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Jasper Carrott so happy to share a Sunday evening in York with Alistair McGowan

Jasper Carrott and Alistair McGowan: Comedy and impressions for sharing on a Sunday night in York

JASPER Carrott had decided his Stand Up & Rock gig with Brummie schoolmate and ELO drummer Bev Bevan in Barnstaple would be his last show.

June 6 2022. Age 77. Joke cracker Carrott and sticks basher Bevan in Devon. Exit the Queen’s Theatre stage left, the finale for the Lifetime Achievement winner in the 2008 British Comedy Awards. The Funky Moped now defunct.

But what’s this? An Evening Shared With Jasper Carrott & Alistair McGowan, heading to the Grand Opera House, York, on Sunday on their comedy and impressions double bill.

“I gave it up last year to see how I felt – and I missed it terribly,” says comedian, actor and television presenter Jasper, his nickname since the age of nine when growing up in Birmingham.

“I’m having a golden autumn. There’s an audience out there that’s not catered for and I cater for it. I get standing ovations, and these days I like to say it would be 100 per cent…if 100 per cent of the audience could still stand up!”

Carrott, 78, and Evesham-born McGowan, 58, who now lives in Ludlow, Shropshire, first shared a bill as a one-off at the 2017 Reading Festival. “They had a spare spot on the Sunday, and my agent asked if I’d like to do it, My first thought was, ‘Not on my own’,” recalls Jasper (real name Robert Norman Davis, by the way).

“I’d previously worked with Phil Cool for about three years [from 1992] on the Carrott & Cool tour shows, where the comedy nights felt different because of Phil’s impersonations. Anyway, my agent said Alistair would be interested in doing the festival with me, and it went really well.” 

So much so, they went out on tour in 2018, playing York Barbican in their An Evening With Jasper Carrott & Alistair McGowan format on November 19. “That was one of the first shows I did with him.”

How did they settle on who would open the show? “Alistair really wanted to go on first. I think he thought it would be more difficult if he had to build on my energy. We first did it that way at Reading, and it worked, so, each half, Alistair does 20-25 minutes, then I come on and do 30,” says Jasper.

In a long, long career, Jasper has spread his wings to star in the television series The Detectives from 1993 to 1997; play Koko, the executioner, for the D’Oyly Carte Opera in a 96-show run of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado at the Savoy Theatre, London, in 2002, and host 300 episodes of  the ITV daytime game show Golden Balls from 2007 to 2011.

Jasper Carrott, centre, and The Bev Bevan Band line-up for their Stand Up & Rock shows in 2021

Yet raconteur Jasper has always returned to performing stand-up, cracking quickfire gags, spinning yarns and singing ditties to guitar accompaniment solo on stage: the most exposed and exposing form of self-expression on stage. 

“Now then, I’m going to paraphrase Bill Shankly [the legendary Liverpool football manager of the 1960s and ’70s],” says Jasper. “When he signed Kevin Keegan, he walked him on to the Anfield pitch and said, ‘you can run anywhere on this pitch, but you can’t hide’, and that’s the same for me, doing my comedy.”

Ten years away from the stand-up microphone had passed when best friend Bev Bevan said, ‘Let’s do some shows together. That’s when I rediscovered the essence of it, going eyeball to eyeball with an audience. It stirred up all the adrenaline again, which is a very addictive drug.”

Preferring that eyeball-to-eyeball experience to playing 5,000-seaters “where everyone just watches the screens”, Carrott and Bevan did shows together for more than eight years. Now he is back on the road with Alistair McGowan.

“Times have changed in comedy. You can’t talk about anything [because of political correctness], but it’s like you have to have Tourette’s to go on stage to talk. That’s comedy today, long, hard and woke. For ages I’ve been watching a lot of comedians, and with all the young stand-up comics, I don’t really laugh,” he says.

“Storytelling is an art and not many comedians now tell stories, but I do sets with machine-gunfire gags and three or four stories with jokes in them that are hidden, and that’s what I’ve always done.

“That’s because I was a product of the American style of comedy: Tom Lehrer, George Carlin, Bob Newhart, Shelley Berman. I still don’t swear on stage, but I talk about topics that need discussing, however awkward.”

Looking ahead, Jasper says: “Lots of comedians have performed into their 80s: George Burns, the Marx Brothers, Ken Dodd, and I’ll know when it’s time to stop,” he says. “I have no ego about it. I really enjoy it, and one of things now is the nostalgia, where I go on stage and I’m part of the audience’s lives. I feel their warmth.”

A comedian to the last, he ponders his final curtain. “When I get asked, ‘what do you want on your gravestone?’, I always say, ‘I never died in Glasgow’!”

An Evening Shared With Jasper Carrott & Alistair McGowan, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday, 7.30pm. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Jasper Carrott: Comedian, actor and TV presenter

Jasper Carrott on playing Koko, the executioner, in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado for D’Oyly Carte Opera

“That was an experience and a half! I was a bit shaky at first as I had to learn so much. Someone said, ‘you can know it, but you don’t own it’, and remember sitting down and thinking ‘how do I go about doing this?’.

“I was a pain in the a**e for everyone on the staff, from the actors to the director, really trying to glean the essence of the part, which I then really got hold of.

“Why pick me for Koko? I suppose they looked at it and thought, ‘who can we get to front this?’, when people like Eric Idle had done it before. I said I’d be very interested, and they sent the director out to Spain, where I was playing golf, to play the piano to see if I could sing.”

Surely D’Oyly Carte must have heard Jasper’s 1975 hit single, Funky Moped? “My musical passport!” he says, with laughter in his voice.

Once Jasper received the OK, rather than KO, for playing Koko,  “the rest was a long, hard slog, getting to learn the part…and learning never to do it again! I never realised how much work went into performing opera.”

Jasper Carrott on hosting the ITV game show Golden Balls

“I thought, ‘I’m a raconteur, not a game show host’, but I did the pilot and they liked it. When my agent said how much I’d be paid, I said, ‘is that in lira?’, but no, it wasn’t! I ended up doing 300 episodes.

“I learned so much about human nature in that show, about just how deceitful people are!”

