Morgan & West: Magic meets science at York Theatre Royal
GREAT Yorkshire Fringe festival favourites Morgan & West present their new show Unbelievable Science at York Theatre Royal on Saturday afternoon.
After a decade of magic shows for young and old alike, their time-travelling conjuring act is well established on the UK touring circuit, but these spiffing chaps hide a dark secret beneath their prestidigitatory prowess.
Rhys Morgan and Robert West are Oxford graduates with degrees in physics and chemistry and fully qualified secondary school teachers to boot.
Unbelievable Science: “A show to marvel and wonder at what science and nature has to offer us all”
Unbelievable Science combines the duo’s trademark showmanship and silliness with genuine scientific knowledge and a lifelong love of learning to create a fun science extravaganza for all ages.
After their nomination for a Primary Times Children’s Choice Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, science communicators Morgan & West are taking the show all over England, where audiences will experience captivating chemistry, phenomenal physics and bonkers biology.
Fires, explosions, lightning on stage, optical illusions, mass audience experiments and 3D shadow puppets await all those “wily enough to come along to be intrigued by science”.
Morgan & West: “Throwing out the jargon and making everything plain, simple, clear and enormously exciting”
“In the age of ‘so-called experts’, we felt it was time to bring families together to marvel and wonder at what science and nature has to offer us all, provoking questions and discussions as to how things work and what regular people themselves can learn from it,” say Morgan & West.
“It’s time to throw out the jargon and make everything plain, simple, clear and enormously exciting.”
Tickets to see these Penn & Teller: Fool Us winners on May 7 at 2.30pm are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Morgan & West’s poster artwork for their new modus operandi as science communicators
Jonny Woo and Le Gateau Chocolat: Cabaret stars of Now That’s What WE Call Musicals
NO musical is safe from Le Gateau Chocolat and Jonny Woo’s fabulously camp cabaret revamp in Now That’s What WE Call Musicals! at York Theatre Royal on June 2.
Dubbed the “Ebony and Ivory of drag”, Le Gateau Chocolat, Olivier award-winning star of La Clique and La Soiree, and Jonny Woo, queen of London’s alternative drag scene, present a melting pot of musical theatre, karaoke, comedy, vaudeville, variety, sing-along invitations and dress-up madness.
“Get ready to be dragged through a catalogue of our favourite musical hits, from Gypsy to Grease, Little Mermaid to The Sound Of Music,” say Gateau and Woo.
Expect sexual references and crude language in a 7.30pm show with an age guidance of 16+. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Stewart Lee: Two shows each night for three days in York
DELAYED by lockdowns, Stewart Lee’s Snowflake/Tornado double bill at last blows into York Theatre Royal from tomorrow (3/5/2022) until Thursday.
Bolstered by new material for 2022, the brace of 60-minute sets will be performed back to back nightly from 7.30pm. Good luck trying to acquire a ticket on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk at this late stage.
Heavily rewritten in the light of two pandemic-enforced dormant years, Snowflake looks at how the Covid-Brexit era has influenced the culture war between lovely snowflakes and horrible people.
Tornado questions Lee’s position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly listed his show as “reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is safe.”
“I’m just an old-fashioned entertainer at heart,” says Stewart Lee
Is the material still topical after a two-year layoff during the pandemic? “Well, believe it or not, the stuff in Snowflake making fun of Jimmy Carr for doing jokes about ‘gypsies’ has been in my show since 2019, as it’s the sort of thing he always does.
“So it’s just an indication of how he tends to hit the same shock buttons every time,” says Lee, in reference to the show discussing Carr’s ongoing use of material about the Traveller and Roma communities that saw calls for the 8 Out Of 10 Cats host to be prosecuted for incitement to racial hatred. “That’s a step too far, especially when he’s being condemned by members of the current government.
“The weird thing is that, because of the two-year downtime, lots of the material that was a bit ahead of the curve came into focus and goes down even better now. For example, everyone’s thought a lot more about the supposedly ‘woke’ ideas I endorse, what with Black Lives Matter and those leaked police e-mails about hating women. And Boris Johnson’s dishonesty and hypocrisy, which I discuss on stage, is undeniable now.”
Tornado takes the form of a long shaggy dog story about how Lee saw loads of rotisserie chickens being delivered to American comedian Dave Chapelle’s dressing room in London in 2018.
Stewart Lee’s tour poster for his rearranged Snowflake/Tornado itinerary in 2022
“More people know who he is now because he got in trouble with transgender people last year,” he says.
“But some material had to be ditched from Tornado after lockdown. I had 20 minutes in 2019 about what I imagined the new James Bond film would be like, but it’s out now.
“That said, dropping that bit and switching in some new stuff tightened the second half, which is largely about attempts by the right to weaponise a ‘culture war’ against liberals and minorities.”
