Alice Simmons: Busking in the Pocklington Arts Centre bar on February 25 2022
BUSKING In The Bar returns to Pocklington Arts Centre from next month for a new series of of free Friday night performances by emerging artists.
Lexi Rae Walker is booked in for December 10; Lily Honey, January 28; Alice Simmons, February 25, and Tim O’Connor, March 25, all starting at 8pm with the bar opening at 7pm.
Past sessions have featured Jess Gardham, Katie Spencer, Dan Webster, Beth McCarthy, Rachel Croft, Boss Caine, Dave Keegan, Charlie Daykin and Ava Rose.
Director Janet Farmer says: “We’re incredibly excited to be bringing back Busking In The Bar. What can be better than spending a Friday night enjoying a drink with friends and experiencing some free live music?
Lexi Rae Walker, performing with Busking In The Bar curator Charlie Daykin
“We have some truly talented artists lined up for you, so why not come along to soak up the atmosphere and discover some fantastic talent.”
Charlie Daykin, who has helped to curate the winter line-up, says: “It’s so exciting to see the next generation of singer-songwriters performing in the intimate setting of the Pocklington Arts Centre bar. Prepare to be amazed by the quality of this diverse line-up of talented musicians”.
York singer-songwriter Lexi Rae Walker, 18, is studying at the Access Creative College, York, and names Adele and Amy Winehouse among her influences.
“Singing is my biggest passion and I’m pretty sure I was singing before I could even talk properly,” says Lexi Rae, who performed on the main stage at this season’s York Food and Drink Festival.
Lily Honey: Booked to busk on January 28 2022
Yorkshire singer-songwriter, pianist and guitar player Lily Honey has performed at The Fulford Arms, in York, and such festivals as Latitude, Pocklington’s Platform Festival and York Food and Drink Festival. Since the August 2020 release of her debut single Leaving All My Love, Lily has enjoyed airplay on BBC Introducing.
Alice Simmons wraps her songs in electric piano, heavy bass lines, delicate guitar and smoky vocals, drawing comparisons with London Grammar’s Hannah Reid, Portishead’s Beth Gibbons and Florence + The Machine. She has played Latitude, Humber Street Sesh and Beyond The Woods festivals.
Tim O’Connor is a troubadour for the 21st century, crafting insightful, heartfelt, contemporary yet timeless songs, influenced by The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash and traditional Irish music. He has worked with many great musicians, among them the late Maartin Allcock, from Fairport Convention.
For more information, go to pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk or contact 01759 301547.
POCKLINGTON Arts Centre is adding a second performance of TaleGate Theatre’s pantomime on December 11 after the 2.30pm matinee sold out.
Now, families can enjoy the silliness, slapstick and magic of Mother Goose at 6pm too, with tickets on sale at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk or on 01759 301547.
Director Janet Farmer says: “Our family theatre offering is such an important part of all that we do at PAC, so we’re delighted that so many children and their families are going to be able to enjoy our Christmas panto this year.
“TaleGate Theatre never fail to make us laugh, so we know this will be a lot of fun this festive season.”
Feathers will fly as Fairy Virtue battles against Baron Vain in TaleGate Theatre’s traditional tale of good versus evil. Will Mother Goose be swayed to join the dark side of vanity or will she save her best friend, Priscilla, the goose that lays golden eggs? Will Billy Goose marry Jill, the baron’s daughter? Find out on December 11.
Tickets cost £10, concessions, £7.50, family of four, £31.
ARTS podcasters Chalmers & Hutch put this question to Wyvern Hill director Jonathan Zaurin and lead actor Pat Garrett after their Best Feature success at the Dead Northern Film Festival, held at City Screen, York.
Focus leader Thijs van Leer: “Taking things at a steadier pace at 73” at The Crescent, York. Picture: Paul Rhodes
FOCUS were always a musical anomaly, hard to pin down in any particular scene. Fifty years on from their period as international rock stars, York was fortunate to have the chance to see a rejuvenated band.
Focus are a band that inspire either fervent admiration or mockery for their prog excesses. Thursday’s large crowd at The Crescent was firmly in the former camp.
“This strange band” is how Dutch founding member Thijs van Leer described them. Their creative collision of hard rock, jazz and classical is music long on ideas and short on words.
The set was great value, just shy of two hours, and the energy throughout was amazing. Drummer Pierre van der Linden was incredible, not letting up for an instant.
