Ebor Singers, Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, National Centre for Early Music, York, December 15
THIS was the Ebors’ now traditional performance of Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, spiced with a selection of contemporary American carols and seasonal songs.
The Britten, given in the original all-female version, was accompanied by the harp of Rachel Dent, even to the extent of some optional improvising during the processional plainsongs. Her Interlude was a touch halting, but elsewhere she sustained a pleasing pulse.
The singing had its moments, though few were provided in the solo work where intonation was wayward. As a choir, the ladies made plentiful amends. There was a lovely legato in There Is No Rose and a direct, confident approach to This Little Babe. In contrast, the reverential ending to In Freezing Winter Night reflected the manger’s “humble pomp”.
The pair of soloists in Spring Carol chirped merrily. Deo Gracias was a little too rushed for its cross-currents to have maximum impact. Though it was good to have this music made available again, its overall effect was not as strong as it was last year.
In The Moon Of Wintertime, the evening’s subtitle, taken from the Canadian Huron carol, was also used by American composer Stephen Paulus. In the event, his modal tune was less attractive than the original (Jesous Ahatonhia), and he used a bowdlerized paraphrase of Edgar Middleton’s translation, which is much less down-to-earth than the native Indian version. Its last verse, however, was a model of choral control here.
The same composer’s Three Nativity Carols, surprisingly enjoying their UK premiere – Paulus died in 2104 – brought an engaging post-Britten style to some ancient texts. They were accompanied by oboe (Jane Wright) and harp (Dent). Syncopation jollied up The Holly & The Ivy, florid oboe counterpointed the slow rocking of This Endris Night, and Wonder Tidings used a proper refrain to add colour to the mediaeval text, with the instruments dancing attendance.
Much of the rest was slow-moving and diction went to the wall. American audiences may love it, but Craig Hella Johnson’s pairing of Lo, How A Rose with Amanda McBroom’s The Rose (written for Bette Midler and covered by Westlife) did the lovely Praetorius tune no favours at all.
Hackneyed favourites by Lauridsen and Whitacre came and went and a Jake Runestad lullaby just picked itself in time to avoid a similar fate. It was left to Nico Muhly’s setting of Longfellow’s Snowflakes, with piano backing, to offer some true atmosphere, albeit out of a corner of the minimalist playbook. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas makes for a tacky ending – it should be dropped.
I know this was a Christmas concert, with all the festive sentimentality that implies, but overall I left feeling that this choir is coasting: it is capable of tackling something a lot less anodyne and a lot more challenging.
Frank Brooker’s Happy Chappies: Playing at the Cross Keys on January 2 2020
“GET jazzing done!”, says Alan Bramley, organiser of a new season of Thursday
afternoon jazz sessions at the Cross Keys pub, in Tadcaster Road, York.
“Those weekly sessions have become increasingly popular since their
inauguration in 2017,” says Alan, who not only makes the bookings but also plays
trombone with some of the bands.
“For the start of 2020, I’ve booked a programme of jazz in varying
styles, all highly entertaining.”
Frank Brooker’s Happy Chappies kick off the New Year on January 2, followed
by the Cross Keys Jazz Band on January 9; Tim New Jazz Band on January 16; 7th City
Jazz Band on January 23 and the Nicki Allan Five, finishing off the month, on
January 30.
These traditional jazz afternoons run from 1pm to 3.30pm each Thursday.
Admission and parking are free, food is available and the pub is both dog and
child friendly.
More details can be found on Facebook at Crosskeysjazz.
Mary, Mary, very contrary: Fiona Baistow., left. and Florence Poskitt clash over who plays Mary in York Stage Musicals’ The Flint Street Nativity
The Flint Street Nativity, York Stage Musicals, John Cooper Studio @41 Monkgate, York, until Sunday. Box office: 01904 623568, at yorkstagemusicals.com.
THIS is the second time York Stage Musicals have gone back to school to stage Tim Firth’s riotous Christmas comedy.
