James on stage: Next spring their ranks will swell by 30 when joined by an orchestra and gospel choir
ENDURING Manchester band James will play York Barbican on April 28 on next spring’s James Lasted Orchestral Tour.
Led as ever by Boston Spa-born singer Tim Booth, this 40th anniversary celebration will come loaded with a 22-piece orchestra and eight-strong gospel choir conducted by Joe Dundell.
The tour title is presumably a nod to both James’s longevity and to the orchestral music once synonymous with James Last, the German composer, jazz double bassist big band leader of the James Last Orchestra.
All 15 dates on the 2023 orchestral tour have sold out already, including Sheffield City Hall on May 4 as well as Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall and a Royal Albert Hall finale in London.
That itinerary will be accompanied by a double album of new versions of James’s greatest hits, fan favourites and deep cuts, plus one new composition, as yet untitled. Full details including release date, tracklisting and formats are to be announced soon.
The poster for the James Lasted Orchestral tour in 2023
Recorded at Blueprint Studios, Manchester, the album was arranged and conducted by Duddell – whose credits include Elbow and New Order – working in tandem with Orca, the orchestra assigned to the tour too, and a gospel choir.
Since playing as James for the first time when supporting Big Country at Manchester’s Hacienda on November 17 1982, they have released 16 studio albums, sold 25 million records, and enjoyed an Indian summer renaissance with a run of Top Five albums with Girl At The End Of The World, narrowly missing out on the top spot in 2016 to Adele’s 25, 2018’s Living In Extraordinary Times and 2021’s The Colours Of You.
Last December’s arena tour, taking in Leeds First Direct Arena with fellow Mancunians Happy Mondays in support, was their biggest selling and most successful to date.
Looking ahead to the 2023 tour and double album release, Booth, 62, says: “There are a number of great bands who have been around for 40 [years]. But to get here and to be having the best time of our lives. To be part of a supportive loving family that still has something to say and new ways to say it. To be turned on by every gig and song. To fall in love over and over again, Groundhog Day, with our bandmates and audience. Damn. That’s time well spent.
James, at Broughton Hall, near Skipton, in May 2021, when gathered for rehearsals and promotional duties for 16th studio All The Colours Of You. Picture: Lewis Knaggs
“We should have recorded the orchestra tour first time round, as many of you have reminded us. Well, we’ve done it now. And here comes the tour. The orchestra and gospel singers expand our palette, heighten the tenderness, heighten the celebration and, despite their numbers, somehow leave us feeling more naked and raw. It will be different, probably each night, because we are James and Joe [Duddell] knows how to dance with us. And because you are different, each night.”
Bassist Jim Glennie, 59, adds: “Has it really been 40 years? In some ways it feels like yesterday and in others, many lifetimes. A family of brothers and sisters, willing to support each other musically and emotionally. Uniquely challenging, always pushing ourselves into the new and taking risks collectively and individually, looking for transcendence.”
Joining Booth and Glennie in the tour line-up will be Saul Davies, Adrian Oxaal, David Baynton-Power, Mark Hunter, Andy Diagram, Chloe Alper and Deborah Knox-Hewson.
Marking diaries for next summer’s outdoor concert season, James are booked in to play Live At The Piece Hall 2023 in Halifax, West Yorkshire, on July 7 and a hastily added second show on July 8, due to “phenomenal demand”.
Already confirmed for The Piece Hall in 2023 are Madness on June 16 and 17; The War On Drugs, June 21; Rag’n’Bone Man, June 23; Embrace, July 1; Sting, July 3, and The Lumineers, July 9, with plenty more acts yet to be announced. Box office: thepiecehall.co.uk.
Double the fun: Graham Smith’s Dame Harmony Humperdinck and Gemma McDonald’s Kurt Jester in Babes In The Wood
Babes In The Wood, Rowntree Players, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight until Friday, 7.30pm (last few tickets for first three, limited availability for Friday); Saturday, 2pm (last few) and 7.30pm (limited). Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
HOWARD Ella reckons this is the best of the 13 Rowntree Players pantomimes under his writer-directorship. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he, but he does have a point. This is a case of 13th time, luckier still, for family audiences at the York community theatre.
For a start, Babes In The Wood is two shows for the price of one: weaving Robin Hood and his merry band, Sherwood Forest and the Sheriff into the fairy tale of those two poor orphans abandoned in woodland by their wicked uncle.
Don’t be hood-winked by the show title. It is rather more Robin’s story and characters that dominate,including distaff variations on a theme, while accommodating the misfortunes of Hansel (Henry Cullen/Fergus Green) and Gretel (Maddie Chalk/Ayda Mooney) in their Gingerbread House, cooked sweeter and cuter than in the dark fable of yore.