“Scene-stealing” guitarist Menno Gootjes at Thursday’s concert. Picture: Paul Rhodes
Thijs van Leer has to take things at a steadier pace. Mostly seated, he remained the centre of attention, despite scene-stealing guitarist Menno Gootjes, a leading figure in the Dutch metal scene, who has both the licks and the confidence for the role. Bassist Udo Pannekeet was quietly doing some amazing work on his six-string bass.
Van Leer is now 73 but his passion for the music appears undimmed. The first-ever knighted musician in Holland was also fulsome in praising the other musicians.
Thursday’s show was essentially a ‘best of’ but included some less familiar numbers such as Birds Come Fly Over (Le Tango) from 2012’s Focus X.
York’s own Soma Crew provided support – and their set was intermittently excellent. Their music is a fusion of bands like the Velvet Underground and, by volume, My Bloody Valentine.
Focus playing their near two-hour set at The Crescent, York. Picture: Paul Rhodes
The unusual lap steel-meets-synthesiser lead of Joe Sellers lifted the music above a mire of guitars, and pick of the dark crop was Seven from their 2021 album Out Of Darkness And Into Light. The use of the 1973 French/Czech animation Fantastic Planet as a backdrop was a clever touch, care of The Crescent’s Harkirit Boparai.
It is Van Leer’s wordless vocals that distinguish Focus from the many other prog rock explorers. His yodelling, building to a crescendo, captured the attention of music fans when they played the Old Grey Whistle Test in December 1972. That song was Hocus Pocus, which along with Sylvia, is certainly their best known.
The yodel marks the song out as unique, but what really makes it stand out is Jan Akkerman’s absolutely stunning guitar riff – one of the very best in rock music. In concert, this one-time hit single gets stretched, and as an encore it went on for well over ten minutes. Taken full tilt, that riff and Gootjes’ solos worked their magic. Impressive but far too long was the drum solo that accounted for over half of that time.
Time has added the frisson of nostalgia for long-term fans, and consequently this was a concert that will live long in the memory.
Chemistry: Sanna Buck’s femme fatale and Aran MacRae’s Richard Hannay in Settlement Players’ The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders
John Buchan, Alfred Hitchcock, Simon Corble, Nobby Dimon and Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps, York Settlement Community Players, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, no longer dashing about with pencil-slim moustache panache until Sunday afternoon, alas, after cast illness.
DRINK in hand, it was time to sit back in the John Cooper Studio’s cabaret-style seating, relax and let the suspenseful comic drama begin.
Glass empty, (product-placed York Gin) bottle likewise, Aran MacRae’s Lieutenant Richard Hannay is slumped in his dull, lonely, newly rented Portland Place flat. He’s a man in an emotional pickle, on the edge, on the ledge, “tired of the world and tired of life” as the problems pile up. Suicidal, even, and in need of love as it later turns out.
So far, so sombre. What the dashing but hopes-dashed Hannay needs is “something pointless and trivial” to shake him out of his torpor. “I know,” he says. “Go to the theatre.” Boom, there goes the first big laugh, an insider knowing joke told against theatre, delivered with perfect comic timing, and so Harri Marshall’s production immediately hits its stride.
Writer Patrick Barlow: Fast-moving, snappily-clever, needs-must version of The 39 Steps
This is Patrick Barlow’s fast-moving, snappily clever version of The 39 Steps, the one he scripted for the West Yorkshire Playhouse and later West End and international success from an original Yorkshire-founded concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon.
In a nutshell, Marshall’s cast is charged with hitching John Buchan’s story of murder, suspense and intrigue to the thrills, spills and daring deeds of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film in a deranged marriage of comedy, farce, misadventure, mystery and thriller.
In Barlow’s National Theatre of Brent days, he would have his mock two-man theatre troupe, Desmond and Raymond, re-enact the Light Brigade and the Zulu Wars in a send-up of short-handed theatre companies.
Past productions of The 39 Steps divided its 135 characters between a cast of four, one man for Hannay, a woman for three women, and two men or a man and a woman (as in Rowntree Players’ 2015 production at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre), nominally called Man 1 and Man 2, for the rest.
Aran MacRae’s “tired of the world and tired of life” Richard Hannay. Picture: John Saunders
Marshall marshals rather more forces, calling on six men in black, Daniel Boyle, Andrew Isherwood, Matthew Lomax, Jim Paterson, Matt Pattison and Stephen Wright, to take on Barlow’s trademark needs-must, bargain-basement theatre style as The Clowns.