First seen on television with York actor
Mark Addy in a donkey head, and then adapted for the stage at the Liverpool
Playhouse in 2006, The Flint Street Nativity that re-creates the trepidatious highlight
of the primary-school Christmas calendar, the Nativity play.
“There’s no treachery
assassination, double-dealing, deceit, coercion or blackmail that you encounter
later in life that you will not have been prepared for in the classroom,” says
teacher’s son Firth, who brings to school the clash between teamwork and
individual desires that flavoured his pent-up comedy in Neville’s Island,
Preston Front and Calendar Girls.
Verity Carr’s Wise Gold, Chloe Shipley’s Shepherd and Florence Poskitt’s Angel Gabriel in The Flint Street Nativity
Robert Readman was YSM’s
equivalent of “Mizzis Horrocks”, the play’s schoolteacher, for the York company’s
first go at Firth’s Nativity play in November 2011. Now Nik Briggs makes an ass
of himself…in a good way, not only directing but also playing the Addy role of
Ass, having starred opposite a Donkey as Shrek in YSM’s Shrek The Musical at
the Grand Opera House in September, by the way.
Briggs has designed the
classroom stage and costumes too. “Nik has been very busy this term and shows a
real aptitude for theatre,” his school report would say.
Mizzis Horrocks is often
heard, but not seen, in Firth’s play, as she strives to guide her class of
seven years olds through their Nativity play at Flint Street Junior School, being
reduced to sounds, rather than words, that nevertheless capture her increasing
exasperation at their antics.
Firth’s salient powers of observation
are as sharp as ever as the children pretty much do their own thing, much like
Mary’s donkey, a holiday relic that swears in Spanish.
Inn-timidating: Paul Mason as the Inn Keeper in The Flint Street Nativity
Andrew Roberts’s jumper sleeve-picking, stoical Narrator is resolute
that the show must go on, flattening everything before him, voice and all, but
he must contend with petty squabbles, rampant egos and the disappearance of
Peter Crouch, the school stick insect.
Your reviewer called on York directors to give Florence Poskitt a lead role next year after seeing her Ethel Cratchit in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Scrooge The Musical last month. Glory be, that rallying call has been answered early in the form of her seemingly ruthless little madam playing the Angel Gabriel, so determined to gazump Mary’s role. Anything but angelic, Poskitt nevertheless reveals the girl’s inner vulnerability behind the hard-nosed, playground bully front.
Her usurping classroom troublemaker is
but one comic joy, topped off with her spiralling spat with Fiona Baistow’s class
swat Jenny B as they vie for the prized role of Mary.
Fiona Baistow’s little miss goody two shoes playing Mary
Two roles require constant headgear:
Briggs as the loveable Irish lad who grows so attached to his Ass’s cardboard head
that he will not remove it, and Matthew Clarke as the NASDA-fixated dreamer designated
the part of the Star of Bethlehem in a performance full of pathos and frustration
as much as wonder.
Conor Wilkinson makes a delightful YSM
debut as the boy assigned to play both King Herod and Joseph, but obsessed with
re-enacting the Ally McCoist era on A Question Of Sport and smiling distractedly
at his parents in the audience.
Jack Hooper taps into the sadness, desperation
and pain in the new boy playing Wise Frankincense, struggling with his lisp as he
shies away from saying “Jesus”.
Mizzis Horrocks’s class performing their Nativity play in York Stage Musicals’ Christmas production
Verity Carr’s Wise Gold, Louise Leaf’s Angel and especially Chloe Shipley, as the blunt , no-nonsense farm girl bringing home truths to the role of a Shepherd, contribute plenty to the fractious fun too.
Fun, meanwhile, is not the word the rest
of the class would choose to describe the oddball loner (Paul Mason), a pub landlord’s
son with a last orders’ threat about him, whose scary Innkeeper keeps stealing
scenes.
Firth complements the delicious mayhem, social comment and joy of watching adults play children with two masterstrokes. Firstly, to Jessica Douglas’s strident school-piano accompaniment, each child sings a familiar Carol with satirical new lyrics that tell the truth about their parents, from a child’s frank, hurt or frustrated perspective.
