One-off collaborative tour: Catrin Finch, Seckou Keita and Vishtèn to play Pocklington next June
BBC Radio 2 Folk Award Winners Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita and special guests Vishtèn will bring their one-off collaborative tour to Pocklington Arts Centre next summer.
Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Sengalese Kora maestro Seckou Keita, will perform with Canadian multi-instrumentalist powerhouse trio Vishtèn on Saturday, June 13.
Finch and Seckou, who played the National Centre for Early Music in York on October 20, were named Best Duo/Group in the 2019 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, while Seckou also received the award for Musicianof the Year.
Since forming their partnership in 2013, they have released two albums, Clychau Dibon that year and Soar in 2018.
Arts centre manager James Duffy says: “I saw Catrin, Seckou and Vishtèn’s first ever public performance together in Canada, as part of a Music PEI Showcase in October. The response that night was truly wonderful and deservedly received a standing ovation.
“It’s a fantastic collaboration that blends folk/roots and world music between these two highly regarded artists. Thanks must go to Focus Wales, Music PEI and Theatr Mwldan for bringing this show to Pocklington in 2020.”
In September, Finch and Keita travelled to Prince Edward Island on the east coast of Canada to meet and collaborate with Vishtèn, who are flag-bearers for the Acadian musical tradition globally.
Now, this collaboration will be heading to British shores in a one-off tour that will combine sets by both artists with a special set featuring new material by Finch, Keita and Vishtèn together.
In the Vishtèn line-up are twin sisters Emmanuelle and Pastelle LeBlanc, from Prince Edward Island, and Pascal Miousse, a direct descendant of the first colonial families to inhabit Quebec’s remote Magdalene Islands.
Pocklington’s audience can expect tight harmonies, layered foot percussion and a trademark blend of fiddle, guitar, accordion, whistles, piano, bodhrán and jaw harp.
Tickets for this 7.30pm concert cost £22 on 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
James Coldrick, left, Louise Henry, Adam Sowter, Stan Gaskell, Sally Mitcham, Beryl Nairn, Mick Liversidge, Maggie Smales and Florence Poskitt in Rigmarole Theatre Company’s When The Rain Stops Falling. Picture: Michael J Oakes,
When The Rain Stops Falling, Rigmarole Theatre Company, John Cooper Studio, 41 Monkgate, York, 7.30pm tonight and tomorrow; 2.30pm and 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
WHEN will the rain stop falling, you may well be asking amid
Yorkshire’s November floods, burst banks and Army assistance in Fishlake.
Bad news. The answer, in Andrew Bovell’s apocalyptic play,
is 2039, and by then much water will have passed under the bridge in the two hours’
traffic of 41 Monkgate’s stage.
This week’s Yorkshire premiere of When The Rain Stops
Falling marks the debut of Rigmarole Theatre Company, a new York venture led by
artistic director and designer Maggie Smales, who directed York Shakespeare Project’s
award-winning all-female production of Henry V, set at a “Canary Girls” munitions
factory in the First World War.
In other words, she has pedigree for interesting directorial
choices, and Smales shows astute judgement again in picking Bovell’s multi-layered
mystery, spread across 80 years and four generations of one family in England
and Australia, premiered in Adelaide 11 years ago.
Once described as a “poetic pretzel of a play”, it takes the
form of an unbroken, non-linear staging of 22 scenes, in this case within the
John Cooper Studio’s black-box design, with a back-wall montage of umbrellas, a
drape of Aboriginal wall art, window frames and doorways painted white, ceiling
lamps in different shades and a prominent fish mobile.
Within this framework, the cast of nine moves furniture on
and off and occupants of rooms overlap as the years from 1969 to 2019 move backwards
and forwards.
No money, no food, no shoes: Mick Liversidge as Gabriel York in When The Rain Stops Falling. Picture: Michael J Oakes
To help you work out who’s who, the one-sheet “programme”
provides a pictorial family tree to distinguish between Gabriel and Gabriel and
even a Gabrielle.
The play opens to the inevitable sound of falling rain…in
the desert region of Alice Springs, Australia, in 2039, with Smales’s company standing
in lines beneath umbrellas on the stage periphery and criss-crossing the floor
in silent repetitive movements with soup bowls before making way for the first
monologue by Mick Liversidge’s Gabriel York.
