Close-up Vieux: Vieux Farka Touré “absolutely in his element on stage, elegantly dressed and enjoying the music” at The Crescent, York on Monday. All pictures: Paul Rhodes
A MONDAY night to remember in the company of Vieux Farka Touré, guitar-playing son of the late Ali Farka Touré, one of the brightest of stars to emerge from Mali.
Vieux has forged his own reputation as a guitarist through relentless touring and clever collaborations. Sons of famous fathers do not always find a way to reconcile that looming shadow, but Vieux’s most recent record, Ali, is his best yet. Recorded with Khruangbin, one of the planet’s coolest collectives, from Houston, Texas, Touré updates and celebrates his father’s songs.
The setlist drew extensively from Ali and also Les Racines, Toure’s other album from 2022. Performing as a trio, Vieux was absolutely in his element on stage, elegantly dressed and enjoying the music. The frequent smiles and eye contact between the musicians spoke of the level of understanding between them.
Vieux Farka Touré: Updating and celebrating his father’s songs
The concert hit a purple patch about three songs in, when Vieux switched to electric guitar and the musicians really locked into one another. Tongo Barra and Tamalia were the highlights: lithe, hip swinging and possessed of the sort of groove you didn’t want to end.
It was a coup for the Crescent to book Touré, and another fine feather for York promoters Ourboros. The sold-out atmosphere reflected that. The place was crowded but not rammed, in good spirits but not rowdy and somewhere where all ages could feel comfortable in the dark.
As the 11-song set ranged on, the tone shifted from the desert blues Touré is known for toward a much heavier sound, one that punched harder but swung and grabbed less. This guitar attack is built for touring and can stun an audience in seconds. Sacrificing some of the depth and ease of his albums, Touré was nevertheless a fine showman and the fluidity of his guitar playing was a wonder from start to finish.
Review by Paul Rhodes
Ali, a collaborative studio album of Ali Farka Touré covers by Malian singer and guitarist Vieux Farka Touré and Texan trio Khruangbin, was released on September 23 on Dead Oceans.
Touré on tour: Vieux Faraka Touré’s “guitar attack is built for touring and can stun an audience in seconds”
And then there were three: Millie O’Connell’s Babe, left, Debbie Kurup’s Star and Danielle Steers’ Lady in The Cher Show: A New Musical. Picture: Matt Crockett
THE role of Cher in The Cher Show, A New Musical will be shared by Debbie Kurup, Danielle Steers and Millie O’Connell at the Grand Opera House, York, next week on the European premiere tour.
In a case of Cher, Cher and Cher alike, the trio of musical actresses will portray the American “Goddess of Pop” and “Queen of Reinvention” in three different stages of her career as a singer, actress and television personality: Millie as Babe; Danielle as Lady and Debbie as Star, each delineated by a different colour scheme.
On the road since April, the year-long British and Irish tour of this Tony Award-winning 2018 Broadway smash has visited Yorkshire already, playing the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, in late-October, directed by Arlene Phillips and choreographed by two-time Strictly Come Dancing professional champion Oti Mabuse, with a book by Tony and Olivier Award-winning Rick Elice (Jersey Boys, The Addams Family) and costume design by Gabriella Slade (Six, In The Heights, Spice World 2019 Tour).
From a young child with big dreams in El Centro, California, the shy daughter of an Armenian American truck driver, to the heights of global stardom, The Cher Show tells the story of Cherilyn Sarkisian’s meteoric rise to 100 million record sales, an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, three Golden Globes and even an award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Oti Mabuse: Choreographer for The Cher Show
As the publicity blurb puts it, “Cher takes the audience by the hand and introduces them to the influential people in her life, from her mother and Sonny Bono to fashion designer and costumier Bob Mackie. It shows how she battled the men who underestimated her, fought the conventions and, above all, was a trailblazer for independence”.
Thirty-five hits feature, from I Got You Babe, Bang Bang and Gypsys, Tramps And Thieves to I Found Someone, If I Could Turn Back Time, The Shoop Shoop Song and Believe, from a songbook of the only artist to have a Billboard chart number one hit in six consecutive decades.
Let’s meet the three Chers in chronological order, firstly Millie O’Connell’s Babe. “I’d worked with Arlene [director Arlene Phillips] before; she gave me my first job at 19 on TV,” she says. “She’s followed my career since then, and it’s really great to be able to work with her again. She and Oti and Gabriella are a really good production team of women and that really drew me in the most.
“Cher came into my life when I heard Believe. I was like, ‘this is brilliant’! I used to impersonate that song as a party trick, and it’s been really exciting taking that impersonation so far that it now becomes naturalistic.”
Millie O’Connell’s Babe in The Cher Show. Picture: Pamela Raith
Millie plays Cher “before the high cheek bones”, from the age of six to her early 20s, having worked on voice, mannerisms and movement over an intense four weeks, all leading to a performance with multiple costume changes. “I’m going through all those eras, from before I Got You Babe to The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour; I even have one costume change on stage in the first act!” she says.
Picking out Cher’s enduring qualities, Millie says: “I love how she’s a star who never hides her vulnerability. She reveals her heart, which is really empowering, especially for women.”