Star-struck: Matthew Clarke as the NASA-obsessed pupil playing Star
Secondly, the YSM actors re-emerge for
the finale as those parents, whose behaviour so explains why the children are
how they are. Darkness descends at the finale, Firth fuelling the
nature-versus-nurture debate, the real-life story trampling over the Nativity
play.
Chances are you won’t see a funnier
Nativity play this term.
York Stage Musicals present The Flint Street
Nativity, John Cooper Studio @41 Monkgate, York, until December 22, 7.30pm
except Sunday at 6pm. Box office: 01904 623568, at yorkstagemusicals.com or in
person from the York Theatre Royal box office.
Putting the “barb” into York Barbican: Ed Byrne on Friday night
Ed Byrne, If I’m Honest, York Barbican, December 13
FRIDAY the 13th is unlucky for some”,
and certainly for those who missed out on Ed Byrne’s If I’m Honest show at a
half-full York Barbican. An honest mistake, no doubt, that should be rectified
next time.
Unlike our political parties in the General
Election, 47-year-old Dubliner Byrne has decided honesty is the best policy,
and while comedians are no less likely to exaggerate than politicians seeking
the X factor at the ballot box, they do so with a silver, rather than forked,
tongue.
Byrne headed to York, the lone red rash in deepest
blue North Yorkshire, on the night after the nation had voted. Yet more politics
was not for him, however. “I could talk about Brexit for 20 minutes, but I
choose not to,” he said. Exit Brexit, stage hard right. Good call, Ed, judging
that the party mood needed to be joyful, not political.
He was not one to massage figures, either, instead
drawing attention immediately to the empty seats, making everyone there feel
better for their impeccable judgement. Honesty, straightaway, was the best
policy.
Byrne book-ended the show, providing the short
opening and longer closing chapters, with Henley comedy pup Kieran Boyd let off
his lead in between. While this can break the rhythm of the night, Byrne knows
the importance of giving fledgling acts their wings. Nish Kumar, for example, played
support slots in York several times before graduation to headline status at the
Grand Opera House.
Rather too many comedians do material about their children;
the equivalent of being passed endless pictures of little Johnny or Joanna at an
inescapable party, but when Byrne, fast thinking and even faster talking, is
making the observations, then fair children’s play to him.
In If I’m Honest, he “takes a long hard long hard look at
himself and tries to decide if he has any traits that are
worth passing on to his children”. On
Friday, he did so self-deprecatingly, as he takes on parenthood in his forties
with children named Cosmo and Magnus. And no, they were not named for comic
effect.
Far from it. When he
played Reykjavic, Byrne was greeted with an outpouring of Icelandic
congratulations for choosing one of their own!
Byrne could laugh
at how his young sons already were mirroring him and his mutually sarcastic exchanges
with his wife, theatre publicist Claire Walker.
Byrne’s comedy is
both mentally and physically energetic, even hyper, as well as laced with Irish
storytelling lyricism and much mischief making, and not only children’s received
behaviour was up for his honesty test.
So too were
superdads and superheroes and the way superhero film titles have become so
convoluted, as he yearned for the simplicity of old.
Byrne wore a shiny red
jacket and tapered jeans that would not have looked out of place competing on
Strictly Come Dancing, a show he revealed he had turned down, foregoing the chance
for “Byrne the floor” headlines, much to his family’s disappointment. He could not
trust himself with the dancers, said the Oti fan, honest to the end.
Hello? Play Scarborough as well as York, you say? Why not, says Lionel Richie
LIONEL
Richie will play two North Yorkshire shows within a fortnight next summer after
adding Scarborough Open Air Theatre on June 9 to his York Festival appearance on
June 21.
Tickets go
on sale for his Scarborough return on Wednesday at 9am, Richie having made his
sold-out debut there in June 2018 on his All The Hits, All Night Long tour.
“It was a truly wonderful night on the Yorkshire coast in 2018 and I
cannot wait to return to this beautiful part of the UK again,” says the Alabama
soul singer, songwriter and producer. “It’s going to be another night to
remember, so bring you’re dancing shoes.”