Lee’s comedic schtick may be defined as “people paying to see a miserable and frustrated middle-aged man wind himself up into a frenzy about everything”, but to counter that perception, he says: “The funny thing with this tour is that my obvious delight at being back on the boards can’t help but infect the audience. I’m just an old-fashioned entertainer at heart! Like Vera Lynn. Or that Emu.”
Lee, 54, will be touring Snowflake/Tornado until July. His new show, Basic Lee, will be fine-tuned in Edinburgh Fringe work-in-progress shows at The Stand in August before playing the Leicester Square Theatre, London, from September 20 to December 17. A national tour will follow from January 26 2023 with full details at stewartlee.co.uk.
BETH McCarthy will play a home-city gig for the first time since March 2019 at The Crescent, York, tonight (2/5/2022).
Much has happened to Beth, singer, songwriter and erstwhile BBC Radio York evening show presenter, since she moved to London.
Lockdown times three may have curtailed her gigging but in that hiatus she has been buoyed by the online response to four singles and videos, drawing 4.8 million likes and 300,000 followers on TikTok and attracting 465,000 monthly listeners and nine million plays of her heartbreak hit She Gets The Flowers on Spotify.
“I moved down to the Big Smoke three weeks before the first lockdown,” recalls Beth. “Got here. World at my feet, then not anymore!
“It was funny really because, in the first stage of lockdown, it was like it was for all performers – everything stopped – so I came back to York and stayed with my parents for a while, and my only outlet for performing was busking on my parents’ drive.
“It got a bit depressing, I’m not going to lie, but I came back to London, as I’d managed to keep my place on, did some songwriting and started busking.”
After Beth was filmed busking, the response to the footage on social media was so positive that she thought, ‘I’d better get on to this’. “I started doing stuff on TikTok, doing something more than straightforward covers by re-working songs to give them a different perspective,” she says.
“That started to take off and the one that really caught on was OMG Did She Call Him Baby?, where I adapted the hook from Will Joseph Cook’s Be Around Me and changed it OMG Did She Call Him Baby?.
“He’s a songwriter from London, he’s got his own label; like me, he’s pretty independent himself. His song was going viral on TikTok, so I contacted him and he said yes to my version, and mine went viral too!”
Beth has settled into London life, living south of the river in Battersea. “That’s uncommon for creatives, but I absolutely love it, even if you could argue I haven’t experienced it at its fullest,” she says.
“But being around its fast pace does me a lot of good, whereas some people are put off by that and feel lonely. Not me. When I did The Voice [the BBC One talent show] in 2014 when I was 16, staying down here for rehearsals, I loved it and I’ve wanted to be here ever since.”
Reflecting on her move, Beth says: “I’ve had what you could call quite a ‘soft release’ to London; going back to York, doing some Radio York shows for a while, and I’ve still got my family there. I’ve had one foot in York, one foot in London, but now this is me, down here full time.”
Last year, Beth supported Sigrid and sold out two headline shows in London and now she has been taken under the wing of Kilimanjaro Live to promote her shows. This spring, she has appeared on Kilimanjaro Live’s stage at Liverpool Sound City on May 1, and coming next after York tonight are gigs at Camden Assembly, London, on May 3 and Deaf Institute, Manchester, on May 7, followed by a set at Kilimanjaro Live’s new festival in Norwich, Neck Of The Woods, on May 29.
“Having Kilimanjaro Live and Live Nation onside is great, and I’ve also signed to the Paradigm agency, who do everyone! I have two agents there; one works with Billie Eilish, not bad company to be in!” says Beth.
“I haven’t got a manager yet. Finding the right one when you’ve been working on your own isn’t easy.”
Beth is signed to a small Manchester label, LAB Records. “They’re great as I just want to keep releasing songs, and there were sniffs around She Get The Flowers when it took off on Spotify for a bigger release. It almost happened but the industry is still bruised [by the pandemic].”
Check out She Gets The Flowers’ accompanying video on YouTube, the one with a litany of female hurt spelled out on cards – a mode of expression patented by Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues – held silently by assorted friends and cohorts of Beth, among them familiar faces from York’s arts scene such as Annie Donaghy and Livy Potter.
“Because it was lockdown, it was one of the hardest things to navigate, with only a restricted number of people allowed in the room and everyone having to be masked up except when each of us was being filmed, but that was the easiest way to film it at the time,” recalls Beth.
“I did it with Ont’ Sofa [the Old Stables recording studios in Harrogate], who I’ve always done stuff with, working with Ben Dave, who has a company called Dot and Diode, and Harrogate musician and producer Jason Odell.
“I’ve worked with Jason really closely. He co-produced it and every song I’ve done since then, so it’s nice to have a little piece of Yorkshire going in with Jason’s involvement.”
