York Musical Theatre Company cast members Cat Foster, left, Henrietta Linnemann, John Haigh, Richard Bayton, Helen Spencer and Rachel Higgs dress the part for Hooray For Hollywood! at Nola in York
YORK Musical Theatre Company will offer escapism to Hollywood’s golden era after release from the pandemic lockdowns at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York.
The classic American cinema of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s will be explored in song in the slick and sophisticated six-hander Hooray For Hollywood! from November 8 to 10.
Devised and directed by Paul Laidlaw, the piece was first staged at York Theatre Royal Studio in 2007, and now Laidlaw reignites his show with a cast of six – Richard Bayton, Cat Foster, John Haigh, Rachel Higgs, Henrietta Linnemann and Helen Spencer in a nostalgic, whirlwind journey through the sounds of a bygone era from the MGM, Warner Bros, RKO and Universal studios.
Richard Bayton, left, and John Haigh raise a glass to Hooray For Hollywood! at Nola
“Packed with a classic collection of love songs, torch songs and comic numbers, Hooray For Hollywood! covers iconic artists such as Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra to name just a few,” says Laidlaw, who recalls the premiere 14 years ago.
“We’ve actually performed the show at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre before, as well as at the York Theatre Royal Studio. As we head into our 120th year next year, it felt right to be a bit nostalgic and look back at some of our original pieces that audiences loved and revive them for new audiences.
“We loved performing The World Goes ’Round a few years ago and this show has a similar feel in that it’s a small cast and is fast paced and slick but will take the audience on a magical musical journey.”
Cocktail time for York Musical Theatre Company cast members Rachel Higgs, left, Henrietta Linnemann, Cat Foster and Helen Spencer at Nola
In the lead up to next month’s performances, Laidlaw’s cast members have been Puttin’ on the Ritz in a photo-shoot at the Nola jazz restaurant and bar in Lendal, designed to evoke the glitz and glamour of vintage Hollywood.
“Housed in the old congregational chapel on Lendal, the gold, mirrored decor of Nola was the perfect setting as the cast of six brushed up their white tie, tails and top hats – so to speak! – and posed with martini glasses in the 1920s’ Art Deco atmosphere,” says publicity officer Anna Mitchelson.
“Richard, Cat, John, Rachel, Henrietta and Helen are now deep into rehearsals for the show, learning intricate harmonies and weaving famous Hollywood melodies together in a unique and clever way.”
Tickets for the 7.30pm performances cost £15, £12 for age 18 and under, on 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
IRISH comedian and television presenter Dara Ó Briain will ask So…Where Were We? when he resumes touring next year, playing York Barbican on December 15.
By the end of his Voice Of Reason travels, Ó Briain had performed the show 180 times over two years and across 20 countries, from Auckland to Reykjavik, from Moscow to New York, and by March 2020 he was ready for a break.
“I would now like to apologise for saying that and will never wish for anything like that again,” he says, vowing never to stop again, “because that’s clearly what caused all this trouble”. Oh, and he ate a bat, he reasons.
Expect stories, one-liners, audience messing and tripping over his words in Dara Ó Briain’s So…Where Were We? tour show
In So…Where Were We?, Ó Briain will hardly mention the last year and a half, “because, Jesus, who wants to hear about that, but will instead fire out the usual mix of stories, one-liners, audience messing and tripping over his words because he is talking too quickly, because he’s so giddy to be back in front of a crowd”.
Ó Briain, 49, has become an ultra-familiar face on British television, hosting BBC Two’s long-running panel show Mock The Week, Stargazing Live and Robot Wars, along with Dave’s Go 8 Bit and Comedy Central’s re-boot of the quiz show Blockbusters.
Add to that list Three Men In A Boat, Three Men In Another Boat, Three Men In More Than One Boat, Three Men Go To Ireland, Three Men Go To Scotland and Three Men Go To Venice; Dara Ó Briain’s Science Club; Dara & Ed’s Great Big Adventure and Dara & Ed’s Road To Mandalay; Dara Ó Briain: School Of Hard Sums and Tomorrow’s Food.
Next, Ó Briain will host Channel 4’s daytime quiz One & Six Zeros, where contestants will compete to win a grand prize of £1,000,000.
Dara Ó Brian’s last visit to York Barbican came on the Voice Of Reason tour in 2019
Ó Briain has five stand-up DVDs with Universal Pictures to his name: Dara Ó Briain Live At The Theatre Royal (2006); Dara Ó Briain Talks Funny Live In London (2008); This Is The Show (2010); Craic Dealer (2012) and Crowd Tickler (2015). 2018’s Voice Of Reason was filmed exclusively for the BBC.
