AMERICAN R&B singing group Tavares will play York Barbican on September 7 on their ten-date Greatest Hits Tour 2022.
Noted for their close harmonies, the Grammy award winners from Providence, Rhode Island, will be touring with a line-up of brothers Chubby, Pooch and Butch.
Tavares are best known for their run of hits in 1976-1977, Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel, Don’t Take Away The Music, Whodunit, One Step Away and More Than A Woman, from the iconic Bee Gees/Gibb Brothers soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever.
Expect a brace of Tavares number ones from the American R&B charts too, It Only Takes A Minute Girl and She’s Gone.
At the height of their R&B, funk and soul career, Tavares comprised five Cape-Verdean American brothers: Ralph, Chubby, Pooch, Butch and Tiny. They also performed as Chubby And The Turnpikes and The Tavares Brothers. Eldest brother Ralph died last December, two days short of his 80th birthday.
Tickets for their 7.30pm York show go on sale on Friday from 9am at ticketline.co.uk and yorkbarbican.co.uk or on 0844 888 9991.
YORK Unitarians’ Friday Concert on March 25 will feature a graduation recital by York violinist Imogen Brewer, accompanied by pianist Hilary Suckling, at 12.30pm.
Imogen’s lunchtime programme in the St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel will be recorded and will form part of the requirements for her post-graduate performance degree at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.
She will play works by Copland and Messiaen and Barber’s Violin Concerto with a piano reduction.
Tickets will be available on the door at £6 (cash); two thirds of the proceeds will go to the artists; one third to the chapel.
FORMER York Theatre Royal marketing officer and 2009 TakeOver Festival co-director Sam Freeman heads back to his old stamping ground on Friday night with his solo rom-com for the lonely hearted and the loved-up, armed with a projector, a notebook, wonky spectacles and nods to Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill.
This 7.45pm performance of Every Little Hope You Ever Dreamed (But Didn’t Want To Mention) will be preceded on his ten-date tour by tonight’s 7.30pm show at the Cold Bath Brewery Co Clubhouse in Harrogate.
Freeman, marketeer, occasional writer, director and stand-up comedian, combines storytelling and whimsical northern comedy in his multi-layered story of a chance encounter between two soulmates, how they fall in love, then part but may meet again.
Performed by a man in a red checked shirt, black jeans, red Converse, a passable knowledge of Powerpoint and an inexplicable love of Excel spreadsheets, Every Little Hope You Ever Dreamed (But Didn’t Want To Mention) is about “love, Calippo lollies, lazy days under blues skies, cats, answerphones, stabilisers, dangerous places to eat, Google Earth, the necessities of strong planning, dead phones and wiggling toes, time standing still, crazy-paved driveways, mountains, hills, bravery and high-fives. But mostly, love,” says Sam.
Against a film backdrop, Freeman interweaves five stories that start separately and in isolation before gradually coming together as themes, characters, objects, words and callbacks.
Sam says: “The show’s a beautiful mix of storytelling and comedy. It’s warmly influenced by the Richard Curtis rom-coms like Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral but with a more whimsical, Northern feel.
“It has part of me written into it, places I’ve been and seen, from travelling home on the Transpennine express when the snow has fallen, to moments of being a hopeless (and often failed) romantic. It’s a show written for the lonely hearted and those in love.”
For Harrogate tickets, harrogatetheatre.co.uk; for York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
For Charles Hutchinson and Graham Chalmers’ interview with podcast special guest Sam Freeman, head to the Two Big Egos In A Small Car listening link at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/10231399.
DEMENTIA Friendly Tea Concerts re-start at St Chad’s Church, Campleshon Road, York, on Thursday afternoon after a two-year hiatus.
Alison Gammon, clarinet, and Robert Gammon, piano, will be giving the concert programme first planned for March 2020 but ruled out by the first Covid-19 lockdown.
“We are excited to be doing the Saint-Saëns clarinet sonata and the lovely Fantasy Pieces by the Danish composer Niels Gade,” says Alison. “As March 17 is St Patrick’s Day, we felt that an Irish composer should be represented too, so Robert will play two Nocturnes by John Field that will make a serene interlude.”