Stewart Lee

Jasper Carrott on fellow comedian Stewart Lee

“Stewart left a couple of books for me at a gig after he’d played there a couple of days earlier, saying I’d inspired him. He’s not always funny but he is very interesting, and he’s probably the link between what I do and the young comedians of today.”

Jasper Carrott on the essence of comedy

“Comedy is the only measurable artform. People laugh or they don’t. You can’t tell me how much you enjoy a Rembrandt painting, but if there aren’t any laughs at a comedy gig, you won’t be performing again.”

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REVIEW: York Settlement Community Players in The Real Thing, York Theatre Royal Studio, until Saturday ****

Alan Park’s playwright Henry and Alice May Melton’s actress Annie in York Settlement Community Players’ The Real Thing. All pictures: John Saunders

IS a play ever the real thing or just playing? What is love? What is art? What is truth? What is artifice? Can Tom Stoppard write good roles for women? Can you even trust this review? So many questions, and none of them will be answered conclusively.

He may be considered one of the greatest, smartest of British playwrights, knighted for his clever, clever dramas with their iridescent, intellectual language and adroit structures. But Tom Stoppard is not British by birth and nor is it his original name.

He was born Tomás Straüssler in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, and was raised in Singapore and India, taking the name Stoppard from his stepfather before moving to England in the post-war aftermath. He quit school (Pocklington School, by the way), becoming a journalist…and you know what they say about journalists and their relationship with the truth.

Written in 1982, The Real Thing revels in confusion, confusion that becomes even greater at the finale, or does it? Trust me, it certainly considers the nature of honesty in a play full of dishonesty and infidelity, where you may well not be able to tell when it is being a play within a play or a play being re-written within the play within the play or just a play.

Charlotte (Victoria Delaney) has a word with errant husband Henry (Alan Park) in The Real Thing

Stoppard’s protagonist is a playwright, Henry (Alan Park, performing on a Theatre Royal stage for the first time since playing Jack in Pilot Theatre’s Lord Of The Flies 19 years ago).

He is married to Charlotte (Victoria Delaney), an actress, who is playing an actress, also called Charlotte as it happens, opposite Max (Mike Hickman) in Henry’s new play. Charlotte reckons he never writes her a decent role (an in-joke from Stoppard about his own writing).

Max in the play within a play is being played by an actor also called Max (Hickman), who is married to an actress, Annie (Alice May Melton).

Soon Henry and Annie are shacking up; dischuffed Charlotte and free-spirited daughter Debbie (Hannah Waring) moving on. Into the story come Billie (Rebecca Harrison), a lesbian young actress with a thing for Annie, and Brodie (Livy Potter), a troubled young writer whose frank and frankly badly written play is taken up by Annie. At least, I think that is what you are watching.

Alice May Melton’s Annie and Rebecca Harrison’s Billie in The Real Thing

For sure, two years pass between Act and Act II, because the programme note says so, but Oxford School of Theatre graduate, professional actor and former Theatre Royal youth theatre fledgling Jacob Ward revels in the deliberate complexities in his first full-length production as director.

Betwixt scenes, actors move three door frames into different configurations – on Richard Hampton’s open-plan set design – that may or may not signify what is real and what isn’t.

A multitude of doors traditionally denotes we are in the presence of a theatrical farce, but here it is more a case of moving the goalposts or rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic as the grip on reality sinks.

Park’s playwright Henry has the best lines (of course he does!), and what he says carries the greatest weight as effectively Stoppard’s voice on stage in this heavily autobiographical drama.

Mike Hickman’s Max

What is reality, what is merely appearance, applies to the relationships within the play, where fronts keep being put up and lies told.

Ironically, such is the language he uses, Stoppard’s characters are often not wholly believable, being conduits for his own cleverness or point-making, but the greater truth here is a writer’s struggle to express love in his writing: the gap between Henry’s feelings for Annie and putting them on the page.

Amid the obfuscation of a multi-storey of levels on stage, Stoppard’s grasp of the complications of love is the one real thing in this Tony Award-winning romantic comedy that is more romantic in spirit than action.

Whatever the truth within, Ward’s cast is the real deal, Park a powerhouse of opinion and conviction, Melton full of intrigue and resolve, mysterious and elusive too; Delaney delightfully forthright; the rest wholly committed to spinning plates ever faster.

York Settlement Community Players present Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, York Theatre Royal Studio, 7.30pm nightly until Saturday, plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office

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REVIEW: York Stage, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Grand Opera House, York, to Sat. ****

High-flying success: Ned Sproston’s Caractacus Potts at the wheel of Chitty, with Carly Morton’s Truly Scrumptious in the passenger seat and Logan Willstrop’s Jeremy Potts and Hope Day’s Jemima Potts in York Stage’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. All pictures: Charlie Kirkpatrick

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, York Stage, Grand Opera House, York, 7.30pm nightly to Saturday; 2.30pm matinees, Wednesday and Saturday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york

THIS is James Bond author Ian Flemings’s eyebrow-raising 1964 children’s story, via Ken Hughes’s 1968 family musical fantasy film, adapted for the stage by Jeremy Sams.

It would be easy to put the emphasis on the spectacle, the car that floats and flies, with as many special features as a Q-customised Aston Martin for Bond. Certainly director-producer Nik Briggs pulls out all the stops on that score, but his Chitty show has more wings to it than merely its fine four-fendered friend’s airborne adventures.

The “fantasmagorical” spectacle here extends beyond the repurposed scrap-heap Grand Prix car to Damien Poole’s fabulous, fun and funny choreography; the hair and make-up by Phoebe Kilvington’s team; Charades Theatrical Costume’s flamboyant costume designs and the uncredited hi-tech set design, windmill sails et al.

Pulling a Chu-Chi Face: Alex Papachristou’s Baron Bomburst and Jackie Cox’s Baroness

Out of sight, aside from diligent yet playful musical director Adam Tomlinson, is his lush 12-piece orchestra, properly filling the pit with gorgeous musicality for the Sherman brothers’ score.

Above all, Briggs has improved further on the balance between grand theatricality and human personality in West Yorkshire Playhouse’s 2015 Christmas production. Perhaps it would be truer to say “caricature personality”, but the result is a greater connection with the audience.

In particular, this applies to the baddie double act of Alex Papachristou’s arch, spoilt, teddy bear-carrying Baron Bomburst and his brassy Baroness (Jackie Cox), a hammier, kinkier couple than past interpretations, and far funnier than their outrageous banishment of children from their Vulgarian principality should be.