Ó Briain has put pen to paper for three non-fiction children’s books published by Scholastic UK: Beyond The Sky: You And The Universe (2017), Secret Science: The Amazing World Beyond Your Eyes (2018) and Is There Anybody Out There? (2020).
The golden-tongued County Wicklow storyteller last played York Barbican on his Voice Of Reason tour in March 2019, following his Crowd Tickler gig there in November 2015. Tickets for his 2022 return go on sale from November 5 at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
A scene from Quinneys in the making by University of Leeds theatre and performance students
CITY Screen, York, will play host to a special screening of Quinneys, Dr George Rodosthenous’s film adaptation of Horace Annesley Vachell’s long-dormant play, on November 24.
As part of the Year of the Dealer, an Arts & Humanities Research Council project organised by the University of Leeds and led by Dr Mark Westgarth, actors from the university’s theatre and performance programme have made the full-length feature film.
Quinneys is a comedy-drama of love, money, social climbing and fakes and forgeries set in the world of antique dealing. Written in 1915 by Vachell (1861-1955) and based on the real-life antique dealer Thomas Rohan (1860-1940), the original play tells the story of Joseph Quinney, a hard-nosed Yorkshire antique dealer, stubborn but endearing and keen to see his daughter marry well.
The stage play was hugely popular in its day with performances all over the world but it was last performed more than 70 years ago. This new film version is the first in almost 100 years.
Please note, the 5.30pm to 8.30pm event on November 24 is private and fully subscribed and will be preceded by a wine and canapes reception.
Emma Scott as Macbeth and Nell Frampton as The Lady in York Shakespeare Project’s Macbeth. Picture: John Saunders
York Shakespeare Project in Macbeth, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee; all sold out. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
SOMETHING wicked this way comes…eventually, delayed from March 2020 by lockdowns, rather than the notorious Macbeth curse per se.
Leo Doulton, “sometimes director, sometimes writer, repentant historian”, as his Twitter feed puts it, has persisted with his original vision of a “cyberpunk” Macbeth.
Eight cast members remain from the original unlucky-for-some 13, stopped in their tracks a week away from opening night last year; three have changed roles; five new additions have come on board, most notably Nell Frampton taking over from Amanda Dales as The Lady.
Frank Brogan’s Macduff. Picture: John Saunders
Crucially, however, Emma Scott’s Macbeth is still leading Doulton’s company, hurled into a dystopian, dizzying future as Doulton and his set and costume designer, Charley Ipsen, slice up Shakespeare’s dark, dreak tale of vaulting ambition, multiple murders and supernatural forces in new ways.
First of all, this is a shortened Macbeth, with no interval, no tedious, unfunny Porter scene, done and dusted in under two hours. Everything, everyone, is in a hurry; not once does Scott’s Macbeth sit down; nor do the guests at the dinner ruined for Macbeth by the ghost of Banquo (Clive Lyons). Instead, they stand, dotted around the perimeter of the John Cooper Studio’s rectangular black-box design.
Frampton’s The Lady is in a rush too, so much so, they trample loudly through several lines as they move around the fringes, imparting instructions in noisy boots. Tony Froud’s Ross and Frank Brogan’s gruff Yorkshireman Macduff are restless too, delivering a line, moving, delivering another, moving on again.
Nell Frampton’s The Lady. Picture: John Saunders
This sense of impermanence is deliberate, and maybe that is one reason why the walls are lined to the brim with swatches of wallpaper, rather than full rolls. Equally, this dissonant imagery is part of the cyberpunk mood board, just as the dried leaves around the ramps evoke Macbeth’s stultifying impact on nature’s course.
Doulton has responded to the pandemic, he says, by emphasising the uncertainty of the play’s inhabitants. “None of them, except perhaps the Witches, knows what’s going on,” he reasons. Hence a production that never stops moving in “an ever-changing world of illusory realities”.
In effect, all the world’s a stage here. The audience is seated around four ramps with a central dais that may or may not signify the Stone of Scone (but is not made of stone). Rarely is centre stage used as centre stage, except by the rightful king, Duncan (Elizabeth Elsworth).
Diana Wyatt as Second Witch. Picture: John Saunders
Scott’s Macbeth will as likely deliver a soliloquy from the up-lit recesses as from the epicentre; Frampton’s The Lady plots from the shadows; likewise, the discussions of Rhiannon Griffiths’s strategist Malcolm and Brogan’s exhausted Macduff are framed by the walls.
As for the spectral weird sisters, those midnight hags, the three Witches (Joy Warner, Diane Wyatt and Xandra Logan), they hover amid the parched twigs and branches on the mezzanine level, Macbeth never in touching distance, and they disappear from view as quickly as they enter.
The implication is that the once “worthy” Macbeth and The Lady know they will not be king and queen for the long haul, once their knives are out, hence that centre stage is so often barren.
