Rosamund Pike as pioneering Polish scientist Marie Curie in Radioactive
CITY Screen, York, will mark International Women’s Day on
March 8 with an exclusive Picturehouse preview of Radioactive, the biopic of pioneering
Polish scientist Marie Curie starring Rosamund Pike.
Marie discovered the radioactive elements radium and
polonium. Working with her husband, Pierre Curie (played by Sam Riley), she was
the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and would become the only person to
receive two.
Throughout her life, Marie showed a steely reserve in the
face of xenophobia and institutional hostility, but her discoveries and legacy
came at a price, not only for the woman herself but also for the world.
Next Sunday’s 1.30pm preview will be followed by a Q&A
with Rosamund Pike and director Marjane Satrapi, broadcast live from the Curzon
Mayfair, London.
On general release from March 20, Radioactive (12A) is based
on Lauren Redniss’s book Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale Of Love And
Fallout and is director Satrapi’s first film to be sourced from a graphic novel
not written by herself.
The Iranian-born director is best known for Persepolis, her 2008 film about her life in pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Iran and then in Europe. Based on her graphic novel of the same title, it traces Satrapi’s growth from child to rebellious, punk-loving teenager.
Tickets are available in person from the City Screen box office, in Coney Street, on 0871 902 5747 or at picturehouses.com/cinema/city-screen-picturehouse. Please note, the film screening will start promptly at 1.45pm.
Peppa Pig’s Best Day Ever is just around the corner. All pictures: Dan Tsantilis
PEPPA Pig is celebrating ten years of live shows with a new adventure,
Peppa Pig’s Best Day Ever!, visiting the Grand Opera House, York, on March
4 and 5.
Performances start at 1pm and 4pm on the first day; 10am and 1pm on the
second, and courtesy of the Cumberland Street theatre, CharlesHutchPress has
one family ticket (four seats) to be won for the 4pm Wednesday performance.
Based on the Entertainment One animated television series, this is Peppa
Pig’s sixth touring production, rooted as ever in songs, games and laughter as
Peppa and friends make a big splash when they jump in puddles.
Peppa Pig Live has been enjoyed by more than 1.5 million
people in Britain, playing eight consecutive West End seasons, as well as
touring the United States and Australia.
In the wake of directing and adapting the stage shows Peppa Pig’s
Adventure, Peppa Pig’s Party, Peppa Pig’s Treasure Hunt, Peppa Pig’s Big
Splash and Peppa Pig’s Surprise, Richard Lewis is doing likewise
for Peppa Pig’s Best Day Ever, working with BAFTA award-winning composer Mani
Svavarsson.
Family travels in Peppa Pig’s Best Day Ever!
Produced by children’s theatre team Fierylight, in tandem with eOne,
the new adventure finds Peppa Pig excited to be going on a special
day out with George, Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig.
Peppa’s best day ever will involve a road‐trip full of fun
adventures. From castles to caves, dragons to dinosaurs and ice‐creams to the muddy puddles, there will be something for all Peppa’s family and their
friends Mr Bull, Suzy Sheep, Gerald Giraffe and very busy newcomer Miss
Rabbit to enjoy.
Tickets are on sale on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
Competition question:
Who has written the music for Peppa Pig’s Best Day Ever!?
Send your answer with your name, address and daytime phone number, to charles.hutchinson104@gmail.com, marked
Peppa Pig Competition, by 1pm on Monday, March 2.
Let’s go.! Time to head out on Peppa Pig’s best day ever
Quickfire questions for Peppa Pig to answer as York beckons.
Are you excited about your road trip with your family and friends?
“Yes. Oink! Oink! Hee! Hee! Hee! I’m very excited to visit loads of
new places and I hope to make some more nice friends. I think it’s going to be
the best ever!”
What makes your best day
ever?
“Lots of adventure! I like it when we get to drive around in our
camper van and eat lots of ice cream and explore castles. And jump in muddy
puddles of course.”
