A scene from Gary Clarke’s Wasteland, heading for York Theatre Royal next month
THE search is on for singing pitmen to
take part in Gary Clarke’s Wasteland, a new dance event at York Theatre Royal
next month.
Four non-professional singers are being
sought to join the cast for the 7.30pm performances on March 27 and 28.
Wasteland was created to mark the 25th
anniversary of the demolition of Grimethorpe Colliery in South Yorkshire and 30
years since the rise of UK rave culture.
Now the Gary Clarke Company is seeking four singers aged over 40 with experience of singing in a group setting or community choir to play the roles of ex-coal miners.
No professional experience is necessary
but applicants should have experience of learning songs from memory and singing
in unison. The role will involve “some moving on and around the stage and
interacting with other members of the company”.
Down the mines: Another scene from Gary Clarke’s Wasteland
Singers will be supported throughout the process by musical director Steven Roberts, assistant musical director Charlie Rhodes, choreographer and artistic director Gary Clarke and company associate Alistair Goldsmith, who will work with everyone’s individual needs and abilities.
Each participant will receive a food
and travel allowance to help cover the cost of rehearsals and
performances.
For any enquiries or to register
interest, send an email to engagementgcc@gmail.com or call engagement manager Laura
Barber on 07391 621966.
Neil Abdy, who grew up in the mining
community of South Yorkshire and whose father was a miner, was one of the team
of volunteers who took part in a special preview at Cast Doncaster in
2018.
“Being given the opportunity to be part
of this excellent work was unbelievable,” he says. “Everyone made us feel
special and the friendship and camaraderie was excellent. I have a new spring
in my step. If you have the opportunity to take part, definitely give it a go.
It’s one of the best experiences you will ever have working with this wonderful
team.”
Tickets for Gary Clarke’s Wasteland are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Out of step with all around him: Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck in Joker
JOKER – Live In Concert will bring Todd
Phillips’s award-laden film to York Barbican with live orchestral accompaniment
of Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score on May 17 at 7.30pm.
Preceded by the world premiere at the Eventim
Apollo, London, on April 30, the international tour has further Yorkshire shows
at Hull Bonus Arena on May 16 and Sheffield City Hall on June 24.
Central to the emotional journey Joaquin
Phoenix’s character Arthur Fleck takes through Phillips’s film is Guðnadóttir’s
beautifully haunting, BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning and Academy Award- nominated
score.
The fusion of looming industrial
soundscapes with raw, emotive string-led melodies – led by a lone cello – creates a melancholic shroud
marked with moments of hope, unfolding gradually to become a fever pitch of
disquieting tension.
Phillips’s music will be brought to life by a full orchestra to build a “vivid, visceral and entirely new Joker viewing experience”.
The London premiere will be conducted by Jeff Atmajian, the conductor and orchestrator of the original soundtrack; Senbla’s Dave Mahoney will take over for the UK tour dates, including York Barbican.
The poster artwork for Joker – Live In Concert
Hildur Guðnadóttir, the first-ever solo female winner of the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, also won a Grammy for her score for HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl. “I’m thrilled to get to see and hear Joker in the cinema with a live orchestra,” she says.
“When we recorded the music, the
orchestra brought such depth and detailed attention to the performances that we
were all literally holding our breaths during most of the recording sessions.
It was a beautiful trip. I’m so happy to get to go there again and for an
audience to experience that too.”
Director Todd Phillips says: “I speak for the entire Joker team when I say how thrilled we are to be working with Senbla and Ollie Rosenblatt on Joker – Live In Concert. I think it’s a wonderful way for audiences to experience Hildur Guðnadóttir‘s haunting and immersive score, while bearing witness to Joaquin Phoenix’s descent into madness as Arthur.”
Joker already has won the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Critics’ Choice awards for Best Actor and Best Original Score and is nominated for 11 Academy Awards, more than any other film. Those nominations for the Oscars awards ceremony include Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Music/Score.
