Jimmy Carr: Welcoming the Menfulness charity to his Grand Opera House gig in York
COMEDIAN Jimmy Carr will support the work of Menfulness, the inclusive social community for men in York, at tomorrow night’s Terribly Funny gig at the Grand Opera House, York.
Led by five men from York who, like many men, have struggled with mental health and the pressures of life, Menfulness wants to keep growing its community and continue to look for funding opportunities to participate in events, activities and counselling offers of support to men’s wellbeing in a friendly, non-judgemental environment where they can share at their own pace.
The Menfulness charity brings men together to socialise, exercise, enjoy themselves, talk and let off steam: all essential for wellbeing and health, both physical and mental. At tomorrow’s show, the team will be seeking to bring awareness of the mental health of men and hoping to raise as much money as possible to provide urgent counselling to help save men’s lives.
They will be available on the night if any theatregoer would like advice on Menfulness. A collection will take place after the show.
For more information on the charity, go to: menfulness.org/. Box office for tickets: atgtickets.com/york.
Menfulness’s poster for tomorrow’s chance to raise funds and raise awareness of men’s mental health counselling at Jimmy Carr’s gig
The artwork for the University of York Music Department’s Antigone
University of York Music Department Practical Project: Antigone, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, November 3 to 5
REWRITING Sophocles is a dangerous exercise. The tragedy Antigone is the last of his so-called Theban trilogy and a cornerstone of western drama, as relevant today as when it was written nearly 2,500 years ago.
Seamus Heaney wrote a concise version of the story, leaning towards poetry, while Jean Anouilh’s play, inspired by the Nazi occupation of Paris, explores its meaning.
Sadly, Jon Hughes’s abridged paraphrase is not in either category. Its use in the university music department’s latest Practical Project, a rite of passage designed to welcome and incorporate the latest intake of undergraduates, meant that barely half the evening, its incidental music, was devised by the students themselves.
His introduction mentioned Antigone’s possible parallels with Greta Thunberg or Malala Yousafzai. Yet his play remained rooted firmly in ancient Greece, whereas a modern scenario – surely not beyond the wit of these talented students – might have justified reinterpreting this ancient text.
The net result was that the ‘theatrical’ side of this drama, co-directed by Lucy Grehan-Bradley and Roseanna Schmidt, was seriously undercooked. Despite the use of face microphones, too few of the actors observed two basic rules: face your audience and project to the back row. Dialogues were carried on quietly like conversations over a cup of coffee rather than shared with the audience.
There were notable exceptions. Kieran Crowley’s Tiresias, who also voiced the prologue, made a laudable attempt to inject drama into his lines. So too did Christina-Alexandra Higgins as Antigone’s sister Ismene, albeit in a much briefer appearance.
Dom Sutton’s Creon, a pivotal figure here, at least made us aware of his dilemma as a ruler whose power base might crumble. But Katerina Poulios, despite singing her lament with conviction, otherwise gave a shy, retiring Antigone, quite the reverse of the figure found in Sophocles. Several lesser characters despatched their lines robotically, as if barely involved.
Things were altogether better on the musical front. The seven episodes of the drama were interwoven with 11 musical interludes which generally exhibited admirable craftsmanship. Musical director Becky Lund, who took the lion’s share of the conducting with considerable authority, also contributed a War Prelude of heavy percussion and catchy rhythms. Helen Southernwood offered a passionate lament for Ismene in modal minor style, although her concept of ‘continuo’ – unabated background noise, even during the interval – was less appealing.
There were several attempts to bring back choral speaking, which enjoyed a certain fashion before the Second World War. But this hall is so unkind to speech that they were regrettably doomed to failure and proved virtually unintelligible.
Anna Benton’s neo-Romantic lament for Antigone was intriguing, however, and Anna Nightingale’s two odes used a wide range of techniques. Both choir and orchestra showed great commitment under duress. But in the end the formula was too prescriptive, as if to ward off failure rather than taking risks and allowing full rein to the new students’ imaginations.
Jools Holland: No Friday fry-up at Wackers, but a feast of a blues, ska and boogie-woogie set with Chris Difford, Lulu and Ruby Turner at full power at York Barbican
JAUNTY Jools Holland loves York. One of his favourite gigs, one of his favourite places, he says, as he makes his dapper way to the grand piano.
“Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he”, you might sneer, “he’s just playing to the crowd”. Let CharlesHutchPress know if he uttered the same sentiment at Harrogate Conference Centre tonight!
The thing is, Londoner Jools does love York, and in particular he loves the pensioner’s meal deal with a free cup of tea at Wackers. Except that, on arrival, he discovered his favourite fish and chip joint was no more; the chips were down, permanently; another sad change since he last toured pre-pandemic.
He cheered, we cheered, he shouted, we shouted, as he played the chirpy ringmaster once more, introducing his speciality acts, bantering to and fro with the full house, and revelling in the company of his restored rhythm and blues orchestra.
After all those Covid months of cobwebbed closure and silent nights, the sight of a stage stuffed to the gills with brilliant players brought joy uncontained to a Barbican gathering that was up for a party from the off.
To one side were Jools’s brother, Christopher, beneath a natty hat on keyboards, guitarist Mark Flanagan and stand-up bassist Dave Swift. Squeezed in at the back was Gilson Lavis, as imperturbable as the late Charlie Watts, on drums.
To the other side was a multi-storey horn section, and to misappropriate the style of a certain Christmas Carol: on the fifth day of November, York-loving Jools gave to us: three trumpet players, three trombones, five gold saxophones. Forever on the move, in the swing, they urged each other on, enjoying each solo spotlight as much as the audience.