What are you most looking
forward to on your road trip?
“Jumping in muddy puddles. Hee! Hee!”
Who is your favourite person
to travel with?
“My little brother, George. Oink! Oink! But he has to bring Mr Dinosaur
everywhere with him!”
Who else will join you at
the theatre?
“Mummy, Daddy, Mr Bull, Suzy Sheep, Gerald Giraffe and some of our
other friends. Even Miss Rabbit is coming. She is always so busy with all her
jobs, so it’s extra special she can come with us.”
Annie Donaghy, Big Ian Donaghy, Beth McCarthy, Heather Findlay and Jess Steel at A Night To Remember in 2019 at York Barbican. Picture: Karen Boyes
A NIGHT To Remember, tomorrow’s charity concert at York Barbican,
has sold out but any returned or cancelled tickets will go on sale this morning
from 10am.
Now in its eighth year, this annual fundraising event helps good
causes in the city to make a difference, as organiser and host Big Ian Donaghy
brings together “the finest musicians and singers for a gang show like no
other”.
Tomorrow
night, all the singers will perform as an ensemble exceeding its constituent
parts. “When you have a dream team on the stage, it seems a shame to not use
them, so everybody sings on everybody else’s songs,” reasons Big Ian.
Jess Steel: taking on “near-impossibly demanding songs” at York Barbican
A Night To Remember lets singers take on their favourite songs.
“Soulful Jess Steel will take on a Dusty Springfield classic, as well as other
near-impossibly demanding songs that she’ll deliver in the manner she’s now
well known for.
“Heather Findlay will bring her class into the mix, performing
two of her favourite songs,” says Big Ian.
Beth McCarthy, who made her debut at the Mount School when Big
Ian ran a School of Rock concert there, will be stepping out of her comfort
zone to rock the Barbican foundations.
Beth McCarthy: “Stepping out of her comfort zone to rock the Barbican foundations”
Annie Donaghy will put her spin on a George Michael classic on a
night when the set list will feature covers of Dusty Springfield, Shania Twain,
Simple Minds, Paul Simon, Michael Buble, Guns N’ Roses, Barbra Streisand, Peter
Gabriel, Elton John and Marvin Gaye classics, as well as a few surprises.
York singer Jessa Liversidge will lead her fully inclusive
Singing For All choir, a group with members aged up to 98, who will sing The
New Seekers’ I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing.
Among the men, Graham Hodge will “venture into very different
areas” as he celebrates his 70th birthday; gravel-voiced
Boss Caine, alias Dan Lucas, will tackle a country favourite that nobody would
ever guess; Hope & Social’s Gary Stewart will play the congas, as well as
singing a Paul Simon rouser.
Jessa Liversidge: bringing her Singing For All choir to York Barbican
The gig’s house band will be led by York music stalwart George
Hall, joined by powerhouse duo Rob Wilson and Simon Snaize on guitar duty.
“This year, the show has a bigger, brassier feel with a 12-piece
brass section, made up of Kempy, Pete, Stu and Chalky from my band Huge, being
joined by funk horns and brass players from York Music Forum, ranging in age
from 13 to 18, led by Ian Chalk,” says Big Ian.
He also
promises “ground-breaking, heart-warming and heart-breaking films” to raise
dementia awareness. “Watch out for surprise appearances, as previous years have
included messages from Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, The Hairy Bikers, Rick
Astley, Nick Knowles, Anton du Beke and Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson,” he says.
Oh, what A Night To Remember as singers and musicians gather at the finale of last year’s fund-raising concert at York Barbican. Picture: Ravage
“But the
real reason these musicians come together is to help St Leonard’s Hospice,
Dementia Projects in York, Bereaved Children Support York and Accessible Arts
& Media.”
Any
returned or cancelled tickets for tomorrow’s 7.30pm concert will be on sale on
0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or
in person from the Barbican box office.
