CALLING young artists. Pocklington Arts Centre is launching an art competition to celebrate Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee.
Children aged five to 18 are invited to create a piece of artwork inspired by The Queen’s 70 years on the throne.
Entrants could win a top prize of £200 for their school or organisation, and further prizes of £50, £25, and £10 will go to the three pupils whose works are judged to be in the top three.
The competition is being run in association with All Saints’ Church, in The Pavement, Pocklington, where selected images from the competition will be displayed on the railings in an outdoor exhibition from May 23 to June 18.
Pocklington Arts Centre director Janet Farmer says: “The Platinum Jubilee is a special moment in our history, so we wanted to present an exhibition that reflects this.
“After we previously held two hugely successful outdoor exhibitions at All Saints’ Church during lockdown, we can’t wait to see these new artworks marking such a momentous occasion, created by young talent, on display.”
The prize money has been made possible thanks to the Friends of Pocklington Arts Centre, whose chair, Janet Brader, says: “We love being able to encourage children and young people to engage in the arts, something that we do through subsidising the venue’s family theatre programme, so we are delighted to be able to support this wonderful competition.”
Young artists should submit their 2D art as an A4 or A3 image or a Jpeg, excluding photography, to Pocklington Arts Centre, in Market Place, or by emailing info@pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk by Tuesday, April 26.
Please include your name, age, telephone number, email address and name of your school or organisation.
CANADIAN comedian, writer, presenter and actress Katherine Ryan is to return to York Barbican on September 29 for a second performance of Missus.
The creator and star of the Netflix series The Duchess and host of All That Glitters first presented her latest tour show in York last December.
Ryan, 38, once denounced partnerships but she has since married her first love, accidentally, in a world where a lot has changed for everyone, prompting her to offer new perspectives on life, love and what it means to be Missus.
London-based Ryan’s debut sitcom, The Duchess, made its debut in September 2020, immediately leaping to the top of the UK Netflix chart in the wake of her Netflix stand-up specials, 2017’s In Trouble and July 2019’s Glitter Room. She remains the only woman to be given a Netflix global special.
Ryan is a stalwart of British panel shows Would I Lie To You?, 8 Out Of 10 Cats and QI and has appeared on the BBC One series Who Do You Think You Are?.
Tickets for Katherine Ryan’s Missus show go on sale on Friday from 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
AT last, tonight IS the press night for Hull Truck Theatre’s 50th anniversary “headline production”, Richard Bean’s 71 Coltman Street.
First, a Covid outbreak among the company in rehearsals delayed the opening from February 17 to February 22, when “the complexity and ensemble nature of the show meant it could not be ready any earlier”.
Press night was duly moved from February 23 to March 1, only for a second, wider-spread Covid outbreak in the company to enforce the cancellation of more performances from March 1 to 5.
Third time lucky for the fourth estate, artistic director Mark Babych’s production of Hull playwright Bean’s riotous comedy reopens tonight for its final week.
Commissioned to mark Hull Truck’s 50th birthday, with songs by musician, writer and comedy actor Richard Thomas, of Jerry Springer The Opera notoriety, 71 Coltman Street begins a suite of work in 2022 to mark the pioneering Hull theatre’s past, present and future.
It takes the form of an origin story that embraces the spirit of Hull Truck’s founders and the ideals and ideas that drove them, told with Bean’s trademark humour, grit and passion, familiar from One Man, Two Guvnors and his 2017 Hull City of Culture premiere, The Hypocrite.
In a combination of irreverent comedy, cabaret, farce, and drama, Bean heads back to the 1970s to recount Mike Bradwell’s mission to revolutionise British theatre. Sick of fancy plays by dead blokes, he wants to tell stories about real people, living real lives, and it doesn’t get more real than Hull.
In a freezing cold house on Coltman Street, a motley crew of unemployed actors gather to improvise a play with no name, no plot, no budget, and no bookings. So begins Hull Truck Theatre under Bradwell’s artistic directorship.