In the middle, pulling the strings, was Jools. Oh, and yes, sir, he can boogie, boogie woogie, all night long, or more precisely from 8.20pm to 10.07pm, on his piano. A big screen showed his flying fingers in close-up and the cut of his dandy tailoring too.
That screen combined graphics with live footage, opening with the image of theatre curtains, later showing photographs of Holland, Lavis and special guest Chris Difford in Squeeze days.
Jools plugged his new lockdown album Pianola. Piano & Friends – out on November 19 on Warner Music – most notably for the irresistibly perky, fabulously funky single Do The Boogie, co-written with Mousse T, and when filling in for Tom Jones’s vocal on the soulful Forgive Me. Morris Dance, an instrumental homage to his dog of that name, was a blast too.
The vocalists kept a’coming: tour regulars Louise Marshall and Lucita Jules; then Chris Difford, immaculate in a blue suit, white shirt and scholarly specs, with a deliciously dry-humoured line in anecdotes.
Take Me I’m Yours acquired ska trim, a 1974 Difford-Holland composition was aired for the first time, and a big-band Cool For Cats ended with Difford clouded in dry ice as he recalled Cliff Richard’s propensity for doing likewise whenever he shared the Top Of The Pops studio with Squeeze. “I thought he had no legs,” deadpanned Difford, newly tagged “Cliff Difford” by Jools as he departed.
From The Selecter’s Pauline Black to Marc Almond to Beth Rowley, Jools has had a canny knack of picking just the right vocalists for framing their songs in ska, blues and brass-powered settings. To that list now add Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie.
Yes, enter Lulu, now 73, all in black, even for the darkest of dark glasses, for an unnamed opening shot of the blues and a quick dig at British music for being “wet” before The Beatles before a knock-out version of Ray Charles’s Hit The Road Jack. Glasses off, how else she could she finish but with her teen anthem. Well, you know, you make her wanna Shout. Come on now, who didn’t join in, hands jumping, heart’s bumping? We all did!
How could Jools top that? It must be time for blues royalty, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. Here comes Ruby Turner, first warming up with a couple of looseners, then hitting her stride in I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, and then…the moment. Ruby Turner overdrive, as she reached for gospel glory in Peace In The Valley, waking up the entire neighbourhood. The Barbican rocked, the earth moved, time for a breather.
Of course the triple-decker encore had to have the obligatory Enjoy Yourself as the meat in Jools’s sandwich. The years may be going by as quickly as you wink, but how good it felt to still be in the pink on a Friday night in York, as the fireworks went off all around us in the night sky as we departed.
Review by Charles Hutchinson
Jools Holland & His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra play Leeds First Direct Arena on December 17; doors, 6.30pm. Box office: firstdirectarena.com.
Aesthetica Short Film Festival director Cherie Federico
NEXT year will mark the 20th anniversary of Cherie Federico moving from New York to York.
By then, the founder of Aesthetica Magazine, the Aesthetica Short Film Festival and Aesthetica Arts Prize will have lived longer in her adopted home city than her native United States.
In 2002, she came to York to study at York St John University and…stayed, seeing possibilities within these historic city walls for artistic innovation.
This is her busiest week of the year, hosting the Aesthetica Short Film Festival, now in its 11th year and bigger than ever, running from Tuesday to Sunday – and online until November 30 – with a remarkable 500 films; themed strands and guest programmes; masterclasses; an industry marketplace; VR (virtual reality) lab; interactive media lab; a celebration of the New Wave of filmmakers; mentoring sessions; networking opportunities and a Sunday awards ceremony.
“It’s become a very significant British film festival, and our ticket sales are healthier than ever,” says Cherie, as the festival restores live screenings in 2021 after last year’s entirely digital event for home viewing only. This year, you can watch in person or online or a hybrid combination of the two each day.
“People are buying hybrid passes to be able to soak up everything in the city – films, masterclasses, panels and discussions – over the six days and also to have full access to the virtual platform to catch up on films and masterclasses until the end of the month.
“There are more films showing than ever before because we’re offering the chance to experience them in different ways; some programmes are online only, some are in-person only, so there are some distinctive programmes, but there’s also cross-pollination between the two formats.
“The thing that has changed this year is that we’ve organised the films into six strands, which came about in response to the pandemic.”
ASFF’s films span documentary; advertising; narrative; animation; artists’ film; comedy; dance; drama; experimental; family friendly; fashion; music video and thriller. “The programme is still organised thematically by genre, but these films now move into different strands too,” says Cherie.
“I was thinking, ‘what are the key things that unite the films in this year’s programme?’, and I came up with How It Was, How It Is, How It Will Be, thinking about the past, present and future, focusing on extraordinary stories in the everyday.
“Strand Two, Humanity On The Edge, addresses ‘Crisis’, whether looking at the effect of climate change or the pandemic; Black Lives Matter; LGBTQ+ issues; human rights; women’s safety. There is no more ‘normal’. It’s an idea that’s become redundant. Crisis has become a defining characteristic of life in the 21st century.”
Cherie continues: “Strand 3, When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade, is about hope, optimism, positivity. The glass is half full, as we take a lighter look at life to remind us of all the joy and beauty around us, as we take a moment to admire the power and resilience of the everyday person.
“Strand 4, Pleased To Meet You, explores Connections, how relationships are formed, and considers how the digital age has altered the way we build, maintain and cut ties, maybe irrevocably.
