Javier Torres as Dracula and Antoinette Brooks-Daw as Lucy in Northern Ballet’s 2019 production of David Nixon’s Dracula. Picture: Emma Kauldhar
NORTHERN Ballet’s Dracula will be shown on BBC Four on Sunday night in the television debut of artistic director David Nixon’s celebrated 2019 production.
After the 10pm screening, this adaptation of Bram Stoker’s gothic story will be available on BBC iPlayer throughout June as part of the Leeds company’s Pay As You Feel Digital in its 50th anniversary year.
When theatres had to close suddenly under Covid-19 restrictions, Northern Ballet was obliged to cancel the spring tour of the 2020 premiere of Kenneth Tindall’s Geisha after only one performance at Leeds Grand Theatre on March 14.
In response, the company pledged to “keep bringing world-class ballet to our audiences” through a Pay As You Feel Digital Season.
One performance and goodnight: Ayama Miyata as Aiko and Minju Kang as Okichi in Northern Ballet’s Geisha in March. Picture: Guy Farrow
To date, the season has been watched by more than 200,000 people, attracting donations of £20,000.
Northern Ballet’s latest statement reads: “The company is set to face a loss of over £1 million in box-office income due to Covid-19, which may impact its ability to continue to pay its workforce, many of whom are freelancers, as well as its ability to present new ballets.
“While theatres remain dark, the company aims to continue making its performances available online and on TV, encouraging audiences to donate when they watch, if they are able.”
Dracula was recorded at Leeds Playhouse on Hallowe’en 2019 and streamed live to more than 10,000 viewers in cinemas across Europe. Choreographed by Nixon, it stars Northern Ballet premier dancer Javier Torres in the title role.
Jonadette Carpio in EGO, one of Northern Ballet’s Pay As You Feel Digital Season shows. Picture: Emily Nuttall
Northern Ballet’s Pay As You Feel Digital Season also includes Amaury Lebrun’s For An Instant; Kenneth Tindall’s original dance film EGO; Mariana Rodrigues’s Little Red Riding Hood; highlights from Northern Ballet’s 50th Anniversary Celebration Gala and extended scenes from Northern Ballet repertoire, including Tindall’s Geisha.
Premièred in 2019, Lebrun’s For An Instant was part of Northern Ballet’s Three Short Ballets programme and had only seven performances in Leeds and Doncaster. The full ballet, created, by the French contemporary dance maker with Northern Ballet’s versatile performers, can be viewed online until June 7.
Highlights from Northern Ballet’s 50th Anniversary Celebration Gala,performed at Leeds Grand Theatre in January, include scenes from Tindall’s Casanova, with music by Kerry Muzzey,and Nixon’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
More will be released from this one-night-only spectacular, when Northern Ballet was joined by dancers from The Royal Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Leeds company Phoenix Dance Theatre and Scottish Ballet.
“A good song makes you feel like you’re not alone in the world, ” says Martyn Joseph
PENARTH folk singer, songwriter and guitarist Martyn Joseph will play Pocklington Arts Centre on January 16 2021.
Often called “the Welsh Springsteen”, he has released 32 albums in a career spanning 30 years, half a million record sales and thousands of live performances.
In April 2019, Joseph won a Wales Folk Award for Here Come The Young, the title track of that year’s album. “He’s never sounded more potent than he does here,” said Uncut on its release.
In 2018, he was honoured with a Spirit of Folk Award by Folk Alliance International in Kansas, USA, and he received Fatea magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Britain.
In his song-writing of passion and humour, Joseph, 59, engages with challenging narratives that tackle the complexity of the human condition, underpinned with a promise of hope.
“Really what I do is to try and write songs that might step up and make some sense of a moment in time,” says the Welsh raconteur of his tales of topical concerns and stories of the fragility of love. “A good song makes you feel like you’re not alone in the world.”
Tickets are on sale at £18 at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
South African cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe: Responding to beneficial effects of walking. Picture: Mlungisi Mlungwana
OPERA North is creating Walking Home: Sound Journeys For Lockdown in response to the easing of Covid-19 regulations on exercise and time spent outdoors.
For this commission for BBC Arts and Arts Council England’s Culture in Quarantine programme, the Leeds company has asked five artists to write and record new works specifically to be heard while walking.