Bomburst’s spies, Boris and Goran, are always  comedy gold, in pursuit of purloining the car for the baron, but they are better still in the hands of Jack Hooper and James Robert Ball, Vulgarian vultures trying to pass themselves off as Englishmen (and even women too).

Send for the clowning spies: Jack Hooper’s Boris gives a lift to James Robert Ball’s Goran

Papachristou, Cox, Hooper and Ball stretch their Vulgarian accents across Germanic vowels with delight and differing, equally amusing results in a send-up where ’Allo ’Allo! meets Mel Brooks’s The Producers.

Such is their broad playing, their comic interplay, their relish for downright silliness, that all four carry appeal for adults and children alike, evil but never vile. Unlike Richard Barker’s Childcatcher, that towering, spindly, grotesque rotter, whose villainy is more threat than presence, given how few scenes he has.

Meanwhile, several saucy jokes fly above innocent young heads, relished especially by Ball and Papachristou, who also rescues a prop malfunction (a telephone wire becoming detached) with an off-the-cuff one liner.

Ploughing a straighter furrow are Ned Sproston’s thoroughly decent inventor and single dad Caractacus Potts, plucky children Jeremy (Logan Willstrop, sharing the role with Esther de la Pena) and Jemima Potts (Hope Day/Eady Mensah), and Carly Morton’s utterly pucker Truly Scrumptious (whose beautiful singing with the purity of a Julie Andrews peaks with her Doll On A Music Box routine, clockwork dancing so exquisitely).

Peachy performance: Carly Morton’s Truly Scrumptious

Throughout, Mick Liversidge’s potty, old-school, restlessly energetic Grandpa Potts maximises his humorous interjections aplenty.

Briggs uses adult and children’s ensembles to the full, testament to the show’s mantra that teamwork makes the dream work, never more so than when Poole’s choreography is in full flow in Toots Sweets and especially The Bombi Samba.

Boris and Goran’s Act English and Potts and the Morris Men’s Me Ol’ Bamboo, Grandpa and The Inventors’ The Roses Of Success and the Baron and Baroness’s Chu-Chi Face are all bursting with character as much as musical flair.

For all the considerable technical demands of a show with a flying car, Briggs and his company take everything in their stride with panache in a dazzling, dapper and delightful family treat for the Easter break. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, bang on.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond at Easter. Hutch’s List No. 15, from The Press

Student Emma Yeoman: Displaying flora and fauna in sculptures and on canvas in the grounds of York St John University, Lord Mayor’s Walk, York, at York Open Studios

ART across the city canvas, acoustic gigs, Easter chocolates, a comedy double bill, a singing milkman and Brazilian rhythms shape Charles Hutchinson’s April days ahead.

York’s art fiesta of the year: York Open Studios, April 15 and 16, April 22 and 23, 10am to 5pm

MORE than 150 artists and makers at 100 locations within the city or a ten-mile radius of York open their doors to visitors over two weekends to give insights into their inspirations, creative processes and skills.

Painting and printmaking, illustration, drawing and mixed media, ceramics, glass and sculpture, jewellery, textiles, photography and installation art all will be represented, with works for sale. For full details, including who is participating in Friday’s 6pm to 9pm preview, go to: yorkopenstudios.co.uk.

Rick Witter and Paul Banks: Playing Shed Seven songs in an acoustic duo setting in Barnsley

Local heroes head south…well, to South Yorkshire: Rick Witter & Paul Banks Acoustic, Birdwell Venue, Birdwell, Barnsley, tonight (8/4/2023), 7.30pm

MR H, alias former Fibbers boss Tim Hornsby, promotes frontman Rick Witter and guitarist Paul Banks as they shed their Shed Seven cohorts for an acoustic set down the road from their York home in Barnsley.

Witter and Banks present a special night of Shed Seven material and a few surprises in a whites-of-their-eyes show with an invitation to “holler along to some of the best anthems ever”. Box office: seetickets.com/tour/rick-witter-paul-banks-shed-seven-acoustic.

Hitting the sweet spot: York Chocolate Festival

Choc absorbers: York Chocolate Festival, Parliament Street, York, today, 10am to 5pm

TO coincide with Eastertide, York Chocolate Festival returns to Parliament Street to showcase chocolate and all things sweet from independent businesses.

Tuck into a festival market with a selection of chocolatiers and confectioners; an activity area with chocolate lollipop-making, tastings and cookery workshops; a chocolate bar (not a bar of chocolate) and a taste trail on foot around the city to sample delicatessens, restaurants and suppliers. Entrance to the festival and market is free, with some activities being ticketed.

Buffy Revamped: Seven Seasons, Seventy Minutes, One Spike, as Brendan Murphy re-creates every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Fringe show of the week: Buffy Revamped, York Theatre Royal, Wednesday, 8pm

THIS Edinburgh Fringe 2022 award winner relives all 144 episodes of the hit 1990s’ television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, as told through the eyes of the one person who knows it inside out…Spike.

Created by comedian Brendan Murphy, the satirical Buffy Revamped bursts with Nineties’ pop-culture references in a seven-seasons-in-seventy-minutes parody for Buffy aficionados and those who never enrolled at Sunnydale High alike. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Richard Galloway in Badapple Theatre Company’s 2023 tour of Eddie And The Gold Tops, doing the milk round from April 15

Theatre tour of the week and beyond: Badapple Theatre Company in Eddie And The Gold Tops, on tour from April 15 to June 13

GREEN Hammerton’s “theatre on your doorstep” company, Badapple Theatre, mark their 25th anniversary with a tour of Yorkshire and beyond in artistic director Kate Bramley’s revival of her joyous Swinging Sixties’ show Eddie And The Gold Tops.

York actress Emily Chattle, Zach Atkinson and Richard Galloway transport audiences back to the fashion, music and teenage optimism of the 1960s as village milkman Eddie becomes a pop star quite by accident. Hits flow like spilt milk, Top Of The Pops beckons, but when things take a ‘churn’ for the worse, how will he get back for the morning milk round in Badapple’s wry look at the effects of stardom? For tour and ticket details, go to: badappletheatre.co.uk or contact 01423 331304.