“Strand 5, Mirror, Mirror, looks at identity, how we decide who we are or, perhaps, who we want to be; how you see yourself, whether you’re holding a mirror up to society or to yourself, and how the way you see yourself is often very different to the way other people see you.”
The sixth strand, Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free, addresses how segregation, racism, marginalisation and discrimination are systemic issues deep-rooted within society. “They are part of many people’s daily experiences,” says Cherie. “We must recognise that in the fight to establish true equality.”
In further festival highlights, New Wave introduces the next generation of filmmakers, with ASFF being the only British festival to offer a strand dedicated to graduate filmmakers, under such titles as The Art Of Limitation: Creativity Under Constraints (Saturday, City Screen, 3.30pm to 5.30pm).
The Guest Programmes have been curated by Rachel Pronger, originally from Bradford and now living and working in Berlin after deciding “it’s now or never to move”. 9/11, Twenty Years On is the subject of three programmes at Bootham School: Memories, Monuments (earlier today); In Search Of (Saturday, 3.30pm) and The Fallout (Sunday, 2pm).
“Part One looks at how did we get to the point where people steered planes into the Twin Towers; Part Two covers the day itself; Part Three considers how that moment led to a rise in populism and nationalism, and how you end up with Trump in the White House,” says Cherie. “That moment, 9/11, galvanised some very dangerous attitudes harking back to 1939.”
Look out for a sound installation at Spark: York, a new location for the 2021 festival, where the sound of a rainforest is accompanied by a CO2 monitor. “The more people that fill the room, the quieter the room becomes,” says Cherie.
For the first time since the first lockdown in March 2020, The Basement at City Screen, York, is open, playing host to the VR Lab for ten 360-degree films and six immersive experiences each day from 11am to 8pm.
The week’s masterclasses are welcoming the likes of filmmaker Peter Strickland (Katalin Vargo, Duke Of Burgundy); rising director Prano Bailey-Bond (Best Experimental Film winner for Man vs Sand at 2013 ASFF; debut feature film Censor); Hyena writer-director Gerard Johnson; actor Maxine Peake, discussing “acting as authorship”, and The Father producer David Parfitt.
So too are: stop-motion director Anthony Farquhar-Smith (Fantastic Mr Fox, Corpse Bride); rising star Gamba Cole (from Stephen Merchant’s BBC series The Outlaws ); Industrial Light & Magic’s VFX supervisor Julian Foddy and feminist filmmaker Sally Potter (Orlando, The Road Not Taken).
Still to come are: Senna, Amy and Diego Maradona documentary filmmaker Asif Kapadia (Yorkshire Museum, Saturday, 3pm); God’s Own Country and Ammonite writer-director Francis Lee, the Yorkshireman who “doesn’t often do” such Close Up encounters (Yorkshire Museum, Saturday, 6pm) and Alice Seabright, who has written and directed episodes of Netflix hit Sex Education (Yorkshire Museum, Saturday, 6.30pm).
A Sunday streaming at 1pm brings together actor and Primetime founder Victoria Emslie and Lizzy Talbot, intimacy coordinator for Bridgerton, who will discuss the tasks and techniques involved when working with an intimacy coordinator, one of the stage and screen’s increasingly important new roles.
“It’s quite remarkable how many big names we have taking part in the festival,” says Cherie. “It’s a huge, huge festival and it’s really important for people in York to realise the scope and the breadth of a festival that takes place in their city.
“It’s major cultural programming, and I’m proud of the dynamic we bring to the city’s cultural agenda. It’s extraordinary to be able to do this and we’re proud that we brought £2 million to the York economy in 2019, the last time we had a live festival.
“This festival is a unique experience that you can’t get anywhere else, and that’s what makes it so special: the combination of films, the masterclasses and the venues around the city; the union of the historic and the contemporary.”
Please note, ASFF is applying a stringent Covid-safety policy. “For admission, if you have had two jabs, you must show your NHS Covid pass; if not, you must have proof of a negative Lateral Flow Test that day. There are no exemptions,” says Cherie. “We’re determined to mitigate the risk of Covid-19 at the festival.”
For full details on the 2021 Aesthetica Short Film Festival programme, go to: asff.co.uk.
Shobna Gulati’s Ray, Amy Ellen Richardson’s Margaret and Layton Williams’s Jamie New in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at Leeds Grand Theatre
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Sheffield Theatres/Nica Burns, at Leeds Grand Theatre, until Sunday. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or at leedsheritagetheatres.com. *****
EVERYBODY’S been talking about Everybody’s Talking About Jamie coming to the Leeds Grand for ages: a two-year wait for early bookers after Covid shut down fun.
“The hit musical for today” began life at Sheffield Crucible Theatre in 2017 and finally makes the 44-mile trip to Leeds after West End success and a screen conversion to film release in September.
Inspired by the Firecracker documentary Jamie: Drag Queen At 16, composer Dan Gillespie Sells (from the pop band The Feeling) and writer/lyricist Tom MacRae worked their magic from an original idea by director and co-writer Jonathan Butterell.
What emerged was the completion of a populist trilogy of Sheffield comedy dramas: the defiant spirit and sheer balls of The Full Monty, the classroom politics and fledgling frustrations of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, and now Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, the unapologetic story of the boy who sometimes to be wants to be a girl, wear a dress to the school prom and be a drag queen.
Now you can throw in the sass, the too-cool-for-school dress sense and the multi-cultural diversity of Sex Education, the Netflix binge-watch through lockdowns, as another barometer of Jamie’s topicality for our changing times and attitudes towards gender, bigotry, bullying, homophobia, absentee fathers and the right to self-expression.
