The Classic Comedy Theatre Company in Alan Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, next year. Picture: Pamela Raith
ALAN Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table, the debut production by the Classic
Comedy Theatre Company, will play the Grand Opera House, York, from February 10
to 15 next year.
This touring show is produced by impresario Bill Kenwright and his team
behind the Agatha Christie, Classic Thriller and Classic Screen To Stage
theatre companies for more than 15 years.
Premiered in January 1977, Ten Times Table is “the one with the committee
from hell and a fete worse than death”.
In the long-since grand ballroom of the Swan Hotel, a most miscellaneous
assemblage gathers to conduct the business of the Pendon Folk Festival.
A tense moment in the Classic Comedy Theatre Company’s Ten Times Table. Picture: Pamela Raith
Unfortunately for excitable chairman Ray, his calamitous committee
quickly divides as his wife, Helen, has a bone to pick.
Add a Marxist schoolteacher, a military dog breeder and an octogenarian
secretary, and the table is set for a tumultuous comedy by committee.
In the cast will be Robert Dawes, Deborah Grant, Mark Curry, Robert
Duncan, Elizabeth Powers, Gemma Oaten and Craig Glazey.
Tickets are on sale on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
GRAHAM Gouldman will
play Leeds City Varieties Music Hall on March 25 on next spring’s tour to launch
his first solo album in eight years.
The 10cc luminary’s
14-date travels with his semi-acoustic band, Heart Full Of Songs, will run from
March 19 to April 4, coinciding with the March 20 release of his as-yet-unnamed
record on the British independent label Lojinx.
One notable guest
on Gouldman’s first solo set since 2012’s Love And Work is The Beatles’ Ringo
Starr, who plays drums on Standing Next To Me.
Last year, Gouldman,
73, was invited by Starr to join his All Starr Band for tours of Europe and the
United States that featured three 10cc songs.
“Playing with Ringo
Starr and The All Starr Band was absolutely brilliant, and having Ringo play
drums on one of my new album’s songs was the icing on the cake,” says Gouldman.
“Absolutely brilliant”: Graham Gouldman’s verdict on playing with Ringo Starr in the Beatle’s All Starr Band last year
“The song is about
how I came to be asked to join his band, and about my experience of being on the
road with Ringo alongside Steve Lukather, Colin Hay, Gregg Rolie, Warren Ham
and Gregg Bissonette, who also plays drums on three of the album’s tracks.”
When Gouldman formed
what became Heart Full Of Songs, it was for the pleasure of playing his songs
in their simplest form, leading to the acoustic four-piece’s first tour in
April and May 2013.
Gouldman’s band now
tours Britain, Belgium, Holland and Germany with a line-up of Gouldman, Ciaran
Jeremiah, Dave Cobby and either Iain Hornal, Nick Kendal or Andy Park,
depending on their commitments.
The Heart Full Of
Songs set list will feature such golden Gouldman hits as 10cc’s I’m Not In
Love, Dreadlock Holiday and The Things We Do For Love, The Hollies’ Bus Stop,
The Yardbirds’ For Your Love and Wax’s Bridge To Your Heart, complemented by
new material.
“I always love
taking my Heart Full Of Songs show on tour,” says Gouldman. “Acoustic
performances always create a very intimate atmosphere where every song – which
is what it’s all about – can truly be heard. It also gives me a chance to
explain how the songs came about and something of the writing process. We’ll
see you there.”
Tickets for his Leeds concert, Gouldman’s only Yorkshire date, are on sale on 0113 243 0808 or at cityvarieties.co.uk.
Did you know?
In 2014, Graham
Gouldman was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, an arm of the USA’s
National Academy of Music. Previous inductees include Noel Coward, Irving
Berlin, Burt Bacharach, Neil Sedaka, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan,
Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and Leonard Cohen.
Mark Hird’s Ebenezer Scrooge and Frankie Bounds’ Young Ebenezer in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Scrooge The Musical. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Scrooge The Musical, Pick Me Up Theatre, Grand Opera House, York, until Sunday, December 1. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york
FOR years and years, Pick Me Up Theatre artistic director Robert
Readman has applied for the performing rights for Scrooge The Musical, more in
hope than expectation.
