The art beat of YORKshire
FIND out in Episode 88 of Two Big Egos In A Small Car as culture podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson reflect on polymath Grayson Perry’s final night of his tour into the normal world.
Under discussion too are Record Store Day; Father John Misty’s love-hate divide and bad lad René Magritte.
To listen, head to: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/10525896
MANTRA Vega, the transatlantic band co-founded by York singer-songwriter Heather Findlay and Sound Of Contact’s Dave Kerzner, are releasing a song on Bandcamp tomorrow to raise funds for humanitarian relief in Ukraine.
Heather, formerly of Mostly Autumn, now one half of Odin Dragonfly and a solo artiste, reunited with Dave to write and record We See You.
Mantra Vega’s recording features Findlay on lead vocals; Kerzner on keyboards and vocals; Dave Kilminster, from Rogers Waters, Steve Wilson and Keith Emerson’s bands, on lead guitar; Chris Johnson, from Mostly Autumn and Halo Blind, on rhythm electric guitar; Stuart Fletcher on bass and Alex Cromarty, ex-Mostly Autumn, on drums.
In addition, Mantra Vega have made a Global Sing-Along Mix of We See You, where “anyone in the world can sing the verses in their own language or with the wordless anthemic chorus”.
Kerzner says: “Heather came to me with this great idea of reuniting Mantra Vega to do a song for this global concern regarding the war in the Ukraine. I’m proud to have taken part in it.
“As well as raising funds to help the people of the Ukraine, we also wanted to send love and support to all who are suffering from this crisis through the universal language of music.”
We See You will be available exclusively from Bandcamp from midnight tomorrow (May 6) for a limited time, launching on Bandcamp Friday, a monthly event when the ten per cent revenue share that Bandcamp usually takes is waived. In this instance, that means more funds can be donated to Ukrainian aid.
In an incentive to help spread the love, Mantra Vega invite fans to share Howard Rankin’s artwork from that midnight launch onwards, either as their profile picture or as a social media post, accompanied by the download links, encouraging their friends to head over to Bandcamp to buy the single.
All proceeds will be donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine Appeal.
GAVIN & Stacey star Mathew Horne has performed on a York stage only once before, appearing in The Catherine Tate Show Live show at York Barbican.
“We started the tour there. It must be five years ago,” he recalls, ahead of being joined by Keith Allen and Ian Bartholomew in Jamie Glover’s touring production of Harold Pinter’s fractious family drama The Homecoming at York Theatre Royal from May 16 to 21.
“I know York very well from going on school trips from my hometown of Nottingham, though I don’t know the Theatre Royal itself, but I’m assured by our director that it’s beautiful with very good audiences.”
Mathew initially had hoped to be touring opposite Allen in another Pinter work, The Caretaker, rather than The Homecoming, his bleakly humorous exploration of family and relationships, premiered in the West End in 1965 before winning four Tony Awards on Broadway in 1967, including Best Play.
“Really the whole seed of the idea came from myself and director Jamie Glover, an actor-director colleague and friend of mine,” says Mathew.
“We had wanted to do a play for a while, and Keith had done an episode of Agatha Raisin [the Sky One series in which Horne plays Roy Silver]. I’ve known him for 15 years, and he came on and did a guest part.
“Just after that, I did a film called Bolan Shoes with Timothy Spall, which will be out at the end of this year. I got talking to him about the last play he’d done, The Caretaker, and I thought, ‘hang on, I’d love to play Aston in that with Keith as the Caretaker’.”
Mathew duly took the idea to Glover, with the aim of mounting a production at the Theatre Royal, Bath. “But the rights weren’t available,” he recalls. “However, we could do The Homecoming, because it was offered to us by Harold Pinter’s estate.
“I thought, ‘that’s going to be a problem because Keith has done it twice already, the last time seven years ago.”
Indeed, Allen had played university professor Teddy at the National Theatre in 1997 and chauffeur Sam at London’s Trafalgar Studios in 2015. “I called him anyway, and Keith said he’d always wanted to play Max [retired butcher, brutal patriarch and Teddy’s father], which slightly blindsided me, but I was delighted.”