Richie, 70, will play Scarborough as part of his Hello!, Hits tour, performing
songs from his Commodores days to the present day, taking in Three Times
A Lady,
Truly, Dancing On The Ceiling, Say You Say Me, Hello and All
Night Long.
Honoured last year with the Ivor Novello PRS for Music Special International
Award, to go with an Oscar, Golden Globe and four Grammy awards and 100 million
album sales, Richie released his latest album, Live From Las Vegas, in the
summer.
Heading East: Westlife: to play Scarborough in the same week as their York Festival headline show next June
York
Festival can be added to such Richie festival headline sets as Bonnaroo, Outside
Lands and Glastonbury, where he drew more than 200,000 to main stage in 2015.
Cuffe and Taylor are promoting both his Scarborough and York gigs. “Lionel
Richie is an undoubted global superstar and we are delighted to be able to
bring him back here to Scarborough,” says director Peter Taylor.
“His 2018 sold-out show was the stuff of legend. It was a brilliant
night in the presence of one of the most successful and celebrated music
artists of all time.”
As well as Richie, Cuffe and Taylor have booked Irish boy band Westlife
to play both locations, Scarborough OAT on June 17 and York Festival, at York Sports
Club, Clifton Park, Shipton Road, on June 20.
Tickets for Scarborough OAT concerts are on sale at scarboroughopenairtheatre,com, on 01723 818111 or 01723 383636, or in person from the venue, in Burniston Road, or the Discover Yorkshire Tourism Bureau, ScarboroughTown Hall, St Nicholas Street.
For York Festival tickets, go to york-festival.com.
York Early Music Christmas Festival:Yorkshire Bach Choir/Baroque Soloists, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, December 14
THE York Early Music Christmas Festival finished brightly on Saturday with Handel’s Messiah before a packed house. Tempos were rapid, but that comes with the territory when Peter Seymour is at the helm (he sat at the harpsichord and even fingered it from time to time).
Nothing wrong with speed: it is widely thought to deliver excitement. But audiences, like electorates, are not easily fooled and Messiah is not really about excitement. Although traditionally wheeled out at Yuletide, its true focus is the message of Easter.
Mezzo soprano soloist Helen Charlston. Picture: Matthew Badham
One of Seymour’s soloists, mezzo Helen Charlston, appeared to realise this and took him on. He raced into her aria, He Was Despised – and she managed to slow him down. Thus her unaccompanied voicing of “despised” and “rejected”, with a little sob in the latter word, unexpectedly became the evening’s most telling moment.
The choir of 36 voices was impeccably on the ball, its diction superb and its staccato runs unimpeachably clear. Six tenors were not enough in this company and the bass line lacked its usual authority, but the upper voices – several countertenors included – were exemplary.
York soprano soloist Bethany Seymour. Picture: Jim PoynerJim Poyner
The best of the soloists was the bass Gareth Brynmor John, relaxed and forthright in equal measure and especially stirring in Why Do The Nations. In contrast, Gwilym Bowen’s increasingly effortful tenor verged on the operatic, although perfectly suited to Thou Shalt Break Them. Apart from her smooth I Know That My Redeemer Liveth, Bethany Seymour’s soprano arias were shrieky, with dodgy breath control.
No such problems with the tireless orchestra. Led by the spritely Lucy Russell, the strings laid a consistently stylish foundation. Yet relentless speed is only one of countless ways to treat this work. It would be nice to hear some of them occasionally.
James Swanton: Dickensian storyteller par excellence. PIcture: Jayne Nicoll
AFTER spinning yarns all this week at London’s Charles Dickens Museum, Gothic York actor James Swanton returns home with his Ghost Stories for Christmas.
At the time of going to CharlesHutchPress, only five tickets remain on sale for the entire run.
As last year, Swanton will be performing three Dickens works, one each night, at York Medical Society, Stonegate, from Tuesday to Saturday.
A Christmas Carol on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday will be complemented by the lesser performed The Chimes on Wednesday and The Haunted Man on Friday, all at 7pm.
