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One garden, three shows, Park Bench Theatre is in full bloom in Rowntree Park

There must be an easier way: Cassie Vallance takes a leap of faith to enter the Friends Garden, rather than opening the gate to begin her Park Bench Theatre performance of Teddy Bears’ Picnic. Picture: Northedge Photography

NO Chelsea Flower Show this summer.  No Harrogate Autumn Flower Show in its Newby Hall debut year. York, however, has three shows in one garden.

Theatre shows, that is. Monologues, to be precise, staged by Engine House Theatre under the title of Park Bench Theatre in the Covid-secure, socially distanced setting of the Friends Garden at Rowntree Park.

The first, First Love, Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s short story of a man, a woman, a recollection, is in its last bloom with Wakefield Theatre Royal pantomime dame Chris Hannon earning Best in Show awards galore for his tragicomic turn.

The second, artistic director Matt Aston and actor Cassie Vallance’s playful adaptation of the familiar song Teddy Bears’ Picnic, is bedding in nicely in morning and afternoon performances that began on Wednesday.

The first shoots of the third, Tom Bellerby’s premiere of Aston’s lockdown play Every Time A Bell Rings, will poke through on August 26, with its topical tale of tentative first steps being taken from long-term isolation.

Chris Hannon had last performed in the first week of January, in Jack And The Beanstalk, in the dame role he has made his own over a decade at Wakefield Theatre Royal. Little could he have imagined what lay ahead…or, rather, did not once Covid-19 spread its pandemic wings.

Chris Hannon as the Man, beset by hazy memories as he looks quizzically at the park bench in Samuel Beckett’s First Love. Picture: Northedge Photography

“I had lots of nice things lined up, starting with a TV series, The 4 O’Clock Club for CBBC, but at least that should still happen next year,” says Chris.

“This summer I should have been doing Alice In Wonderland, a promenade show around Williamson Park in Lancaster, put on by The Dukes theatre. That would have been the first time I’d done that, with a holiday in Mallorca in between, but that all fell by the wayside.”

In Lockdown, Chris had watched the series of National Theatre streams of NT Live productions, only exacerbating how his absence from theatre made the heart grow fonder for a return to performing.

“The NT plays were great, but all it reminded you of was how much you missed being in a theatre with an audience, sharing a room with actors, that feeling of being together. It really made you want to be there,” he says.

“That’s what’s been hard. Not being close to people. Missing that connection. That’s why it’s been so exciting to be able to do Park Bench Theatre, to be performing to an audience again.

“Mind you, the Beckett piece is a singular challenge: performing an hour’s worth of material on your own.”

Director Matt Aston and actor Chris Hannon in rehearsal for First Love. Picture: Northedge Photography

Rehearsals with Matt Aston had begun on Zoom, followed by a week in a space on the University of York campus, before tech preparations at Rowntree Park. “As it’s a one-man show, we did four hours a day on Zoom, and that was about as much as I could take each day in screen!”

For each production, audience members must tune in on a headset, cutting out extraneous noise from elsewhere in the park. “It works well for First Love as the monologue is about a man working through a hazy memory, and if you were to perform it to 600 people, it would be more technically demanding, but it suits the intimacy of headsets, when you’re playing to a maximum audience of 70.”

Cassie Vallance finished her run in Aston’s production of The Storm Whale in the York Theatre Royal Studio on January 4 but has kept busy in lockdown by moving Story Craft Theatre’s participatory Crafty Tales sessions for children online, working in tandem with fellow actor Janet Bruce.

“It was a very quick learning curve: one of my two-year-old daughter’s first words was ‘Zoom’!” she says.

“I also auditioned for Juliet Forster’s July production of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad at York Theatre Royal but that had to be postponed in March. I really hope they will do it next year.” [Editor’s note: The York Theatre Royal website states “the production will now be staged in 2021.]

“I’ve also been doing some R&D [research and development] work for a friend and had time away too, so we’ve just changed things around a bit for me to do Teddy Bears’ Picnic, which is great,” Cassie adds.

Bear in the air: Cassie Vallance’s Jo with teddy Filey in Teddy Bears’ Picnic. Picture: Northedge Photography

“In June I was thinking ‘that’s it for 2020′ but then this show happened and I just know how lucky I’ve been compared with many of my friends in theatre, where the situation is changing all the time but theatres are still dark.

“It’s so nice that City of York Council and Make It York have been so enthusiastic about Park Bench Theatre, and we’re so lucky that York is really up for it. ”

From an original idea by The Storm Whale musical director Julian Butler, Cassie and Matt Aston have co-created the aptly outdoor performance of Teddy Bears’ Picnic for children aged three upwards.

Again, Zoom has come in handy. “I’d write a bit, Matt would write a bit, and we’d share thoughts on Zoom,” says Cassie. “We then started working on the physical aspect of the show from August 1, as I’m much more of an up-and-about physical person, and then we began running it.

“The main thing, when working on it, has been to be flexible, with it being for children and an outdoor show. Visually, it has to have lots of big stuff, and our thinking was, ‘if we can say it physically, let’s do that’, but it’s also a play full of memory moments, which we’ve made more intimate.”