Danielle Steers’s Lady takes up Cher’s story from the late-1960s to the mid-1970s. “I’m middle Cher! Starting with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and ending with the divorce,” she says.
“I was in a show called Bat Out Of Hell, when I was in the original cast in London and on Broadway, and I sang Dead Ringer For Love, the Cher and Meat Loaf duet. That’s when people said, ‘Oh my god, you sound like Cher, and I’d never thought of my voice that way before.
Barnsley-born Danielle Steers’s Lady in The Cher Show
“While I was in America, The Cher Show was on there and I used to have to pass the show sign on my way to work and I thought, ‘that looks amazing’. I became obsessed!”
Danielle, born and raised in Barnsley, went through “quite the audition process”, on Zoom and in person, for the UK tour but is delighted to now be singing multiple Cher songs.
“When you hear Cher, you just know it’s her. I can’t pinpoint it, but it’s the way she sings certain words and forms her vowel sounds,” she says.
“Everyone always tries to do their best Cher impression, but though it’s hard, in this show you have to find that fine line between gimmickry and reality, and of course Cher singing now doesn’t sound like she did in the 1960s, but we have to be true to her at all times.”
Debbie Kurup’s Star, centre stage (where else!), in The Cher Show. Picture: Pamela Raith
Debbie Kurup plays Cher, the Star. “She’s the oldest and wisest of the three Chers,” she says. “We actually start the show with ‘Star’ having a bit of a confidence crisis and calling on the other two Chers to help her and go through the eras. I pick up the baton again in Act Two, although I narrate throughout.”
Her admiration for Cher is boundless. “She is amazing,” says Debbie. “Some of her inner strength comes from when she was bullied at school, was dyslexic and never felt she fitted in.
“Because she felt like an outsider, she’s always worked harder. She’s funny, she’s a consummate entertainer, not afraid to reinvent herself. That’s what sets her apart, making her a megastar.”
The Cher Show, A New Musical, runs at Grand Opera House, York, November 15 to 19, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/york.
Ian McIntosh’s Deco: A soul voice to be in heard in the midnight hour…or night and day at the Grand Opera House this week. Picture: Ellie Kurttz
Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly plus 2.30pm, Thursday and Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/york
RODDY Doyle has resisted any temptation to update his 1980s’ story of the “hardest-working band in Dublin” for its first tour in five years.
“The vibrancy is still there but so is the tension caused by lack of communication,” he reasons. “For instance, will Deco, the obnoxious lead singer, turn up on time? These days, you’d track him down on your mobile in no time at all. But there wasn’t that option in the late-’80s.”
Back then, he chose Sixties’ music – Motown and Memphis soul – for his young, working-class band because “at the time, it felt timeless”. “Thirty-five years later, I was right,” he says.
What’s more, he went for a “a big band with a brass section and [female] backing vocals, as opposed to three or four young men that was the norm back then”. Right choice number two, as confirmed by a passer-by’s terse reaction to three young men busking Depeche Mode’s 1984 synth anthem Master And Servant: “Sh*te”.
Conor Litten’s jazz-filtering Dean and Stuart Reid’s much trumpeted soul brother Joey The Lips in The Commitments. Picture: Ellie Kurttz
The songs of Otis, Wilson, Marvin, Aretha and co are so familiar, more popular than ever, that we are on first-name terms with their makers. Put a multitude of Motown and Memphis staples in one exuberant show, wrapped inside a Dublin comedy drama full of whimsy, wit, pathos, bluster, booze, banter, too much testosterone and a classic rise and fall arc, and here comes a cracking night out, whatever the year. The craic, writ large and loud as Doyle “captures the rhythm of Dublin kids yapping and teasing and bullying”.
Continuity accompanies this revival in other ways too: from the February 2017 tour visit to the Grand Opera House, Andrew Linnie has stepped up from playing silver-tongued dreamer and putative band manager Jimmy Rabbitte to taking over the director’s chair. Meanwhile, Nigel Pivaro follows another Coronation Street alumnus, Kevin Kennedy, into the role of Jimmy’s Da, forever offering curt advice, slumped over a newspaper in his battered seat beneath the stairs.
Represented by Tim Blazdell’s set design of rundown apartment and garage frontages, The Commitments is set in 1986 in the north side of Dublin, where Jimmy Rabbitte (James Killeen), a visionary manager with the lip of a Malcolm McLaren and the cheek of a Stevo, wishes to build a band on the foundation of his black American soul and blues idols: Redding, Pickett, Gaye and Franklin.
His reasoning: the Irish are the blacks of Europe; Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland; northsiders are the blacks of Dublin, and soul music is the politics of the people; a mantra as familiar as the Choose Life speech in Trainspotting.
Dublin double act: Nigel; Pivaro as Jimmy’s Da, left, and James Killeen as Jimmy Rabbitte. Picture: Ellie Kurttz
The show opens with the first sighting of a Christmas party in York in 2022, as a drunken Deco (Ian McIntosh) bursts into the Regency pub and leaps unsteadily onto a table in his Irish football shirt. This bored factory worker has the sweetest of soul voices – “the voice of God”, as soul brother Joey The Lips will say later – but the attitude of an ass-soul: a Deco heading for a decking.