Tickets for Joker – Live In Concert at York Barbican go on sale at Friday at 10am on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office; Hull, 0844 858 5025 or bonusarenahull.com; Sheffield, 0114 278 9789 or sheffieldcityhall.co.uk.
Heart-breaking: Nathaniel Hall in his one-man show First Time at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. Pictures: Andrew Perry
DAY three in the Studio Discoveries festival house, and York
Theatre Royal’s Visionari community programme group will be presenting
Nathaniel Hall’s First Time tomorrow night.
Can you remember your first time? Nathaniel can’t seem to
forget his. To be fair, he has had it playing on repeat for the last 15
years, and now he is telling all in his one-man show on tour in North Yorkshire
this month.
After
playing the VAULT Festival in London, Hall has embarked on his travels, taking
in the McCarthy at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre last night, Harrogate
Theatre’s Studio Theatre tonight and York Theatre Royal Studio tomorrow as part
of Studio Discoveries, a week of new theatre chosen by Visionari.
The party is over, the balloons have all burst and Nathaniel is
left living his best queer life: brunching on pills and Googling ancient
condoms and human cesspits on a weekday morning…or is he?
“Join me as I blow the lid on the secret I’ve been keeping all these years,” says Nathaniel Hall
After
playing the Edinburgh Fringe for four weeks last summer, HIV+ queer artist and
theatre-maker Hall takes First Time on the road as he strives to stay positive
in a negative world. “Join me as I blow the lid on the secret I’ve been
keeping all these years,” he says.
Conceived, written and performed by HIV activist Hall, this
humorous but heart-breaking 75-minute autobiographical show is based on his
personal experience of living with HIV after contracting the virus from his first
sexual encounter at 16.
“Narratives
of HIV often portray people living with the virus as the victim. First Time
doesn’t accept this stance,” says Hall. “It not only transforms audiences into
HIV allies, but also helps them rid toxic shame from their own lives.”
First Time
takes up Hall’s story after an all-night party, when “he hasn’t been to bed and
he hasn’t prepared anything for the show. He’s only had 12 months and a grant
from the Arts Council, but he can’t avoid the spotlight anymore and is forced
to revisit his troubled past”.
“First Time not only transforms audiences into HIV allies, but also helps them rid toxic shame from their own lives ,” says Nathaniel Hall
His path leads from sharing a stolen chicken and stuffing
sandwich with a Will Young lookalike aged 16, through receiving the devastating
news aged 17 and heart-breaking scenes devouring pills and powder for
breakfast, to a candlelit vigil and finally a surprising ending full of
reconciliation, hope…and a houseplant from Mum.
Commissioned
by Waterside Arts and Creative industries Trafford and developed with Dibby
Theatre, the original production led the Borough of Trafford’s 30th World AIDS Day commemorations in 2018.
Directed by
Chris Hoyle and designed by Irene Jade, with music and sound design by Hall,
First Time will be staged at 7.45pm at each location. Tickets:
Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; York, 01904 623568 or
yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Visionari’s Studio Discoveries festival
runs until Saturday. For full details, visit the Theatre Royal website.
Seth Lakeman: telling A Pilgrim’s Tale to mark the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower setting sail
DEVON folk musician Seth Lakeman heralds Friday’s release of his album A Pilgrim’s Tale with a tour that opens at Cast, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, tomorrow night (February 5).
This year marks
400 years since The Mayflower ship departed these shores for the Americas.
Lakeman was raised and still lives on Dartmoor, within sight of the sea at Plymouth, from where the Puritans sailed on The Mayflower in 1620.
His album tells the epic and soulful tale of the
Pilgrim Fathers, and consequently,
the ten tour dates are routed in a trail of towns and
cities that, for various reasons, hold significance to the Mayflower journey.
Locations such as Immingham – where Separatists made a dangerous escape from England to Holland in their search for religious freedom – and Dartmouth, where the ship was anchored for repairs. Doncaster, Harwich, London and, of course, Plymouth feature too.