This year, at last, the answer was affirmative, and so Readman
reckons he must be the first director/producer to stage Leslie Bricusse’s
musical on this scale since Bill Kenwright’s long-running tour show.
Those were the days with Tommy Steele in the lead, with
songs specially added for his knees-up brand of showmanship, but Readman has restored
the 1992 score, when Bricusse transferred his 1970 film musical to the stage as
a vehicle for Anthony Newley, six new songs and all. Back come the likes of
Good Times, the best in the show, says Readman.
Mark Hird’s Ebenezer Scrooge and Rory Mulvihill’s Ghost of Christmas Present in Scrooge The Musical
Ironically, if anything, there are too many songs, or, more precisely, there are not many memorable songs, making it feel like too many.
This is in part because the dialogue is largely true to Charles Dickens’s novel, save for the occasional modernism, and you wish for rather more of it, but another song is always nudging it out of the way.
While you could not call it a “sung-through musical”, it is veering towards that style, yet the great joy of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol lies in its storytelling and the myriad ways of presenting it, whether James Swanton’s one-man show, Alexander Wright’s pub supper two-hander with audience participation or Deborah McAndrew’s beautifully resonant adaptation for Hull Truck Theatre.
Readman goes for spectacle, garland upon garland of snowy white flowers decorating the stage; a huge door; a big four-poster bed; loud, very loud, sound effects for Jacob Marley’s entry, rattling chains et al; echoing voices; a company of more than 40; and two flying sequences. One for Tony Froud’s Marley; the other for Rory Mulvihill’s Ghost of Christmas Present and Mark Hird’s Ebenezer Scrooge, where they are held in suspense rather more than this ghost story holds us, in the absence of more darkness.
Sonny Love as Tiny Tim in Scrooge The Musical
Hird’s diminutive Scrooge carries the last residue of his
wonderful Captain Mainwaring in Pick Me Up’s Dad’s Army, and consequently he is
humorous from the start, full of bluster rather than the coldness of a blasted
heath. You find yourself liking him, even when he is mithering and being
miserly, rather like Rowan Atkinson’s penny-pinching Mr Bean, but Scrooge’s
transformation is still highly enjoyable in his impish hands.
What’s more, his scenes with Young Ebenezer (Frankie Bounds) and his lost true love, Isabel (Jennie Wogan), and later with Bob Cratchit (Alan Park), Tiny Tim (Sonny Love) and the Cratchit family, are poignant to the core. Bounds, by the way, is the pick of the young talents, with a lovely singing voice in Happiness, while Olivia Caley, as the Ghost of Christmas Past, definitely has a future.
Look out too for Flo Poskitt’s comic cameo as Ethel Cratchit:
not for the first time this year, she gives a peach of a supporting
performance. Maybe next year, a director will reward her with an overdue lead.
Mulvihill amuses by lounging like Jacob Rees-Mogg in the
House of Commons, in his Christmas green silks and ermine; Sam Johnson leads
his musical forces with customary skill, and Iain Harvey and Readman’s choreography
has most fun when Andrew Isherwood’s Tom Jenkins leads the stand-out Thank You Very Much.
Overall, however, while it may feel “Bah Humbug” to say it, by
Pick Me Up standards, this Scrooge falls
short of a Christmas cracker.
Royal appointment: Louise Henry as Princess Snow White in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture by David Harrison.
LOUISE Henry will swap flat whites for Snow White next week after being picked to lead the Grand Opera House pantomime cast in York.
Louise, 22, from
Knaresborough, works at the Hoxton North café bar in Royal Parade, Harrogate,
but will join rehearsals for Three Bears Productions’ Snow White And The Seven
Dwarfs from Monday (December 2) for the December 13 to January 4 2020 run.
