The art beat of YORKshire
TWO Big Egos In A Small Car culture podcasters Chalmers & Hutch have their say in Episode 67.
Also under discussion are Blood Youth, heavy metal and heady beer; James & Happy Mondays’ Manchester night in Leeds; Harrogate Theatre’s sublime pantomime, Cinderella; Mick Jagger’s dedication to the blues and House Of Gucci’s style versus content.
To listen, head to: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/9652018
YORK artist Alex Utley reckons “fashion is about someone else deciding what looks good on you but style is what comes from you”.
His comment comes as New Visuality’s Our Style project is kickstarted in York after receiving a National Lottery award from the National Lottery Community Fund.
In the lead-up to Christmas, the project is working with 20 young people who have experienced learning difficulties or physical disabilities.
Sessions have been running in York city centre, led by Alex as chief curator. The Our Style At Christmas event at Guildhall’s ArtSpace saw more than 50 people drop in to buy jewellery, candles and T-shirts, and the project has had a presence at the Blueberry Christmas Fayre at York’s Melbourne Centre too.
When asked who he thought had blazed the trail to help to hammer home how style, not fashion, had provided lifelines to so many struggling people, Alex does not hesitate: “I like people who march to the beat of their own drum,” he says.
“You get Harry Styles and Yungblud from this generation, and from days gone by you had people like David Bowie or Elton John – he wore some right stuff!”
Alex is bringing his own energy inspired by these trailblazers to the project, although it is less their stylistic choices that have galvanised him, more that they have burst through closing doors.
“My stylistic choices are my choices,” he says. “I don’t look at Bowie and say, ‘That’s a good look, I’m going to wear that’. It’s more, ‘They did this at this moment in time to help people like me choose more freely’.
“So, someone who is comfortable enough in their own masculinity to wear a dress doesn’t change who I am. It helps strengthen my own outlook on life.”
Alex is speaking from his home in Acomb, but he is a regular learner at Blueberry Academy and has led on many previous New Visuality projects. He sees Our Style as a chance to “bring to the light many issues previously touched on”.
“Clothes rightly or wrongly come accompanied with such powerful associations, but they should never be more powerful than the wearer,” he stresses. “My style doesn’t change who I am. My jumper or dress doesn’t have a gender; it is fabric. I might like it, and if I like it, I’m going to wear it. My heroes have helped me to stop thinking about others’ opinions and to just do it.”
Over the years, Alex’s philosophy has consolidated. “I’ve hopefully made a small difference up to now. During certain youth groups and football sessions, I feel I may have changed people’s perceptions.
“A mate’s younger sister couldn’t wrap her head around seeing a different version of me. She had my old self stuck in their mind, and she used my dead name because she just couldn’t see that I was now Alex.
“So I used an analogy: when Transformers change, they change because they weren’t happy as, say, a car; they couldn’t be themselves, they transformed into robots, more powerful. She seemed to get it! This project, Our Style, will hopefully build on that.”
Alex is not only relishing the opportunity to curate the participants’ artwork, he also sees the celebration of style as a chance to balance out past negative experiences.
“Everyone sees disability first,” he asserts. “There’s so much ableism, even in areas you wouldn’t expect. Disabled people could wear the same thing as able-bodied people and the mainstream media might refuse to publish or show it.
“It’s not just the mainstream media; it happens in areas where you would otherwise expect more acceptance. The main reason why I do my hair in different colours is because I want people to see me before the wheelchair, before the splints, before the tubes.
“Back in the day, the amount of people that would look at my legs, my arm, the tubes, before seeing me as even half a person, was depressing. The second I dye my hair, they see the colour and the person before they begin staring without shame at parts of my life I have to live with.”
This month’s continuing art sessions and next year’s events and happenings in locations around York will have Alex’s stamp all over them. “It’s a great project. It’s an opportunity for young people to have fun in areas that have previously been marginalised and their ideas unexplored,” he says.
“We’re grateful to the National Lottery Community Fund and indeed everyone who continues to buy National Lottery tickets. It’s good to be able to show that all that money goes a long way in helping the most vulnerable people in our communities take their fair share of celebrating their communities.”
For art and items of clothing created in Our Style projects, check out According To McGee’s gallery, opposite Clifford’s Tower, and the Blueberry Pop-Up Shop in Micklegate, York.