Now, Robin (Hannah King) takes on not only a rescue mission to free Maid Marion (Marie-Louise Surgenor) from the tower and the clutches of the Sheriff of Nottingham (Jamie McKeller) and sidekick Will Snatchell (Joe Marucci), but also vows to find Hansel and Gretel.
Double the trouble: Joe Marucci’s Will Snatchell and Jamie McKeller’s Sheriff of Nottingham
For Friar Tuck, read Freya Tuck (Meg Badrick), and so on through the Merry Band of Alana Dale (Keelie Newbold) Georgie Green (Erin Willis), Jill Scarlett (Mollie Surgenor/Eva Howe) and Little Joan (Libby Roe/Charla Banks).
Put them together with King’s traditional, thigh-slapping yet somehow girl-power principal boy Robin Hood and suddenly they are aping SIX The Musical in Six, a musical number that makes great play of the sisterhood buzz musical of the decade (already booked in for June 27 to July 2 return to the Grand Opera House next summer, by the way).
Musicals are a running theme to the song-and-dance numbers in Ella and musical director Jessica Viner fast-moving show, from the opening Hairspray ensemble routine (Good Morning Sherwood Town) to Dirty Rotten’s echo of Something Rotten.
Best of all is Musical, all singing, all dancing and all seven minutes of it, led by Gemma McDonald’s cheeky, chipper, cartoonesque Kurt Jester, who lost her voice at Friday’s dress rehearsal but thankfully called on Doctor Theatre to see her through two shows on Saturday.
Howard Ella: Rowntree Players’ pantomime writer-director
The comic (bubble-haired McDonald) and the dame (Graham Smith’s slightly grumpy but lovable ‘Humpy’, alias Dame Harmony Humperdinck) are no longer chained to working in the Sheriff’s castle, but freelance travelling actors instead.
One is the greatest Shakespearean actor of her age, with an ego to match; the other is a comic extraordinaire in the daft jester tradition. Both have a licence to be loose cannons and pretty much run the show in their unruly way.
King’s Robin and Surgenor’s Maid Marion deliver a knockout Without Love in the tower by the No Exit sign, after Marion knocks back Robin’s demand to do a Rapunzel with her hair, whereupon Robin recourses to a ladder entry through the open window. Physical comedy in the classic English tradition.
Ella loves a pun, a political dig (for example, “Party?”. Correction: “Work gathering”) and partnerships too: not only the regular double act of Smith & McDonald and principal boy and girl King and Surgenor, but also a new combination of McKeller and Marucci, actors with previous form for Rowntree Players, but now venturing into the dark side, albeit to self-delusional comic effect as the topically tax-hiking Sheriff and the dimwitted, snatch-all Snatchell.
Hannah King’s Robin Hood and Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Maid Marion
McKeller is particularly inspired casting. Now making his name on the streets of York as ghostwalk host Doctor Dorian Deathly, he returns to his former stamping ground to make a big imprint with his gleefully dastardly Sheriff, eyebrows arched, voice arch, stage walk swaggering. “There’s still a touch of showbiz lurking behind the venom,” as Ella puts it and he’s spot on.
The comic and the dame nail the slapstick sludge scene; Viner’s musical band are as merry as Robin’s band; the senior chorus and young Blue/Red Team (Red on Saturday night) lap up every ensemble scene, and Ami Carter’s choreography is all dash, nothing slapdash.
Ella and his fellow set designers Paul Mantle and scenic artist Anna Jones have excelled too for the tower and forest alike. Andrea Dillon and Claire Newbold have fun with the costumes, for the pink-fixated dame as ever, but doubly so for the Merry Band in the Six pastiche.
You will love the all-action songsheet number too in a production that comes with genuine icing on the cake: a snow-topped roof from a past panto now repurposed to the dame’s mocking as the Gingerbread House.
Knocked for Six: The Merry Band mirroring SIX The Musical in Babes In The Wood
“I’m bringing my Twat to a theatre near you, it’s futile to resist,” says Dawn French. Picture: Marc Brenner
DAWN French is adding a new leg for 2023 in response to demand for more performances after all her 2022 one-woman comedy shows sold out.
Dawn French Is A Huge Twat will play York Barbican on September 16 next year on an autumn itinerary taking in 23 venues from September 7 to November 26, including a further Yorkshire gig at Sheffield City Hall on October 8 and a London Palladium run from September 21 to 24.
Tour tickets are available from dawnfrenchontour.com; York tickets, also at yorkbarbican.co.uk; Sheffield, sheffieldcityhall.co.uk.