The 2.30pm event resumes the established format of 45 minutes of classical music, followed by tea, coffee and homemade cakes. “This relaxed concert is ideal for people who may not feel comfortable at a formal classical concert, so we don’t mind if the audience wants to talk or move about,” says Alison.
“Seating is unreserved and there’s no charge, although donations are welcome. We give the hire cost to the church and the rest goes to Alzheimer’s charities.”
In addition to a small car park at the church, street parking is available along Campleshon Road. Wheelchair access to St Chad’s is via the church hall.
THE Chapter House Choir performs two choral masterpieces, Bach’s motet Komm, Jesu, Komm and Victoria’s 1605 Requiem, at St Olave’s Church, Marygate, York, on Saturday.
The 7.30pm programme will be directed by Benjamin Morris, assistant director of music at York Minster. Tickets are on sale at chapterhousechoir.org or on the door.
Jonathan Hanley: Soloist for the role of the Evangelist
YORKSHIRE Bach Choir and Yorkshire Baroque Soloists perform Bach’s St John Passion at St Lawrence Parish Church, Lawrence Street, York, on Saturday.
“The Passio Secundum Johannem may be Bach’s most inherently dramatic passion setting,” says conductor Peter Seymour. “Telling the story of Christ’s sacrifice, it also offers a celebration of human feeling in evoking the joy and suffering of man’s pilgrimage on Earth.
“The vivid, colourful playing of the Yorkshire Baroque Soloists will be joined by outstanding solo interpreters of the roles of Evangelist and Christus.”
Jonathan Hanley, who will be the Evangelist, says: “It’s wonderful to be back with the Yorkshire Bach Choir, singing my favourite of Bach’s works with Peter at the helm, who taught me so much about how to perform and love the great composer.”
Stephan Loges, who will be Christus, says: “I have many fond memories of wonderful concerts and a special recording of Bach’s St John Passion with Peter Seymour and the Yorkshire Baroque Soloists. To finally be able to return to Yorkshire Bach Choir and live music-making with Bach’s masterpiece and renew old friendships will be true joy.”
Tickets cost £25, concessions £23, students £5, at ncem.co.uk or on the door.
2,000 shows and counting: Kristian Lavercombe, as Riff Raff, far right, clocks up another milestone in The Rocky Horror Show on its return to York . Picture: David Freeman
LET’S do The Time Warp again? It’s just a jump to the left, and then a step to right, to enjoy plenty more of Charles Hutchinson’s recommendations.
Fancy dress invitation of the week: Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show, Grand Opera House, York, Monday to Saturday
KRISTIAN Lavercombe celebrates his 2,000th performance as Riff Raff as Richard O’Brien’s 1973 musical extravaganza enjoys yet another York run.
Alongside Lavercombe in Christopher Luscombe’s touring production will be 2016 Strictly Come Dancing winner Ore Oduba as preppy college nerd Brad Majors, Haley Flaherty as squeaky-clean fiancée Janet Weiss and Stephen Webb as castle-dwelling Transylvanian transsexual doctor Frank-N-Furter.
Cue fabulously camp fun and even camper costumes, shlock-horror comedy and science-fiction send-ups, audiences in fancy dress and sassy songs such as Sweet Transvestite, Science Fiction/Double Feature and The Time-Warp singalong. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
New Beverly Cinema, by Imogen Hawgood, at According To McGee, York
Exhibition launch of the week: Imogen Hawgood and Horace Panter, Hyperrealism in America and Japan, at According To McGee, Tower Street, York, from 11am today until March 25
NEW According To McGee signing Imogen Hawgood, from County Durham, introduces her collection of realist paintings in a duo show with Pop artist and Ska legend Horace Panter, The Specials’ bassist.
Panter’s Edward Hopper-inspired depictions of Midwest motels, inner-lit Japanese kiosks and sun-warmed Coca-Cola crates complement Hawgood’s exploration of Americana icons and the idea of “the road” as a transitional landscape.