Thrilled to open the 50th anniversary season with 71 Coltman Street, director Babych says: “From our radical roots to who we are now, Hull Truck Theatre remains a company inspired by the people and place of Hull and East Yorkshire, working with a diverse range of artists and communities to create work with a unique northern voice that celebrates the stories of our city-centre stage.
“We’re incredibly excited to be working with Richard again after the amazing success of The Hypocrite [co-produced with the Royal Shakespeare Company] in 2017. After such a long association with the company, with an incredible track record of work, including Toast, Under The Whaleback and Up On The Roof,Richard’s commitment to the company and the city is something of which we are very proud.”
In preparation for writing the play, Bean conducted extensive research with original company members and founding artistic director Bradwell. 71 Coltman Street is his creative response to the early days of the company, some parts true, others not, but to appropriate the late great Eric Morecambe’s quote, his play is “playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”!”
“The house at 71 Coltman Street is still rather grand,” says Richard. “It’s a big house, like an old merchant’s house, that was turned into bedsits in the 1960s and became a house for passers-through.
“Basically, the family who owned it in back then still own it, but we’ve changed their names in the play to protect their identity!”
Bean drove down the street but could not access 71 Coltman Street itself. “Mike Bradwell and Alan Williams told me all about it instead. It was where they lived and worked on shows, with a really massive three-panelled window at the front,” he says.
“Running between Anlaby Road and Hessle Road, in west Hull, Coltman Street has a reputation as a bit of a rough street, a transitory place to live. My dad was a policeman in Hull, and if you said, ‘there’s a new theatre company setting up in Coltman Street’, he’d say, ‘oh, Coltman Street’!”
Hull Truck Theatre in 71 Coltman Street, Hull Truck Theatre, Hull, until March 12. Box office: 01482 323638 or at hulltruck.co.uk.
Blair Dunlop: “Cutting an elfin figure, he was refreshingly un-diva like”. All pictures: Paul Rhodes
THE best moments in live music are often those that can’t be re-created by spinning the record at home. When touring musicians also play together rather than skedaddling after their set, then magic can happen.
As Blair Dunlop, Magpies’ fiddler Holly Brandon and support act Ellie Gowers sang and played together, Sunday’s concert went from middling to great. The energy and camaraderie between the performers was palpable and the musical results were wonderful.
Blair Dunlop has been forging a strong cult following since his debut back in 2012. As the son of UK folk royalty Ashley Hutchings, Dunlop is used to the level of expectation that welds itself to any son or daughter of such a figure.
He has since moved progressively away from those folk antecedents, but to his credit has also kept traditional elements to the fore. Newly turned 30, he has doubtless many twists and turns ahead.
Like others of his generation (take a bow Ed Harcourt and Teddy Thompson), Dunlop has perhaps found it hard to find a musical spot to wed himself too, and can therefore end up caught between stylistic camps.
Ellie Gowers: “Well-chiselled songs and playing were consistently fine”
On this tour he was playing new tunes. Interestingly, he chose to first play songs that have been rejected by “the suits at the record label”. You have to say they probably made the right call – here was the sound of Dunlop trying too hard. His tale of a Chesterfield working man’s café was simply too workmanlike. Better was to come.
Dunlop is good company on stage. Cutting an elfin figure, he was refreshingly un-diva like, instead talking at length of his love of cars and football. 356, his song about a classic Porsche was memorable (if anatomically incorrect) and new number Giulietta took his love of petrol but made it more relatable.
Dunlop’s guitar playing was consistently excellent, but like the man himself never too flash. Beneath The Citadel was perhaps the best received, with some wonderful picking on display, as well as some high-brow lyrics to match his own fine brows.
Support act Ellie Gowers is a new name to the city, but certainly one to watch. Her well-chiselled songs and playing were consistently fine. From the heart of England (Warwick), Gowers was previewing her debut album (due Autumn 2022) based on traditional folk tales from her home county, along with earlier material in a singer-songwriter garb.