In Pinter’s coruscating play, university professor Teddy returns from America in 1965 with his wife Ruth to find his find his elderly father, uncle and brothers still living at their childhood home in North London, whereupon life becomes a barely camouflaged battle for power and sexual supremacy fought out with taut verbal brutality.
Amid the men’s struggle for power and one-upmanship, who will emerge victorious in this misogynistic cauldron: the poised and elegant Ruth or her husband’s dysfunctional family?
Mathew takes the role of Lenny, Teddy’s enigmatic brother. “He’s a pimp and a bit of a chip off the old block in terms of his father,” he says. “He’s a working-class boy with aspirations above his station and on the surface he appears to be a charming and amiable man but there’s a deep-seated resentment and menace about him.
“He’s a character that I always wanted to play so it felt like a no-brainer. It’s the danger and menace that’s innate in him which attracted me to the role because it’s not something I’m generally allowed to play on television or in films.
“A character with real danger and menace is something I can’t recall having done, so that’s every reason to play him.”
In a nutshell, Lenny is an enigma in a typical Pinter puzzle. “This play is particularly a puzzle because it’s a game: a struggle for power involving both a familial power play and a gender power play,” says Mathew. “Most puzzles have answers but Pinter wanted ambiguity, and that’s why people are puzzled, because you laugh when morally and ethically you feel you shouldn’t.
“Pinter is holding up a mirror to society but he does that in a very visceral way because he makes you question your own moral ethics. That’s why The Homecoming is deeply complex and deeply challenging, at times hysterically funny, but at other times sickeningly vile. That’s what theatre should do: ask you questions and challenge you.”
How do actors respond to facing a play with a puzzle at its heart? “Working out that puzzle, as actors we have to make choices and decide answers ourselves, but how we play it is to Pinter’s intentions,” says Mathew.
“There are ambiguities, and so it’s up to the audience to each decide what they think, but it’s not that we don’t have to make choices, but ambiguity is innate to the play.
“I’ve made all sorts of choices about Lenny, his background and his intentions, but how the audience reads that is none of my business. Sometimes there’s pure laughter, sometimes uncomfortable laughter, and you might even hear someone in the audience go ‘OK…’, which is really thrilling.”
Keith Allen reckons Jamie Glover’s direction has led to this production being the most humorous of his three encounters with The Homecoming. “I do concur with Keith on that,” says Mathew. “It was important for me in my early discussions with Jamie that we went down the humorous line because I’d seen the 2015 production, which was more bleak and went down the nasty path.
“We feel the only way to redeem some of these characters is to go for the comedy. It was written as a comedy, a deep, deep black comedy and it should be funny. Having seen a production that didn’t lean into that comedy, we felt we had to do that – and Keith feels this production is the closest to what Pinter would have wanted.
“You can’t control laughter, but if The Homecoming makes you laugh and then question why, it’s really exciting.”
“Puzzle” is not the only “P” word associated with Pinter. So too is the importance of “the Pause”. “The pauses mean as much as the words, and that’s how we approached it in rehearsals, really working on the silences, the pauses and the ellipses,” says Mathew.
“These are the three areas where actors are supposed to be quiet, but because it’s Pinter, they all mean something different to each of the other characters. So we worked on that; what they meant to each character, and there was only one where we couldn’t think why it was there, or what the character [saying that speech] or the other characters were thinking, but we’ve still made it work!”
How highly does Mathew rate The Homecoming among Pinter’s works? “It is his best play, simple as that,” he contends. “It’s poetic and it’s like a piece of classical music. It’s an immaculate work in terms of the writing and there’s no fat on the meat in this play. It’s deft.”
As for the play’s resonance in 2021, Mathew says: “The exploration of masculinity, male toxicity and the patriarchy is very much bubbling away throughout and that feels particularly relevant now with war happening in Europe and with the ultimate despotic patriarch at the helm.”