Crossing folk, jazz, Middle Eastern and African traditions, classical and contemporary music, with a propensity for experimentation and breaking the confines of genre, the contributors are South African cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe; Syrian-born qanun virtuoso Maya Youssef; Syrian-born Iraqi oud player and composer Khyam Allami; Anglo-Polish vocalist, violinist and songwriter Alice Zawadski and English accordionist and electronic experimentalist Martin Green, from the cutting-edge folk trio Lau.
Martin Green: Has a dawn or early morning walk in mind for his piece. Picture: Genevieve Stevenson
Building on Opera North’s history of innovative sound walks and installations, the five musicians are writing and recording their pieces in home studios across Britain and Europe. Once complete, Walking Home will be available through broadcast slots across BBC radio and television, through podcasts on BBC Sounds, and via the BBC Arts website, continuing the Culture in Quarantine mission to bring the arts to homes despite arts venue closures, social distancing and UK-wide lockdowns.
One of 25 new commissions for Culture in Quarantine,Walking Home is billed as a “vibrant cross-section of music-making in Britain today, made by musicians under lockdown for audiences in the same predicament”.
The series seeks to engage with the lockdown context for walking and solitary activity, each 15-minute piece “offering an opportunity to renew our imaginative connections with our environment”.
Maya Youssef: Intense and thoughtful music on the qanun
Jo Nockels, Opera North’s head of projects, says: “The spark for the Walking Home commissions came from the strange alchemy we found between walker, place and music that was powerfully evident in the past sound journey commissions we have made for the Humber Bridge and River Tyne.
“While these five new walking commissions are on a much more intimate scale, and meant for wherever you are, all five respond to the dynamic of walking, listening through headphones and taking in your surroundings to produce an experience as much created by the listener as by the artists.
“They might offer a soundtrack to a daily escape from lockdown; intensify the sensations experienced on their chosen route; or conjure up something altogether harder to define.”
Iraqi oud player and composer Khyam Allami: Taking cinematic approach to disconcerting atmosphere of urban areas under lockdown
Nockels adds: “We are delighted to be working with five such brilliant and varied composer/musicians on this project, each of whom innovates way beyond the boundaries of genre. Together they will form a collection of music that is refreshing, unexpected and individual.”
Best known as one third of the visionary folk trio Lau, Martin Green’s reputation as a composer in his own right was cemented by an Ivor Award for his Opera North commission for the Great Exhibition of the North in 2018.
Evolving over the course of a half-hour walk along the banks of the River Tyne, Aeons was an epic sound work that featured the Orchestra and Chorus of Opera North and Becky Unthank of The Unthanks. His contribution to the Walking Home series has a dawn or early morning walk in mind.
Alice Zawadski: Classical violin, gospel, jazz and folk. Picture: Monika S Jakubowska
Syrian-born Iraqi oud player Khyam Allami’s haunting installation Requiem For The 21st Century was an Opera North commission for the 2019 PRS New Music Biennale, combining microtonal tuning, ancient Arabic musical modes and generative software to produce ever-changing melodic sequences from speakers fitted within an array of decaying ouds.
Allami will be writing and recording his sound walk from his base in Berlin, taking a cinematic approach to the disconcerting atmosphere of urban areas under lockdown.
Now based in Manchester, cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe moves seamlessly from collaborations with world musicians and beatboxers to concerto performances and solo classical recitals.
He spent an Opera North Resonance residency working on a new body of solo music for the cello influenced by traditional African instruments. His sound journey will acknowledge the beneficial effects that he has felt from walking over the past weeks.
Walking Home: Five artists are writing and recording new works specifically to be heard while walking
Born and raised in Damascus, Maya Youssef plays the qanun, the Arabic form of the zither with a history dating back to the 19th century BC. She has made her home in the UK after recognition from the Government’s Exceptional Talent programme for her intense and thoughtful music, rooted in the Arabic classical tradition but taking inspiration from Western classical music and jazz.
Drawing on classical violin, gospel, jazz and folk, Alice Zawadzki’s output as soloist and collaborator is prodigious and eclectic. Her second solo album, last year’s Within You Is A World Of Spring, showcased her mastery of a range of styles in an inspired collection of songs.