McIntosh’s incorrigible Deco, rather more of a Celtic dish than Andrew Strong’s Meat Loafian frontman in Alan Parker’s 1991 film, has the swagger and soul fervour of Kevin Rowland in Dexys Midnight Runners’ Projected Passion Revue pomp.
Anything but a Rabbitte in headlights, Jimmy holds auditions with clarity of thought and purpose, the Eighties’ wannabees sent packing in a revolving door of a comical scene, each rapid exit accompanied by a withering word or look from Pivaro’s Jimmy’s Da, eyebrows raised as high as Salvador Dali’s.
The last to join is the mysterious, mystical, scooter-riding soul sage Joey The Lips (a sublime Stuart Reid). Trumpet player to the stars, he may be ageing, but soon Joey will be work his way through the backing singers, Natalie (Eve Kitchingman) pocket dynamo Bernie (Sarah Gardiner) and everyone’s crush, Imelda (Ciara Mackey). Are they a chain of fools? Well, who can resist when Joey tries a little tenderness in grey Dublin town? Oh, and, for the record, their take on Chain Of Fools is fab-u-lous. So too is Think.
Scene stealer: Ronnie Yorke’s ska and scar-loving skinhead bouncer Mickah
Rabbitte strives to spark a Dublin soul revolution with the vim of a Bob Geldof, but such a path to soul salvation can never run smoothly, not when band members are as fractious as Deco and drummer Billy (Ryan Kelly), and scene-stealing bouncer Mickah (Ronnie Yorke) is doing his nut.
Doyle’s narrative is lyrical, colourful, impassioned, fiery, furious and funny, if prone to caricature when painted with broader brush strokes on stage, but like a Mickah punch, The Commitments is a knockout. You may not connect with all the cast of rowdies as there are so many, but you will with the way they play.
Favourite songs this time? Proud Mary, Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone and McIntosh’s rendition of It’s A Thin Line Between Love And Hate, a song to define Deco’s antagonistic character.
If you can’t get no satisfaction, then you ain’t got no soul. Make a commitment to see The Commitments. NOW!
Review by Charles Hutchinson
Make a date to see James Killeen’s Jimmy Rabbitte and Ciara Mackey’s Imelda, in a clinch, in The Commitments. Picture: Ellie Kurttz
Clem Burke, second from right, keeps the beat with The Split Squad
BLONDIE drummer Clem Burke is in York tomorrow, playing with The Split Squad, “one of the finest all-star you might never have heard before”.
New Jersey-born Clem, 67, will be on sticks duty at grassroots music venue The Vaults, alias the Victoria Vaults, in Nunnery Lane, with support from Johnny Seven and Indignation Meeting from 7.30pm.
Here CharlesHutchPress drums up some questions for Clem.
How come you are playing York as the only venue outside London, Clem?
“The offer to play The Vaults came through our UK agent and we’d heard it was a great venue, so we thought, ‘why not?’.”
When did you last play a venue as small as The Vaults in York?
“We often do club venues in the States as well, and it’s always fun to get together with my mates in the band. We’ve also done quite a few festivals around the world.”
What do you like about venues such as The Vaults by way of contrast with the big arenas and concert halls for Blondie?
“I do enjoy playing smaller venues but I enjoy the arenas as well.”
What’s the story behind the formation of The Split Squad in 2011?
“With The Split Squad, we’re a group of mates who enjoy each other’s company, so when the opportunity for a few gigs comes up, provided time allows for everyone’s schedule, we go for it.
“We all have similar musical influences, Motown, New Wave, power pop, garage rock, R&B, so it’s always a gas to get together and do some gigs.”
Aside from you on drums, who else is in the line-up? “The Split Squad was put together by our lead singer, bass player and main songwriter Michael Giblin, who was a mutual friend of all the other group members.
“The other group members are Keith Streng, from The Fleshtones, on guitar, Josh Kantor on keyboards and Eddie Munoz on guitar.
The poster for tomorrow’s gig at The Vaults, York
“Mike wrote some brilliant songs and gathered us all in the studio to record our first album. After the record came out, we began to get some radio airplay and then the offer for some gigs started to roll in.
“It wasn’t really supposed to be a ‘real’ band, but we’re almost ten years on and have two albums out [2013’s Now Hear This… and 2022’s Another Cinderella] and an EP [2018’s The Showstopper].”
How would you describe The Split Squad’s music?
“The sound of The Split Squad is the sound of the history of rock’n’roll. Our various influences are diverse but always rockin’.”
What do you recall of Blondie playing to 25,000-30,000 people on a race day at York Racecourse on July 22 2011?
“I do recall that gig. It was a beautiful day with a great reception from the fantastic crowd. With Blondie, we’ve played a few racetracks, as we call them in the States, a few times over the years. Most famously in Yonkers, New York State, when Parallel Lines was first released.”
What do you think of Britain right now? Grate Britain rather than Great Britain?