This drifting, eccentric wanderer is waiting for his long-estranged
son, Andrew (Stan Gaskell), with no money, no socks and no food. As chance
would have it, a fish suddenly falls out of the sky…manna from heaven in a play
with downpours of biblical proportions.
Not till the end shall we see these two again, but as a
lattice builds, fish, or more precisely, fish soup, will keep making an appearance,
along with dining tables and references to rain in Bangladesh. This adds splashes
of dark humour to the otherwise claustrophobically black, stormy days of
betrayal, abandonment and destruction that unfold against a backdrop of climate
change.
Bovell first heads back to a London flat in 1969, where we
meet Gabriel York’s grandparents, James Coldrick’s Henry Law and Florence
Poskitt’s Elizabeth, in younger days, their relationship problems heightened by
the arrival of son Gabriel. Elizabeth is encountered again in 1988, still in
the same flat, even more buttoned up, Gabriel (Adam Sowter) frustrated at her
still declining to reveal why his father suddenly disappeared when he was only
seven.
Sally Mitcham. left, and Louise Henry in When The Rain Stops Falling. Picture: Michael J Oakes
Sowter’s Gabriel duly heads to Australia to put the missing
pieces together, whereupon he encounters a troubled roadhouse waitress in
Coorong, Gabrielle York (Louise Henry, soon to play Snow White in Snow White
And The Seven Dwarfs at the Grand Opera House).
Tragedy has struck her not once, but thrice, but you should see
the play to find out how and why, as we learn still more from older Gabrielle
(Sally Mitcham) and stoical husband Joe Ryan (Maggie Smales).
Smales chose Bovell’s poetic allegory - full of Australian
culture, Greek myth, English awkwardness, French philosophy and meteorological
turmoil – because it addresses “the most important
question of our times”: Are we prepared to pass on the damage from the past to
our children or can we change to save ourselves?
Ultimately, in a prophetic play heavy with the weight of
legacy and inheritance, Bovell calls on us to change before it is too late. Smales’s
excellent cast, so skilled at storytelling and largely at Aussie accents too,
certainly makes the case for him.
In the words of the director, “If you like a powerful story that
has something to say about who we are and where we are going, this is the one
to see.”
You are also assured of a warmer welcome than Boris Johnson
in sodden South Yorkshire this week. Among the drinks that the convivial bar is
serving is…water, naturally.
A detail from Elena Skoreykp Wagner’s new winter window installation at Owl & Monkey, York
OWL & Monkey, the
homeware and lifestyle store in Heslington Road, York, is unveiling its annual
artist’s window installation for the festive season today.
The festivities will
launch from today until Sunday as York illustrator Elena Skoreyko Wagner
becomes the third artist chosen to celebrate the wonder and magic of a
childhood winter.
As well as revealing
Elena’s papercut installation, Helen and Matt Harris’s shop will be hosting
events to herald the season, including fountain pen-making and a Letters To Santa
opportunity, plus the chance to meet Elena and watch her papercutting in action
on Sunday.
“Come down on Sunday between12 noon and 4 pm and ask Elena to create a mini paper version of you, your friends or family to take away on the day,” suggests Helen. “You can watch Elena make her cut-and-create decorations to purchase for £10. So, come prepared with some photos for your desired creation.”
“The theme of a childhood Christmas really appealed to me, capturing that wonder and magic,” says Elena. Picture: Alice Lodge
As the installation
goes on show, Helen says: “We’re excited to be hosting Elena’s beautiful
creations and are delighted to welcome her installation and work to the shop.
“It exudes a sense of
joy and hopefulness, celebrating the everyday elements of life through her
collages, illustrations and zines. So, when we discovered her creations, we knew
they were just what we were seeking.”
Matt adds: ‘We love
the joyful nature of Elena’s work and how it captures the magic of the everyday.
It matches so well with what we hope the shop offers; a happy place to
celebrate the everyday.”
Canadian-born Illustrator Elena, who gained a BFA in studio art from York University in Toronto in 2006, specialises in colourful hand-cut paper collages, pieced together from paper snippets, along with zines. Her work is often narrative, depicting women and children, to touch gently on health and social issues, find magic and uncover meaning in the mundane.
Elena Skoreyko Wagner at work on a papercut. Picture: Kayti Pechke
“The theme of a
childhood Christmas really appealed to me, capturing that wonder and magic,” she
says of her new installation. “I have also been working with some local
designers and makers to bring my designs to some exciting new products, so I’m
really looking forward to bringing them to Owl & Monkey.”