Delta Saxophone Quartet: Friday night is Late Music night at the Unitarian Chapel
YORK Late Music’s 2020 season opens with
a trio of concerts next week, one on March 6, two on March 7, at the Unitarian
Chapel, St Saviourgate, York.
First up, at 7.30pm on the Friday, Delta
Saxophone Quartet celebrate the music of iconic composer Steve Martland alongside
new works by David Power and Steve Crowther in the first half.
The second half has four pieces from Project Flicks: silent film with live music featuring Frank Milward’s Brian And Banksy and David Lancaster’s Rendezvous.
Murphy McCaleb: tackling climate change in his Instruments Of Change concert
On the Saturday, York St John University senior lecturer in music Murphy McCaleb and his ensemble present Instruments Of Change, addressing the issue of climate change at 1pm.
Dr McCaleb is a bass trombonist and pianist who can turn his hands to classical, jazz, rock, pop, electronic and experimental music.
Later that day, singer Merit Ariane Stephanos’s 7.30pm concert tells the love story of the sun and the moon. Destined never to meet, their enigmatic relationship affects our lives deeply, rules our daily rhythms and fires up our imagination.
Merit Ariane Stephanos: singing songs to the sun and the moon
“The cycles of light and dark in which
they are intertwined create breath-taking displays,” says Merit, who will be
performing with Jon Banks on accordion, qanun and santur, Antonio Romero on percussion
and Baha Yetkin on oud.
“Punctuated with Shakespeare and anonymous quotes
and rhymes, our songs journey through musical styles, eras and languages,
illuminating each other in an ever-changing light.
Tickets on the door cost £5 for the lunchtime recital; £10, £8 concessions, for the evening concerts.
Awkward moment for Martin (Bryan Bounds) and son Billy (Will Fealy) in The Goat. Pictures: Matthew Kitchen
REVIEW: The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, Pick Me Up Theatre, John Cooper Studio, Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, dropping jaws until Saturday, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at pickmeuptheatre.com.
WELL, you won’t see a play like this every day, but I dare you still
to see it in Pick Me Up Theatre’s northern UK premiere.
Playwright Edward Albee, born in Virginia, but long associated
with New York after moving to Greenwich Village at 18, is best known for Who’s
Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?. The 1962 one, turned into a 1966 Mike Nichols film with
the almighty verbal scrap between Elizabeth Taylor’s Martha and Richard Burton’s
George.
Susannah Baines’s Stevie wonders what’s going on in The Goat
Albee wrote another play with a question mark in its title in
2002: The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? The American agent provocateur of theatre of
the absurd could pour 50 years of the even more absurd into it, but essentially
it is a further study of the marital complexities of a middle-aged
couple, in this case Martin and Stevie Gray.
Except that Albee’s Broadway premiere came with
a plea from the writer: “Imagine what you can’t imagine… imagine being in love
with something you can’t conceive of. The play is about love, loss, the limits
of our tolerance and who, indeed, we really are.”
And there was more: “All I ask of an audience
is that they leave their prejudices in the cloakroom and view the play objectively
and later – at home – imagine themselves as being in the predicament the play
examines and coming up with useful, if not necessarily comfortable, responses.”
Will Fealy as Billy: announcing a talent to watch as drama school beckons
Who could sense at the start what lies in store, how famous New York architect Martin Gray’s world would soon turn to rubble as the American Dream crumbles? Played by suave American actor Bryan Bounds, who recommended the play to director Mark Hird, Gray has just turned 50, won his latest prize and been given the ultimate commission to design the World City on Kansas’s wheat fields.
Hair immaculate, life immaculate, house
immaculate in its monochrome trendiness (in Robert Readman’s design), he says
he could not be more happily in love with wife Stevie (Susannah Baines). Son
Billy (Will Fealy) is blossoming at 17, brightly questing and gay (like Albee,
who knew it at 12 and a half).