Presented by Theatre Royal Bath Productions, The Homecoming runs at York Theatre Royal, May 16 to 21, 7.30pm; plus 2pm Thursday matinee; 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Copyright Of The Press, York
Leeds Lieder Festival 2022, Ian Bostridge & Imogen Cooper, Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, April 30
SONG recitals nowadays are generally considered to be duos, with voice and piano on an equal footing. Long gone are the times when the singer had star billing and Joe Bloggs, in much smaller letters, was “at the piano”.
For this Schubert recital, however, despite the confluence of two stars in the Schubertian firmament, who deservedly drew the biggest house of the festival so far, the occasion was really only about one person.
Ian Bostridge is an extremely talented tenor, not to say a highly intelligent one. But his stage persona is becoming ever more eccentric, to the point where he is becoming hard to watch. It is not just that he cannot stay still: he roams the bend in the piano, sometimes even leans into it with his back to the audience, then darts out to front-stage and back again, all the while contorting his slim figure into angular postures.
Furthermore, he is off on his own tangent, rarely engaging the audience directly. He often starts a phrase looking into the auditorium, but his chin soon descends into his chest and he stares at his feet. His expression is generally pained – no-one does angst better – but he finds it hard to lighten up. There was only one detectable smile in this whole recital.
All of this puts his pianist at a disadvantage. There is practically no eye contact possible between them: the pianist never knows where on the platform he may have got to.
These things are important because a lieder recital is so much more than mere vocal display. It is an unveiling, at the most intimate level, of the composer’s reaction to a piece of poetry and it requires the closest co-operation between singer and pianist, with the former’s every hand gesture or facial expression tailored to assist the message.
When there is as much physical activity as Bostridge generated here, it ceases to be meaningful and becomes merely a distraction, even an annoyance.
Imogen Cooper is one of our great Schubertians, but she was up against it from the start. She took the line of least resistance and played with never-failing style, but she rarely strayed beyond safe territory when it came to asserting herself. Too often she had to allow Bostridge to hold onto the spotlight, when he should have deferred to her and let her illuminate Schubert’s intentions.
The menu was alluring enough: the 14 songs of Schubert’s Schwanengesang (not a song-cycle but a posthumous title imposed by his publisher) separated by four more settings by Johann Seidl (whose Die Taubenpost ends Schwanengesang).
Without the visuals, there was actually some excellent singing. Bostridge minimises the vibrato in his voice, reserving it for special, often warmer, moments. That is fine, particularly when a fortepiano is in use (it wasn’t here). But it is counterbalanced by the extreme tension in his sound, doubtless brought on by his stressful stage persona.
The first seven songs of Schwanengesang are settings of Ludwig Rellstab. Their lyricism was amply conveyed by Cooper, beautifully liquid for the brooklet running through Liebesbotschaft (Love’s Message) and light as a feather in Frühlingssehnsucht (Spring Longing).
Bostridge, in contrast, was apt to home in on the moments of anguish, although his dead slow “goodnight” at the close of Kriegers Ahnung (Warrior’s Foreboding) was effective indeed.
Similarly, the piano delivered a melting postlude to Ständchen (Serenade) and was wonderfully staccato throughout the galloping in Abschied (Farewell), while our tenor was happier in the cutting pain of Aufenthalt (Resting Place) and the utter isolation of In Der Ferne (Far Away).
Where the Rellstab songs seemed cousins of Die Schöne Mullerin in their yearning for the distant beloved (with echoes of Beethoven), we were much closer to darker Winterreise territory for the reminder of the evening: the Seidl interlude and the Heine songs that make up most of the rest of Schwanengesang, all of them from the last three years of Schubert’s life. The sombre tone was struck at once in Seidl’s Sehnsucht (Longing). Bostridge’s restlessness was certainly in tune with much of the poetry, although more of his purely physical activity might have been channelled into the voice.
