Native Harrow’s Devin Tuel and Stephen Harms. Picture: Brenna Tuel
AMERICAN duo Native Harrow head down from their Celtic Connections show
in Glasgow to play York the next day, January 18.
Singer-songwriter Devin Tuel and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Harms
will be promoting their wistful folk-rock 2019 album, Happier Now, at The
Basement, City Screen.
Signed to Loose Music, the London home to The Handsome Family, Courtney
Marie Andrews and Israel Nash, Native Harrow will be performing 11 British gigs
in January before returning to North Yorkshire for the Deer Shed Festival at Baldersby
Park, Topcliffe, from July 24 to 26.
Native Harrow is the nom de plume of Tuel, a former ballerina and classically trained singer, from Newburgh, New York, who says of her third album: “This record is about becoming your own advocate. Realising that maybe you are different in several or a myriad of ways and that that is okay. And further, it is about me becoming a grown woman.”
After nearly two decades of rigorous training in ballet, theatre and singing, Tuel needed to break out of the oppressive rules of academia. She had to find her natural voice, write from her heart, and figure out what kind of performer she truly was, rather than the one she was being moulded into from the age of three. “I spent my early twenties playing every venue in Greenwich Village, recording demos in my friend’s kitchen and making lattes,” she says.
“I felt very alive
then. I was on my own living in my own little studio, staying up all night
writing; the dream I had of being a bohemian New York City artist was
unfolding. I wanted to be Patti Smith.
“I was also
heartbroken, poor and had no idea what I was getting myself into. My twenties,
as I think it goes for most, were all about getting up, getting knocked down,
and learning to keep going. I never gave up and I think if I told 20-year-old
me how things looked nine years later she’d be so excited”.
She and Harms recorded Happier Now at Chicago’s Reliable Recorders over three days in March 2018, working with co-producer Alex Hall on nine songs that addressed fear, love, the open road, ill-fated relationships and coping with the state of the world.
“I wanted to share
that I made it out of my own thunderstorm,” says Tuel. “I had experienced the
high peaks and very low valleys of my twenties.
“I saw more of the
world on my own, got through challenges, revelled in true moments of triumph, but
all the while the world around me was growing louder, wilder, and scarier.
Music for me is a place to be soft. This album was my place to feel it
all.”
Happier Now’s songs
were written in the duo’s “downtime” during three back-to-back tours across
North America, spanning 108 dates, in support of Native Harrow’s second album,
Sorores.
Tuel approached the
sessions like a musicians’ workshop, each morning beginning with the songwriter
presenting her collaborators with the day’s material.
Tuel, Harms and
Hall rehearsed and documented each song live on the floor, tracking as a band
through each take. No click tracks, scratch tracks, or even headphones; just
three musicians in a small room, captured with Hall’s collection of vintage microphones
and subtle retro production techniques.
Overdubs, including vocal harmonies, B3 organ and the rare lead guitar, were added to decorate these live performances. The creative energy of the tightly knit sessions spilled over into Tuel’s songwriting as well: she skipped lunch on the third and final day of recording to pen the road-weary Hard To Take.
Four days after arriving in Chicago, Native Harrow were back on the road and Happier Now was complete, with its songs oscillating between feeling the sting of uncertainty on Can’t Go On Like This, through the beauty of California on Blue Canyon, to the ache for lavish stability on Way To Light.
Hear them live in York on January 18 in an 8pm show promoted by Please Please You. Tickets cost £10 at ticketing.picturehouses.com.
The Buena Vista Social Club musicians playing in Amsterdam in April 1998
JANUARY 7 2020 will mark 20 years since City Screen, York, opened on its
riverside site in Coney Street.
General manager Tony Clarke and associate general manager Cath Sharp
have been there since the opening, and to mark the anniversary they have selected
Buena Vista Social Club for a special show at 8.30pm that night.
Tony says: “Wim Wenders’ film about ageing Cuban musicians has probably
best stood the test of time, and so we’d like to show it again on our 20th
anniversary and offer the screening free to Picturehouse members.” Please
note, tickets are available to members only in person at the City Screen box
office.
The film poster for Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club
The City Screen cinema is partly new-build and partly a conversion of
the old office and printworks of The Yorkshire Herald, whose name is still emblazoned
across the top of the building.
Since May 1987, York Film Theatre (YFT) had operated City Screen at
Tempest Anderson Hall, Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens. In 1997, however,
YFT entered into a ground-breaking public/private partnership with a commercial
arts cinema group, coincidentally called City Screen Limited, to create a new
art-house cinema in the centre of York.
In 1998, the new partnership won an Arts Council Lottery Award of £2.37
million, a sum matched by City Screen Ltd, to buy and renovate the Yorkshire
Herald newspaper building that had stood derelict since 1989.
Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo in Buena Vista Social Club
The new City Screen, York, opened for business in January 2000 with a
first programme of Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club, Martin Scorsese’s Bringing
Out The Dead, Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey and Simon Beaufoy and Billie
Eltringham’s The Darkest Light.
In Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated documentary, Cuba’s rich and colourful past comes vividly to life as the Paris, Texas and Wings Of Desire director documents American musician Ry Cooder’s return to Havana.
There Cooder had recorded the Grammy Award-winning Buena Vista Social Club album, still the biggest-selling world music recording of all time, with veteran musicians Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo and Compay Segundo.
This
dream team of players from Cuban music’s golden age introduced the rhythms of
Son, Bolero and Danzón to a new audience, making them instant international
stars.
Compay Segundo performing with the Buena Vista Social Club musicians
Never a regular band, however, The Buena Vista Social Club had gone their separate ways after that 1997 album, but Cooder’s return brought them together again in 1998 to look back to the halcyon days of Cuba’s music scene, when the rich and famous travelled from all over the world to listen to them.
In the film’s climax, their music comes alive anew as they rehearse for their first – and only – performance in the United States at a sold-out Carnegie Hall in New York
Looking
forward to introducing the January 7 screening, Tony says: “”Our wine
supplier, Bibendum, has generously provided us with some Prosecco to enable us
to give members a free drink on the night to toast City Screen on this
anniversary, and we’ll even have our head chef make some birthday cake as
well.
“What’s more, the celebrations will continue throughout 2020 with more special events once the ‘Oscar season’ is over, so keep an eye out for those too.”
Take a seat and bask in Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience at York St Mary’s
VAN
Gogh: The Immersive Experience is to be given an extended run at York St Mary’s,
having drawn 50,000 visitors since July.
The Vincent
Van Gogh exhibition was set to close on January 5 but now will be open until
the end of the Easter holidays on April 19.
Explaining
the decision, creative director Mario Iacampo said: “We have had such a warm
welcome in York, and incredibly positive feedback about how people have been
moved by the experience, so we’re delighted that we’re able to continue as a
part of York’s vibrant winter programme of events and activities.
Van Gogh: art spread out all around visitors at York St Mary’s
“York
St Mary’s is a wonderful venue for this kind of immersive digital art: right in
the heart of the city for easy access, yet able to be adapted, so visitors feel
as though they are in the French countryside, or overlooking the Rhone, during
their time with us.”
The
multimedia experience centres around a 360-degree projection in the nave of the
deconsecrated church, making use of the stone arches and high ceiling.
Animated versions of more than 200 of Van Gogh’s most famous works are
projected on to the walls, while a specially written emotive soundtrack and
relaxing reclined deckchairs encourage visitors to sink into the environment
around them for a Zen-like experience.
The
main show runs on a continuous loop lasting 35 minutes, and visitors can spend
as much time as they want in the nave.
Feeling blue: the Van Gogh Immersive experience
At
the end of a visit, a virtual reality experience takes visitors through a day
in the life of the artist in Arles during Van Gogh’s time there, depicting locations
that inspired his work, starting with the bedroom in the farmhouse that he
painted three times.
Paul
Whiting, head of marketing and communications at Visit York, said: “We’re
delighted that this innovative exhibition will be extended into 2020. It’s a
wonderful addition to the media arts offering of the city, combining a
beautiful, atmospheric venue with a uniquely immersive art installation. It’s
great news that visitors and residents will have further opportunities next
year as they enjoy their ‘Only in York’ experience.”
Van
Gogh: The Immersive Experience, at York St Mary’s, Castlegate, York, will be
open from Wednesday to Sunday in January, February and March, daily during half
term and then from March 30 until April 19.
Admission prices are £13, £11, concessions, and £9, children, with booking strongly recommended. For more details and opening times, visit vangoghexpo.co.uk.
The doorway to Van Gogh’s bedroom at Arles . Pictures: Charlotte Graham
Here is Charles Hutchinson’s feature on Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, as first printed in The Press, York, on July 15.
WHAT is the difference between an exhibition, a show and an immersive experience, like the one you can encounter at York St Mary’s?
Let Mario Iacampo, the man behind the cutting-edge Van Gogh attraction in Castlegate, York, define it.
“Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is not an exhibition and it’s not a show, which I believe requires a live element; it’s somewhere between the two,” he says. “I wanted to create a Zen environment where you can sit down and watch at your leisure.
“To make it an ‘experience’, first of all there has to be emotion; then there has to be music to go with it; thirdly, there has to be the immersive experience, all around you, even on the floor.”