Badapple’s Yorkshire tour dates:

April 15, Aldborough Village Hall; April 16, Marton cum Grafton Memorial Hall; April 19,
Appletreewick Village Hall;  April 20, Kings Theatre, Queen Ethelburga’s School, Thorpe Underwood; April 26, Bishop Monkton Village Hall; April 27, Spofforth Village Hall; April 29,
Kirkby Malzeard Mechanics Institute.

May 4, Sheriff Hutton Village Hall; May 13, Sutton upon Derwent Village Hall; May 21, Cherry Burton Village Hall; May 24, Husthwaite Village Hall; May 25, Tunstall Village Hall; May 28, Otley Courthouse. June 9, North Stainley Village Hall, near Ripon; June 13, Green Hammerton Village Hall. All shows start at 7.30pm.

Hand in the air tonight: Chris Hayward performing his Seriously Collins tribute to Phil Collins

Tribute show of the week: Seriously Collins, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Friday, 7.30pm

NOW in its fifth year, Seriously Collins features Chris Hayward and his musicians in  a two-hour tribute to singing drummer Phil Collins and Genesis. No gimmicks, no bald wigs, only the solo and band hits, re-created meticulously. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Back in York: Ryan Adams goes solo and acoustic at the Barbican

Solo show of the week: Ryan Adams, York Barbican, Friday, 8pm  

NORTH Carolina singer-songwriter Ryan Adams plays York for the first time since 2011 on his eight-date solo tour, when each night’s set list will be different.

Adams, who visited the Grand Opera House in 2007 and four years later, will be performing on acoustic guitar and piano in the style of his spring 2022 run of East Coast American gigs, when he played 168 songs over five nights in shows that averaged 160 minutes. Box office: ryanadams.ffm.to/tour.OPR and yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Scott Matthews: Restless lullabies in Selby

Singer-songwriter of the week: Scott Matthews, Restless Lullabies Tour, Selby Town Hall, Friday, 8pm; The Old Woollen, Sunny Bank Mills, Farsley, April 16, 8pm

EXPECT an intimate acoustic show from Scott Matthews, the 47-year-old Ivor Novello Award-winning folk-pop singer-songwriter and guitarist from Wolverhampton, who has supported Foo Fighters, Robert Plant and Rufus Wainwright on tour.

Mastered at Abbey Road Studios, his starkly bold April 28 album Restless Lullabies reincarnates songs from his 2021 record, New Skin, removing its electronic veil. Box office: Selby, 01757 708449 or selbytownhall.co.uk; Farsley, oldwoollen.co.uk.

Fernando Maynart: Joyful night of Brazilian samba and bossa nova in Helmsley

“The Brazilian Ed Sheeran”: Fernando Maynart, Helmsley Arts Centre, April 15, 7.30pm

BRAZILIAN singer-songwriter Fernando Maynart returns to Helmsley Arts Centre with a new band and more of his beautiful TranSambas music, rooted in South American culture.

Combining song-writing with traditional, tribal and modern Latin rhythms, Maynart presents a concert with joy at its heart and  a repertoire of rhythms embracing bossa nova and samba. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.

Jasper Carrott and Alistair McGowan: Evening of comedy and impressions at Grand Opera House, York

Double bill of the week: An Evening Shared With Jasper Carrott and Alistair McGowan, Grand Opera House, York, April 16, 7.30pm

BRUMMIE comedian Jasper Carrott has shared bills in the past with impressionist Phil Cool and latterly with ELO drummer Bev Bevan. He first did so with impressionist Alistair McGowan at Reading Festival in 2017: a one-off that went so well that further shows ensued and now Jasper and Alistair are touring once more this spring.

The format involves McGowan taking to the stage first in each half, followed by Carrott’s stand-up combination of quickfire gags, sketches and stories. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

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One year on from Too-Rye-Ay tour cancellation, Dexys confirm York Barbican as first night for The Feminine Divine Live!

In the pink: Kevin Rowland, second left, with the 2023 incarnation of Dexys

AT last! Dexys will play York for the first time in their 45-year career on the opening night of September’s The Feminine Divine Live! tour.

Kevin Rowland’s revived soul band had been booked to play York Barbican on last autumn’s 40th anniversary Too-Rye-Ay As It Should Have Sounded Tour, but his need to recuperate from a motorbike accident and “some health issues that will take some time to recover from” forced the September 30 2022 gig’s cancellation as early as March last year.

The healing process took longer than expected, but Rowland was able to lead Dexys in their Commonwealth Games closing ceremony rendition of 1982 chart topper Come On Eileen in the their home city of Birmingham last August.

Now Rowland, who will turn 70 on August 17, will front Dexys as they “dramatically perform the new album from beginning to finale, followed by a selection of classics and hits (including plenty from Too-Rye-Ay) at York Barbican on Tuesday, September 5: the only Yorkshire show on their 13-date British and Irish tour. Tickets go on fan pre-sale from April 12 at dexysofficial.com and general sale from April 14 at dexysofficial.com and yorkbarbican.co.uk.

The Feminine Divine, Dexys’ fifth album of original material, will be released on July 28, 11 years since their last studio set, 2012’s One Day I’m Going To Soar. Lead single I’m Going To Get Free is up and midnight-running already.

The album artwork for Dexys’ The Feminine Divine, set for release on July 28

Produced once again by Pete Schwier, along with session musician and producer Toby Chapman, The Femine Divine is billed as “a personal, if not strictly autobiographical, record portraying a man whose views have evolved over time”.

After taking time out to refocus his energy, Rowland has come back to music with a fresh perspective and new-found positivity, leading to an album that reflects his thoughts “not just on women, but the whole concept of masculinity he had been raised with: an education and an un-learning that is traced across the arc of The Feminine Divine. 

The first side is full of music-hall swagger, much of it written with original Dexys’ trombonist Big Jim Paterson, now a non-touring band member. The second side is “like nothing Dexys have done before”: a saucy, synth-heavy cabaret, written in collaboration with Sean Read and Mike Timothy. In a nutshell, steamy, fizzing and sultry; at times doom-laden and heavy, at other times raunchy and funky.