The story arch of She Gets The Flowers and its accompanying video charts those who do not receive the flowers and the circumstances why. “Everyone in the video needed to feel comfortable in front of the camera,” says Beth.
“A couple of them, Annie and Livy, had acting experience but the majority didn’t, but it was vital we set it up to create an emotional atmosphere, so we played them all the lyrics before recording, and that’s what made the song translate so well with their candid expressions on camera.”
For her York, London and Manchester gigs, guitarist Beth will perform in a three-piece line-up, but she remains equally at home singing on her own. “I’m back and forth with what I do when I play live.” she says.
“From the start, I paved the way for being able to just rock up with a guitar and just be myself on a stage. Picking up an acoustic guitar and becoming a singer-songwriter from when I was 13, I feel lucky that I was brought up in the very rootsy music scene in York.”
Beth McCarthy: Performing at Big Ian Donaghy’s A Night To Remember charity fundraiser at York Barbican
Joining Beth at The Crescent tonight will be drummer and musical director Michael Turnbull and keyboard player Christina Hizon. “Michael is connected with Litany (Beth Cornell’s band], from Harrogate, so it’s northerners coming together! I said, ‘You’re from the north, you’re going to have to be in my band’,” she says.
“Christina’s been on tour with Maisie Peters, and next up, after my shows, she’s going to tour with Ed Sheeran. She played with [Queen drummer] Roger Taylor on his tour last year that came to the York Barbican. We first in a social setting in London.”
Positivity courses through Beth as TikTok, Spotify and YouTube give her momentum, now compounded by her return to the concert platform. “I’m just going to push my music as much and as often as possible,” she says.
“I may have no label deal or management, but what I do have is the hope that people just want to listen to music, in whatever form, and the last two songs I’ve released have really instilled that in me.
“The rest is just fluff, and as long as you do the things that matter to you, that’s what’s important.”
Beth is putting together an EP combining her compositions If You Loved Me Right, Friendship Bracelet, No Hard Feelings and You Ruin Love. “The point was to capture as many feelings as possible out of relationships and break-ups,” she says.
“If You Loved Me Right is a classically bitter break-up song, taking the power back, feeling not sad, but angry. Friendship Bracelet says ‘go ahead, burn my bracelet’. I wanted the title No Hard Feelings for one song, knowing that most of the songs would be about hard feelings. But that’s all fine, that’s me! I like things to have a concept, to have an honest purpose.
“I feel like if I ever did fall deeply in love it would ruin my career! To be fair, the songs have all been pretty sad or angry, though No Hard Feelings is like an amicable break-up song where you end up on good terms. It’s still hard, but sometimes love fizzles out, there’s no falling out and you just don’t see each other anymore.”
In the buzz of London, Beth has been taking part in “loads of writing sessions with a bit of the speed-dating culture but for writing”. “I find everybody is pretty happy to share other talented people for you to work with,” she says.
Her song-writing goal is to conceive “songs for people who don’t have songs yet”, by which she means songs that are personal to them. “It’s that thing when people go, ‘that’s the song that feels like it came from me, even though I didn’t write it’,” says Beth. “I’m always searching for the person that doesn’t have that song.”
Beth McCarthy, The Crescent, York, tonight (2/5/2022), supported by Jemma Johnson. Doors: 7.30pm. Box office: the crescentyork.com or myticket.co.uk/artists/beth-mccarthy
The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon: Leading a Charmed Life at York Barbican tonight. Picture: Kevin Westerberg
SEEKING Divine inspiration? Here comes Charles Hutchinson with his guide to what’s hot, from topical comedy to charming songwriters, a steamy thriller to intense jazz.
Charmer of the week: The Divine Comedy, York Barbican, tonight, 7.45pm
THE Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon plays York this weekend for the first time since the Irish chamber-pop leprechaun’s Minster concert in May 2011.
Hannon will be showcasing his 2022 compilation, Charmed Life – The Best Of The Divine Comedy, marking the completion of the 51-year-old songwriter, musical score composer and cricket enthusiast’s third decade as a recording artist
“I’ve been luckier than most,” Hannon says. “I get to sing songs to people for a living and they almost always applaud.” Hence that Charmed Life title. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Alexander Flanagan Wright feels the Stillington dance vibes
Outdoor dance vibes of the long weekend: Dance Dance Dance, A Damn Big Dance Party, At The Mill, Stillington, near York, Sunday, 6pm to 11pm
HEADPHONES on as At The Mill plays host to a three-channel Silent Disco with a bunch of very cool guest DJs, a live set from Flatcap Carnival and the pizza oven fired up for orders.
Organiser Alexander Flanagan Wright says: “We got Joshua Pulleyn coming. We got Bolshee taking over a channel. We got Sarah Rorke blasting out some Northern Soul vibes. Tom Figgins is metaphorically spinning a track or two.