What was arresting was the variety that she weaves into her songs, and the quality of her crystal-clear voice. For an encore, Dunlop and Gowers took on Gillian Welch’s mighty Dark Turn Of Mind and fought it to a draw. Two performers who unmistakably bring the best out of one another. Long may they run.
Review by Paul Rhodes
Blair Dunlop and Ellie Gowers: Uniting for encore cover of Gillian Welch’s Dark Turn Of Mind
MARILLION will play York Barbican on September 21 on their nine-date autumn tour to promote new album An Hour Before It’s Dark.
Tickets will go on sale on Friday at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk for the prog rock veterans, who say: “We’re once again looking forward to our shows in September, in conjunction with Kilimanjaro, and we can’t wait to get out there and play the new album to the fans.”
Addressing social, political and personal matters, Marillion “put their finger on the pulse of time” on their March 4 album, whether referencing the last hour of being allowed to play outside as a child before having to go home; the fight against time in relation to the climate crisis or the last minutes in a person’s life.
The poster for Marillion’s September 2022 tour
An Hour Before It’s Dark contemplates the Covid-19 virus, mortality, medical science, care and Leonard Cohen and yet the music is surprisingly upbeat, Marillion’s sound being bolstered by the soulful addition of Choir Noir.
Like its predecessor, 2016’s FEAR (**** Everyone And Run), the new album was recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studio. Those studios also formed the backdrop for a behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of the album and a performance of Murder Machines released in tandem with the record.
Founded in 1979, Marillion have chalked up 20 studio albums over 43 years. In the line-up at York Barbican will be Ian Mosley, Steve Rothery, Steve Hogarth, Pete Trewavas and Mark Kelly.
Fan-tasia : Becky Gee, curator of fine art at York Museums Trust, at the Beyond Bloomsbury: Life, Love & Legacy exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: Charlotte Graham
FROM an ice trail to Spring Awakening, a very happy pig in mud to sibling rivalry in a salon, Charles Hutchinson points you in the right direction for days and nights out.
Exhibition opening of the week: Beyond Bloomsbury: Life, Love & Legacy, York Art Gallery, until June 5
YORK Art Gallery’s spring exhibition, in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery and Sheffield Museums, explores the lives and work of the extraordinary Bloomsbury writers, artists and thinkers.
Active in England in the first half of the 20th century, they included the writer and feminist pioneer Virginia Woolf and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, as key figures.
On show are more than 60 major loans of oil paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs by Bell, Dora Carrington, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Paul Nash, Gwen Raverat and Ray Strachey, plus four commissions from Sahara Longe, painted in response to the Bloomsbury legacy, and Bloomsbury-inspired murals and fireplaces designed by graphic artist Lydia Caprani.
York Ice Trail: Thrills in chills this weekend
Spectacle of the week: York Ice Trail, today and tomorrow
MAKE IT York and Visit York invite you to “pack your suitcase, grab your passport and embark on a journey around the world” in the return of the York Ice Trail.
Sculptures of solid ice await discovery at 43 locations this weekend, inspired by international cultures and a love of travel. Live carving is promised too.
In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the National Railway Museum has withdrawn its Faberge’s Trans-Siberian Railway Egg in Low Petergate, but a newly added ice sculpture in support of Ukraine will be on display in St Helen’s Square.
Giovanni Pernice: This is him in This Is Me!, on tour at York Barbican on Wednesday
Dance show of the week: Giovanni Pernice: This Is Me!, York Barbican, 7.30pm
AFTER partnering Rose Ayling-Ellis to Glitterball Trophy success in the 2021 series of Strictly Come Dancing, Giovanni Pernice pays homage to the music and dances that inspired his journey from competition dancer to television favourite.
“I just want to try and do something different, something that you haven’t seen before,” says Sicilian stallion Pernice, 31. “I want to challenge myself and show off my hidden talents.” Cue ballroom and Latin dances and more besides. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Peppa Pig in her dressing room, awaiting her call for the Best Day Ever
Children’s show of the week: Peppa Pig’s Best Day Ever, Grand Opera House, York, Wednesday, 1pm and 4pm; Thursday, 10am and 1pm
PEPPA Pig is so excited to be heading off on a special day out with George, Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig in a road trip full of adventures, songs, games and laughter.