Swanton, the
Outstanding Performing Artist winner in the 2018 York Culture Awards, will be
the black-clad gatekeeper for all manner of supernatural terrors after memorising
three hours of wintery material for his “seasonal roulette of three Dickensian
tales”.
Ahead of his Dickens of a week
in York, James answers Charles Hutchinson’s questions.
Why is A Christmas Carol so
amenable to being presented in so many guises each winter in York and
elsewhere, James?
“Could it be that it’s the greatest story ever written? Ebenezer
Scrooge has joined Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula as Victorian literature’s
most endlessly adapted characters.
“But unlike the master detective and the master vampire, who
constantly crop up in diverse new contexts, Scrooge remains inseparable from
his original story. It’s perfectly structured and passionately written. It
demands to be told, just as we all demand to hear it, year after year. There’s
a great responsibility not to do it badly!”
What form do your three shows
take: a reading or more than that in each one-man show?
“I’m happy to say that these are full-fledged dramatisations
rather than Jackanory-style readings. This has been quite the Labour of
Hercules: 180 minutes of text to memorise to cover the three one-hour readings!
But it’s worth it to ensure these pieces are truly alive. My abridgements are
closely based on Dickens’s own performance scripts, so their faith to their
sources is absolute.”
Will you use a similar
performance style for each tale?
“This is old-fashioned storytelling in a suitably atmospheric
space. I’m hoping to use every physical and vocal trick in my repertoire to
make the audience see Dickens’s pictures as clearly as I do myself.
“The formidable Miriam Margolyes saw me performing one of these
pieces in 2017 at the Charles Dickens Museum. She was very complimentary about
its pictorial vividness – and she’s not easily pleased!”
Give quick synopses of The
Chimes and The Haunted Man…
“Just like A Christmas Carol, these lesser-known works
hinge on disenchanted older men who must encounter the supernatural to change
for the better. The Chimes is the exuberant tale of a lowly ticket-porter who
finds goblins squatting in the bells of his local church.
“Meanwhile, The Haunted Man is a Gothic
chiller about a chemist who hatches a bargain with his ghostly double to remove
all of his sorrowful memories.”
Dickens’s concern over
Ignorance and Want rings out in A Christmas Carol. Rather than being ghosts,
the ills of greed and the need for charity and care for others are as alive as
ever. Discuss.
“You know, the absence of Ignorance and Want might be the only
flaw in The Muppet Christmas Carol (a near-perfect film, as everyone knows).
Dickens spectacularly revives the figure of Ignorance in The Haunted Man, in
which the feral child receives a ferocious human embodiment. Deeply disturbing.
“And The Chimes is so socially angry
that it might as well be called ‘A Brexit Christmas Carol’. It attacks the
untrustworthy press, the still more untrustworthy rich, and a world that
condemns the poor without considering how they came to such grief. These might
be Victorian ghost stories, but they are indisputably stories for our own age.”
We still respond to what
Dickens says in a way that contrasts with so many people turning their back on
religion. Why?
“Dickens might be considered to have
reinvented Christianity for an increasingly secular world. He’s particularly
invested in the idea of redemption, and how it might be realised through the
death of an innocent child.
“Death is ever-present for Christ, even at the Nativity:
think of King Herod’s massacre of the innocents, or the Wise Man who gifts him
with the myrrh that’ll preserve his body after the crucifixion.
“All three of these Dickensian ghost
stories centre on children in mortal peril. Tiny Tim must be resurrected just
as miraculously as Scrooge. Dickens suggests that we can conquer death, but in
ways more practical than waiting for an afterlife.”
James Swanton’s Ghost Stories For Christmas, York Medical Society, Stonegate, York, 7pm nightly; A Christmas Carol, December 17, 19, 21; The Chimes, December 18; The Haunted Man, December 20. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
James Swanton with his bust of actor Henry Irving in Irving Undead at York Medical Society in October
REVIEW: James Swanton in Irving Undead, York Medical Society, Stonegate, York, October 10 to 12 2019
IT starts with a dusty recording of Henry Irving drifting across the York Medical Society carpet.
