Retrospective: Sir David Suchet will reflect on 52 years on stage and screen at York Theatre Royal this autumn
SIR David Suchet will retrace his steps as a young actor when he visits 20 theatres with Poirot And More, A Retrospective, playing York Theatre Royal twice on October 13.
After touring the show to Australia and New Zealand in early 2020, the autumn tour will mark his return to the British stage.
Suchet says: “Regional theatre has always been very close to my heart as it’s where my career started and was nurtured. To visit so many places that have meant so much to me during my 52-year career is wonderful.
“This show is my way of connecting and saying hello to people across the country after this terrible period and welcoming them back into the theatre. I am looking forward to sharing my memories, stories and favourite moments.”
“I am looking forward to sharing my memories, stories and favourite moments,” says Sir David Suchet
In Poirot And More, A Retrospective, 75-year-old Suchet looks back fondly on his illustrious five-decade career, shedding new, intimate light on his most beloved performances in conversation with Geoffrey Wansell, journalist, broadcaster, biographer and co-author of Poirot And Me, as they discuss the actor behind the detective and the many characters Suchet has portrayed on stage and screen
For more than 25 years, Suchet has captivated millions worldwide as Agatha Christie’s dapper Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Elsewhere, he has graced the world’s stages performing Shakespeare, Wilde, Albee and Miller and is celebrated for his portrayals of iconic roles such as Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest, Cardinal Benelli in The Last Confession, Joe Keller in All My Sons and Gregory Solomon in The Price.
Suchet spent 13 years in the Royal Shakespeare Company and remains an associate artist. He is an Emmy award winner and seven-time Olivier Award nominee (for The Merchant Of Venice, Separation, Oleanna, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Amadeus, All My Sons and The Price). In 2020, he was knighted for services to drama and charity.
Tickets for Suchet’s 3pm and 8pm shows on October 13 are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Ralph Fiennes in his world premiere: “He did not merely declaim or recite. Instead, Four Quartets became poetry in often slow, mellifluous motion”
REVIEW: Ralph Fiennes in TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 8pm nightly. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
THIS was always the “event” moment of the reopening Love Season at York Theatre Royal.
So much so, there had even been 16 days of darkness since the closing night of A Splinter Of Ice: a dramatic pause of anticipation worthy of a Harold Pinter play, a pause lengthened all the more by the gap between Ralph Fiennes’s unannounced arrival on stage and his opening word from T S Eliot’s epic poem cycle. Like a pianist composing himself for the first note.
In the interim since July 10 had come the Government’s rubber-stamping of Step 4 and the return to full-capacity audiences, making Fiennes’s York debut at 58 even more of an event.
Mask-wearing was still advised, a softly-softly policy that was met largely with compliance, although temperature checks and the taking of names and phone numbers have gone.
Sitting close together in an almost full theatre for the first time since mid-March 2020 was a suck-it-see experience: any loud cough was met a tad nervously, and the Theatre Royal felt uncomfortably warm. Hopefully, that can be adjusted. Please.
Anyway, on with the one-man show, a London-bound touring tour de force presented in its world premiere by the Royal & Derngate, Northampton, and the Theatre Royal, Bath, directed and performed by the esteemed Mr Fiennes, whose solemn entry was as low key as his autumnal colours of brown jacket and grey shirt hanging loosely outside dark trousers.
Ralph Fiennes in Four Quartets: “His feet were bare, maybe to ground himself, as if connecting with the earth below when the world around was in such a whirl”
His feet were bare, maybe still from that day’s yoga session, or maybe to ground himself, as if connecting with the earth below when the world around was in such a whirl.
He had the air of an intellectual lecturer, wrapped in intense thought, but needing to express himself, to communicate, hence the sporadic breaking of the fourth wall for direct address from the stage apron. Never dry, but conversational.
Fiennes did not merely declaim or recite. Instead, Four Quartets became poetry in often slow, mellifluous motion, a dramatic monologue with choreographed movement and lighting to suit the moment, the mood, the scene.
Fiennes had started with the lights still up and would bring them again sporadically, but at one point too, he plunged the stage into darkness, before a single light picked out a grey, almost ghostly countenance. Fire suddenly burned brightly, almost blindingly.
