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Teacher James B Partridge holds York Barbican assembly for Primary School Bangers. Put it on Saturday’s timetable

James B Partridge: From viral videos on TikTok to concert halls with his Primary School Bangers. Picture: Rebecca Johnson

VIRAL sensation and “Britain’s favourite primary school teacher” James B Partridge turns York Barbican into a school hall assembly on Saturday in the only Yorkshire date of his Primary School Bangers spring term.

After notching more than 71 million views of his videos online  on YouTube and TikTok, James is bringing even more of the iconic songs that defined our childhoods to theatres and concert halls throughout April 2026.

Expect classic school-day singalongs of hymns and songs “we were forced to do in assembly” in a night of heart-on-sleeve nostalgia, delivered with James’s trademark infectious joy as he follows up his sold-out Big Christmas Assembly tour.

What started as a few playful videos of James performing songs for his pupils in the classroom has grown into a nationwide phenomenon, spreading from social-media fame to a field-closing Glastonbury set, featured on the BBC’s festival highlights, all while he continues to teach primary school children during the week.

“I’ve brought the show to York before,” James recalls. “I came to Theatre@41, Monkgate, twice in 2023, when I first started doing the early version of Primary School Bangers [or Primary School Assembly Bangers as it was first known], beginning in February that year.

Alan Park: Chair of the board at Theatre @41, Monkgate, where James B Partridge played twice in the first year of Primary School Bangers and Big Christmas Assembly in 2023

“I spent quite a while emailing arts centres and venues, including Alan Park at Theatre@41, when I presented what looked like this nerdy spread sheet! The initial pitch was: ‘Are you are up for a night of school assembly singalongs?’ – and lot of venues just pressed ‘Delete’.”

Not Alan Park, however. “If I can put in a shameless plug for Theatre@41, James’s pitch chimed with our policy of bringing new artists to York,” says chair of the board Alan. “We pride ourselves on looking at everything we’re sent, and we thought it was a great idea as he’d had such success online.

“I was bowled over when it sold out, and then the second show – his Christmas Assembly show – sold out as well, and I’m so pleased he’s now going to play York Barbican. I like how performers can start here, because we’re open to taking a gamble on them, and then they grow and go on to bigger things.”

 As James recalls: “At that first show I did in York in June 2023, there was a combination of  people who’d seen what I’d done online, plus some curious locals, with a general demographic of people in their late-30s to their 50s. A lot of them were in their 40s – and a lot of them were teachers.

“Luckily Theatre@41 invited me back in November 2023 for The Big Christmas Assembly, although that was a slightly misleading title as most of the venues had a capacity under 100 – but the only way is up!

“I just through they’d be fun videos for my family and friends to reminisce about, but they translated to all sorts of people that I’d never met,” says James

“I was playing a combination of studio theatres, cabaret venues and venues above pubs, but thankfully the concept has grown, when at first it was very much a case of seeing how it goes by posting videos online.”

Those videos had caught the eye and ear because James had chosen to go “left-field”. “I put my top five Easter hymns on there and then my Top Ten Primary School Bangers. I just through they’d be fun videos for my family and friends to reminisce about, but they translated to all sorts of people that I’d never met.

“Then, when we made it out of lockdown, I also resumed my function band, Truly Medley Deeply, playing songs from the Sixties to the present day – I still play with them occasionally – but I was raring to go with Primary School Bangers, and came up with idea of a immersive theatre show after the videos.”

James’s combination of harmony, humour and heart has gone on to strike a chord with audiences of every generation, as they recall childhood days of standing in school assemblies in the lunch hall/sports hall/exam hall, half-heartedly singing a bunch of songs, but now singing those same songs at the top of their voice along with everyone else in the room.

Alongside his live shows, James has performed with Gareth Malone’s Voices at the Royal Variety Show, provided vocals for Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and Electric Light Orchestra and appeared on Chris Evans’ Virgin Radio Breakfast Show, BBC Breakfast, CBBC Newsround, ITV’s This Morning, BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show, BBC One’s The One Show and Songs of Praise: The Big School Assembly Singalong.

How would he define a “Primary School Banger”? Not The Wheels On The Bus, apparently! “I would argue that’s probably a pre-school banger, so that could be a whole new show,” says James.

“A  ‘Primary School Banger’ is a tune that lots of people enjoyed singing at school and loved singing along to, which includes hymns like All Things Bright And Beautiful and Morning Is Broken, but also new worship songs that were sung across the UK as part of school assembly.

Whether you are a teacher, a parent, or just someone who remembers every word to He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands, Primary School Bangers is a class act this weekend. 

James B Partridge, Primary School Bangers, York Barbican, Saturday (4/4/2026), doors 7pm. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk. Also playing two Yorkshire autumn dates: Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, September 21, and CAST, Doncaster, September 22. Box office: jamesbpartridge.com.

James B Partridge’s Primary School Bangers: Put it on the weekend timetable

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Alexander Armstrong and Aled Jones to team up for The Big Christmas Sing-a-Long debut tour. York Barbican awaits on December 11. When do tickets go on sale?

Alexander Armstrong and Aled Jones

ALEXANDER Armstrong and Aled Jones will host The Big Christmas Sing-a-Long at York Barbican on December 11.

Tickets for the only Yorkshire venue on their 13-date debut tour will go on sale at 9.30am on Thursday (2/4/2026) at https://www.yorkbarbican.co.uk/whats-on/sing-a-long/.

Performers and presenters Armstrong and Jones will unite for a festive season of music, laughter and Christmas cheer in cathedrals, theatres and concert halls from November 24 to December 21, promising “some special surprises along the way”.

Armstrong was one half of the comedy duo Armstrong and Miller, teaming up for series on Channel 4 and BBC One with Ben Miller.

As well as hosting Classic FM’s flagship weekday mid-morning programme, he continues to be a regular on BBC One’s Have I Got News For You, having hosted more than 40 episodes, as well as helming BBC One quiz show Pointless.

After branching out into presenting travel shows, he will make his fifth series for Channel 5 in the United States of America this summer. He published his debut children’s novel, Evenfall: The Golden Linnet, in 2024 and the follow-up, Evenfall: The Tempest Stone in February this year. 