Opera North is “still in discussion with the BBC about a release date, but hopefully it will be within the next month or so”.
Zoom in the room: A rehearsal for The Flood for the York Radio Mystery Plays by the remote wonders of 2020 lockdown technology, with director Juliet Forster, top row, second from right, and Rosy Rowley (Mrs Noah), middle row, second from left
YORK Theatre Royal and BBC Radio York are collaborating to bring the York Mystery Plays to life on the airwaves next month.
Four instalments will be presented as audio versions on the Sunday Breakfast Show with Jonathan Cowap on successive weekends from June 7, the Sunday before Corpus Christi Day on June 11: the day since mediaeval times when the plays were performed on wagons on the city streets from dawn until dusk.
Working remotely from home, a cast of 19 community and professional actors has recorded the 15-minute instalments, Adam And Eve, The Flood Part 1, The Flood Part 2 and Moses And Pharaoh, under the direction of Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster.
“The York Mystery Plays are part of the DNA of this city,” she says. “The longevity of these potent plays clearly demonstrates how vital the collective act of storytelling is, and how much we need to explore and reflect together on our experiences and understanding of the world.
“We’re determined to keep doing this in spite of the lockdown. So, these plays seem exactly the right choice to pick up, find a new way to create, communicate afresh and encourage one another.”
Juliet, incidentally, previously co-directed Anthony Minghella’s Two Planks And A Passion at the Theatre Royal in July 2011, a play set around a performance of the York Mystery Plays on Corpus Christi Day in midsummer 1392.
This time, she and husband Kelvin Goodspeed have adapted Mystery Play texts for the radio series, drawing on material dating back to the 1300s first resurrected after a long, long hiatus for the Festival of Britain in 1951.
Juliet Forster: York Theatre Royal artistic director and director of the 2020 York Radio Mystery Plays
The York Radio Mystery Plays now form part of York Theatre Royal’s Collective Acts, a programme of “creative community engagement” set up in response to the St Leonard’s Place building being closed under the Covid-19 strictures.
“When we went into lockdown, Tom [Bird, the Theatre Royal’s executive director] kept saying we ought to try to do something with the Mystery Plays, and I suggested that we should do radio plays,” recalls Juliet.
“But I’d never done a radio broadcast, so I contacted Radio York and said ‘let’s do this together’.”
Under the partnership that ensued, the Theatre Royal has chosen the texts, sourced the scripts, recruited the actors and provided the music, while BBC Radio York sound engineer Martin Grant has mixed the recordings, splicing them together into finished crafted instalments.
Ed Beesley has provided composition, sound design and foley artist effects. Madeleine Hudson, musical director of the York Theatre Royal Choir, has given the choir and cast songs to perform.
In choosing the plays, Juliet says: “The ones that make for the most fun are the ones around Noah’s flood, but they are also about a family in isolation for 40 days, maybe falling out with each other, so there are parallels with what’s happening now.
“Then there’s the positive ending, which would be good, and that sense of starting again, so it was the perfect choice.”
Voice of an Angel: Christie Barnes recording her role remotely from home for Adam And Eve, the opening instalment of the York Radio Mystery Plays
The Flood, Parts 1 and 2 were picked initially for a spring pilot show, but then the BBC decided to build a series around the Corpus Christi Day tradition in June, and so two more plays were added: Adam And Eve and Moses And Pharaoh.
“I’d already started working on Adam And Eve and thought about doing a Nativity play, but in our conversations with Radio York, they then talked about wanting to keep the series going, with the possibility of four Nativity plays at Christmas and four for Easter based around the Crucifixion,” says Juliet.
“So I thought, ‘I’ll stick with Old Testament stories’, and I’d done the Moses and Pharaoh story for The Missing Mysteries with the York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre in 2012.
“It’s a play about a desire for freedom to get out, which again relates to now: that need to breathe, to get to the other side, but there’s also that moment where they dare not go out, where they stay behind closed doors, so that really is like now. That feeling of living in fear.”
As for Adam And Eve, again the Genesis story is a resonant one. “They were living in this paradise but then lost it, facing hardship and their own mortality, which we’re all facing now,” says Juliet.
“That sense of not knowing paradise is what you have until it’s gone; also that role of being guardians but always wanting that little bit more, when instead we need to be more environmentally friendly.”