A statement on Dawn’s website proclaims: “Attention all Twats! We grossly underestimated just how many glorious Twats are out there, wanting this show, so here I come, the second leg of the tour. Wooohoo!
“I couldn’t be more chuffed if I were a chough. So now, stop nagging me on social media about the fact we missed your town…and get booking. I’m bringing my Twat to a theatre near you, it’s futile to resist.”
Dawn French: Deep-diving into the countless times she has demonstrated – in her own words – ‘a spectacular display of twattery’. Picture: Marc Brenner
In Dawn French Is A Huge Twat, the Holyhead-born actor, novelist, comedian and one half of French & Saunders invites audiences to join her on a whirlwind journey through some of the most embarrassing, misguided and undignified moments of her personal and professional life, deep-diving into the countless times she has demonstrated – in her own words – “a spectacular display of twattery”.
The show is written by 65-year-old French and directed by Michael Grandage, with a set and costume design by Lez Brotherston, as was the case for her last York Barbican show in July 2014, Dawn French in 30 Million Minutes: a frank French confessional, rooted in her 2008 memoir Dear Fatty, transferred into a night of comedy, theatre monologues and shards of tragedy too.
Did you know?
A CHOUGH is a black Eurasian and North African bird of the crow family, with a downcurved bill and broad, rounded wings, typically frequenting mountains and sea cliffs.
According to legend, the soul of King Arthur exited stage left in the form of a chough, its red feet and bill signifying Arthur’s violent and bloody end.
A scene fromLez Brotherston’s set design for Dawn French Is A Huge Twat. Picture: Marc Brenner
Heaven’s above: Alan Heaven directing a rehearsal of A Nativity for York. All pictures: John Saunders
A NATIVITY for York returns to the Spurriergate Centre, Spurriergate, York, on Thursday after a two-year enforced break, under the direction of the divinely named Alan Heaven.
Mounted by York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust (YMPST), the production will run for eight performances, preceded by an open dress rehearsal at 7.30pm on Wednesday.
After directing the Last Judgement plays in the York Mystery Plays Wagon cycles on the city streets in 2018 and 2022, Heaven has created a new interpretation of the Nativity, combining “music, dance, sorrows and joys and some audience participation”.
It may be unlucky to open an umbrella indoors, as the saying insists, but York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust cast members, led by Mark Comer, take their chances in the rehearsal room. All pictures: John Saunders
Billed as a fresh, vibrant and magical retelling of the Nativity, based on the York Cycle of Mystery Plays, A Nativity for York features actors, dancers and musicians drawn from a wide range of community volunteers, in keeping with the YMPST productions of A Nativity for York in 2019 and A Resurrection for York in 2021.
Work began on the production in October, and although Covid among nine of the 16-strong cast has disrupted rehearsals in recent weeks, preparations are almost complete for the hour-long performances on Thursday and Friday at 7.30pm, then Saturday and Sunday at 3pm, 5pm and 7.30pm.
“The story is quite familiar but, in order to keep the play dynamic, we have focused on the cast putting every ounce of their energy into their parts, so that they engage with the audience,” says Alan.
“Keeping the play dynamic”: Anastasia Crook’s Mary rehearses a scene that testifies to the movement skills of director Alan Heaven
“Hopefully, as they work together – and most have multiple roles – through all 12 scenes, the result will be a positive and community-minded experience.”
Heaven, an experienced director specialising in Early Modern theatre practice, community theatre, street theatre, movement and puppetry, is also a playwright, actor, musician, artist, illustrator and film maker.
He first worked with the York Mystery Plays in 2008 and has done so regularly since then, as well as adapting and staging the entire York Mystery Plays corpus for families.
A restful moment for Michael Maybridge’s Joseph during rehearsals
Delighted to be working with the YMPST on this week’s new Nativity, he says: “It’s a real honour to be entrusted with these texts, which are such a vital part of York`s heritage. I hope to deliver a production that develops the rich and vibrant contrasts of the originals.
“There’ll be comedy and celebrations along with music, dance and song, next to the savagery of Herod and the struggle to escape his reach. This is a wonderful and exciting journey that will involve the audience and thrill and delight everyone involved.”
Tickets are on sale at £10, students and under 18s £6, on 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the Theatre Royal box office.
Robert Hollingworth: Conductor of the University of York’s largest choir
University of York Choir & Baroque Ensemble, Central Hall, University of York, November 30
CHRISTMAS music of the Baroque and the 20th century were contrasted here in the five sections of Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit and four carol-anthems by Howells.