The poster for Alexander Armstrong & Aled Jones’s debut tour of The Big Christmas Sing-a-Long

Welsh television and radio personality and concert singer Jones, 55, will perform beloved songs, including his signature rendition of Walking In The Air, alongside classic carols synonymous with the festive season.

Joining him on stage will be Northumberland-born comedian, actor, Pointless presenter and singer Armstrong, 56, whose bass-baritone vocals and charm will bring humour, warmth and festive sparkle to York.

Audiences will be invited to pull on their favourite Christmas jumper and sing along to a joyful mix of traditional Christmas carols, modern festive favourites and timeless seasonal classics.

Original crossover star Jones has sung for the Pope and the Royal Family, received an MBE and released more than 40 albums, achieving ten million sales and more than 40 silver, gold and platinum discs.

Beginning his career at the age of 12, Jones was one of the world’s most successful boy sopranos, becoming the first classical artist to have two albums in the top five of the Official Album Charts.

He has built an extensive career as a TV and radio presenter, hosting his Classic FM show and BBC One’s Songs Of Praise, while continuing to record and tour. Last year, he released his third book, Aled’s Book Of Blessings for 2026, and he is now working on his next one.

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York linocut artist Gerard Hobson designs 13 bird boxes for Castle Howard Gardens and Arboretum’s Easter Family Trail

York artist Gerard Hobson with one of his 13 bird boxes for Castle Howard’s Easter trail. Picture: David Scott

YORK wildlife, flora and fauna artist and printmaker Gerard Hobson is collaborating with Castle Howard on a new interactive Easter trail for families, comprising 13 handmade wooden bird boxes installed for a springtime adventure across Castle Howard Gardens and the Arboretum.

In post until April 19, the boxes house Hobson’s linocuts of birds, including swallow, magpie, woodpecker and wren, as part of a story designed for children as they all prepare for spring.

All those who complete the trail, answering questions posed by Owl and his friends, will be rewarded with a chocolate prize at the finish, supplied by Autism Plus in Knaresborough. “Designing and making this trail has been a wonderful opportunity to showcase the varied wildlife that visits our gardens, both at home and in the Castle Howard Estate,” says Gerard.

“Young explorers will discover interesting facts about our feathered friends and learn more about their homes along the way,” he says.

Ben Paterson installing one of Gerard Hobson’s bird boxes at the Castle Howard Arboretum for the Castle Howard Easter trail. Picture: David Scott

Abbigail Ollive, Castle Howard’s visitor attraction director, says: “Easter is always a special time to visit the estate and this year’s trail is a wonderful way for families to explore the gardens and learn about nature together.

“Gerard is known for his bold hand-coloured lino prints, inspired by British wildlife, and we are delighted to partner with him as he transforms his beautiful style into a playful outdoor installation. We’re thrilled that the trail extends across both Castle Howard and the Arboretum, so families can continue the adventure.”

The Easter Family Trail is included with Castle Howard Membership, along with Castle Howard and Arboretum day tickets at castlehoward.co.uk and castlehowardarboretumtrust.org. The Castle Howard Farm Shop and Arboretum Shop are stocking Gerard Hobson’s designs, including prints and homeware, for sale.

Hobson will be taking part in York Open Studios on April 18, 19, 25 and 26, from 10am to 5pm, demonstrating his linocut printing skills at his studio in Water Lane, Clifton.

Artist and printmaker Gerard Hobson in his Water Lane studio in York. Picture: Gerard Hobson

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REVIEW: Steve Crowther’s verdict on Carducci String Quartet, British Music Society of York, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, March 27

Carducci String Quartet

THE Carducci String Quartet opened their programme with a poised and assured account of Mozart’s String Quartet in C major, K. 465, the ‘Dissonance’.

Despite its nickname, the opening feels less discordant than unsettled, but its harmonic daring is still radical.

As Matthew Denton (first violin) pointed out, one more chromatic note and we would have the serial set: Haydn – Mozart – Schoenberg. Maybe.

Once the Allegro begins, however, the music resolves into clarity: the curtain lifted, the sun came out and Classical balance is restored. The ensemble interplay was lively and finely judged throughout.

The Menuetto – my favourite movement – retained its charm without underplaying the darker, less grounded A minor Trio. The Allegro molto last movement was again notable for the crisp exchanges, but it was the beautiful projection of song in the second movement Andante cantabile which really impressed.

The performance had a real operatic quality. Across the work, the Carduccis conveyed a strong sense of structural coherence.

After this Classical poise, Rebecca Clarke’s one-movement Poem opened up a more elusive, impressionistic sound world. The performance was highly persuasive. Echoes of Ravel and Debussy were clear, yet Clarke’s voice remained distinctive.

Themes seemed to emerge and dissolve rather than assert themselves, creating a continuous unfolding of mood and texture rather than a clearly defined architecture.

The Carducci Quartet clearly understood the music’s melancholic, unsettled character, shaping it with sensitivity and restraint. I admired the piece and the performance, but the impact was fleeting – the work didn’t stay with me, just a lovely impression of it.

From this impressionistic fluidity, the programme returned to firmer ground with Beethoven’s String Quartet in C major, Op. 59 No. 3, often regarded as the most immediately approachable of the Razumovsky quartets.

Its opening Andante shares something of Mozart’s harmonic uncertainty, unfolding with an almost improvisatory quality before the Allegro decisively asserts itself in a burst of C major energy and clarity.

This is a technically demanding movement, particularly for the first violin, and Matthew Denton was pushed to the limits in the frequent upper register passages of the development section. The rapid string crossings were dispatched with brilliance.

The second movement, Andante con moto, provided the emotional centre of the work: restrained, inward and quietly hypnotic, with an undercurrent of sadness that never became sentimental.

Maybe this hinted at the well-documented despair mapped out in the Heiligenstadt Testament? Probably not. What was fascinating was the recapitulation: here the themes are presented in reverse order, creating a quite radical sense of symmetry.