“If you’d never heard anything about The Mayflower and the birth of the modern USA, these words and music could be your primer,” says Seth, whose album is narrated by actor Paul McGann and features guest performers Cara Dillon, Benji Kirkpatrick, Ben Nicholls and Seth’s father, Geoff Lakeman.
The
Mayflower carried British and Dutch passengers with hopes of fresh settlement, who
were met by the Wampanoag first nation tribe on arrival. Bottling the spirit of
the 17th century pilgrimage, Lakeman has written and performed a
selection songs that shape a fictional narrative of the journey, informed by
research from text, such as the journals of William Bradford; conversations
with modern-day ancestors of the Wampanoag people at the Plymouth Plantation in
Massachusetts, and information sourced at the national heritage sites that
still exist in the UK.
The artwork for Seth Lakeman’s album A Pilgrim’s Tale
Chronicling
the voyage and early settlement in these songs, Lakeman has created a
drama that celebrates the history but does not lose sight of the journey’s
tribulations. It stays sensitive to important facets of the story; the
religious liberation that passengers were trying to achieve, the nefarious
deeds enacted on the Wampanoag, and the deaths that followed on both sides.
Lakeman
feels linked intrinsically to the story. “I didn’t have far to go for
inspiration,” he says. “The Mayflower Steps, on Plymouth’s cobbled
Barbican streets, are 20 minutes away from me.
“I fished
from this quay as a boy, sang songs on tall ships tied up here and played music
in just about every old sailors’ pub in this Elizabethan quarter.”
The
stories in the songs are told from a variety of perspectives, from personal
accounts, such as the opening number, Watch Out, detailing deadly premonitions
of a Wampanoag girl, to tales of the collective travellers in songs such as Pilgrim
Brother and Sailing Time, each marching at a hopeful cadence, reflecting their
early optimism.
In an
immersive tale of struggle, songs bring to life anew 17th century
characters: a crewman wrestling to control the ship; a pilgrim celebrating in
rapturous faith, or the solemn Wampanoag tribesmen forlornly surrendering to
the new way of life thrust on them.
Inspiration
for the project came when Lakeman was on tour in Robert Plant’s band and
paid a visit to the Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts to talk to the
Wampanoag that still reside in the area.
It did not take long for the songs to form on his return to England. “After I travelled home from the ‘New World’ to Plymouth, everything happened in a quite mystical way. The songs came together so speedily and with exactly the vibe I wanted, and we recorded in a very short time in my Crossways Studio at home on Dartmoor,” says Seth, who at present is hosting the BBC Radio 2 series Seth Lakeman’s Folk Map Of The British Isles on Saturday nights..
To
supplement the recordings, a between-song narration was written by the associate
director of Plymouth’s Theatre Royal, Nick Stimson, and read by Paul McGann,
who Lakeman was elated to have on board.
“As we
finished the album, another quite magical thing happened, when Paul agreed to
voice the narration between the tracks on the record. He pitched it perfectly,”
he says.
Released on BMG, the album track listing is: Watch Out; Pilgrim Brother; Westward Bound; A Pilgrim’s Warning; Sailing Time; The Great Iron Screw; Dear Isles Of England; Saints And Strangers; Foreign Man; Bury Nights; The Digging Song and Mayflower Waltz.
Tickets for Lakeman’s 7.30pm concert in Cast’s Main Space tomorrow (February 5) are on sale at castindoncaster.com or on 01302 303959.
Feel the chemistry Emma Lucia’s Girl and Daniel Healy’s Guy in Once , The Musical
Once, The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/York
THREE weeks
into rehearsals at Toynbee Hall in London’s East End, the media were invited to
a press day where director Peter Rowe and musical supervisor Ben Goddard put
their 16-strong cast through their paces in exhilarating fashion.
Sometimes you can feel the magic in the air as early as that, sensing the chemistry between leads Daniel Healy and Emma Lucia and the bonding of the company of actor-musicians as they turned a rehearsal room into an Irish pub full of lusty singing and joyful playing.