Director Tom Bellerby, once associate artist at York company Pilot Theatre and associate director at Hull Truck Theatre, headed for London in 2018 to take up the post of resident assistant director at the Donmar Warehouse. He left that role last year but had stayed in the capital, only for theatre suddenly to be cast into the wilderness.

Director Tom Belllerby in the rehearsal room for Park Bench Theatre’s premiere of Matt Aston’s Every Time A Bell Rings. Picture: Northedge Photography

…“The day that Boris Johnson made his big speech, effectively closing theatres, no warning, I was on day one of rehearsals for a play at the Bush Theatre,” Tom recalls. “I’d just done my first eight hours and then got the message that that was that.

“I came back to my family in York and I’ve only been back to London for one day since then to pack up my flat down there. Being back here has reminded how much I love it here, working for four years in York, two at Hull Truck, before I had two amazing years at the Donmar.”

As chance would have it, the flat in York where Tom had lived when he was 23, was available again. “So, I sent the landlady a note and told her my situation and my partner Lydia’s situation – she writes for continuing BBC dramas – and after ten weeks of living at my parents, we moved back into the old flat,” he says.

As well as his curtailed Bush Theatre production, Tom should have been directing Anders Lustgarten’s The Seven Acts Of Mercy at Derby Theatre in late-May but lockdown put a line through that one too.

Not that lockdown was an entirely negative experience. “There were times when I loved the change of pace, getting into the routine of a daily walk,” he says.

At Aston’s invitation, Tom is directing the Park Bench Theatre artistic director’s new monologue, Every Time A Bell Rings, wherein Slung Low and Northern Broadsides regular Lisa Howard plays Cathy, who has been living in isolation.

Taking notes: Actor Lisa Howard and director Tom Bellerby working on Every Time A Bell Rings. Picture: Northedge Photography

On Easter Sunday 2020, in the uncertain world of lockdown, she searches for solace on her favourite park bench in her favourite park in Aston’s poignant but humorous look at how the world is changing through the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic.

“I love working on new writing, being the first person to tell this story” says Tom. “Matt has responded to this moment in history with a powerful piece and because I’m a geeky type, I’ve enjoyed looking at the nuances of the writing.”

Whereas he is linking up with Aston for the first time, he is renewing acquaintances with Lisa Howard. “I worked with Lisa on Blood + Chocolate in York in 2013 and I’m really excited to be working with her again for the first time since then,” he says. “Again, the audience will be  using headsets for the show, like they did for Blood + Chocolate, which will help to make it more intimate.”

Engine House Theatre presents Park Bench Theatre, Friends Garden, Rowntree Park, York, until September 5

Chris Hannon in First Love, tonight, 7pm and tomorrow, 4pm and 7pm.

Cassie Vallance in Teddy Bears’ Picnic, August 22; August 27 to 29; August 31; September 1 to 5, 11.30am and 1.30pm.

Lisa Howard in Every Time A Bell Rings, August 26 to 29; August 31 to September 5, 7pm, plus August 29 and September 5, 4pm.

For tickets, go to parkbenchtheatre.com or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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Review: Teddy Bears’ Picnic…One sandwich short of a picnic or a top banana drama?

One sandwich short of a picnic: Cassie Vallance’s Jo clowns around on her Friends Garden park bench in a scene from Teddy Bears’ Picnic. Picture: Northedge Photography

REVIEW: Teddy Bears’ Picnic, Park Bench Theatre, Engine House Theatre, Friends Garden, Rowntree Park, York until September 5. ****

THROUGH stealth and goofy coming timing, Cassie Vallance had stolen Twelfth Night, the Jazz Age hit of last summer’s Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre in York before the rest of Joyce Branagh’s superb cast could do anything about it.

After that Pop-Up Elizabethan theatre season on the Castle car park, Vallance has popped up again at York Theatre Royal’s Pop-Up On The Patio festival, presenting Crafty Tales with her Story Craft Theatre cohort Janet Bruce last Saturday lunchtime.

She would have done so again this Saturday too at 1pm but for the fact she needs to be at Rowntree Park for the 1.30pm performance of Teddy Bears’ Picnic, her solo performance for this summer’s Park Bench Theatre season.

For all her oodles of comic energy, not even Vallance can be in two places at once and so Janet Bruce will be bringing a picture-book story to life on her own on the patio this weekend.

Any good at the hurdles? Cassie Vallance tries to negotiate the gate to enter the Friends Garden. Picture: Northedge Photography

In between Twelfth Night and Teddy Bears’ Picnic came Vallance’s starring role in director Matt Aston’s adaptation of Benji Davies’s The Storm Whale stories for the York Theatre Royal Studio’s Christmas show for children.

Now, Aston, artistic director of Engine House Theatre, resumes his creative partnership with Vallance for this season’s Park Bench Theatre resurrection of outdoor theatre for the post-lockdown age.

Together, they have co-created a new version of the Teddy Bears’ Picnic story spun from the threads of the popular children’s ditty and an original idea by musical director Julian Butler; Aston directing, Vallance performing with all that impish clowning, physical comedy and pathos that has marked the York actor’s performances over the past year.