Interwoven with these were five extracts from A Child’s Christmas In Wales by Dylan Thomas. It was an ingenious idea, although none of these strands had much in common beyond the seasonal message.
Robert Hollingworth, who is now conductor of this choir, the university’s largest, read the passages from Thomas’s nostalgic view of a childhood Christmas, blanket-wrapped in an armchair and adopting an impressive Welsh lilt (that softened a bit towards the end). It was cosy, fireside stuff, with larger-than-life characters springing from the pages.
Charpentier’s late-17th century mass is almost balletic in its attempt to appeal to popular taste. The Baroque Ensemble, with guests leading three of its string sections, responded stylishly, with keen rhythm and taut ensemble.
The choir did not catch quite the same sense of urgency, perhaps feeling that Hollingworth’s baton was directed more at the players. That said, the tempo changes in the middle of the Credo were well managed. Alexander Kyle took over conducting for the final two sections, including a surprisingly jaunty Agnus Dei.
Variety came with several passages from a semi-chorus that additionally supplied soloists, who were at their most appealing when sopranos intertwined with recorders. A choir this size ranged on three flanks is always going to have difficulties with blend, especially in the very dry acoustic of Central Hall.
So, it was a pity that the least-known – and most recent – of the Howells pieces, Long, Long Ago, came first, before the choir had found its feet.
Here Is The Little Door, conducted by Kyle, was the best-shaped of the Howells. In contrast, A Spotless Rose was a little too fast for there to be no feel of the bar-line and the crunchy harmonies at the end, symptomatic of icy winter, were fudged. Bo Holten’s First Snow made an effective finisher.
Hollingworth is deservedly recognised as a first-class choir trainer. He will need just a little longer to stamp his mark on this choir. Watch this space.
Tom Bird: Leaving York Theatre Royal for Sheffield Theatres
YORK Theatre Royal chief executive Tom Bird is flying off to take up the equivalent post at Sheffield Theatres.
He will migrate southwards from York in early 2023, replacing Dan Bates, who left Sheffield earlier this year after 13 years to become executive director of Bradford’s UK City of Culture 2025 programme.
“York Theatre Royal has been such a special part of my life,” says North Easterner Tom, who moved back north in December 2017 from his role as executive producer at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. “I’m enormously grateful to everyone at this outstanding theatre, and the wider community, for their support over the past five years.”
In South Yorkshire, he will work closely with artistic director Robert Hastie, interim chief exec Bookey Oshin, who will stay on as deputy CEO, and the senior team, pulling the strings of the Crucible, the Lyceum and the Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse (formerly the Studio).
Together, these theatres make up the largest producing theatre complex outside London, presenting both in-house and touring productions.
Kyiv City Ballet dancers Nazar Korniichuk and Anastasiia Uhlova reading well-wishers’ messages at York Mansion House when invited to York by Theatre Royal chief executive Tom Bird
“I’m totally thrilled to be joining Sheffield Theatres as chief executive,” says Tom, who was headhunted for a post he “just couldn’t say ‘No’ to”. “For many years, I’ve admired these daring and beautiful theatres, and the wonderful city they’re at the heart of. I can’t wait to work with Rob, Bookey and the whole of Sheffield’s exceptional team.”
In London, he directed the Globe to Globe Festival for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, before becoming executive producer at Shakespeare’s Globe, where he produced a tour of Hamlet to 189 countries.
In York, Bird ruffled feathers by implementing the Theatre Royal’s transition from the long-running Berwick Kaler era of pantomime to co-productions with Evolution Productions and met the challenges of the Covid lockdowns to staff, performers and theatregoers alike, while also changing his job title from executive director to chief executive.
On stage in York, in June, he arranged the first ever visit of Kyiv City Ballet to Great Britain, the dancers travelling over from France, where they had been based since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In the first winter of Covid, he and creative director Juliet Forster oversaw The Travelling Pantomime, a socially distanced show taken by van to every York neighbourhood in December 2020, and his Globe years with Emma Rice led to the forging of a partnership with her new company, Wise Children, and in turn the Theatre Royal’s first co-production with the National Theatre for Rice’s adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.
Changing of the panto guard at York Theatre Royal: Chief executive Tom Bird, centre, with creative director Juliet Forster and writer-producer Paul Hendy, of Evolution Productions. Evolution, by the way, are Sheffield Lyceum Theatre’s partner in pantomime too
What’s in store for Tom in Sheffield? Between them, the three stages welcome 400,000 people on average to performances each year. In addition, Sheffield Theatres runs community engagement and artist development programmes, notably the Sheffield People’s Theatre and Young Company, as well as the Bank Programme, whose purpose is to develops creative talent on a yearly basis.