You just knew the show was going to be good, but, glory be, it is even better than that. Having cherished John Carney’s micro-budgeted cult romantic Irish film starring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova since 2007, yet aware that many still don’t know that charming movie, save maybe for its multi-award-winning song Falling Slowly, your reviewer urges you to fall immediately for this touring musical version. No time for slowness here.
Broadway, the West End and Dublin have all had a go at doing Once The Musical. Rowe and regular musical partner Goddard first united Scotsman Healy and Durham-born Lucia as Guy and Girl, jilted Dublin busker/vacuum cleaner repairman and immigrant Czech odd-jobs worker and musician, for shows in Ipswich and Hornchurch in 2018, and now they have found the perfect format for a touring version.
What a Guy: Daniel Healy in Once, The Musical
Designed by Libby Watson, the setting is an Irish pub, crammed with pictures and chattering life, where the cast rally the audience with songs familiar from The Pogues, Chieftains and Dubliners to set the Dublin craic.
Scenes are
played out against this backdrop, the musicians fading in and out of scenes,
sometimes acting like a Greek chorus as they lean in, in response to what is
unfolding between Healy’s Guy and Lucia’s Girl.
They are
first encountered as she watches him busking in the chill streets, singing to
his ex, now moved to New York, but still the subject of each pained song,
although he is on the cusp of giving up on those songs too.
Girl is open,
frank, funny for being so serious; Guy is taciturn, guarded, but the shared
love of music speaks volumes and she needs her vacuum cleaner mending. It duly arrives
as if out of thin air, shooting across the stage in one of the show’s many
humorous moments.
Big-hitting Falling Slowly is not held back. Instead, it forms their first song together in Billy’s unruly music shop, tentative at first as she picks out the piano lines, to accompany his singing, then joining in, their voices entwining and overlapping beautifully. Gradually, one by one, the musicians join in too: fiddle, guitars, mandolin, cello, squeezebox and more, in union, in sympathy.
Emma Lucia’s Girl saying hello to the piano – which musicians should always do, she says
Here, in a
nutshell, is why Once works wonders as a musical, being as much a celebration
of the power of music in Dublin’s fair city as a love story of ebb and flow,
rise and fall, surprise and revelation, over five all too short days.
The path of
love is never smooth, as we all know, but for those who have never seen Once,
it would be wrong to issue spoiler alerts of what ensues. Except to say, on the
way home you will want to discuss how the open-ended story might progress, if you
have any romantic bones in your body!
Healy and
Lucia are terrific leads: who would not fall for either of them?! His Guy is
generous, kind, a blue-eyed soul man of song and acoustic guitar playing; her Girl,
his new Czech mate, is feisty, fearless in the face of adversity in her adopted
city, and plays the piano exquisitely too.
Dan Bottomley’s
hapless, bandy-legged, hopelessly romantic, fiery Billy pickpockets plenty of
scenes and Ellen Chivers, last seen in York last summer in the Theatre Royal’s Swallows
& Amazons, is even better as wild-spirited Czech Reza.
From Enda Walsh’s witty, whimsical, love-struck script to Hansard and Irglova’s impassioned songs, you must see Once, a wonderful show that blows away weeks of panto wars and politics, to herald a new year of theatre in York. In fact, it is so enjoyable, you could go not once, but twice…and make sure to arrive early to see York buskers Rachel Makena, Florence Taylor, Owen Gibson and Peter Wookie taking turns pre-show and in the interval in the foyer bar.
Jools Holland: on tour for 32 autumn and winter dates
BOOGIE WOOGIE pianist Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra
will be joined on tour for the first time by veteran singer Leo Sayer, as well
as original Squeeze compadre Chris Difford.
Both Sayer and Difford will perform at York Barbican on November 11,
Harrogate International Centre on November 27 and Leeds First Direct Arena on
the 32-date itinerary’s closing night, December 20. Sayer, but not Difford,
will be a guest at Holland’s Sheffield City Hall show on December 3.