Take a chance, if you have the time pre-show, to cast an eye over the programme’s pocket-profiles of Mayfield School Class of 2020, asking Jamie and his classmates: What do you want to be when you grow up? What’s your favourite thing about school? It could be any comprehensive classroom of 16-year-olds, capturing hopes, aspirations and realities with wit and spot-on social awareness. Another testament to just how switched on, relevant, yet boldly humorous this show is.
“Jamie”, on the one hand, is a classic teen rebel story, told from the teen perspective of Jamie New (Bury-born Layton Williams, reprising his West End role), but it is not merely a down-with-the-kids high-school musical.
Class act: Layton Williams’s Jamie New and his Mayfield School classmates in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
Even more so than in Hairspray, it gives the adult viewpoint too, whether Jamie’s world-weary but ever supportive mum Margaret (Amy Ellen Richardson, expressed powerfully through her belting ballads, If I Met Myself Again and He’s My Boy); gobby best friend Ray (Shobna Gulati, wonderful); Jamie’s stay-away Dad (Cameron Johnson); narrow-minded teacher Miss Hedge (Lara Denning), or dress-shop boss Hugo/veteran drag act Loco Chanelle (special guest Shane Richie as you have never heard or seen him before but will want to again!).
Serious points are made, confrontations have both poignancy and punch, but what’s not to love about the sheer bl**dy Yorkshireness of it all: from the frank, no-nonsense humour that mocks the ridiculous careers advice offered at schools to the raucous, rough-rouge glamour, tattoos and all, of Sheffield drag queens Sandra Bollock (Garry Lee), Laika Virgin (JP McCue) and Tray Sophisticay (Rhys Taylor), as musical pizzazz meets kitchen-sink drama.
The songs are a knock-out, led off by the immediately infectious And You Don’t Even Know It, through the irresistible title number and Jamie’s heartfelt Ugly In This Ugly World, to the show-closing defining statement of Out Of The Darkness (A Place Where We Belong). Sam Coates’s band have a ball with Gillespie Sells’ orchestrations.
Matt Ryan’s direction, Kate Prince’s choreography and Anna Fleischle’s designs are all fast-moving and slick but with room for grit too amid the glitter. You will note the brick designs on the side of the desks, for example.
Not only Williams’s Jamie scores high marks among the classroom performances, so too do George Sampson’s everybody-hating, self-loathing bully Dean Paxton and Sharan Phull’s self-assured, doctor-in-waiting Pritti Pasha.
Yet, of course, everyone is talking about Williams’s Jamie New, so restless at sweet 16 to be “something and someone fabulous”. His Jamie is a mover, a peacock groover, a fantabulous fusion of lip and lip gloss, high heels and higher hopes, outwardly confident yet naïve, in that teenage way, and vulnerable too. What a performance.
Yorkshire has given us Billy Liar’s Billy Fisher, Kes’s Billy Casper, and now Jamie New, disparate young dreamers in need of escape from the grey grime, but this time the story is so, so uplifting, emerging from darkness into the spotlight (and mirroring the return of live theatre from Covid quarantine to boot).
Review by Charles Hutchinson
Remaining performances: tonight, 7.30pm; tomorrow and Sunday, 2.30pm and 7.30pm.
Lucy McCormick’s “rock star” Cathy in Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Steve Tanner
ASK Wise Children artistic director Emma Rice why she cast performance artist and actor Lucy McCormick as Cathy in her stage adaptation of Wuthering Heights, and she replies: “Lucy is a rock star.”
“Literally and metaphorically! She is pure charisma and has a wildness of spirit that takes my breath away. She is fearless, passionate, seriously sexy and maverick,” says Emma. “She was my Catherine Earnshaw from the moment I saw her perform and I cannot believe my luck that she is creating this role with me. I am in awe.”
Ask Emma why she picked Ash Hunter for Heathcliff, and she enthuses: “Oh, everything! Ash Hunter is everything I want from my Heathcliff. He has a unique intensity that could stop a train in its tracks and a deep understanding of human love, rage and sorrow. He is one of the finest actors I have ever worked with and when he and Lucy start to fizz together, the planets start to spin. I am beyond words.”
From Tuesday (9/11/2021), Lucy and Ash will be at York Theatre Royal, leading Rice’s company in Wise Children’s wild folk musical account of Emily Bronte’s raging Yorkshire moorland tale of love, revenge and redemption in a co-production with the York theatre, the National Theatre and the Bristol Old Vic.
Here Lucy and Ash discuss Emma’s directorial style, returning to the stage, their roles, their passions, their accents.
Emma’s style is so distinctive, how would you describe it?
Lucy: “I would say ‘theatrical’.”
Ash: “I read somewhere that it’s ‘theatre magic’ and I think that a very apt description of her style. She’s got a massive bag of tricks, which she can delve into to create something rare and different to the theatre you see anywhere else.”
Lucy: “Colourful and dramatic but very theatrical and very musical. A bit of everything.”
Ash: “She clearly has a love for the stage and all of its facets; puppetry, song, dance, there’s nothing that doesn’t happen in this production. Vivid.”
How are you feeling about getting stuck into this production, especially after the last two years?
Lucy: “I’ve known about this job during that whole time, which was weird. It got postponed twice during those two years, but it’s good to be back being busy.”
Ash: “Previous to lockdown, the last couple of jobs I’ve had were in TV, so it’s great to be back on stage again. But this has always been a huge production that we’ve been leading up to. So, I think in terms of emotion and preparation it’s been quite a big shift starting Wuthering Heights.”