This is the sound of “the strangest actor who ever lived”, and to a modern ear, the voice is indeed strange and deathly as Irving negotiates a speech from Shakespeare’s Richard III.
A door opens to the side of the stage, and what first emerges is a thin, long finger of actor-writer James Swanton, then all his digits curl round the door frame. Enter the gaunt Swanton, as spindly of leg as Irving notoriously was.
James Swanton in his role as Henry Irving, ” the strangest actor who ever lived”
As ever, whether playing Dracula, Dickens’ Bill Sikes, Frankenstein’s Creature, Lucifer or now Irving, Swanton brings an angular physicality to his bravura performance, wherein he seems to consume the character he plays, so wholly does he take on the part.
As we know too from his solo performance of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol last winter, he is a wonderfully eloquent storyteller, his writing full of intelligence, understanding, wit and drama.
Here Swanton’s Irving relates the story of his life and death, not least how Bram Stoker, his business manager for 20 years is said to have immortalised him by writing the horror story Dracula. The pain behind the mask for the “undead” and restless Irving is that Dracula is now better known than theatre’s first knight: a case of being out for the Count.
“I hope to do the old man justice,” said James Swanton, as Henry Irving confronted his demons in Swanton’s one-man show
Obsessive in his art, ill-fated in love, fearful of scandal, Irving specialised in playing mad monarchs, guilt-stricken murderers and the Devil, delivered with a Gothic, macabre air that apparently “petrified 19th Century London”. Swanton delights in playing Irving’s Romeo, a frightening performance from the early master of horror acting met with derogatory reviews that Irving reads out with a glum glower.
Swanton contends that Irving was a deeply subversive figure with a work, work, work ethic, driven by some mightier force. All this comes through in an intense performance, underscored with admiration for his fellow traveller along theatre’s pit-laden path.
“I hope to do the old man justice,” said Swanton in advance. He certainly does that, while adding to his stock as a formidable talent in his own right.
Babe in arms: Raqhael Harte’s Mary with the infant Jesus. Picture: John Saunders
A Nativity for York, York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust, Spurriergate Centre, Spurriergate, York, until Sunday
A NATIVITY for York is a new solo venture for the York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust, an hour-long festive first directed by Philip Parr.
The City Guilds wagons have parked up for the winter; Corpus Christi feast day is but a summer memory, and the mediaeval Mystery Plays have moved indoors for four nights and days of Christmas shows.
Glad tidings of great joy: Sally Maybridge’s Angel Gabriel in A Nativity for York. Picture: John Saunders
Thursday’s audience is sitting at tables, sipping hot drinks, the community
cast placed among them from the start, to emerge one by one into their roles,
with the company’s musicians and singers to the back of the church building.
This positioning is a reminder that the Mystery Plays are of the people, for
the people, by the people; always were, always will be.
This Nativity play is not one for tea-towel headgear, tons of tinsel,
awkward children and extraneous animals in the stable. Instead, Parr’s
production knits together text from eight of the 48 plays in the York cycle,
here presented in a “northern dialect of Middle English origins but modernised”.
Modernised might be stretching it: this is still the street language of the
plays of yore, where “mickle” means “a large amount” or “much”.
Stable relationship: Raqhael Harte’s Mary and Chris Pomfrett’s Joseph with the new-born Jesus. Picture: John Saunders
What is modern is the presence of rucksacks and backpacks, a pram, an
M&S bag, high-street clothes and Raqhael Harte’s Mary in jeans and hooded
winter coat. That said, Las Vegas Elvis would love the cut of two of the Kings’
outfits, regal white for Wilma Edwards and dazzling blue for Stephanie Walker, an
irreverent comment maybe, but their countenance could not be more reverent.
Costume designer Filip Gesse balances past and present, the everyday and
the holy, robes and jackets in equal number, linking the plays’ history with
today. Just as the deeply affecting storytelling has resonance with our need
for a new guiding light, new hope, new beginnings (disconnected, it would seem,
from the Godless political event going on that divisive, decisive day).