Iacampo, the creative director and founder of Exhibition Hub, has worked with animation artists at Dirty Monitor to create the 360-degrees digital art installation of 19th century Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings evoking his life story.
Having drawn 82,000 people in Naples and 150,000 in Brussels, it is making its British debut in York, Britain’s first UNESCO City of Media Arts, where it will be on show until January 5 2020.
Why did you choose York, Mario? “We were looking at venues around the UK for a while, and I like to present the ‘experience’ in historical buildings,” he recalls. “We went to the Council of Churches and we started studying possibilities.
“York has a huge number of tourists coming to the city, and it’s placed in the middle of the country, which is why we thought York would work well.
“Then the history adds to the impact of the presentation, and using the columns and alcoves of the church are a big part of the interpretation. York St Mary’s was ideal.”
Nine months of preparation and a fortnight of construction then went into making the York installation. After adapting the technology to the 3D design of the York church – the building has four alcoves, compared to six in Naples – the immersive experience projects animated displays on to the walls of the former St Mary’s Church, where black-out blinds and a dozen projectors have transformed the normally light and airy building into a constantly moving projected gallery of 200 of Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous 19th century works.
At one end is a re-creation of Van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles, the subject of three of his paintings with its cramped bed, two chairs, yellowed window, battered Panama hat and row of jackets.
The central Nave houses a 35-minute immersive display, with a carpeted floor filled with deckchairs, from where visitors can enjoy the 360-degree displays seated, standing up or even lying down as the images move over the walls and floor – and their bodies, should they be horizontal.
Rather than merely projecting the original paintings, the immersive experience provides the twist of digitally animating the works: wheat sways in the breeze, water pours out of the confines of the painting’s frame, and the stars twirl and swirl in the night sky. Spookily, a skeleton suddenly smokes a cigarette. Steam from a train gradually immerses all the walls.
Everything comes alive all around you: the sun’s ever-changing position will lead to ever-changing shadows on the walls. There is so much to take in, visually, orally too, that you will want to stay longer than the 35-minute installation loop. At £13, make the very most of an artistic experience like no other in York previously.
The immersive experience is divided into, or rather flows seamlessly through, three sections: his painting years at Arles; his family, showing the repetitions in his portraits; and his years in the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, 18 miles from Arles, still prolific years, but troubled by mental illness, ending in his suicide. The moment his self-portrait with his bandaged head suddenly emerges on the wall shocks anew.
For an extra £3, you can experience a 12-minute Virtual Reality rollercoaster ride from Van Gogh’s house to the settings of his best known works. Breathtaking. Truly breathtaking. And what’s more, part of the money raised from the VR experience will be donated to SASH, the York charity for the homeless, at Mario’s request.
“Sadness will last forever,” says one of Van Gogh’s quotes liberally sprinkled around St Mary’s, yet Mario points out: “He committed himself to the asylum because he felt he needed help, but he was also extremely prolific during that time, and they’re not all sad. Yes, there are some dark works, but he also painted what he saw around him, the gardens, what people were doing.”
Why did he pick Van Gogh for an immersive experience, rather than, say, Picasso or Dali? “You have to choose an artist whose paintings are ‘filled in’ with colour. You put up Starry Night and it fills the building. It really ‘pops’ into life.
“It’s the same with Monet, who we’ve also done for an immersive experience. You could do the same with Dali, but Picasso, maybe not,” says Mario.
“You also choose an artist that people understand, as you’re creating an experience for the general public, not for academics, though they have been complimentary. “ Van Gogh’s profusion of letters, 844 of them, primarily to his younger brother Theo, have helped hugely with the psychological aspect of the experience, cutting out the need for guesswork in interpreting his works. “It’s much easier when you have those letters, says Mario.
Van Gogh, by the way, signed his paintings “Vincent” for “the simple reason” no-one could pronounce his surname.
For the record, Mario pronounces it Van Goch, as in clock.
Agatha Meehan, from York, in the lead role of Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz at Leeds Playhouse, All pictures: The Other Richard
The Wizard Of Oz, Leeds Playhouse, until January 25 2020. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk
AGATHA Meehan is going places. Right now, the blossoming York acting talent
is travelling in a whirling tornado from her Kansas farm to Oz and the Emerald
City in the lead role of Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz.
Already she has starred in the West End as Summer Hathaway in School Of
Rock and Annie in Annie, a part she first played for York Musical Theatre
Company in March 2017 while a pupil at St George’s RC Primary School.
After adding Jane in the UK premiere of A Little Princess at the Royal
Festival Hall to her London credits, now she is alternating Dorothy with Lucy
Sherman in the first Christmas family musical in the Quarry Theatre since the Leeds
Playhouse’s £15.8 million redevelopment. All this, and she is only 12 years
old. What a whirlwind rise.