Director Leo Doulton
On the one hand, this is an audacious directorial move by Doulton, but, on the other, you will likely have to move your head and body position more often than a learner driver negotiating that all-important three-point turn in their test but for much longer. The stage configuration is not the same as a theatre-in-the-round, where you become accustomed to not being able to see a face at all times. You may decide, on occasion, to sit and listen, rather than turning round.
In his interview, Doulton made the interesting point that Macbeth is not all about death, death, more death and the fear of death, although he did note: “It would be impossible to present Macbeth in the same way as when we started work on it before the pandemic. We’ve moved from a world where we fear quite specific things to one where we fear more pervasive, invisible ones, such as the pandemic and the climate crisis.”
Naming uncertainty, innocence and corruption’s constant presence as the themes and motifs that stood out in our new times, he suggested Shakespeare’s tragedy is “more concerned with the art of being human while alive and mortal: how to act, what legacy we’ll have, and how to understand a world far larger than us. Its deaths are from violence and the supernatural, not disease.”
Emma Scott’s Macbeth. Picture: John Saunders
In other words, this is not a Covid-clouded Macbeth, but one that in the absence of moral certainty and leadership, fears a longer damaging legacy, not least the impact of climate change, when there may no longer be trees to move from Birnam Wood to Dunsinane.
Nevertheless, Doulton and Ipsen have fun with the cyberpunk setting, serving up blue drinks, having blue rather than red blood, and staging the fight scenes in a stylised, no-contact manner, while Neil Wood’s menacing lighting captures both light and shade.
As for Scott’s Macbeth: at times, she is as much Hamlet as Macbeth, young, poetic, burdened; more worrier than warrior.
The Howl & The Hum: New single and Leeds Brudenell Social Club finale to autumn tour
FOR the first time, York band The Howl & The Hum are at last taking the “miserable disco” of their debut album, Human Contact, on the road, climaxing with a sold-out two-night residency at Leeds Brudenell Social Club this weekend.
Released in the dark shadows of the Stay At Home first lockdown on May 29 2020, the prescient songs were denied exactly that human contact.
What ensued for Sam Griffiths, Conor Hirons, Bradley Blackwell and Jack Williams was, if not an annus horribilis, then certainly very challenging months of doubt, disillusion and disconnection.
Months that led to the release of one-off single Thumbs Up, two days ahead of their first tour date at Gorilla, Manchester, and, with perfect timing, World Mental Health Day.
“The way we can talk about it is to say the band have struggled with mental health over the past few years, especially over lockdown, to the extent there was doubt we would even continue,” says principal songwriter, singer, guitarist and keyboards player Sam.
“We were very much presented with two roads: one where we could celebrate releasing an album, end it there and find work in hospitality or whatever direction studying ancient Greek and Latin at school can lead to.
The artwork for The Howl & The Hum’s debut album, released amid the lockdown blues of May 2020
“Or there was the other route, one that was terrifying, with strange noises down the road, that involved continuing but with me [temporarily] going back to work at a pub at Leeds and being hopeless at it.
“Then going to Europe made me realise how much I hated social media, and how much I love talking with people, and if our music can help people express how they feel, if we can go out and tour these songs, it’s such a ridiculous life, these weird little indie boys…but it’s the only thing we’re good at: better than I could ever pour a pint.”
Imagine Radiohead’s High And Dry, if it were written by the late Jeff Buckley – “that wasn’t me that said that, but I’m honoured,” says Sam – and the resulting Thumbs Up emerges as a “cathartic confessional from an artist in search of deeper connections in the wake of personal tragedy”.
“Thumbs Up is the confession that us men don’t know how to talk to other men about important stuff,” reflects Sam, who was striving to find silver linings in the darkest of days.
“This song was written in the silence after suicides of friends, during depressive episodes, and over non-existent conversations about how we communicate our feelings: our highs, our lows, our loves and losses. It also references 80s’ movie icons Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a brief admittance of vulnerability in the face of what we call masculinity.”
Sam, why won’t men talk? “It’s an odd one, isn’t it? But then I went to an all-boys school , where there’s so much silence and you only talk about objective truths, football, but not the emotional flow of feelings,” he says.
The cover artwork for The Howl & The Hum’s new single, Thumbs Up
“It’s that masculinity; that thing of pride. But now we’re in age where masculinity can take a different guise and suffering is a huge part of that, and it feels such a shame that we can’t talk about it.
“The main thing that people don’t realise is that everybody has connections with the issue of mental health, be it your family, friends or yourself, and we need to address how we can’t talk about how we feel.
“There are still so many places today where people aren’t aware of it, so I’m trying to find a different language for it, which is why I mention the masculinity of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Thumbs Up, because you can’t imagine them ever discussing doubts and feelings about making their next film.