A charming, short Menuetto grazioso also functioned as a lead-in to the Allegro molto final movement. Suddenly, it was fasten-your-seatbelts time as the Quartet zipped through this relentless fugal tour de force. The articulation was razor-sharp and the rhythmic drive utterly relentless. It was an exhilarating conclusion, both to the work and to the programme as a whole.

The performance that stood out as being exceptional was their account of Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 3, Mishima.

Drawn from Glass’s score for Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, the work unfolds in a series of vividly characterised tableaux. The familiar elements of minimalism – repetition, looping motifs, pulsing rhythms – were all present, but the Carducci Quartet brought far more than surface precision.  What emerged was a performance of real depth and intensity, with a strong sense of dramatic continuity.

The technical demands are considerable: intonation must be exact, and the physical stamina required is significant. Both were met with complete assurance. More importantly, the Quartet revealed the work’s psychological dimension – its tension, its stillness, its underlying unease. Nothing felt routine; everything was shaped with insight and purpose.

I have heard this work many times, but this performance stood head and shoulders above any I have encountered.

Review by Steve Crowther

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Last chance to see: The Ladies Football Club, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield ****

The women factory works – and footballers to boot – in The Ladies Football Club. Picture: Johan Persson

GO Firth and multiply the possibilities. In the wake of BAFTA and Olivier Award winner Tim Firth being asked to write the book for the Madness musical Our House and adapting his Calendar Girls film script for the stage version and subsequently the musical with composer Gary Barlow, now he puts the Sheffield into Stefano Massino’s 2019 Italian play Ladies Football Club, adding “The” to become the definitive version.

One accompanied in the city known as the “Home of Football” by foyer panels of information on the history of the women’s game, from Dick, Kerr’s Ladies FC and legendary gay star winger Lily Parr to Hope Powell and beyond.

Parr’s story, incidentally, has been told theatrically in Benjamin Peel’s Not A Game For Girls and Sabrina Mahfouz and Hollie McNish’s Offside, a play about football, feminism and female empowerment: themes in common with Firth’s premiere.

In the amphitheatre of the Sheffield Crucible, a theatrical sporting venue more associated with the multi-coloured ball-manoeuvring skills of snooker’s world championship, Sheffield Theatres’ artistic director Elizabeth Newman teams up with Frantic Assembly counterpart Scott Graham, whose trademark storytelling through movement was so crucial to the National Theatre’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time.

Jessica Baglow’s goalkeeper Rosalyn leaps into action in The Ladies Football Club. Picture: Johan Persson

Bringing football alive on stage has been expressed in myriad forms, from the game enacted in the heat of Celtic-Rangers sectarianism in avant-garde ballet maverick’s Michael Clark & Company’s punk liaison with Mark E Smith’s The Fall in I Am Curious, Orange, at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in 1988, to the masks and mannequins for the “Dirty Leeds” players in Anders Lustgarten’s Brian Clough psychodrama The Damned United.

More recently, Amanda Whittington turned the spotlight on the early days of women’s football in Mikron Theatre’s four-hander Atalanta Forever in 2021 and James Graham essayed the state-of-the-nation treatise wrapped inside the so-close-but-no-cigar reinvention of England’s football team under thoroughly decent Gareth Southgate, premiered by the National Theatre in 2023 and now being stretched into a four-part BBC One series.

You could argue that theatre’s best evocation of physical combat on the sports field comes in John Godber’s Up’N’Under, wherein Rugby League’s bruising encounters are played out by actors wearing shirts with one team’s colours on the front and the opponent’s strip on the back. So simple, so economical, so effective, so Godber.

Here, in The Ladies Football Club, no football is kicked with a satisfying thud, although we still feel every lunging tackle, every meaty header, as the cut and thrust, the tension and drama, of a game is evoked by Graham through largely balletic movement, sometimes freeze-frame in the manner of Roy Of The Rovers comic strips, sometimes in cartoonish slow motion, other times with sudden circular bursts of energised running.

“Offside, ref!”: The Doyle & Walker Ladies players protest in The Ladies Football Club. Picture: Johan Persson

There are 11 players on the “pitch”, sometimes fewer, depending on factory resources available, but all representing only the one team. Opponents are a ghostly blur, conjured in your imagination, as the Sheffield foundry team go through their motions and emotions.

Just as the opposing teams are absent, so too are the steel city’s men folk, sent to the front in the Great War. The women take over their Doyle & Walker factory labours, making the munitions for all that senseless fighting and bombing.

We see them on the factory floor, with their banter, their sandwiches and their rivalries, and we see them starting up lunchbreak kickabouts, with their banter, their sandwiched tackles and their rivalries, before progressing from playing with prototype explosives for a ball to local pitches and ultimately to famous stadia.

Teamwork is captured in Graham’s ensemble movement; individual stories are played out in Firth’s script, 11 stories in all, one for each player, each with a back story to tell.

Anne Odeke’s Justine celebrating victory in The Ladies Football Club. Picture: Johan Persson

That requires Firth to emphasise one trait or trope to encapsulate a character, a device that is at risk of making them 2D, rather than 3D, but aids the humour in the clashes of personality, beliefs and habits, also brought out in the way each plays the game. The fiery Marxist activist of the team plays, where else, but on the left wing.

Firth and director Newman have to squeeze in too much, but the accumulative effect is to bring the speed and momentum of a match into the storytelling, matched by Joe Ransom’s playful video designs, using projections rather than jumpers for goalposts, as the walls and floor come alive, in tandem with the ‘cabinets’ in Grace Smart’s smart set design, from which the factory work stations are pulled out.

United in defiance in the team line-up are Jessica Baglow’s stoical goalkeeper, Rosalyn; Cara Theobold’s workforce leader, Violet; Leah Brotherhead’s idealist militant, Hayley; Lesley Hart’s minister’s daughter, Berenice; Bettrys Jones’s Olivia, first with the news from the family newsagency, Ellie Leach’s Brianna, Claire Norris’s late-blooming outsider, Melanie; Krupa Pattani’s Cheryl, reluctant player-turned-captain; Cheryl Webb’s Abigail; Chanel Waddock’s Penelope, and, most amusing of all, Anne Odeke’s loud and proud Justine, never short of a salty quip.