If you go down in the Covid-secure Friends Garden tomorrow, or on various dates until September 5, you are in for a children’s show to delight three year olds and upwards. Take a picnic, take a child or two, or more, within a family bubble to sit in socially distanced pods marked out by chalk circles, with room to accommodate your favourite teddy bear too.

Juggling tea cups: Cassie Vallance keeps her balance in Teddy Bears’ Picnic. Picture: Northedge Photography

On arrival, you will pick up the necessary equipment to listen on a head set to the feed of Vallance’s storytelling, sound effects (from lasers to a send-up of The Six Million Dollar Man intro for the adults present) and reprises of the familiar song, complemented by Julian Butler’s incidental music.

Vallance is playing Jo, struggling with her big case as she tries to negotiate her way through the not very high gates to the Friends Garden on a sunny Thursday afternoon.

Eventually, she does so, taking up residence on and around the park bench beneath the linden tree in the garden corner, as a squirrel looks on, front paws in that distinctive squirrel position where they look to be on the cusp of bursting into applause.

Vallance’s Jo is in three quarter-length dungarees with yellow buttons and matching head band and anything but matching pumps (purple instead), her bravura attire denoting a funny woman has just entered the garden.

Who would name a teddy after a beach? Cassie Vallance’s Jo does, holding Filey aloft in Teddy Bears’ Picnic. Picture: Northedge Photography

Jo begins to unpack the case, taking out case after smaller case, as if opening up a Russian doll. She puts up bunting, does a spot of juggling. Vallance has said nothing, as much mime artist or silent movie actor to this point, but once she puts on a pair of spectacles, she “realises” she has an audience and starts talking…excitedly.

She seeks to give this re-telling a context for Covid-19 2020, as Jo talks to the children about the experience of coming out to play again, to see friends again, to be outdoors again, to be enjoying a Teddy Bears’ Picnic again, after being stuck inside in lockdown for an eternity.

“It’s a bit weird,” she says, and who would disagree. “There’s been lots of Zooming,” she notes. “For a word that sounds so fast, it seems to take so long!”

Picking a banana from her picnic, Vallance’s Jo bounces around the audience, revelling in “just being”, “feeling happy”, “enjoying stuff”, but then her thoughts turn to memories. “All memories are important. They may not be happy, but that’s OK, they can help us learn,” she says.

A show with bite…a horsefly bite for Teddy Bears’ Picnic director Matt Aston

At this juncture, Jo transforms into her younger self, recalling childhood Teddy Bears’ Picnics in Rowntree Park, surrounded by her teddies, all except her favourite, Kelly, who came off worst in an unfortunate encounter with her father’s Flymo mower.

Vallance’s crestfallen pathos at this juncture is a joy, so too are the Scottish and Welsh accents she adopts for Jo’s mum and dad (even though they are from Welwyn Garden and Fulford!).

Aston and Vallance’s charming short story ends on a positive and reassuring note in these strange times for children and adults alike, Jo saying that things can and always will change…and “change can be really, really good”.

Ironically, the only sting in this tale was, well, not a sting but a horsefly bite suffered by director Matt Aston pre-show. Kelly went to hospital in the story, Aston to A&E with his arm swollen. Is ted not dead? Did both have a happy ending? That would be telling!

Performances: August 21 and 22, 27 to 29 and 31; September 1 to 5; 11.30am and 1.30pm. Box office: parkbenchtheatre.com

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REVIEW: The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre, At The Mill ****

Trouble at the Mill: Musician Phil Grainger and writer/storyteller Alexander Flanagan-Wright presenting Orpheus and Eurydice at Stillington Mill. Picture: Charlotte Graham

REVIEW: The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre, in At The Mill, Stillington Mill, and beyond

ALEXANDER Flanagan-Wright and Phil Grainger should have been in Edinburgh right now. Instead they will be popping up at the Pop-Up On The Patio festival at York Theatre Royal tomorrow.

On The Fringe up further north, they were all set to perform the North Yorkshire double act’s British premiere of The Gods The Gods The Gods, episode three of their spoken-word and soulful-song 21st century twist on ancient Greek tragedies in the year 2020BC…Before Covid.

The duo had been touring The Gods x 3 and its “brother and sister” predecessors, Orpheus and Eurydice, in Australia, with New Zealand next, when Covid-19 dropped in its unwelcome calling card, sending Alex back to Stillington Mill, his family’s converted 17th century corn mill, and Phil to Easingwold.

Eighteen months of UK and international tour plans have gone into the pending file, but Alex and Phil are not of the “so far, so furlough” lockdown mentality. Alex took to ‘writing’ while walking the dog, recording his rhythmic thoughts; Phil penned new songs on his unruly guitar, as well as shaping up on shifts in his father’s picture-framing business.

“You have to try to find round pegs to fit round holes,” said Alex, as he and Phil and their respective companies, The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre, set about launching their five-pronged art attack, I’ll Try And See You Sometimes, seeking new horizons in the year 2020BC. Beyond Covid and its killjoy claw in this new age of “Use your hand sanitiser but try not to lose your sanity”.