AS first impressions go, this transatlantic close-harmony duo make an almighty one.
With their well-worn schtick about being water boatmen on a junk raft, and laugh-out-loud turns between songs, they make friends and admirers easily. Fourth time around? Not so much, but even through a hungover ennui this was still life affirming.
Son Of Town Hall’s Ben Parker, from London and David Berkeley, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, are familiar winter visitors, playing before lockdown in Pickering and Grewelthorpe and York.
Yes, many of the jokes and the songs were the same and to the uninitiated sound similar, but they were delivered with such panache and obvious enjoyment that misgivings were soon swept aside. By the time the concert finished, the rain had passed and the sky was starbright and clear.
Lockdown hasn’t given the pair extra pounds, nor it seems a glut of new material. Instead, they spent the enforced down-time plotting a podcast that they have a Kickstarter campaign for. It would be great to see how their short stories develop.
Of the new tunes, Mutiny was a rum thing, but New Orleans was one of their finest. A tale of their love for a trapeze artist, they prefaced the song with a very amusing skit about their time as gofers for the jealous circus master.
Guilty of the charge of all sounding a bit the same, at their best, Son Of Town Hall combine their almost brotherly harmonies with the spirit and oomph of the music hall (akin to “a much-outdated ruin from a much-outdated style”, as Nick Drake once sang) but the better for ignoring the obvious.
Their one full-length record, The Adventures Of…, was featured extensively, and highlights included The Man With Two Wives and Holes In A Western Town (“sing it like you mean it,” they quipped). And sing we did under the friendly eyes of the operatic society serving at the bar.
Over one hour 45 minutes and 15 numbers, Parker and Berkeley, now recast as George Ulysses Brown and Josiah Chester Jones, spun a soaked web of intrigue and 19th-century bromance so real you could touch it.
The two are showmen, not just singer-songwriters (albeit world-class ones). Over five years into their voyage. you wonder how far they want to take it, or whether it’s all about the getting there that matters.
Review by Paul Rhodes
DIARY entry, April 6th 2021. Robert Readman announces Pick Me Up Theatre’s Christmas show for 2021 will be the Broadway hit SpongeBob The Musical.
Diary entry, December 5 2021. No, it won’t be. Robert is directing Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary’s The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ The Musical instead, booked into Theatre@41, Monkgate, York from December 8 to 18,
SpongeBob The Musical may yet re-emerge down the line in winter 2023, but Robert made the call to pick up Pick Me Up’s theatre-making for the first time since March 2020’s Covid-curtailed run of Tom’s Midnight Garden with the musical version of the trials and tribulations of Sue Townsend’s teenage diarist.
“It’s my kind of show,” says Robert. “I love British musicals; I loved the TV series and I loved Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole books.
“Pick Me Up will be doing a season of works by British writers in spring 2022, with George Stagnell starring in both Billy in March and Shakespeare In Love in April, and when we got the chance to do Adrian Mole, I knew we had to do that as this winter’s show – though I didn’t actually know it would be the British amateur premiere until the writer [Pippa Cleary] told me.
“But it’s perfect timing for us to do the show now because the story runs from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve.”
Robert and musical director Tim Selman are working with a cast of experienced York hands such as Sandy Nicholson, Andrew Isherwood, Adam Sowter, Florence Poskitt, Alan Park and Alexandra Mather and two sets of teen talents, rather sweetly designated as Team Sue and Team Townsend.
“They’re all aged either 13, early-14 or late-14, but they’re different in height, so what I did was to match each team to Adrian’s height. Team Sue – Flynn Baistow’s Adrian, Benedict Wood’s Nigel, Dotty Davies’ Pandora and Freddie Adams’ Barry – all turned out to be from Lancashire, apart from Benedict,” says Robert.
“Team Townsend – the taller Jack Hambleton’s Adrian, Flynn Coultous’s Nigel, Emily Halstead’s Pandora and Guy Wilson’s Barry – happen to be all from Yorkshire.
“Although Sue Townsend was a Leicester writer, and set her stories there, we’ll be using northern accents, which suits the characters just as well.”