Sam Harrison’s Tinman leading a merry dance in The Wizard Of Oz
There’s no place that Agatha feels more at home than on stage, and she
gives a remarkably assured performance, from the moment she sings the iconic
Over The Rainbow.
Her Kansas accent is spot on; her Dorothy, in pigtails and farm dungarees and later the ever-evocative blue gingham dress, is a stoical young girl of moral conviction, passion and determination, challenging adult authority and inertia in Baum’s Kansas of the 1900s and Emerald City alike.
Combining Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg’s songs
from the more innocent 1939 MGM film with John Kane’s witty, somewhat knowing 1987
script for the Royal Shakespeare Company, artistic director James Brining’s
production delivers on an epic, filmic scale, full of heart and humour, joy and
jeopardy, Munchkins and monkeys, mystery and magic.
Eleanor Sutton’s Scarecrow in The Wizard Of Oz
Meehan’s Dorothy is surrounded by a combination of
hi-tech and lo-tech, and likewise the familiar and the freshened up, with
Jitterbug re-introduced as one of two premier league showstoppers alongside The
Merry Old Land Of Oz, choreographed to dazzling effect by Lucy Cullingford.
Phil Cole’s Uncle Henry and Angela Wynter’s Aunt Em are a mixed-race couple; Eleanor Sutton is a female Scarecrow; Sam Harrison’s Tinman is gay and the outstanding Marcus Ayton is a black timorous Lion, with boxing moves and a knock-out singing voice to boot for If I Were King Of The Forest.
Simon Wainwright, from innovative Leeds company Imitating The Dog,
provides the video projections for the twister scene that combine with the
time-honoured skills of spinning aerialists. Toto the dog is played by a real
dog before the storm, then by a puppet animated so expressively by Ailsa
Dalling in Oz. Look out too for the crow puppets, and be sure to duck when the
Wicked Witch of the West and her dive-bombing monkeys are flying overhead.
A roaring success: Marcus Ayton’s outstanding Lion in The Wizard Of Oz at Leeds Playhouse
Polly Lister is terrifically terrifying as the mean, twisted neighbour Miss
Gulch and the cackling, droll Wicked Witch, whose vamp camp air never quite ventures
into pantomime villainy.
As you would expect of a major-city Christmas show, this is a big, big production:
a cast of 20, supported by a young Leeds
community company as the Munchkins; a band of 11 directed with panache by Tamara
Saringer; and wonderful set and costume designs by Simon Higlett, whose palette
progresses from parched, dustbowl Kansas with its plain farmhouse and water
tower, to the spectacular greens and yellows of a futuristic Emerald City.
Click your ruby red heels, make a wish and find yourself having a wizard
time on the Yellow Brick Road at Leeds Playhouse this winter.
Toto and puppeteer Ailsa Dalling in The Wizard Of Oz
Tim Stedman’s Happy Harry, left, Howard Chadwick’s Nora the Nanny, Zelina Rebeiro’s Snow White, Pamela Dwyer’s Fairy Ruby Rainbow (back), Colin Kiyani’s Prince Lee (front) and Polly Smith’s Wicked Queen Ethel Burger in Snow White at Harrogate Theatre
Snow White, Harrogate Theatre, until January 19 2020. Box office: 01423 502116 or atharrogatetheatre.co.uk
JUST by the entrance to the stalls is a sign. Snow
White contains Smoke/Haze, Pyrotechnics, Flashing Lights. The usual, in other
words, but then it adds Poison Apples.
A-ha. This is why Harrogate Theatre’s pantomime is
such a joy for adults, as well as the children they bring along. The witty
extra details.
This latest pantomime collaboration between
director Phil Lowe and co-writer and chief executive David Bown doesn’t contain
“And The Seven Dwarfs” in the title, but it does contain Tim Stedman in his 20th year
as Harrogate’s strawberry-cheeked, squeaky-voiced daft lad.
Back to Stedman in a moment, but first more of
those details that make the difference: the sign on stage that points to Base
Camp and Too Camp; Harrogate being renamed Happygate in the county of
Yawnshire; and the pop-culture words to spot in Wicked Queen Ethel Burger’s castle
lair. Spells For Teen Spirits (one for Nirvana fans); Keep Calm & Cast
Spells; Tears/Fears.
Then there are the regular mentions of Harrogate’s
event of the year:September’s week-long cycling festival, the UCI Road World
Championships, that turned the Stray into looking more like a Waif and Stray.
“And the bikes have been put away,” came the first mention. “It’s only grass,
it will grow back,” we were re-assured by Stedman and on the back page of a
mocked-up Happygate Advertiser.