In keeping with Covid-19 social-distancing rules, the production required the actors to record their lines on a smart phone from home, having done collective rehearsals for each play over the Zoom conference call app.
Rory Mulvihill experiments with recording the role of Satan in the shower of his Naburn home, by torchlight, with the script stuck to the wall
Among the cast are Rory Mulvihill and Rosy Rowley, Rory reprising his role as Satan from the York Millennium Mystery Plays in York Minster in 2000, this time in Adam And Eve; Rosy returning to Mrs Noah in The Flood, a role she first played in the 2012 York Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens.
Rory experimented with recording in his shower as his sound booth in his Naburn home. “I Blu-Tacked my script on the wall and had to use torchlight because I couldn’t have the extractor fan on, but when Juliet heard the recordings, she said it was a tinny noise, so she rejected them!
“I had to do them at my desk in the end, with Julia saying it didn’t matter if there was birdsong!”
“Choosing the right time and location for the recordings was a challenge,” says Rosy. “Living in a busy street and having teenagers in my house, I ended up rehearsing in the garden shed and having to record at two in the morning in my bedroom in the attic.
“It was lonely having to record on your own with no voice to respond to, so you had to imagine how someone would have said a line.”
Hear the results from June 7. Note that in addition to the broadcasts on Jonathan Cowap’s Sunday show, the radio plays can be heard on BBC Sounds at bbc.co.uk/sounds.
The directory for the Covid-cancelled 2020 York Open Studios
YORK printmaker Jane Duke and ceramicist Beccy Ridsdel are organising a £10,000 fundraising campaign to boost the “big challenge” of bringing back York Open Studios in 2021.
“Are you a fan of York Open Studios?” they ask. “Cancelling this year had a huge effect on our finances, so we’ve started a GoFundMe to help us make next year brilliant! If you could donate, even a small amount, it would make a huge difference to us and all of our artists.”
Doors shut by the Covid-19 lockdown, York Open Studios 2020 was to have featured 144 artists and craft makers at 100 studios and workshops on two April weekends.
Jane and Beccy say: “In 2020, the timing of the Coronavirus lockdown meant the event was cancelled at less than a month’s notice, by which time the entire year’s budget had already been invested in marketing and publicity.
York printmaker Jane Duke, co-organiser of the Go Fund Me campaign for the 2021 York Open Studios
“With virtually no income from sales commission, and having refunded or credited artists and advertisers, the volunteer committee now face a huge challenge in bringing York Open Studios back in 2021. We need your help.”
The organisers continue: “If you are a regular visitor, we would like you to consider donating the money you would perhaps have spent on petrol or fares coming to see us this year.
“If you have never been but would still like to support the art community, we would very much welcome your donation.”
York Open Studios is run by volunteers and is entirely self-funded, paying for itself by commission on sales, entry fees from artists and the sale of advertising space in the printed directory.
York ceramicist Beccy Ridsdel, co-organiser of the Go Fund Me campaign for the 2021 York Open Studios
In 2019, nearly 49,000 individual visits were recorded at the annual event, a highlight of the York art calendar that is completely free to attend.
“We will be here in 2021 celebrating our 20th anniversary,” say Jane and Beccy. “Many of our artists already have pledged to return, but your support now will help us ensure the festival is as bright, full and visible as ever.
“Your money will be used to promote and publicise the event and to produce printed maps, guides and signage, so visitors can plan their weekends and find our artists. We are already preparing York Open Studios 2021 and by donating now you can help us to move forward with confidence. Thank you!”
Wanja Kimani’s lockdown film Butterfly: Inspired by the daily family walk
WANJA Kimani’s Butterfly, a new film inspired by the everyday pleasures of a daily family walk, will be released on June 2 as the latest digital commission in lockdown from Scarborough Art Gallery.
Butterfly is filmed from the perspective of two children adjusting to life during the Coronavirus lockdown and collects encounters from their walks, when they appreciate nature and music in particular.
Suitable for all ages, Kimani’s six-minute film can be seen on Scarborough Museums Trust’s YouTube channel, https://bit.ly/SMTbutterfly, from next Tuesday morning.
One of Butterfly’s highlights will be a performance of Over The Rainbow, from The Wizard Of Oz, played on violin, piano and accordion by two music teachers from their doorstep.