How rare and exhilarating it is to see an entirely female cast – and of this number too – as they fight to break out of the strictures of prescribed roles for women.

Playing for more than kicks: Chanel Waddock’s Penelope in The Ladies Football Club. Picture: Johan Persson

When Red Ladder staged The Damned United, artistic director Rod Dixon summed up the play’s attributes thus: “As a story, it has it all – passion, power struggles, tragedy and a classic anti-hero – which lends itself brilliantly to theatre.” In the case of The Ladies Football Club, passion, power struggles and the tragedy of war play out. As for an anti-hero, the Football Association banned women’s football from 1921 to 1971 on the grounds of safety risks (to their anatomy). In a nutshell, the beautiful game was deemed “quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.”

And so, women received the red card from both the post-war factory floor and playing pitch. Amanda Whittington wrote Atalanta Forever as her revenge play; Firth concludes The Ladies Football Club with a triumphant coda, celebrating the Lionesses’ victories and welcoming the next generation of young players on stage in full England kit (in a role shared by Evie-Rose Drake, Cristina La Roca, Bonnie Hill and Sophie tanner).

The audience cheers rise all the louder, honouring the wartime past of the foundry’s first flame of players while holding a torch for the future too. Football is indeed coming home…to Sheffield.

Sheffield Theatres in The Ladies Football Club, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, today, kick-off at 7.15pm. Box office: 0114 249 6000 or sheffieldtheatres.co.uk.

Explosive drama: Claire Norris’s Melanie, centre, discovering the football is a prototype bomb in The Ladies Football Club. Picture: Johan Persson

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More Things To Do in York and beyond as the clocks go forward and arts spring up. Hutch’s List No. 12, from The York Press

James Bye, left, Shvorne Marks, Natalie Casey and Grant Kilburn in Danny Robins’ 2:22 A Ghost Story, on tour at Grand Opera House, York

THE clock is ticking to see a ghostly thriller, a madcap murder mystery, a poetic book launch and an unjust trial as Charles Hutchinson sets his arts alarm.

Supernatural thriller of the week: 2:22 A Ghost Story, Grand Opera House, York, March 30 to April 4, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees

“THERE’S something in our house. I hear it every night. At the same time,” says Jenny, who believes her new home is haunted, but her husband Sam is having none of it. Whereupon they argue with their first dinner guests, old friend Lauren and new partner Ben. Can the dead really walk again? Belief and scepticism clash, but something feels strange and frightening and is moving closer. Only by staying up until 2:22 will they know the answer.

James Bye, Shvorne Marks, Natalie Casey and Grant Kilburn perform Uncanny and The Battersea Poltergeist podcaster Danny Robins’s supernatural thriller, the Best New Play winner at the 2022 WhatsOnStage Awards, on its return to York. As secrets emerge and ghosts may or may not appear, dare you discover the truth? Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

What We Could Have, by Sarah Williams, from the Other Viewpoints exhibition at Pyramid Gallery

Meet The Makers event of the week: Other Viewpoints, Lesley Williams, Sarah Williams, Peter Heaton and Adele Howitt, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, today, 11.30am to 2.30pm

YORKSHIRE artists Lesley Williams, Sarah Williams and Peter Heaton and ceramicist Adele Howitt have teamed up for Other Viewpoints, on show until May 9. Today, they will be on hand to discuss their work.

Lesley, from York, makes semi-abstract oil paintings based on rural landscape and gardens; Sarah, also from York, employs colours, textural marks and shapes in blending abstract and figurative elements; Peter, from North Yorkshire, is exhibiting landscape fine art prints, and Hornsea maker Adele’s ceramics are marked by notions of the living landscape, abstraction, pollen grains and natural pattern.

Main Street Sound: In harmony with Harmonia at the NCEM

Choral concert of the week: Choirs In Harmony, Main Street Sound & Harmonia, National Centre for Early Music, York, today, 7.30pm

CHOIRS In Harmony brings together two Yorkshire vocal groups for an evening of rich, expressive choral music. York’s only ladies’ barbershop chorus, Main Street Sound, and Malton contemporary, folk, jazz, and musical theatre ladies’ choir Harmonia join forces to showcase a vibrant mix of contemporary arrangements, close harmony and uplifting ensemble singing. Expect moments of intimacy, bursts of energy and the joy of voices uniting in a space made for resonance. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.

Giddy up: Country queen Twinnie rides into The Crescent tonight

Recommended but sold out already: Twinnie, The Crescent, York, tonight, 7.30pm

BORN in York and now established as the UK’s leading country-pop trailblazer on the American circuit after her West End musical theatre days and TV soap career as Porsche McQueen in Hollyoaks and ruthless boxing promoter Jade Garrick in Emmerdale, Twinnie-Lee Moore returns home on her Dirt Road Disco Tour.

Noted for her fearless honesty and storytelling truths, she blends Nashville-inspired country roots with pop hooks and her own gypsy-influenced flair in songs of empowerment, vulnerability, and unapologetic individuality. She made her Grand Ole Opry debut in November 2023 as the first British Romani Traveller to perform in the circle and featured on Rob Brydon’s Honky Tonk Road Trip documentary series on BBC Two last year.

Lucy Kierl in rehearsal for the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s madcap musical mystery Murder For Two. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

Whodunit of the week: Murder For Two, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, today to April 18, 7.30pm plus 1.30pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees

JOE Kinosian and Kellen Blair’s fast-paced musical whodunit is a madcap murder mystery with a twist, performed by two actors, Tom Babbage and Lucy Kierl, who play 13 characters between them, plus the piano, as they put the laughter into manslaughter.