“When Ash and Lucy start to fizz together, the planets start to spin,” says director of Ash Hunter’s Heathcliff and Lucy McCormick’s Cathy in Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights. Picture: Steve Tanner
Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff are a passionate pair, what are you most passionate about?
Ash: “I’m passionate about Lucy.”
Lucy: “I’m passionate about deconstructing patriarchal capitalist systems and I like peanut butter.”
Ash: “And I’m still passionate about Lucy.”
Emily Brontë’s novel has inspired so many versions. How do you best know Wuthering Heights: as the book, a film or TV adaptation or that Kate Bush song?
Ash: “Mine is the Kate Bush song, always and forever, and the Tom Hardy TV series version, which is what I based my Heathcliff on,” [he says with a laugh].
Lucy: “I’ve read the book, back when I was an acting student. I read it because I thought I should read some old classic novels, and now I’m in it!”
What sort of Heathcliff and Cathy will feature in this version of Wuthering Heights?
Lucy: “I’m a bit more intense than Cathy in my actual life.”
Ash: “I think what’s quite clear is that we have some similarities to our characters in real life. I think I’m a lot like him, especially the version that we are doing here. We were saying the version of Heathcliff here isn’t colour-blind casting; he is black, he’s got a Jamaican accent.
“He’s spurned and treated like an outcast, not only because of his poverty or social standing, but also because of his colour, and the anger that’s brewed up within him is a righteous anger.
“Colourful and dramatic but very theatrical and very musical,” says Lucy McCormick, summing up Emma Rice’s stage version of Wuthering Heights. Picture: Steve Tanner
“It’s something that I have felt; I think he is me if I hadn’t found my peace. I actually think that he is less brutal than the Heathcliff in the book and there was a desire to show that people are not entirely bad or entirely good. I think Emma [Rice] hasn’t allowed Heathcliff to become as dark as he could have become, and there are moments where you see him soften.”
Lucy: “Emma wants to leave it on a positive. He’s bad enough.”
Why should this story be told now?
Ash: “For me, its specific to what’s going on in the world and with me and my relationship with my blackness and masculinity. I’m hoping there are people who are going to see this and identify with Heathcliff and his struggles. If you treat someone like a monster, then you create a monster. You wanted a monster, you got one.
“Hopefully, people see that reflection and even out of that can come love and positivity, and if you do face that and deal with your demons, something good can come from it.”
Lucy: “I do think people will always be a***holes; what’s a better way of putting that? It’s like reality TV, these awful people play out their lives and people love to look in on it and their mistakes and hopefully learn from them.
“It’s a classic story of dysfunctional people making mistakes and hopefully an audience can analyse it and see where it went wrong. Because people can be rubbish, and that’s never going to change, unfortunately.”
This is a classic Yorkshire tale; how are your accents coming along?
Ash: “I’m speaking with a Caribbean accent. I love it because of the lyricalness of it. I can’t imagine doing it another way and also where it places him and my voice. It is there to differentiate him from everyone else; you can’t get away from his otherness.
Ash Hunter’s Heathcliff with Katy Owen’s Isabella in Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights. Picture: Steve Tanner
“The choice that when he comes back a gentleman, that he hasn’t changed his accent, he has a more refined, posh, deeper Jamaican accent but he’s not trying to change who he is, he’s owning it. It’s beautiful.”
Lucy: “What was weird for me is that it’s close to my accent but not my accent. I’ve almost found that harder than say an American accent or whatever else I’ve done. It’s just working on that subtle difference. Tweaking my own voice. It’s quite annoying!”
What can the York audiences expect to feel after watching this adaptation of Wuthering Heights?
Ash: “Exhausted! It’s a whole gamut of human emotions! Emma hasn’t left anything out.”
Lucy: “They’re going to laugh, they’re going to cry – and feel celebratory at the end but they will have gone through a journey.”
Ash: “The first half is just a juggernaut. It’s a play in itself! The ending of the first half is just… Watching Catherine and Heathcliff’s descent into mutual madness is just woah! It’s cool.”
Lucy: “There’s a point in the first half that you get to and you just don’t stop! And then we do a second play! The audience seem to feel good about it. Emma wants the audience to feel good at the end.”
Ash: “The first half has a massive tragedy and the second half ends with big drama but in a different way. Emma is careful to give the audience a gift to go away with.”
Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights runs at York Theatre Royal, November 9 to 20. Box office:01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Lucy McCormick in Wise Children’s tour poster for Wuthering Heights, leaping onto the York Theatre Royal stage from Tuesday. Picture: Hugo Glendinning
Ash Hunter’s Heathcliff and Lucy McComick’s Cathy in Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights in 2021. Picture: Steve Tanner
AS Emma Rice’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’sWuthering Heights heads to York Theatre Royal from November 2, Steve Pratt considers the reaction to the original novel and previous incarnations of the story.
Bell, book and Brontë
EMILY Brontë’s only novel Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey were accepted by publisher Thomas Newby before the success of their sister Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre.
It was described by reviewers as both “a disagreeable story” and “a strange book”. Another thought the faults of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre were “magnified a thousand-fold”, adding that “the only consolation which we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read”.
Another critic noted: “It is not without evidences of considerable power: but, as a whole, it is wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable; and the people who make up the drama, which is tragic enough in its consequences, are savages ruder than those who lived before the days of Homer.”
Praise was in short supply. “We rise from the perusal of Wuthering Heightsas if we had come fresh from a pest-house. Read Jane Eyreis our advice, but burn Wuthering Heights,” suggested one critic.