From castles to caves, dragons to dinosaurs, ice creams to the obligatory muddy puddles, there will be something for all the family to enjoy. Look out for Miss Rabbit, Mr Bull and Gerald Giraffe too on “the best day ever for Peppa Pig fans”. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
Hair-larious: Buglight Theatre turn the Bronte sisters into salon stylists in Jane Hair
Salon appointment of the week : Buglight Theatre in Jane Hair: The Brontes Restyled, York Theatre Royal, Studio, Thursday, 7.45pm
SIBLING rivalry meets literary debate one explosive evening when stylists Anne, Emily and Charlotte Bronte cut, colour and style while sharing their hopes and dreams in Bradford’s most creative beauty salon.
Buglight Theatre writers Kirsty Smith and Kat Rose-Martin offer this chance to meet the modern-day versions of three determined young women from Yorkshire who set the literary world on fire. For returns only, ring 01904 623568.
Josh Liew and Amy Hawtin: Playing the leads, Melchior Gabor and Wendla Bergman, in Central Hall Musical Society’s Spring Awakening at Theatre@41
Musical of the week: Central Hall Musical Society in Spring Awakening, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Thursday and Friday, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm, 7.30pm
CENTRAL Hall Musical Society (also known as CHMS, York), from the University of York, present Duncan Sheik and Steven Slater’s 2006 rock musical revamp of a once-banned Frank Wedekind play, directed by Abena Abban.
A group of teenagers in a small German village in 1891 find the oppressive structures upheld by their parents and teachers to be at odds with their own awakening sexuality.
Spring Awakening explores themes of sex, puberty, coming of age and a yearning for a more progressive future, refracting old-fashioned values through a 21st-century lens. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Le Navet Bete’s motley crew of pirates in Treasure Island at York Theatre Royal
Family show of the week; Le Navet Bete in Treasure Island, York Theatre Royal, Thursday, Friday, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm and 7.30pm.
LAST in York last September to reveal a vampire’ secrets in Dracula: The Bloody Truth, physical comedy company Le Navet Bete now go in search of buried treasure in a swashbuckling family adventure, Treasure Island.
Peepolykus artistic director and writer John Nicholson directs a cast of four, playing 26 characters in a fresh take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale laced with contemporary comedic twists, tropical islands, an unusual motley crew of pirates, a parrot called Alexa (straight from the Amazon), a white-bearded fish finger tycoon and unforgettable mermaid. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
David Ford: Living in interesting times at Pocklington Arts Centre on Thursday
Gig of the week outside York: David Ford, Pocklington Arts Centre, Thursday, 8pm
WHAT happens when you shut a creative force in a room for two years? The answer is a tornado blast of a new album from Eastbourne singer-songwriter David Ford documenting the tumultuous events of 2020 and 2021, as he charts the rise of Covid and fall of Trump, although both are still stubbornly refusing to go away.
Ford will air songs from the imminent May You Live In Interesting Times, along with compositions written in two days and recorded in one with American support act Annie Dressner. Look out for their six-track EP on sale at the Pock gig. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Bagged up: The artwork for Black Country, New Road’s second album, Ants From Up There
AS Black Country, New Road head out of the departing Isaac Wood’s song world, podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson review sophomore album Ants From Up There and ponder where they might roam next, now they are six.
Under debate too in Episode 79 of Two Big Egos In A Small Car are PJ O’Rourke’s righteous literary legacy; Peter Jackson’s newly revealing Beatles rooftop concert film and American musicians’ love of British indie acts.
DAVID Ford’s sixth studio album, May You Live In Interesting Times, is on its way but when?
“I should probably know the date, shouldn’t I?” says the self-styled international songsmith from the Sussex resort of Eastbourne.