After playing Liesl
von Trapp in York Stage Musicals’ The Sound Of Music at the Cumberland Street
theatre, now she will star as Princess Snow White alongside Mark Little’s
villainous Lord Chamberlain, regular dame Steve Wickenden’s Nurse Brexit, ’Allo,
’Allo! star Vicki Michelle’s Wicked Queen and Martin Daniels’ Muddles.
From producer Chris
Moreno’s search for a local principal girl in Three Bears’ fourth Opera House
panto, Louise was among 30 invited from the many applicants for a day’s
auditions in May.
After queueing in the rain in the line of Snow White hopefuls that formed along the stage door wall, she won through to the shortlist of 12 for the afternoon’ s second session and was then picked for panto principal girl after a nervous wait.
Meet the Grand Opera House pantomime cast: Mark Little, left, Steve Wickenden, Martin Daniels, Louise Henry, Jonny Muir, and Vicki Michelle. Picture by David Harrison.
“The auditions were
on the Wednesday, and they rang me just as I was setting off to work on the
Friday afternoon,” Louise recalls. “I’d been refreshing my emails, hoping for
news, and it was such a euphoric moment when the phone call came.
“I’m so thankful to have been chosen. I’ve
been beaming whenever I’m reminded that I’m signing my first professional
contract. I’m really looking forward to getting into the theatre and putting
the show together. Performing is all I have ever wanted to do and I feel so
lucky that my Christmas this year will be doing just that.”
Although Louise has not studied at drama school
since leaving school, “I’ve had acting and singing lessons for as long as I can
remember and I’ve done lots of theatre work, like school plays when I was at
King James’s in Knaresborough,” she says.
“From the age of nine to 17, I went to the
ACTAcademy in Harrogate, run by Kelly Creates, when we took part in the
Harrogate Festival of Speech and Drama and did The Big T talent show at
Harrogate Theatre, and I’ve had singing tuition with Jacqueline Bell in
Wetherby too.”
Louise impressed in Nik Briggs’s April production of
The Sound Of Music, playing the eldest von Trapp daughter, Liesl. “I was 21
playing 16, and the next in age to me was 12, playing 15!” she says. “It’s such
a nice show to do because it’s so honest, and it was sad when it came to an end
as we all made such good friends.
Welcome to York: Louise Henry, from Knaresborough, is pictured by Clifford’s Tower after landing the role of Snow White in the Grand Opera House pantomime. Picture: David Harrison
“It was lovely to be able to become familiar with the
Grand Opera House stage too before doing the panto.”
Since The Sound Of Music, Louise has appeared in
two more York shows, the first being another Nik Briggs production, Joseph
McNeice and Matthew Spalding’s new musical comedy, Twilight Robbery, at 41
Monkgate in May.
“I played Jane, the daughter, who’s 40 years old,
so I went from one extreme, 16-year-old Liesl, to another…and now I’ll be
playing Snow White!”
The nearest she has come to playing her own age was
her most recent role, a young Australian woman, Gabrielle York, in Rigmarole
Theatre Company’s debut production, Andrew Bovell’s apocalyptic family drama When
The Rain Stops Falling, at 41 Monkgate in November.
Louise Henry, right, playing Gabrielle York in Rigmarole Theatre Company’s When The Rain Stops Falling earlier this month. Picture: Michael J Oakes
Now her focus turns to her professional bow, billed
as “York’s very own Louise Henry” in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs.
“I’ve done one panto before, Aladdin, an amateur one
for the Pannal Players when I was maybe 14,” says Louise,
Looking forward to starting rehearsals on Monday,
she says: “This opportunity is what I’ve been waiting for, and I’ve just got to
have faith in my abilities.
“Snow White is on stage for most of the time, so I’ll
always need to react in the moment, and that’s something that will add to my
repertoire of skills, which I’m always working on.”
Imagine how Louise feels as the first night approaches,
knowing she is taking on the title role in a star-laden show. “I know! It’s my
show! How crazy is that!” she says. “When I rang my sister to tell her I’d got
the part, she didn’t believe it…and when I rang my mum, I had to say, ‘no, I’m
not kidding’. That was a really fantastic day!”