This demands that they must improvise props on the hoof amid the dearth of resources, wear multiple hats metaphorically and sometimes physically in leaping from role to role, and somehow ensure the smooth delivery of a performance, (hoping the audience won’t notice the absence of an errant stage manager, but Barlow/Marshall knowing they will).
From Lip Service to Mischief’s The Play That Goes Wrong, this is a slick, precise, unflappable comic device that has borne the ripest fruit, and here Marshall’s misrule of six brings a new dimension to both the madcap comedy capers and to the underlying darkness.
Barlow’s play often draws comparison with the anarchic spirit and teamwork of Monty Python; now, after Marshall’s innovation, the absurdist League of Gentlemen come to mind too. Daniel Boyle’s voice and looning eyes remind you of late Python Terry Jones; Matthew Lomax’s female characterisations echo the Gents.
Unforgettable: Daniel Boyle as Mr Memory in The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders
All the while, there is a story to tell, driven by narrator Hannay, MacRae’s upright Hannay playing it absolutely rod-straight, whatever hurdle is thrown his way from Hitchcock’s thriller and other Hitchcock works besides, as he ends up as murder suspect number one when a mysterious German woman with a gun, Annabelle Schmidt (Sanna Buck), dies in his arms after insisting on leaving the London Palladium by his side, desperate to impart important information.
On his tail as he heads to Scotland by train are policemen, secret agents and assorted women, and Marshall’s forces pull off Barlow’s obstacle course with elan, whether faced by re-enacting Hitchcock’s chase on the Flying Scotsman, the escape from the Forth Bridge, the first ever theatrical bi-plane crash [reprised from 1959’s North By Northwest] or a death-defying finale. Every Hitch homage defiantly goes off without a hitch.
Particularly strong is the chemistry between MacRae and Buck, a Swedish-born stage and film actor performing in York for the first time. MacRae, a professional with West End credits, now back in his home city, wholly lives up to Marshall’s billing that he would “balance brilliant playfulness against being earnest when required”, while Buck is to the Thirties’ manner born in her trio of roles as mystery German woman Annabelle, an alluring English femme fatale and a shy but helpful Scottish farmer’s wife. What a debut!
Caught on the hop: Harri Marshall’s company breaks into a dance step in The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders
Praise too for Helen Taylor’s wardrobe, especially for MaCrae and Buck, and Richard Hampton and Graham Sanderson’s set and lighting designs.
What rotten luck that, after the supremely assured first night, cast illness should rob the company and audiences alike of further performances of such verbal vim, satirical brio, dextrous stage craft, inventive surprise and even a sudden outbreak of dancing, as taught in rehearsal to the ever-game cast by York Lindy Hop.
No matter how frustrating the sudden curtailment must feel to Harri and her cast, Settlement Players’ first live show since March 2020 has been totally worthwhile, reminding us of MacRae’s considerable talent, first shown in youth theatre days, introducing York to Buck and bringing together a pool of performers it would be good to see working together again.
Director Harri Marshall: Heavy heart at having to call off the remaining performances
York Settlement Community Players’ statement on Friday:
“We are very sorry to announce that, due to cast illness and circumstances beyond our control, all remaining performances of The 39 Steps are cancelled (Fri 12, Sat 13 and Sun 14 November).
“All ticket holders for these affected performances will be contacted by email and receive a full refund. We ask that you please bear with us and theatre@41 while the necessary arrangements are made and thank you for your patience at this time.
“We would like to express our utmost thanks to the cast and crew for their commitment and creativity over the past months. It is with a heavy heart that we make this necessary decision but look forward to putting on more great theatre in York next year.”
ViP screening of Spencer at Cineworld York tonight
FORTY years to the day since Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, made their first official visit to York, Cineworld York is hosting a special ViP screening of Spencer at 7pm tonight.
On November 12 1981, the Royal couple were greeted by thousands of well-wishers as they travelled through the streets in an open-top car.
Now, Cineworld is offering a “uniquely regal way” to experience Pablo Larrain’s biographical psychological drama, starring Kristen Stewart as Diana, in their premium ViP format.
ViP guests at Cineworld York will be “transported to Sandringham as they are given the Royal treatment with a meal prepared by a chef, unlimited snacks and luxury seats”.
To make this occasion extra special, the screening will include a free glass of champagne on entry and a string quartet in the VIP exclusive lounge.
