossoms.

York theatre event of the year: Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape, York Theatre Royal, until May 17

OSCAR winner Gary Oldman returns to York Theatre Royal, where he made his professional debut in 1979,  to perform Samuel Beckett’s melancholic, tragicomic slice of theatre of the absurd Krapp’s Last Tape in his first stage appearance since 1987.

“York, for me, is the completion of a cycle,” says the Slow Horses leading man. “It is the place ‘where it all began’. York, in a very real sense, for me, is coming home. The combination of York and Krapp’s Last Tape is all the more poignant because it is ‘a play about a man returning to his past of 30 years earlier’.” Tickets update: check availability of returns and additional seats on 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Katy Stephens’ White Witch and Aslan the lion in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Ellie Kurttz

Touring show of the week: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7pm plus 2pm Thursday and Saturday matinees

STEP through the wardrobe into the kingdom of Narnia for the most mystical of adventures in a faraway land. Join Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter as they wave goodbye to wartime Britain and say hello to Mr Tumnus, the talking Faun (Alfie Richards), Aslan, the Lion (Stanton Wright), and the coldest, cruellest White Witch (Katy Stephens). 

Directed by Michael Fentiman, this breathtaking stage adaptation brings magical storytelling, bewitching stagecraft and stellar puppets to CS Lewis’s allegorical novel. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Philipp Sommer: Delivering his riposte to Shakespeare’s hatchet job on Richard III in Re-Lording Richard 3.0

Festival of the week: York International Shakespeare Festival, until May 4

YORK International Shakespeare Festival is marking its tenth anniversary with a programme incorporating artists from the Netherlands for the first time; Croatia for Marin Drzic Day; Ukrainian artists from Ivano Frankisk and Bulgaria.

Among the highlights will be Berlin actor Philipp Sommer’s riposte to Shakespeare’s hatchet job on York’s own Richard III, Re-Lording Richard 3.0 (tomorrow); Olga Annenko’s Codename Othello (Friday); York company Hoglets Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Mischief with Team Titania and Team Oberon (Saturday); Stillington writer/actor/director Alexander Wright’s immersive, existential Hamlet Show (April 28 to 30); Ridiculusmus’s Alas! Poor Yorick (April 29) and the Shakespeare’s Speakeasy play in a day (May 2). For the full programme and tickets, head to: yorkshakes.co.uk.

George Young’s Henry VI in York Shakespeare Project’s Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3. Picture: John Saunders

Condensed play of the week: York Shakespeare Project in Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3, “I Am Myself Alone”, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee

UNIVERSITY of California Santa Barbara theatre professor Irwin Appel, artistic director of Naked Shakes, directs York Shakespeare Project in his condensed, physical theatre version of Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy.

A bare space, a crown and a throne meet an ensemble cast in a powerful show of “actor-generated theatricality and transformation”, wherein they tell a cautionary tale of power and greed that charts how a tyrant can rise in a torn and broken society. Box office: yorkshakes.co.uk or tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Pip Cook, left, Josie Morley and Keeley Lane in Badapple Theatre Company’s revival of Kate Bramley’s The Thankful Village, playing York Theatre Royal Studio from today

Wartime memorial of the week: Badapple Theatre Company in The Thankful Village, York Theatre Royal Studio, today to Saturday, 7pm plus 2.30pm matinees, today and Saturday

IN a new departure for Green Hammerton touring company Badapple Theatre, writer and artistic director Kate Bramley will be playing a live score for the first time to accompany her poignant First World War comedy-drama The Thankful Village.

A story of hope, humour and humanity is seen through the eyes of three Yorkshire women from the same rural household, below and above stairs. Left behind to cope after their men-folk march off to Flanders, Pip Cook’s Edie, Keeley Lane’s Victoria and Josie Morley’s Nellie each face up to the challenges in their own way as they wait anxiously for news of their loved ones far away. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Matt Goss: Tipping his hat to The Hits & More at York Barbican on Friday. Picture: Paul Harris

Pop concert of the week: Matt Goss, The Hits & More, York Barbican, Friday, 8pm

MATT Goss, the Bros pop pin-up-turned-Las Vegas showman, says: “Trust me, what I’ve learnt over the years being on countless stages around the world, this will be your best night of the year.”

Now living in central London after many years of blue skies in America, Goss, 56, will be celebrating all he has achieved in his music career and beyond in a rock’n’roll show, but still with a horn section (featured previously in the Matt Goss Experience show with the MG Big Band and the Royal Philharmonic at York Barbican in April 2023). Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk. 

Comedy gig of the week: Hilarity Bites Comedy Club, Clayton Jones, Dawn Bailey and Chris Brooker, Milton, Rooms, Malton, Friday. 8pm

HEADLINER Clayton Jones,  the 2017 Last Minute Comedy Comedian of the Year winner, covers everyday topics of marriage, children, being mixed race, school life and growing up in London in his observational comedy.

Newly turned 50, affable Dawn Bailey views life as a mum through happy specs and giddy knickers (in her own words). Host Chris Brooker combines infectious energy with original material and inspired improvisation. Box office:  01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.