An added element of
the window from today is the re-use of vintage Japanese papers found by the Owl
and Monkey duo. “A lot of my work uses up-cycled papers, so when Helen and Matt
gave me some old, damaged Japanese papers, I was super-excited to see how they
could gain a new story as part of the window,” says Elena. “Watch out for them
in the very many garlands I’ve been busy sewing together these past few weeks.”
The Owl & Monkey homeware and lifestyle range “celebrates the simple pleasures of home and life with a carefully chosen selection of sustainably and ethically sourced goods to enhance the everyday”.
Helen and Matt Harris’s Owl & Monkey store in Heslington Road, York
“From studio pottery
to an ever-growing range of stationery, all the products are selected with good
ethics, function and joy in mind,” says Helen.
“We also focus on the
power of sharing the skills and passions of the people behind the goods, so an important
part of our ethos is collaboration with local designers, makers and artists.”
You can discover more
about Elena’s work at elenastreehouse.com, on Instagram, @elenaskoreyko, and Facebook,
@elenastreehouse.
Owl & Monkey, 16a Heslington Road, York, is open Wednesdays, 11am to 5pm; Thursdays and Fridays, 11am to 6pm; Saturdays 10am to 5.30pm, plus Sundays, 12 noon to 4pm, November 17 to December 22, and Tuesdays, 11am to 5pm, November 19 to December 17.
“You just think, ‘Come on, make a decision’,” says Al Murray as Brexit lumbers on and on and on
COMEDIANS had been strangely reluctant to discuss Brexit, seemingly for fear of alienating half an audience. Three years in, however, and no nearer to finding a fixit, they are joining the rest of a divided nation in frustration at Mission Implausible.
If one comedian were guaranteed to lose his rag over Brexit Britain, it would be the garrulous Guvnor, bellicose pub landlord Al Murray.
His July show at Pocklington’s Platform Festival had been billed as the “last hurrah” for his Landlord Of Hope And Glory tour, but Brexit is the wanted/unwanted gift that keeps giving.
So, here we all are, post-October 31 impasse, rain sodden and shivering as we go to the polls in darkest December, Boris and Jezza fighting to be the next Guvnor, and Murray’s bilious bulldog still barking his take on Brexit on his autumn travels that stop off at the Grand Opera House, York on November 18.
A comedian seeks to be side-splittingly funny; now Murray is having to deal with split sides. “That’s the interesting thing: they really are split, and you can’t predict how people will be on each night,” says Al, who conducts his interviews as the real Al Murray, satirical comedian, TV presenter, author and military history documentary maker.
” What you have to do is burrow down into ‘Who are we?’; ‘What does this say about us?’, and that’s the thing you then mine for comedy,” says Al Murray, defining the comic craft.
“There are people who still care about it, with everything that’s going on in parliament, but the rest are fed up. Who could imagine people being frustrated with politicians promising things that couldn’t be delivered?!”
Given the Little Englander persona of Murray’s larger and louder-than-life caricature, you might expect him to line up with Boris/Farage/No Deal/Brexit Means Brexit, but Murray thinks as much as the Guvnor drinks, and so Landlord Of Hope And Glory does not take the path of least resistance.
“You write the kernel of a show a couple of months before going out on the road, so that was back in March and April, when it looked like we might go No Deal, and you just think, ‘Come on, make a decision’.
“But whatever way you voted, you have no say in what’s been happening, and as a comic, you’re thinking, ‘How can I find a fresh angle on this?’.
“You don’t want to sound like anyone else, so the conclusion to the show came to me pretty early on, but for the show to merge together perfectly, it took 20 gigs to get to that point.”
Social and political satire requires exaggeration to lampoon its targets, and yet the Westminster and Brussels playgrounds keep surpassing such comic imagination.
“People talk about that a lot: that there’s this problem for comics being outflanked by the behaviour of our politicians, so what you have to do is burrow down into ‘Who are we?’; ‘What does this say about us?’, and that’s the thing you then mine for comedy,” says Al.
Preparing for a dressing down: Satirist Al Murray in the dressing room with The Pub Landlord’s garb
“Get Brexit Done/Not Done” may exasperate many, but Murray is revelling in picking at its bones. “The idea that this thing was going to go on forever didn’t have bite in April, but it does now. It routs us – and I’m rather pleased about that.