“The UK is like a second home to all the members of Blondie. We all love visiting and gigging there as often as possible. Like the rest of the world, the UK is going through some trying times, we can only be optimistic and hope for the best.
“It’s very important to have hope and to be nice to one another. We have to stop the hate. Peace & Love, Clem.”
The Split Squad play The Vaults, Nunnery Lane, York, on Thursday (10/11/2022). Tickets: theyorkvaults.com; wegottickets.com/event/561001; seetickets.com/event/the-split-squad/the-york-vaults-venue/2396633
“The sound of The Split Squad is the sound of the history of rock’n’roll,” says drummer Clem Burke, seated second from right with fellow Split Squad members
Who’s who in The Split Squad?
Clem Burke
The band’s resident legend. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer, and Blondie
founding member, is still bashing away with the same passion, fury and timing he has had since before he first walked into a Blondie rehearsal session.
Constantly moving and always playing, Clem is still highly in demand as a session musician, having worked with Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan, Eurythmics and, more recently, with The Tearaways, The Rockats and Echo & The Bunnymen.
Michael Giblin
Working from his laboratory deep in the centre of Pennsylvania, Mr Giblin, the
well-dressed bass player, singer, keyboardist, producer and connoisseur of fine cuisine, is the glue that keeps the band together and the fuel that keeps it moving ahead.
A member of 1990s’ power-popsters Cherry Twister, he assembled The Split Squad after his current band, Parallax Project, encountered the other band members on various tours and recording projects.
Michael has seen his stock rise as a producer and engineer, having his hand on new releases from The Fleshtones, The Cynz, and Stupidity.
Eddie Munoz
Eddie might be best known as the lead guitarist of ’80s L.A. legends The
Plimsouls (and he keeps the name alive by touring occasionally), but any attempts to pigeonhole him with terminology such as ‘’power pop’ or ‘New Wave’ pop are futile.
Keith Streng
One of the four handsomest guys in rock’n’roll, an uncrowned king of pop and
soul, Keith and his glitter boots have trodden on stages all over the globe the past four and a half decades as the guitarist and co-founder of one of the most enduring bands of all, The Fleshtones. These days, he also can be found recording with other acts, from Radio Birdman legend Deniz Tek to Swedish garage fiends Stupidity, Strengsbrew and The Vacuum Cleaners.
Josh Kantor
How many people in the biz can say they played with four Rock and Roll Hall-of-Famers (Clem Burke; Peter Buck and Mike Mills of R.E.M.; John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin) and at least one future Baseball Hall-of-Famer (and maybe more)?
When not playing with The Split Squad or The Baseball Project, Josh is the long-time organist extraordinaire for the Red Sox. Yes, those Red Sox, the ones up in Boston. From his perch at Fenway, Josh dishes out arguably the wildest array of songs in the history of the game, many by request, and has been on board for three World Series titles.
Latest album Another Cinderella also features an all-star cast of guests: Jason Victor (The Dream Syndicate); Brian Hurd (Daddy Long Legs); David Minehan
(The Neighborhoods/Aerosmith/The Replacements); Scott McCaughey (R.E.M./The Baseball Project/The Young Fresh Fellows); Joe Adragna (The Junior League) and violinist Deni Bonet.
Knock-out punch: The artwork for The Split Squad’s Another Cinderella
Michael Giblin on Another Cinderella
“This generation of Cinderella Men can take a punch and give one back that’s just as hard, if not harder. And they skilfully mix up a variety of punches. They come to the centre of the ring in a hurry and a flurry of relentless power-pop beats (Hey DJ, Another Cinderella and Sinking Ship); rope-a-dope with some deep-fried blues (Palpitation Blues); counter with psychedelia (Taxi Cab and Bigger Than Heroin), then unload a romper-stomper (Invisible Lightning), assault you with a combo of late ’60s-style soulful rock (Showstopper and Trying To Get Back To My Baby); a jab of ’70s hard rock (Not My Monkeys); set you up with a gentle ballad (As Bright As You Are), before catching you and sending you to the canvas with a full-on uppercut to the jaw (Hey (Soul) DJ). A TKO.”
Simon Radford and Claire Pulpher in rhearsal for White Rose Theatre’s York premiere of The Last Five Years
GIVE a round of applause to actor Simon Radford, who has been travelling back and forth from Edinburgh to rehearse with director and fellow cast member Claire Pulpher for York company White Rose Theatre’s production of The Last Five Years.
One week of crossing and re-crossing the border has been followed by a further week of rehearsals, now in situ in North Yorkshire, but still involving plenty of movement, taking in Our Lady’s Church Hall in Acomb, a day at Ripon Arts Hub, in All Hallowgate, Ripon, followed by two performances there last Thursday and Friday, and a day of rehearsing and filming a promotional video at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York.
From tomorrow until Saturday, Simon and Claire will perform Jason Robert Brown’s emotionally charged American musical there with a six-piece band led by musical director John Atkin, who accompanied the duo on piano in Ripon.
Joining Atkin will be Marcus Bousfield on violin; Rachel Brown and Lucy McLuckie on cello; Paul McArthur on guitar and the ubiquitous Christian Topman on bass.
