YORK Theatre Royal is cancelling all
public performances and events until April 11 after Prime Minister Boris
Johnson’s Coronavirus briefing on avoiding unnecessary social contact.
Ticket holders are being asked to consider donating the price of their tickets to the theatre, Britain’s oldest playhouse outside London.
Shows at theatres nationwide have been cancelled in response to yesterday’s Government advice on the Coronavirus pandemic, asking the public not to go to theatres, pubs and clubs.
The Theatre Royal box office will be in touch with ticket holders for the next four weeks of performances, covering March 17 to April 11, and they are being requested not to contact the box office directly but wait to be called.
Executive director Tom Bird said: “The closure of theatres in the UK puts York Theatre Royal, along with hundreds of other theatres, into a critical situation. We are asking that people consider donating their ticket purchase to the theatre at this time. As a charity, their support is crucial to our survival.
“If they cannot do this, we’d ask that
they consider a credit to their account. If none of this is satisfactory, they
can choose a refund.”
York Theatre Royal further advises: “If
the closure period is extended, we will be in touch with bookers for future
performances in good time, and we’ll also post updates to our website and
social media channels.
“It’s with enormous sadness that we
take these measures, but the safety of our audiences, staff and community is of
utmost importance.
“We are looking at ways we can be of
use to the wider York community during this time. More details regarding these
plans will follow.”
The theatre building, in St Leonard’s
Place, is remaining open at present, including the café and box office.
POCKLINGTON Arts Centre is closing its doors to the public with effect from today in response to the Government’s Coronavirus measures, but vows to re-emerge “stronger and more vibrant than ever” in its 20th anniversary year.
A statement released by director Janet Farmer and venue manager James Duffy this morning said: “In the light of the Government’s latest advice for people to avoid non-essential contact, we have taken the decision to close PAC to the public as of today (Tuesday, March 17).
“The health and safety of our staff, visitors, artists and volunteers is of utmost importance to us and therefore we do not feel it is prudent to remain open to the public at this time.”
Their statement continues: “We don’t know yet how long this closure will last, but this will be at least until Easter 2020 [mid-April]. Further updates will be announced in due course.
“During this period, it is critical that we continue to support our staff, artists and creative partners. We will be working closely with our peers across the region and indeed the country, and we are determined that PAC will emerge from this challenge stronger and more vibrant than ever. We will be publishing more on this in the coming days.”
Anyone who has booked a ticket or is due to attend a public event at PAC will be contacted by the box-office team over the next few days to organise a refund and/or discuss the cancellation.
Robert Plant: booked to headline this summer’s Platform Festival with his new band Saving Grace
“Tickets can be refunded but we would ask you to consider supporting the
venue and artists by not accepting a refund, if you are able to afford to,” suggested
the statement. “We will of course try to reschedule events, but this may take
some time, so please bear with us in these very challenging times.”
Pocklington Arts Centre will be setting up a crowdfunding page later
this week. “We’ll publish details of this on our social media accounts,” said
Janet and James. “If you feel able to donate to this, your support would be
most welcome to help secure the long-term future of the venue.”
The statement concluded: “Please visit our social media channels and
website [pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk] for daily/weekly updates and as to when
PAC will reopen.
“Many thanks for your understanding. We very much appreciate your patience in
this unprecedented situation. Take care and keep safe.”
Pocklington Arts Centre’s spring and summer programme to mark the East
Yorkshire venue’s 20th anniversary was launched on March 6 with a
party night of New Orleans Mardi Gras jazz by the New York Brass Band.
Planned as the epicentre of the celebrations is the fifth Platform
Festival of music and comedy, hosted by PAC at The Old Station, with the
headline attraction of Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant’s new project, Saving
Grace, on July 10.
Full details can be found at platformfestival.net and
pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
HAS there ever been a more cynical, anti-arts, pro-insurance industry posh pals statement from Prime Minister Johnson than yesterday’s first Coronavirus daily briefing?
For one so notoriously careless with words, despite his love of a luxuriant lexicon, his careful avoidance of enforcing a shutdown of pubs, clubs, theatres etc, in favour of merely recommending “avoiding unnecessary social” interaction, effectively amounts to washing his and his Government’s hands of the future of one of the power houses of British life: the entertainment industry.
No formal closures means no chance of insurance pay-outs. In an already increasingly intolerant, Right-veering Britain, with its Brexit V-sign to Europe, could it be this is another way to try to suffocate and stifle our potent, provocative, influential, politically challenging, counter-thinking, all-embracing, anti-divisive, collective-spirited, often radical, always relevant, life-enriching, rather than rich-enriching, font of free expression, protest and empowerment?
Was this the day the music died?