The vampire strikes back: Steve Steinman’s Baron von Rockula with his vampettes in Vampires Rock – Ghost Story
Rock horror show: Steve Steinman’s Vampires Rock – Ghost Train, Grand Opera House, York, tonight (12/3/2022), 7.30pm
NOTTINGHAM singer and producer Steve Steinman returns to York with his tongue-in-cheek show stacked high with rock anthems, guitar gods and vampy vampettes.
Steinman’s Baron von Rockula and his vampires take refuge in an old fairground’s ghost train as he seeks a new virginial wife after the death of his beloved Pandora. Ordering faithful sidekick Bosley to find him one, enter Roxy Honeybox.
Now in its 20th year, Vampires Rock sets a cast of singers, dancers and musicians loose on Queen, AC/DC, Bonnie Tyler, Meat Loaf, Bon Jovi, Journey and Guns N’ Roses chestnuts. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Glenn Tilbrook: Squeezing in hit after hit at The Crescent
York gig of the week: Glenn Tilbrook, The Crescent, York, Sunday, 7.30pm
THIS is a standing show…and an outstanding one too as endearing and enduring Deptford singer, songwriter, guitarist and troubadour Glenn Tilbrook makes his debut appearance at The Crescent.
More than 45 years after he first answered an ad placed by Chris Difford looking for like-minded sorts to form the band that became the evergreen Squeeze, an ending is nowhere in sight, even if he called his fourth solo album Happy Ending in 2014. Expect silver-tongued Squeeze and solo numbers, peppered with audience requests, tomorrow night.
Squeeze up, by the way, because this Gig Cartel-promoted gig has sold out. Fingers crossed for any returns (www.thecrescentyork.com), but otherwise you’re really up the junction for a ticket.
Alexander McCall Smith: Delving into his books at York Theatre Royal
Literary event of the week: Alexander McCall Smith, York Theatre Royal, Monday, 7.30pm
YORK Literature Festival plays host to Alexander McCall Smith as he discusses the new instalment in his long-running Scotland Street series, the warm-hearted, humorous and wise Love In The Time Of Bertie.
Fiona Lindsay pops the questions, intertwined with footage shot on location in Edinburgh, wherein McCall Smith invites guests into his study, where he writes surrounded by paintings and books, and visits key landmarks from the books.
The festival follows from March 18 to 27 with full details at yorkliteraturefestival.co.uk. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
NOT Thu 17 March 2022 after all: It’s different for Joe Jackson now as York gig moves to the summer
Postponement of the week: Joe Jackson, Sing, You Sinners! Tour, York Barbican, moving from March 17 to July 29
BLAME Covid for this delay to only the second ever York concert of singer, songwriter and consummate arranger Joe Jackson’s 44-year career.
“After months of uncertainty, it finally became clear that continuing Covid restrictions (particularly on venue capacity) in certain countries, would make our Spring European Tour un-viable as planned,” says Jackson’s official statement. “We can’t tour at a loss, and the situation did not look like changing soon enough.”
Tickets remain valid for the new July 29 date when Jackson promises hits, songs not aired in years and new material. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Sam Freeman: Thirty years of love burst out of his storytelling show in Harrogate and York
Storytelling show of the week: Sam Freeman, Every Little Hope You Ever Dreamed (But Didn’t Want To Mention), Cold Bath Brewery Co Clubhouse, Harrogate, Monday, 7.30pm; York Theatre Royal Studio, Friday, 7.45pm
FORMER York Theatre Royal marketing officer and 2009 TakeOver Festival co-director Sam Freeman heads back to his old stamping ground with his solo rom-com for the lonely hearted and the loved-up, armed with a projector, a notebook, wonky spectacles and nods to Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill.
Freeman, marketeer, occasional writer, director and stand-up comedian, combines storytelling and whimsical northern comedy in his multi-layered story of a chance encounter between two soulmates, how they fall in love, then part but may meet again. Box office: Harrogate, harrogatetheatre.co.uk; York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
For Charles Hutchinson and Graham Chalmers’ interview with podcast special guest Sam Freeman, head to the Two Big Egos In A Small Car listening link at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/10231399.