Behind them, Dexys (or Dexys Midnight Runners until the name shearing in 2011) have chalked up one billion worldwide streams, three British top ten albums, two number one singles (Geno, Come On Eileen), a Brit Award and multi-platinum sales of sophomore release Too-Rye-Ay. 

When Too-Rye-Ay’s 40th anniversary shows were called off, Dexys’ official announcement read: “We had tried to keep the tour on track, but now it is clear that that there won’t be sufficient time to do the work needed to deliver the show as we had envisaged. Dexys feel awful about cancelling and are immensely sorry for the inconvenience caused.”

Too-Rye-Ailing: The original poster for the 2022 Dexys tour that could have been, until Kevin Rowland’s motorbike accident forced its cancellation

Reorganising the dates was ruled out. “We did consider postponing the tour until next year, but we already have plans for 2023, and we promise that when we next tour, and, it won’t be long, we will do plenty of material from ‘Too Rye Ay, As It Should Have Sounded’,” said Dexys at the time. True to their word, here come The Feminine Divine album and tour.

Their reworking of Too-Rye-Ay, As It Should Have Sounded went ahead with a 40th anniversary album release last October on single CD, triple CD and vinyl formats on Universal.

Released in July 1982, Too-Rye-Ay was the one with strings, brass and dungarees attached that reached number two, Dexys’ highest ever album chart position, buoyed by the top-spot success of ubiquitous wedding-party staple Come On Eileen.

The Van Morrison cover, Jackie Wilson Said (I’m In Heaven When You Smile), went top five too and Let’s Get This Straight (From The Start) peaked at number 17, but the notoriously perfectionist, restless Rowland later said: “For many years, I’ve struggled with Too-Rye-Ay.

“I was never happy with many of the mixes on the record. Tracks like ‘Eileen’ and one or two others were really good, but with most others, while I felt the performances were really good, that didn’t come over properly in the mixes.”

The cover artwork for Dexys revisited: Too-Rye-Ay As It Should Have Sounded

He went on: “I even felt fraudulent promoting the album, because I knew it didn’t sound as good as it should have.

“And of course, the irony was, it was by far our most successful Dexys album, because of the worldwide success of Come On Eileen. I knew there were other songs on there just as good as ‘Eileen’, but they hadn’t been realised properly.

“So, I was absolutely delighted to get this opportunity to remix the album with the masterful Pete Schwier, who has worked with Dexys since 1985, and Helen O’Hara [violinist on the original album] is also helping.”

Rowland concluded: “This is like a new album for me. It is an absolute labour of love. I want people to hear the album as it was meant to sound.”

Words of reflective satisfaction that now make way for a focus on the new Dexys of The Feminine Divine, whose track listing will be: The One That Loves You; It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023); I’m Going To Get Free; Coming Home; The Feminine Divine; My Goddess Is; Goddess Rules; My Submission and Dance With Me.

First single I’m Going To Get Free sets the tone by dint of its central character responding to mental-health struggles by striving to “optimistically break free from internalised trauma, depression and guilt”. New-found positivity indeed.

The 2022 Dexys’ line-up for Too-Rye-Ay As It Should Have Sounded
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York gallery According To McGee exhibits Richard and Chantal Barnes and Freya Horsley at Affordable Art Fair Hampstead

Chantal Barnes and Richard Barnes: According To McGee regulars heading for next month’s Affordable Art Fair Hampstead in London

YORK art gallery According To McGee is making plans for a return to business after a seven-month sabbatical on leaving Tower Street last September.

“We’ve been busy reminding ourselves why we need to celebrate art as gallerists”, says co-director Greg McGee. “York Art Gallery has been a great touchstone, as have locations further afield. Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Middlesbrough’s MIMA, even last week’s trip to Belfast’s thriving independent art galleries, gave us a much-needed shot in the arm.

“The York experience can at times be a little insular, both from a purveyors and consumers’ point of view, so we’ve been getting out and coming back feeling re-energised.”

Embracing this outward-looking instinct, Ails and Greg McGee have focused their energies on the Affordable Art Fair Hampstead, running from May 11 to 14 on the Lower Fairground Site, Hampstead Heath, London.

Just Behind The Morning, by Chantal Barnes

“We wanted to stretch our curatorial wings outside of Yorkshire,” reasons Ails. “The Affordable Art Fair (AAF) is a whole different level of quality and serious collecting. The organisers now hold fairs in ten cities around the world: London, New York, Hong Kong, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Brussels, Singapore, Stockholm, Melbourne and Sydney.

“They’re dedicated to sharing the importance of loving art, and, when possible, collecting it. On a micro-level, that’s what we do too. So we approached them and they accepted us, and we’re looking forward to exhibiting with them in Hampstead next month.”

Although the McGees are purposely basing this latest chapter of their gallery’s evolution beyond York, a cohort of artists with strong links to York will be leading the way.

“At this stage of our career and with this specific project, it’s important for us to work closely with artists we actually personally like!” says Ails, “We’re handing our exhibition space over to Richard Barnes, Chantal Barnes and Freya Horsley. The three of them have a painterly synergy that has been hugely successful for us in the past and will help steady the ship as we sail into unknown waters.” 

St Pancras Night Bus, by Richard Barnes

According To McGee’s final exhibition after 17 years opposite Clifford’s Tower (see https://fb.watch/jpif4qmZM4/) was a celebration of all three painters, presenting their latest collections.

Will the Affordable Art Fair exhibition provide an opportunity for international visitors to enjoy what art lovers in York have been able to experience, namely three seascape and cityscape painters, all well regarded for years?

“That’s a good question,” says Greg, “The answer helps us distil what we do best. We celebrate contemporary painters, painters who relentlessly evolve, and yearn for the next chapter. It’s not in the nature of any of our painters, especially Richard, Chantal, and Freya, to fossilise their output and become complacent.

“Their current compositions and mark making have all the experimental derring-do of white-hot graduates out of a world-class art school with points to prove and paintings to sell. You don’t get to sell as well as these three, nor do you get invited to exhibit at a globally recognised art event such as Affordable Art Fair Hampstead, without having something exciting and relevant to say.”

Richard Barnes with two of his new metropolitan artworks after his move south from York

Richard, who moved south from York in 2020 after teaching art at Bootham School for many years, is excited to bring his new collection to a wider audience.