Every detail, every nuance, mattered, as with Eliot’s text, whether the placement of the two chairs and the table with a glass of water and a wartime studio microphone, used only once as if for addressing the nation.
The removal of the jacket and later putting it on again, wrapping it closely around his lean frame, signified the change of seasons, and all the while, Fiennes would break the moment, but not momentum, by moving two rotating slabs into different positions. It was an act of toil, but one to present new palettes, new shapes, new reliefs, as if in a painting, rather than the endless turmoil of Sisyphus being forced by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity.
Ralph Fiennes: “Made Eliot’s language dance, sing, sting, ebb and flow, spark and turn to embers”
Fiennes’s voice, so familiar from the screen, is a thing of beauty in the flesh, weighted yet airy, his diction enunciated to the last ‘t’ that could blow out a candle. He made Eliot’s language dance, sing, sting, flow, spark and turn to embers in the series of symphonic meditations.
Conceived in lockdown, when Fiennes decided to set himself the task of learning Four Quartets, his performance could be termed a labour of love, but it is too transcendent to be burdened with a sense of labour.
Eliot’s final masterpiece, published in wartime 1943, brought together Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages and Little Giddings, each announced by Fiennes in an unbroken performance with resonance anew in our pandemic age of seeking survival amid a national (and international) crisis.
For all the turbulence and dissonance of war, Eliot’s tone is reflective, but never nostalgic, as he and in turn Fiennes addresses what Fiennes called “the perennial questions, the big, big ideas”: the passing of time and feeling trapped; the link between past, present and future; identity; existence; faith, the soul and spiritual yearning; the elements and the environment; the futility of war.
A chill wrapped itself around the Theatre Royal heat, as mortality, human frailty, the fire and the rose, signified the end. The rest was silence, Fiennes’s head bowed, as if to honour the passing of Eliot’s gilded, questing, mysterious words.
Kissing by the dock: Laura Elsworthy’s Juliet and Jordan Metcalfe’s Romeo in Hull Truck Theatre’s Romeo & Juliet at Stage@The Dock, Hull
Hull Truck Theatre in Romeo & Juliet, Stage@The Dock, Hull, until August 7. Box office: hulltruck.co.uk.
CHATTING with an actor the other day, the question arose: how did you decide to play your Romeo?
“I’ve seen so many bad productions of Romeo & Juliet where I can’t wait for them to die, because they’re not very likeable!” he said. “I still truly believe that!
“I knew the approach I had to take was, I didn’t need the audience to fall in love with me, I just needed Juliet to fall in love with me. As soon as you worry about what the audience thinks of you, then Romeo is guaranteed to be unlikeable.”
Interesting, then, that Hull Truck Theatre’s Romeo and Juliet really do love each other. So much so, Hull-born duo Jordan Metcalfe and Laura Elsworthy are real-life husband and wife, marrying in the summer of 2018 after bonding when working on The Hypocrite in Hull’s year as UK City of Culture in 2017.
Thankfully, they have survived rather longer than Shakespeare’s tragic star-cross’d young lovers to tell the tale. Thankfully too, this is not an R&J where you “can’t wait for them to die, because they’re not very likeable”.
Strangely, however, the coupling does not have the same chemistry on stage as off. Chemistry should lead to biology, but Metcalfe’s wet-behind-the-ears Romeo comes over more as the fifth member of a boy band, one for the shadows, not a natural lead. Crucially, kissing by the dock, the sparks do not fly with Elsworthy’s Juliet and nor do the sudden flare-ups of fury that lead to murder carry conviction.
Elsworthy is better by far: more assured in her restless performance, spoilt, temperamental, teenage to the max, not averse to blunt northern humour, and she makes Shakespeare’s language catch fire with her Hull vowels. Pre-notoriety Amy Winehouse to his Summer Holiday Cliff Richard, at a stretch.
Sitting on the dock: The audience watching Mark Babych’s cast members in Hull Truck Theatre’s Romeo & Juliet
Hull Truck artistic director Mark Babych’s two hours’ traffic on the R&J stage is not unlikeable but nor is it is loveable, either.