Louise Henry stars in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Grand Opera House, York, December 13 to January 4 2020. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
Fieri Consort: taking a trip to Christmas Eve in 1629 Rome in York
THE 2019 York Early Music Christmas Festival is starting earlier, two hours earlier, to be precise, after Solomon’s Knot’s sold-out opening concert on December 7 was moved to 4.30pm.
Performing without a conductor and from memory at the National Centre for Early Music, the 14-piece baroque group will present Festive Music from 17th century France, as they make their much anticipated Christmas festival debut with a brace of Charpentier works, A Song On The Birth Of Our Lord and Pastoral On The Birth Of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
“We’re a group of singers and players who are prepared to take risks in order to communicate more directly with our audiences,” they say.
To make sure they arrive in York well in time for their 12.30pm Sunday concert, the recorder group Palisander will be travelling by car, rather than risking public transport!
Lydia Gosnell, Miriam Monaghan, Caoimhe de Paor and Elspeth Robertson will perform A Yuletyde Eve on recorders of all shapes and sizes, as they return to the NCEM, in St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, after playing there in March.
Expect an afternoon hour of “very entertaining” Renaissance music, including works by Praetorius and Tye, as well as some more familiar carols.
Owain Park, a former winner of the NCEM Young Composers Award, will direct his ensemble, The Gesualso Six, in Videte Miraculum at 6.30pm on December 8.
Inspired by Advent being a time of mystery, reflection and wonder, this two-hour journey through the ages and across borders will weave Christmas carols, such as Praetorius’s Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen, seamlessly with 21st century works, including Park’s luscious On The Infancy Of Our Saviour.
On December 9, wind ensemble Boxwood & Brass re-create A Georgian Country House Christmas at 7.30pm. Their “Band of Musick” play as a traditional Georgian militia ensemble of clarinets, horns and bassoon, regaling their audience with quintets, marches, dance music and regional carols.
Very sadly, Joglaresa’s Sing We Yule concert on December 10 at 7.30pm will be their last visit to the NCEM. “Their leader, Belinda Sykes, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer,” says NCEM artistic director Delma Tomlin. “I shall deeply miss Belinda and her wonderful consort; she has been such a fantastic leading light of the Early Music world, and Joglaresa’s concerts here have been a joy.”
Belinda, singer and recorder and bagpipe player, will lead Joglaresa in an effervescent programme of traditional carols and wassails, lullabies and dance tunes, from Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales as they “chase out the chill from the Celtic fringes of Europe”.
On Wednesday, December 11 at 6.30pm, Fieri Consort will take a trip to Rome on Christmas Eve in 1629, where a performance of Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger’s oratorio The Shepherds Of Bethlehem is taking place in the lavishly decorated Vatican palace.
Featuring a libretto by the future Pope Clement IX, this Christmas play tells the story of the Nativity through solos, duets, trios and full choruses, interspersed with instrumental and vocal pieces by Kapsperger and his contemporaries.
A second concert is on the move, this one on account of the NCEM being a polling station for the General Election on December 12. Ceruleo will now perform Burying The Dead at St Lawrence’s Church, Hull Road, instead.
Written by Clare Norburn and directed by Thomas Guthrie, with lighting by Pitch Black and costumes by Hannah Pearson, this new theatre show for the 21st century will take the 7.30pm audience on a fictional journey into the head of composer Henry Purcell, played by actor Niall Ashdown.
Purcell is in the throes of his final illness, suffering from feverish hallucinations, wherein the past, present and fantasy collide and his songs take on a life of their own.
Fretwork’s December 13 concert with mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, winner of the 2018 Handel Singing Competition, has sold out. Their 6.30pm programme, From Virgin’s Womb, will interweave William Byrd’s In Nomines with seasonal Elizabethan music by Holborne, Peerson, Weelkes and Gibbons, the songs being accompanied by viols. Jollity meets piousness, rejoicing and reflection meet drunkenness and misbehaviour, in Fretwork’s company.