Definitely not Yorkshire! Alexander Flanagan-Wright and Phil Grainger on their global travels

Among this summer’s outward-thinking projects has been the Hyper Local Tour of Orpheus, taking the two-hander to people’s socially distanced back gardens at their invitation.

A small step, for small audience numbers, maybe, but nevertheless adding back gardens to Orpheus’s list of 325 shows in Oz, NZ, New York, Bali, let alone a boat on the River Ouse and a shoes-off night in the magnificence of Castle Howard.

Alex and Phil then decided to go even more Hyper Local for “six days of work” in Alex’s own back garden at Stillington Mill, 11 miles north of York.

This is no ordinary back garden with its mill pond, fairy-lit woodland, shepherd’s hut for holidays lets and open-air marquee for weddings and performances on what appears to have been a disused tennis court. Game on, nevertheless, for the artship enterprise.

Entering this magical arts hub is like leaving behind the Athenian court for Titania and Oberon’s woods in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Alex perhaps in the sprightly sprite role of Puck and big Phil as a keen-to-do-everything Nick Bottom but never quite making an ass of himself!

At The Mill ran for six shows in six nights with Covid-secure, social distancing measures in place, picnics optional, as the globe-trotting, back-home gents played to a maximum audience of 30 per 7pm gig from August 2 to 7. Total attendance: 175 out of a possible 180, making the low-key run a palpable hit, like the shows, whether old, nearly new or hot off the book and songbook presses.

Oh…you are Orpheus. The poster for The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre two-hander

“We’re doing some Orpheus, some Eurydice, and one night of New Stuff We Haven’t Done Before,” the duo had announced online, with the aid of an Instagram poll to decide whether Orpheus or Eurydice would win out on the Tuesday.

Eurydice had her day and her say that evening beneath the trees as Alex and Phil took on roles that had been shaped by Serena Manteghi and Casey Jay Andrews on overseas duty. Alex had a book in his hand, not because he couldn’t be bothered with learning the lines, but because he loves the feel of the book in which he wrote those lines.

It as if by touching the book, he connects directly to his heart, because his heart bleeds in these words. Without dwelling too much here on his own circumstances, it hurts…and this time it’s personal, cathartic, but beyond the dates he mentions, it is universal too.

Add Phil’s songwriting, guitar and electronica to Alex’s lyrics, and Eurydice’s torrid yet beautifully nuanced tale of love and loss, a bee tattoo and a bee sting, hits you with the force of a Bill Withers or Otis Redding song.

If Eurydice pulls off the trick of being both formal in structure yet informal, then Wednesday night’s New Stuff We Haven’t Done Before in the marquee was very much the latter.

Alex once more in jaunty trilby, jeans and T-shirt, Phil in baggy clown’s pantaloons, they introduced crossfire works from The Gods The Gods The Gods before Alex premiered his new piece penned in lockdown, This Story Is For You.

One guitar + one book + two hats + six shows = Phil Grainger and Alexander Wright’s At The Mill festival of two-handers at Stillington Mill. Picture: Charlotte Graham

Already available in assorted print forms decorated by guest illustrators for I’ll Try And See You Sometimes, now it tripped off the lucid tongue, as poetic, as timely, as insistent and surprising as a Kae Tempest (formerly Kate Tempest) album, as Alex recounted a female love story gone so right, then so wrong. Throughout, Phil accompanied on gentle waves of guitar, the tide coming in on the key of E.

The second half was given over to Phil, a storyteller without a script or book, as much as a soul-mining singer and songwriter, encouraged by Alex to grow more confident in his own candid, humorous, touching lyric-writing to match his ever-affecting way with a tune.

He even covered a teenage lament by a former Easingwold school colleague called Josh, who has long deserted his list-making song. Wrong, Josh, it’s a curio beauty, worthy of The Undertones’ first album.

Phil calls himself Clive, his middle name, his father’s name too, when performing solo (with occasional vocals and drum patterns from Alex), but this is Phil talking, this is the Phil sound, and it really is time he made an album.

And so, Orpheus and Eurydice, Alex and Phil, move on to the Theatre Royal patio for tomorrow’s double bill: another day, another garden.  

What comes next for the ever-busy double act? Wood has arrived at Stillington Mill for Alex and Phil to start work on converting the marquee into an outdoor theatre. If they build it, we will come.

In the swing of it: Phil Grainger and Alexander Flanagan-Wright at the outset of their six-pack of At The Mill shows at Stillington Mill. Now they switch to the more compact Pop-Up On The Patio garden at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Charlotte Graham

Orpheus, The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre in Orpheus, Pop-Up On The Patio, York Theatre Royal, tomorrow, August 21, 6pm

WRITTEN by Alexander Flanagan-Wright, with incidental music and songs by Phil Grainger, Orpheus is a thoroughly modern, beautifully poetic re-telling of an ancient Greek myth.

Dave is single, stood at the bar; Eurydice is a tree nymph…and Bruce Springsteen is on the juke box in this tale of impossible, death-defying love told through hair-raising spoken word and soaring soul music, where Alex and Phil weave a world of dive bars, side streets and ancient gods.