“Looking back, we may see our friends as being like superheroes at school, like my best mate at school, who killed himself a month after leaving. No-one No-one had taught us how to talk to each other.”
Thumbs Up has had a long gestation period. “It’s one I’ve been aching to write, probably from before the first album, but never got finished,” says Sam.
The Howl & The Hum promoting their York Minster concert ahead of its digital streaming on May 25
“But then we went into lockdown and things became very relevant. As a band, we lost out on a lot of promises, a lot of things that never flourished, from every angle, from tours and financial support to sales and merchandise backing the record company promised.”
Inevitably, that took its toll, but The Howl & The Hum re-surfaced, first for their York Minster concert in May and now for a dozen English, Scottish and Welsh dates that conclude on Saturday and Sunday at Leeds Brudenell Social Club, near where Sam now lives.
The Howl & The Hum are touring with Rory Welbrock deputising for Bradley, alongside Sam, Conor and Jack. “Rory is a wonderful singer-songwriter in the Elliott Smith mould, who used to play bass for Bull, and whenever he couldn’t play with them, I’d fill in,” says Sam. “That’s the beauty of the York music scene; it has that lovely village feeling and it’s good that we can be that fluid.”
Jack is not listed as a band member on the press release for Thumbs Up, but Sam clarifies that situation. “Jack still fills in as a session drummer, but he eventually wants to do other things. He doesn’t enjoy the creative element as much as Conor and I do, but he’s basically one of the best drummers around. He’s our clock at the back,” he says.
“At the end of the day, the band has always been a ‘fuzzy’ project. It’s my songs but it wouldn’t ever be complete without Conor’s guitar or his fantastic artwork, which is increasingly important.”
“Maybe the 2000s will have an impact on the next album,” says The Howl & The Hum’s Sam Griffiths
Meanwhile, discussions are on-going with Please Please You promoter Joe Coates for “something in York in the New Year”. Watch this space.
Looking ahead to the weekend in Leeds, Sam says: “This tour is the chance to play the songs for the first time on the road that we should have been playing 18 months ago, so it’s our chance to both welcome and say goodbye to Human Contact, as we’re about to start working on the next album. I guess we’ll be both celebrating our debut and giving it a Viking funeral, setting fire to it.”
Where might Sam’s song-writing take him next? “I’ve been utterly caught up in the 1990s, having been born in 1992. I was a huge Radiohead fan from my teens, Jeff Buckley and Oasis too, and as I’m from Colchester, Blur,” he says. “Thumbs Up came out of that.
“I was born in Swindon, where my mum knew members of XTC, so I’ve been listening to them too, and since this summer I’ve been taking a geographical and chronological approach, starting with Scotland: Arab Strap and Frightened Rabbit, who have set up a foundation for suicide prevention and mental wellbeing after singer Scott Hutchinson died, having written the song Floating In The Forth about planning his suicide and then doing it.
“I was listening to The Smiths, Joy Division and New Order when we were making Human Contact, and people say there were a lot of Eighties’ influences on there, so, after Thumbs Up and the Nineties, maybe the 2000s will have an impact on the next album.”
The Howl & The Hum play Leeds Brudenell Social Club on October 30 and 31, supported by Martha Gunn and Elkyn; both nights sold out; doors, 7.30pm.
Aesthetica Short Film Festival: York’s trendiest fest returns
YORK’S annual short film festival keeps growing longer as Charles Hutchinson surveys a week ahead of multiple choices.
Festival of the week and beyond: Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York, from Tuesday
THE 11th edition of the Aesthetica Short Film Festival runs in York from November 2 to 7 and online from November 2 to 30 in a new hybrid format that combines in-person events and the virtual platform.
ASFF 2021 offers six carefully curated film programmes, such as animation, drama, family friendly and dance, along with industry sessions and marketplace, masterclasses, guest screenings, the VR Lab, social events and an awards ceremony in this showcase for a new wave of cinematic talent. Full details can be found at asff.co.uk.
They Cud be so good for you: Leeds band pop over to York tonight
Heritage gig of the week: Mr H presents Cud, plus Percy, The Crescent, York, tonight, 7.30pm
HERE’S the history bit: Leeds art students form band in 1985, create cult indie-pop and funk sensation, tour with the Pixies and record sessions with John Peel.