Yet Martin seems distracted, playing at forgetfulness
in banter with Stevie, and what’s that smell, she asks. When he is even more
distracted while talking with best friend Ross (Mick Liversidge), fouling up a
TV interview recording, the truth will out. Martin has fallen in love with Sylvia,
a goat (hence the smell), and the feeling is mutual, and yes, without being
graphic, the relationship is full on.
MIck Liversidge’s Ross: asking the searching questions in The Goat
Greek tragedies dive deep into the extremes of
the human condition, as do plenty of Shakespeare’s plays, and, especially,
Jacobean tragedies. The Goat puts the ‘eek’ into a modern Greek tragedy,
although it is more of a tragicomedy. Yes, you read that right. There is a liquorice-dark
humour to Albee’s brilliantly written confessions and confrontations, as well
as moments that are excruciatingly uncomfortable, as The Goat turns from domestic
situation comedy to Domestos-powerful situation tragedy.
What’s more, Hird’s thrust-stage setting, with
the audience so close up on three sides, adds to that discomfort, and not because
Baines’s Stevie starts smashing all the living-room pottery (courtesy of Fangfoss
Pottery’s Gerry Grant). No, it is the fierce heat, the candour, of what is
being said. Hird’s cast avoids histrionics; instead the rise and fall and rise
again of anger, hurt, confusion, love, is far more skilfully played by one and
all, pulling the audience this way and that.
Bounds urged Hird to cast Baines, and he was spot-on:
his Martin is infuriatingly phlegmatic, unflustered; her Stevie is an ever-tightening
coil in response, whose actions will speak louder than his words.
The Gray family: all smiles before the Sylvia storm
Son Billy is caught in the middle, and Will
Fealy, such a burgeoning talent that he has just been offered an unconditional
place at Arts.Ed in London, conveys all the confusions of illusions being shattered,
certainties derailed, while dealing with his own sexual awakening.
Mick Liversidge’s bewildered, shocked Ross sort
of represents the audience in his reactions, or does he, because the moral
ambiguities are complex, and as Albee once said, “if you think this play
is about bestiality, you’re either an idiot or a Republican”. Trump that!
Albee also said: “Never leave the audience the same way you found them”, and 90 unbroken minutes of The Goat – apart from the smashed bowls and vases – will leave you pondering relationships, family, love. As for goats, I’ll stick to loving goats’ cheese.
Please
note: this play contains adult themes and strong language; suggested minimum
age of 15.
YORK artist Lesley Birch will exhibit at Glyndebourne, the Sussex opera house home to the Glyndebourne Festival, from May to December.
“I’m very proud to have been invited,” she says. “It’s a huge privilege
and rather daunting too. I’m working on pieces now.”
Lesley has been chosen for the Forces Of Nature exhibition of paintings,
prints and ceramics in Gallery 94, located by the stalls entrance to the auditorium at the country
house in Lewes, East Sussex.
Curated by Nerissa Taysom,
the exhibition was inspired by the
strong women on stage in this year’s upcoming six festival operas, so all ten
artists will be women.
Exhibiting alongside Lesley will be Michele Fletcher, Tanya Gomez, Rachel Gracey, Kathryn Johnson, Rosie Lascelles, Kathryn Maple, Tania Rutland, Katie Sollohub and Hannah Tounsend.
The Old Town, by Lesley Birch, part of her Marks & Moments exhibition at Partisan, York
Forces
Of Nature will explore how artists represent their feelings or memories of
natural phenomena, its forms and sounds, while questioning how we confront
nature in an age of climate change.
Lesley
works out of PICA Studios, the artist collective in Grape Lane, York, and in this
typically busy year, her new Marks & Moments paintings can be savoured at Partisan, the boho
restaurant, café and arts space in Micklegate, York, in a feast of colour and
imagination until March 31.
Filling two floors, more than 50 paintings are on view, ranging from
Lesley’s Musical Abstract Collection – large canvases expressing music and
movement in nature – to little gouache gems created en plein air in the remote
village of Farindola in Abruzzo, Italy.