To celebrate the release of Spencer, staff and customers at Cineworld York re-created the banquet from the film’s teaser trailer frame by frame. In the trailer, staff are seen preparing for a lavish feast at Sandringham, a process that the Cineworld York crew took off by swapping lobster for popcorn and carrying in hampers that replaced the royal crest with the Cineworld ViP logo. To watch it, head to Cineworld York’s Facebook page.
ViP is Cineworld’s luxury-screening format, available at five cinemas nationwide for selected films all year-round.
A ViP ticket at Cineworld York costs £31 and always includes: access to an exclusive lounge 45 minutes before the showing; complimentary dining prepared by a chef, with four courses, including desserts; unlimited cinema snacks such as popcorn, hot dogs, nachos and soft drinks, all included in the ticket price; an intimate screening room with luxurious recliner seats that come fitted with their own side table for snacks and drinks, and alcoholic beverages, available to purchase at the private ViP bar.
Nick Bashford, Cineworld York’s general manager, says: “Recreating the Spencer trailer was a fantastic experience and one that was thoroughly enjoyed by Cineworld staff and our ViP guests.
“We can’t wait for more guests to experience this unique way of enjoying Spencer for themselves. We host ViP screenings all year round but turning a part of our cinema into a portal to Sandringham is extra special. It’s not every day we have a string quartet at Cineworld!”
Out on the wily, windy moor: Ash Hunter’s Heathcliff, Lucy McCormick’s Catherine Earnshaw and Nandi Bhebhe’s The Moor in Wise Children’s The 39 Steps
FIVE years ago, when Emma Rice all too briefly ruled the Globe, executive producer Tom Bird told her he would be fleeing the Shakespeare nest to move to York. “I’m going to do Wuthering Heights,” she told him that day.
Bird, now York Theatre Royal’s chief executive, recalled Rice’s vow at Wednesday’s post-show Q&A session, as the two friends from London days discussed Wise Children’s gothic musical play that felt like it had indeed “come home”, as both Bird and Kate Bush before him, put it.
In turn, Nottingham-born Rice remembered childhood walks up to the Top of th’ Withens – the West Riding house said to have inspired Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights – on her Yorkshire visits.
True to her word, Wise Children artistic director and former Kneehigh theatrical pioneer Rice has made her Wuthering Heights, in tandem with production partners York Theatre Royal, the Bristol Old Vic and the National Theatre, no less.
Rice’s association with Bird post-Globe has been a joyous and fruitful one for the York theatre, first hosting the premiere of Wise Children’s debut, Angela Carter’s Wise Children, then collaborating on her adaptation of Enid Blyton’s jolly-hocket-sticks Mallory Towers in 2019. Wuthering Heights would have followed far sooner but for the delay impact of Covid’s long winter.
As eggs is eggs, and Rice is Rice, the wait has been well worth it, and sure enough the Theatre Royal snapped, crackled and popped with excitement as smiling, exhilarated university theatre students took their turn to be photographed with an ever-obliging Rice in the foyer in the post-show buzz. If you could bottle the essence of theatre, why it can and should matter to all ages, why it still has limitless possibilities, then bottle that air right here, right now.
How come there is so much life in Emma Rice’s Wuthering Heights when there is so much death and “so little love” in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (with a helpful, if grim family tree at the beginning of the digital programme)? Because she doesn’t look at life the way that others might, or tell it the way others might. Take, for example, her opinion that Emily Bronte is an “overlooked comic genius”, presenting as evidence the foppish Lockwood (Sam Archer) and Little Linton Heathcliff (Katy Owen), “the most despicably funny character ever written”.
Or how Rice transforms the Yorkshire moorland into a character, The Moor, led by Nandi Bhebhe, the narrator in a crown of thorns and twigs. All but Lucy McCormick’s Catherine Earnshaw and Ash Hunter’s Heathcliff play The Moor in Rice’s ensemble and even McCormick is seen shaking a stick feverishly in the first evocation of the moorland, amid the sound and fury of the live band’s percussive clatter signifying everything about Yorkshire’s tight, stifling grip.
Bhebhe’s bad weather-forecasting Moor and cohorts become the equivalent of Macbeth’s witches, both McCormick’s Cathy and Hunter’s conversing directly with her, although the cautionary Moor is trying to save them from themselves.