A still from Wanja KImani’s film Butterfly, released on June 2
Kimani, who lives in Cambridgeshire, says: “We heard beautiful music coming from the house one day and put a note on the door to ask if we could film the following day.
“It’s not something we would usually have heard: all of these things are coming together because we’re all forced to be at home.”
Kimani asks both herself and the viewer: “What can we learn from listening even closer to our natural world, which seems to be revelling in our absence? How can the small but magnified details of our journey change how we engage when all of this is over?
“In this digital commission, I am exploring objects from the natural world through the eyes of children, who instinctively collect and curate everyday objects simply by noticing them.
“What can we learn from listening even closer to our natural world, which seems to be revelling in our absence?” ponders Wanja Kimani in Butterfly
“The title, Butterfly, sums up spring for me: a sign of new life, light and a reminder that things are working even when we don’t see them. It’s something that my youngest has just learned how to draw and is so proud of it.”
Scarborough Museums Trust wants Butterflyto be accessible to everyone. Consequently, the film includes audio description and captioning, for those who might find this helpful. A transcript is available to download too.
Kimani says: “Thinking about how this work will be accessed has made me pause and reflect on how the tools I use can be used to enrich the experience of diverse viewers. It made me consider how my work may be viewed and what different audiences may need to engage with the work.
“By embedding access in the process, the work has allowed me to experiment with how different senses engage with work, with the second part of the work attempting to level out the point of entry.”
“Butterfly is something that my youngest has just learned how to draw and is so proud of it,” says filmmaker Wanja KImani
Through film, textiles and installation, Kimani’s repertoire of work “explores memory, trauma and the fluidity within social structures that are designed to care and protect but have the potential to mutate into coercive forces within society”.
She imposes elements of her own life into public spaces, creating a personal narrative where she is both author and character. In 2018, her performance piece Expectations was included in the Laboratoire Agit’Art presentation during the Dak’Art Biennale of Contemporary African Art in Dakar, Senegal.
In 2019, she presented her work at Art Dubai and as part of a group show, Yesterday Is Today’s Memory, at Espace Commines, in Paris, France.
The digital commission series forms part of Scarborough Museums Trust’s response to the Corona crisis, asking Kimani, Kirsty Harris, Jane Poulton, Feral Practice, Jade Montserrat, Lucy Carruthers and Estabrak to create digital artworks for release online across assorted social-media platforms over the next few months.
Rory Mulvihill as Fagin and Jonny Holbek as Bill Sikes in York Light Opera Company’s February production of Oliver! at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Tom Arber
AFTER 60 unbroken years, York Light Opera Company will NOT perform at York Theatre Royal in 2021.
The decision has been taken in response to the ongoing uncertainty surrounding when, how and in what form theatres will re-open as the Government conducts a phased easing of Covid-19 lockdown measures, with theatres expected to be at the back of the queue.
“We said, ‘let’s just bite the bullet’ and so we’ve scrapped our February 2021 show,” says leading player Rory Mulvihill, a York Light member for more than 35 years. “Given the present situation surrounding theatres, I’d be very surprised if we weren’t vindicated.”
Reviewing the situation: “We said, ‘let’s just bite the bullet’,” says Rory Mulvihill after York Light decided the show must not go on in 2021 in these Covid-19 times. Picture: Anthony Robling
Rory led the York Light cast as light-fingered gang boss Fagin in the late-February 2020 production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver!. “We’re celebrating 60 consecutive years at the Theatre Royal this year and we were able to do that show, when this [Coronavirus] tsunami was coming but was still on the horizon,” he says.
York Light’s next show, Ali Kirkham’s June production of Kander and Ebb’s Chicago at Theatre @41 Monkgate, has been “cancelled until further notice”.
Alan Ayckbourn and Heather Stoney in their Scarborough garden. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
Review: Alan Ayckbourn’s Anno Domino, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, online at sjt.uk.com until 12 noon on June 25.
HERE is a sentence your reviewer never thought he would write. 81-year-old Alan Ayckbourn is playing an 18 year old in his new audio play.
Such is the impact of life in lockdown limbo, when the Corona crisis put paid to this summer’s Stephen Joseph Theatre premiere of the director emeritus’s 83rd play, Truth Will Out.