Wise move: Stephanie Walker’s King seeks the infant Jesus. Picture: John Saunders
Parr’s Nativity for York juxtaposes the Christmas miracle with the story of an ordinary couple caught up in events beyond their control that will change their lives forever.
“The Nativity is probably a story that much of our audience will know, but we wanted to give it a fresh, new and contemporary perspective,” he says. “Joseph, Mary and their baby are really no different from any other refugees: fleeing their country, persecution and the threat of death.” Thought for the day, indeed.
Bearing her gift: Jenna Drury’s Shepherd with Raqhael Harte’s Mary and Jesus. Picture: John Saunders
Sally Maybridge’s Angel Gabriel looks down from above in radiant white, while cast members move among the full house, sometimes in circular motions as the Kings (completed by Ben Turvill) and the Shepherds (Ged Murray, Michael Maybridge and Jenna Drury) make their journeys to seek out the new-born king, wrapped up in Mary’s arms.
All the while, Chris Pomfrett’s Joseph is protective, concerned, dutiful, specs propped on his head in his few calm, reflective moments, fearful at others.
The weight of responsibility: Chris Pomfrett’s Joseph must take Mary and Jesus to a safe place after learning of Herod’s decree to put all infant males to death. Picture: John Saunders
Parr, artistic director of Parrabola and driving force behind the York International Shakespeare Festival, not only directs with suitable gravitas and awareness of making the fullest spectacle of the church setting, but also has written and arranged the beautiful music. Instrumental or choral, accompanied or a cappella, it sounds wonderful as it rises within these bare walls.
Thursday and tonight’s performances have sold out, but seats are available for shows at 12 noon, 2pm and 6.30pm tomorrow (December 14), and 12 noon and 2pm on Sunday. Rejoice at this news and book now on 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or from the Theatre Royal box office in person.
York Early Music Christmas Festival: Fieri Consort, National Centre for Early Music, York, December 11
SORRY to pour cold water on your show, chaps, but this was not the oratorio it was billed to be. Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger, an Italian with Austrian forebears, described his theatrical piece of 1629, The Shepherds of Bethlehem, as a “dialogo recitativo” – a dialogue in musical speech – a forerunner of oratorio certainly, but not the real McCoy. That was still to come.
Now that’s cleared up, Kapsperger certainly made a hefty stab at dramatising the Christmas story and the five singers and four players of Fieri put up a pretty good case for it. So we had the shepherds and the angels battling for the spotlight, while the librettist – a pope-in-waiting – delivered unctuous praise of the present pope, Urban VIII, via a narrator.
What the work lacked in arias was pleasingly filled in with motets and other madrigal-style commentaries, mainly from an earlier generation of composers. So Hassler hinted at the Annunciation, Michael Praetorius’s rose bloomed again, Marenzio admired the Christ-child and Victoria evoked the mystery of it all.
Fieri bring plenty of meat to the table in this repertory. These are strong, modern voices quite without the preciousness once so treasured by early-music buffs, but smooth at the edges as well, so that their blend is exceptionally polished. Shading was less prevalent here. There was even some splendid coloratura from Hannah Ely and Helen Charlston, courtesy of Carissimi, and the instruments kept up tasty chatter behind it all.
Do the hustle: Emma Osman as sex worker and single mum Carol in Kay Mellor’s Band Of Gold at Leeds Grand Theatre. Picture: Anthony Robling
KAY Mellor had seen at
least 30 actors for the all-important role of hustler Carol in her stage
version of Band Of Gold, then in walked Emma Osman.
“She looked right, she
sounded right…and she turned out to be from Leeds,” recalled the Leeds writer-director
at the question-and-session session that followed Monday night’s performance of
her world premiere at Leeds Grand Theatre. “I couldn’t believe it. It must have
been meant to be.”