Tickets for Holland’s 24th autumn and winter tour will go on sale at 10am on Friday (February 7) via Ticketmaster, See Tickets, Ticketline and Stargreen, as well as the venues.
Leo Sayer: touring with Jools Holland’s orchestra for the first time in 2020
Joining
jaunty Jools too will be two long-term participants, gospel, blues and soul
singer Ruby Turner, who has written songs with Holland, and original Squeeze
drummer Gilson Lavis. Regular vocalist Louise Marshall will be there each show
too.
Sayer,
71, who became an Australian citizen in 2009 after moving to Sydney, New South
Wales, in 2005, charted in the Top Ten with all of his first seven hits between
1973 and 1978: The Show Must Go On, One Man Band, Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance),
Moonlighting, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, the chart-topping When I Need You and
How Much Love.
Further
success followed with I Can’t Stop Loving You (Though I Try) and More Than I
Can Say in 1978, Have You Ever Been In Love in 1982 and Thunder In My Heart,
contributing vocals to Meck’s number one in 2006.
Chris Difford: Squeezing in autumn and winter dates with Jools Holland
Difford, Holland’s fellow Squeeze co-founder, has worked through the
years with Glen Tilbrook, also writing with Elton John, Paul Carrack, Lisa
Stansfield, Bryan Ferry, Helen Shapiro, Elvis Costello and Holland too, who
calls him “the John Lennon of London, the John Betjeman of Blackheath and the Alain
Delon of Deptford”.
Holland and his orchestra have performed previously with Eddi Reader, Lulu,
Joss Stone, Fine Young Cannibals’ Roland Gift, Spice Girl Melanie
C and Marc Almond. For his 2020 tour, UB40 featuring Ali and Astro will join him for
three November gigs in Guildford and London.
Jools is recording his next album, whose focus will be on piano
stylings, duets and collaborations with top instrumentalists, for autumn
release.
Tickets for York Barbican, where Holland last played on October 31 2019, will be on sale on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; Leeds, firstdirectarena.com; Sheffield, 0114 278 9789 or sheffieldcityhall.co.uk.
What if the story of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight were to be retold by the woman at its heart ? Debbie Cannon does exactly that in Green Knight
STUDIO Disoveries, a week of new
theatre chosen by the Visionari community programming group, continues tomorrow
with a brace of shows at the York Theatre Royal Studio.
Writer and performer Debbie Cannon’s
Green Knight, at 6.30pm, is a one-woman version of the medieval poem Sir Gawain
And The Green Knight.
The setting is Christmas at Camelot,
where a monstrous green warrior issues an unwinnable challenge to Arthur’s
finest knight, but what if the story were to be retold by the woman at its
heart?
Flying
Elephant’s premiere production, Picasso’s Women, delivers a unique look at Picasso’s life through the
voices of his wives, mistresses and muses at 8.30pm.
One of three of Picasso’s Women at York Theatre Royal Studio tomorrow
Written by Brian McAvera, directed by
Marcia Carr and performed by Judith Paris, Colette Redgrave and Lucy Hunt, it
takes the form of three monologues featuring French model Fernande, Russian
ballerina Olga and 17-year-old mistress Marie-Therese.
Originally produced for the National
Theatre and BBC Radio 3, the women’s stories provide an insight into the
influence these women had on Picasso’s life and art.
The full programme for Visionari’s
second Studio Discoveries season can be found at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. The
festival begins today (February 4) with Not Now Collective’s Pepper &
Honey, a new play with live Croatian pepper biscuit-baking, at 11am and 2pm. Box
office: 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the Theatre
Royal box office.
YORKSHIREMAN Simon Armitage performs in York tonight and tomorrow for
the first time since being appointed Poet Laureate last May.
The 56-year-old Huddersfield poet is presenting Seeing Stars: An Evening
With Simon Armitage at York Theatre Royal in two fundraising
shows to support the theatre’s community work.