Claire Pulpher: Actress, director and debutant producer
“It’s been pretty intensive in rehearsal, more like a professional process, crammed into a short time,” says Claire, who plays struggling Ohio actress Cathy Hiatt opposite Simon’s rising novelist, Jamie Wellerstein, as Brown charts the path of two lovers over the course of five years of courting and marriage, trials and tribulations.
She is delighted to be working with Simon as they unite for York’s newest theatre company. “We first met when doing Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods with Pick Me Up Theatre at the Grand Opera House in 2014,” recalls Claire. “The Last Five Years is my favourite show and Simon’s favourite show, and ever since I met Jon Atkin, when he was the musical director for Chess in 2019, we’d wanted to do the show together.
“We thought, ‘let’s make it happen’, and we’ve all put ideas together and it’s somehow happened!”
She first saw the show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008/2009. “But we’ve never seen it done locally, so I set about organising the licence. I’ve directed shows, choreographed shows, but I’ve never produced a show before, so that was a new challenge, me being a novice!
Close together and drifting apart: Simon Radford’s Jamie and Claire Pulpher’s Cathy in a montage of their five-year relationship in Jason Robert Brown’s American musical
“But as a two-person, one-act show, it was affordable, and we didn’t have to panic about getting the rights as no-one else around here was after it,” she says.
“It’s over an hour long, more like 90 minutes with no interval, and when I saw it at the Fringe, it was staged in a pub off the beaten track, and it’s stayed with me as a show ever since.
“The way I saw it presented, the band was on stage and they became immersed in the performance, with each performer singing alone, Cathy to an imaginary Jamie, and vice versa, except in the duets. We’re doing the same.”
In Brown’s theatrical structure, Cathy’s side of the story starts at the end of the relationship; Jamie tells his tale from the beginning, but will they ever meet in the middle in a musical full of laughter, tears and everything in between, played out to a score of upbeat songs and beautiful ballads?
“It’s a rom-com but so relatable as it’s a bit more naturalistic, maybe even uncomfortable,” says Claire Pulpher of The Last Five Years
“It’s a rom-com but so relatable as it’s a bit more naturalistic, maybe even uncomfortable, because we’ve all been through those trials and tribulations,” says Claire. “It’s showing things the creative arts don’t normally show.
“The relationship is seen from each perspective, presented as internal monologues rather than discussions, as they go in opposite directions on the time line with each song.
“Jamie is 23 at the start when he gets his first book deal, and he’s hugely successful from a young age with everything moving so fast that gradually everything spirals out of control. Cathy is struggling in her acting work, and so their career paths are contrasting and are not aligning.”
The Last Five Years will be staged over the next four days with a sound design by Ollie Nash and lighting by Ruth Symington. Tickets for tomorrow to Saturday’s 7.30pm performances and Saturday’s 2.30pm matinee are on sale at tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
The Gunpowder Plotters: Jamie Zubarai’s Kit Wright, left, David Reed’s Guy Fawkes, Robin Simpson’s Robert Catesby, Greg Haiste’s Thomas Percy and Andrew Pollard’s Thomas Winter. Picture: Sam Taylor
Guy Fawkes, Rumours and Rebels season, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly plus 2pm, Thursday and 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
FOR all the teeth-breaking toffee apples, pumpkin soup, fizzing fireworks and sausages – two forms of bangers, if you will – we take Guy Fawkes very seriously in York, more so than that scoundrel Dick Turpin. Born in this city, Christened at St Michael le Belfrey, no effigy burns on Bonfire Night at his old school, St Peter’s (likewise in Scotton, where Fawkes lived in his teenage years).
Yet just as he was mocked for his affected moniker Guido Fawkes, he is ridiculed for the ultimate incompetence of the Gunpowder Plot that ended with the treasonous traitor’s execution in January 1606, along with the hanging, drawing and quartering of his fellow conspirators. Cue comedic stereotyping of Popish knave Fawkes down the centuries.
Like the bungling incompetents in Guy Ritchie’s 1998 crime thriller Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, Fawkes’s story lends itself to black comedy, but like Vinnie Jones’s notorious line, “it’s been personal” for York-born writer and actor David Reed.
He first wrote a radio drama of Guy Fawkes for The Penny Dreadfuls, his troupe of purveyors of historical comedy spoofs, aired in 2009 on BBC Radio 4. Director Gemma Fairlie thought it should transfer to the stage, and rather later than first planned, it now forms Reed’s first stage play, billed as “an explosive new comedy”, one that takes the form of interlocking sketches more than a play in full flow, on Carla Goodman’s revolve set (to signify revolution).
Reed and Fairlie decided it should seek to weave together the two faces of theatre – comedy and tragedy – by combining high farce in the manner of Blackadder, Upstart Crow and Monty Python with the pathos of the futility-of-war finale to Blackadder Goes Forth, forever entrenched in the memory, like the poems of Owen and Sassoon. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder? Seriously serious. One barrel of home brew among them. Comedy! The play seeks a more even balance, but ultimately to the detriment of both, never becoming a tragicomedy.