“For 17 years I worked on painting York in new ways. The concept of the cityscape was there to be pulled and played with, and the iconic visuals of York was perfect for that – being cheeky, being innovative, reinventing,” he says.

“Now it feels right to focus on London. There are so many stories, so many layers of history to capture. I’m really pleased with this collection, and I’m looking forward to revealing them at Hampstead with According To McGee.”

Chantal, Richard’s daughter, is an increasingly collectible painter with collections already gracing international walls. Hampstead will be her first art fair show.

Artist Chantal Barnes at work

“The vigour with which Chantal pushes paint around is exciting and relevant and indicative of where contemporary painting is today,” says Greg.

“Chantal and Richard have studios not far too apart, and sometimes they even collaborate on the same piece. There’s a wonderful synergy between the two of them, whether that happens to be on the same canvas or two canvases in close proximity, and this show is an exciting opportunity to witness that.”

Freya Horsley has been working on new collections for the exhibition. “While the internet makes artists and galleries increasingly global in their reach, the Affordable Art Fair is exciting because it’s absolutely about seeing real artwork up close and in person,” says the York artist.

“This is something that Greg and Ails have always celebrated and promoted in their York gallery: the physical presence of a painting and the way it can change a space.

Even Now, mixed media on canvas, by Freya Horsley

“Working towards the fair has given me a really strong focus and an opportunity to make big impactful pieces, as well as smaller more affordable paintings, which is part of the rationale of the AAF. Alongside Richard and Chantal, I’m looking forward to showing our work to a new audience in this prestigious setting.’’

Ails is keen to build on According To McGee’s latest stage. “This is going to be about more than sales. The amount of global attention each Affordable Art Fair receives is simply huge, and we’re looking forward to bringing some of that gold dust back home when we relocate in York.”

Greg adds: “It’s this progressive, outward-looking energy that I think serves York so well. Us looking outwards to bring back energy and calibre is what in essence a heritage city like York is obliged to do now, for all kinds of reasons.

Greg and Ails McGee outside their former According To McGee gallery in Tower Street, York. Relocation plans are ongoing

“Unless you want to become Beamish [the Living Museum of the North in County Durham], history only works when you have one foot firmly planted in an innovative future. And rather than being a footnote in the annals of York’s creative scene, we would much prefer to be part of the future than the past.

“The art of Richard Barnes, Chantal Barnes, and Freya Horsley has always flown the flag for what contemporary painting can do, and we’re excited as to what this new approach can bring.”

Watch this space for updates on According To McGee’s relocation plans after the McGee family’s move into Acomb.

Affordable Art Fair Hampstead fact file

AFFORDABLE Art Fair Hampstead presents contemporary art from 100 London, UK and international galleries from May 11 to 14 at Lower Fairground Site, Hampstead Heath, London. Works are for sale at £50 to £7,500.

Visitors can enjoy an art-filled day out with installations, curated displays, rising star artists from University of the Arts, London and Jackson’s Painting Prize, plus bars and cafés. Expert advice is available from the fair’s new art consultancy service “to help make finding your dream artwork a breeze”.

Opening hours are: May 11, general admission, 11am to 5pm; Late View, 5pm to 9pm. May 12, 11am to 5pm, Art After Dark Late View, 5pm to 9pm. May 13 and 14, general admission, 11am to 6pm; Weekend Family Hour, 11am to 12 noon. Tickets: https://affordableartfair.com/fairs/london-hampstead

York artist Freya Horsley, pictured in the former According To McGee gallery space in Tower Street, York

Where else can you see Freya Horsley’s seascapes?

FREYA will be taking part in York Open Studios on April 15, 16, 22 and 23, showing her abstract landscape paintings at Bootham School Arts Centre, Bootham, York, from 10am to 5pm each day, preceded by a preview evening on April 14 from 6pm to 9pm.

Her work explores light, weather and atmospheric effects, building up surfaces with a wide variety of media and processes.

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Chitty Chitty Bang Bang flies into Grand Opera House with York Stage at the wheel

Alex Papachristou’s Baron Bomburst and Jackie Cox’s Baroness in York Stage’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

THE Sherman brothers’ fantasmagorical musical, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, takes to the air at the Grand Opera House, York, from tonight.

Produced and directed by Nik Briggs, with musical direction by Adam Tomlison and choreography by Damien Poole, York Stage’s production of Ian Fleming’s story of madness, mayhem and magic features not only a big cast but a quartet of cars too.

“One of them is parked in the en-suite! That’s Baron Bomburst’s car, more of a vintage, turn-of-the-century car than Chitty, slightly more primitive, that we’ve brought here from Brighton,” says Nik. “The Baron wants inventor Caractacus Potts to fit it with a ‘float and fly’ features.

“There’s the battered old Chitty that the children find in a junkyard, and the Chitty with the title role, the 16ft long, 6ft wide, four-fendered Chitty, weighing 1,000kg, that magically flies over the Grand Opera House stage. We’ve hired that car from a company down south that built it specially for stage productions.

“We also have a smaller version of Chitty that was created for a production in Malton five or six years ago.”

Adapted from James Bond novelist Fleming’s story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car, written for his son in 1962 and published as three books in 1964, the musical tells the tale of whacky inventor Caractacus Potts (played by Ned Sproston), his two children and the gorgeous Truly Scrumptious (Carly Morton).

Can they outwit bombastic Baron Bomburst (Alex Papachristou), who has decreed that all children be banished from his kingdom? Watch out, here comes the evil Childcatcher (Richard Barker), who will be “popping up, here, there and everywhere, you never know where next”, Nik promises.

Nik Briggs: Producer-director for York Stage’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

“Yes, we have the flying car, but at its heart, it’s a really lovely story of Caractacus and his children, who are so imaginative. Even though Chitty is burnt out when they find her, they see designs of the car and that leads them off into a fantasy world, where the Baron is desperate to have the car.

“His wife, the Baroness (Jackie Cox), will do anything to please him and so she sends spies Boris and Goran (Jack Hooper and James Robert Ball) – obviously not the most intelligent of spies – from Vulgaria to retrieve the car from England.

“We have a broad style of playing these characters, with various Germanic and Vulgarian accents rather than a uniform one,” says Nik. “We’ve deliberately allowed everyone to find the fun in their character, so they all have their different styles. It’s almost comedy in the ’Allo ’Allo! style.