Emerging from the same art/design cauldron that produced fellow Leeds legends Soft Cell, Scritti Politti and The Mekons, Cud were the pre-Britpop answer to sad-eyed shoegaze, reckons promoter Tim Hornsby. Here come Carl Puttnam and co with the still infectious indie rock of Rich And Strange and Purple Love Balloon. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
David Baddiel: Taking on the trolls
Comedy gig of the week: David Baddiel, Trolls: Not The Dolls, Grand Opera House, York, Monday, 7.30pm
IN his follow-up to My Family: Not The Sitcom and Euro 2020 return to number one with Three Lions, comedian David Baddiel turns his quizzical gaze to trolls: “the terrible people who spend all day insulting and abusing strangers for no other reason than to fill the huge gaps in their souls”.
Baddiel tells stories of the dark, dreadful and absurd cyber-paths that interacting with trolls has led him down. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
Shobna Gulati’s Ray and Layton Williams’s Jamie New in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at Leeds Grand Theatre
Musical of the week: Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Leeds Grand Theatre, Tuesday to Saturday.
EVERYBODY’S talking about Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, but stop talking and start rushing to the box office as tickets are hotter than a climate-changed world amid COP26 fever.
Jamie New, 16, lives on a Sheffield council estate, where he doesn’t fit it in and is terrified of the future, but he will be a sensation in this award-winning musical, “specially updated for the times we live in”.
Layton Williams reprises his West End role, starring alongside Shane Richie and Shobna Gulati. Box office: 0844 848 2700 or at leedsheritagetheatres.com.
Heather Watts’s Queen of the Night and Alexandra Mather’s Pamina in York Opera’s The Magic Flute. Picture: John Saunders
Nights at the opera: York Opera in The Magic Flute, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, 7.15pm; Saturday (6/11/2021), 4pm
YORK Opera returns to York Theatre Royal after a pandemic-enforced two-year gap with Mozart’s The Magic Flute, sung in English to orchestral accompaniment.
The story follows Prince Tamino (Hamish Brown) on his quest to rescue Pamina (Alexandra Mather) from the grasp of her mother, the evil Queen of the Night (Heather Watts), and return with her to the world of light presided over by Sarastro (Mark Simmonds), the High Priest of Isis and Osiris.
David Valsamidis makes his York Opera debut as Papageno, the Queen of the Night’s bird catcher; John Soper is the stage director; Derek Chivers, the musical director. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Feat of Peake: Tim Peake discusses the life of a British astronaut at York Barbican
In space, no-one can hear you scream, but at York Barbican they can hear you talk: Tim Peake, My Journey To Space, Tuesday, 7.30pm
IN December 2015, Tim Peake became the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station to conduct a spacewalk while orbiting Earth.
Back on terra firma, he is on his first British tour, sharing his passion for aviation, exploration and adventure as he brings unprecedented access, photographs and fresh footage to his guide to life in space, from European Space Agency astronaut training to launch, spacewalk to re-entry.
Peake will be revealing the secrets, the science and the everyday wonders of how and why humans journey into space. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The Battersea Poltergeist: From podcast to night terrors at the Grand Opera House, York
Fright night of the week: The Battersea Poltergeist – Live, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm
FROM a BBC Radio 4 series, The Battersea Poltergeist became a multi-million, genre-busting download phenomenon, mixing documentary and drama to tell the terrifying true story of the 1956 haunting of the Hitchings family at 63 Wycliffe Road, London, at the hands of a poltergeist they nicknamed Donald.
Now, The Battersea Poltergeist goes live as writer, playwright and journalist Danny Robins, the show’s creator, and his podcast guest experts delve deeper into this paranormal cold case, bringing the investigation to life on stage, sharing exclusive footage of Shirley Hitchings and other witnesses and revealing chilling new evidence. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
Off into the sunset: Clannad bid farewell on rearranged 2021 tour
Long goodbye of the week: Clannad: In A Lifetime, The Farewell Tour, York Barbican, Wednesday, 8pm
CLANNAD were booked to play York Barbican on March 10, but you-know-what intervened, delaying Moya Brennan and co’s Farewell Tour to the autumn.
The tour takes its name from the career-spanning March 2020 anthology In A Lifetime, drawn from 16 studio albums since 1970 that fuse elements of traditional Irish music with more contemporary folk, new age and rock. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Duncan Honeybourne: Lockdown piano soundbites at Late Music concert
York Late Music at the double:Duncan Honeybourne, 1pm to 2pm; Elysian Singers, 7.30pm to 9.30pm, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York, November 6
IN the afternoon, Duncan Honeybourne presents pieces from his collection Contemporary Piano Soundbites: Composers In Lockdown 2020, after commissioning more than 30 piano miniatures from distinguished senior figures and emerging composers alike. Works by John Casken, John McLeod, David Power, David Lancaster, Sadie Harrison and Adam Gorb feature.
For the evening concert, Elysian Singers director Sam Laughton has devised a programme of choral music where a contemporary work is paired with an earlier piece based on words from the same poet or source, such as Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Rachmaninov’s settings of All-Night Vigil. Box office: latemusic.org.