The Mellstock Band’s Philip Humphries has an interesting programme credit: not only voice, but also serpent. “Yes, this Dorset band bring real serpents,” says Delma, ahead of snakes arriving on December 14 at 1pm.
Humphries and co’s Christmas Frolics in period costumes will be an uproarious celebration of dance, drink and general misbehaviour, as carried on in many villages until a century ago, along with sobering admonitions from the puritans, parsons, preachers and angels.
Carols dedicated to dancing, bell ringing and cider will vie for attention with “the Devil’s own tunes”, complemented by the Wessex stories of Thomas Hardy and William Barnes.
The York musicians of the Yorkshire Bach Choir, under the direction of Peter Seymour, will close the festival with a 7pm performance of Handel’s Messiah at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, on December 14.Helen Charlston will be among the soloists, alongside soprano Bethany Seymour, tenor Gwilym Bowen and bass Gareth Brynmor John.
“We will echo Handel’s London performances, including some rarely heard versions,” says Peter.
All concerts will take place at the NCEM unless otherwise stated. Tickets are on sale on 01904 658338 or at tickets.ncem.co.uk.
The Yorkshire Shepherdess Gathering Her Animals And Children In Time For Christmas: Anita Bowerman’s new charity Christmas card for Yorkshire Air Ambulance
YORKSHIRE Air
Ambulance ambassador Amanda Owen and her farming family feature in a new
charity Christmas card painted by Harrogate artist Anita Bowerman.
Owen, alias The Yorkshire Shepherdess,
is at present drawing more than 1.5 million viewers to the second series of her
Channel 5 documentary Our Yorkshire Farm on Tuesday nights.
She was first the focus of a Yorkshire
Air Ambulance (YAA) charity card last year, showing Amanda surrounded by her
beloved sheep and dogs on a harsh winter’s day.
Crimson Glory Vine (Vitis Coignetiae) at RHS Garden Harlow Carr, one of Anita Bowerman’s 12 paintings from her artist-in-residence year
Painted by Anita, it became the
charity’s best-seller, with cards flying off around the world.
This year’s card for the YAA already is
proving more popular than ever and once more all the proceeds will go to the
charity.
Harrogate artist Anita Bowerman painting Amanda Owen, The Yorkshire Shepherdess, at her moorland farm for last year’s Yorkshire Air Ambulance Christmas card
“I’m absolutely
delighted to feature again on the Yorkshire Air Ambulance Christmas cards,”
says Amanda. “Anita Bowerman is a fantastically skilled artist who has a unique
ability to depict children and animals in wonderfully intricate detail.
“I’m hopeful that these cards will go worldwide and raise much-needed funds for
this incredible charity. 100 per cent profit goes to the YAA.”
Amanda, hill farmer, mother of nine, photographer, public speaker and author, lives with husband Clive and their family at Ravenseat in Upper Swaledale, North Yorkshire, one of the highest, most remote hill farms in England.
Maytenus Boaria Tree at RHS Garden Harlow Carr, September, by Anita Bowerman
She has always supported the work of the YAA, given the remote area where they live and the nature of the charity’s work, but it was an introduction through Anita that brought Amanda and the charity closer together.
“I was contacted by
Anita last year to ask if I’d be happy to collaborate with her and the YAA by
painting me and my sheep as a scene for one of their Christmas cards,” says
Amanda.
Travelling Home For Christmas:, one of Anita Bowerman’s Christmas card designs for Yorkshire Air Ambulance
“Obviously it was a
real honour for me to accept, and the card went on to be the Charity’s
best-selling Christmas card.
“I hear they were
sending them out all around the world, and as far away as Canada. We have kept
in contact since and when I was asked to be an ambassador, I was absolutely
delighted. I genuinely couldn’t think of a better organisation to be involved
with. I was very emotional when they first asked me.”
The Winter Walk At RHS Garden, Harlow Carr, December, by Anita Bowerman
Amanda
adds: “I’m aware that living as remotely as we do, the YAA is a vital service
that can make the difference between life and death. We have had our fair share
of medical emergencies, though we’re fortunate to have never yet ourselves
required the services of the YAA.”