Looking forward to Bird’s arrival, artistic director Robert Hastie says: “Tom Bird joining Sheffield Theatres as chief executive is great news. He brings a wealth of experience, most recently with our fellow Yorkshire theatre, York Theatre Royal, where he has led with ambition and aplomb. I can’t wait to work alongside him in Sheffield.
“Tom joins us at an exciting time, following our special 50th anniversary year and having welcomed so many people back through our doors to experience the magic of these very special theatres. As we look ahead, I know Tom will make such a positive impact on our work, both on our stages and beyond our walls.”
Lord Kerslake, chair of Sheffield Theatres Trust board, adds: “Sheffield Theatres is renowned for the quality and ambition of its work. It’s an organisation determined to serve its audiences, to deliver bold and brilliant theatre, to innovate, invest in talent and collaborate with its communities.
“In Tom we have appointed a driven, experienced and creative leader who will help shape the next chapter of this world-class organisation. Tom brings huge passion to this role, for the work on and off our stages. I’m excited to see what he, together with Rob and Bookey, and the fantastic Sheffield Theatres team, will achieve together.”
Wuthering Heights: York Theatre Royal’s first co-production with the National Theatre in tandem with Emma Rice’s Wise Childen company in 2021
Jake Attree, after Bruegel, in A Northern Sensibility
JAKE Attree, the York-born artist with the Dean Clough studio in Halifax, poses the question “What is a northern sensibility” in his series of two exhibitions at the School House Gallery, York.
Part II opens today in Jake’s exploration of the abiding influence on Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s masterpieces on his work and his continuing fascination with Bruegel’s North European aesthetic.
“For me, it began in the library of Danesmead Secondary Modern School in York,” says Jake. “I must have been about 14 at the time; one particular Bruegel reproduction in the book of European painting I found there, The Gloomy Day, had a particular resonance for me as it reminded me of Baile Hill, a site in York that I visit frequently to draw from.
“So, I became, I suppose, rather obsessed with Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a Flemish painter from the 16th century. Perhaps having been born and brought up in a medieval city had some influence on how I responded, and continue to respond, to Bruegel’s work, who knows?
“What I do know is that I continued looking very hard at Bruegel, initially the sequence of five paintings which make up the Season series.”
Some years ago, Jake began to make a series of drawings and paintings of figures in extensive landscapes. “As I became more and more involved in this series, I began to look at Bruegel’s The Procession To Calvary and have been making work influenced by this great painting ever since,” he says.
York artist Jake Attree
Lately, he was introduced to The Mill And The Cross, Polish director Lech Majewski’s 2011 film that focused on 12 of the 500 characters depicted in Bruegel’s 1564 painting, starring Rutger Hauer, Michael York and Charlotte Rampling.
It was to become another prompt to push the as-yet-unformed project further. “As I pushed myself towards a contemporary take on Bruegel’s painting – which is, on many levels, deeply pertinent to the time in which it was painted – I at last began to use a more diverse range of imagery, as well as a direct response to the painting,” says Jake.
“Vast crowds making their way through an extensive landscape, inspired by some momentous event, are bound to have some resonance with our own time, whether it is intentional or not.”
The exhibition title of A Northern Sensibility is a nod to Jake coming from the north. “That is just a fact,” he says, as he recalls with wry amusement that his first exhibition with Messum’s in Cork Street, London, was entitled The Elemental North.
While a London gallerist’s perception of Attree as a northern painter is water off a duck’s back to him, he has cemented a sense of northernness through the lens of his great artistic mentor, Bruegel.
Jake has lived and breathed Bruegel since childhood. “I remember watching the drovers driving their sheep past my classroom window and how it reminded me of The Return Of The Herd,” he says.
“When Jake’s compositions include figures, often – as in Bruegel – they are depicted intent on their own private journey,” says School House Gallery co-curator Robert Teed
School House gallery co-director Robert Teed says: “When Jake’s compositions include figures, often – as in Bruegel – they are depicted intent on their own private journey, indifferent to the vast landscape around them, or the importance of events happening just outside their field of vision, utterly absorbed by their own tragedies or triumphs.
“Bruegel famously celebrated the details of existence, revelling in people fighting, eating and drinking, and the consequences of that.
“This forms part of what Jake calls Bruegel’s ‘Northern sensibility’: the Flemish painter might have been regarded as vulgar by his Venetian counterpart, but behind the apparent chaos of his huge canvases depicting the rawness and messiness of human life there lies a cast-iron formal discipline.”