In the cast too is veteran actor and drama teacher Ian Giles, who played his part in Sue Townsend’s rise as a writer. “In the summer of 1977, I was appointed artistic director of the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester, and one of my innovations was to create a writers’ group for local people,” he recalls.
“The then unknown Leicester housewife Sue Townsend was among those who came along. She was in her thirties, from a council estate, had worked as a factory worker and shop assistant, and was very shy. She only attended because her partner, Colin [Broadway], told her to give it a go, though she used to love reading the likes of Dostoevsky.”
Ian put Sue forward for a Thames Television Writer’s Bursary and her manuscript for Womberang duly won the Thames Television Playwright Award, setting her on the path to writing plays for the Royal Court and the Adrian Mole series of books.
Coming full circle, Ian, now 72, will play grumpy old Bert Baxter in the Mole musical. “He’s an 89-year-old curmudgeon, so that should be easy for me!” he says, delighted to be reconnecting with his Townsend past.
“I’m surprised the Adrian Mole books aren’t on the school curriculum, because the issues raised are still so pertinent. The first book is 40 years old now, and the books were like the Harry Potter books of their time. Only the Bible and Shakespeare outsold them!”
Re-joining the discussion, Robert says: “We love Adrian Mole because it’s a boy expressing how awful life is when you’re going through puberty. The young cast find it very funny, but it’s interesting to see how differently they interpret their characters, especially the two Adrians.
“What works best is the fun Sue had in having all the characters being seen through Adrian’s lens.”
“And with a working-class ethic to it,” says Ian. “Sue was writing from council-estate experience, growing up not far from where playwright Joe Orton grew up. There’s a lot of Sue in the character of the mother, Pauline.
“It’s all pertinent to the 1980s when it was written, but it also resonates with all teenage experiences that people go through.”
Robert adds: “Because of the ‘80s’ retro culture that’s going on now, young people are wise to that, which makes it a good time to do this show.
“But what’s nice about the music is that Jake and Pippa have not pastiched the Eighties’ pop style. They’ve made their own style of music, so you will enjoy the story being in a musical structure, with some lovely balladry, and a lot of sadness and heartbreak in there, and the parents and classmates being given good songs as well as the leads.”
The John Cooper Studio will be set up as a traverse stage with the audience in raked seating to either side and on the mezzanine level above. “The set design will feature two houses, one to either side, with everything going on in between,” says Robert.
“The reason I’ve done that is because all the scenes are quite short and it moves at a pace, so you can’t have lots of scenery to move around, slowing it down.”
Now make a date in your diary to see Adrian Mole, Pandora and co at Theatre@41.
Pick Me Up Theatre present Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, The Musical, John Cooper Studio, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, December 8 to 18, 7.30pm, except December 11 and 12; 2.30pm matinees, December 11, 12 and 18. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
THE Chapter House Choir’s ever-popular Carols by Candlelight at York Minster has once again sold out, two weeks before the 7.30pm performance on December 15.
“However, if you have missed out on obtaining a ticket for this wonderful occasion, you have a second chance to hear the choir and the bell ringers of the choir,” says honorary secretary David Frith.
The second concert , a Festival of Carols with the Chapter House Choir, will take place at St Michael-le-Belfrey, York, on December 18 at 7.30pm. Tickets are available via Eventbrite, “but hurry because they are limited in number and selling fast,” advises David.
DAME Berwick rides again, Adrian Mole surfaces, carol concerts abound and contrasting comedy cracks on, all demanding a place in Charles Hutchinson’s diary
Comeback of the week: Berwick Kaler and co in Dick Turpin Rides Again, Grand Opera House, York, December 11 to January 9
DAME Berwick Kaler last took to the pantomime stage in his 40th anniversary show, The Grand Old Dame Of York, on February 2 2019, having announced his retirement. Subsequently, he decided it was the “worst decision he had ever made”, a feeling only compounded by writing and co-directing Sleeping Beauty.
In the tradition of Clive Sullivan and Denis Law, he then switched to the other side in the same city, leaving York Theatre Royal to sign up with the Grand Opera House, along with panto teammates Martin Barrass, David Leonard, Suzy Cooper and AJ Powell.