“Brexit is now being paraded full bore at the centre of our national debate, yet people were telling me a decade ago that the Pub Landlord’s anti-European stance was outdated!”
Murray is not predicting an end to Brexit deliberations any time soon. “I think we’re going to go back out with this show next spring, when it still won’t be over.
“The reality is, you will never find anything to satisfy everyone, so you just have to balance it,” he suggests. “Is there a way out of this mess? The Pub Landlord thinks so: the whole of Europe goes on the pound and the EU changes its name to Great Britain!”
Is Brexit a step backwards or forwards for Britain, Mr Murray? “The thing is, I haven’t heard yet how it’s a step forward. I’m open to whatever ‘Brexit’ is, but you get the feeling a lot of people don’t know what it is, or that people won’t like it, whatever it is.”
AlMurray: Landlord Of Hope And Glory, Grand Opera House, York, Monday, November 18, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/York
“Scream the house down for a ticket” to see Daniel Easton, left, and Robert Goodale in The Woman In Black. Picture: Tristram Kenton
REVIEW: The Woman In Black, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
AFTER terrifying visits in 2013 and 2014, York Theatre Royal has gone back to Black for a wintry chill in 2019. Scream the house down for a ticket; this ghost story is still the best in the fright night business, although Gaslighting and the Grand Opera House-bound revival of Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s Ghost Stories are guaranteed to scare you witless too.
Stephen Mallatratt’s splendidly theatrical stage adaptation began life as a bonus Christmas show at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1987 in novelist Susan Hill’s hometown of Scarborough, and this latest touring production still retains its original director and designer, Robin Herford and Michael Holt. Well, if it ain’t broke, etc etc.
It is an old-fashioned piece, but delightfully so, with no hi-tech special effects. Instead, the programme states “harmless stage smoke and sudden loud effects are used in this production”. What matters is how they are used: the smoke gradually envelops you in a disorientating murk; the sound effects go off all around you, whether the approach of a horse’s hooves or jolting, silence-shattering screams. Cue shrieks, gasps and nervous audience laughter that ripple outwards through the stalls to the dress circle in waves.
The horror, the horror: Daniel Easton as The Actor, increasingly haunted, just like the audience, in The Woman In Black. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Mallatratt’s two-hander begins in a dusty theatre as elderly lawyer Arthur Kipps (Robert Goodale) employs a young actor (Daniel Easton) to help him exorcise the fear that has filled his soul for more than 50 years. “For my health, my reason,” he says, “It must be told. I cannot bear the burden any longer.”
That burden is a stultifying obsession with the curse that he believes a spectral woman in a black cape with a wasted face has placed on his family. The Actor is initially sceptical, his mood light and cocky, yet the depth of Kipps’s desire to recover his peace of mind starts to grip the thespian too, and in turn the audience…whether a newcomer or a returnee glutton for more spine shivers.
The terrifying tale with the terrible toll is told in a theatrical re-enactment rendered with only two chairs, a skip of papers, a hanging rail of costume props, dust sheets over the stage apron and a frayed curtain.
Behind this gauze partition are the stairwell, passages, rooms and contents of the haunted Eel Marsh House, as the Actor plays young Arthur Kipps and stage novice Mr Kipps adapts himself to all manner of other parts, while growing ever more paralysed by resurgent fears as the story unfolds of his ill-fated errand as a young solicitor.
“A celebration of the craft of acting”: Daniel Easton in The Woman In Black. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Sebastian Frost’s restless sound effects align with Kevin Sleep’s lighting design, where shadows and darkness wrestle with light for dominance, as Easton and Goodale re-create Kipps’s flesh-creeping journey to the eerie marshlands: an isolated place forever at odds with its wretched self.
As much as The Woman In Black is a ghost story first and foremost, in Mallatratt’s hands, it is also a celebration of the craft of acting, the power of storytelling and the role of the imagination.
Designed as a play within a play, the drama within takes over from the act of making it. You never see the horse and cart or a dog called Spider, but you feel their presence and you rise to applaud Easton and Goodale for having you wholly in their grip, as Hertford’s direction steers this eerie ghost ride with grave concern but dark humour too.