During the last two Heine songs, Bostridge really began to show respect for the texts and kept his body much stiller. Am Meer (By The Sea) was almost a daydream and the sheer horror of Der Doppelganger (The Ghostly Double) was notably eerie. Der Taubenpost (The Pigeon Post) came as welcome relief at the close, given by both performers with rhythmic zest.
Review by Martin Dreyer
COMEDIAN Sara Pascoe will play York Barbican on November 24 on her 50-date Success Story tour.
Further Yorkshire performances will follow at Sheffield Octagon on November 25, Hull City Hall on March 17 2023 and Harrogate Royal Hall on April 21. Tickets are on sale at sarapascoe.co.uk/sara-on-tour.
Pascoe, now 40, decided she wanted to be famous at 14 years old. Since then, she has auditioned for Barrymore, scared Dead Or Alive’s Pete Burns and ruined Hugh Grant’s birthday, but look at her now, she says.
Please look, she needs you to look. And clap. And laugh. And then clap again…on her “biggest and best tour of her life, where she will be playing in parts of the UK and Ireland that she hasn’t performed at before”.
Dagenham-born Pascoe’s last nationwide tour, LadsLadsLads, culminated in two London Palladium shows, filmed for a BBC Two stand-up special, Sara Pascoe: LadsLadsLads.
Since then, things have most certainly changed for Pascoe, she says. After contemplating the positive aspects of self-imposed celibacy in LadsLadsLads, Success Story finds Sara, a few years later, happily married with a beautiful baby son.
In her new show, she will examine what it is to be successful, how we define it and how it feels when what we want eludes us. Expect jokes about status, celebrities, plus Sara’s new fancy lifestyle versus infertility, her multiple therapists and career failures.
Comedian, writer and actor Pascoe wrote and starred in the BBC2 sitcom Out Of Her Mind and hosts BBC One’s The Great British Sewing Bee, BBC Two’s Last Woman On Earth, Dave’s Comedians Giving Lectures and Comedy Central’s Guessable.
She has hosted the BBC’s Festival Of Funny and Live At The Apollo’s Christmas Special and appeared as a panellist on Mock The Week, Have I Got News For You and Would I Lie To You?. Later this year, she can be seen in the new Amazon series Katherine Ryan Backstage.
Pascoe has written and performed in the BBC Radio 4 series Modern Monkey and BBC Two’s Sara Pascoe vs Monogamy, a short inspired by her first book, Animal. Her second book, Sex Power Money, was accompanied by a podcast that garnered millions of listens and multiple award nominations.
THE world-premiere stage adaptation of Dan Brown’s thriller The Da Vinci Code will NOT be playing the Grand Opera House, York, from May 30 to June 4 after all.
Blame theatre’s perennial enemy – “unforeseen circumstances”- for the cancellation. “Grand Opera House, York, is sorry for any inconvenience,” the Cumberland Street theatre’s statement concludes.
Directed by Luke Sheppard, who was at the helm of the award-winning West End musical & Juliet, the debut tour was in the diary for January 10 to November 12.
However, the producers have decided: “Due to the current challenges of touring, we have made the difficult decision to conclude The Da Vinci Code earlier than expected. We are extremely proud of the work done by the cast and creative team who made this wonderful show, and we hope that it will be seen again before long.
“We apologise for any disappointment caused and ask that audiences continue to support theatre as the industry continues to recover.”
When announcing the tour, producer Simon Friend had said: “We have a truly stellar cast and creative team bringing The Da Vinci Code to life on stage for the first time, and with Dan Brown’s full endorsement of the show and the talented director Luke Sheppard at the helm, we’re confident that we’ll please devoted fans as well as newcomers to this magnificent story.”
Should you need a quick refresher course on what now will not be unfolding in Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel’s stage adaptation in York, the curator of the Louvre, in Paris, has been brutally murdered. Alongside his body is a series of baffling codes.
Professor Robert Langdon and fellow cryptologist Sophie Neveu attempt to solve the riddles, leading to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and beyond as they delve deep into the vault of history. In a breathless race through the streets of Europe, Langdon and Neveu must decipher the labyrinthine code before a shocking historical secret is lost forever.