Delayed by a year, Dame Berwick now resumes panto business at 75, writing, directing and starring in Dick Turpin Rides Again. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
Community pantomime of the week: Rowntree Players in Dick Whittington, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, today until December 11
ROWNTREE Players should have presented Dick Whittington last year, but director Howard Ella and co-writer Andy Welch have now dusted off their script written by satellite in lockdown, freshening it up for 2021.
Martyn Hunter returns to the Players’ panto ranks as King Rat, as does Bernie Calpin as Kit The Cat, joining Hannah King’s Dick Whittington, Graham Smith’s Dame Dora, Gemma McDonald’s Duncan, Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Ratatouille, Geoff Walker’s Alderman Fitzwarren and Ellie Watson’s Alice Fitzwarren. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
American gig of the week in York: Native Harrow, Fulford Arms, York, Tuesday, 8pm
PENNSYLVANIAN folk/rock duo Native Harrow are on the final leg of their tour travels showcasing their beautiful fourth album, Closeness.
Now re-located to Brighton, guitarist-singer Devin Tuel and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Harms have a new single too, Do It Again, one of six songs recorded when they elected to return to the studio where they had made Closeness to continue living in that world, if only for a few more days. Box office: seetickets.com/event/native-harrow/the-fulford-arms/1471604.
Musical premiere of the week in York: Pick Me Up Theatre in The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, The Musical, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Wednesday to December 18
PICK Me Up Theatre are returning to the Theatre@41 Monkgate stage for the first time since Covid’s first lockdown curtailed Tom’s Midnight Garden in March 2020.
In a change from the initially announced SpongeBob The Musical, director Robert Readman has jumped at the chance to present the British amateur premiere of Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary’s musical version of Sue Townsend’s 1982 story of teenage diarist Adrian Mole. Ignore the official poster, there will be a 2pm Sunday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Comedy gig of the week: Katherine Ryan, Missus, York Barbican, Thursday, 8pm
CANADIAN comedian, writer, presenter and actress Katherine Ryan, 38, previously denounced partnerships but has since married her first love, accidentally.
A lot has changed for everyone, and now the London-based creator and star of Netflix series The Duchess and host of All That Glitters will be offering new perspectives on life, love and what it means to be Missus. Box office: yorkbarbicancentre.co.uk.
Reunion of the week: Prima Vocal Ensemble and York Railway Institute Brass Band, Christmas Classics for Voices and Brass, Selby Abbey, December 11, 7.30pm
YORK choir Prima Vocal Ensemble and York Railway Institute Brass Band are uniting for a Christmas concert at Selby Abbey for the first time since 2018.
The choir will sing classical pieces by Morten Lauridsen, Gabriel Faure and John Rutter, while the band’s festive music will include Shepherd’s Song and Eric Bell’s Kingdom Triumphant.
Choir and band will join together for a finale of Gordon Langford’s joyous Christmas Fantasy. Tickets: on 07921 568826, from Selby Abbey or at primachoralartists.com.
Welcome back: York Community Carol Concert, York Barbican, December 12, 2pm
YORK’S Community Carol Concert returns after last year’s Covid-enforced cancellation, with all the participants who missed out in 2020 taking up the invitation to take part in 2021.
In the Sunday afternoon line-up will be the Shepherd Group Concert Brass Band, Dringhouses Primary School Choir, Clifton Green Primary School Choir, Stamford Bridge Community Choir and York singer Steve Cassidy, hosted by the Reverend Andrew Foster and BBC Radio York presenter Adam Tomlinson. Plenty of tickets are still available but online only at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Carol concert with a difference: Kate Rusby At Christmas, Harrogate Royal Hall, December 12, and York Barbican, December 20, 7.30pm
BARNSLEY folk singer Kate Rusby, her regular band and “the brass boys” have created a Christmas tradition of their own, celebrating South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire pub carols, punctuated by her own winter songs.
For more than 200 years, from late-November to New Year’s Day, these carols have been sung on Sunday lunchtimes in pubs, having been frowned on in Victorian times for being too happy. Not for the first time, the Victorians were wrong. Box office: Harrogate, 01423 502116 or at harrogatetheatre.co.uk; York, yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Looking ahead to a “terrible” 2022: Jimmy Carr, Terribly Funny, York Barbican, April 15, doors, 7pm
CYNICAL comedian Jimmy Carr will complete a hattrick of York performances of his Terribly Funny tour show next spring.