Off to the woods: Northern Broadsides in As You Like It
Shaking up Shakespeare: Northern Broadsides in As You Like It, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Tuesday to Saturday; York Theatre Royal, March 23 to 26
MARKING Northern Broadsides’ 30th anniversary, artistic director Laurie Sansom’s diverse cast of 12 northern actors captures the “sheer joy of live performance and the crazy power of love to change the world” in his bold, refreshing take on Shakespeare’s most musical comedy.
Exiled from the court, high-spirited Rosalind, devoted cousin Celia and drag queen Touchstone encounter outlaws, changing seasons and life unconfined by rigid codes in the forest.
Gender roles dissolve and assumptions are turned on their head in a natural world of endless possibilities. Box office: Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com; York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Lola May as daughter Aramide, Oyi Oriya as mother Omotola and Anni Domingo as grandmother Agbeke in Utopia Theatre’s Here’s What She Said To Me
Touring show of the week: Utopia Theatre in Here’s What She Said To Me, York Theatre Royal Studio, Thursday and Friday, 7.45pm
MEET Agbeke, Omotola and Aramide, three generations of proud African women connecting with each other across two continents, time and space, in Oladipo Agboluaje’s distaff drama, conceived and directed by York St John University graduate Mojisola Elufowoju.
Together the women share their struggles, their joys, tragedies and broken dreams, in order to find healing in the present. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Joanna Holden’s Mrs Snowball and Adrian Hood’s Our Seth
71 Coltman Street, Hull Truck Theatre, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm and 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: 01482 323638 or at hulltruck.co.uk.
HULL Truck was not formed in a van – that came a little later – but a squat in Coltman Street in 1971, founded by actor-musician Mike Bradwell when unable to find work.
“I wanted to be nuisance,” said Bradwell, a firebrand iconoclast who sought to make theatre about, by and for real people. Even the left-leaning, arts-championing Guardian met his scorn.
To kick start Hull Truck’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2022, artistic director Mark Babych asked Hull playwright and film writer Richard Bean to tell the story of those Coltman Street revolutionary beginnings.
The result is a “riotous new comedy” from the ever-irreverent Bean, a former stand-up and psychologist with a love of people showing two fingers to – or at least challenging – authority and the status quo, be it Francis Henshall in One Man, Two Guvnors or Kempton Bunton in the newly released film The Duke.
Bean did extensive research for 71 Coltman Street, interviewing Bradwell and fellow hippy-haired revolutionaries, and what appears on stage is a fusion of the truth and the not-so-true but you wish it were, matched by the songs of Richard Thomas (of Jerry Springer: The Opera notoriety).
Sara Perks’s set design is an open-plan lay-out of the freezing-cold 71 Coltman Street, where Bradwell (Kieran Knowles) and his fellow unemployed actors burn furniture to keep warm. Guitars, drums and a piano, sofas, cushions and theatre posters fill the room, where they improvise a play with no name, no plot, no budget and no bookings. Their phone is the nearest Hull white phone box.
There are two forms of funding theatre, says Bradwell: Arts Council support or, in their case, social security, and Hull is the perfect place to be “looking for work” and setting up a theatre company because there are no jobs. Whereas, don’t sign on in Stratford-upon-Avon, he advises.
Played by Babych’s actor-musicians, in the pioneering company are Linda (Lauryn Redding), Bradwell’s girlfriend; up-for-anything Manchester lad Stew (Laurie Jamieson) and knows-everything-but-rather-charming, public school-educated Julian (Jordan Metcalfe). Enter Bea (Hanna Khogali), newly up from Oxford.
Bradwell encourages, nay, demands, that they take on the guise of potential characters for plays, when on the streets, for research purposes, be it Stew’s comedic Italian Dave, Julian’s vicar, Bea’s thief with a troubled past or Linda’s former hippie.
As if 71 Coltman Street were not already ripe with characters, Bean serves up two caricatures of chaotic comic delight: no-nonsense, leather-tongued landlady Mrs Snowball (Joanne Holden), who holds no truck with theatre luvvieness, and her equally blunt, not-all-there son, Our Seth (Adrian Hood), first encountered bringing a huge dead dog into the flat. Can two people scene-steal the same scenes? Oh, yes they can.