“Partisan is a sort of emporium full of collectable stuff, such as vintage lamps and the like, and it’s so exciting to see my paintings in this bohemian setting, reflected off the old French mirrors and hung high and low,” says Lesley, whose works are divided into colour and spring moods upstairs and dramatic landscapes downstairs. All paintings are for sale.
Forces Of Nature at Glyndebourne: Artist open houses, Sunday, May 17, 10am to 1pm, open to the public; May 21 to December 13, festival and tour ticket holders only.
IN the week when Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s terrifying play Ghost
Stories will be spooking out the Grand Opera House, now there is to be even
more paranormal activity at the York theatre.
On March 12 and 13 at 10.30pm each night, Paranormal Research York (PRY)
will lead The Ghost Hunt in a theatre lit only by the emergency lighting
systems.
Those attending this after-dark theatre tour will be encouraged to
participate throughout the interactive event, where PRY will employ assorted traditional
methods, such as a human pendulum and divination activities, using crystals and
divining rods.
Ghost hunters: the calling card for Paranormal Research York
A variety of technical equipment will be on hand for guests to try out, such as a “stick
man” camera and gadgets that can detect spirit energies. In a nutshell, guests
can be “as involved as they dare to be”.
Paranormal Research York’s team of experienced and professional paranormal investigators
from York have come together to investigate predominantly in “Britain’s most
haunted city”.
Their work involves accessing a range of haunted locations in and around
York and then researching their findings to go with the legends.
Parallel paranormal activities: Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s play Ghost Stories will be scaring all and sundry at the Grand Opera House in the same week as the late-night ghost hunts
Looking forward to conducting The Ghost Hunt in a building built in 1868,
PRY’s Clare Bryant says: “We’re very excited to be hosting the first ever ghost
hunt at this amazing, historical building. From our first walk around at the
Grand Opera House, we could feel the spirits already coming forward.”
Kevin Spindloe, from PRY, adds: “Wow! Friday the 13th and we have the
privilege to be investigating here. It’s so active here and the spirits seem
keen to tell their own ghost stories. As a guest you can be involved in the
activities or just watch. Either way you will experience an event like no
other.”
The Ghost Hunt on Friday, March 13th has sold out – unlucky for some! – but tickets for March 12 and the Ghost Stories run from March 10 to 14 are on sale on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
The lecturer in Ghost Stories: “The supernatural is purely a trick of the mind,” he says…but is it?
THE Grand Opera House, York, already
has its own ghost, one said to call out the first name of a new member of staff
in the quiet of the auditorium on first acquaintance.
No doubt that will intrigue Professor
Goodman, ahead of the lecturer’s visit to the Cumberland Street theatre from
March 10 to 14 as the investigative fulcrum of writer-directors Andy Nyman and
Jeremy Dyson’s “supernatural sensation”, Ghost Stories, on its first national
tour.
On the road since January 7 after
completing its latest West End run at The Ambassadors Theatre, London, the
Lyric Hammersmith Theatre production should feel at home in York, the
self-proclaimed most haunted city in Europe.
What’s more, with the Grand Opera
House’s proximity to the York Dungeon, “York’s scariest tourist attraction”,
where better for Nyman and Dyson’s global hit to be spooking?
Premiered a decade ago and turned into
a film too, Ghost Stories invites its captive audience to “enter a nightmarish
world, full of thrilling twists and turns, where all your deepest fears and
most disturbing thoughts are imagined live on stage”.
Expect a “fully sensory and
electrifying encounter in the ultimate twisted love-letter to horror, a
supernatural edge-of-your-seat theatrical experience like no other”, as
Professor Goodman strives to prove the supernatural is “purely a trick of the
mind” in the face of three stories that beg to differ.
“Ghost Stories has never really gone
away, running in various incarnations since the original production a decade
ago, going into the West End, then Canada, Moscow,” says co-writer Jeremy
Dyson, best known for his work with those twisted humourists The League Of
Gentlemen.