Director Sheppard said of the stage adaptation: “Cracking The Da Vinci Code open for the stage reveals an epic thriller steeped in theatrical potential, rich in suspense and surprising at every turn.
“Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel’s brilliant adaptation leaps off the page and demands us to push the limits of our imagination, creating a production that champions dynamic theatrical storytelling and places the audience up close in the heat of this gripping mystery.”
In York, Coronation Street star Chris Harper would have played Robert Langdon alongside Danny John-Jules as Sir Leigh Teabing, Hannah Rose Caton, in her British stage debut as Sophie Neveu, and Joshua Lacey as Silas.
The Grand Opera House is contacting ticket holders.
MEZZO soprano Helen Charlston is to become an artistic adviser to the York Early Music Festival from this month.
Helen’s appointment covers the 2022-2024 festivals, joining fellow advisers John Bryan, Lindsay Kemp and Peter Seymour.
She is taking over from harpsichordist Steven Devine, who will stand down after this summer’s festival.
Since York Early Music Festival began in 1977, guest advisers have included Robert Hollingworth, Catherine Bott, Elizabeth Kenny and Thomas Guthrie.
Helen is establishing herself as a key performer in the next generation on British singers. Winner of the London Handel Competition in 2018, she was a founder participant in the Rising Star of the Enlightenment’s programme, working frequently as a soloist alongside the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
She is a member of the Jardin des Voix academy’s Young Artist Programme with Les Arts Florissants, a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and a 2018 City Music Foundation Artist.
This year, Helen makes her debut in San Francisco with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, singing Irene in Handel’s Theodora. She also will perform with the Dunedin Consort, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, RIAS Kammerchor, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and La Nuova Musica, as well as making her debut at the Cheltenham and Norfolk & Norwich Festivals.
Helen won the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize in the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and is heard regularly on the concert platform with prominent British collaborative pianists. She has performed at Oxford Lieder Festival, Leeds Lieder, the Ryedale Festival, the Wigmore Hall and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
Her debut album, Isolation Songbook, was commissioned in response to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown for release on Delphian Records in March 2021, after she premiered 15 songs and duets with Michael Craddock and Alexander Soares, written during lockdown in 2020 as a musical response to the changing world in which we found ourselves.
Her second solo album, Battle Cry She Speaks, will arrive on May 27, again on Delphian Records. Inspired by the music of Strozzi, Purcell and Monteverdi, the recording is centred on a new song cycle for Helen and lutenist Toby Carr.
She began singing as chorister and head chorister of the St Albans Abbey Girls Choir. She studied music at Trinity College, Cambridge, where she held a choral scholarship from 2011 to 2015, and was a scholar on the Pembroke College Lieder Scheme, led by pianist Joseph Middleton.
Helen has a long-standing association with the National Centre for Early Music, in Walmgate, where she has appeared in many concerts in both the York Early Music Christmas Festival and York Early Music Festival, larger performances with the Yorkshire Bach Choir and at the University Song Days held there.
She was a member of Fieri Consort when they won the Cambridge prize in the 2017 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition.
Delma Tomlin, York Early Music Festival administrative director and NCEM director, says: “We are delighted to welcome Helen as a new artistic adviser, joining our already established team of experts.
“Artistic advisers play an important part in the development of our work, and we are sure Helen’s expertise and experience will be huge assets to the festival. Helen has a long association with York and we are looking forward to working with her.
“We are sure she will bring some brilliant and fresh ideas as we move towards York Early Music Festival 2023.”
Helen says: “I’m very excited to be joining the York Early Music team as artistic adviser. It’s such an honour to be working with one of Europe’s most important and progressive Early Music festivals, with a reputation for promoting and championing the work of young emerging artists.
“I always love performing in York and now I can look forward to spending more time working in this beautiful city and soaking up the atmosphere of the fabulous medieval splendour of the festival’s hub in St Margaret’s Church.”