In The Procession To Calvary, Christ is a tiny figure almost lost in the melee. “But he is deliberately placed dead centre, and the diagonals of the composition lead to the exquisitely eloquent depiction of Mary’s grief in the right foreground,” says Robert. “This is what Jake believes epitomises Bruegel’s elegance, eloquence and intelligence.”
A Northern Sensibility presents Jake’s art in the context of Bruegel’s abiding influence on his aesthetic. “The figures in Jake’s landscapes are both timeless and contemporary, suggesting themes of rootlessness, displacement and migration; and in his figureless compositions we sense the tenacity and persistence of nature in spite of humans,” says Robert.
“A Northern Sensibility aims to prove that Jake Attree’s art also embodies elegance, eloquence and intelligence.”
City Screen Picturehouse: Season of Christmas films
CITY Screen Picturehouse is celebrating the Christmas season in York with a series of festive films ranging from modern animations to returning classics.
Festive cinema-goers can look forward to the likes of Elf, Frozen, Die Hard and It’s A Wonderful Life, complemented by many more.
Marketing manager Tiffany Winterburn says: “We have a fantastic selection of films this season to get you in the Christmas spirit and invoke that feeling of festive nostalgia.”
Parents will have plenty of options to entertain their little ones every Saturday morning this month at 11am at Picturehouse’s Kids’ Club, beginning today with The Grinch (2018), followed by Frozen on December 10, The Muppets Christmas Carol on December 17 and Polar Express on December 24. Tickets cost £3.
In keeping with tradition, Frank Capra’s 1946 fantasy It’s A Wonderful Life (U) returns to City Screen this month, marked by a dementia-friendly screening on December 19.
An elderly angel is sent from heaven to help desperately frustrated businessman George Bailey (James Stewart) as he contemplates suicide. Taking George back through his life to point out what good he has done, the angel shows him what life would have been like if he had never existed.
The December 19 screening is open to all, but specifically for people with dementia and their family, friends and carers, who are welcome to join for free tea, coffee and mince pies and a chance to socialise for 30 minutes before the film starts at 12.45pm.
A full list of upcoming films and times can be found on the Picturehouse Christmas 2022 blog at picturehouses.com/blog/christmas-at-picturehouse-2022. Tickets are available from the Coney Street box office or at picturehouses.co.uk.
CITY Screen York is selling a selection of Christmas gifts, notably City Screen Christmas Crackers, available exclusively in the cinema.
Each cracker contains:
● One voucher for a free cinema ticket
● One voucher for a free drink (house wine, draught beer, soft drink or hot drink)
● A bag of chocolate coins
● A joke and a paper hat
These crackers are 100 per cent plastic-free, printed using vegetable inks and produced in the UK, making for both a minimalist and environmentally friendly gift. £1 from every cracker sold is donated to Picturehouse’s partner charity, Refuge, for the provision of specialist support for women and children experiencing domestic violence.
Crackers are available in singles at £16 or in a pack of six (£96). For more details, go to: picturehouses.com/blog/have-a-cracking-christmas-with-picturehouse-christmas-gifting
PAUL Gameson directs The Ebor Singers tonight in an evening of beautiful choral arrangements for Christmastide at St Lawrence Parish Church, Lawrence Street, York.
The 7.30pm concert, A Christmas Celebration By Candlelight, also marks the launch of the York choir’s CD recording of Christmas music by contemporary American composers, Wishes And Candles.
Pieces from the disc, featuring works by Morten Lauridsen, Eric Whitacre, Dan Forrest, Abbie Bettinis and Matthew Culloton, will be complemented by festive compositions by John Rutter and Bob Chilcott.
“We’re looking forward to sharing music from our new album,” says Paul. “It took two years to put this together, thanks to a two-year Covid-enforced hiatus between recording sessions, so it was particularly enjoyable completing this in April this year.
“Music by Lauridsen and Whitacre is featured, but so too are other composers whose names and music deserve to be more widely known, such as Forrest, Bettinis and Culloton. There’ll also be some audience-participation carol singing, so bring your voices too!”
Tickets (£15, concessions £12, students £7 (16 plus), children free) are on sale at eventbrite.co.uk or on the door.
A Christmas Celebration is the first of two Christmas concerts in York for the choir, who will perform Part 1 of Handel’s Messiah (featuring the Christmas story) and Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols on Sunday, December 18 at 7.30pm at St Olave’s Church, Marygate. Tickets: eventbrite.co.uk.