Eurydice, The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre, Pop-Up On The Patio, August 21, 8pm

LENI is five years old, holding a Superman costume for her first day at school. Eurydice is five years into the rest of her life, sporting a bee tattoo on her wrist, in Alexander Flanagan-Wright’s story of someone defined by someone else’s myth.

This tale of making changes, taking leaps and being a daily superhero is billed as “a story about a woman told by women”. That was the case when performed by Alex and Phil Grainger’s co-creators, Serena Manteghi and Casey Jane Andrews, to 2019 Adelaide Fringe Best Theatre award-winning success.

Now, Alex and Phil take over to weave a world of day-to-day power and beauty and goddesses, relayed through heart-stopping spoken word and live electronica. Watch out for the sting in the tale.

Tickets are on sale at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk and MUST be bought in advance.

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Your chance to sign up for the Futureproof future for the arts at York Theatre Royal

Shaping the future: the Futureproof logo for York Theatre Royal’s young team on a mission

YORK Theatre Royal is giving the green light to young people from Yorkshire to lead the way to a bright future for the arts despite the heavy Covid cloud.

Welcome to Futureproof, a dozen-strong team determined to have a voice in the changing landscape of arts and culture. Through a combination of activities, events and consultations, their mission is to “ask the big questions and debate, make and inspire others to explore how the arts and young people can have a future together”.

Circle Saturday, August 22, on the calendar: launch day for the first big Futureproof online event to kick-start a long-term dialogue between young people and the cultural sector. This weekend, the Futureproof team is inviting 14 to 26 year olds to join in a day of free participatory workshops, consultations, careers sessions, debates and shared online performances from 9.45am to 9pm.

Edenamiuki Aiguobasinmwin and Abigail Sewell: dance company director and theatre and film director leading the Futureproof Symposium

Futureproof is split into four different themes: Futurepractice; Futurepaths; Futureproof Symposium and Futurevoices.

Futurepractice is a series of online skills-building workshops delivered by specialists, covering choreography, beatboxing, playwriting, acting and film making.

Futurepaths looks at careers in design, directing, performing and writing for stage from the perspective of those who work in those fields.

Futureproof Symposium is a conversation between film and theatre director Abigail Sewell, Namiuki Dance Theatre director Edenamiuki Aiguobasinmwin, the Futureproof programming team and panellists with key roles in the arts sector.

Futurevoices rounds off this weekend’s programme of free events with an online Open Mic session, enabling participants and audience members to contribute and complete the launch. For full details, go to yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/be-part-of-it/collectiveacts/futureproof/.

PIlot Theatre’s cast members Nigar Yeva, left, Zak Douglas, Aimee Powell, Kate Donnachie and Khai Shaw in Crongton Knights. Picture: Robert Day

Along with Sewell and Aiguobasinmwin, among those leading the day’s activities will be playwrights Richard Hurford and Mike Kenny; Pilot Theatre artistic director Esther Richardson; York Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster and Freedom Studios’ filmmaker Dermot Daly.

So too are set designer Hannah Sibai; Royal Shakespeare Company actor Laura Elsworthy; company members from Pilot Theatre’s Covid-curtailed Crongton Knights production and choreography session leaders Luella Rebbeck  and Lizzy Whynes, youth theatre officer at Harrogate Theatre.

Juliet Forster asks: “Is anything future-proof? We’ve never been in a time like this, and the question in many of our heads is this: how on earth are the performing arts going to survive this pandemic, and will the theatre industry we know now even be recognisable in a few years’ time?

“The voices, thoughts and ideas of the young generation have never felt more timely or more urgently needed,” says York Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster

“The arts have survived many disasters and setbacks over the centuries, and not without pain, but only through a process of renewal and reconnection, discovering the arts’ relevance in a changing society.

“The future has never felt more unknown or more fragile, but with the uncertainty comes this incredible opportunity for change. The voices, thoughts and ideas of the young generation have therefore never felt more timely or more urgently needed, as they could shape, re-invent and dream an exciting new cultural landscape – one that reflects their experiences, speaks to them, inspires them and is inspired by them.”

To sign up to take part in Futureproof Saturday, go to yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/be-part-of-it/collective-acts/futureproof/, complete the booking form, then send it to futureproof@yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

For any questions about York Theatre Royal Futureproof, contact paula.clark@yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Sign up: Saturday’s free Futureproof kick-start programme
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Sounds In The Grounds to do the rounds at Scampston Hall and Ripley Castle concerts

What a blast: New York Brass Band players make sounds in the grounds of Scampston Hall. Picture: Charlotte Graham

NORTH Yorkshire stately homes Scampston Hall and Ripley Castle are to play host to Sounds In The Grounds, each presenting four nights of live music in the open air.

In a new venture from Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre founder James Cundall MBE, he will stage Covid-secure shows by The Bootleg Beatles, Abba Mania, Beyond The Barricade and A Country Night In Nashville.

The New York Brass Band, from old York, will be the support act every night in these fully staged productions with LED screens beside the stage.

On reflection: New York Brass Band members and A Country Night In Nashville performers at Scampston Hall

In compliance with Covid-19 safety guidelines, audience members can watch the concerts from a designated picnic patch for two, four or six people. These socially distanced patches will be defined by painted lines at each 1,888-capacity grass arena within the grounds of Scampston Hall, near Malton, and Ripley Castle, near Harrogate.