Lowe and Bown certainly have fun stoking the fires
of this hot topic that vexes more than agitated letter writers to the local
paper.
On a happier note, Stedman’s 20 years of putting
the funny ha-ha in Harrogate is a cause for celebration, albeit that his silly
billy is given a new name for these politically correct times: Happy Harry,
rather than the usual Muddles. Happy to report, however, that he is still the
sharpest fool in the foolbox, and the fool is still making fools of others,
just as he did in Shakespeare’s plays.
Stedman’s jaunty jester is in cracking clowning form,
picking his “victim for humiliation” with a Catch The Apple game that ends with
teacher Mrs Smith – an appropriate name, he notes – as his stooge for this
particular performance.
His Wheel of Happiness – we should all have one installed
at home – is a thing of joy with its tension-building Slice of Danger and his hapless
slapstick scene with Pamela Dwyer’s Scottish Hunter the Handyman recalls Laurel
and Hardy, while the terrible Christmas cracker jokes keep rolling by. “What do
call an exploding monkey?” he asks. “A ba-boon!” Cue groans.
Colin Kiyani’s Prince Lee and Zelina Rebeiro’s Snow
White keep the romance and soppy ballad count ticking over and the seven dwarfs
make their appearances as big puppet heads, while Alice Barrott’s Magic Mirror
is a frank-speaking Southerner in a northern town.
In a piece of metatheatre, Dwyer’s Fairy Ruby
Rainbow makes a point of stepping outside the pantomime boundaries to explain
that “technically fairies aren’t allowed to be around humans but you can keep
my secret safe” as she transforms into castle dogsbody Hunter the Handyman.
Both roles are handled with aplomb.
Polly Smith returns to the Harrogate panto, this
time as Wicked Queen Ethel Burger, a role with plenty of bite and spite, while
fellow returnee Howard Chadwick’s grouchy dame lives up to his name of No
Nonsense Nora the Nanny, banning the singing of Baby Shark. Look out for his
paintbrush hair-do, one of many delights in Morgan Brind’s designs that provide
humour and spectacle in equal measure.
Nick Lacey’s sprightly musical direction and David
Kar-Hing Lee’s zesty choreographer add to the enjoyment as Harrogate Theatre
revels in the restlessly cheeky Stedman’s 20th anniversary. He’ll return
for Cinderella next Christmas, and surely the Stray grass will be back by then
too. Won’t it?
“The show is saying it’s OK to be exactly who you are,” says Shappi Khorsandi
SHAPPI Khorsandi is extending her 2019
tour into 2020, bringing her self-reflective show Skittish Warrior…Confessions
Of A Club Comic to Pocklington Arts Centre on February 16.
Comedian, author and “idiot who agreed
to be tortured” on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here in 2017, Khorsandi takes
a warts-and-all journey back to the 1990s’ comedy scene, her breakthrough on TV
and then letting it all slip away in her 20 years as a stand-up.
“The show is a good opportunity to look
back on how it all began,” she says. “It talks about the bits that stand-ups
don’t usually talk about, those behind-the-scenes moments where doors get
slammed in your face. It’s about rediscovering that early passion. It’s a
celebration of the comedy circuit.”
Building the show around cultural
observations and confessional gags, Khorsandi says: “I hope people will take
away a great sense of warmth and a lot of heart. The show is saying it’s OK to
be exactly who you are. The only person you should ever compete with is
yourself.”
Skittish Warrior looks at the “funny
side of failure”. “It’s an ode to being an underdog. We celebrate the underdog.
I have to do that. I don’t have a choice,” says Khorsandi.
“But it’s not doom and gloom. I’m
perfectly happy. I’m not cut out for a tabloid level of fame. After 20 years, I
feel completely comfortable with the fact that I’m vulnerable. It’s OK to say,
‘I’ve messed up so many things’.
“It’s about realising that if you
didn’t get something, it wasn’t what you wanted anyway. If it was very important
for me to do well on panel shows, I wouldn’t have been daydreaming on panel
shows!”
Born in Tehran, Iran, Shappi is the daughter of the Iranian
political satirist and poet Hadi Khorsandi and moved to Britain as a child after
the Islamic Revolution. In her twenties, she began performing in comedy clubs, going
on to appear on a multitude of TV shows, be a panellist on ITV1’s Loose Women
and BBC One’s Question Time and write two books, A Beginner’s Guide To Acting
English in 2009 and her debut novel, Nina Is Not OK, in 2016.
A play based on the novel is on its way,
and already she has a musical comedy to her name, Women In Power, inspired by Aristophanes’s
ancient Greek comic play The Assembly Women, co-written with fellow comedians
Jenny Éclair and Natalie Haynes for a run at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton,
in September 2018.