Goose by the Ouse: Dame Berwick Kaler, centre, with Martin Barrass, left, AJ Powell, Suzy Cooper and David Leonard, gathering again at the Grand Opera House, York, for The Adventures Of Old Mother Goose. Picture: David Harrison
KALER on the loose, Christmas music, art and crafts and a stellar trio on the horizon have Charles Hutchinson hopping between diaries
Berwick’s back: The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose, Grand Opera House, York, December 10 to January 8
THE script is complete, as of 6am on Thursday morning, for writer, director and perennial York dame Berwick Kaler’s second year at his adopted panto home, presented in tandem with the Grand Opera House’s new partners in pantomime, UK Productions.
At 76, expect a greater emphasis on the verbal jousting from Dame Berwick, but still with slapstick aplenty in the familiar company of sidekick Martin Barrass, villain David Leonard, principal gal Suzy Cooper, luverly Brummie AJ Powell and ever-game dancer Jake Lindsay in his tenth Kaler panto, me babbies, me bairns. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Angel With Gift, linocut print by Anita Klein, part of The Christmas Collection at Pyramid Gallery, York
Exhibition launch of the week: The Christmas Collection at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, today until January 12, open daily
YORK ceramicist Ben Arnup opens The Christmas Collection, the last exhibition of Pyramid Gallery’s 40th anniversary celebrations, at midday today. He will be exhibiting 12 new trompe l’oeil ceramic sculptures too.
Gallery curator Terry Brett has invited London printmaker Anita Kelin to fill the walls with 15 large linocut original prints and two paintings in her 28th year of showing her depictions of family life at Pyramid. Exhibiting too will be printmaker Mychael Barratt, sculptors Christine Pike and Jennie McCall, ceramicist Katie Braida and glassmakers Rachel Elliott, Alison Vincent, Keith Cummings and David Reekie, plus 50 jewellery makers.
Sara Davies: Crafty ideas for Christmas at York Barbican
Return to York of the week: Craft Your Christmas with Sara Davies, York Barbican, tonight, 7.30pm
DRAGONS’ Den entrepreneur Sara Davies, who founded her Crafter’s Companion company in 2005 while studying at the University of York, offers practical demonstrations, creative ideas and a healthy slice of down-to-earth know-how.
Taking you from gifts to garlands, cards to crackers, via a peek into the Den and a sprinkling of Strictly Come Dancing sparkle, Sara will help you to create your own unique handmade Christmas. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The Ebor Singers: Christmas music from America and Britain at St Lawrence Parish Church
Christmas concert of the week: The Ebor Singers, A Christmas Celebration By Candlelight, St Lawrence Parish Church, Lawrence Street, York, tonight, 7.30pm
PAUL Gameson directs The Ebor Singers in an evening of beautiful choral arrangements for Christmastide that also marks the launch of the York choir’s CD recording of Christmas music by contemporary American composers, Wishes And Candles.
Pieces from the disc, featuring works by Morten Lauridsen, Eric Whitacre, Dan Forrest, Abbie Bettinis and Matthew Culloton, will be complemented by festive compositions by John Rutter and Bob Chilcott. Expect audience participation in carol singing too. Tickets: eventbrite.co.uk and on the door.
Russell Watson and Aled Jones
Festive musical duo of the week: Aled Jones and Russell Watson, Christmas With Aled & Russell York Barbican, Tuesday, 8pm
ALED Jones and Russell Watson are reuniting for Christmas 2022, combining a new album and tour. Performing together again after a three-year hiatus, the classical singers will be promoting their November 4 release of Christmas With Aled And Russell.
The album features new recordings of traditional carols such as O Holy Night, O Little Town Of Bethlehem and In The Bleak Midwinter, alongside festive favourites White Christmas, It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, Little Drummer Boy and Mistletoe And Wine, complemented by a duet rendition of Walking In The Air. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk
York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust cast members in rehearsal for A Nativity for York. Picture: John Saunders
Nativity play of the week: York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust in A Nativity for York, Spurriergate Centre, Spurriergate, York, Thursday, Friday, 7.30pm; Saturday, Sunday, 3pm, 5pm and 7.30pm
A NATIVITY for York returns to the Spurriergate Centre following a two-year enforced break, staged by York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust (YMPST). After directing the Last Judgement plays on the city streets in 2018 and 2022, Alan Heaven has created a fresh, vibrant and magical retelling of the Nativity, combining “music, dance, sorrows and joys and some audience participation”.
Heaven’s company of actors, dancers and musicians is drawn from a wide range of community volunteers, in keeping with the YMPST productions of A Nativity for York in 2019 and A Resurrection for York in 2021. Tickets: 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the Theatre Royal box office.
Solomon’s Knot: Christmas Cantatas at Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, in York Early Music Christmas Festival 2022’s concluding concert
Festival of the week: York Early Music Christmas Festival, mainly at NCEM, Walmgate, December 8 to 16; online box set, December 19 to January 31
MUSIC, minstrels, merriment, mulled wine and mince pies combine in York Early Music Christmas Festival 2022, to be complemented by an online box set of festival highlights post-festival.