“Sounds In The Grounds offers the opportunity to get together and enjoy a fun night of live music in a stunning setting in a socially distanced way,” says organiser James Cundall. “Whether you prefer the Swinging ’60s or showstoppers, platforms or cowboy boots, I hope we have something for everyone.

“Importantly, it’s an opportunity for musicians and technicians to showcase their talent again after weeks of inactivity during lockdown.”

When A Country Night In Nashville meets the New York Brass Band in the grounds of a North Yorkshire stately home. Picture: Charlotte Graham

Visitors should provide their own chairs and can bring a picnic, although tables should  be left at home. Food and drink stalls will also be on site too.

Beyond The Barricades, featuring past principals from Les Miserables, will celebrate the world’s greatest West End and Broadway musicals at Scampston Hall on August 28 and Ripley Castle on September 4. The guest star will be Australian baritone Lockie Chapman, founding member and former lead singer of The Overtones.

Abba Mania will pay tribute to the super-Swedes at Scampston on August 29 and Ripley on September 5; The Bootleg Beatles will travel through the Fab Four’s back catalogue at Scampston on August 30; Ripley, on September 2; A Country Night In Nashville will evoke the energy and buzzing atmosphere of a Honky Tonk in downtown Nashville, while journeying through the history of country music at Scampston on August 31 and Ripley on September 6.

Let out on bale: New York Brass Band and A Country In Nashville musicians at Scampston Hall. Picture: Charlotte Graham

Tickets are on sale at soundsinthegrounds.seetickets.com/content/ticket-options. If you have any ticketing queries, email soundsinthegrounds@seetickets.com or contact the organisers directly on 07927 291267.

Organiser James Cundall’s separate enterprise, Lunchbox Theatrical Productions, mounted Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre in a pop-up Elizabethan theatre at the Castle car park in York in Summer 2018 and 2019 (also at Blenheim Palace, near Oxford, that second year), but Lunchbox hit the financial rocks of liquidation in October 2019.

Welburn impresario Mr Cundall also runs Thor’s winter and summer bars in York and Yorkshire’s Winter Wonderland at York Designer Outlet.  

Fab Four, outdoor: The Bootleg Beatles to play Sounds In The Grounds
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No turning back for Dick Whittington as Rowntree Players postpone panto to 2021

Cherish the memories of past Rowntree Players pantomimes…until the show can go on again in December 2021.

DICK Whittington will still be the next Rowntree Players pantomime…but not until 2021.

“After many weeks of deliberation, it is with a very heavy heart that the Rowntree Players’ committee has eventually decided that this year’s pantomime, Dick Whittington, will not go ahead this year,” came today’s statement.

“But it will be back better than ever in December 2021.” Dates for next year’s diary will be December 4 to 11 with the usual evening and matinee performances.

The Players’ annual “rollicking romp of a panto” has taken place, with only a few breaks, for more than 70 years at York’s community theatre in Haxby Road. Given that long history, the decision to cancel the 2020 pantomime run amid the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic was not taken lightly.

Co-writer and director Howard Ella has worked closely with the board of trustees to mull over the possibilities, now that indoor performances are permitted, but in the end they bowed to the curse of social distancing and the uncertainty over when and if theatres can re-open at full capacity. No compromise was their verdict.

Howard says: “We could have considered performing to a small audience, with a three-piece band, no chorus, a limited cast and set, no shout-outs from the audience but, let’s be honest, that would not be the Rowntree Players’ panto everybody knows and loves.

“We have never done a compromised show and nor do we want to start to. The script is now locked in a secure vault in Alderman Fitzwarren’s bank, ready for summer auditions next year.”

The Players’ decision comes as the viability of Christmas pantomimes across the country is being assessed.  “At a time when many venues are perilously close to closure, the Joseph Rowntree Theatre is unique in York in that it’s owned by the charity that runs it and has no staff overheads, run as it is by more than 170 volunteers,” says Dan Shrimpton, chair of the board of trustees.

“We wholeheartedly support Howard and his committee’s decision on this year’s pantomime, heart-breaking though it is.  The ten-day run of performances in December is the real highlight of the theatre’s year, but we look forward to welcoming the Rowntree Players back next year with the postponed show. The show will go on – oh, yes it will!”

The Rowntree Players’ pantomime is “very much a community affair”, billed as all-round, good, affordable fun for all, written and directed by York artists, suitable for absolutely all ages, and not requiring any knowledge of previous shows or of the local area.

“Tickets will go on sale from the Joseph Rowntree Theatre box office in the summer of 2021 and are expected to sell very well, given the uncertainty surrounding many other local pantomimes,” today’s statement concludes.

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NCEM, Crescent and Fulford Arms line up 12 acts for Songs Under Skies garden gigs

Amy May Ellis: Opening open-air concert of the Songs Under Skies series in York

SONGS Under Skies will bring together the National Centre for Early Music, The Crescent, The Fulford Arms and the Music Venues Alliance for a September series of open-air acoustic concerts in York.