Too late! Beth Hart’s York Barbican gig on Sunday has sold out
Recommended but sold out already
FEMALE Gothic, tonight and tomorrow, and Nightwalkers storytellers Jan Blake and TUUP, Saturday, both at York Theatre Royal Studio; York band The Howl & The Hum, Leeds Brudenell Social Club, Saturday and Sunday; American singer-songwriter Beth Hart, York Barbican, Sunday.
The Young’uns Michael Hughes, David Eagle and Sean Cooney performing The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. Picture: Pamela Raith
MAY 2015. Teesside folk trio The Young’uns have just concluded a gig in Somerset when up comes Duncan Longstaff with two pieces of paper.
On one is a black-and-white picture of a man. “This is my dad,” he says. On the other is a list of achievements that reads like a litany of defining moments of early 20th century working-class struggle. “This is what he did,” he explains.
Duncan hoped the Stockton-on-Tees vocal, accordion, guitar and keyboard group might write a song about his father. One song? They duly wrote 17, whereupon a show about Johnny Longstaff was born.
From tonight to Saturday, The Young’uns – Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes – perform a theatrical version of The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff at York Theatre Royal, the show now featuring songs from the original album alongside new material and animation.
Young’un Sean Cooney recalls the May 2015 night that spawned their musical celebration of northern working-class activism. “It was really special. Duncan Longstaff, who was in his late-60s/early 70s, had heard us on the radio and knew we were from the north-east, from Stockton-on-Tees, Johnny’s hometown.
“He had this lovely photograph of his dad, this scruffy-looking lad, and as he was aware we wrote songs about real people, with a north-east flavour, he thought we might get one song out of it.
“But it turned out there were six hours of recordings of Johnny at the Imperial War Museum, and once we’d made time to listen to them properly, we realised we had something really special that could never be just one song.”
The resulting show, the true story of The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff, is billed as a “timely, touching and often hilarious musical adventure, following the footsteps of a working-class hero who chose not to look the other way when the world needed his help”.
The Young’uns singing an a cappella number in The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. Picture: Pamela Raith
Johnny’s journey took him at 15 from poverty and unemployment in Stockton, through the Hunger Marches of the 1930s, the mass trespass movement and the Battle of Cable Street, to fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
That journey is recorded not only on tape but also in writing. “Duncan kept bombarding us with stuff: Johnny had written his memoirs, but they’d never been published, and suddenly there were these 600 pages, left at my front door,” recalls Sean.
“Then he lent us Johnny’s books, with corrections that he’d written down the side when he didn’t agree with the accounts of what had gone on.
“With all these resources, we thought we’d love to use Johnny’s voice from the recordings and tell his story through song.”
The Young’uns drew inspiration from the ground-breaking BBC Radio Ballads documentaries produced by folk musician Ewan MacColl and Charles Parker in the late 1950s for the BBC Home Service. “They pretty much put working-class voices on the radio, with Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl writing songs to go with those voices,” says Sean.
“For our show, the songs and story are very much interwoven with Johnny’s voice. You’ll hear Johnny talking and then we’ll break into song, and there’s a special sequence at the finale, with our voices, Johnny’s voice, a little bit of narration…and then Johnny singing.
“At the end of those six hours of recordings at the Imperial War Museum, you hear him breaking into song. He’s singing The Valley Of Jarama [also known as El Valle del Jarama], and for those people who know about the Spanish Civil War, that was the song that was always being sung.”
The Young’uns first envisaged The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff as a radio series, “but then came the touring opportunity to put together something new for the road, with a promoter arranging dates for us for March 2018,” recalls Sean.
“We thought, ‘yes, let’s take it on the road’, but as we sat in the pub at Sheffield railway station [Sean lives in Sheffield] in May 2017, I was thinking, ‘we’ve only done three months’ work on it so far, we’ve only got ten months to go’, and we still didn’t know if we’d just do the songs, with us introducing them, or whether we’d use Johnny’s voice.
The Young’uns incorporate Scott Turnbull’s animation in their theatrical performances of The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. Picture: Pamela Raith
“That’s when we came up with the idea of doing the show as ‘gig theatre’ with a backdrop image of Johnny behind us. It felt exciting and trepidatious at the same time, but the reaction we got was so great that what was originally going to be a side project, diverging from our main work, became much more than that.”
The album recording ensued and then came a show in Toronto where “we became really pally with the team there, and they said, ‘Have you heard of Lorne Campbell at Northern Stage’, as they’d worked with Lorne on Sting’s shipbuilding musical, The Last Ship, so they had a connection with him,” says Sean.