On the radio, Khorsandi has hosted the BBC
Radio 4 series Shappi Talk, Homework and Shappi Khorsandi Gets Organised, as
well as appearing on Loose Ends, Front Row, Midweek and Today.
Recalling how it all began, 46-year-old Khorsandi
says: “I feel very thankful that when I started out in comedy, it was punk. The
ultimate aim was to play the clubs, not telly. That’s why my new show is a love
letter to the comedy clubs.
“I was a nervous wreck at the start. It
was terrifying. I would phone the Comedy Store for an open spot, and if they
picked up, I would put the phone down. I was treading water for the first ten
years. It’s a sort of madness to carry on doing something that is so
precarious. But I always knew that there was nothing else along my Yellow Brick
Road.”
Celebrity has its pitfalls, she
acknowledges. “It’s about really understanding what a full-time job it is to be
famous and to stay there. It has to be at the cost of everything else.
Instagram posts don’t post themselves!”
In 2017, that celebrity status led to Khorsandi
taking part in ITV’s reality TV show I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!. “It
changed my life. Because you’re hungry and have nothing to do in the jungle, it
forces you to look at your life,” she says. “While I was in there, my life was
going on without me. I realised there was no other life I wanted, and I
desperately wanted to be back in it.
“Some people may see I’m A Celebrity as
crass, but it bought me time to re-evaluate my life. I realised what I didn’t
want: to be on the front page of The Sun. That’s not worth anything. Doing
stand-up, writing plays and books; those things have value and they were the
things I wanted to come back to.”
Hence her tour of Skittish Warrior…Confessions
Of A Club Comic, now bolstered with more shows in 2020. “I get an absolute
adrenaline rush on stage. For me, it’s always been about the live stuff,” she
says.
Time for reflection at the year’s end. “I
look back on my career and see all the times I’ve sabotaged it. But if I had
really wanted it, I would have got it,” says Khorsandi.” I’ve got two kids, and
I really wanted them. It may sound cheesy, but they’re my greatest successes.”
Shappi Khorsandi: Skittish Warrior…Confessions Of A Club Comic, Pocklington Arts Centre, Sunday, February 16 2020, 7.30pm. Tickets: £15 on 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Minju Kang and Rachael Gillespie in Northern Ballet’s Cinderella at Leeds Grand Theatre
Northern Ballet in Cinderella, Leeds Grand Theatre, until January 2 2020. Box office: 0844 848 2700 or at leedsgrandtheatre.com
FOR the most magical
Christmas show of this winter, look no further than Northern Ballet’s revival
of Cinderella, first staged at Leeds Grand Theatre in 2013.
The prettiest, most breath-taking
transformation of Yorkshire’s winter theatre wonderland is back, three bounding
huskies et al.
The Cinderella story exists in myriad
forms across the world and through the ages, our British pantomimes being the
most familiar but also the most misleading when presented with the Eastern
mysticism of Canadian artistic director, choreographer and costume designer
David Nixon and his associate director Patricia Doyle’s beautiful, painfully romantic
interpretation.
Set in Imperial Russia at a time when
“superstitious people believe in the possibility of magic” and the repressive
authorities believe in the power of gun rule and constantly barking dogs,
Northern Ballet’s oriental fairy-tale production opens in a burst of yellow
flowers beneath the deepest blue sky on the hottest of days, far removed from
pantomime’s glitter and chintz.
Out go the Fairy Godmother and Buttons, pumpkins and
cross-dressing Ugly Sisters. In come acrobats and a towering stilt walker, a
bear and huskies, a kindly Easter magician (the wonderful Ashley Dixon); a
servant who ends up being shot for helping Cinderella and skaters sashaying
across a frosted lake.
Cinderella’s anything but ugly
stepsisters, Natasha and Sophia (Kyungka Kwak and Rachael Gillespie) are not
wild cards but wholly subservient to the despicably wicked yet immaculately
fashionable step-mother, Countess Serbrenska (Minju Kang, roundly booed but soon
cheered at the end after her fabulously theatrical performance).
Duncan Hayler’s set design has the sleight of hand of a
magician, not only in the transformation scene where the kitchen comes alive
but also when the invitation envelope to the royal ball is peeled open to
reveal a dazzling, white ballroom. Philip Feeney’s compositions, gorgeous
throughout, bring even more of a flourish to Hayler’s works of wonder.
Yet the designs never out-dazzle Sarah Chun’s put-upon but
blossoming Cinderella or Jonathan Hanks’s powerful Prince Mikhail.
A glorious show in a well-deserved return,
Cinderella is Northern Ballet at Nixon’s very best.