“Traditionally you have a fall guy to set up the gag, but with the Baron and Baroness and the spies too, it’s more like being on a see-saw; they’re the fall guy for each other, so anything goes.”

Barlby-raised Alex Papachristou is returning to the York stage, where he first caught the eye,  to take over the role of Baron Bomburst at short notice, heading up from London over the past fortnight for weekend rehearsals, to be followed by tech week.

“They’re ridiculous characters, like a parody of themselves, but it’s also good to see the consequences of the Baron and Baroness’s greed. He’s like a 1910 version of Donald Trump, saying he’s going to make Vulgaria great again!” he says.

“The villains do have a Bond villain quality about them. The Baron doesn’t have a cat but he does have a teddy bear.”

York Stage’s poster artwork for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as Chitty takes to the sky over York

Nik adds: “The Jeremy Sams version of the musical that we’re using does feature the Baron and the Baroness and the two spies a lot more than the 1968 film, so you get the story of Caractacus Potts, his children and Truly Scrumptious, but more of the baddies too.

“It’s also interesting to have a story about a single father. Caractacus is this loving character who will do anything for his children, giving them their creative outlets and liberating them to do whatever they want. When the romance with Truly Scrumptious comes along, they are from two different worlds, but they find love.”

Alex’s Baron will differ from the screen version. “I don’t play him like in the film. I play him as a 33-year-old spoilt young Baron, not a baron in his sixties. Of the roles I’ve played before, he’s quite similar in that way to Herod [performed as a white-faced, cross-dressing vaudeville act in York Stage Musicals’ Jesus Christ Superstar in 2011, when Briggs was Pontius Pilate], but not similar to anyone else,” he says.

“I’ve had to work really hard at this role as he wasn’t a natural fit. I even had Brian Blessed in my head for a while! The humour is more dry, more subtle, than in the film, and these characters are so well written that there’s a lot of elasticity to play around with them: you could really do it 100 ways, but as long as the children in the audience hate you and the adults love you, that’s all that matters!

“On the surface, the Baron and Baroness love each other, but underneath, they can’t stand each other, and it’s good to play someone who has more than one level to their character. These are the parts that are a joy to do and it’s always fun to be the villain.”

York Stage in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Grand Opera House, York, today to April 15, 7.30pm nightly except April 9, plus 2.30pm matinees, tomorrow, Saturday, April 12 and 15. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Copyright of The Press, York

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REVIEW: Pick Me Up Theatre in Oh! What A Lovely War, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York ***

Ian Giles, front, leading Adam Price and Joy Warner in Adieu La Vie in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Oh! What A Lovely War at Theatre@41, Monkgate

PICK Me Up Theatre are staging Oh! What A Lovely War to mark the 60th anniversary of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop premiere at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East.

Why else Robert Readman and co-director Johnny Holbek are reviving this old stager is not so clear on encountering the veteran work of Sixties’ agit-prop; rather like the surfeit of voices that are sometimes a struggle to comprehend in the absence of head microphones.

Body mics do the hard-working company no favours, especially Ian Giles’s all-important master of ceremonies, whose deadpan punchlines fall flat when dying in the muffled air. In contrast, the regular toots on his whistle could not have been shriller.

Ironically, when your reviewer – seated up on the mezzanine level – couldn’t decipher what the drill sergeant was shouting, it turns out it was supposed to be gibberish, but the joke was lost after the uncertainty caused by the earlier encounters with the lack of clarity.

Alison Taylor, front left, and Beryl Nairn performing En Avant!

Oh! What A Lovely War, constructed as a searing satirical chronicle of the First World War, as told through songs and documents in the form of a seaside Pierrot entertainment, was a landmark in British theatre history, prompting the intrigue surrounding Pick Me Up’s revival.

Likewise, Richard Attenborough’s 1969 film account of the working-class Smith lads, Jack, Freddie, Harry and George, seeing initial hope swallowed up by the mud and stench of the trenches, resonated amid the Sixties’ vibe of Make Love, Not War.

From Blackadder Goes Forth to Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse and Private Peaceful, Sam Mendes’s 1917 to this year’s BAFTA-winning All Quiet On The Western Front, the Great War continues to provoke eloquent, elegiac reflection across the arts and literature.  

Oh! What A Lovely War is closest in spirit to Blackadder in the trenches, in its sense of futility, chiming with Winston Churchill’s maxim in favour of dialogue over destruction. “Jaw Jaw is better than War War,” he forewarned, and in turn Oh! What A Lovely War has plenty of jaw jaw about war war, while making a song and dance of it with familiar music-hall songs from the Great War period and hymns fitted out with new lyrics to give them a satirical snap.

Florence Poskitt, left, Maggie Smales and Marlena Kelli in the Kamerad! Kamerad! vignette in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Oh! What A Lovely War

Against the John Cooper Studio’s back wall, ever more damning statistics of the body count are typed out across the screen, the factual counter to the officers’ cavalier attitude to so many wasteful deaths of the working-class cannon fodder.

They have the show’s most shuddering impact, ensuring that a sense of righteous anger prevails, as does a haunting sorrow, further enhanced by the presence of a junior ensemble.

However, the strident tones of surrealism, in part set by the Pierrot costumes with their out-of-period elasticated waists, always feels one step removed from connecting. Likewise, you can see the ever-willing cast having to push too hard to make the satire amusing in a show that starts to drag on, like the war itself.

Readman and Holbek’s period-piece production seeks to break down theatre’s fourth wall, often through Giles’s conspiratorial asides, sometimes through music-hall repartee, but the best scenes are self-contained, most notably for the Christmas Day exchange of gifts in No Man’s Land and the grotesque grouse moor shooting-party bluster among those making money out of the war (in a haunting forerunner of Covic contracts).

James Willstrop and Sanna Jeppsson, front, with the Pick Me Up Theatre ensemble performing Row Row Row

Inspired by Charles Chiltern’s radio series that combined First World war statistics with songs, Littlewood’s piece was constructed through improvisation and credited to the company of performers. In the spirit of that gestation, Pick Me Up’s multi role-playing troupe of troops is credited by a list of cast names and not by character, and it is very much an ensemble piece, teamwork to the fore, although James Willstrop, Florence Poskitt, Alison Taylor and in particular Craig Kirby stand out.