When famous novelist Arthur Whitney is found dead at his birthday party, it is time to call in the detectives, but they are out of town. Enter Officer Marcus Moscowicz, a neighbourhood cop who dreams of climbing the ranks. Here is his chance to prove his super sleuthing skills and solve the crime before the real detective arrives. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

Stu Freestone: Launching first poetry collection at The Crescent

Book launch of the week: York Literature Festival and Say Owt present Stu Freestone, The Lights That Blur Between, The Crescent, York, March 30, 7pm to 10pm

YORK performance poet, Say Owt gobby collective associate artist and Cheese Trader cheesemonger Stu Freestone launches his debut poetry collection, The Lights That Blur Between, with two sets, one comedic, the other accompanied by guitarist Simone Focarelli, accordionist Ben Crosthwaite and drummer Joe Douglas. In support will be Grantham singer-songwriter Adam Leeson and York political satirist and performance poet Sarah Armitage.

Freestone’s poems explore the nostalgia of adolescence, relationships, loss and processing, as well as humorous themes of condiment addiction, festival trips gone wrong, cheesemonger battle raps and the perils of “after-work’ drinking in his honest portrayal of life experiences. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

Dan Poppitt, Charlie Clarke, front, and Molly Whitehouse in rehearsal for Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ Parade

The other American musical of the week: Black Sheep Theatre Productions in Parade, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, April 1 to 4, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

PRESENTED by York company Black Sheep Theatre Productions under the direction of Matthew Peter Clare, Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s stirring Tony Award-winning musical explores love and hope against the odds, set against a backdrop of political injustice and rising racial tension. 

Leo Frank, a Brooklyn-raised Jew, is put on trial for murder in Marietta, Georgia, but when the world seems against you, receiving a fair trial might prove impossible. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Alison Moyet: Re-visiting Yazoo’s two synth-pop albums after more than 40 years at York Barbican. Picture: Naomi Davison

Gig announcement of the week: Alison Moyet, Songs Of Yazoo, the minutes and Other Tour, York Barbican, November 18

BASILDON soul, blues and pop singer-songwriter Alison Moyet will play York in one of ten new additions to her autumn tour, when she will focus on songs from Yazoo’s 1982-1983 catalogue, recorded with Vince Clarke, and a selection from her solo electronica albums, 2013’s the minutesand 2017’s Other, both co-written with producer Guy Sigsworth.

“Many years touring the same pool of songs and I am keen for a palate refresher,” says Moyet, 64. “Specifying which years I will be fishing from too, I think, is a grand way to serve pot luck for specific tastes. No bones.” Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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Full cast confirmed for Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman’s world premiere of twisted thriller The Psychic at York Theatre Royal

York Theatre Royal’s cast and creative team for Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s world premiere of The Psychic

THE full cast is in place for York Theatre Royal’s world premiere of The Psychic, a twisted thriller written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman.

Joining the already announced Frances Barber (as Rosa) and Eileen Walsh (Sheila Gold) are Megan Placito (Tara), Dave Hearn (Robert Hamm), Jaz Singh Deol (Deepak), Nikhita Lesler (Nisha) and East Yorkshire actor Charlie Blanshard (Mark).

After the international success of Ghost Stories, Dyson and Nyman return with a dark thriller that follows the story of popular TV psychic Sheila Gold. The production will open on May 6, preceded from April 29, and will run until May 23 with its combination of thrills, laughs and shocks.

The Psychic co-writers and co-directors Jeremy Dyson, left, and Andy Nyman

Sheila Gold loses a high-profile court case that brands her a charlatan, costing her not only her reputation, but also a fortune in legal fees. When a wealthy couple ask Sheila to conduct a séance to attempt to make contact with their late child, she senses an opportunity to bleed them for money.

What follows makes Sheila question everything she has ever believed and leads her on a journey into the darkest corners of her life.

Joining Dyson and  Nyman in the production team will be designer Rae Smith; illusion designer Chris Fisher; lighting designer Zoe Spurr; sound designer Nick Manning; video designer Duncan Mclean; casting director Arthur Carrington;  associate director Andy Room and design assistant Will Fricker.

The poster for York Theatre Royal’s world premiere of The Psychic

Award-winning Leeds-born writer and director Dyson’s writing credits include Ghost Stories, nominated for Olivier Award for Best Entertainment; The League Of Gentlemen Are Behind You, The League Of Gentlemen: A Local Show For Local People, nominated for Olivier Award for Best Entertainment, and The League Of Gentlemen.

His co-writing credits for television include Psychobitches, winner of Rose d’Or for Best TV Comedy and nominations for two British Comedy Awards; The Armstrong & Miller Show, BAFTA Award winner for Best Comedy; Billy Goat; Funland, nominated for BAFTA Award for Best Drama Serial and The League Of Gentlemen, winner of BAFTA Award for Best Comedy, Golden Rose of Montreux and RTS Award for Best Entertainment. Co-writing credits include Ghost Stories and The League Of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse.

 Nyman is an award-winning actor, director and writer. As an actor, his theatre work includes The Producers(Menier Chocolate Factory/Garrick Theatre); Assassins; Terrible Advice(Menier Chocolate Factory); Fiddler On The Roof (Menier Chocolate Factory/Playhouse Theatre – Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical); Abigail’s Party (Menier Chocolate Factory/Wyndham’s Theatre); Hello, Dolly! (London Palladium) and Hangmen (Wyndham’s Theatre/Golden Theatre, New York City).

Charlie Blanshard: Appeared on the York stage in 2025 in his debut full-length play Jorvik and York company Next Door But One’s How To Be A Kid

He starred in Ghost Stories (Duke of York’s Theatre/Arts Theatre),  co-written and co-directed with Jeremy Dyson and later adapted into a film, in which he also starred.

His television credits include Hanna, Wanderlust, The Eichmann Show, Campus, Crooked House, Dead Set and Peaky Blinders. Among his film credits are Wicked: Part 1, Jungle Cruise, Judy, The Commuter, Death At A Funeral, Kick-Ass 2, Black Death, The Brothers Bloom, Severance and Shut Up & Shoot Me (Best Actor Award at the Cherbourg Film Festival).

Nyman has collaborated with Derren Brown for almost 20 years, co-writing and co-creating much of Brown’s early TV work. He has co-written and directed six of Brown’s stage shows, winning the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment for Derren Brown – Something Wicked This Way Comes and a New York Drama Desk Award for Best Unique Theatrical Event in 2017 for Derren Brown – Secret.