Scarlet Wilderink, Ben Tolley, Niall Ransome and Marcquelle Ward (front) in Treasure Island. Pictures: Sam Taylor
Treasure Island, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until December 29. Box office: 01723 370541 or at tickets@sjt.uk.com
TREASURE Island is re-envisaged with sea shanties, baguette swords, talking vegetables, puppets, rap battles and a giant mechanical crab called Susan in the Stephen Joseph Theatre Christmas show.
Stolen and re-told by story pirate Nick Lane, Robert Louis Stevenson’s
nautical adventure is presented by an actor-musician cast of five billed as The
Fearsome Pirates.
Or not that fearsome at the Relaxed Performance your reviewer attended
where they introduced themselves and explained who each would be playing, while
the stage management outlined how the sword fighting would not be dangerous and
the maximum noise to be expected was the closing of a trapdoor. Likewise, no-one
should be alarmed by the sight of smoke (dry ice) emerging on deck.
Scarlet Wilderink: Revelling in her big fake moustache character switch in Treasure Island
It was fascinating to see the care being taken in making everyone at ease,
reaffirming the importance of theatre’s powers of storytelling reaching out to
everyone.
Lane’s “brilliantly bonkers” shows, whose adventures always begin and
end up back in Scarborough in time for Christmas, have become a staple of the
SJT winter programme, Treasure Island following in the unconventional footsteps
of Pinocchio, A (Scarborough) Christmas Carol and Alice In Wonderland.
Lane’s humour is always wind-assisted, with any excuse for the word “bum”
and prodigious feats of, how to put this, bottom burping. Adults might feel there
is too much wind in this particular sail this time, but try telling that to the
young ones, who revel in the repetition of Marcquelle Ward’s involuntary trumpeting
in the role of apple-loving Jim Hawkins. Nevertheless, maybe a tad less wind
next year would still blow the house down.
Marcquelle Ward, left, Scarlet Wilderink, Alice Blundell and Niall Ransome as the Fearsome Pirate storytellers in Treasure Island
Lane’s play feels more episodic than in past years, not merely because
the cast announces each chapter, but because there is so much to cram in after dishing
out the roles for Ward, Alice Blundell, Niall Ransome, Scarlet Winderink and
Ben Tolley, the pick of this winter’s troupe under Erin Carter’s direction.
Tolley arrives in a suit, saying he is attending on behalf of the
Stevenson estate to make sure no disrespectful nonsense is allowed on stage,
whereupon he is commandeered to play assorted parts, such as Long John Silver
(or LJs as he becomes in the climactic rap battle).
This is a typically inventive device by Lane, and Tolley responds to the
max as the ship full of Scarborough scalleys heads to Treasure Island in search
of Captain Flint’s treasure before the pirates find it.
Alice Blundell with the accident-prone puppet of Captain Smollett in Treasure Island at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough
In a second Lane innovation, out goes a talking parrot, in comes a
talking…carrot, perched on Silver’s shoulder in his “disguise” as a pirate cook.
“Five a day, five a day,” says the Carrot, in one of the comic high points.
Look out for the seagulls too, dropping their messages from the sky on
Silver’s head, much to the children’s glee.
Helen Coyston’s stage designs bring out the full potential of the Round
setting, especially when the cast creates the deck of the Hispaniola, and the
giant mechanical crab claws that emerge through one of the exits ticks the “mild
peril” box to amusing effect.
Ben Tolley’s Long John Silver in Treasure Island
Musical director Simon Slater’s new songs are terrific: shanties and
nautical nuggets as fresh and bracing as the sea air with fun lyrics to boot.
While not matching the heights of Alice In Wonderland, in particular, Lane’s Treasure Island still has a treasure trove of jollification, adventure and daftness to be discovered, hapless Captain Smollett puppet, big fake moustache, baguette sword fights and all.
Lynne Dawson: narrator for Tubby The Tuba at York Guildhall Orchestra’s New Year concert on January 4
YORK Guildhall Orchestra will open 2020 with a
family-orientated, mid-afternoon concert on January 4 at York Barbican.
“This is a great way to finish off the festive
break by introducing the younger members of the family to the fantastic and
entertaining world of live orchestral music,” says publicist Geoff Eggington.
Joining Simon Wright’s orchestral forces will be
the YGO’s president, Tollerton soprano Lynne Dawson, in her role as narrator for
a couple of pieces.
Brian Kingsley: tuba soloist for Tubby The Tuba
These will include Kleinsinger’s Tubby The Tuba, the
heart-warming story of Tubby, the butt of all the jokes in the orchestra, who nevertheless
finds a wonderful tune and persuades the whole orchestra to play it. The tuba
soloist will be Brian Kingsley, from the Orchestra of Opera North.