Josienne Clarke: Performing the songs of Sandy Denny with full folk-rock band at Pocklington Arts Centre

Folk gig of the week: Across The Evening Sky: Josienne Clarke Sings The Songs Of Sandy Denny, Pocklington Arts Centre, Friday, 8pm

MELANCHOLIC  singer, songwriter and interpreter of traditional song Josienne Clarke leads a full folk-rock band – guitar, piano, bass and drums – in a new show dedicated to Sandy Denny, whose songs are her “north star – a constant guiding light”.

“If I can take one young fan of mine and introduce them to Sandy, in a context that they can grab hold of,” she says. “If they like my music, they will love Sandy. And that would be the whole concept sorted. To pass it on, so that these songs can go on forever.” Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

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REVIEW: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday *****

Full steam ahead: The train journey scene in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York

IF you did not head over to Leeds Playhouse between November 18 and January 25 for the most spectacular show of the Yorkshire Christmas season, then you can still venture into Narnia via the wardrobe as Michael Fentiman’s breathtaking production has further magical life, like Aslan, on a long tour.

The narrow Grand Opera House stage is smaller than the Playhouse’s cavernous Quarry Theatre, but much of the grand scale has been retained, except for Katy Stephens’ White Witch no longer rising high above the auditorium in the climax to Act One.

It matters not a jot as that scene still carries its own frightening, shivering beauty amid the flurry of snowflakes in a show replete with magic and illusions by Chris Fisher and wondrous puppetry, designed by Max Humphries and directed by Toby Olie. The wow factor keeps on rising.

Marking the 75th anniversary of C S Lewis’s 1950 novel, and based on the original production by Sally Cookson, this show finds the perfect balance of storytelling and spectacle, delivered by a cast of actor-musicians who are as likely to switch instrument as character as they perform Barnaby Race and Benji Bower’s score rooted in English folk music suffused with the energy of Irish jigs.

Set and costume design by Tom Paris, working from Rae Smith’s original design, are complemented by Jack Knowles’s stellar lighting design and Tom Marshall’s sound design that fills the Grand Opera House auditorium like no other show.

Katy Stephens’ White Witch comes face to face with her nemesis Aslan in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. Picture: Ellie Kurttz

Pre-show, a pianist in military attire and pith helmet plays favourite tunes of the wartime era, setting the scene for an enchanted story where the Pevensie children will become caught up in a very different battle in Narnia.

Yet the costumes for the Narnian creatures will remind you of the other war the children have left behind: from goggles for Ed Thorpe’s Mr Beaver, to an airman’s flying jacket for Alfie Richards’ Mr Tumnus and a gas mask for Shane Antony-Whiteley’s lupine Maugrin, who moves and fights on all fours with the aid of crutches that propel him around the stage in leaps and bounds.

Typified by Antony-Whiteley’s Maugrin, Shanelle ‘Tali’ Fergus’s choreography is as much physical theatre as ensemble dance and graceful poise for Stephens’ White Witch,  all played out on a revolving set that facilitates going into the wardrobe and out the other side into frozen, faraway Narnia, with its signature lamp post atop a piano.

Seen through the eyes of the Pevensie children, evacuated to the avuncular Professor’s Scottish lair, Lewis’s torrid, allegorical tale is told with a sense of wonder as Lucy (Molly Francis, understudying for Kudzai Mangombe), Edmund (Bunmi Osadolor), Susan (Joanna Adaran) and Peter (Jesse Dunbar) “meet new friends, face dangerous foes and learn the lessons of courage, sacrifice and the power of love”. All four deliver terrific performances, with bags of humour and pathos, and room for mistakes and rivalries on a rapid learning curve of empowerment.

Set-pieces deliver time after time, from the journey north on a train, whose individual carriages light up to musical accompaniment as they are carried above heads as the steam hisses, to Aslan miraculously vanishing from his, spoiler alert, resting place. The stage floor lights up to denote the crackling of ice; the huge puppet of Aslan, steered by puppeteers, will rise to his haunches, as impressive as Joey, the horse in War Horse.

The Pevensie children in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe: Edmund (Bunmi Osadolor), Peter (Jesse Dunbar), Susan (Joanna Adaran) and Lucy (Kudzai Mangombe)

All life is here in Fentiman’s company, from Richards’ deceitful but devastated faun Mr Tumnus to Stanton Wright’s embodiment of Aslan’s noble demeanour (standing alongside the roaring puppet); Thorpe and Anya De Villiers’  bickering Mr and Mrs Beaver to Kraig Thornber’s triple bill of roles as the Professor, Father Christmas and Wise Owl. And yes, a comment is made that this is not the season for Christmas!

Stephens brings all her Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe gravitas to the White Witch, putting the vile into evil that made you swear the Grand Opera House had suddenly turned colder on each entry.

Praise too for the work of fight director Jonathan Holby, musical director Ben Goddard and hair and make-up designer Susanna Peretz. If you see the show elsewhere,  that praise will extend to aerial director Gwen Hales.

In the words of director Michael Fentiman: “This production celebrates the magic of live theatre. It is a celebration of the possibilities of the collective imagination and the boundless wonders of individual skill.”

How right he is, and what a special, powerful. moving, beautiful production it is. Make sure to rush to the wardrobe: five-star theatre awaits.

The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday 7pm plus 2pm Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york. Also Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, September 23 to 27, 7pm plus 2pm Wednesday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees (box office, 01274 432000 or) and Hull New Theatre, September 30 to October 4, 7pm and 2pm Thursday and Saturday matinees (box office, hulltheatres.co.uk). Age guidance: six upwards.