The writer in United States’ publication Graham’s Lady’s Magazine was clearly no fan: “How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors…”
Cliff Richard’s Heathcliffin 1996
Heath-Cliff Richard
HEATHCLIFF, a musical conceived by and starring Cliff Richard, centred on the character of – yes, you’ve guessed it – Heathcliff. Some imagined that dark and brooding Heathcliff was outside clean-cut pop star Cliff’s acting range. Song lyrics were by Tim Rice, no less. The musical’s book was not by Ms Brontë but Cliff and theatre director Frank Dunlop.
A studio album with ten songs from the show, including duets with now-Dame Olivia Newton-John, was released in 1995 with the stage version premiering the following year in London. Ticket sales broke box office records although critics were less enthusiastic than Cliff’s fans.
Moors the merrier
IN 1939, MGM turned the book into a movie, recreating the Yorkshire Moors on a California ranch and in a Hollywood film studio. Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon starred. A “very poor” adaptation, thought one critic, adding: “The accuracy is dreadful, the characters are almost unrecognisable and the setting a century and a half out. Enjoy it as a romance but, if you watch as a portrayal of the book, you will be disappointed.”
Oscar-nominated as best picture, the film lost out to Gone With The Wind.
Ralph Fiennes, in his film debut as Heathcliff, and French star Juliette Binoche as Cathy in Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 film Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
Beating about the Bush
WUTHERING Heights was Kate Bush’s debut single in 1977, written when she was 17. It became the first UK number one written and performed by a female artist.
Kiss me Hardy
THE 2009 ITV adaptation of Wuthering Heights starred Charlotte Riley and Tom Hardy, who became a couple in real life once the cameras stopped turning. Their romance had a happier ending than Cathy and Heathcliff’s – they are now married with children.
Throbbing passion
JANET McTeer, the award-winning actor who worked in the York Theatre Royal coffee bar as a student, not only appeared in the 1992 Wuthering Heights film as Ellen Dean but also read the audio book.
A reviewer considered her performance brought the book fully to life, adding, “McTeer’s sections throb with the passions appropriate to this classic.”
O-O-Brontë
THE forgotten James Bond – hands up those who remember Timothy Dalton played 007 in three movies – was shaken and stirred by Cathy when he played Heathcliff in the 1970 film. Producer Louis Heyward declared this would be more like the book than the first American version (not difficult), saying “Hollywood now goes in for the truth. Heathcliff was a bastard and Cathy a real bitch and that’s how they’ll be in this film”.
A sequel, Return to Wuthering Heights, was threatened but happily never materialised.
Lip Service satirists Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding in Withering Looks
‘Allo, ‘Allo, Eeethcleef
THE 1992 film version was shot on Yorkshire locations with Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff and French actress Juliette Binoche as Cathy. The scenery was authentic but critics worried about the French actress’s faltering English accent, not to mention seeing an uncredited Sinead O’Connor narrating the story as Emily Brontë herself.
Effing Heights
A BBC Radio 3 adaptation put the f-word into the mouths of Cathy and Heathcliff to “capture the shock” that greeted the publication of the book (which had words crossed out in the original text because they were considered too strong).
Writer Jonathan Holloway declared: “What I wanted to elbow out is this idea that it’s the cosy greatest love story ever told – it’s not. For me Wuthering Heights is a story of violent obsession, and a tortuous unfulfilled relationship. This is not a Vaseline-lensed experience.”
Gone with the Howling Wind
HURLEVENT – which translates as Howling Wind – was a 1985 French film adaptation of the first part of the novel, set in 1930s’ Southern France. Other adaptations have moved the story to Catholic Mexico, a California high school and medieval Japan. The book has also been an opera and a graphic novel.
Withering Looks
LIP Service, alias comedy duo Sue Ryding and York’s Maggie Fox, continue to perform their award-winning Brontë spoof Withering Looks on stages up and down the land. The show is described as “an authentic look at the lives and works of the Brontë sisters – well, two of them actually as Anne has just popped out for a cup of sugar”.
Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights, a York Theatre Royal, National Theatre and Bristol Old Vic co-production with Emma Rice’s Wise Children, runs at York Theatre Royal from November 2 to 9. Box office: 01904 623568.
Cherie Federico: Aesthetica Short Film Festival director
THE 11th Aesthetica Short Film Festival is running in York this week and online until November 30. No better time for Two Big Egos In A Small Car podcasters Chalmers & Hutch to invite director Cherie Federico for a chat about York’s fiesta of film.
Under discussion too in Episode 63 are: Adele’s algorithms; The Young’uns’ gig theatre in The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff at York Theatre Royal, and are Public Service Broadcasting’s powers of Bright Magic fading?
The poster announcing Damon Albarn’s York Minster concert
DAMON Albarn will play York Minster in a special intimate album-launch show on December 2.
Yes, you read that right. Damon Albarn. York Minster. Intimate show. December 2.
Hurry, hurry: a gone-in-a-flash sell-out is expected when ticket bundles go on sale tomorrow morning at 10am for the Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad & The Queen leader’s concert to celebrate the November 12 release of his solo studio recording The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows.
Doors will open at 6.30pm for Albarn’s first-ever York gig, organised by Leeds promoters Brudenell Presents and Leeds record store Crash Records.
“Bit of a crazy announcement…we’re incredibly proud to be teaming up with @Crash_Records to host the legendary @Damonalbarn at York Minster this December!” reads Brudenell Presents’ tweet. “Album & Ticket bundles go on-sale tomorrow via the Crash website.”