Tickets are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Mischief Theatre co-founder Dave Hearn: Last appeared on the York Theatre Royal stage in Original Theatre’s The Time Machine in March 2023

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REVIEW: Pick Me Up Theatre in Next To Normal, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until April 4 ***

Andrew Isherwood’s cast in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Next To Normal: back row, from left, Ryan Richardson’s Dr Madden/DrFine, Matthew Warry’s Gabe, Dale Vaughan’s Dan, Niamh Rose’s Natalie and Fergus Green’s Henry; front, Monica Frost’s Diana. Picture: Emil Marczuk

BRIAN Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s 2009 triple Tony Award-winning American musical carries a content warning on the Theatre@41 website and noticeboards.

“Please note, that Next To Normalincludes depictions of various mental health conditions and disorders, including bipolar disorder, anxiety, and grief,” it reads. “The production also includes depictions and discussion of drug use, self-harm, death, and medical trauma.”

At the heart of this intimate exploration of family and illness, loss and grief is electroconvulsive therapy, but audiences are in for shock treatment too. Pick Me Up Theatre’s show is loud, very loud, sometimes too loud, and while loathe to call it an aural assault, the combination of a score operatic in dramatic scale, propelled by rock guitars as much as keyboards, and vexatious singing, where voices rise and rise and overlap, can become too much, too big.

Your senses take one heck of a bashing, nothing by comparison with grief-riven suburban American wife and mother Diana’s 16 years of manic depression, granted, but you might want to let out a scream, if it were not so indelicate to do so.

Imagine a union of Alanis Morissette’s Thank U and Greek tragedy, as intense as clenched teeth, as restless as waiting for test results, in a musical stronger on malady than melody, as too many modern American shows are.

Director Andrew Isherwood, on an award-winning hot streak, seeks to find a chink of light in the shroud of darkness, drawing on the sporadic shards of humour, particularly in Act One, but they tend to sit awkwardly, as jagged as broken glass, under the weight of Kitt’s oppressive, largely depressive music.

Leading a merry dance: Ryan Richardson’s Dr Madden in a clasp with Monica Frost’s Diana. Picture: Joanna Hird

We meet the family in Robert Readman’s dark design of the kitchen, with a stairway to the bedrooms on the mezzanine level above. Between pillars can be seen musical director James Robert Ball’s band, Ball pretty much out of view but playing as beautifully as ever on the keyboard, complemented by Helen Warry’s violin and synths, Georgia Johnson’s bass, Joel Fergusson’s drums, Catherine Strachan’s cello and  Neil Morgan’s itchy guitar.

Pent-up dad Dan (Dale Vaughan) is an architect trying to hold the increasingly flimsy domestic structure in place. Mum  Diana is always in a rush but going nowhere fast, talking in front of the children of nipping upstairs for sex, making sandwiches for packed lunches, but she is cutting them on the floor.  

“Happy Easter,” she says, when teenage daughter Natalie points out that the wall calendar remains on April from the year before. Nothing she says makes sense, says Dan, confiding in the audience as he breaks down theatre’s fourth wall.

Natalie (a suitably prickly Niamh Rose) is bright, but agitated, her behaviour gradually mirroring her mother, distant, even sour, when fellow student Henry (Fergus Green) will not be put off by her cold shoulder. Eyes are said to be the window to the soul, but both Rose and Green have a curtain of hair, in the manner of Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke’s Kevin & Perry.

Brother Gabe (Matthew Warry) flits in and out, always in his mum’s corner and ear but often at odds with his dad. His story is central to her decline, but it would be wrong to give away the full details here, as the revelation needs to be gradual.

Frost looks younger than she is playing, Rose older, which is initially disorientating, but the characterisation and mannerisms soon emphasise the age difference.

Monica Frost’s Diana, Matthew Warry’s Gabe and Dale Vaughan’s Dan in the kitchen in Next To Normal. Picture: Joanna Hird

Your reviewer may not be alone in not connecting with any of the family members, in part because of so much self-pitying song content, while Green’s stoner Henry is something of a saint for persisting in caring for Natalie.

If laughter is the best medicine, then Ryan Richardson has his moments as a brace of doctors, Dr Madden and Dr Fine. Note the names: Madden and Fine, specialists in dealing with mental illness and trying to make you feel fine. Richardson has a disarming manner, something of the night about him, but more Dr Frank-N-Furter than Dr Frankenstein, putting the scare into care, yet always seeking to be reassuring despite all the shortfalls and pitfalls  in Diana’s ECT treatment.

Next To Normal is pretty much a sung-through musical, with only the briefest bursts of dialogue leading to the next outburst in song. More to-and-fro talk, fewer stand-and-deliver songs, would have been a better balance, rounding out the characterisation more fully too, a deficiency that undermined the show publicity’s promise of “presenting the family’s story with love, sympathy and heart”. Alas, your reviewer did not feel any of those emotions being stirred.

“Next to normal” is not only how the dysfunctional family eventually settles on living but sums up this musical too: it is indeed next to normal – if the likes of Six, Legally Blonde, Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, Buddy and Calendar Girls pass as normal – in being so discomforting, disquieting, musically unnerving, mentally exhausting, as unflinching as Spring Awakening.

The performances are better than the show, Ball’s band pulling out all the strings, and Isherwood’s cast equally committed to going hell for leather when in collective song, especially in the high-stakes sparring of Vaughan and Warry. Tenderness has its place too, and those songs are more rewarding, especially when Frost’s Diana is at her most emotionally damaged.

“There will be light, there will be light, there will be light, there will be light,” concludes the closing song Light, an assertion that feels wholly unconvincing, like the restoration of order at the end of Macbeth.