“But for me, making the record is the best thing; promoting it is the worst thing. I just want to move on and do something else.”
Nevertheless, promote it he will at Pocklington Arts Centre on Thursday on the Interesting Times Tour. “It’s likely the album could be available on the night,” he says without total conviction (and still no release date on his website).
His lack of certainty is forgivable in such uncertain times, brought on by the pandemic lockdowns that have elicited his “demonstration of just what happens when you shut a creative force in a room for two years”.
David already has an album sitting restlessly on his studio shelves. “I’d recorded what was supposed to be my new album in 2019, a record that I still find incredibly exciting,” he says.
“I made it with a quartet of jazz musicians, whereas usually I just go into my studio and play all the instruments myself, taking months to finish it, but this one I did in a day and a half, and I was like a child in a sweetshop.”
The poster for David Ford’s Interesting Times Tour
The jazz players threw themselves in at the deep end. “They didn’t rehearse. They’d never heard the songs,” says David. “It was all very strange but exhilarating. I just gave them the chord sheet, with an idea for the tempo, and they’d start playing. Then, depending on the tone, they would adapt their playing.
“I didn’t play a note on it. I just sang. Before that, I’d always considered myself an adept musician, but this was like going back to school.”
David will be taking that album on tour with a jazz band in October, so keep an eye out for further announcements.
Putting that still hibernating album to one side, the one-time Easyworld frontman found the experience of being in lockdown “more productive than I’d been in years”.
Out went his tour with Texan-born singer and storyteller Jarrod Dickenson that would have brought the co-headliners to The Crescent in York. Twice kicked down the road, it is now consigned to the “one day, hopefully” drawer.
In came a burst of songwriting at home. “I recorded songs as I went along, and then I decided there was a record there with connected themes about the last two years, and what we’ve been through in various states of lockdown, starting with that order to stay home,” says David.
“There were two large themes of global significance: the rise of Covid and what I hoped would be the end of Trump and the handing over of the presidential baton.
“One of the things I liked about this record: it’s a time capsule,” says David Ford
“So, there are songs about the specifics of lockdown and the specifics of the American Presidential election and then the more general mood of the world.”
Alas, for David, both Covid and Trump are still stubbornly hanging around, but that thought comes only in hindsight. The songs on May You Live In Interesting Times were written on the spur of the moment.
“They’re my thoughts on that time, and that’s one of the things I liked about this record: it’s a time capsule. Like the song Six Feet Apart; which I wrote in March/April 2020 with the line that ‘maybe September, we’ll all get back together’, and yet here we are, two years down the road.
“That thought now seems charmingly naïve when we’re still trying to find a path out of Covid, while ‘learning to live with it’.”
Ford’s scalding lyrics are noted for their dark irony and whiplash wit, but a different tone emerged in the first lockdown, at least initially. “In the early days, I had a strange amount of optimism about what Covid might teach humanity about its connectedness, when we might otherwise seem poles apart,” says David.
“Here was a chance to think about how we treat others politically, internationally, financially; a chance to re-set ourselves for the future.
“But that optimism lasted only two months, with only the already wealthy doing well out of it. My optimism dissipated very quickly, but there are still reasons for optimism in that the pandemic has affirmed faith in humanity’s ability to deal with a crisis. Especially the speed we came up with the vaccine.
Annie Dressner: Special guest on David Ford’s tour
“The triumph of science, though some people don’t seem to be able to get behind that as a good thing, but I think it’s a modern miracle, where people who are really smart essentially have saved millions of lives.”
He wrote a song in response to that medical breakthrough. “It’s called Two Shots, which already shows its age, because we’ve now got the booster!” says David.
He will be playing solo in Pocklington. “I thought I’d strip it down and play in the traditional way, since it’s been a while since I played live, but then I couldn’t resist myself, building machines again [to build a cathedral of sound with looping and effects pedals]!” says David.
“But it’s still essentially a ‘Get Back Out On The Road’ show with the chance to enjoy being in a room with people again, playing highlights from over the years, rather than just trying to flog the new album.”