As chance would have it, that now mothballed play portends the impact of another type of virus, “a virulent computer virus that brings the country to a standstill, in a doomsday scenario piece, perhaps not too cheering in these darker days,” as Ayckbourn reflected.
“Still, I nearly predicted it correctly – I just got the wrong virus,” he said. Ayckbourn and SJT artistic director Paul Robinson promptly hatched a plan for an alternative AA premiere, one that could be recorded at home and aired exclusively on the Scarborough theatre’s website for free.
Former radio producer Ayckbourn duly unlocked a shelved piece of writing from its own lockdown for a new lease of life as the equivalent of a radio drama that marks the first time he has written, directed and performed in one of his plays. Not to mention parade his foley artist skills for sound effects, Anno Domino rose-pruning secateurs et al.
Heather Stoney and Alan Ayckbourn in Two For The Seesaw at Rotherham Civic Theatre in 1964
Ayckbourn last appeared on a professional cast list in the 1964 Rotherham Civic Theatre programme for Two For The Seesaw. Sharing the stage in William Gibson’s American two-hander was Heather Stoney. “We were both totally unsuitable,” he recalled of taking on roles broken in by Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft.
Still in his twenties, Ayckbourn played a middle-aged Nebraskan businessman; Stoney, a young Jewish dancer from the Bronx. Fifty-six years since that exit stage left, Ayckbourn now plays four characters ranging in age from 18 to mid-70s, and so too does Stoney, his wife.
Billed by Ayckbourn as “altogether lighter and more optimistic” than Truth Will Out but still with “dark corners”, and introduced on the audio recording by Robinson as “huge fun”, Anno Domino charts the break-up of a long-established marriage and the domino effect that has on family and friends.
“The inspiration came from the idea that all relationships ultimately, however resilient they appear to be, are built on sand!” says Ayckbourn, from the land of sand, Scarborough. “And it only takes one couple to break up abruptly to take us all by surprise, then all of a sudden everyone is questioning their own unshakeable relationship.”
He divides Anno Domino into two acts, the 56-minute Preparations and 48-minute Repercussions. Those Preparations are for successful West Sussex architect Sam and reasonably successful lawyer Milly Martin’s silver wedding anniversary party, where we learn they will be making a big revelation.
The Stephen Joseph Theatre artwork for Alan Ayckbourn’s audio play Anno Domino
At the hotel party will be Sam’s parents, gruff retired criminal lawyer Ben, set in his wary ways, prone to forgetting to put on his trousers these days, “staggering on to the finishing line” with his brusque wife Ella, the play’s “darkest corner”.
There too will be Ben and Ella’s daughter Martha, a nursery-school teacher blighted by phobias and a troubled past, now six weeks into her relationship with garage mechanic Craig, a dour, kind-hearted Yorkshireman from Heckmondwike, after depressing “waste of space” poet Sefton left her.
Martha’s taciturn teen son Raymond, or Raz as he insists on being called, will eventually turn up too to, phone in hand, cheeky eye on young waitress Cinny.
The big revelation – the break-up announcement, brought on by boredom with each other – triggers the Repercussions of Act 2, where the dark corners are ultimately turned..
The best scenes, in interchanges with advice-seeking, out-of-his-depth Craig and later Martha, centre on the domineering, blinkered Ella, Ayckbourn once more writing so brilliantly for his female characters, recalling Woman In Mind. “Because I know men,” says Ella, who has the dismissive manner of a Lady Bracknell, when in fact she does not know men at all.
The poster artwork for Alan Ayckbourn’s virus play Truth Will Out, the SJT summer production scuppered by the Covid-19 pandemic strictures
Ayckbourn, in that playing-things-down way of his, described making the play with Stoney as “just mucking about in our sitting room”, but it is an utter joy to hear them performing and, more to the point, performing together, with their natural chemistry, moving from voice to voice, the recording given a final mix of pleasing clarity by Paul Steer. There is pleasure too in visualising the characters from those voices.
Ayckbourn’s tone may be “lighter”, from an S&M/M&S in-joke with the listener to the pronunciation of fuchsia, but the barb is still there too with digs at cynical, untrustworthy, ruthless, amoral lawyers and an authorial comment on the negative perception of “light on their feet” people in the arts. Yet again, he has found more to say about love too.