“It was done in Russian in Russia but we
had to maintain that it was set in Britain because apparently no Russian is
afraid of a ghost.”
Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson: co-writers and directors of Ghost Stories
The latest British incarnation opened
at the Lyric Hammersmith last March, whereupon it was picked up by commercial
producers keen to take it on the road. “We’d always wanted to do that but never
been able to do so, even though we knew just how much people wanted to see it,
but we were told it ‘wasn’t tourable’.”
Until now, until Jon Bausor came up
with a design that could play both The Ambassadors Theatre and theatres around
the country.
“He’s made it possible to squash the
set into a van!” says Jeremy, who lives in Ilkley, by the way. “Each time we’ve
staged the play, we’ve been able to solve another problem, get rid of another
niggle, and finally we have the production that is totally to our satisfaction.
“The show’s been going down really well
on tour, and it will fit perfectly into York with all its ghost stories and the
York Dungeon opposite the Grand Opera House.”
Why are we so drawn to ghost stories,
Jeremy? “I think there are lots of reasons,” he says. “One of them is obvious: death
and the afterlife, which is a personal concern to all of us, and ghost stories
are a way to approach such an overwhelming concern.
“That’s particularly so in our
increasingly secular society, where there’s a hunger for the mysterious, the
uncanny, the inexplicable, which once upon a time would have come under the
auspices of the church and religion.
“That’s part of it, and also when it
comes to a show like Ghost Stories, there’s the entertainment and the thrill,
the fairground element.”
Nyman, London actor, director and
writer, and Dyson, screen and stage writer and author, have been friends for a
“very long time”. “Since we were teenagers, in fact,” says Jeremy. “We met when
we were 15 and one of the things we bonded over was horror movies at the dawn
of the video age, renting those films to watch them together.
The Caretaker: one of the three Ghost Stories to be told at the Grand Opera House, York
“We’ve had our individual careers and
we’d never thought of working together, but out of the blue Andy called me with
this idea of having three men sitting telling ghost stories after he saw The
Vagina Monologues [Eve Ensler’s show with three women telling stories].
“It was a very intriguing idea that was
enough to hook me straightaway, though we then veered away from that initial
construction over a long gestation period.
“Creating Ghost Stories was very much a
case of sitting in a room together, talking about it for a year, and then
getting together, bashing out the outline, working every day for a week, when
we pretty much hammered it out, because we’d been thinking about it for so
long.”
Ghost Stories has drawn comparisons
with Stephen Mallatratt’s stage adaptation of Susan Hill’s The Woman In Black,
premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 1987 and still running
in the West End, but Jeremy was keen that Ghost Stories should stand in its own
right.
“We wanted very much to create a theatre
experience that we hadn’t had before, in terms of being a very immersive piece
of theatre, and we also like the challenge of taking things that you’re
familiar thematically from horror films and seeing if we could transfer them to
the stage.”
A further element is at play in Ghost
Stories. “Andy and I both have a love of conjuring and magic; Andy has worked
with Derren Brown for 20, so we wanted to build that into the show’s
structure,” says Jeremy. “We wanted to look at how you can create a magical effect
with a combination of storytelling and technology, and that’s what we’ve
achieved.”
Ghost Stories promises “moments of extreme shock and tension” at the Grand Opera House, York, from March 10 to 14. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york. Unsuitable for anyone under 15 years old.
Matthew Kelly, left, and David Yelland in The Habit Of Art. Picture: Helen Maybanks
YORK Theatre Royal’s co-production of Alan Bennett’s comedy The Habit Of Art with the Original Theatre Company is heading to New York as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival.
Premiered in York in September 2018, Philip Franks’s show starring Matthew Kelly will be one of eight productions featured in 59E59 Theaters’ annual celebration of theatre from the UK.
Franks’s
production begins its
second British tour in March ahead of the American dates from May 29 to June 28
in one of 59E59 Theaters’ three off-Broadway spaces, having first toured Britain
in Autumn 2018.