“Paul Smith has some new punk and old-school hip hop heading your way. Abbi Ollive has a solid hour of girl power. And I’m lining up a lot of Chemical Brothers, Prodigy and Beyoncé as I can. Come dance. It’s gotta be mega. There’s a handful of tickets left at atthemill.org.”
Beth McCarthy: Heading back home to play The Crescent
Homecoming of the week: Beth McCarthy, The Crescent, York, Monday, doors 7.30pm
BETH McCarthy, now living in London, heads home to play her first York gig since March 2019.
Singer-songwriter Beth has been buoyed by the online response to her singles and videos, drawing 4.8 million likes and 300,000 followers on TikTok and attracting 465,000 monthly listeners and nine million plays of her She Gets The Flowers on Spotify. Box office: myticket.co.uk/artists/beth-mccarthy.
Double at the treble: Stewart Lee serves up his Snowflake and Tornado double bill on three nights at York Theatre Royal from May 3 to 5
Comedy gigs of the week: Stewart Lee, Snowflake/Tornado, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Thursday, 7.30pm
DELAYED by lockdowns, Stewart Lee finally brings Snowflake/Tornado – a double bill of two 60-minute sets, back-to-back nightly – to York with new material for 2022.
Heavily rewritten in the light of two pandemic-enforced dormant years, Snowflake looks at how the Covid/Brexit era has influenced the culture war between lovely snowflakes and horrible people.
Tornadoquestions Lee’s position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly listed his show as “reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is safe.” Good luck trying to acquire a ticket on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Trouble brewing: Lift-off for Susie Amy’s Alex Forrest and Oliver Farnworth in Fatal Attraction. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Psychological thriller of the week: Fatal Attraction, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm and 2.30pm matinees, Wednesday and Saturday
JAMES Dearden, screenwriter for Adrian Lyne’s 1987 “bunny boiler” American psycho thriller, has written a new stage version of Fatal Attraction for 21st century audiences, mobile phones et al.
The plot remains the same: happily married New York attorney Dan Gallagher (Oliver Farnworth) has a night on the town with editor Alex Forrest (Susie Amy) that boils up into passion.
Dan returns home to wife Beth (Louise Redknapp), trying to forget what happened, but Alex has only one rule: you play fair with her and she’ll play fair with you. If not…! Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
All smiles: Marti Pellow on his Greatest Hits Tour at York Barbican
Smile of the week: Marti Pellow, Greatest Hits Tour, York Barbican, Tuesday, 7.30pm
LET Marti Pellow introduce his Greatest Hits Tour show. “It’s about finally being able to come together to celebrate love, life, and remember those we may have lost along the way. Most of all, it’s about enjoyment and celebrating the here and now. Get your dancing shoes on: it’s time to party with Marti.”
Expect songs from his Wet Wet Wet and solo catalogues up to 2021’s Stargazer album, cover versions too, plus reflective chat as he sits on the edge of the stage. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The good sax guide: Saxophonist Trish Clowes with her My Iris bandmates, promising earthy restlessness and futuristic dreamscapes at the NCEM
Jazz gig of the week: Trish Clowes: My Iris, National Centre for Early Music, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm
SAXOPHONIST Trish Clowes leads her jazz band My Iris in their York debut, providing pianist Ross Stanley, guitarist Chris Montague and drummer James Maddren with a high-intensity platform for individual expression and improvisation.
Driving grooves and lingering melodic lines combine as they “seamlessly morph between earthy restlessness and futuristic dreamscapes”. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Exploring motherhood: Ana Silverio in Me, Myself & Misha
Indoor dance show of the week: Terpsichoring Dance Company in Me, Myself And Misha, York Theatre Royal Studio, Friday, 7.45pm
TERPSICHORING Dance Company’s Me, Myself & Misha is a heartfelt, autobiographical 40-minute show devised and performed by award-winning dance artist Ana Silverio, who explores the physical and emotional journey, full of challenges and joys, that one woman undertakes to become a mother.
Universal themes of pregnancy and labour are presented, using a mix of physical theatre and dance alongside an original and moving musical score. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The poster for the Yorkraine benefit concert at the Grand Opera House, York
Fundraiser alert: Yorkraine, for DEC Ukraine Appeal, Grand Opera House, York, May 24, 7.30pm
YORKRAINE’s benefit concert combines four of York’s finest cover bands, The Supermodels, The Mothers, The Y Street Band and Sister Madly, plus acoustic slots from Alex Victoria and Mal Fry and guest speakers.
The evening of pop and rock classics from the past six decades will raise funds for the British Red Cross DEC appeal to aid Ukrainian refugees who find themselves in dire circumstances. All artists, hosts, sound tech and crew have donated their time free of charge. Box office: atgtickets.com/York.