Taking part will be Amy May Ellis; Luke Saxton; Dan Webster; Bella Gaffney; Kitty VR; Boss Caine; Wolf Solent; Rosalind; Polly Bolton; Henry Parker; Elkyn and Fawn.

The setting will be the garden of St Margaret’s Church, home of the NCEM, for six double bills that will mark the return of audiences to the verdant Walmgate premises for the first time since the March lockdown.

Concerts for last month’s online York Early Music Festival had to be recorded and filmed behind closed doors at the NCEM, with no audiences, for digital streaming from July 9 to 11.

Boss Caine: Sharing the September 9 bill with Kitty VR

Songs Under Skies will take place on Wednesday and Thursday evenings between September 2 and 17. Gates will open at 6.30pm for each 7pm start; acts will perform either side of a 30-minute interval with a finishing time of 8.30pm. Social distancing will be strictly observed and masks must be worn inside the NCEM but will not be required in the garden.

Dates for the diary are: September 2, Amy May Ellis and Luke Saxton; September 3, Dan Webster and Bella Gaffney; September 9,  Kitty VR and Boss Caine; September 10, Wolf Solent and Rosalind; September 16, Polly Bolton and Henry Parker; September 17, Elkyn and Fawn.

NCEM director Delma Tomlin says: “We’re thrilled to be able to welcome artists and audiences back to our home at St Margaret’s Church, thanks to the invaluable help of our York partners, and I’d like to say a huge thank-you to them.

“We hope that this marks the beginning of a gradual and safe return to being able to bring you much more music over the months to come.

“We’re thrilled to be able to welcome artists and audiences back to our home at St Margaret’s Church,” says NCEM director Delma Tomlin

Like all arts organisations, the last few months have been difficult, but we’re lucky to have received overwhelming support from our loyal audiences and from our funders, to whom I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks. We hope you’ll be able to join us for these wonderful Songs Under [the] Skies of our beautiful city.”

Chris Sherrington, who runs The Fulford Arms and is the North East regional coordinator for the Music Venues Alliance, says: “Both The Crescent community venue and The Fulford Arms are excited to be working with our York Music Venue Network partners, the NCEM, to help fill some of the cultural vacuum that has sadly been affecting York since March.

“It’s an exciting opportunity to bring our expertise together and programme a beautiful series of shows in a safe and stunning space with a range of amazing talent. We hope this will be the first of many such endeavours.”

Bella Gaffney expressing her joy at the Songs Under Skies season being confirmed

The NCEM has been one of the first arts organisations to stream online concerts, seeking to keep music alive since the beginning of lockdown and attracting a worldwide audience of more than 70,000 in the process.

Over the past few months, the NCEM has streamed a series of concerts from its archives, followed by the aforementioned York Early Music Festival Online with its combination of concerts and talks. The Director’s Cut, Delma’s selection of festival concert highlights, is available to download and keep. Go to ncem.co.uk for more details.

Songs Under Skies tickets cost £6 per show and audiences are invited to buy tickets for family groups or as individuals. Seating will be in pods with a maximum audience capacity of 50. Full details can be found at tickets.ncem.co.uk/.

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Country singer Twinnie to risk Whiplash in carefree pursuit of love on summer single

Twinnie: New single from York country singer

YORK country queen Twinnie is releasing Whiplash as the latest single off her 2020 debut album Hollywood Gypsy.

Produced by Jamie Kenney, who has worked previously with Dierks Bentley and Miranda Lambert, Twinnie’s celebration of the “sweetness and strength of first falling in love” is accompanied by a video directed by Fraser Taylor.

Twinnie is seen strolling and running through the deserted streets of London – a very 2020 image – as well as the sun-kissed countryside.

“Whiplash stands alone to me with its sound, which I love,” she says. “It’s about falling in love with someone unapologetically and not caring if it goes wrong or not. Living for the moment and being totally wrapped up in that person.”

Recorded between London, Nashville and Sweden, Hollywood Gypsy was released in deepest lockdown on April 17 on BMG. “The title of the album pretty much sums me up,” says Twinnie.

“I’m a traveller by nature and by heritage, so I’m quite free. Hollywood Gypsy is about me, my life, my artistry.” 

You can watch the Whiplash video on YouTube.

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Bull on the loose with single Disco Living taking a dig at ‘London luxury lifestyles’

From Yorkshire clifftop to London rooftop: Bull’s new single Disco Living mocks the absurdity of “effortless” luxury-house lifestyles

YORK alt rockers Bull have an addictive new indie banger ready to sizzle this summer in the ebullient form of Disco Living.

Out now on EMI Records/Young Thugs, the follow-up to Green evokes the summertime spirit of vintage Britpop in its sly look at the “ridiculousness of the so-called high-end lifestyle and people’s obsession with luxury”.

As vocalist and songwriter Tom Beer explains: “I wrote this in London when we lived at our friend and amazing visual artist Jean Penne’s house and decided to become a world-famous group.

“I was walking down a street of mansions to meet my friend in Hampstead Heath. I walked past one mansion that was under construction and it had a facade of the completed house on the front with the extremely bold tag line, ‘Discover Effortless Living’. I thought this was really funny, so wrote the song with that as the opening line, kind of about that and how absurd it all was.”