The Young’uns met up with artistic director Campbell in September 2019. “We knew we had a show that was so personal and special to us, and we wondered, ‘what would they want to do with Johnny, with us?’, but Lorne was great, saying he just wanted to heighten it, to bring it to bigger audiences,” says Sean.
“The key, he said, was to ‘make you as comfortable as you can be, and no, you won’t have to act’. Because the backbone of the show is Johnny’s voice and the songs, we’d never thought about the visuals, but Loren brought in an animator, Scott Turnbull, from Teesside, and now these beautiful images are built into the songs and there’s a lot of movement in the show too.”
From tonight, Johnny’s voice and Sean’s songs will unite and resonate anew. “We never strive to make links with today, but it’s clearly obvious,” says Sean. “He was fighting for the future in the 1930s, and the biggest parallel now is the fight to deal with climate change.”
Like The Young’uns, Johnny was a young’un when he started out on his adventures. “He was 15 when he walked from Stockton to London; 17 when he crossed the Pyrenees, but though they’re now seen as huge politically charged events, when Johnny lived through them, he didn’t grab that significance,” says Sean.
“He went on the Hunger March to look for work, and when he was told he was too young at 15, he followed them in secret until he was discovered, and they then said he could join.
“He went on the Cable Street march because he’d met a Jewish refugee. He didn’t understand Fascism’s doctrines; he just wanted to make human connections.”
At 17, The Young’uns made their under-age way into singing in the back of The Sun Inn pub in Stockton for the first time. “We stood up and sang unaccompanied, and it just felt natural,” Sean says. “As we were 40 years younger than anyone else there, we got called ‘The Young’uns’, and unfortunately the name stuck, but we realised we had a voice and it connected with people.
The Young’uns with an image of Johnny Longstaff behind them. Picture: Pamela Raith
“It felt welcoming, it felt ordinary, because as a kid I couldn’t access music at school, where it felt like it was for someone else, for other people, as I couldn’t play an instrument.
“But once we discovered that world of folk music, where everyone is encouraged – big voice, little voice, in tune, out of tune – this group of people who met in the back room of a pub, sharing songs and stories – wondered why we had never been taught this at school.
“Learning sea shanties that everyone could sing, we found the audience singing along with us, and from that moment, we wanted to keep doing it.”
Twenty-one years down the line, with three BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards to their name, The Young’uns are not so young’uns at 36, but their return to the stage after the pandemic lockdowns has had the same exhilarating impact on them. “For so many people in our world, it’s been incredibly emotional to get back out there,” says Sean.
Even more so, when spreading The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. “In many ways there’s potential for people, when they see a show poster or hear a story of Johnny, to pigeonhole it in our divided land, but we want to stress the humanity in that story and in what other people did in the 1930s.
“Johnny became a member of the Labour Party, but in the Spanish Civil War, people came from different backgrounds to fight Fascism, from public schools too.
“When people hear Johnny’s voice, there’s great respect for that voice and what he’s saying. It’s a different kind of story, that’s not well known, but…”
…thanks to Duncan Longstaff’s two pieces of paper, The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff is now being sung loud and proud.
The Young’uns in The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff, York Theatre Royal, tonight to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.Further Yorkshire concerts by The Young’uns: Square Chapel Arts Centre, Halifax, December 11, 7.30pm; The Greystones, Sheffield, December 12, 3pm and 8pm; The Coliseum Centre, Whitby, December 17, 7.30pm. Box office: Halifax, squarechapel.co.uk; Sheffield, ents24.com/sheffield-events; Whitby, eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-younguns.
FASTLOVE’S globe-trotting tribute to George Michael is on the road with a new show, the Everything She Wants Tour, visiting the Grand Opera House, York, on November 3.
Direct from the West End, the celebratory night combines a full video and light show with all the hits from Wham! onwards, taking in Careless Whisper, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Faith, Father Figure, Freedom! ’90, Faith, I Knew You Were Waiting et al.
Tickets for next Wednesday’s 7.30pm performance are on sale on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
FIND out in Episode 61 of Two Big Egos In A Small Car, when arts podcasters Chalmers & Hutch make room for a special guest.
Let it be Knaresborough DJ, author and Beatles buff Rory Hoy, who discusses his new book, The Beatles Acting Naturally: Obscure, Rare, Unfinished And Abandoned Film And TV Projects Of The Fab Four.
Just enough time too to squeeze in Adele’s return and The Rolling Stones leaving Brown Sugar out of their American tour set list.
Chrystal E. Williams in the title role in Opera North’s Carmen. Picture: Tristram Kenton
OPERA North was riding high coming into this new Edward Dick production.
Buoyant through lockdown with multiple streamed events via its own digital platform ON Demand, its backstage efforts were centred on a huge Music Works development.