Balancing act: Gary Barlow talks the talk as he walks the walk on his musical journey through A Different Stage
Gig announcement of the week: Gary Barlow, A Different Stage, Grand Opera House, York, June 10 and 11
TAKE That legend, singer, songwriter, composer, producer, talent show judge and author Gary Barlow is adding a theatrical one-man show to his repertoire.
“I’ve done shows where it has just been me and a keyboard,” says Barlow. “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.” Now the bad news: tickets went on sale at 9.30am yesterday and sold out by 10am, but Pray there could yet be a silver lining…
TWO Big Egos In A Small Car culture podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson take their hat off to Barry in Episode 86 as the Australian comedy chameleon plays his first show in three years at the age of 88 at York’s Grand Opera House.
Plus Graham unexpectedly encounters Chinese artist Ai Weiwei at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Echo & The Bunnymen and Groove Armada’s Leeds O2 Academy gigs, and Harrogate gallery curator Andrew Stewart RIP.
“To say I was enthusiastic is an understatement,” says Marti Pellow as he returns to the concert platform
PULL on your dancing shoes, it’s time to party with Marti, says that Scottish fellow Pellow ahead of his Greatest Hits Tour gig at York Barbican on Tuesday night.
York is one of five additions to the second leg of a post-lockdown itinerary that opened at Scarborough Spa Theatre on November 11 when the former Wet Wet Wet frontman, soulful solo singer and musical theatre star could not wait to re-connect with his devotees.
“Throughout lockdown, I was inundated by beautiful messages from fans, asking me to please organise a tour once we come out of these terrible times,” said the Clydebank singer at the time.
“Twelve million people tuned in for the Lockdown Sessions I did and each one of you has inspired me to make this tour happen this year.”
How did those autumn shows go? “Great! To say I was enthusiastic is an understatement and the audiences were so up for it because concert venues were the first places to close for Covid and the last to reopen,” says Marti, whose tour mission statement is to celebrate love, life and those we lost along the way.
The cover artwork for Marti Pellow’s Stargazer album, his homage to his heroes
“Calling it the Greatest Hits Tour was perfect too. As much as I did want to play songs from Stargazer [his March 2021 album written in homage to his heroes], and I did do that, most of the night hangs on being a celebration of getting back together.
“They were all shouting back at me, ‘No Marti, no party!’, as I did all those songs from multiple decades. After we’d navigated that year and a half we’d all been through, the set picked itself, whether I wrote the song, co-wrote it, sang it solo or with Wet Wet Wet, or it was a song I’d covered.”
On the tour’s second leg, that format remains the same; “In the more intimate parts of the show, I like to sit down and reflect, and I have a sophisticated audience so they’ll let me do that, dangling my feet off the edge of the stage and shooting the breeze,” says Marti, now 57.
“I’m forever mixing it up or changing the running order. I like people to be surprised! Maybe in the first song, I’ll look at them, and they’ll be turning their heads to the right thinking, ‘where’s he going here?!’
“It’s purely about reacting on the spot each evening. You’re thinking to yourself, ‘what’s going on with this audience?’. If it’s an attentive, ‘listening’ audience, I’ll squeeze in a few more ballads. Or maybe I’ll do songs that reflect on topics.
“It’s all about escapism,” says Marti Pellow of the joy of performing for musician and audience alike
“It’s about how you set it up, like maybe pulling out a James Taylor Jackson Browne cover, or sharing a thought with them that they’ll relate to as audiences are storytellers themselves, remembering when they first heard a song or how their daughter always sang this song at the top of her voice in the back of the car.”
Marti has been delighted to find himself playing to such diverse crowds, whether they know him from Wet Wet Wet, his musical theatre performances or those Lockdown Sessions that went viral.
“What I find fascinating is the age range. At one of the shows I did last year, I met an elderly couple who said they were up having a dance, recalling how they first did that to a Wet Wet Wet song in 1987 when they were in their in their early 50s,” says Marti.
“Then I’ll be standing by a 17-year-old kid who says he’s come to the show because he’s seen me on YouTube and loved it.
“I think that’s got to do with me being a singer-songwriter, a storyteller, first catching an age group in their teens, but then you transcend that by doing half a dozen albums with your old band, 15 solo albums, and by being an eclectic artist, like doing songs from Broadway.
“Having that eclectic skill set transcends to the audience, who switch on to me through different media, including doing Kander and Ebb [Chicago] or being in Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers.”
The poster for Marti Pellow’s first gig at York Barbican since his Private Collection Tour in May 2018
Marti does not rest on his laurels. “I like spending some time in Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, where it’s about educating myself, and then applying that to what I do. That might switch on certain parts of the audience that will go on a journey with you,” he says.