Who cannot but love the team play in writer-director Rice’s shows, as exemplified by those Moors: the Moors, the merrier, as it were. Her cast sits attentively to the sides, always in view, visibly enthusing in each other’s performances as they conjure what Hunter calls her “theatre magic”.
Rice pulls off the feat of being deadly serious and yet seriously funny too; one review even used the words “camp” and “pastiche” to describe elements of the performance style, and there is something of the affectionate irreverence of Lip Service’s Withering Looks show about Rice’s script, not least when she comments on why do so many men’s names begin with H and why do so many characters have similar names?
Helpfully, each death is registered on a chalk board – as well as being signified by dark birds in flight across the projection screen – but there is a greater motive behind those boards: Rice’s passionate belief in the importance of literacy, a learning tool that was denied to Hareton by Heathcliff.
Rice is an audacious theatre-maker; she takes chances and invariably they pay off, typically in her casting choices, most notably maverick, fearless performance artist Lucy McCormick as her “unwell, prisoner-of-her-time Cathy, neither tortured romantic heroine, nor minx”.
“Lucy is a rock star,” she reasoned, and as if to prove the point, banshee McCormick suddenly grabs a microphone at one point, her locks tossed asunder by a fan, for an ensemble dance number that could have come from Rent or Spring Awakening as much as from the people’s operas of Brecht & Weill.
There is so much to love about Rice’s Wuthering Heights; the echo of Lawrence Olivier’s black-and-white film 1939 film in the title wording on screen; Vicki Mortimer’s set and costume designs, especially the towers of chairs; the use of puppetry and dance and projections; Ian Ross’s songs, whether in folk musical major keys or minor keys for bleaker undercurrents; the musicianship of Sid Goldsmith, Nadine Lee and Renell Shaw; the way this is anything but the Heathcliff and Cathy show.
Katy Owen brings such heart to her double bill of spoilt toffs, Isabella and Little Linton; Sam Archer is playful as the absurd Lockwood and grave as the inadequate Edgar Linton; Tama Phethean’s glowering, towering Hindley and Hareton Earnshaw, the one bruising, the other bruised, hit home, and while Rice’s company makes you feel they are all scene stealers, none does more so than Craig Johnson’s deathly-camp Dr Kenneth.
Ultimately, spread over this revenge tragedy’s ensnaring three hours, this is more Heathcliff’s Wuthering Heights than Cathy’s, on account of Rice’s most serious social commentary of all, on racism, prompted by her visit to the Calais Jungle. Hunter’s intense, brooding, raging Heathcliff is the refugee, the outsider, of Jamaican roots, abused and mistreated. “Cruelty breeds cruelty. Be careful what you seed,” cautions Rice.
And yet, amid so little love and so much 19th century grimness up north, Rice finds an uplifting finale so beautiful that it brings tears of joy.
Tickets are still available; crack the whip, like Rice’s Cathy and Heathcliff, and book every last seat. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Aran MacRae’s Richard Hannay: A man contemplating a boring life at the outset of The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders
YORK actor, singer, songwriter, self-taught guitarist and percussion player Aran MacRae is playing his first lead role since returning to his home city in March 2019.
From tonight, he takes centre stage as Richard Hannay, “the man with a boring life”, in York Settlement Community Players’ production of Patrick Barlow’s West End hit comedy thriller The 39 Steps at Theatre@41, Monkgate.
Whereas Aran was breaking in a new character when he originated the role of 14-year-old Tink in the West End premiere of Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf’s musical Bat Out Of Hell at the London Coliseum in 2017, Hannay has history aplenty on stage and screen.
Aran has broken with his previous practice, however, when preparing to play Hannay, whose state of torpor changes when he encounters a woman with a thick accent at a theatre who says she is a spy. He agrees to take her home, whereupon she is murdered, and soon a mysterious organisation called The 39 Steps is hot on Hannay’s trail in a nationwide manhunt that climaxes in a death-defying finale.
“This is the first project where I haven’t looked at any previous material, and that’s partly because I want the character to come from me,” says Aran.
Wanted by the police: Aran MacRae’s Richard Hannay, whose his face splashed on the front of the papers
“I’ve truly learned what it takes to become a proper, conscious working actor during this project, with all the highs and lows that come with that, so I’ve been inspired not just by the play, its timeless appeal and the traditional values the British have, one of which is how ridiculous we are, but also by the cast and by the director, Harri Marshall, who is brash in such a way that it’s so intelligent. She’s a superhero, she really is.”