In the rudimentary amphitheatre of Hull’s converted former dry dock, he sets up a traverse stage to emphasise the antipathy between the warring Capulets and Montagues, with a tent at either end for props and instruments.
Those costume designs, by Sian Thomas, are a star turn on the otherwise bare wooden stage: a catwalk for 1950s’ Italian and American college fashion that inevitably echo West Side Story, Bernstein and Sondheim’s American spin on R&J.
One American voice pops over the Atlantic in the dapper form of Reno-born, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama-trained Richard McIver’s hat-tilting Mercutio, every inch the scene stealer he should be. (Back in 1977, in an English Literature class, your reviewer was told Shakespeare killed off Mercutio prematurely because he was pinching the play from an under-par Romeo!).
McIver’s Guys And Dolls panache is typical of the knowing, bite-your-thumb irreverence that permeates Babych’s interpretation, where all manner of accents and acting styles prevail.
Multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Goode’s Prince Escalus and Friar John could have popped out of a Kneehigh Theatre show; Laurie Jamieson’s double bill of fiery Tybalt and fixer Friar Lawrence would suit a Shane Meadows film or Shameless; EM Williams’s bleached Benvolio is part Puck, part punk.
Lady and Lord Capulet fuse into Carolyn Backhouse’s Capulet, a Cruella de Vil figure, while Amanda Gordon’s Nurse is suitably irritating, irrational, contradictory yet kind all at once.
Babych has fun with a colourful, impassioned Romeo And Juliet, rather than finding the aching poetry and doomed love at this time of a plague on all our houses. Playing broader strokes is a gamble, one that leads to less rather than “more woe”, but the get-up-and-go suits the setting, distracting from regrets over not bringing cushions to soften the seating.
Taking the mic…in 2022: Omid Djalili rearranges Pocklington visit for a second time
OMID Djalili’s brace of postponed shows on July 22 at Pocklington Arts Centre has been moved to May 18 and 19 2022.
British-Iranian comedian, actor, television producer, presenter, voice actor and writer Djalili, 55, originally had been booked for this month’s cancelled Platform Festival at the Old Station, Pocklington.
When Pocklington Arts Centre’s festival organisers, director Janet Farmer and venue manager James Duffy, decided not to stage the large-scale indoor festival under the continuing pandemic cloud, award-winning Djalili agreed to do two shows in one night at PAC to ensure all those who had purchased tickets for his festival gig would not miss out.
Significantly too, those 7pm and 9pm performances would have been without social-distancing measures, but after the Government’s delay in Step 4 from June 21 to July 19 left uncertainty in the air, the shows were re-scheduled for next spring.
Tickets for the original event at Platform Festival remain valid and any ticket holder needing further information should contact the box office on 01759 301547. Those who selected the 7pm show on July 19 are now allocated to May 18; 9pm tickets to May 19. Remaining tickets for the new dates cost £25 at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
When Djalili’s shows go ahead, third time lucky, expect intelligent, provocative, fast-talking, boundlessly energetic comedic outbursts rooted in cultural observations, wherein he explores the diversity of modern Britain.
Everything stops for tea…and now Covid alas. Sandy Foster and Tom Kanji in Home, I’m Darling, Laura Wade’s comedy where nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, on hold until August 2 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough. Picture: Ellie Kurttz
HOME, I’m Darling will have to be Darling, I’m Home until August 2, resting up after a second company member of the Stephen Joseph Theatre co-production tested positive for Covid.
Already, Laura Wade’s 1950s-meets-the 21st century comedy comedy had been subject to ten days of darkness that would have ended tonight but now the hiatus must continue.
The official statement from the Scarborough theatre reads: “As you may know, we recently had to cancel performances of Home, I’m Darling due to a company member returning a positive test over the weekend.
“At that time, everyone within that company bubble took a test, all of which returned negative results, but of course, they all isolated in case they later developed symptoms.
“Unfortunately, a further member of the company has developed symptoms and returned a positive test, which means we have to cancel Home, I’m Darling for a further period as their isolation will now be longer. We’ll welcome it back to our stage on Monday, August 2.”
Ticket holders for a performance before that date will be contacted by the box office shortly to offer the option to move the booking to a later date, to ask for a refund or to credit to their account.