Another Hull Truck favourite, Matthew Booth, is more low key in his cameos, but you will particularly enjoy his Hell’s Angel, Daz, delivering frozen fish and a nonsensical story.
Bean’s celebrates the character of Hull itself, just as it drew Philip Larkin and John Godber to the coastal city, and he captures the world of making performances brilliantly too, not least in a scene that draws on Lee Strasberg’s workshop techniques.
71 Coltman Street is long and yet it flies by, constantly on the move, adding more characters, building momentum, passing social comment and showing all sides of Bradwell.
Bean spears all things 1971, from flares to a raucous, coarse Hull Truck cabaret night at the Hull & East Riding Institute for the Blind, audience bingo et al, before a climactic performance of debut play Naked turns into a sideshow for Mrs Snowball and Our Seth.
Thomas’s rough and ready songs add to the comic mayhem, and whatever is thrown at them by Bean, from agit-prop drama to cabaret, satirical comedy to Ortonesque farce, Babych’s cast are terrific, especially Knowles’s grouchy but resolute Bradwell and Metcalfe’s Julian, winding him up so unintentionally.
The Covid curse put paid to last week’s performances, but undaunted, in an echo of Bradwell’s pioneers, the bloody-minded Hull Truck spirit has prevailed.
TWO Big Egos In A Small Car podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson look back on the life and wild times, the bands and the books, of Seattle singer, songsmith and writer Mark Lanegan.
Under discussion too in Episode 80 are Bielsa’s Leeds legacy; Sonita Gale’s Hostile immigration documentary, plus The Wedding Present and Ukrainian music in Leeds.
Becky Gee, curator of fine art for York Museums Trust, at the launch of the Beyond Bloomsbury exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: Charlotte Graham, courtesy of York Museums Trust
BEYOND Bloomsbury: Life, Love & Legacy, the spring exhibition at York Art Gallery, explores the extraordinary lives and work of the Bloomsbury Group of writers, artists and thinkers.
Active in England in the first half of the 20th century, the amorphous but amorous group met for 30 years, but with their unconventional lifestyles, bohemian airs and smart London and southern country addresses, they have since drawn opprobrium for their elitism as much as praise for the artistic acuity, audacity and intellect of writer and feminist pioneer Virginia Woolf, her sister, painter Vanessa Bell, and their contemporaries.
Acerbic New York satirist, poet, writer and critic Dorothy Parker famously drew on geometric imagery to say the prolific, passionate and hugely gifted group “lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles”.
Now, Beyond Bloomsbury finds a different angle, telling the story of not only the artists, but also the group’s writers, dancers, activists and philanthropists, as York Art Gallery and exhibition partners Sheffield Museums and the National Portrait Gallery showcase 60 major loans of oil paintings, sculpture, drawings and by Bell, Dora Carrington, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Paul Nash, Gwen Raverat and Ray Strachey.
Alongside them are four new portraits by Sahara Longe, commissioned by York Museums Trust and Sheffield Museums to respond to the Bloomsbury Group and the exhibition themes.
Becky Gee, curator of fine art at York Museums Trust, says: “We proposed a show at York Art Gallery to the National Portrait Gallery in 2019, and when they said they were looking for a gallery to tour it to too, that’s when Sheffield Museums became involved, and we worked closely together on the research.
“The exhibition should have opened here, but then Covid intervened, so Sheffield hosted it first at the Millennium Gallery.”
York Art Gallery staff take in the expanse of Lydia Caprani’s expansive mural wall at the Beyond Bloomsbury exhibition. Picture: Charlotte Graham, courtesy of York Museums Trust
Now, for the York run, Bloomsbury-inspired murals and fireplaces by graphic artist Lydia Caprani have been added, while Caprani has worked collaboratively with York LGBT Forum and Kyra Women’s Group to create decorative pieces to complement the Bloomsbury works.
“The reason I proposed this show is that, firstly, I knew the National Portrait Gallery had a strong holding of Bloomsbury Group artworks, offering the chance to equally profile the work of men and women: highlighting women’s art, women’s histories,” says Becky.