Aran has given Richard Hannay his own back story, beyond that description of a “man with a boring life”, one rooted in Hannay’s war experiences. “The trauma of war in Hannay’s time contrasts with how lucky I am to have been born in a country where we’ve not had to experience that, and we take it for granted, whereas across the world, wars and conflicts still happen,” he says.
“That’s something I realise as a millennial. It’s really pushed me to the edge of thinking about things, in the cause of going close to the edge of distress, but in doing so I’m showing my passion for the people, which is a great passion I have as an actor,” he says.
“When I set out to perform, I always wanted to make my mother laugh and smile, and then I realised that if I’m going to make everyone laugh, I’m going to have to learn a lot – and I’m still learning.”
Hannay is driven by a desire for truth, for knowledge, says Aran. “It’s that ancient thing of the human spirit, the curiosity to bite the apple; it’s something that powers him on,” he notes.
Arms and the man: Aran MacRae in rehearsal for York Settlement Community Players’ The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders
In his own desire to reach that point in his performance, Aran has applied a technique he learnt from York, Leeds and Bradford drama teacher Matt Zina. “I sought him out for some acting classes a little while ago, and he talked about the ‘Seven Levels of Why’,” he reveals.
How does it work? “I realised that Hannay is searching for knowledge and truth, and then I asked the question ‘Why?’. The answer I arrived at is that Hannay wants to keep the peace, and then, at the end, when he’s kept the peace and found the truth, he gets the opportunity to be in love,” says Aran. “Maybe it comes by chance, but that’s the beauty of love.
“I set myself a super-objective with each piece I do, and there were many I could have set with this play because it demands that I make many decisions. I question ‘why?’ seven times, so by the time I go on stage, all that questioning is in my body and it all goes on stage with me. That means, if I have a moment of doubt, I remember my super-objective.”
Aran continues: “With each role, I’m trying to learn if I’m an actor-performer as an individual or as part of a collective, and that depends on the style of performance you’re doing” he says. “If it’s television, it’s about the individual, but with theatre, it’s collective: it’s like when birds take off together, you see them flying in formation, and then they move within that formation. It’s almost like a dance.”
Aran, who trained in musical theatre for three years at the Guildford School of Acting and built momentum in his career in the West End, on tour and overseas, is part of Harri Marshall’s cast of eight tasked with the breath-taking challenge of combining John Buchan’s 1915 novel with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film scenes in a blend of virtuoso performances and wildly inventive stagecraft.
Aran MacRae’s Hannay and Sanna Buck’s Arabella in a scene from the Settlement Players’ The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders
He is playing Richard Hannay opposite Sanna Buck in three parts and Stephen Wright, Andrew Isherwood, Jim Paterson, Matt Pattison, Matt Lomax and Daniel Boyle handling the rest of the 150 characters in the guise of The Clowns.
“Sanna is the most supportive actor to play opposite, and I couldn’t have done it without her,” says Aran. “The support and listening ear she has offered me has been priceless. The spirit she has shown during rehearsals has pulled me close to being a better actor and a better human being.
“All the rest of the cast are gentlemen and scholars, and again, the love for theatre and the support we have shown each other, when coming back to theatre and coming back to social interaction, with all the changes that have gone on, has been fantastic.
“One thing I’ve noticed is our desire to be happy, to have a laugh – though my personal thing is to create a feeling of peace with that lovely cool-down after all the laughter, but that doesn’t mean the clowns should be in charge!”
The pursuit of laughter is all important in Barlow’s version of The 39 Steps, but so is the authenticity of characterisation, not least in Hannay’s military disposition.
Handcuffed: Aran MacRae’s Richard Hannay at a loose end in The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders
“I’ve used YouTube for a really useful video on the ‘Attention’ and ‘At Ease’ positions, watching soldiers on parade, and I also visited Elvington Airfield a couple of time, talking to people around the air base, and studying planes,” says Aran.
“I’ve also done some movement to music, working to the soundtrack from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly and Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back In Town. Music, as I’m still learning, is a great healer and has the ability to take you back in time, so it’s a very useful tool for an actor to use.
“For Hannay’s accent, I was very lucky to have had good training at Guildford [School of Acting], where I had this amazing teacher, Chris Palmer, who taught me Received Pronunciation, so I have a good grounding in that accent.
“Overall, the performance comes down to the body, the mind and the voice; they are the three crucial things to study when you’re developing a character. But I’ve also realised that an actor is like a magician, because we don’t want to show you the rabbit in the hat, revealing our secrets.”