Painting Amanda and her family and animals is always such a joy for Anita. “In the card you can see Amanda with some of her children, sheepdogs, a robin, Tony the Pony, an owl, a robin and much more,” she says.
“The holly hanging above them is kept
in this ancient barn all year. The original painting can be seen in my Dove
Tree gallery and studio in Harrogate.
The Snow Lays Deep And Crisp And Even: Anita Bowerman’s third design for her 2019 Christmas cards for Yorkshire Air Ambulance
“It’s a privilege to be able to support
the vital work of the YAA through the sale of these cards, and having Amanda as
an ambassador is a bonus.”
Priced at £4 for ten cards, they are
available at yorkshireairambulance.org.uk/product/Yorkshire-shepherdess-2/ or
from Anita’s gallery in Back Granville Road, Harrogate. (Visit
anitabowerman.co.uk for location details and opening times.)
Anita has illustrated two more cards
for the YAA this Christmas: Ribblehead Viaduct and Malham Cove. Meanwhile, copies
of last year’s card are still available at yaa.org.uk/shop.
The Tarn At RHS Garden Harlow Carr, November, by Anita Bowerman
If you are seeking Christmas presents
or cards, Anita will be hosting champagne and canapes events to mark the eighth
anniversary of her gallery on December 5 from 6pm to 8pm and December 7, 10am
to 3.30pm.
“I’m also
artist-in-residence this year at RHS Garden Harlow Carr, in Harrogate, where
I’ll be appearing in the shop there every Saturday, from 4pm to 8pm, during
Harlow Carr’s Glow winter illuminations until Christmas,” says Anita, who will
be doing mini-demonstrations and chatting to visitors.
Glow: the winter illuminations at RHS Garden Harlow Carr, Harrogate, pictured in November 2017
“I’ve finished all 12
paintings of the gardens, one for each month, all
made using moss, twigs and leaves, and now have my prints and cards in the shop.”
The Glow winter illuminations
at Harlow Carr light up the gardens after dusk every Thursday, Friday and
Saturday until December 28, from 4.30pm to 8pm, except on Boxing Day, with last
admission at 7pm.
On those days, special lighting effects transform Streamside, the Queen Mother’s
Lake, Winter Walk, the Doric Columns and Alpine House.
New for this year, as part of the Glow adventure, you can enjoy
illuminated sculptures, such as a silver angel; meander through a tunnel of
twinkling lights as you enter the Kitchen Garden, and finish the trail at a
festive-themed marquee with Christmas carols.
Glow tickets can be booked at gardentickets.rhs.org.uk/
Did you know?
Yorkshire Air Ambulance serves five million people across Yorkshire, carrying out more than 1,500 missions every year. The charity operates two state-of-the-art Airbus H145 helicopters and needs to raise £12,000 every day to keep saving lives.
Charles Hutchinson
Chris Gorman’s film footage of Anita Bowerman at work at RHS Harlow Carr, Harrogate, during her year as artist-in-residence.
Taylor made: Harrogate comedian Tom Taylor spins his stories at York Barbican
HARROGATE
comedian and Sitting Room Comedy promoter Tom Taylor hops over to York to
headline the Laugh Out Loud ComedyClub line-up at York Barbican on
December 20.
Taylor
is an award-winning humorist and writer who featured on BBC Radio 4 in the BBC
New Comedy Award with his offbeat musical comedy and droll one-liners.
MIke Newall: smooth-talking Manchester comic
Both a stand-up and character actor, Taylor has penned and performed two
murder mystery solo shows, A
Charlie Montague Mystery: The Game’s A Foot and Try The Fish/ The Man
With The Twisted Hip, as seen at York’s Great Yorkshire Fringe.
Joining him in the Fishergate Bar will be casual, smooth-talking,
story-telling Manchester comedian Mike
Newall, whose Nineties’ Britpop haircut has gained him the nickname “The Real
Magic Mike”.
Debra-Jane Appleby: no-nonsense northerner
Debra-Jane Appleby, former winner of the
Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year and Funny Women Comedy Award in 2005, completes
the 8pm line-up with her no-nonsense northern take on the world.