Born in Leeds, raised in
Moortown until she was eight, then Selby and York, Emma is being billed as
“newcomer Emma Osman”. Although she has played Carly Reynolds in BBC One’s
Doctors and Beth Ayres in Snatch on screen, this is her “break-out role”,
performing alongside EastEnders’ Laurie Brett, Hollyoaks’ Kieron Richardson,
Emmerdale’s Gaynor Faye, Coronation Street’s Shayne Ward and York actor Andrew
Dunn, from Victoria Wood’s dinnerladies.
“The call came through my
agent, and I met Kay in Leeds, two weeks before my 25th birthday,”
says Emma. “It was confirmed I’d got the role later that evening, and what an
early birthday present that was!”
Emma first caught the eye in York as a regal, mysterious and love-struck Titania in Nightshade Productions’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the city-centre streets in July 2012. Two summers later, by now studying at East 15 Acting Acting School, she returned home to play Oda-Mae Brown in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Ghost The Musical: the sassy comic-relief Whoopi Goldberg role in the film version.
Emma Osman in 2014, when she was playing Oda-Mae Brown in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Ghost The Musical in York
Now living in London, Emma
is nevertheless delighted to be back north once more, and Mellor’s story of “life on the lane” in Bradford’s red-light
district in the 1990s has resonance for her.
Written 22 years after the ITV
crime drama’s finale in 1997, the play retains the setting and storyline of the
humorous but heartbreaking original series, wherein a group of women, Carol, Rose,
Anita and Gina, a young mother newly on the game, must battle for survival…and
a killer is on the loose.
“I’ve got a lot of family that
lived in Bradford. My aunt used to work in the job centre, dealing with lots of
sex workers, meeting the women Band Of Gold is based on,” says Emma. “In fact,
the woman who Carol is based on is coming to the show.”
Normally, Emma has a rule
not to watch a show before auditioning for a part. “But because Band Of Gold
was written about real people, I broke that rule and watched all the series before
meeting Kay,” she says.
Life on the lane and in the hustlers’ bar: Emma Osman’s Carol, Laurie Brett’s Anita and Gaynor Faye’s Rose in Kay Mellor’s Band Of Gold. Picture: Anthony Robling
“I’ve also watched a lot of
documentaries on sex-workers, especially the Holbeck one in Leeds. It’s interesting
to see how even though the women have to be tough, they’re also very vulnerable
and they’re just everyday girls in extraordinary circumstances.
“What Band Of Gold does so
well is show it all, the vulnerability, the banter and the problems that have
put them where they are.”
Carol was “the
Cathy Tyson role” in the TV series, but Osman gives it her own stamp, bringing
lip, no-nonsense nous, jagged humour, resilience and a strut to a feisty woman
who can handle a disinfectant bottle as well as she can deal with men’s demands
and the inherent dangers of her work, taking care of herself and daughter Emma.
“There’s a pressure there, but you have to make the role your own,” she says. “I appreciate being given this opportunity to do something so powerful and to play a character who’s so strong and feisty.”
“I’m honoured to be working with Kay Mellor, so I want to make her feel proud,” says Emma Osman
Working
with a writer-director on a premiere has “definitely been different from my
past theatrical experiences, though limited,” says Emma. “This way, if Kay
wants to change a line, she can, if it makes more sense for the plot or
improves the dialogue, so there was a lot more going on in rehearsals. And she’s
been making changes during the run, giving us notes after shows, so we’re still
working on it.”
Emma
adds: “It’s given me such an insight into playing Carol, and it’s such an
honour to be doing this play in Leeds with Kay, especially as I was born here
and lived here until I was eight.”
Playing
Carol is a “dream role”, she says. “I’m a big feminist and I’m into playing
feminists, so this is ‘full-on percussion’ as my first big stage part. I’m
honoured to be working with Kay, so I want to make her feel proud, just as I want
to make the sex workers, or former sex workers, who are coming to see the play
feel that we’re telling their stories truthfully.”
Kay Mellor’s Band Of Gold
runs at Leeds Grand Theatre until Saturday, December 14. Performances: 2.30pm and 7.30pm today; 7.30pm tomorrow;
2.30pm and 7.30pm, Saturday. Tickets update: limited availability on 0844 848
2700 or at leedsgrandtheatre.com.