Lace in brief, witty bursts of metatheatre, referencing Shakespeare’s King Lear, the audience’s changing standards of theatre attire and a nod to Covid naysayers, dismissing the Plague as “a hoax”. Apply Horrible Histories’ flair for debunking history. Toss in a sword fight with The Three Musketeers panache. Crumbs, so much to play with, to squeeze in, so many elements to rub against each other, like sticks to start a fire. More of which later.
A pre-show chat with York actress Florence Poskitt, of musical comedy duo Fladam, and her father revealed he had once written a comedic musical version of Guy Fawkes. So many possibilities, and yes, this Guy Fawkes has music, of the incidental variety in the Jacobean style, by composer and sound designer Eamonn O’Dwyer.
Comic aside: Cassie Vallance’s Martha Percy in her farthingale that requires her to enter sideways. Picture: Sam Taylor
The way it plays out, Reed’s Fawkes treacherous trigger man is the grave one, driven by the detremination to return Roman Catholicism to the throne by blowing up Westminster, haunted by seeing the pregnant Catholic martyr Margaret Clitherow compressed to death in York, struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder from years of fighting in Spain, and now hell-bent on death and destruction back home.
Whereas Rowan Atkinson’s Edmund Blackadder is a cynic, full of putdowns, Reed’s Fawkes is already too damaged to be a clown with a frown. Darkness to the light around him, let others do the historical mockery; he is a man on a mission, and Reed wants us to better understand his motives, to tell his side of the story, to highlight his tragic flaws, rather than merely decry him as a pantomime villain, just as the Richard III Society seeks to paint a fuller picture of another derided son of York, Richard III, to counter the slings and arrows of Shakespeare’s play.
Fawkes is the northern late arriviste to a bunch of southern-softie amateurs: revolutionary fops who gather regularly at their local to discuss and plot James I’s overthrow, keener on the snacks and the gossip than getting the job done under stressed-out, coffee bean-chewing ringleader Robert Catesby (a delightfully nuanced, dyspeptic comedic turn from Robin Simpson, continuing his run of superb autumn performances after a trio of roles in Harrogate Theatre’s H2 Rep season).
Broader comedy is to be mined in Greg Haiste’s blustering, preening Thomas Percy, aping Rik Mayall’s Lord Flashheart with chutzpah; Northern Broadsides favourite Andrew Pollard’s more melancholic, thwarted idealistThomas Winter (of discontent), donning a bear’s costume as a forlorn distraction, and Jamie Zubairi’s camp Kit Wright, still in thrall to Fawkes from York schooldays.
Guy Fawkes is two clashing plays within one, matched by the theatricality of Goodman’s costumes, with the gap being bridged by Cassie Vallance’s Martha Percy, Fawkes’s rekindled love from yore, who begins as a riff on Blackadder’s Queenie, but grows to match Fawkes’s political zeal. Their showdown is Reed’s best scene, one that shows the alternative direction that this play could have taken from the start, potentially far more combustible, more dramatic too, for being more troubled, like Fawkes himself.
Ironically, both in Reed’s script and Fairlie’s direction, the comedy is the play’s stronger suit, but as the plot thickens, the gunpowder never catches fire. Or rather, when it briefly does, symbolically it is stamped out.
Maybe the truth is Guy Fawkes could never be a tragic hero, such were his intentions, but when Reed’s Fawkes says at the close “God, I’m weird”, no-one laughs. In an out-and-out comedy, you would, but the line belongs in a wholly darker drama.
Russell Dowson, left, as Max Goodman, Pete Keen, as Nigel Forbes, and Stuart Leeming, as Detective Inspector Berry, in rehearsal for the Stockton Foresters’ December production of A Sting In The Tale
THE Stockton Foresters will stage their innovative adaptation of A Sting In The Tale from December 1 to 3 at Stockton on the Forest Village Hall, near York.
In the wake of their post-lock down production of A Bunch Of Amateurs, these thespian villagers will be out to prove once more that they are not amateurs at all, but a bunch of talented community players.
The Foresters will be presenting their account of a 1986 comical thriller by playwrights and television screen writers Brian Clemens and Dennis Spooner, whose credits include The Avengers, The Professionals and Coronation Street.
Nicky Wild’s Jill Prentice
Director Louisa Littler says: “A Sting In The Tale opens with two once-successful crime writers trying to write a play to pay off their mounting debts, then develops as they realise who better to accomplish the perfect murder than themselves.
“With so many twists and turns, you will remain intrigued – or as happily confused as the bumbling Detective Inspector Berry – until the end.”
Louisa’s cast will include Russell Dowson as Max Goodman, Peter Keen as Nigel Forbes, Stuart Leeming as Detective Inspector Berry, Nicky Wild as Jill Prentice and Holly Smith as Ann Forbes.
Gun shot: Peter Keen, left, and Russell Dowson rehearsing a scene for A Sting In The Tale
The Stockton Foresters have been staging shows since 1946, “entertaining families across York, always trying to bring a fresh twist to old favourites”, as chairperson and cast member Nicky Wild illuminates.
“Amateur drama was actively promoted to create, repair, sustain and develop community spirit during and in the post-war years,” she says.