Doors open at 7pm, and the host, as
ever, will be Laugh Out Loud promoter Damion Larkin.
Tickets are on sale on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.
York, So Good They Named It Once, by Harland Miller, oil on canvas, 2009, copyright Harland Miller, Photo copyright: White Cube (Stephen White)
YORK artist and writer Harland Miller’s largest ever solo exhibition
will be held in his home city next year.
Harland Miller: York, So Good They Named It Once will run at York Art
Gallery from February 14 to May 31 2020.
Supported by fellow North Yorkshireman Jay Jopling’s White Cube
galleries in London, the show features Miller’s best-known series, the Penguin Book Covers
and the Pelican Bad Weather Paintings.
These works directly refer to the 55-year-old artist’s relationship with
York, the city where he was born and grew up before moving to London, as well
as making wider references to the culture and geography of Yorkshire as a
whole.
Death, What’s in it For Me?, by Harland Miller, oil on canvas, 2007, copyright Harland Miller, Photo copyright: White Cube (Stephen White)
The titles are all sardonic statements on life: York, So Good They Named It; Once Whitby – The Self Catering Years; Rags to Polyester – My Story and Incurable Romantic Seeks Dirty Filthy Whore.
In
addition to these dust-jacket paintings, Miller will show works from his recent
Letter Painting series: canvasses made up of overlaid letters to form short
words or acronyms in a format inspired by the illuminated letters of medieval
manuscripts.
Miller left Yorkshire to study at Chelsea School of Art, graduating in
1988 with an MA, since when he has lived in London, New York, Berlin and New
Orleans.
He has held solo exhibitions at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art,
Gateshead, in 2009 and Palacio Quintanar, Segovia, Spain, in 2015. Group
exhibitions include the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in 1996; Kunsthalle
Mannheim, Germany, 2004; Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2005,
2006 and 2007; Sculpture in the Close, Jesus College, Cambridge, 2013, and Somerset
House, London, 2016.
In 2008, Miller curated the group show You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The
Soil, an homage to Edgar Allan Poe to mark the bicentenary of his birth, at
White Cube and Shoreditch Town Hall, London.
Ace, by Harland Miller, oil on canvas, 2017, copyright Harland Miller, Photo copyright: White Cube (George Darrell)
His first novel, Slow Down Arthur, Stick To Thirty, the story of a child who travels around northern England with
a David Bowie impersonator, was published
by Fourth Estate in 2000.
That same year, Book Works published his novella,
At First I Was Afraid, a study of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,
based on the true story of a female relative, whose box of Polaroid images, all
of oven knobs turned to “Off”, was discovered by Miller.
In his artwork, he continues to create work in the vein of his Penguin covers, wherein he married aspects of Pop Art, abstraction and figurative painting with his writer’s love of text. He now includes his own phrases, some humorous and absurd, others marked by a lush melancholia.
Adam Martyn: partially sighted actor who will play 18th century blind scientist Nicholas Saunderson in No Horizon next year
NO Horizon, a new musical
that tells the forgotten story of a Yorkshire maths genius, will tour to York
Theatre Royal next April after more than a decade in the making.
Andy
Platt’s show is inspired by the life of Nicholas Saunderson, a blind scientist
and mathematician from the West Riding village of Thurlstone, near Penistone, who
overcame impossible odds to become a Cambridge professor and friend of royalty.
Often described as an 18th
century Stephen
Hawking, Saunderson was born in 1862 and by the age of one he was blinded by
smallpox. In an era before
Braille, it is said he taught himself to read by running his fingers over the
gravestones in a local churchyard.
He learned Latin and Greek and became Lucasian Professor of
Mathematics at Cambridge, a post also held by Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage
and the aforementioned Stephen Hawking.
In his
day, Saunderson spent time with kings and queens and had a reputation that
spread across Europe. Remarkably,
his field of expertise was not in mathematical equations, but in lecturing
about optics.