“We’d be grateful if you could wait for our box office to contact you rather than calling them, if possible,” the statement adds. “They’re going to have to make many phone calls and emails over the next few days, and the faster they can do that, the sooner they’ll get to you.
“The company are in good spirits and desperate to get back to the show! In all other respects, it’s business as usual at the SJT. Our cinema, play readings and Eat Me Café are operating as normal and within strict Covid safety guidelines.”
Directed by Liz Stevenson,the SJT co-production with Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, and the Bolton Octagon Theatre, will run until August 14, once clearance to resume is given. Tickets are still available at sjt.uk.com.
Barron nights: American comic Sara Barron to play York, Leeds and Selby on 30-date British tour. Pictures: Karla Gowlett
AMERICAN comedian Sara Barron examines kindness, meanness, ex-boyfriends, current husbands, all four remaining friends and two of her 12 enemies in Enemies Closer at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, on October 9.
Further Yorkshire gigs on Barron’s debut British tour from October 2 to November 14 will be at Sheaf Street, Leeds, on October 20 and Selby Town Hall on September 29 on .
“As an American comic, I can’t be like, ‘Yeehaw, this tour is gonna be awesome’ without forcing my UK audience into a full-body cringe,” says Sara, from Chicago, Illinois. “But. May I just say…I think it *will* be awesome, but I’m saying it in an ‘I-live-in-Britain-and-buy-all-my-bras-from-M&S’ kinda way.
“The UK comedy scene is one of my great beloveds – alongside crafty passive-aggression – so touring this show is truly the fulfilment of a dream. Come if you dig an artful rant. Stay at home if think you’re ‘a positive person’. I hope to see you there!”
“Come if you dig an artful rant, Stay at home if think you’re ‘a positive person’,” advises Sara Barron
Barron first performed the no-holds-barred Enemies Closer at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe, having made her Edinburgh debut with For Worse in 2018, when she was nominated for Best Newcomer in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards and Chortle Awards. Two sold-out runs of For Worse ensued at the Soho Theatre, London.
She has since appeared on the BBC’s Live At The Apollo, Would I Lie To You?, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order and Richard Osman’s House Of Games; Channel 4’s 8 Out Of 10 Cats and Dave’s Hypothetical.
On radio, Sara’s credits include BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, The Now Show, Where’s The F In News? and Woman’s Hour and BBC Radio Scotland’s Breaking News; she has published two essay collections, People Are Unappealing and The Harm In Asking, and her writing has featured in Vanity Fair and on This American Life.
In New York City, frequently she has hosted the cult storytelling show, The Moth: True Stories Told Live.
York tickets for Enemies Closer are on sale at tickets.41monkgate.co.uk; Leeds and Selby tickets, via berksnest.com/sara.
One of Judy Burnett’s paintings at Morten Gallery, Bridlington
YORK artist Judy Burnett is exhibiting paintings and collages in the Hills, Fields and Shifting Tides exhibition at Morten Gallery, High Street, Old Town, Bridlington, until August 14.
East Yorkshire artist Hannah Hoad’s linocut prints are on show too in the summer exhibition at the coastal gallery run by ceramicist Jenny Morten.
“These two artists have a lifelong love of the beautiful Wolds area surrounding the sweeping bay of Bridlington,” says Jenny. “Judy walks along the coastal paths drawing the changes in the seasons, capturing the myriad effects of light and the rich textures of colours and forms in her sketchbook.”
Hannah Hoad, left, gallery owner Jenny Morten and Judy Burnett launch the Hills, Fields and Shifting Tides exhibition at Morten Gallery
Once back in her studio, she develops her studies into compositions of multi-layered complexity through hand-painted collage, inks and acrylics.
“Hannah picks out the diversity of bird and animal life against a backdrop of subtle patterns and tones with a printmaker’s eye, transferring her sketches into finely worked linocuts, where bold black outlines are softened by hand- painted watercolour,” says Jenny.
Most of the works on show are small in scale with a jewel-like quality that delights the viewer on close inspection. Original framed works are displayed in both the main and side galleries with mounted pieces in browsers available too.
Morten Gallery’s opening hours are: Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm.