Pick Me Up Theatre, Next To Normal, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until April 4; 7.30pm nightly except Sunday; 2.30pm matinees, tomorrow, Sunday and next Saturday. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

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Why 2: 22 A Ghost Story is more than jump scares for Natalie Casey on stage return in timely Danny Robins supernatural thriller

Natalie Casey’s Lauren and James Bye’s Sam in Danny Robins’ 2:22 A Ghost Story, on tour at Grand Opera House, York, next week

THE numbers add up for metropolitan supernatural thriller 2:22 A Ghost Story. Seven West End seasons, 12 productions worldwide, one record-breaking UK and Ireland tour, now being followed by another.

Next stop, a return to the Grand Opera House, York, from March 31 to April 4 after a first spooking in Europe’s self-proclaimed “most haunted city” in May 2024.

From the imagination of The Battersea Poltergeist and Uncanny podcaster, broadcaster and journalist Danny Robins comes the paranormal tale of teacher-on-maternity-leave Jenny (Three Little Birds’ Shvorne Marks) and always-right scientist Sam (EastEnders’ James Bye) hosting their first dinner party since becoming the latest “posh tw*ts” to move into a newly gentrified Greater London neighbourhood.

For several nights, Jenny has been disturbed at 2:22am precisely by the sound of someone moving around the house and a man’s voice crying, picked up via the baby monitor in daughter Phoebe’s bedroom. 

She is convinced the house is haunted, but Sam scoffs at the suggestion, sparking an argument with dinner guests Lauren (Natalie Casey), Sam’s best friend since university days, and her latest boyfriend, builder Ben (Grant Kilburn), a streetwise, working-class counter to the yuppie London intellectuals.

Can the dead really walk again? Belief and scepticism clash, but as the sudden sounds, screams and blinding lights multiply and the trendy wine  flows, they will stay up until 2:22am to discover the answer in Robins’ thriller of Hitchcockian elan.

Facing up to the supernatural: James Bye, left, Shvorne Marks, Natalie Casey and Grant Kilburn in 2:22 A Ghost Story

“The thing about this show is that it’s a phenomenon,” says cast member Natalie Casey, once of Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps. “I’ve never been involved in anything like it. MAGA [Make America Great Again] is a cult, but 2:22 is a phenomenon. I’ve never done a show before where people scream, they cry, and it grabs them by whatever they want to be grabbed by!

“I first auditioned for it many years ago, but didn’t get it and was very sad about that, but I think I must have stayed on their radar as I was asked to do this tour – though I hadn’t toured for a long time – and got very excited when I saw who else would be doing it.

“It’s reinvigorated my love of touring, and it’s been amazing meeting people around the country, where we know that this is a time when lots is going on to divide people, when in fact  all we want is to get on with our neighbours and just hug each other.”

Analysing why 2:22 is more than a supernatural thriller, Natalie says: “It’s very richly layered. On the surface it’s about the jump scares, but it’s also a play about fear, longing and our refusal as human beings to let things go when we need to.

“To be able to deliver that message to people in the dark of a theatre, where they can feel real emotions together, is an amazing feeling to get as an actor. As dark as our times are, I can feel we want better, we want more, and theatre is a magical part of that.”

Natalie’s character, Lauren, comes from California. “So I’m doing a slight ‘Valley girl’ accent – I’m good at American accents as they infect every part of our lives,” she says. “I’m playing someone who’s completely unlike me, but that’s the chameleon quality of acting, where my dream is to be in Star Trek. I’d love to play a Klingon!”

New house, old friends: James Bye’s Sam, left, and Shvorne Marks’s Jenny, right, welcome Natalie Casey’s Lauren and Grant Kilburn’s Ben for dinner in 2:22 A Ghost Story

Actress, presenter, narrator and singer Natalie feels very lucky to be on stage with James Bye, Shvorne Marks and Grant Kilburn. “It’s very easy to ramp up the tension when you have actors so committed to doing that, and immediately the house becomes very claustrophobic: that feeling of walls closing on you,” she says.

Throughout, the clock is on the move. “There is the symbolism of time, how it will inevitably pass, whether we like it or not, and how it will reveal too, whether we want it to or not,” says Natalie.

Does she believe in the supernatural? “I’m not a believer, I’m a ‘man of science’. I’ve never experienced what could be classed as ‘supernatural’ or felt it, but I also know that science takes a long time to catch up, so I would never say that anyone who has had a supernatural experience is wrong. It’s just that we’ve not  yet reached the point where we can explain it,” says Natalie. “In an infinite world with infinite possibilities, there are infinite explanations.

“It’s part of our collective psyche, that obsession with what is just beyond our periphery; our need to reach out to what is just beyond our understanding. We will always look to give meaning to our world.”

Summing up 2:22 A Ghost Story, she says. “It might look like a simple piece of theatre with two couples sitting around a dinner party table, but it turns into a play about love and loss, mourning and yearning for a different life. This play will be watched for decades. This play will never die. Oh, the irony.”  

2:22 A Ghost Story, Grand Opera House, York, March 31 to April 4, 7.30pm nightly plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

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Black Sheep Theatre puts justice on trial in Parade at Joseph Rowntree Theatre amid religious intolerance and racial tension

Dan Poppitt, Charlie Clarke and Molly Whitehouse in rehearsal for Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ Parade

MURDER in myriad forms is making its way on to North Yorkshire’s stages this spring, whether Tigerslane Studios’ real-true-crime courtroom drama Murder Trial Tonight IV: Death Of A Landlord at York Barbican last Sunday or Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair’s madcap musical whodunit Murder For Two, “putting the laughter into manslaughter” at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, from Saturday.

Next comes York company Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ staging of Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s stirring Tony Award-winning musical Parade, first performed in 1998 and now more topical than ever in its exploration of love and hope against the odds, set against a backdrop of religious intolerance, political injustice and rising racial tension.

The tragic true story of the trial and lynching of  a man wrongly accused of murder will be brought to life anew at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, from April 1 to 4.

The setting is 1913, when Leo Frank, a Brooklyn-raised Jew living in Georgia, is put on trial for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, a factory worker under his employ. Already guilty in the eyes of everyone around him, his only defenders are a governor with a conscience and his assimilated Jewish wife, who finds the strength and love to become his greatest champion when the world seems against you and receiving a fair trial might prove impossible.