“I know my audience through engaging with them, listening to what they say on social media. Like for the Greatest Hits Tour, I listened to them when I asked, ‘what kind of show do you want?’.
“Every day is a school day when I’m performing, and when I look at my audience, what I get back from them far outweighs what I give them.”
Describing the concert experience, Marti says: “It’s monumental, in the way that when you go to church, the power of the music will physically move people. Like with a ballad, where people remember how they fell in love to that song; there’s a shared experience when you’re in the moment and you’re engaging in your stagecraft.
“It’s all about escapism. That’s what it’s about. Whether it’s a three-minute pop song by The Beatles or a beautiful piece by Rachmaninov, it has a beauty to behold.
“If you’re the catalyst for that, seeing all those smiles makes it so worthwhile.”
Marti Pellow: Greatest Hits Tour, York Barbican, May 3, 7.30pm; doors 7pm. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Going out of his mind in forlorn pursuit of controlling yours: Rory Fairbairn’s Mind Mangler in Magic Goes Wrong
Magic Goes Wrong, by Mischief/Penn & Teller, York Theatre Royal, tonight at 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm and 7.30pm; Sunday; 2.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Age guide: 11+
IN a nutshell, Magic Goes Wrong, show goes right. Cue packed houses, just as there were for Mischief’s The Play That Goes Wrong (twice) and The Comedy About A Bank Robbery on past York visits, taking in both the Theatre Royal and Grand Opera House.
If those calamitous, chaotic comedies were essentially English in character, for Magic Goes Wrong, Olivier Award-winning Mischief writers Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields have gone international by teaming up with deconstructionist American magicians Penn & Teller.
Off to Las Vegas headed the Mischief triumvirate to match their verbal and physical comedy skills and instinct for catastrophic comedic structure with Penn Jillette and Teller’s magical sleight of hand.
The result is a show big on set pieces and spectacle, with the rhythm and flow of a speciality act bill or a circus and the cliff-edge drama of the audience knowing that if anything can go wrong, it will, but still being surprised by how it does just when you think you are one step ahead.
In a tight spot: Jocelyn Prah’s German contortionist Spitzmaus
In the play within the magic show, a hapless gang of magicians is staging an evening of grand illusion billed on a malfunctioning archway of lights as the Disaster In Magic Charity Fundraiser. In Mischief tradition, mayhem ensues as acts flounder, flounce or or fall out, accidents spiral beyond control and so does the ever-elusive fundraising target.
All the while, in the Mischief house style, all the acts take everything very seriously, the more so with every calamity, faces determinedly kept straight even when in panic or pain, as they try to stay as serene as a swan on water while paddling not so elegantly beneath the surface – and unlike observing a swan, we can see that frantic paddling: the perfect recipe for comedy.
Running the charity fundraiser is Sam Hill’s master of ceremonies Sophisticato, son of late, great magician The Great Sophisticato, who took perverse pleasure in refusing to pass on his skills or props. Embitterment is never far from the breaking through the oily façade.
Ruining ill-fated Sophisticato’s desire for a smooth-flowing night are what befalls not only himself but also Valerie Cutko’s statuesque Eugenia, Rory Fairbairn’s hapless Mind Mangler, Kiefer Moriarty’s The Blade, with his lust for endangering himself, and the sparring German act Spitzmauz (Jocelyn Prah) and Bar (Chloe Tannenbaum), capricious as cats as they constantly seek to outdo or undermine each other.
Cutting-edge comedy: Chloe Tannenbaum’s Bar and Kiefer Moriarty’s danger-magnet The Blade
Smashing down theatre’s “fourth wall”, audience participation plays a big part, with a cameraman filming audience members as they partake in the Mind Mangler’s inept mind games.
Pick your own favourite among the magic acts, maybe Prah’s wunderbar Spitzmauz, maybe Hill’s exasperated, thwarted, on-a-knife-edge MC, Sophisticato, but most probably Beverley-born Fairbairn’s Mind Mangler, the mentalist magician going out of his mind, initially vainglorious, inducing mockery, but gradually turning the audience to his side with cheers, maybe his ultimate mind game.
Allied to Penn & Teller’s penchant for the wow factor, the Mischief makers apply the ‘ow!’ factor, in the comic tradition of “no pain, no gain”. Magic Goes Wrong covers so many comedy bases under Adam Meggido’s direction, from downright silliness to upright characters; from physical danger to slapstick; from fast farce to slow-build momentum; from friction between the players to metatheatre.
The more you experience each character, amid the rising desperation, the funnier they become, in the tradition of Michael Crawford’s Frank Spencer or John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty.