Taking part will be La Palatine (Fiesta Galante); Ensemble Augelletti (Pick A Card!); Solomon’s Knot (Johann Kuhnau’s Christmas Cantatas); Spiritato and The Marion Consort (Inspiring Bach); Ensemble Moliere (Good Soup); Bojan Čičić (Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas); The Orlando Consort (Adieu) and Yorkshire Bach Choir & Yorkshire Baroque Soloists (Handel’s Brockes Passion). Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Guitarist Tom Bennett and baritone Sam Hird, outside their training ground, the Royal College of Music. On Friday, they perform a Christmas recital in York
Homecoming of the week: Sam Hird and Tom Bennett, A Winter Night’s Recital, All Saints’ Church, North Street, York, Friday, 7pm to 9pm
YORK baritone Sam Hird and his fellow Royal College of Music graduate, guitarist Tom Bennett, perfrom classical songs from around the world, by Schubert, Faure and Britten, complemented by festive favourites such as Adeste Fideles, O Holy Night and A Cradle In Bethlehem to stir the Christmas spirit.
The 15th century All Saints’ Church will be the “perfect backdrop” to this candlelit concert, Hird’s professional solo debut. A glass of mulled wine and a mince pie is included in the ticket price of £10 plus booking fee, available from samhirdmusic.co.uk and on the door.
Big jumpers, big songs: Alistair Griffin presents The Big Christmas Concert, St Michael le Belfrey Church, York, December 9, 10 and 17, 8pm; doors, 7.30pm
Alistair Griffin: Christmas hits
BILLED as “the biggest Christmas concert in York”, singer-songwriter Alistair Griffin’s winter warmer returns with classic Christmas tunes, carols and bags of festive cheer, heralded by a brass band.
The Big Christmas Concert takes a festive musical journey from acoustic versions of traditional carols to Wizzard, Slade and The Pogues, as audiences sing along and sip mulled wine while enjoying the fairytale of old York. Christmas jumpers and Christmas attire are encouraged; a prize will be given for the best costume. Box office: www.alistairgriffin.com.
One way or another, you’re gonna get ya ticket for Blondie at Scarborough Open Air Theatre next summer
Booking ahead: Blondie, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, June 22 2023
LOWER East Side New York trailblazers Blondie are off to the East Coast next summer to play Britain’s largest outdoor concert arena.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame icons will be led as ever by pioneering frontwoman/songwriter Debbie Harry, 77, guitarist/conceptual mastermind Chris Stein and powerhouse drummer Clem Burke, joined by former Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock, guitarist Tommy Kessler and keyboardist Matt Katz-Bohen.
Blondie join Sting, Pulp, rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires, N-Dubz, Olly Murs and Mamma Mia! among Scarborough OAT’s 2023 headliners, with plenty more to be added. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.
The Waterboys: 40th anniversary celebrations in 2023, taking in York Barbican
Booking ahead too: The Waterboys, York Barbican, October 12 2023, 7.30pm
GREAT, Scott will be back for yet another evening with The Waterboys at York Barbican, this time to mark the Scottish-founded folk, rock, soul and blues band’s 40th anniversary.
Mike Scott, 63, has made a habit of playing the Barbican, laying on the “Big Music” in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018 and October 2021, since when The Waterboys have released 15th studio album All Souls Hill in May. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Grayson Perry: A Show All About You…and surely about him too at Harrogate Convention Centre?
A brush with an artist: Grayson Perry: A Show All About You, Harrogate Convention Centre, October 1 2023, 7.30pm
ARTIST, iconoclast and TV presenter Grayson Perry follows up A Show For Normal People with A Show All About You, wherein he asks, “What makes you, you?”. Is there a part deep inside that no-one understands? Have you found your tribe or are you a unique human being? Or is it more complicated than that?
Perry, “white, male, heterosexual, able bodied, English, southerner, baby boomer and member of the establishment”, takes a mischievous look at the nature of identity, promising to make you laugh, shudder, and reassess who you really are. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk.
Also recommended but sold out: The Cure, The Lost World Tour 2022, Leeds First Direct Arena, Tuesday, doors, 6pm
ROBERT Smith’s ever-changing band play Leeds for the first time since September 21 1985 at the whatever-happened-to-the Queens Hall. Expect a long, long set of all the heavenly, hippy pop hits, the gloomier goth stalwarts and more than a glimpse of the long-promised 14th studio album, Songs Of A Lost World, pencilled in for 2023.