Other family favourites in the 3.30pm programme
will be Viennese waltzes and polkas by Johanne Strauss, the Elder and the Younger,
such as Thunder & Lightning, Champagne, Gold & Silver and The Blue
Danube.
Extracts from The Sound Of Music and Les Miserables
will feature York Stage Musicals members in the singing roles.
Simon Wright: conducting York Guildhall Orchestra’s New Year concert
Looking ahead to 2020, this will be YGO’s
40th anniversary year, when the main celebratory concert will be
held on February 15, almost to the day when the orchestra’s debut concert was
performed in the York Guildhall, hence the name.
On that first programme were Ravel’s
Mother Goose Suite and a Brahms Symphony. This time, the orchestra will be
joined by Jamie Walton in Sir Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto.
“As always, we’re delighted we’ll be working
with the City of York Council and the York Music Hub in 2020 by providing free
places at our May concert for children from York primary schools and members of
Yorchestra.”
Further information on the year ahead can be found at yorkguildhallorchestra.com. Tickets for the New Year’s Family Concert are on sale on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.
Zoe Paylor’s Pinata and Mark Friend’s Pinocchio, from Blue Light Theatre Company’s Oh! What A Circus cast, at Acomb Cobblers. All pictures: Scott Atkinson
ROLL up! Roll up! The Blue Light Theatre Company’s pantomime, Oh! What A
Circus, will open at Acomb Working Men’s Club, York, next month.
Made up of paramedics, ambulance dispatchers, York Hospital staff and members of York’s theatre scene, the company will be in action on January 24, 25 and January 29 to 31 at 7.30pm nightly, plus a 1pm matinee on January 25.
Blue Light Theatre Company’s cast members for Oh! What A Circus at Acomb Working Men’s Club
“Our story revolves around two circuses, one good and one evil, and
their search for a star act, but which circus will succeed?” says Mark Friend,
who plays Pinocchio. “This is a family-friendly
show that would make a perfect Christmas gift for the whole family, especially
as it features many famous fairy-tale characters such as Pinocchio, Geppetto,
Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood, Tinkerbell and Hansel and Gretel.”
In the cast will be Steven Clark, as dame Dolly Mixsteur; Glen Gears, Darius De’vil; Jorvik Kalicinski, Geppetto; Mark Friend, Pinocchio; Perri-Ann Barley, Rapunzel; Devon Walls, Red Riding Hood; Brenda Riley, Magenta, the Sorceress; Craig Barley, Cyril and Old Man, and Kevin Bowes, Nodoff, the Clown.
Shoe-in for success: Blue Light Theatre Company’s Zoe Paylor (Pinata), Jorvik Kalicinski (Geppetto) and Mark Friend (Pinocchio) at Acomb Cobblers
So too will be Linden Horwood, as Tinkerbell; Pat Mortimer, Signora Fi Lacio; Zoe Paylor, Pinata and Suki; Kristian Barley, Hansel; Katelyn Botterill, Gretel, and Kalayna Barley, Bird and one of the four Piglets, Pandora. The other three will be Kathryn Donley as Pringles; Charlotte Botterill, Pippa, and Abigail Botterill, Primrose.
Director and producer Craig Barley leads the production team, joined by writer/co-producer Perri-Ann Barley; choreographer Devon Wells and the costumes team of Brenda Riley and Christine Friend. Steven Clark has written additional material.
Sizing up Pinocchio: Jorvik Kalicinski’s shoemaker Geppetto works on Mark Friend’s Pinocchio’s shoe as Zoe Paylor’s Pinata looks on at Acomb Cobblers
As in previous years, Blue Light will be raising money for York Against
Cancer and Motor Neurone Disease (York). “We hope to exceed our record-breaking
£3,000, which was split between the charities after our last production,
Wonderland,” says Mark.
“We’ve had fantastic support from local and national businesses, and our
raffle prizes include family passes to many of York and North Yorkshire’s
famous attractions. We also offer a cheap bar, which now accepts credit and
debit cards, and cheap pick’n’mix sweet bags for sale at the shows.”
Tickets cost £10, adults, £8, concessions, £5, children, at bluelight-theatre.co.uk, on 07933 329654 or from cast members. “We’re hoping to sell some tickets for Christmas zero-waste presents over the next couple of days,” says Mark.
Did you know?
SHOULD you be wondering, the publicity photographs were taken by Scott Atkinson at Mansell Hughes’s shoe repairs shop, Acomb Cobblers, in Green Lane, Acomb. “Mansell is a huge support to us, giving us free rein of his shop for our photo-shoot,” says Mark Friend.