After playing sold-out gigs at York Barbican on November 4 and the Grand Opera House five nights later, he will return to the Barbican on April 15 with the promise of “all-new material for 2022”.
Carr will be discussing terrible things that might have affected you or people you know and love. “But they’re just jokes,” he says. “Political correctness at a comedy show is like having health and safety at a rodeo.” Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk
YORK Minster will always drive out demons but welcomed a Damon last night. Damon Albarn, leader of Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad And The Queen, no less.
Albarn would be playing two sets in one night, an 8.30pm performance being added pronto last month by Leeds co-promoters Crash Records and Brudenell Presents after the 6.30pm show sold out in five minutes.
The advice was to arrive by the door time, advice taken as the hats-and-scarves queue snaked towards Constantine the Great’s statue. Accommodating 600 in the Nave, it would be 7.22pm before Albarn took to his grand piano seat, in studious glasses, after an introduction by a member of the Minster clergy, just as had been the case when York band The Howl & The Hum played there on May 25.
Albarn was not alone, instead being accompanied by an all-female string quartet, who set the hushed, wintry mood with two instrumentals, the second a magical, frost-tipped rendition of In The Bleak Midwinter, with candlelight displaying glowing approval at either side.
In the first ever York concert of his 32-year career, Albarn’s focus was to be on his November solo release, The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows – tickets had been sold in a bundle with a CD copy of the album – although Chris Sherrington, from the Fulford Arms, tipped off CharlesHutchPress to expect “an interesting set”, suggesting past as well as present might feature.
Albarn had first intended the album to be an orchestral piece inspired by the landscapes of Iceland. In lockdown, however, he returned to the music, resulting in 11 tracks rooted in themes of fragility, loss, emergence and rebirth.
Last night, those songs re-emerged with strings attached and in an atmosphere of contemplation, almost everyone in a mask as the new Omicron variant reintroduced caution and uncertainty: those feelings of fragility and loss rather dampening these past months’ sense of emergence and rebirth.
Taking the album’s title from the John Clare poem Love And Memory, Albarn had been on his “own dark journey while making the record”. Crucially, too it had led him to “believe that a pure source might still exist”. That pure source is not specified, but listening to these sombre songs in the stillness of the cathedral made you wonder whether divine intervention could play its part.
That said, as Albarn recalled in his one humorous anecdote, in his youth he had been allowed to play his local church organ on Saturday mornings, until one day the vicar decided his rendition of The Stranglers’ Golden Brown was perhaps not appropriate.
As it happens, it would not have been appropriate on this night either, when melancholia and slow, serpentine songs of icy beauty and grave singing prevailed in a set played in album order (save for the omission of Combustion, Esja and Giraffe Trumpet Sea), climaxing with Polaris and Particles.
Given that the second concert would need to start on time, Albarn explained he had to keep strictly to 45 minutes – although he had wanted to play for longer – as he switched to performing a “few older songs now”.
Beetlebum sounded like it could have come from a George Martin recording session with The Beatles; Albarn aficionados would have recognised Lonely Press Play from 2014’s Everyday Robots, and if you would choose one Blur song to close a church concert…maybe Tender, but surely, The Universal? Yes! The Universal.
“When the days they seem to fall through you/Well, just let them go,” he sang, with resonance anew after so much drifting through lockdown days. “Well, here’s your lucky day,” he sang too, and we were indeed lucky to be among the 600-strong congregation.
At one point, Albarn had stood up to thank his unnamed string players, so vital to the night’s mood. At another, he talked of the great honour of performing in York Minster and of the “wonderful surprise” of playing in such a vast space (much like York singer-songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich’s look of awe when he first took in the grandest of Gothic church designs after agreeing to play the Minster).
Albarn, now 53, once tearfully surveyed the masses at Glastonbury on Blur’s comeback, but now he was moved anew, arms aloft at 8.08pm, after making the Minster feel intimate: no mean feat at a serious, seriously good concert.
He would soon enough be doing it all again: the second queue waiting for the doors to open as we departed. Second time around, it turns out he had his wish, playing for longer, adding Blur’s My Terracotta Heart and Under The Westway to the finale before The Universal made 600 more feel so delighted that it really, really had happened: Damon Albarn’s belated first and second coming at York Minster.