He will not be wholly solo. “I’ll be playing a few songs with my support act, my new good friend Annie Dressner [a New York singer-songwriter, now based over here].
“We got on very well at our shows in Otley and Sheffield in January, and we thought, ‘why not record and mix some songs together?’,” says David.
They duly completed six songs in two days in Eastbourne, resulting in the 48 Hours EP being available exclusively on the Interesting Times Tour.
David Ford plays Pocklington Arts Centre, supported by Annie Dressner, on March 10, 8pm. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
SIX York artists and makers are taking part in the Arnup Studios Group Exhibition at Blossom Street Gallery, Blossom Street, York, until March 28.
Arnup Studios, in Panman Lane, Holtby, near York, was originally the home and workplace of renowned painter and potter Mick Arnup and sculptor Sally Arnup. Now their daughter, potter Hannah, is continuing its creative story.
This Could Be, by Michelle Galloway
Exhibiting alongside her are Michelle Galloway, Emma Frost, Kate Pettitt, Reg Walker and Emma Welsh, who all have studio space in the village studios.
In Sally’s Studio, Hannah creates stoneware decorative pottery, handmade for everyday use and enjoyment, her pieces appealing to both practical and aesthetic values. She also enjoys making one-off sculptures and tripod pots that form a delightful addition to this month’s exhibition.
Watford Pylons, by Emma Frost
Working in the Pottery Studio, Michelle Galloway paints calm, harmonious watercolours, quiet and contemplative, atmospheric, yet gentle and light, punctuated by the intensity of her oil paintings. Her inspiration comes mostly from her interest in archaeology, architecture and man-made structures.
Landscape artist Emma Frost works in acrylic paint in the North Studio, where she conjures scenes that depict the world around her, exploring the constant presence of power lines and structures in her daily life, resulting in a body of work showcasing pylons, telegraph poles and such like. Work is nearly entirely created using palette knives, incorporating some large brush work.
Breathe, by Kate Pettitt
Based in the Gallery Studio, Kate Pettitt specialises in studio and plein air paintings and drawings of the natural environment and the human form. She works in a variety of media from oil to charcoal, her work being elemental, instinctive and often textural.
Reg Walker constructs abstract sculptures, both contemplative and playful, mostly in steel and aluminium, in the Kiln Studio. He also makes small pieces for the hand, in bamboo, and distinctive collages in natural materials. For Blossom Street Gallery he has created a collection of paperbark collages from the natural shedding of the Japanese birch tree in his garden.
Paperbark collage, by Reg Walker
From the South Studio, Emma Welsh creates silver, gold and platinum jewellery. Each piece is hand-made individually using traditional techniques. For this exhibition she has assembled a fossil-themed collection inspired by happy days spent searching for ammonites along the coast.
Kate Pettitt and Reg Walker will attend a Meet The Artist event at Blossom Street Gallery, York, on March 12. Gallery opening hours are 10am to 4pm, Thursday to Sunday.
Ore Oduba strikes a pose in the obligatory dress code for playing Brad Majors in The Rocky Horror Show. Fishnets? Tick? High heels? Tick. Picture: Shaun Webb
ACTOR, presenter and 2016 Strictly winner Ore Oduba will be donning his fishnets in Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show at the Grand Opera House, York, from March 14 to 19.
Delighted to be resuming his role as squeaky clean Brad Majors in Christopher Luscombe’s touring production from January to June, he says: “I’m so excited to be extending my stay with our amazing Rocky family. Truth is, when you know how it feels to wear a corset and heels, it’s very hard to take them off – at least it is in my case!
“It’s been a wild ride so far. This show is the perfect remedy to everything we’ve all been through. People want to laugh and be uplifted and to be able to forget about everything for a couple of hours. It’s all about ‘Leave your inhibitions at the door – we haven’t got time for that’.”