Golden opportunity: Tom Rosenthal announces Pocklington date
TOM Rosenthal, star of Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinner and ITV2’s Plebs, will bring his new stand-up show, Manhood, to Pocklington Arts Centre on March 14 next year.
His 8pm performance will tell the story of how he spent his life trying to avenge the theft of his foreskin.
Tickets for this past winner of the Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year award will go on sale at £17.50 on Friday at 10am on 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Arts centre director Janet Farmer says: “We’re delighted to be able to bring Tom Rosenthal to Pocklington as part of his latest stand-up tour.
“This booking only strengthens an already fantastic line-up of comedy, which features our popular Punchline Christmas Comedy Gala on December 13 and TV regulars Arthur Smith and Andy Parsons on January 31 and April 28 respectively.
“As with all our live comedy, Tom is likely to sell out, so I would advise you to book your tickets in advance.”
Director Maggie Smales in the role of Joe Ryan on the preview night of When The Rain Stops Falling. Picture: Michael J Oakes
YORK director and designer Maggie Smales is reviving a
theatre company name from her Seventies’ student days to present Andrew
Bovell’s When The Rain Stops Falling, a multi-layered mystery spread across 80
years and four generations of one family in England and Australia.
Smales chose this apocalyptic story of betrayal, abandonment and destruction for Rigmarole Theatre Company’s debut venture because it addresses “the most important question of our times”: Are we prepared to pass on the damage from the past to our children?
Ahead of this Yorkshire premiere opening at 41 Monkgate, tomorrow (November 14), Maggie answers Charles Hutchinson’s questions.
What prompted you to
set up a theatre company now, Maggie?
“We’re lucky to have
a lot of heritage theatre and musicals here in York. While that is wonderful,
for both performers and audiences, I feel it’s important that there is
contemporary work on offer.
“There’s such a lot
of great work that offers a more direct connection to our lives today. TV
dramas are often fantastic, but I don’t think you can beat live drama where the
audience is in the room with the events playing out before them.”
Why make the link
with your student past by reviving the name Rigmarole?
“A bit frivolous, I suppose, but it is
somewhat in the spirit of sustainability and re-use, which are part of
Rigmarole’s ideals.
“Also, I’m constantly
reminded while I work, whether directing or acting, that I’m still a student,
and long may that last!
Why did you choose
this play for your launch production?
“Taking on a directing task is a large
job, so when I take it on, it has to be for a text or project that matters to
me.
“This play deals with
the most pressing question of our times. Can we change to save ourselves? A
question that is played out through the narratives of characters in the play
and set in the context of a climate that’s changing and threatening our very
existence.
“That sounds heavy,
but like other great plays, it just uses great storytelling. I was completely
blown away by it.
“Furthermore, it’s a
play that offers fantastic opportunities for actors. It’s beautifully crafted
and has a deliciously poetic text. As a director, it has a canvas that spans
the globe and 80 years of time, so it offers the fantastic challenge of
realising it all within a simple black box.”
Rigmarole Theatre Company’s cast for When The Rain Stops Falling: James Coldrick, left, Louise Henry, Adam Sowter, Stan Gaskell, Sally Mitcham, Beryl Nairn, Mick Liversidge, Maggie Smales and Florence Poskitt. Picture: Michael J Oakes
Where did you come
across this play? Have you seen it?
“I haven’t seen it, but I read it before
seeing Andrew Bovell’s other well-known piece, Things I Know To Be True, which
he wrote for Frantic Assembly.
“His adaptation of
The Secret River by Kate Grenville was recently at the Edinburgh Festival and
at the National Theatre. I went to see it and was captivated by the way he uses
personal narrative to convey the story of a nation and the crimes at the very
heart of its growth.”
What resonates most
with you about this play?
“Something that has emerged as an
increasingly important feature is that of legacy and inheritance: that we live
among the presence of our ancestors but also with them inside our hearts. This
is something maybe the Australian aborigines understand much better than us.”
What do you read into
the title?
“With the weather
we’ve been having lately it’s become a bit of a sore point really! Or spookily
prophetic.
“Our story as humans
is of carrying on, of finding a way forward and sometimes of bearing the burden
of our own and others’ crimes. The final year of the play is set at the brink
of our possible extinction and leaves us wondering if we always will ‘carry
on’.”
Do you believe we can
change, as Bovell’s play calls on us to do?
“I don’t think we do change. I think it
is more in our DNA to ‘carry on’ and adapt our behaviour to suit the demands
around us as we find them.