Penn & Teller: Co-creators of Magic Goes Wrong with Mischief’s Jonathan Sayer, Henry Lewis and Henry Shields
Then wave the wand of magic over the mishaps, pratfalls and power struggles, and abracadabra, delusion and illusion combine to glorious comic effect. Amid the calamitous carnage, there are still “how-did-they-do-that?” magical moments, quickly followed by a give-away ‘reveal’ for the bigger laugh.
Whereas celebrity-led fundraising telethons go so slickly, this Disaster Magic night could not be more contrasting, but what comic relief for anyone who finds those over-excited, tearful telethons a turn-off.
Keep an eye on the misbehaving Disaster In Magic Charity Fundraiser arch in Will Bowen’s hi-tech set design, spelling out new words from those letters as the lights go out in yet another font for comedy where one word sums up this fabulous, fun, funny show: MAGIC.
What if you don’t like magic? You will love Magic Goes Wrong.
Please note: Magic Goes Wrong co-creators Penn & Teller do not appear on stage.
On a knife edge: Susie Amy’s Alex Forrest reaches boiling point in Fatal Attraction. Picture: Tristram Kenton
FIRST Susie Amy played the cheated wife’s role in the 2022 theatre tour of James Dearden’s Fatal Attraction.
Now, for the second leg, she has switched from Beth to “the other woman”, the Hitchcockian bunny boiler Alex Forrest, still playing opposite Coronation Street soap star favourite Oliver Farnworth, but now joined by Eternal singer, television presenter, actress, 2016 Strictly Come Dancing runner-up and fashion influencer Louise Redknapp as the tour rolls into York next Tuesday for its final week at the Grand Opera House.
“I played Beth for eight weeks from January, and it was great playing her with Kym Marsh as Alex,” says Susie. “But the way it’s worked out, it’s been nice to have the rare chance to play both female leads in the same play and see things from different perspectives – and I’ve really enjoyed working with Louise too.”
The changeover could not have been quicker. “I finished on the Saturday as Beth and started as Alex the next Tuesday after rehearsing the role while playing Beth in the evening,” she says.
The poster for the first leg of the Fatal Attraction tour when Susie Amy, left, played wife Beth, with Kym Marsh as Alex Forrest and Oliver Farnworth as attorney husband Dan Gallagher
“I only had the odd couple of hours here and there, but I did a lot of work on my own with Rachel Heyburn, our assistant director, and I knew the project very well by then, knowing the feel of the piece.”
A household name since her sparkling days as glamour model Chardonnay Lane-Pascoe in ITV’s trashy hit melodrama Footballers’ Wives from 2002 to 2004, Susie, 41, joined the Fatal Attraction cast for the stage resurrection of an American psychological thriller never forgotten from Adrian Lyne’s 1987 movie, the one with Michael Douglas, Glenn Close and Anne Archer.
Beth, you may recall, is the wife of New York attorney Dan Gallagher (Farnworth), their marriage ever so happy until he meets hotshot editor Alex Forrest on a night out that ends up in enflamed passion. Dan returns home, tries to forget his “mistake”, but Alex has different ideas. She has one rule: you play fair with her, and she’ll play fair with you.
So far, so familiar, from Dearden’s original film screenplay, but the tour is presenting his new stage version of a stylish, sinister, steamy thriller that asks: what happens when desire becomes deadly?
The poster for Fatal Attraction’s run at the Grand Opera House, York, with Susie Amy, right, now playing Alex
“The film was set in 1987; the play is set today with mobile phones,” says Susie. “The writer has been in the rehearsal room, sharing his vision with us, honouring the original but modernising it too, which is important because we think so differently now.
“Whereas Alex would have been called a ‘bunny boiler’ back then, now there’s more emphasis on understanding mental health, so though it’s the same story, now we look at things differently, especially in relation to mental wellbeing.
“Now, we relate more to Alex’s desperate loneliness. Here, a man has come along and shown her interest that she’s really bought into, before he goes back into his family world, and she can’t accept that.”
Alex is placed in a difficult situation, says Susie. “Dan has gone back to the people he’s fairly happy with, and that has left Alex unhappy, which is a not-unfamiliar position – and now we see her side of the story through the eyes of having a better awareness of mental health issues.
“Dan is arrogant. His wife has quit her better-paid job to look after their children, and he’s used to getting his way. Though he genuinely connects with Alex, he wants to forget her, hoping she will never see him again.
“Whereas Alex would have been called a ‘bunny boiler’ back then, now there’s more emphasis on understanding mental health,” says Susie Amy
“He doesn’t treat Alex well but, at the same time, you shouldn’t stalk someone, though Dan should not have given false hope to her, and Beth ends up very much betrayed. Beth had really trusted him in a relationship where she thought they respected each other.”