Confirmed to be joining Armitage for the 7.30pm shows are actors Kacey Ainsworth (best known for playing Little Mo in EastEnders), Richard Bremmer, Charlotte Mills and Tom Kanji.
Curated by Scarborough-born theatre director Nick Bagnall, Seeing Stars features readings from Armitage’s works inspired by Sir Gawain And The Green Knight and The Death Of King Arthur on the tenth anniversary of Seeing Stars, his “very dramatic, very theatrical” book of dramatic monologues, allegories and absurdist tall tales.
Nine months into his Poet Laureateship, how would Armitage, the first
Professor of Poetry at Leeds University, define poetry? “I’ve always taken the
view that poetry is not just one thing,” he says.
“There have been recent times when people think it’s just words in a
book, but performance has always been important and that has come back into
fashion and been re-imagined too with spoken-word slams. There is room for everybody
creating the language.”
Armitage continues: “One of the roles of the Poet Laureate, as I see it,
is to promote poetry and speak up for the arts.
” I know it can have a strange effect on people when you say you’re a poet,” says Poet Laureate Simon Armitage
“My feeling is, if you’re involved with the arts, you’re more
comfortable with yourself and you bring that to the inner universe you exist
in, even if it’s only being more comfortable about language and how you think.”
At a time of cutbacks in arts funding and schools putting science before
the arts in the curriculum, Armitage says: “You stifle creativity at your peril
because, if you don’t offer an outlet, if you antagonise, it will still find a
way out.”
Where does Armitage see sitting poets sitting in the public’s perception
in 2020? As minstrels? Prophets? Commentators? Outsiders? “I know it can have a
strange effect on people when you say you’re a poet. Definitely there’s something
of the outside, the alternative, about it,” he says.
“It’s been a ‘peculiar’, not ever a mainstream, artform but I think people
have a soft spot in their heart for poetry, especially at moments in their life,
happy or sad, whether reading it or even writing it in those moments, so I still
don’t think it’s a remote artform.”
As for his aims in his ten-year tenure as Poet Laureate, Armitage says: “By
the end of those ten years, I would like to have seen my projects come to
fruition [such as the newly founded Laurel Prize for nature poems and the
establishing of a National Centre for Poetry].
“I’d also like to be judged for my writing, either myself seeking to
maintain standards, or writing in a communicative, engaging way, and my Poet
Laureate poems have to satisfy me too.”
Seeing Stars: An Evening With Simon Armitage, York Theatre
Royal, tonight and tomorrow, February 4 and 5, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568
or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
YORK Guildhall
Orchestra will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a
special York Barbican concert on February 15.
Almost 40 years to the day from when the orchestra was founded by John Hastie and played in a “one-off” in the York Guildhall in February 1980, the anniversary will be marked with a 7.30pm programme of works and composers from that first concert.
Who
could have foretold the amazing journey, reputation, critical acclaim and
popularity of the Guildhall group that has developed in the intervening years?
The anniversary concert will
begin with the first piece the orchestra played in 1980: Ravel’s Mother Goose
Suite (Mere L’Oye), a showpiece for glorious orchestral tunes featuring the
talents of the wind section.
This will be followed by
the return of soloist Jamie Walton, founder of the North York Moors Chamber
Music Festival, for Elgar’s evergreen Cello Concerto. A celebratory
orchestral work by John Hastie will open the second half that will conclude with
Brahms’s Symphony No 2 (Symphony In Norahms).
This finale will call on
the whole orchestra to do what it loves doing best: play a luxurious, full
orchestral work of the Romantic period of classical music.
Tickets cost £6.30 to £17.55 on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.
New pantomime partnership: York Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster and executive director Tom Bird with Evolution Productions producer Paul Hendy,
THE new age of pantomime at York
Theatre Royal will involve Evolution rather than revolution.
For the first panto of the post-Berwick
Kaler era, the Theatre Royal is teaming up with award-winning pantomime producers
Evolution to present Cinderella.