The outcome of this is the new Howard Opera Centre, named after its principal benefactor Dr Keith Howard, who contributed some 60 per cent of the £18.5 million cost. It will house management and rehearsal studios for the company itself, while providing educational spaces for youngsters to explore their potential.
Within months, a new bar and restaurant with public access will open next to the Howard Assembly Room (now freed exclusively for smaller-scale events), the result of imaginative enclosure of a former Victorian street.
Camila Titinger as Micaëla and Erin Caves as Don Joséin Opera North’s Carmen. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Sadly, all this excitement did not generate a Carmen to do it justice. It is a besetting sin of Carmen producers that they feel the need to re-interpret Bizet, not to say Mérimée, in tune with modern attitudes.
This runs a serious risk of dumbing down, even presumption: this show’s Carmen, Chrystal E. Williams, was quoted in the programme as declaring that “it would be easy just to do a conventional Carmen”, as if convention were a dirty word – or easy.
It is hard to portray an incorrigible man-eater as a saint, albeit one who is the figment of solely male imaginations. Indeed, after Opera North’s last attempt at the work, Daniel Kramer’s brutalist affair ten years ago, no-one would have been surprised if the company had played this one straight down the middle.
Instead, what we have is a good night out, but with little relevance to the original. Time and place are not identified in Colin Richmond’s sets, but we can tell that this is a border town. Since the smugglers are dealing in drugs, we have every reason to assume that we are on the United States-Mexico border.
Phillip Rhodes as Escamillo with members of the Chorus of Opera North. Picture: Tristram Kenton
The action opens in a bordello masquerading as a night-club, whose clientele is mainly in uniform, doubtless drawn by the illuminated ‘GIRLS’ on scaffolding dominating the scenario. Not exactly an advertisement for women’s lib, especially given female staff sashaying around in flimsy underwear, to the designs of Laura Hopkins.
If these girls are smoking anything, it is coke, not cigarettes. Still, it has to be said, the ladies of the chorus bravely put their best foot forward; if they feel uncomfortable, it certainly does not show.
Immediately noticeable is the sparkling form of the orchestra, with Garry Walker at the helm for the first time as music director, a year later than planned. Theirs is much the most positive contribution to the evening.
Walker keeps rhythms consistently crisp but is equally alive to atmosphere: nerve-jangling chromatics in the card scene, for example, and velvet horns in Micaela’s song a little later. His tenure is off to a cracking start.
Nando Messias as Lillas Pastia: “Makes several androgynous incursions during the second half”. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Neither of the principal pair is vocally quick out of the blocks and he has to gentle them into the fray. Williams is lowered on a swing onto the night-club stage, to be embroiled at once in a fan-dance: it is an eye-catching entrance, in keeping with her charm.
When the stage swivels and we see the ‘real’ Carmen – at her make-up table, wig removed, cuddling what we assume is her daughter – her mezzo, although still light, begins to bite. But it is not until Act 3 that we hear what might have been: genuine passion.
The same applies to Don José. Erin Caves only joined the cast five days ahead of curtain-up, Covid having effectively removed two previous candidates. His safely surly opening is understandable, but does little to convince of his interest in Carmen or offer any reason for her pursuit of him.
If there is any electricity at their first encounter, it is low-voltage, like Caves’ tenor. It is only when his bile is up, much later, that he finds real resonance. His eventual throttling of Carmen prolongs her agony unjustifiably.
Erin Caves as Don José and Chrystal E. Williams as Carmen. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Phillip Rhodes’ Escamillo arrives on an electrically-powered bucking bronco, a cowboy not a toreador; there is no hint of the bull-ring. The swagger of his ‘Toreador’ song certainly raises the vocal temperature but thereafter gradually dissipates, lessening the likelihood that he would offer José any real threat. So when José chases him across the scaffolding that now stands in for a mountain fortress, we are entitled to wonder what all the fuss is about.
Camila Titinger gives an engaging Micaela, whose aria is a touch short on warmth; she is mistakenly encouraged to make much of her pregnancy. Amy Freston’s Frasquita and Helen Évora’s Mercedes are tirelessly flighty, raising everyone’s spirits, while the spivvy smugglers of Dean Robinson and Stuart Laing bring an element of light relief. Matthew Stiff is a firm if stolid Zuniga.
With the Lillas Pastia of Nando Messias making several androgynous incursions during the second half, there is no end to the mixed messages of this ill-focused production. Thank heaven we have five children who know exactly what they have to do, working with a chorus that does its level best to sound persuasive. But the saving grace is the orchestra – focused on unvarnished Bizet.
Martin Dreyer
Further performances onOctober 26 and 28, then on tour until November 19, returning to Leeds in February 2022.
Frank Brogan’s Macduff. Picture: John Saunders