Amid all the seriousness within this analysis of the art of performance, Aran smiles at the thought that these discussions are in the cause of a comedy being funny.
“He had this brilliant playfulness, balanced against being earnest when required,” says director Harri Marshall, recalling Aran MacRae’s audition
“The script is genius,” he says. “The lines are so funny, it could work just as a radio play, but then you add the physicality and the awareness of the need to be able to laugh at yourself and to connect with that on stage,” he says.
Aran is an advocate of thinking on your feet as an actor when performing in a comedy. “Instinct! That’s where a lot of comedy comes from,” he says. “The ability to see something that might hurt and then finding something funny in it.
“Comedy makes us question ourselves, which is something we’ve all been doing in the pandemic, when other people keep you going through these moments. Family and a good cup of tea.”
Instinct applies not only to comedy but to casting too, hence the last word will go to Harri Marshall, as she explains her choice of Aran for Richard Hannay. “As soon as he walked in the room for the audition, I knew he’d be perfect,” she says. ”He had this brilliant playfulness, balanced against being earnest when required, and he always wanted to discover and apply new ideas and methods of doing things.”
York Settlement Community Players present John Buchan and Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm, 7.30pm; Sunday, 2.30pm. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
The poster for Paul Chowdhry’s Family-Friendly Comedian tour, visiting the Grand Opera House, York, next Thursday
AFTER barely surviving the pandemic, British-Asian stand-up Paul Chowdhry tackles the UK’s handling of the Coronavirus crisis and why the rules of six only worked for white people in his November 18 gig at the Grand Opera House, York.
Two years of pent-up frustration go into his Family-Friendly Comedian (No Children) gig, where he also discusses fame, England football fans and Tom Cruise landing his helicopter in someone’s garden.
Londoner Chowdhry began his stand-up career in 1998 and hosted the comedy show Stand Up For The Week, having been a regular act on earlier series. He was the first British act to perform at the Caribbean Comedy Festival in Trinidad in 2003, and when he sold out the 10,000-seater Wembley Arena in December 2017, he became the first British-Asian comic to do so.
Paul Chowdhry: PudCast podcast
On TV, he has been a guest panellist on 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Comedy World Cup and Sorry I Didn’t Know and he finished last when taking part in an episode of the third series of Taskmaster. He hosts the podcast The Paul Chowdhry PudCast, wherein he interviews comedians.
Last on tour with his Live Innit show, Chowdhry, 47, is known for using the signature phrase “what’s happening white people?” at the start of his stand-up routines.
Tickets for next Thursday’s 8pm gig are on sale on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/york.
Ben Caplan: “Imagine the love child of Tom Waits and Gogol Bordello and you’re getting somewhere close”. Picture: Jamie Kronick
TICKETS are still available for Canadian folk-rock singer-songwriter Ben Caplan’s gig at Pocklington Arts Centre tonight (11/11/2021).
His extensive European autumn tour marks the tenth anniversary of his October 2011 debut, In The Time Of The Great Remembering, and will follow hot on the heels of Recollection, a retrospective collection of stripped back re-interpretations of songs from his back catalogue, out in October.
Pocklington Arts Centre (PAC) venue manager James Duffy says: “I saw Ben perform at Cambridge Folk Festival in 2019 and was blown away, like the rest of the audience, with his performance.
“He has a fantastic stage presence and mixes a wonderful blend of musical styles from folk to gypsy through to rock. Imagine the love child of Tom Waits and Gogol Bordello and you’re getting somewhere close.”
Caplan, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, combines timeless melodies with a contemporary folk-rock twist, channelling wild abandon and quiet introspection in songs that evoke both the roar of the hurricane and the eye of the storm.
Gabrielle Papillon: Support act
Caplan’s support act will be fellow Canadian Gabrielle Papillon, whose 2019 album, Shout, was propelled by equal parts synth, big pianos, and anger, “exploding in thoughtful, danceable art-pop anthems of uprising, hope and a delirious celebration of self”.
James says: “I’m delighted Gabrielle is accompanying Ben on this tour, as his support, as this enables PAC to introduce our audiences to another acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter.
“I first saw Gabrielle perform at a Music Nova Scotia showcase event, several years ago, and have followed her career ever since.”
Tickets for Caplan’s 8pm show are on sale at £12 at pocklingtonartscenytre.co.uk or £14 on the door.