That crashrecords.co.uk website advises: “Door times 6:30pm. There will be no support and Damon will go on as soon as everyone is inside, so please be prompt so you don’t miss anything (we suggest being there for doors).
The artwork for Damon Albarn’s November 12 album, The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows
“We have set up special bundles for this release where fans can purchase an album on a format of your choice and get a ticket for this exclusive show.
“There is a limited capacity for this (14+ ages) event so we would expect all the album and ticket bundles to sell out very quickly.”
The ticket and album bundles are: CD and one ticket, £23.99, limited to four per person; vinyl LP and one ticket, £34.99, limited to two per person; one ticket only, £20, limited to one per person.
Crash Records say: “We urge you to consider buying an album bundle rather than ticket only as they only cost £3.99 more to get a CD, plus this way you are helping the artist, and the more albums we sell, the more of these exciting album launch shows we are able to put on in the future.
“Full entry requirements from the venue will be sent via email around a week before the event, so please place your order using an email you check regularly and, if possible, add boss@crashrecords.co.uk to your safe/whitelist, so it doesn’t end up in your junk/spam folder.
“Shipping is the only option for this event. Tickets and albums will be shipped out together on or just before the release date of November 12, so please ensure the address details are correct. There is No Collect At Venue or Collect In Store option. All tickets and stock will be shipped out.”
“I have been on my own dark journey while making this record,” says Damon Albarn. Picture: Linda Brownlee
The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows is Albarn’s first release for his new label, Transgressive Records, with a track listing of The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows; The Cormorant; Royal Morning Blue; Combustion; Daft Wader; Darkness To Light; Esja; The Tower Of Montevideo; Giraffe Trumpet Sea; Polaris and Particles.
The CD edition will include a 20-minute “hidden” track of a new and original recording that inspired some of the record’s themes, not available on other formats.
The album originally was intended as an orchestral piece inspired by the landscapes of Iceland. This past year, however, has seen 53-year-old Albarn return to the music in lockdown to develop the work into 11 tracks that further explore themes of fragility, loss, emergence and rebirth.
The result is a panoramic collection of songs with Albarn as storyteller and an album title taken from a John Clare poem, Love And Memory. “I have been on my own dark journey while making this record and it led me to believe that a pure source might still exist,” he says.
The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows will be available in a digital format, on limited-edition white vinyl, plus CD and cassette. A deluxe edition will take the form of a case-bound book with additional photography, original scanned lyrics and artwork from Albarn, alongside a white vinyl album, a high-quality digital file and a bonus 7-inch featuring an exclusive song from the recording sessions.
UPDATE
TICKETS sold out in only five minutes for Damon Albarn’s 6.30pm concert on December 2, one Tweeter even saying all tickets had gone by the time she went online at 9.42am before officially going on sale at 10am on November 5 .
A second York Minster show was duly added for 8.30pm that night, with ticket bundles on sale from 9am on November 10. Whoosh, gone too.
“Lucy McCormick is pure charisma and has a wildness of spirit that takes my breath away,” says director Emma Rice of her “rock star” actor playing Cathy. Picture: Steve Tanner
YORK Theatre Royal’s Haunted Season climaxes with Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights, Emma Rice’s long-touted elemental adaptation of Emily Bronte’s gothic Yorkshire revenge tragedy, from Tuesday to November 20.
Company founder and artistic director Rice completes a hattrick of Theatre Royal visits after her stage versions of Angela Carter’s Wise Children in March 2019 and Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers in September that year.
This time, she partners with the National Theatre, Bristol Vic (in the city where Wise Children are based in Spike Island) and the York theatre for a gale-force, folk musical Wuthering Heights, whose tale of love, revenge and redemption is marked by her trademark visual flair, wild humour, puppetry and casting of “rock star” Lucy McCormick as Cathy.
Here Emma answers Charles Hutchinson’s questions as Wuthering Heights seeks to hit new heights.
You call Wuthering Heights a “tragedy”, but reviews have emphasised the “comedy/pastiche”, “the unfaithful storytelling” and the folk musical panache of your interpretation. Have past productions been too serious and Yorkshire-grim?
“I believe that Emily Brontë is an overlooked comic genius. I love comedy and there’s always laughter in my shows, but it wasn’t difficult to bring fun to this adaptation – it’s all there in the text.
“Linton Heathcliff is the most despicably funny character ever written and Lockwood a comedy genius. I hope this production will celebrate Brontë’s sparkling humour as well as her bloody passion.”
Kandaka Moore (Zillah), left, Ash Hunter (Heathcliff), Nandi Bhebhe (The Moor), Lucy McCormick (Cathy) and Witney White (Frances Earnshaw) in Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights. Picture: Steve Tanner
What were the aspects of the story that you most wanted to bring out for a 2021 audience in its transition from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights to Emma Rice’s Wuthering Heights?
“There are several aspects of the show that cast a new ‘21st century’ light on the book, but one thing that stands out is how I see Catherine. I initially saw her as the traditional tortured romantic heroine, then as a bit of a minx. Now I think she’s unwell.
“I think she’s a prisoner of her time: a deeply independent women who is constrained by the limitations of being a woman in the 1800s and who fights against those restrictions until it literally drives her mad. I’ve enjoyed exploring this way of looking at this iconic character with Lucy [McCormick] in the role.”
What made you cast Lucy McCormick as Cathy?
“Lucy is a rock star. Literally and metaphorically! She is pure charisma and has a wildness of spirit that takes my breath away. She is fearless, passionate, seriously sexy and maverick. She was my Catherine from the moment I saw her perform and I cannot believe my luck that she is creating this role with me. I am in awe.”