“Even our dearly departed Queen, Elizabeth II, trod the boards. Sadly, she never blessed those of Stockton on the Forest, but we continue to keep our standards high in the hope that King Charles III may pop in to visit!”
Nicky continues: “The Covid years have been hard for everyone with no live events, but our theatre group has stayed strong, remaining a fantastic outlet for audiences and actors alike.
On the case: Stuart Leeming’s Detective Inspector Berry
“It’s a place where people can escape their woes; and most importantly laugh together. So, like many before, we soldier on to entertain our troops. Community theatre will remain the backbone of village life in turbulent times.”
Tickets for the 7.30pm performances are on sale at £8 at https://thelittleboxoffice.com/stocktonforesters or £10 on the door. The Stockton Foresters will be offering a paid bar and raffle to raise funds for the village community.
The village hall is fully accessible, situated on the main Coastliner X843 bus route and has plenty of free parking on site.
Looking ahead, Nicola says: “If you love the show and are interested in joining, the group always welcomes new members to their theatrical family to continue the story.” She can be contacted at nix_charlie@hotmail.co.uk
Sofa scene: Stuart Leeming’s Detective Inspector Berry and Holly Smith’s Ann Forbes
Alan Leach: “Like a boxer, he has had the bravery and confidence to drop his hands to wield an unexpected knockout punch”
Alan Leach, I Wish I Knew Now What I Thought I Knew Then, released on November 4
“DON’T get fooled again…”
Whoever thought that Alan Leach was the quirky, cooky Peter Tork character in Shed Seven or just a fantastic Keith Moon-esque drummer who did handsprings over his kit with varying degrees of landing success are so wrong…
Alan has to be one of the most talented, bright people I have ever met with a rare mix of aptitude and creativity.
Basically, in whatever he does, he gets s**t done.
A great drummer…
A proven songwriter…
A cracking studio engineer who never believed he was…
But he WAS!
Then, with his family, they have created Speed Quizzing, which has an ever-growing empire worldwide.
I remember once telling him as he came to my pub quizzes to be tortured…
“Al, it’s a lovely idea but not everyone has these fancy phones!”
I wonder if these ‘fancy phones’ caught on!
Al has always surprised me…
Ever since he managed to get with his amazing wife Jane Leach.
Best deal he ever sealed.
But this new twist has taken me by surprise…
I never saw this coming…
It may surprise you too.
After taking an indefinite break from the Sheds since last year, Alan has made a solo album.
Like a boxer, he has had the bravery and confidence to drop his hands to wield an unexpected knockout punch.
This nine-track album of his self-penned songs are first-listen beautiful…
Like nine peeks behind his curtains, they show you so much.
A Dozen Of Me will enter your head and never leave. The most gentle of earworms with a lifetime of squatters’ rights ahead.
The true joy of these short stories is they don’t try too hard…
Nothing is desperately pioneering, ground-breaking, edgy or clever…
All of the playing is understated – there only to cradle the song…
To fit in…not stand out.
They make me smile and almost teary as they are steeped in growing up in the ’70s and ’80s…a melting pot of 90s’ pop blended with my Mam’s early 70s’ record collection.
In no time, these songs, laden with gentle hooks, feel like old friends without being derivative.
Charming short stories that nonchalantly roll a hand grenade across the table to deliver a poignant killer line when you least expect it.
I Wish I Knew Now What I Thought I Knew Then track listing:
A Dozen Of Me; Clouds Behind The Moon; Erica; Going For A Song; The One Love Generation; If This Comes Off; Anthem For The Here And Now; Things Like This; Clouds Behind The Moon (orchestral version).
Fact file:
Album engineered and mixed by Mickey Dale.
Former Shed Seven cohort Joe Johnson plays guitar on three numbers, including the co-written Erica.
Alan’s son, Sonny, plays guitar on various tracks. York singer-songwriter Hayley Hutchinson duets on the ballad If This Comes Off.
Alan Leach says:
“ONE small step for everyone else, one giant leap for Alankind. I’ve written, recorded and finally released my solo studio album and it’s available to hear on all the obvious places. It’s a big deal to me as it’s pretty much taken over the last 18 months of my life.
“If you do one thing for me ever, please listen to it from start to finish, tell your friends if you like it and tell absolutely nobody if you don’t. Thanks to everyone who has helped me with this and a big thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time out to listen and share it for me. Cheers all. X”
Alan Leach, Shed Seven drummer from 1990 to 2021, will play two all-seated home-city gigs at The Crescent, York, on December 2 and 3 with a full band in tow. Doors: 7.30pm; on stage, 8.30pm. Tickets: thecrescentyork.seetickets.com/event/alan-leach-friday-show/the-crescent/2427117.
The poster for Alan Leach’s brace of full-band gigs at The Crescent, York, next month to promote his debut solo album
Bar Convent office manager Hannah Wilkinson with an origami dove
THE Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre is launching an appeal for origami peace doves to add to a symbolic installation this Christmas.