Review by Charles Hutchinson
YORK actor and drama teacher Ian Giles played his part in the rise of writer Sue Townsend in his days in Leicester.
Now, 72-year-old Ian is to play grumpy old Bert Baxter in Townsend’s The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ in Pick Me Up Theatre’s musical production at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, from December 8 to 18.
“In the summer of 1977, I was appointed artistic director of the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester, and one of my innovations was to create a writers’ group for local people,” he recalls.
“The then- unknown Leicester housewife Sue Townsend was among those who came along. She was in her thirties, from a council estate, had worked as a factory worker and shop assistant, and was very shy. She only attended because her partner, Colin [Broadway], told her to give it a go, though she used to love reading the likes of Dostoevsky.”
What happened next, Ian? “The chairman of the group managed to get hold of a manuscript off her for Womberang, and on the strength of that first play, I put Sue up for a Thames Television Writer’s Bursary, and she got it,” he says.
“Michael Billington [the esteemed Guardian theatre critic], who was on the panel, told me it was the funniest thing he had read in years.”
Womberang won the Thames Television Playwright Award, and Townsend was on her way, writing Bazaar And Rummage (1982) and The Great Celestial Cow (1984) for the Royal Court Theatre, Chelsea.
Townsend first penned what became The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ as a one-man show: a workshop production starring Nigel Barnett as Nigel, rather than Adrian, Mole, recounting the diary he had written when he was aged 13 and three quarters.
“We think we then changed it to Adrian, because Nigel Mole sounded too like Nigel Molesworth [the subject of Geoffrey Willans’s series of books about life in English prep school St Custard’s], but the BBC say they changed it!” says Ian.
Either way, Adrian became the name when Sue was invited to convert the play into a novel. “She was a dramatist first and was very happy to write the novel as it meant she could use only one voice, Adrian’s, to tell his story,” says Ian.
“Published by Methuen in 1982, it went stratospheric,” says Ian. So much so, The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ and its 1984 sequel, The Growing Pains Of Adrian Mole, made Townsend the best-selling British author of the 1980s. A further six books in the series took sales worldwide past the 20 million mark.
Inevitably, the books were adapted for the radio, television and theatre. “Sue worked on the first musical version, which was a play with songs, and then came the first West End theatre version,” says Ian.
Robert Readman’s York company, Pick Me Up Theatre, will be presenting the latest musical adaptation by Jake Brunger (book and lyrics) and Pippa Cleary (music and lyrics), premiered at the Leicester Curve in March 2015.
“They’d formed a partnership while studying music and contacted Sue about doing a musical, but sadly she died [on April 10 2014) before the premiere,” says Ian.
Now the story comes full circle for him as he takes to the stage as Sue’s character, the 89-year-old curmudgeon Bert Baxter. “Sue became resident writer at the Phoenix, and I moved on, and now the theatre is called the Sue Townsend Theatre in the place where I worked for four years, when she took her first step into writing plays.”
Pick Me Up Theatre present Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, The Musical, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, December 8 to 18, 7.30pm, except December 11 and 12; 2.30pm matinees, December 11, 12 and 18. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
DICK Whittington had to turn round and rest up for a year when Rowntree Players’ 2020 show was cancelled by Covid.
Now, however, Dick and his cat will be on the road from York to London from Saturday (4/12/2021), when the Players take to the Joseph Rowntree Theatre stage with director Howard Ella and co-writer Andy Welch’s pantomime.
Joining Hannah King’s Dick Whittington in the cast will be Graham Smith’s Dame Dora; Gemma McDonald’s Duncan; Martyn Hunter’s King Rat; Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Ratatouille; Geoff Walker’s Alderman Fitzwarren; Ellie Watson’s Alice Fitzwarren and Bernie Calpin’s Kit The Cat.
Howard and Andy first wrote the script remotely, via a satellite link, before the 2020 show was called off. “Socially distanced writing – that was a challenge,” says Howard. “I work away a lot so there had always been an element of remote collaboration, but this was full on.
“What was missing was the ability to read and act as we wrote without a satellite delay. That one-second delay kills humour stone dead, so there was a lot of writing on instinct. Then we had to shelve the script. Totally gutting.”