“Our current crisis
shows that some of us are more prepared to adapt sooner rather than later. Put
differently, there are various types of self-interest at work in humankind, but
I’m fairly optimistic because there’s a lot of goodness in most people.”
Have you had any
discussions with Andrew Bovell?
“We’ve been in touch through his agent and
received a fantastic and insightful reply regarding the recent development
banning the ascents of Uluru. Such a climb is featured in the play but why a
‘fair-skinned Englishman’ went there in search of his father is something you’d
have to come and find out!
“The play has been
performed all around the world but this its first appearance in Yorkshire and
he wished us good luck.
“Bovell uses Australian
culture, Greek myth, French philosophy and meteorological events in history to
create a powerful allegory, which can be appreciated as both high opera and as
accessible soap opera.”
And finally, why
should we see When The Rain Stops Falling?
“If you like to be moved by what you
see, if you like to see a mystery unfold as the puzzle pieces come together, if
you like a powerful story that has something to say about who we are and where
we are going, this is one to see.”
Rigmarole Theatre Company presents When the Rain Stops Falling, John Cooper Studio, 41 Monkgate, York, November 14 to 16, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568, yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or from the Theatre Royal box office in person.
Kelly Jones: “Overcoming things and moving on”. Picture:Simon Bartle
THIS was a solo show, except that it wasn’t a solo show. First up, Dwight A Baker and Patricia Lynn’s country-noir duo The Wind And The Waves, from Austin Texas, thoroughly justified Kelly Jones’s invitation to tour with him: the best support act in ages at the Barbican, with song titles as sharp as This House Is A Hotel (for grumpy teens) and a queue at the merch-stall afterwards.
In Jones’s words, “this tour is about overcoming things and moving on from obstacles and building strength from that”. This sentiment is reflected in Don’t Let The Devil Take Another Day, the title of the upcoming Stereophonics album, out in October, and trailered here by a band who “learned the songs in five minutes”.
The title number and This Life Ain’t Easy But It’s The One We All Get conveyed Jones’s apprehensive yet defiantly hopeful tone on a night when he revealed as much in his storytelling from his back story, as darkly humorous, poignant and South Welsh-rooted as Dylan Thomas’s writings.
He opened by talking about once-a-week, Sunday childhood bath time, third in line behind his brothers for the increasingly dirty water, as he set about song writing from the age of eight when they removed their improvised “ghetto blaster” each week.
He now had 160 songs, from 12 or 13 records, to pick from, songs familiar and rarely performed from Stereophonics 22 years and his 2007 solo work, Only The Names Have Been Changed.
The names this particular evening were Jones on acoustic and electric guitars, stand-up and grand piano; Gavin Fitzjohn on piano, guitar and exquisite trumpet and Fiona Brice on violin and piano, constantly swapping places and roles, joined by drummer Cherisse Osei, hair blowing wildly behind her as if in a wind tunnel, and even she switched from one drum kit to another.
Rather than being restless or breathless, there was an arc and flow to the night, songs benefiting from new arrangements, such as Jones and Fitzjohn perched on high stools for a ukulele account of Rewind.
The stories were heartfelt, one taking in early days with Stereophonics’ Stuart Cable, his mother by the name of Mabel Cable and Keith Richards’ shepherd’s pie dressing-room rules, before his abiding grief at Cable dying too young poured into Before Anyone Knew Our Name. “I miss you man,” he sang, the pain still raw in that soulful voice, the best from Wales since his fellow Jones, Tom.
Kelly recalled his callow football days, playing up front of course, but this was the cue for debut single Local Boy In The Photograph, his tribute to the team’s right back who threw himself under a train.
Not only the tour, but so many of Jones’s everyman songs are about “overcoming things and moving on from obstacles”. Even his first choice of cover, Kris Kristofferson’s Help Me Make It Through The Night, a song his father sang in his working men’s club gigs, now carried that weight.
The second, Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around, had Jones and Patricia Lynn mirroring Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks to the max.
A medical emergency in the audience brought the show to a halt for 15 minutes, handled suitably respectfully by band and audience alike, and the usual 11pm curfew was subsequently waived, enabling a hits-heavy singalong encore of Maybe Tomorrow, Traffic and Dakota.
More frontmen of Jones’s standing should do shows like this: seeing him and his songs in a new light.