Disco Living shouts from the luxury rooftops in the immediate aftermath of Green – Bull’s first single since signing to EMI Records in conjunction with York label Young Thugs – garnering support from Chris Hawkins’ BBC 6Music show, Dork and DIY.

Looking ahead, Yorkshiremen Beer, guitarist Dan Lucas, drummer Tom Gabbatiss and bassist Kai West will take to the road to play the Shacklewell Arms, London, on October 9 and Edge Of The Wedge, Portsmouth, on January 27 2021, pending updates on Government guidance on Covid social-distancing regulations.

Formed in 2011, Bull are the first York band since Shed Seven joined Polydor Records in October 1993 to pen a deal with a major label. To watch the Bull video for Disco Living, go to: youtube.com/watch?v=6juBc3Mgbjc

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REVIEW: First Love, Park Bench Theatre, Rowntree Park, York, until August 22 ****

One man, one monologue, one park bench: Chris Hannon in Samuel Beckett’s First Love. All pictures: Northedge Photography

REVIEW: First Love, Park Bench Theatre, Engine House Theatre, Friends Garden, Rowntree Park, York, until August 22, 7pm nightly and 4pm matinee, August 22. Box office: parkbenchtheatre.com

DARKNESS descended on theatres in March, for rather more than 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.

Auditoria are still gathering cobwebs, but the green shoots of a theatre resurrection are beginning to burst through in the great outdoors as live performance undergoes its own re-wilding.

Engine House Theatre artistic director Matt Aston pounded Rowntree Park on his Government-ordained hourly stretch of lockdown exercise, sewing the seeds for Park Bench Theatre. He settled upon staging three solo shows, on a park bench, in the shade of a linden tree in the Covid-secure setting of the enclosed Friends Garden (audience capacity: 70).

Serving on the bench: Chris Hannon returns to acting after the lockdown hiatus to play a love lightning-struck Irishman in First Love

Greeted by two of those Friends at the gate, this was indeed an occasion for greeting old friends: theatre itself, let alone familiar faces from the York theatre scene, the critics’ circle too, on press night. Oh, how we have missed this: communion; communication; conversation; conviviality; common ground for uncommon thought.

There was much anew about theatre-going too: a digital programme available for everyone, rather than a print edition; de rigueur hand sanitiser; social distancing in conversation; and the grass marked out in chalk circles, as if a convention of baby UFOs had just vacated the garden.

Issued with receivers on arrival, audience members sat in bubbles or on park benches to tune into to the dialogue, sound effects and music on plug-in headphones/earphones (on sale at £1 if you don’t bring any), to eliminate the surround-sound of play and chatter from elsewhere in the park.

Enter a lean, unshaven man in obligatory Samuel Beckett men’s attire: scuffed boots in need of a polish, jauntily-angled bowler hat, an over-sized coat with the sleeves too long, high-waisted charcoal trousers, braced up, and a grubby collarless shirt. A man with plenty to say, as much to himself as those watching.

“A lean, unshaven man in obligatory Samuel Beckett men’s attire”: Chris Hannon in First Love

You will know the tragicomic type from Waiting For Godot, Irish playwright Beckett’s 1953 epiphany of existential angst. First Love is an earlier work, a short story from 1945, premiered in French in 1970 and published in English in 1973. A minor piece by comparison with Godot, yet well worth 70 unbroken minutes of your summertime.

Performed by Chris Hannon, Wakefield Theatre Royal’s pantomime writer and dame for a decade and star of CBeebies’ Topsy And Tim, First Love is a monologue, a one-to-one with each audience member, delivered from where else but a park bench, The Man’s preferred bed for the night.

Billed as a tale of a man, a woman, a recollection, it begins in a graveyard. The Man’s father is dead; he has no job at 25; he is, not to put too fine a point on it, rather strange. He doesn’t like, in no particular order, furniture, children, people in general, taking off his clothes, or the aforementioned woman taking off hers, although he seems happy enough to live off her earnings as a lady of the night.

His candour, yet lack of self-awareness, makes him a thoroughly reliable witness for his recollections. He is from the Beckett school of clown with a frown. Not everything he says, in his elliptical way of talking, makes sense, definitely not to the audience and probably not to him too.

Arms and the man: Chris Hannon in First Love in Rowntree Park

As for love, or, First Love, he mulls over that four-letter word over and over, but as Prince Charles once said evasively: “Whatever ‘in love’ means”. Be warned, he is wont to using other four-letter words too, prompting the website warning: “Contains very strong language”.

Directed by Matt Aston with suitable economy, but acute detail, the verbally and physically adroit Hannon presents a shrugged shoulder of a man, both odd and at odds with the world and himself, walking the wire betwixt comedy and tragedy.

In truth, you wouldn’t want to know him in “real life”, but meeting Yer Man in a York garden on a sunny night for the three Ps – park bench, picnic and pontification – why not?

Oh, and as the Northern Irishman in the Hutch bubble was quick to praise, @runcornchris’s southern Irish accent was spot-on.

Suspicious even of a park bench: Chris Hannon as the Man in First Love
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