A linocut by Hannah Hoad at Morten Gallery, Bridlington
Mark Watson: Instructions on How You Can Almost Win at The Crescent. Picture: Matt Crockett
COMEDIAN Mark Watson marks the return of full-capacity gigs at The Crescent community venue, York, with a sold-out 8pm show tonight.
York promoter Al Greaves’ Burning Duck Comedy Club presents Bristol-born Watson, 41, in How You Can Almost Win. Doors open at 7pm.
Watson says: “In 2017, I went on the show The Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls. It involved being abandoned on an island, starved half to death, almost struck by lightning, cut off from all loved ones and turned into a psychological wreck. I was pretty sure it was the most challenging situation I would ever be in. Then, in 2020, the entire planet basically went into survival-show mode.”
As we crawl from the wreckage of the pandemic, tonight Watson dispenses droplets of wisdom brought back from his island misadventure to suggest ways we can adapt. “But still with jokes,” he promises.
Mark Watson, in his pyjamas, sharing the screen with show host Tim FitzHigham at the first Your Place Comedy livestream in April 2020
During the first lockdown last year, Watson was part of the first double bill for Your Place Comedy, the virtual comedy club set up to support independent venues across the Yorkshire and Humber region.
On April 19 2020, a pyjama-clad Watson and Hull humorist Lucy Beaumont performed live online from their homes, in his case, in the living room, in hers, down the pub, The Dog And B**tard, that she and fellow comedian husband Jon Richardson have set up in their Hebden Bridge garden.
Watson, comedian, novelist, sports pundit, Taskmaster survivor and No More Jockeys cult leader, is noted for cramming spiritual enquiries, high-octane observational comedy and pathological overthinking into his evenings of stand-up.
AS The Hepworth, in Wakefield, plays host to a major Barbara Hepworth retrospective, Two Bigs Egos In A Small Car podcasters Chalmers & Hutch discuss Yorkshire’s great sculptors.
Elsewhere, PINGDEMONIUM! What next for arts and culture amid Covid chaos and show cancellations?
Vanguard Bristol Street Art and Colston on-his-side- shows at M Shed, Bristol: do sculptures still stand up or are murals THE sign of the times?
Michael Lambourne: Researching the story of Black Shuck, the Demon Dog of East Anglia
“NEVER look into the eye of Black Shuck,” warns actor, director, teacher and now writer Michael Lambourne, a familiar face and booming voice to York theatregoers.
Now relocated to his Fenland roots, he returns north this weekend to present the Theatre At The Mill premiere of Black Shuck: How It Came For Me, his “responsive storytelling experience” based on the legend of the Demon Dog of East Anglia: a hound of unnatural size and omen of misfortune to those who encounter its stare.
“According to the folklore tale of the black dog, if you see its eyes, it foretells your demise,” says Michael, who is yet to have such a creepy canine experience but has come across myriad versions of the story, whether of the scratch on the Blythburgh church door, or from Bungay, Blakeney Point or Chatteris Fen.
“The Darkness have a song called Black Shuck on their first album, Permission To Land, as they’re Lowestoft boys,” he continues. “Originally it’s a story from Norse mythology, from the Danes who took over East Anglia, telling of life and death, about everyone’s mortality.”
He is speaking en route to Southend-on-Sea earlier this week to teach his theatre students before setting off to North Yorkshire to perform Black Shuck on Saturday evening (24/7/2021) under the sails of At The Mill’s outdoor theatre at Stillington Mill, near York, where he played Prospero in The Flanagan Collective’s production of The Tempest by the mill pond in June 2016.
“I’ve been wanting to tell stories about where I’m from, and I thought, ‘what better way to tell East Anglia’s story than with a ghost story’, as I look to create art myself, stepping to the fore doing my own work, writing it, creating it and performing it, and hopefully it will appeal!” he says.
“Saturday will be the first airing of the new piece, and this performance came from a kind of call to arms that Alex [At The Mill co-founder, playwright, storyteller, musician and director Alexander Wright] made two to three months ago.
Michael Lambourne with fellow Flanagan Collective cast members Amie Burns Walker, back, and Holly Beasley-Garrigan in the grounds of Stillington Mill when performing The Tempest in June 2016
“I thought, ‘what better time than the present to do that?’, and for this first show, I’m just going to use the ambience of the beautiful garden and my vocal timbre. By the time dusk comes around, there’ll be the hoots of owls.”