Accompanied by Natalie Walker’s piano-led band, the songs transition from hope to despair, from perky to poignant, from Belgium Put The Kibosh On The Kaiser to I Don’t Want To Be A Soldier.

Reviving Oh! What A Lovely War does not evoke nostalgia and nor should it. Instead, it feels and looks out of its time, like Richard Lester’s 1967 film How I Won The War. Some vignettes still work, elsewhere the satire has tired or lost coherence over 60 years.

What hasn’t changed? War, huh, yeah, what is good for? Absolutely nothing. Except anti-war songs.  

Pick Me Up Theatre in Oh! What A Lovely War, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight (6/4/2023) and tomorrow, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Pick Me Up Theatre’s poster artwork for Oh! What A Lovely War
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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Late Music: Ian Pace, Unitarian Chapel, York

Ian Pace: Tireless campaigner for composers of the past 100 years

Late Music: Ian Pace, Xenakis Centenary Concert, Composers With A Side Hustle, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel York, 1/4/2023

OSTENSIBLY a Xenakis centenary celebration, this recital had an intriguing sub-title: Composers With A Side Hustle. All six of the composers involved had day jobs until music took over. Xenakis himself was a professional architect working with Le Corbusier in Paris.

Ian Pace has been a tireless campaigner for composers of the past hundred years, including music that is barely dry on the page. He has appeared regularly in the Late Music series in York for over two decades.

He opened with Xenakis’s Mists (1980), a collection of cameos in which his staccato touch maintained immense clarity, even amongst the busiest of textures, often at the top of the keyboard.

A much earlier work, Chansons I-VI (1950-1), written when music was still a sideline for him, found Xenakis in lyrical vein and still strongly influenced by music of his Romanian childhood and Greek parentage. All the songs had a French tinge, boasting a certain joie de vivre when not reflective. Pace invested their melodies with pleasing immediacy.

Completing his Xenakis tribute, Pace gave the composer’s homage to Ravel, À.r. (1987), a virtuoso flourish to end a stimulating evening.

In between, we visited four American composers as well as our own James Williamson. Philip Glass (cab driver and plumber) wrote Knee Play 4 as a piano transcription of one of the five linking intermezzos from his opera Einstein On The Beach. It was both tonal and minimal, but Pace found a way to bring out its inner voices.

Morton Feldman’s (clothes manufacturer) Extensions 3 was extremely delicate, toying with the limits of audibility until its crashing closing chords.

Minimalism is also a stimulus in the work of Williamson (insurance claims handler), as heard here in his new Neon (2023). Tiny changes in repeating motifs in the centre of the piano were mesmeric, until twice interrupted by loud, separated chords which were like blobs of colour on the canvas. Each time the opening recurred, it brought illumination, although it was more like moonlight than anything gassy like neon. What’s a title anyway?

Pace filled out his programme with an amusing potpourri of Charles Ives (insurance agent), arguably the forefather of all the Americans here. It included a Bach-style invention, a solemn chorale and a parody of salon music, all given nicely tongue-in-cheek.

Finally, there was John Cage (graphic designer and mycologist). In his minimalist Satie-inspired In A Landscape (1948), Pace picked out its two melodies from the subtly shifting accents. Yet again he had proved an invaluable missionary for music that might otherwise be forgotten.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Elizabeth Llewellyn & Simon Lepper, Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, March 28

Elizabeth Llewellyn: Bringing her radiant soprano to more intimate surroundings

HARD on the heels of her triumphant Opera North run in the title role of Ariadne auf Naxos, Elizabeth Llewellyn brought her radiant soprano to more intimate surroundings in a recital celebrating the late Dr Keith Howard, the most generous benefactor in Opera North’s history. Simon Lepper’s piano was her deft partner.

Her programme was an eclectic mix of Verdi and Puccini songs that played to her operatic strengths, lieder of Brahms and Strauss, and songs by two English composers, Coleridge-Taylor and Stanford.

Llewellyn’s debut recording, Heart And Hereafter in 2021, was devoted to songs by Coleridge-Taylor, eight of which she offered here, opening each half of the evening with them. She clearly has a special feel for this music. The best of three from 1896 was a setting of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet Tears, an intimate view of grief.

Even more affecting were four settings of Christina Rossetti from Sorrow Songs, Op 57 (1904), with a passionate “Let me be” in Oh What Comes Over The Sea?.

There is often a touch of Brahms in the music of Stanford, Coleridge-Taylor’s teacher, even when he is trying to be Irish, as in A Sheaf Of Songs From Leinster. Llewellyn gave a spirited account of The Bold Unbiddable Child. In three lieder by Brahms himself, she tried to keep her tone intimate and succeeded best with Auf dem Kirchhofe (In The churchyard), with its telling rhymes, ‘Gewesen’ (deceased) and ‘Genesen’ (released).

She was wise to keep her Italian songs and her Strauss to the end of each half: they allowed her to open out her naturally rich tone. She found it easy to convey the adoration of Du Meines Herzens Krönelein (You My Heart’s Little Crown) and the rapture of the evergreen Ständchen (Serenade). They also allowed Lepper to break out more and he took full advantage of Strauss’s lush accompaniments, highlighting pianistic details.

Llewellyn’s Italian projection was even smoother still. The lullaby Sogno d’or (Sweet Dream, 1912) reappeared in the opera La Rondine; she covered her tone beautifully at its close. She cleverly paired it with another ‘ninna-nanna’ (lullaby), E l’uccellino, an amusing little bird. The remainder of the Puccini songs were stand-alone numbers, which rarely get a recital airing.

In three Verdi songs at the close, she really cut loose, finishing with a vivaciously carefree gypsy girl in La Zingara. As she spends more time in recital halls, she will perhaps not feel the need to fall back on operatic styles so much and she will tailor the intimate side of her tone accordingly.

She has all the charm and charisma you could ask for. For the time being, however, she will do herself – and her audiences – an immense favour by dispensing with her music stand and learning the songs as she would an operatic role. Only then will she establish that direct communication with her listeners that is so crucial to the full success of a song recital.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Elizabeth Llewellyn & Simon Lepper’s CD of songs by Coleridge-Taylor is on Orchid Classics ORC 100164.

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