So….why does Elf Lyons love guinea pigs? Find out on November 21
ELF Lyons concludes her autumn travels at the Burning Duck Comedy Club in York on November 21, but this tour might never happened.
In August 2018, comedian, writer and actress Elf – real name Emily Ann – was planning a physical clown show with dance, tap, rock’n’roll and the splits, but soon disaster struck.
She was taken to hospital and told it would be best that she never performed again. After months spent lying on her back and being wheeled in and out of MRI machines, she had to rethink how to return to the stage. Thankfully inspiration struck, and Love Songs To Guinea Pigs was born.
Elf, the 28-year-old daughter of an economist and painter, presents a surreal tale of love and loneliness, embodying her inner Katherine Hepburn through an absurd narrative of heartbreak and love with live music, terrible mime, silly characters, enthusiastic accents and true stories. “This is Brief Encounter, but with rodents,” she says.
Love Songs To Guinea Pigs is billed as “the perfect show to take a tinder date to, a friend who is going through a difficult divorce, your step-mum as an attempt to ‘bond’ or indeed just come on your own and be a legend”.
Tickets for next Thursday’s 8pm show in The Basement, City Screen, are on sale via thebasementyork.co.uk/elf-lyons or burningduckcomedy.com
The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Tutti Frutti/York Theatre Royal, at York Theatre Royal Studio, September 26 to October 12
RAIN, rain, rain, the River Ouse is in flood, but the weather is even worse at York Theatre Royal, where snow is falling and Tutti Frutti’s actors are covered from head to toe in wool.
Five years ago to the autumnal month, Leeds company Tutti Frutti first staged York playwright Mike Kenny’s re-spinning of Aesop’s wintery old yarn in new patterns and shades, as favoured by the contestants in the annual jumper-knitting competition that opens and closes this one-act show for three year olds and upwards.
Designer Hannah Sibai has cloaked the Studio stage in white, from the floor to the tree branches, set in place in upturned spools and wrapped in wool; from the lit-up miniature village houses at the front to the snow-peaked mountains that form the backdrop.
Colour comes from the suffusion of old-fashioned/Scandi-noir knitted clothing, scarves and hats worn by actor-musicians Alex Wingfield, Florence Russell and Guido Garcia Lueches, who add yet more woolly headgear when playing grouchy, unruly, hip-hop dancing sheep.
The play’s title carries a moralising tone, but Kenny, himself a father, prefers to encourage children to take on responsibility, rather than wave a scalding finger in their direction, in a story set over three winters in a bleak sheep-farming community.
Grandad (Garcia Lueches) now lacks the energy and spryness to guard the family’s flock from the predatory wolves high up in the mountains, handing over the duty to his grandson Silas (Wingfield), a very reluctant “bother of a boy”. “Everywhere, sheep, just sheep,” he bemoans. Not yet ten years old, he is far from thrilled by the honour of keeping his village safe as he quickly tires of the sheep’s irritating stubborn streak and decides to end his solitary sanctuary by lying that a wolf is in his midst. He will do so again the next winter, but each time his Mum (Russell) and Grandad caution him that “no-one trusts a liar, even when they’re telling the truth”. Only this way will he learn that he cannot pull the wool over their eyes.
Significantly, however, Kenny makes a point of Silas insisting he is not a “bad boy but occasionally does bad things”. Just give him time to grow up, embrace his responsibilities and even find his inner wolf.
Director Wendy Harris plays to Kenny’s storytelling strengths, bolstered by Dom Sales’s deeply daft folk songs, played on mandolin, guitar, flute, saxophone and cor anglais, in an enchanting, amusing and ever so slightly scary show when Joanne Bernard’s movement direction and the suitably named Mike Redley’s red lighting transform the cast into the prowling, sometimes howling wolves.
Kenny’s curmudgeonly but highly humorous sheep, with their bleating dialogue and wool-is-cool teenage demeanour, go down particularly well, providing the most fun for both the audience and the cast, who knit together so successfully they deserve to win the village jumper comp.
Cheeky of face, funny of expression, Wingfield captures the easily bored yet adventure-craving essence of Silas; ably backed up by Garcia Lueches’s wise, kindly Grandad and Russell’s often exasperated, always-knitting Mum.
Sheep fans, young mums and their lambs should escape the rain, embrace the snow and flock to this winter winner.