“Because of the nature of the portraits, we could tell the stories of writers, dancers and activists, as well the artists.”
Equally important to Becky was a desire “for a long time to examine how LGBT histories and women’s histories are present in our own York Art Gallery collection, whether through the artists identifying as LGBT or through the subject matter.
“I knew that the Bloomsbury Group were involved in a lot of gay relationships, so we worked with York LGBT Forum, and there’s now a permanent display on that theme.
“To make that work happen, it’s good to attach it to a bigger project and I knew that would be a way to work with the LGBT Forum.”
Explaining the reasoning behind the Sahara Longe commissions, Becky says: “I thought, it’s not good enough just to put the LGBT histories and women’s histories on show, but we should also look at how the Bloomsbury Group was not progressive in certain areas.
Roger Fry’s portrait of Edith Sitwell in the Beyond Bloomsbury: Life, Love & Legacy exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: Charlotte Graham, courtesy of York Museums Trust
“It soon became apparent that the collection we were working with was not telling the full story, so to broaden that narrative, Sahara was perfect to work with.
“She studied painting at a very traditional Italian school, studying the techniques of master painters, and in her work she places Black figures in spaces traditionally filled by white portrait subjects, and luckily she thought it was right to do the portraits for this exhibition in a post-Impressionist style.”
Among Sahara’s portraits – along with novelist Mulk Raj Anand, Black queer Jamaican dancer and choreographer Berto Pasuka and Patrick Nelson, Jamaican boyfriend of Bloomsbury Group artist Duncan Grant – is the Jamaican writer and activist Una Marson, painted in oils on jute.
“She was the first Black woman to broadcast on the BBC, and as far as I’m aware, there have been no portraits of her until now. She featured in Voice, a radio series produced by Goerge Orwell for the India section on the BBC Eastern Service in 1941, and she wrote poetry and plays, as well as her radio broadcasts, many of which contributed to her feminist, anti-colonial and anti-racist actions.”
Visitors move through three galleries, the first introducing the figures associated with the Bloomsbury Group, highlighting the importance of personal relationships, conversation and the privilege of time and space wherein to pursue creative practice.
Even if Vanessa Bell expressed initial disquiet at moving to Charleston Farmhouse in the Sussex countryside in 1916 with her sons Quentin and Julian: “It will be an odd life…but it seems to me it might be a good one for painting,” she wrote.
The second centres on the Omega Workshops, an enterprise established by Roger Fry in 1913 to sell furniture, fabrics and homeware designed by leading artists of the day, plus the rival Rebel Arts Centre.
Becky Gee, curator of fine art at York Museums Trust, who worked for three years to put the Beyond Bloomsbury exhibition together . Picture: David Harrison
The third gallery focuses on activism and philanthropy, identifying causes of importance to group members and highlighting how such beliefs shaped the group’s collective mentality, such as being involved in establishing the Contemporary Art Society, in which York Art Gallery has played its part since the 1920s.
Summing up Beyond Bloomsbury, Becky says: “One of our aims is to celebrate the good but to critique the bad too, because if we didn’t do that, we’d just be telling the same story again.”
Oh, and should you be wondering what an exhibition about a bunch of posh arty southerners is doing in a Yorkshire gallery, Becky is quick to point out: “Look out for the portrait of Edward Carpenter, who lived just outside Sheffield.
“He was a Victorian gay rights activist and writer, so he’s from the generation just before the Bloomsbury Group, and he influenced EM Forster, a gay writer who did not come out in his lifetime.
“Edith Sitwell features in the exhibition, and the Sitwells had Scarborough connections, owning Woodend in the resort.”
Beyond Bloomsbury: Life, Love & Legacy runs at York Art Gallery until June 5. To book tickets, go to: yorkartgallery.org.uk.
Morgan Feely, senior curator at York Museums Trust, stands by Vanessa Bell’s portrait of David “Bunny” Garnett, painted in oil and gouache on cardboard, at the Beyond Bloomsbury exhibition. Picture: David Harrison