Roll on a year and out came the script again. “What was great was to lift it out a year later, read it with fresh eyes and still enjoy it,” says Howard. “What’s most strange is that it really demonstrated the stasis we have been in. It still felt relevant, if only because so much of our world of Covid and politics did not change.
“Of course, once we start blocking with the cast, then the gags change and everyone throws in their bit.”
Comedy writing as a duo, in the tradition of Galton & Simpson and Le Frenais & Clement, works well for the Players’ pantos. “I’ve written on my own and with both Barry [former dame Barry Benson] and Andy on different panto years,” says Howard.
“It’s exciting as you can bounce off each other and try things out before anyone else ever sees the script. The trick in making that writing partnership work is honesty and trust. When you don’t find something funny, when it’s not quite good enough, you have to say so and in a clear way.
“If you’re on the other end of the criticism, that’s where the trust kicks in. You trust you partner’s judgement and screw up the page. Sometimes tough, but you have to see it as collaboration, not compromise.”
This year’s cast is down in size by a couple of principals. “But that was story driven,” reasons Howard. “We wrote the script in early 2020 assuming Covid would drift past, so, in reality, there’s no compromises there. The script has the cast it always needed.
“That said, our chorus numbers are slightly lower to facilitate sensible spacing in dressing rooms and to deal with the [pandemic-enforced] practicalities, like not being able to share costumes between teams.”
Adapting to Covid restrictions has created extra challenges both in rehearsal and at the JoRo theatre. “We’ve had mask wearing and sanitising and spacing where we can,” says Howard.
“Everyone has been on different testing regimes through work and school, and they have been ever changing. Also, there’s double jabs where possible (and some of us oldies are boosted too!)
“What’s great is that the Joseph Rowntree Theatre is aligned with all the guidelines and so we’ve worked together, more than ever, to make it as safe as possible for everyone, both backstage and in the audience.
“But in reality we’re in the lap of the gods. From here on in, we put on a great show and hope that we all stay healthy. Otherwise, I’ll be picking up a script and donning a frock!”
As the first night approaches, what’s the mood in the camp? “Excited isn’t the word! We have missed the community aspect so much – and you only realise the strength of bond between the Rowntree Players company when it hasn’t been there and we all get back together.
“Stepping into the theatre on Sunday for the get-in, seeing all those familiar, yet strangely masked, faces was a delight. We haven’t done this for two years but it’s all come flooding back.
“In the company, we have a lot of returning cast and chorus, which has really helped us to short-cut through both Covid and a slightly curtailed rehearsal period because we slotted in Agatha Christie’s Spider’s Web in September, having delayed that production three times.
“Martyn Hunter has returned to the panto fold after a few years away and he’s done so with gusto, as has Bernie Calpin as Kit the Cat.”
Balancing work commitments with rehearsals, Howard is delighted to be bringing Dick Whittington to the stage. “At its heart, Dick Whittington has traditional pantomime roots. That’s what I love. We try and make every pantomime relevant, recognise how the world is changing and represent it in our own way.
“But underneath all good pantomimes is a tale of right and wrong with a love story in the background and the freedom to be silly in between.
“I’ve also always liked the reminder that nowhere’s streets are paved with gold and that generally you have to work hard and you get out what you put in,” he says, “channelling his inner Yorkshireman”.
Saturday’s opening show will be emotional for cast and audience alike, given the sense of community at the core of all the Players’ work. “Everything we do at Rowntree Players aims to be inclusive of anyone who wants to take part,” says Howard, who is presenting Dick Whittington in tandem with choreographer Ami Carter, musical director Jess Douglas and production manager Helen Woodall.
“There’s a real commitment, there’s a pride in being involved with such an old society returning to the theatre where they started.
“The joy for any audience comes from the cast and their joy in being part of a production. We get so much pleasure from our hobby, we laugh an enormous amount, and I think that enjoyment flows over the pit and into the auditorium in everything we do.”
Rowntree Players present Dick Whittington at Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, December 4 to 11. Performances: 7.30pm, except Sunday; 2pm matinees, Saturday, Sunday and next Saturday. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
AFTER last winter’s resourceful response to Covid restrictions with the Travelling Pantomime, York Theatre Royal’s panto returns to the main house for Cinderella from tomorrow (3/12/2021).