By contrast with the “bunny boiler” jibes thrown at Alex in the film, theatre audiences have been giving Susie’s 2022 Alex a fairer hearing. “To be honest, it’s nice to be getting a mixed reaction, because it’s normal for people to think differently; some people have sympathy for Dan, some for Beth, some for Alex,” she says. “Maybe it all depends on our own experiences in life.
“Then you also have to consider that there are some people who have never seen the film, mostly young people, and they may look at it differently to how people did in 1987.”
Putting Susie on the spot, does she prefer playing Beth or Alex? “Alex,” she says. “Just because, as an actor, it’s a such a great rollercoaster of a ride every performance, playing this independent, sassy, sexy woman, who would catch a man’s eye in a really empowered way, but as the play progresses, her mental health fails her and she starts to turn.”
Fatal Attraction boils over at Grand Opera House, York, May 3 to 7, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm matinees, Wednesday and Saturday. Box office: atgtickets.com/York or on 0844 871 7615.
Copyright of The Press, York
That fatal moment in Fatal Attraction: Lift-off for Susie Amy’s Alex Forrest and Oliver Farnworth’s Dan Gallagher. Picture: Tristram Kenton
The woman and man in black at the SJT: Sam Jenkins-Shaw’s Rochester and Eleanor Sutton’s Jane in Jane Eyre. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
AT the heart of the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s Bronte Festival is the SJT and New Vic Theatre’s co-production of Jane Eyre, adapted by Chris Bush, a Sheffield playwright with a York past drawn to Charlotte Bronte’s revolutionary spirit.
In the wake of the 2022 tour of Kirsty Smith and Kat Rose-Martin’s Jane Hair, re-imagining the Bronte sisters as modern-day Haworth hairdressers and Anne as a political blogger, Bush shows rather more “respect, but not reverence” in her nimble adaptation, eschewing a narrator in favour of letting Zoe Waterman’s cast of actor-musicians crack on with telling the story with a purposeful stride to rival Suranne Jones’s Anne Lister in Gentleman Jack.
Bush had first been offered Emily’s Wuthering Heights, but she was happier to accept the second invitation of sibling Charlotte’s Jane Eyre. “I’m just really drawn to Jane both as a character and a figure,” she reasoned. “I love her determination to take control of her destiny.”
Bush’s Jane Eyre, as characterised by Eleanor Sutton with her scraped-back hair, is a no-nonsense, unbending Yorkshire woman of exacting standards, passionate and impatient, no respecter of authority but resolute in observing her own moral code.
Playwright Chris Bush
From orphaned childhood, she is in a hurry, on a mission, so much so that Bush suddenly stops a play so quick out of the traps that she decides it needs a refresher course in one of those “not reverent” insertions from the Bush playbook of playwriting.
Somewhat against the grain of a Bronia Housman design aesthetic that conveys Bronte’s harsh world by favouring minimalism to keep the scene-changing to a minimum, the pace to the maximum and Nao Nagai’s lighting to the fore, much emphasis is placed Simon Slater’s compositions and sound design rooted in “19th century pop hits” in the spirit of a folk musical or a Brecht and Weill play with music.
They serve the purpose of propelling a story of complexity yet clarity forward, or providing time to catch breath, but their profusion is counter-productive, ultimately slowing down this all-action, vibrant Jane Eyre, by contrast with Sally Cookson’s exhilarating, breathless production for the Bristol Old Vic/National Theatre that toured York and Leeds in 2017.
Like Cookson, Waterman has employed a multi role-playing cast, save for Sutton’s ever-resourceful, clever and fiery Jane Eyre and Sam Jenkins-Shaw’s restless, troubled Rochester, whose burgeoning chemistry climaxes in a beautiful, moving finale.
Nia Gandhi, Sarah Groarke and Zoe West throw up their hands in Jane Eyre. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
There is much to enjoy in the ensemble interplay of Tomi Ogbaro, Nia Gandhi, Zoe West and Sarah Groarke’s constant changes of character or returning with instrument in hand, the fleet-footed flow being aided by Will Tuckett’s movement direction.
Bush’s way with words elicits passion, shards of wit, nuggety northern nous, poetic darkness and light too, and amid the proto-feminist zeal, she highlights the mistreatment and lack of understanding of Bertha, the “mad woman in the attic”.
By having Sutton transform from Jane into Bertha with a loosening of her hair and a change of body shape, Bush makes a link between the two women, one whose free spirit cannot be contained despite the rigid class structure, the other forcibly restrained with terrible consequences.
Should you miss this week’s 7.30pm performances, tomorrow’s 1.30pm matinee or Saturday’s 2.30pm show, a second chance to breathe in this fresh Jane Eyre comes at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme, from May 4 to 28. For more details of the SJT’s Bronte Festival, including Stute Theatre’s I Am No Bird in The McCarthy, today until Saturday, head to: sjt.uk.com.