The show dates will be December 4 to
January 10 2021, an earlier start and finish than the December 7 to January 25
run for Sleeping Beauty, Dame Berwick’s last pantomime as co-director and writer
after a 41-year association with the Theatre Royal.
Cinderella will be directed by Theatre
Royal associate director Juliet Forster, who directed Shakespeare’s comedy A
Midsummer Night’s Dream for Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre in York in 2018 and Arthur
Miller’s A View From The Bridge in the Theatre Royal main house last September,
as well as children’s shows aplenty.
Juliet Forster, who will direct York Theatre Royal’s pantomime, Cinderella
The script will be written by Evolution
co-founder and producer Paul Hendy in tandem with York-born comedy writer and
podcaster David Reed, who has returned to his home city and will provide
additional material.
The cast is yet to be announced but
will not be a star vehicle, with variety acts and blossoming pantomime talent
and a “York flavour” likely to be to the fore instead. The set designer, not
confirmed yet, will be charged with creating magical transformations and glittering
sets to complement the “stunning songs and side-splitting laughs”.
Formed in 2005 by Paul Hendy and Emily
Wood, Evolution Productions present “bespoke pantomimes of epic spectacle and
hilarity” for the Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield; Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury; The
Hawth Theatre, Crawley; Garrick Theatre, Lichfield; Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury;
Alban Arena, St Albans; Octagon Theatre, Yeovil, and Grove Theatre, Dunstable,
now joined in a co-producing partnership by York Theatre Royal.
Juliet Forster and Theatre Royal
executive director Tom Bird were exhilarated by Evolution’s 2019-2020 pantomime
for Sheffield Theatres, starring long-running dame Damian Williams in
Cinderella at the Lyceum.
Paul Hendy’s script from that hit show will
provide an early template for Reed to set to work on giving it a York branding,
with Cinderella’s rags-to-riches story being switched to this historic city in
a “new pantomime for everyone”.
Evolution producer Paul Hendy: co-writer of Cinderella at York Theatre Royal
Executive
director Bird says: “We are
over the moon to be creating a spectacular new pantomime for the people of York:
one that’s tailor-made for the whole family, while honouring the pantomime
traditions that our audiences love so much.
“Our recipe includes two of the most
exciting voices in our city, David Reed and Juliet Forster, together with Emily
Wood and Paul Hendy, the finest makers of pantomime in the country – a
fairytale combination.”
Bird continues: “This phenomenal team
will give the York Theatre Royal pantomime a new lease of life with a fresh,
family friendly, fun-filled approach to the story of Cinderella. It’s a
pantomime for the new decade, set with pride in our amazing city.”
Evolution Productions has built a
reputation for superior, bespoke pantomimes with the emphasis on high-quality
production values, strong casting and funny scripts, twice winning Pantomime of
the Year at the Great British Pantomime Awards.
Producer and writer Hendy says: “Emily
and I are absolutely thrilled to be working with York Theatre Royal on this
year’s pantomime. We are huge fans of the theatre and we’re looking forward to
collaborating with Tom and his brilliant team to produce a wonderful, family-friendly
pantomime with spectacular production values, a superbly talented cast,
and a genuinely funny script.”
Ticket prices will remain the same as
for 2019-2020. Family tickets and Sunday shows are being introduced, as well as
schools and groups discounts so that “everyone can go to the ball”.
Theatre Royal members’ ten-day priority booking opened today; members’ five-day priority booking on February 8; 9am in person at the box office, 10am online and phone booking. General booking opens on February 13; same times as above. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Meanwhile, Berwick Kaler’s first pantomime
at his new York home, the Grand Opera House, will be Dick Turpin Rides Again, with
writer, director and revived dame Kaler being joined by regular cohorts Martin
Barrass, David Leonard, Suzy Cooper and AJ Powell for Qdos Entertainment’s
panto partnership with the Ambassador Theatre Group.