This will be the second co-production with the award-garlanded Evolution Productions, whose director and producer, Paul Hendy, has again written the script for Juliet Forster’s cast.
In the company will be CBeebies’ Andy Day (Dandini); Faye Campell (Cinderella) and Robin Simpson (Sister) from the Travelling Pantomime cast; Paul Hawkyard (the other ugly Sister); comedian and ventriloquist Max Fulham (Buttons); Benjamin Lafayette (Prince Charming) and Sarah Leatherbarrow (Fairy Godmother).
“We’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long time now,” says creative director Juliet Forster. “It feels very emotional to be working with a full cast, rehearsing back in the De Grey Rooms.
“We had a great time taking the Travelling Pantomime around the city last Christmas, but, oh my word, it’s just lovely to be back inside the theatre and to give a massive Theatre Royal welcome to Evolution.”
After the exit of the gang of five, Berwick Kaler, David Leonard, Suzy Cooper, Martin Barrass and A J Powell, to the Grand Opera House, Forster’s pantomime cast has more of a diverse look, typical of her work. “I’ve almost always been able to do that with my casting because, in a lot of ways, I like to reflect the world we live in.
“For me, it’s more dynamic that way, and it was a policy with me before it became an Arts Council thing.”
Juliet believes the new Theatre Royal pantomime will appeal to a family audience and be marked by warmth. “That warmth will come from the performers, Paul’s script and from myself directing it,” she says.
“That’s not something you can manufacture. You have to feel it and encourage it, and the number one thing I learned from doing the Travelling Pantomime was the need to work with a cast that’s really funny and warm. When you get that mixture, you have a wonderful bond with the audience.”
Juliet adds: “I learned a lot from last year’s show being my first panto. Even though I’d done a lot of children’s shows, comedies and farces, pantomime is very much its own form, and I acquired a lot of respect for Paul’s panto-writing skills.
“The other thing I learned, and another big reason for wanting to do it again, was Hayley Del Harrison’s choreography, which was so playful and individual. I loved how she worked with each cast member really individually to bring out their character in their dancing.
“Hayley is back this year, and we’re doing more of that way of working – and we have the ensemble back too. Again, it was a big learning curve for me that dance can not only be beautiful and spectacular in panto but playful and fun too, and that’s something Hayley really brings out.”
Writer-producer Paul Hendy is delighted by the casting too. “It’s not by accident,” he says. “It’s done with this in mind: more than anything we want to appeal to a family audience. That’s my driving force.
“The cast must have that appeal; they must be talented, and they have to have that youthful energy to make the audience go, ‘wow, this is a great show, a different show from the norm’, mixing those qualities with spectacle and comedy. They’re all the ingredients that make a good panto.”
Paul acknowledges the “big reputation” of York Theatre Royal’s pantomime built up over Berwick Kaler’s four-decade damehood. “It’s very significant. Berwick helped to really establish York as a pantomime city, and we will carry that on but with a different flavour. I have every confidence in what we do, and we think people will say, ‘oh yes, we love this show too’,” he says.
“There is definitely room for two large-scale pantomimes in this city. People will come and see this show for what it is, done with a lot of love and care, done in a bespoke way for York audiences. If people want high quality, they will enjoy this show.”
After the positive response to the Travelling Pantomime, audiences can expect more of the same, but more of it! “I was so pleased and proud to be associated with last year’s show. Cinderella will be in that style but on a much bigger scale, with that humour, that spirit, that connectivity with the audience.
“It’s also ‘meta-theatre’ with a knowing awareness to it: it’s that thing of everyone knowing it’s not just Andy Day playing Dandini, but it’s Andy Day from CBeebies playing Dandini. It works better when everyone knows it.”
The last word goes to Juliet, who says: “It feels right to start the new era at the Theatre Royal with Evolution with Cinderella, the best known of all pantomimes, but also a pantomime without a dame, to give the transition time, not wanting someone to have to step into Berwick’s shoes straightaway, out of respect for him, but with a gradual progression to the future in mind.”
Cinderella runs at York Theatre Royal from tomorrow (3/12/2021) to January 2. Tickets are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Copyright of The Press, York