It is thought that Saunderson, who was elected a member of
the Royal Society, may have been the earliest discoverer of Bayes’ theorem, a
mathematical formula for determining conditional probability.
A past performance of No Horizon, set to be revived on a northern tour in 2020
Described by singer and
BBC Radio Two presenter Elaine Paige as “one to watch out for”, Platt’s musical
will run in York on April 9 and 11 – no performance on Good Friday – as part of
its 2020 northern tour mounted by Right Hand Theatre, in the wake of an Edinburgh
Fringe run in 2016.
The show was first
written in 2003 by Platt, a former headmaster who rediscovered Saunderson’s
remarkable journey after it was forgotten by history.
“Saunderson’s achievement as the Stephen Hawking of his day
was phenomenal,” says the writer and producer. “I wanted No Horizon to
entertain and move the audience at the same time as restoring Saunderson to his
rightful place as a national icon. Next year’s tour is the culmination of a
15-year dream.”
The lead role of Saunderson will be played by the partially sighted Adam Martyn, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, who trained at Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts.
He will be on the road in the 2020 tour from March 19, when No Horizon opens at
The Civic, Barnsley, the nearest major theatre near to Saunderson’s birthplace.
The poster for next spring’s tour of No Horizon by Right Hand Theatre
After further shows there
on March 20 and 21, the tour will head on to the Viaduct Theatre, Halifax,
March 26 to 28; Leeds City
Varieties, March 31 and April 1; Cast, Doncaster, April 2 to 4; Harrogate
Theatre, April 7 and 8; York Theatre Royal, April 9 and 11, and Millgate Arts
Centre, Delph, Saddleworth, April 15.
Helen Reid, producer at Right Hand
Theatre, says: “I’m so excited we’ve managed to pull off and organise a northern
tour. It’s only taken over a decade to do it!
“We couldn’t have done it without the
support of our fan base at the Edinburgh Fringe and locally, to help bring the
show to a wider audience.
“We
look forward to seeing our old fans and new fans alike at any of the northern
venues. The support we’ve had so far from the public and celebrities has been
immensely rewarding for Andy and the producers. We thank them all.”
The 2020 tour is funded by Arts Council England and Foyle
Foundation, co-commissioned by Cast, Doncaster, and The Civic, Barnsley, and
supported by Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind.
York tickets are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or cityvarieties.co.uk; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or at harrogatetheatre.co.uk.
Jamaican joy: London jazz singer Cleveland Watkiss celebrates his Caribbean roots at the NCEM, York
HACKNEY jazz singer Cleveland Watkiss
brings the winter sunshine to the National Centre for Early Music in York on
Thursday when presenting his Great Jamaican Songbook concert.
Marking his 60th year with a
joyous show, Watkiss revives some of the greatest songs written by Jamaican
legends Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown and Delroy Wilson et al as he presents a
personal project exploring music that connects him to his Jamaican roots.
Watkiss will be delving into Jamaica’s
long history of pioneering musical sounds, from Mento and Ska to Reggae, Dub
and Roots, as well as highlighting record labels and producers such as Studio
One, Coxsone Dodd, TuffGong, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, and King Tubby.
His 7.30pm set list takes in the work
of Don Drummond; Ernest Ranglin; the Barrett Brothers; Jackie Mittoo; Leroy ‘Horsemouth’
Wallace; Alton Ellis; Ken Booth; The Wailers; Millie Small; Marcia Griffith; Dawn
Penn; Dennis Brown; Gregory Isaacs; Burnin’ Spear and Johnny Osbourne, many of
whom graduated from The Alpha Boys School under the tutelage of Sister
Mary Ignatius Davis, alias “The Nun”.
Thursday night’s musical guests are drawn
from Watkiss’s collaborators old and new: Orphy Robinson, on keyboards and
percussion; Ray Carless, saxophones; Byron Wallen, trumpet; Delroy Murray,
bass; Brandon Murray, guitars; Dan Barnett, drums, and Phil Ramocon, keyboards.
Tickets cost £18, concessions £16, on 01904 658338 or at tickets.ncem.co.uk.