The Habit Of Art director Philip Franks
Leeds playwright Bennett’s 2009 play imagines a meeting between friends and collaborators W.H. Auden, the York-born poet, and composer Benjamin Britten. Most of the original cast are in the latest production, including Kelly, David Yelland and Yorkshire actor Benjamin Chandler, who made his York Theatre Royal debut in the 2018 company.
Kelly says: “I’ve done Brits on
Broadway before in [Hull playwright] Richard Bean’s play Toast, which is very
different to The Habit Of Art. But Americans are going to love Alan Bennett
because they think they’re going to see something very British.”
John Wark, left, and Ben Chandler in The Habit Of Art. Picture: Helen Maybanks
Director Franks adds: “New York is the
most wonderful city but there’s a huge challenge because it’s such an English
play. I hope very much audiences will respond.”
The 2020 production of The Habit Of Art is produced by the Original Theatre Company and Anthology with Peter Stickney and York Theatre Royal.
Franks last directed in York in Summer 2019 when his Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre production of The Tempest ran at the Elizabethan pop-up theatre on the Castle car park.
REVIEW: Crongton Knights, Pilot Theatre, York Theatre Royal,
until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
EVER since Lord Of The Flies, York Theatre Royal resident
company Pilot Theatre have made theatre that speaks directly to young
audiences.
Now, Pilot are in the second year of a four-year creative
partnership with Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre, Derby Theatre and the Theatre
Royal, their reach spreading ever wider.
Last year’s gripping adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s radical Noughts & Crosses is followed up by another topical story, Emteaz Hussain’s stage account of Crongton Knights, a young adult novel by Brixton Bard Alex Wheatle, a London writer of Jamaican parentage.
Co-directed by Corey Campbell, artistic director of Strictly Arts Theatre Company, and Pilot artistic director Esther Richardson, it is a play with music, not a musical, but has the punch of West Side Story, the exhilarating beatbox and vocal score by Conrad Murray setting the story’s pulsating rhythm.
The Crongton Knights of the title are the self-styled
Magnificent Six, caught up at a young age in the gangland turf wars of the
Crongton Estate, divided into “North Crong” and “South Crong”, their homestead.
Into the dangerous Notre Dame estate they venture on a teen
quest, a mission to rescue the mobile phone of Venetia (Aimee Powell, the
show’s best singer), in the possession of her ex-boyfriend with incriminating
photographs she needs to erase.
Leading them is big-hearted McKay (Olisa Odele); alongside are
Jonah (Khai Shaw), Bit (Zak Douglas), Saira (Nigar Yeva) and, along for the
ride, and desperate to be their lookout, Bushkid (Kate Donnachie), on her bike.
What follows is a story of “lessons learned the hard way” at
the hands of those more experienced, more streetwise, more ruthless, more desperate,
as represented by Simi Egbejumi-David’s ensemble roles.
In Wheatle’s words, the Magnificent Six must “confront debt,
poverty, blackmail, loss, fear, the trauma of a flight from a foreign land and
the omnipresent threat of gangland violence”, but the tone is not suffocatingly
grim. Even in a world stacked against teens, there is hope; there is
positivity; above all there is the bond of friendship.
Pilot’s press release talked of a madcap adventure, and Simon Kenny’s graffiti-painted, rainbow-coloured, scaffolded set design plays to that spirit, especially when garage lock-up doors open up to show the Magnificent Six running in slow motion. Imagine a cartoon crossed with the black comedy drama of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting.
Not all the dialogue is as clear as it could be, and nor is the story’s passage, but the highly energised performances, especially by Odele and Powell, are terrific, and special praise goes to Dale Mathurin for stepping into the role of Nesta with only two hot-housed days of rehearsals.
Richard G Jones’s lighting and Adam P McCready’s sound
design are important too, both complementing the urban wasteland of troubled
teens trying to find their place when so much is barren.