Maintaining the tradition of creating a meaningful, community-spirited festive display, the Bar Convent, in Blossom Street, York, is partnering with New Visuality, an award-winning York charity that seeks to advance the arts, culture and heritage.
Prompted by the outbreak of war in Ukraine, and countries still at war around the world, the partnership will design a display of origami doves – the universal symbol of peace and love – and is appealing for the public to participate by making their own.
Sister Ann Stafford, superior at the Bar Convent, says: “The world is in need of prayer, especially for peace. The Ukraine has been suffering since February and there are other countries at war too. This is not what God wants for our world.
Ails and Greg McGee: Co-directors of York charity New Visuality
“God sent the Angel Gabriel to ask a young girl called Mary to be the mother of a baby who would redeem the world. That is what we celebrate at Christmas: the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Here the angels came to the shepherds and announced this special news. The message to the shepherds was one of ‘Peace on Earth’.
“This is why, this year, our Christmas theme will be the dove; an enduring and universal symbol of peace and love.”
Sister Ann continues: “We would like to create a meaningful display of origami doves to show our solidarity and support to those countries at war and encourage prayers for peace.
“We are asking for help to create the display, and we would love for schools, community groups, parishes and individuals to be a part of it by contributing their own origami doves.”
Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre. Picture: Gareth Buddo
New Visuality co-director Greg McGee says: “This is an opportunity for people to not only get creative but to see their creativity exhibited in a world-class space.
“We will display all the doves inside Bar Convent; we’ll get professional artists to provide neon designs to hang alongside; we’ll capture footage that will be projected as illuminations at a later date, and everyone who gets involved will be able to say, years from now, they were exhibiting artists at a game-changing art exhibition.”
Co-director Ails McGee concurs: “It’s a perfect moment for inclusivity. For too long, people have seen heritage as something you have to hurt your neck to look up to. This allows the young artists to take ownership of one of the city’s most exciting venues and visit with friends and family and know that they’re a part of it.”
Instructions and an accompanying video is available on the Bar Convent website at bar-convent.org.uk.
Origami doves should be sent in or dropped off by 5pm on Monday, November 21, to go on display from November 29.
Victoria Delaney, left, Sanna Jeppsson and Mick Liversidge in Vanya And Sonia And Masha And Spike. Picture: John Saunders
DURANG? Durang? His name didn’t ring a bell with your reviewer, but Christopher Durang is a Tony Award-winning New Jersey playwright, performed off-Broadway, on Broadway, internationally, in London last year and now in York.
Director Jim Paterson read the award-garlanded Vanya And Sonia And Masha And Spike in lockdown, marking it down as a New York-seeded play demanding discovery in old York in a Settlement Players premiere.
How right he is, his good judgement extending to his casting and directorial choices for a heightened comedic drama that typifies Durang’s predilection for “verging on parody in dealing with issues of mental health, culture and homosexuality”. Or, more expressly here in this 2013 play, modern-day concerns of celebrity, social networking and the troubling onset of middle age in a world blighted with Chekhovian ennui.
Echoes of Neil Simon’s comedies and Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods permeate through Durang’s tale, as does his flair for metadrama. Vanya (Mick Liversidge) and his adopted sister Sonia (Victoria Delaney) were named by their parents after Chekhov characters from Uncle Vanya.
So too was their famous film-star sister Masha (Susannah Baines), from The Seagull. Not so Spike (Andrew Roberts), her latest bit of stud-muffin from La-La-Land, who turns up impromptu with the vainglorious, needy Masha at the Buck County, Pennsylvania farmhouse where the three siblings grew up.
Quietly waspish Vanya and insecure Sonia had already been squabbling over routines; Delaney’s gloriously storm-in-a-teacup Sonia hurling the crockery across the room; Liversidge’s outwardly laissez-faire Vanya having a way of being ever so irritating.
Enter Baines’s look-at-me-me-me Masha – the Norma Desmond of the piece despite her protestations – with plans to sell the house after her new personal assistant, the never-seen Hootie Pie, tells her it is a crippling drain on her finances.
Cue chaos, stirred up further by Sanna Jeppsson’s Cassandra, the hippy home help, who lives up to her name’s Greek mythological origins: the Trojan priestess, whose truthful prophecies are never believed. Durang and in turn the Swedish-born Jeppsson play this to the max, not so much a scene stealer as a show stealer.
That said, the performances all round are terrific, Delaney just as good as she was in Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman In Mind; Liversidge, with his lovely timing; Roberts, as tongue in two-cheeks as he could possibly be, and Baines suitably over the top yet vulnerable.
Here comes the neighbour, the sweet, innocent, star-struck, delicate flower of an aspiring actress Nina (Livy Potter), named after the Chekhov character in The Seagull that Potter just happened to play in Settlement’s February 2020 production! She too is a hoot in this six-of-the-best cast.
As the resentments, rivalries and premonitions bubble away and boil over amid much noise and a bonkers costumed party, Durang explores the theme of longing for the past and yet hoping for a better future with delicious wit, plenty of grit and a sitcom sense of the absurd.
Paterson has played a blinder in introducing Christopher Durang’s work to York. Don’t miss it; the run from Thursday to today is way too short. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