Exploring the enduring effect that Black Shuck has on Fenland folklore, Michael’s performance will offer a personal account of how a rural myth can become a chilling part of the present day.
The choice of folklore tale and its portent of exit stage left chimed with his own experience. “I went from a happy 40 year old to being in hospital with the doctor telling me my symptoms could signal my demise,” recalls Michael, husband of Paines Plough co-artistic director Katie Posner (formerly associate director of Pilot Theatre in York) and father of Heidi.
In the doctor’s hand was the scan that would signify whether Michael had cancer that would need an operation and “could shuffle me off my mortal coil”.
“I’d had a biting pain in my leg for months, where it got to the point I couldn’t walk – it was almost like a dog had bitten me in the leg. I was still way off from thinking of going for an MRI scan, but then I heeded Katie’s advice.”
Scans at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge revealed a black hole in his spine, where his number two vertebrae should have been. Five days of being prodded and poked in hospital followed.
Michael was diagnosed with lymphoma, the blood cancer. “It had manifested itself in my back, apparently after I fractured my spine, though I can’t think of any time in my life when my back has caused me problems,” says the walking and cycling enthusiast.
The poster for Michael Lambourne’s new show, Black Shuck: How It Came For Me at Theatre At The Mill, Stillington
Chemotherapy and radiotherapy sessions were necessary, but not an operation. “As well as ‘demise’, the Black Shuck folklore signifies your life is about to change, and how you respond to it is up to you. I embraced it, but not that thing where people talk of ‘fighting’ cancer,” says Michael.
“I want to build my body back into balance, using art as catharsis. It just so happens that ball was passed to me and I handled it this way.
“At the final session of chemotherapy, I was overcome with emotion; the nurse would have loved to have given me a hug, but she couldn’t because of the Covid situation, so she just took me by the hand. But by then it wasn’t even a sense of relief. It was just emotion.”
Happily, Michael conducting this interview and performing Black Shuck would indicate his ongoing recovery. “I’m in remission now and hopefully I’ll be able to tell this story for many years to come,” he says.
“I don’t dwell on it in Black Shuck, though it’s an inherent part of the story. The piece is 95 per cent there and now I’m confronting that thing of deciding ‘what is the real message?’.”
Push him further, and Michael urges: “Time is precious and we need to spend it well. Rather than waiting for things to happen, you must actively change it yourself.”
What better way to do that tomorrow night than to experience the stare of Michael Lambourne as he relates the story of Black Shuck. “I’ll be telling the tale in my natural Fens accent, connecting with the place I come from, as my family are truly from the Fens. That’s my heritage,” he says. “It’s not a great stretch to think my forefathers knew about Black Shuck and talked about the demon dog in the pub.”
Shona Cowie: Scottish storyteller of visionary tales
SCOTTISH storyteller Shona Cowie will open the evening with her tale of Bruadarach (noun: dreamer/visionary) at 7.30pm.
Once a creative associate at York Theatre Royal, Shona presents myths of re-imagining and transformation from the Scottish oral tradition, myths called on for centuries as guides through times of change.
A highly physical performer, who brings mime and song to the traditional Celtic style, she is dedicated to bringing front and centre those who have too often been pushed to the margins of stories.
“I worked with Shona at the Theatre Royal, and now we’ll both be doing our ‘fireside chats’ at Stillington,” says Michael Lambourne. “Her work is very lyrical and spiritual, told with a wonderful Scottish lilt.”
In addition, on Sunday at 2pm, Shona will present Beware The Beasts, a show for families (age five upwards), where she will provide case studies from leading monster evaders and offer instruction on the most effective ways to avoid being squashed, eaten or turned into a nugget.
For tickets for tomorrow or Sunday, go to: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill/.
Did you know?
Here is the opening verse to Black Shuck by The Darkness:
“In a town in the east The parishioners were visited upon By a curious beast And his eyes numbered but one and shone like the sun And a glance beckoned the immediate loss Of a cherished one It was the coming of the… Black Shuck”