York Early Music Festival 2022 will run from July 8 to 16. Find the full programme at: ncem.co.uk/whats-on/yemf/
CELLIST Isobel Parsons will play a Dementia Friendly Tea Concert at St Chad’s Church, Campleshon Road, York, on May 19.
Isobel is in her final year of music studies at the University of Leeds and is a pupil of renowned cello teacher Sue Lowe.
Accompanied on the piano by Robert Gammon in a 2.30pm programme of lively and serene music, she will play familiar pieces, The Swan from Saint-Saëns’ Carnival Of The Animals, a Bach Partita and Suk’s Serenade, plus folk songs by Schumann and Faure’s Après un Rêve and Élégie.
As usual, the format will be 45 minutes of classical music followed by tea, coffee, homemade cakes and a chance to chat.
Along with the small church car park, there is on street parking along Campleshon Road, but it can be busy, so do allow plenty of time. Wheelchair access to the church is via the church hall.
“The event is a relaxed concert, and ideal for people who may not feel comfortable at a formal classical concert, so we do not mind if the audience wants to talk or move about,” says organiser Alison Gammon.
“Seating is unreserved and there’s no charge to attend, although donations are welcome. We give the hire cost to the church and the rest goes to Alzheimer’s charities.
Dates are in the diary for all the series of Thursday concerts until Christmas: June 16, Peter and Julia Harrison, flute and poetry reading; July 21, Hannah Feehan, guitar; August 25, Robert Gammon, piano; September 15, Flauti Felice, flute ensemble; October 20, Billy Marshall, French horn, and Robert Gammon, piano; November 17, Giocoso Ensemble, wind group; December 8, Ripon Resound Choir.
YORK Musical Theatre Company & Friends have raised £2,133 for the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal from A Concert For Ukraine, held on April 30 at Our Lady’s Church, Cornlands Road, York.
Organiser Sophie Urquhart says: “As we’ve all been so horrified by the tragic images on the news every night from Ukraine, I felt determined to do something, however small to help.
“As a member of York Musical Theatre Company (YMTC), it seemed an ideal solution to put on a concert for people to enjoy and to raise funds at the same time.
“The rest of the company couldn’t have been more enthusiastic, and once our musical director, John Atkin, was on board, the whole plan came together, inviting members from other local theatre companies to join us.”
Last Saturday’s programme featured multiple show tunes from West End musicals past and present, ranging from old favourites from Les Miserables, The Phantom Of The Opera and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street to a couple from YMTC’s next show, Jekyll & Hyde The Musical, now in rehearsal for a May 25 to 28 run at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre.
“We also had a wonderful and inspirational lady called Victoria from the Ukraine opening our concert, reminding us why we were all there,” says Sophie.
All proceeds are going to the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal run by Action Aid. “For those that couldn’t attend, but would still like to donate, there’s a JustGiving page set up,” says Sophie. To give, go to: justgiving.com/fundraising/Concert4Ukraine?utm_campaign=lc.
Now, in the words of John Atkin, YMTC will “play catch-up” with Jekyll & Hyde rehearsals.
AFTER his June 10 and 11 shows at the Grand Opera House, York, sold out within half an hour last Friday, Take That legend Gary Barlow has been quick to add a Sunday matinee on June 12.
Hurry, hurry, fewer than 100 tickets are still available for the 2.30pm performance by the Wirral singer, songwriter, composer, producer, talent show judge and author.
Barlow, 51, will be presenting his theatrical one-man show A Different Stage, ahead of the September 1 publication of his autobiography of the same name by Penguin Books.
“Now I’ve done shows where it has just been me and a keyboard,” he says. “I’ve done shows where I sit and talk to people. I’ve done shows where I’ve performed as part of a group.
“But this one, well, it’s like all of those, but none of them. When I walk out this time, well, it’s going to be a very different stage altogether.”
Tickets for June 12 are on sale at atgtickets.com/York or on 0844 871 7615.