What do you recall of first reading Wuthering Heights: where, when; how old were you?
“I have always loved the book, though at different times in my life it has meant different things to me. In my teens it was one of the first ‘exam’ books that really got me; it fired up my reluctant teenage brain and dared me to dream of passion and romance.
“In later readings, I was struck by how little love there actually is in the book: it’s brutal and cruel, and this darker version of the book stuck in my mind.
Ash Hunter as Heathcliff and Lucy McCormick as Cathy. Picture: Steve Tanner
“Then, a few years ago, I was appalled by what I saw at the Calais Jungle and at refugee camps all over the world. I was horrified by the cold negotiations our government was having about how many refugee children we would take in – horrified that this could even be a question a so-called civilised country was asking. Something sparked in my brain. Wasn’t Heathcliff an accompanied child?”
Do you view the book and its writer differently now to when you first read it?
“It blows my mind that this book was written by someone so sheltered. The detail of Cathy’s neurosis and behavioural issues and the depiction of illness is devasting and brilliantly described.
“I wonder if, as a vicar’s daughter, all of life came to the Brontes’ door and that is how Emily knew so much about the human condition. I don’t find the novel unworldly in the slightest. It is brutally honest and frighteningly well observed. It explores, obsession, control, prejudice, jealousy, violence and hope. All themes very much rooted in reality.
“I knew I needed to tell this story and I needed to tell it now. When Heathcliff is found at the Liverpool docks, the way he is treated sparks a series of events that are catastrophic. This is a cautionary tale and a revenge tragedy. Truly a story for our times.”
What does outsider Heathcliff’s story represent in our increasingly intolerant, unwelcoming post-Brexit society?
“For me, Heathcliff, and the way he’s treated by those around him, is the key to the story. On the surface it’s a love story, but deep down I think it’s about kindness and about the danger of not showing compassion to those in need.
“Wuthering Heights is a cautionary tale about what happens when we treat those in need as somehow less than ourselves. This is the driving force of my adaptation: cruelty breeds cruelty. Be careful what you seed.”
“Ash Hunter has a unique intensity that could stop a train in its tracks,” says Emma Rice of her pick to play Heathcliff, right
What made you cast Ash Hunter in the role?
“Oh, everything! Ash Hunter is everything I want from my Heathcliff. He has a unique intensity that could stop a train in its tracks and a deep understanding of human love, rage and sorrow. He is one of the finest actors I have ever worked with and when he and Lucy start to fizz together, the planets start to spin. I am beyond words.”
How important is the physicality of the Yorkshire landscape to your production? How do you represent it on stage?
“Hugely important. In fact, I’ve made The Yorkshire Moor a character in the show, played by the jaw-droppingly talented Nandi Bhebhe and the ensemble. The Moor narrates the story, as well as trying – and often failing – to save the characters from themselves.”
Wuthering Heights features a live band. Why is music so integral to your theatre-making?
“Music is important to every part of my life. I love music and can’t imagine making a show that wasn’t full of it. And it feels essential to theatre. Along with storytelling, making music is one of the oldest forms of communication. It’s how we reach across the divide and connect with other humans.
“Wuthering Heights particularly calls for an epic score: it’s an epic novel and needs to be met with everything it demands and deserves. Ian Ross, my long-time collaborator, has composed the most extraordinary score, raw, ravishing and brimful of passion.”
Is it really “grim up north”? If not, why is that the north’s reputation?!
“Haha! I definitely don’t think it’s grim up north, in fact I love it! My family were big campers in the 1970s and many a wet weekend was spent in Derbyshire and Yorkshire. I remember walking up to Upper Withins – the place that is thought to have inspired Wuthering Heights – and being a little disappointed at how small it was. I was intoxicated by the moors though, and the Brontë Parsonage and the sheer wildness of that world.”
“It is a privilege and a wonder to be making something so important,” says Wuthering Heights director Emma Rice. Picture: Steve Tanner
You are building up a relationship with York Theatre Royal for your Wise Children work. Why is forging links with regional theatres, as well as with the National Theatre, important to you?
“York Theatre Royal is Wise Children’s most steadfast collaborator: we’ve made three original touring shows since we launched the company in 2018, and YTR has co-produced all of them! We love working with them and hope to continue doing so long into the future.
“Wise Children’s mission is about making great work and touring it around the country – because we believe that audiences everywhere should have access to the talent and vision that is all too often only seen in the capital.
“We’re also committed to touring the ‘real thing’: we don’t send out a second cast, or a rejigged set – we tour with the original production and cast, making sure that the show is in its perfect form, whether you see it in York or Inverness.”
If someone has never seen Wuthering Heights, or indeed read it, why should they come to your show?
“Because it’s got everything! An epic story, a staggeringly beautiful set, deliriously wonderful music, and a cast of such searing talent that my heart jumps every night. I truly feel this is some of the most thrilling work I have ever made, and I am loving watching audiences respond to it.
“Inspired and emboldened by lockdown, we were determined to bring everything we could to this show – and you can feel the energy in every song, dance, line and action. It is a privilege and a wonder to be making something so important with such an amazingly talented and joyful company.”
Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights runs at York Theatre Royal, November 9 to 20, 7.30pm (except November 14); 2pm matinees, November 11, 13, 18 and 20. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
“I truly feel this is some of the most thrilling work I have ever made,” says Emma Rice as Wuthering Heights blasts its way to York Theatre Royal . Picture: Steve Tanner