Director/musical director  Matthew Peter Clare welcomes the chance to put Parade on parade. “It was due to be done in Leeds but that production got pulled because of Covid,” he says. “It’s not been done in York for at least a decade, and it’s fantastic for us to get hold of the rights, but it is an upsetting piece.

“It’s set in Marietta, near Atlanta, Georgia, post the race riots there, but pre the Great Depression and it’s based on a real-life trial of Leo Frank, who worked in middle management as a superintendent in a pencil factory.

“When one of the employees, Mary Phagan, is murdered, instead of doing a proper investigation, they arrest the nearest Jewish guy – whereas the the nearest black guy is let off because of the race riots, when politically it now wasn’t seen to be right to prosecute a black man.

“So they go with prosecuting Leo Frank, with all the prejudices  of the public heavily influencing the trial with the attitude of ‘he’s Jewish, so get rid.’”

Parade chimes with Black Sheep’s policy of presenting “theatre with a point  that encourages audience reflection”. “This is a show that, like our productions of Elegies For Angels, Punks And Raging Queens and Falsettos, is pushing the concept of ‘other’ to the front and shows the impact of moving against the ‘other’ at a time of racial prejudice,” says Matthew.

Playing the role of Leo Frank will be Black Sheep regular Dan Poppitt. “With regard to Leo, we said from very early on in rehearsals that he was not raised in Atlanta, unlike his wife Lucille, but from Brooklyn, and only moved there when offered a job by Lucille’s uncle, so Leo is seen as a Jewish man first, whereas Lucille is seen as Georgian first, Jewish second,” he says

“These are the nuances that we wanted to promote: the significance of his Jewish heritage and how that leads to prejudice.”

Dan has been particularly keen to be authentic in his portrayal. “Like having to learn Hebrew,” he says. “I’ve studied it phonetically to make sure that the dialogue is pronounced accurately.

Eloise Schneck rehearsing her role as Mary Phagan in Parade

“It’s a case of speaking it properly and with clear intention and how it should be delivered in society at that time.”

Molly Whitehouse is playing Leo’s wife Lucille, an assimilated Jewish woman, which means she “adopts the language, dress and secular cultural habits of the majority population”.

“I’m a northerner first and had a very secular upbringing,” she says. “That regional identity that you draw so much pride from, especially as a queer, working-class woman, can put you on the edge of the community.

“In Lucille’s case, she is already so close to the border of what’s acceptable in Georgia.”

Charlie Clarke has four roles in Parade, two on stage, as Mrs Phagan and Sally Slaton, and two off, as assistant director and choreographer. “I don’t do things by halves!” she says. “Luckily with Matthew directing and being the musical director too, I can spread what I do.

“As choreographer and assistant director, we’ve spoken about how each actor has to give each character their own identity, like Reggie Challenor playing two characters [Jim Conley and Newt Lee] who are the complete antithesis of each other.

“We’ve also discussed how, first of all, they’re all representing real people on stage and how they must make sure that’s pushed through in their performances – and the cast have been really receptive to that.

“We have to ensure we tell the story with truth because, before it’s a musical, it’s a true story.”

Dan rejoins: “I think, especially with a stage show, it’s very easy to forget they’re real characters, but every single person in the show was a real person with a life from before the show’s story began.”

The design will be “incredibly minimalist,” says Matthew. “The blocks we used in Falsettos will be used again, but in a different way, not to evoke houses but the red hills of Georgia. They’re being utilised either as part of the choreography or they’re serving as the landscape.”

Should you be wondering, Parade is so named because the story opens and closes on the day of the Marietta parade for the Confederates’ Memorial Day. “So that’s the framing device, celebrating Georgian identity, but unfortunately there’s a dark underside to that identity, where it prevails, being regardless of the truth in this trial,” says Matthew.

Black Sheep Theatre Productions in Parade, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, April 1 to 4, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk

Who’s in the cast for Parade?

Dan Poppitt as Leo Frank; Molly Whitehouse, Lucille Frank; Reggie Challenor, Jim Conley/Newt Lee; Eloise Schneck, Mary Phagan; Oskar Nuttall, Frankie Epps/Young Soldier; Mark Simmonds, Governor Slaton/Old Slaton; Charlie Clarke, Mrs Phagan/Sally Slaton; Pauline Tomlin, Minnie McKnight; Jack Hooper, Hugh Dorsey; Richard Bayton, Britt Craig; Georgina Burt, Iola Stover;  David Copley Martin, Judge Roan; Jack James Fry, Luther Rosser/Officer Ivey; Sophia Razak, Essie, and Sarah Rudd, Monteen.

Who’s in the production team?

Director and musical director: Matthew Peter Clare; assistant director & choreographer: Charlie Clarke; assistant choreographer& welfare officer: Jack James Fry; costumier: Molly Whitehouse; sound designer: Ollie Nash; lighting designer: Adam Kirkwood; stage managers: Megan Bostock & Steve Hibbs.

Coming next from Black Sheep Theatre Productions

They did the monster match: Dan Poppitt’s Alan and Molly Whitehouse’s Minnie in Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ poster for Love At First Bite

JOSH Woodgate will direct Dan Poppitt and Molly Whitehouse’s seductive new work Love At First Bite at Theatre@41, Monkgate, from June 4 to 6.

“Dating can be hell, but what if one of them was a creature of the night?” ponder the co-writers.

What happens? Alan and Minnie meet at a speed-dating night. A spark flickers. Dates follow. Laughter lingers.

“Yet beneath the rhythms of a familiar rom-com, something waits in the dark,” say Poppitt and Whitehouse, who will play the lovers. “One of them is a vampire — but the secret shifts. Each night, the actors trade fangs, and the audience is left to wonder who is hunter, who is prey.”

Blending sharp-fanged wit with a brush of gothic shadow, Love At First Bite toys with romance, rewrites folklore and invites audiences to consider what it means to love…and to hunger!

Woodgate’s production will mark Black Sheep’s return to Theatre@41, Monkgate, after last year’s staging of The Tempest and The Inner Selves. Tickets for the 7.30pm evening performances and 2.30pm Saturday matinee are on sale at tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.