“Ah well, life goes on, I suppose, life goes on, doesn’t it,” says Ben, at the play’s close. It does indeed, and there may yet be life anew for Truth Will Out.
“I do hope it won’t get lost or forgotten,” said Ayckbourn in last week’s interview. “The SJT have agreed that this was merely a postponement. Shame to lose it as it’s a lot of fun. Watch this space, as they say.”
In the meantime, tune in to Anno Domino, an Ayckbourn rose in full bloom but with very prickly thorns too.
A rehearsal on Zoom for the York Radio Mystery Plays
YORK Theatre Royal and BBC Radio York are collaborating in lockdown to bring the York Mystery Plays to life on the airwaves next month.
Four instalments will be presented as audio versions on the Sunday Breakfast Show with Jonathan Cowap on successive weekends from June 7, the Sunday before Corpus Christi Day on June 11: the day since mediaeval times when the plays were performed on wagons on the city streets from dawn until dusk.
Working remotely from home, a cast of 19 community and professional actors has recorded the instalments, Adam And Eve, The Flood Part 1, The Flood Part 2 and Moses And Pharaoh, under the direction of Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster.
Juliet, incidentally, previously co-directed Anthony Minghella’s Two Planks And A Passion at the Theatre Royal in July 2011, a play set around a performance of the York Mystery Plays on Corpus Christi Day in midsummer 1392.
She and husband Kelvin Goodspeed have adapted Mystery Play texts for the radio series, drawing on material dating back to the 1300s first resurrected after a long, long hiatus for the Festival of Britain in 1951.
Ed Beesley, who would have been working on Juliet’s postponed production of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, has provided composition, sound design and foley artist effects.
Juliet Forster: York Theatre Royal associate director and director of the York Radio Mystery Plays
Madeleine Hudson, musical director of the York Theatre Royal Choir, has given the choir and cast songs to perform.
“The York Mystery Plays are part of the DNA of this city,” says Juliet. “They belong to the people of York and have brought people together to create, perform, watch, laugh and cry since the 14th century.
“The longevity of these potent plays clearly demonstrates how vital the collective act of storytelling is and has always been to human beings, and how much we need to explore and reflect together on our experiences and understanding of the world.
“We’re determined to keep doing this in spite of the Coronavirus lockdown. So, these plays seem exactly the right choice to pick up, find a new way to create, communicate afresh and encourage one another with.”
Under the partnership between the Theatre Royal and BBC Radio York, the sourcing of the scripts, recruitment of actors and provision of music has been done by the theatre.
In keeping with the social-distancing rules, the production required the actors to record their lines on a smart phone from home, having done collective rehearsals for each play over the Zoom conference call app.
Juliet then selected the recordings to be sent to BBC Radio York sound engineer Martin Grant for mixing and splicing together into finished crafted instalments.
BBC Radio York’s acting editor, Anna Evans, says: “It’s a privilege to work with York Theatre Royal and members of the city’s community to retain the tradition of the York Mystery Plays. During such uncertain times, it’s important that we can help maintain this cultural experience in a different way and I am so proud of what the teams have achieved in such difficult times.”
The York Radio Mystery Plays form part of York Theatre Royal’s Collective Acts, a programme of “creative community engagement” taking place while the St Leonard’s Place building is closed under the Covid-19 strictures.
Special thanks are extended to the York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust and the Guild of Media Arts for supporting this project.
In addition to the broadcasts on Jonathan Cowap’s Sunday show, the York Radio Mystery Plays can be heard on BBC Sounds at bbc.co.uk/sounds.
Christie Barnes recording her part as Angel in Adam And Eve
The cast for Adam And Eve is:
God: Paul Stonehouse
Eve: Taj Atwal
Adam: Kane Hutchinson
Satan: Rory Mulvihill
Angel: Christie Barnes
The Flood Parts 1 & 2:
God: Paul Stonehouse
Noah: Mark Holgate
Noah’s wife: Rosy Rowley
1st Son: Joe Feeney
2nd Son: Stan Gaskell
3rd Son: Matthew Dangerfield
1st Daughter: Charlotte Wood
2nd Daughter: Fiona Baistow
3rd Daughter: Taj Atwal
Moses And Pharaoh:
Pharaoh: Paul Mason
1st Counsellor: Maurice Crichton
2nd Counsellor: Claire Norman
Moses: Andrew Squires
God: Paul Stonehouse
1st Youth: Christie Barnes
2nd Youth: Oliver Joseph Brooke
1st Egyptian: Matt Simpson
2nd Egyptian: Rachel Price
Rory Mulvihill experiments with recording his role as Satan in his shower cubicle by torchlight with his script stuck to the wall
Actors
Paul Stonehouse (God): Credits include Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, Blenheim Palace.