In O’Brien’s risqué and riotous 1973 sci-fi musical sextravaganaza, Oduba’s preppy Texas student Brad Majors and his college-sweetheart fiancée Janet Weiss (Haley Flaherty) inadvertently cross paths with mad scientist Dr Frank-N-Furter (Stephen Webb) and his outrageous Transylvanian coterie.
“I think there’s a lot of Brad in me and in a lot of people, ” says Ore Oduba
In a shock’n’roll sugar-rush of fruity frolics, frocks, frights and frivolity, Ore ends up in assorted states of undress. Previously seen on a Yorkshire musical theatre stage as swoon-inducing crooner Teen Angel in Grease, The Musical at Leeds Grand Theatre in July 2019, he signed up to play Brad from last summer, but not before he checked with his wife, television researcher Portia.
“It’s such an iconic show and so well loved, but I thought, ‘I wonder what my wife is going to say about audiences seeing me in stockings?’. I needn’t have worried because what I’d forgotten is that Rocky Horror is one of her and her family’s favourite shows of all time. She was beside herself!
“Then she started chuckling at the idea of me being on stage in just my briefs for the early part of the show, then coming out later in stockings and high heels.”
Ore’s nerdy Brad undergoes a spectacular shedding of inhibitions at the hands of Frank-N-Furter, “just a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania” as he calls himself.
Given how Ore has gone from studying sports and social sciences at Loughborough University to presenting on Newsround, BBC Breakfast, Radio 5 Live and The One Show, to dancing to Glitterball success with Joanne Clifton on Strictly Come Dancing, to musical theatre roles as Teen Angel and songwriter Aaron Fox in Curtains in the West End, he can connect with Brad’s transformation.
Ore Oduba as Teen Angel in Grease at Leeds Grand Theatre in 2019. Picture: Antony Robling
“I think there’s a lot of Brad in me and in a lot of people,” he says. “It’s the idea of being kind of caged animals, because we all have a lot of reservations and inhibitions and things we hold back. We’re just waiting to be unleashed.”
Not that his Strictly sparkle and burst of musical theatre roles came out of the blue. At 13, he won the school drama prize for his performance in the musical Seven Golden Dragons. “Then at secondary school I did every production under the sun,” recalls Ore, now 36. “It was only when I went to university that I turned my attention to broadcasting, but Strictly reminded me ‘Oh my gosh, I love being on stage’.
“On the surface, doing musical theatre now might seem like a big change-up but when I look back to where I felt happiest and most comfortable when I was younger, it was always on stage. In many ways it’s kind of what I always wanted to do. After Grease and Curtains, Rocky Horror is another step up in my so-far short musical theatre career and a lovely chance for me to do something liberating, fun and a little bit different.”
Ore has taken performing the signature song-and-dance routine The Time Warp in his stride, after continuing to dance since his Strictly triumph, both in the BBC show’s tours and in musicals. “I took up tap dancing too, although my wife and I then decided to renovate the house and turn the garage I was practising in into a kitchen,” he says.
Preppy but unprepared for what lies in store at deliciously, devilishly deviant Dr Frank-N-Furter’s castle: Ore Oduba’s Brad Majors and Haley Flaherty’s Janet Weiss. Picture: David Freeman
“So, I no longer have my tap space. Blame it on the kitchen! But every time I get to do something involving choreography, it gets me as excited as I was when I did Strictly. I love it.”
Wearing fishnets and high heels is altogether more over the top than anything he sported in tandem with Joanne Clifton on Strictly. “We did wear Latin heels but they’re not as high as the ones I have to wear in Rocky Horror,” says Ore.
“I remember the first time I was asked to wear something a little bit sheer on Strictly and I thought, ‘I don’t want to be too much of a show pony, I want it to be about dancing’. But by the time it came to the end, I was like, ‘You can put me in whatever you want’.”
Cue Frank-N-Furter doing exactly that to Ore’s Brad Majors in The Rocky Horror Show.
Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show runs riot at Grand Opera House, York, from March 14 to 19; Monday to Thursday, 8pm; Friday, Saturday, 5.30pm and 8.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 7615. Fancy dress encouraged.