Rory Mulvihill (Satan): Credits include many leading roles for York Light Opera Company in more than 35 years as a member; a long association as a performer in the York Cycle of Mystery Plays; York Theatre Royal community productions including Two Planks And A Passion, In Fog And Falling Snow and Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes.
Christie Barnes (Angel): A core member of Out Of Character Theatre Company. Recently performed in Less Than Human and A View From The Bridge at York Theatre Royal, directed by Juliet Forster.
Andrew Squires (Moses). Actor and musician based in York, recently at York Theatre Royal in A View From The Bridge. Other theatre credits include: Uneasy Dreamers at Greenwich Theatre, Mr Brown’s Directions at Burton Constable, Time Out Of Mind at Greenwich Theatre, Democracy Of Oaks at The Fan Museum, London.
Mark Holgate (Noah). Credits include Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, York
Rosy Rowley (Noah’s wife). Reprising the role of Noah’s Wife from the 2012 production of the York Mystery Plays. Other credits include Blood + Chocolate, In Fog And Falling Snow, Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes,York Theatre Royal.
Joe Feeney (1st Son). Credits include Heaven’s Gate, Cosmic Collective Theatre.
Charlotte Wood (1st Daughter). Credits include For the Fallen, Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes, In Fog And Falling Snow, York Theatre Royal; Kiss Me Kate, Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company.
Maurice Crichton (1st Councillor). Came to York as a student, qualifying as a solicitor in the city. He has been performing in amateur productions here for ten years, mostly with York Shakespeare Project and York Settlement Community Players.
He has strong links with the York Mystery Plays and played Pilate in The York Mystery Plays, 2012, Herod in York Minster Mystery Plays, 2016, and Soldier 1 in The Crucifixion on the Butchers’ wagon in 2018. He is secretary of the York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust.
Author Saviour Pirotta. Online story creation adventure. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
THE Stephen Joseph Theatre and the National Literacy Trust are calling on young writers across North Yorkshire to tell Your Stories.
Children’s author Saviour Pirotta, actor and poet Nadia Emam and illustrator Simon Whittaker are on the team for this new project: an online story creation adventure for five to 12 year olds.
For six weeks from Monday, June 1, daily content will be released via the National Literacy Trust’s local Facebook page to encourage creativity through story creation and reading for young people along the North Yorkshire coast.
This will include exercises on how to create characters and settings, such as storytelling bingo, role-playing, drawing comic strips and sound recording, and using all kinds of everyday things to create the adventure.
There will be short vlogs from Saviour Pirotta, writer of children’s novels The Orchard Book Of First Greek Myths, The Ancient Greek Mysteries Series and The Unicorn Prince, and Nadia Emam, who has worked extensively at the SJT and with Slung Low Theatre Company, including playing Gloriana in the BBC’s televised version of the Leeds company’s Flood: Part 2.
The pair also will give dramatic readings of some of the submitted stories and recommended books in the form of accessible e-books and audiobooks.
Nadia Emam: Dramatic readings
At the end of each week, illustrator Simon Whittaker, from House Of Deadleg, will create drawings based on stories submitted. He also will give video tutorials on creating illustrations.
The SJT’s associate director, Chelsey Gillard, says: “Participants can choose to engage every day, or just dip in and out as they like. By the end of the six weeks, they will have all they need to create an exciting adventure set in their hometown.
“Our artist will create illustrations of the characters and settings of the stories, as well as drawing elements from them to create one brilliant mega story curated by Saviour Pirotta.”
Liz Dyer, Our Stories manager, says: “We can’t wait to hear your stories. We’re thrilled to be partnering with the Stephen Joseph Theatre on this project. Having the tools to tell your own story builds confidence in young people that supports them at school, at home and in the future.”