History shows that the arts, the pubs, the theatres, the counter-culture, has always found a way to bite back, to fight back, often at times of greatest repression and depression. No Margaret Thatcher, no Specials’ Ghost Town.
We and our very necessary social interactions shall be back, hopefully after only a short break. Meanwhile, we are all in the hands of science, that equally progressive bedfellow to the arts.
The Joseph Rowntree Theatre: York’s Art Deco community theatre
THE Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, is closing until “further instruction that it is safe to re-open”, as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement issued late last night, chair of trustees Dan Shrimpton said: “Today (March 16), the Government announced that unnecessary social contact should be avoided, including visits to social venues such as theatres.
“The
safety of our community is paramount, and in light of this announcement, it is
with a heavy heart that we will be closing the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, until
we receive further instruction that it is safe to reopen.
“Needless
to say, this is desperately disappointing for the producing companies, our
audiences, volunteers, indeed everyone who forms part of the Joseph Rowntree Theatre’s
community.”
The statement on behalf of the Haxby Road theatre continued: “We will be issuing further advice in the coming days on how we are going to manage ticket refunds and exchanges. We appreciate that you will have questions about bookings and refunds; however, we would ask that you please bear with us and wait for us to contact you.
“Thank
you in advance for your support. We appreciate that this is a very worrying
time for everyone in our community.”
Among the upcoming shows in the diary at York’s community theatre are: York St John University MPS’s Guys And Dolls, March 19 to 21; The Bev Jones Music Company’s Guys And Dolls, March 25 to 28; Flying Ducks Youth Theatre’s Crush: The Musical, April 2 to 4; Jessa Liversidge’s Songbirds, April 5, and Rowntree Players’ premiere of Ian Donaghy’s The Missing Peace, April 17 and 18.
Lights out: Ellen Kent Company’s La Boheme at the Grand Opera House on Friday falls victim to Coronavirus social contact measures
THE Grand Opera House, York, is suspending all shows with immediate effect in light of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Coronavirus statement to “avoid unnecessary social contact”.
Mark Cornell, group chief executive officer of the Ambassador Theatre Group, the theatre’s owners, has issued a group-wide statement. “In response to the Prime Minister’s statement this evening, advising the UK public to avoid unnecessary social contact, including in theatres, we regret to inform you that shows in all Ambassador Theatre Group UK venues are temporarily suspended with immediate effect,” he said.
“We understand that this decision comes as a disappointment, and a massive inconvenience for those of you already on the way to a venue this evening, but ultimately we all want the same thing: the health and safety of our communities, and we believe this is the correct decision to make.”
Mr Cornell’s statement continued: “Given the current ambiguity and lack of clarity as to how long our theatres may be closed for, we hope to provide you with an update within the next 48 hours regarding the exchange of tickets. We will be consulting with industry bodies including the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre and the government over the immediate future.
“For now, we would like to thank you for your understanding and patience,
and to recognise the incredible efforts and support of producers, artists,
partners and customers over this difficult period.”
The Grand Opera House has no show tonight, but Round The Horne is in the diary for Wednesday; Psychic Sally, 10 Years And Counting for Thursday; Ellen Kent Company’s La Boheme for Friday and Madama Butterfly for Saturday, and the musical Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story for March 24 to 28.
Meanwhile, Tom Bird, executive director of York Theatre Royal, was holding a meeting this evening. A statement will follow.
Still on…then off: Jimmy Dalgleish as Tom, left, Olivia Caley as Hattie and Jack Hambleton asTom in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Tom’s Midnight Garden. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Tonight’s 7.30pm performance of Tom’s Midnight Garden at the John Cooper Studio, Theatre @41 Monkate, York IS going ahead, but Pick Me Up Theatre artistic director Robert Readman will call off this week’s run after that.
His Twitter statement at 6.38pm this evening read: “In light of the Government’s latest measures, we will be closing Tom’s Midnight Garden after tonight’s show. Do come if you have tix for another day and we will accommodate as many as possible. We are also sad to announce the postponement of Sondheim 90 and The Pirates Of Penzance. “
Sondheim 90: A Birthday Concert, in celebration of Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday was to have taken place on Sunday; Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates Of Penzance from April 17 to 25, both at 41 Monkgate.
The poster for Sheridan Smith’s return to playing Cilla Black, this time on tour in Cilla The Musical
SHERIDAN Smith will revisit
her portrayal of Cilla Black in Cilla The Musical at Leeds Grand Theatre from
November 9 to 21.
She first played the late Liverpool
pop star and television presenter in Jeff Pope’s award-winning ITV mini-series
Cilla in 2015.
The part was written for Smith originally for a stage show but was then transferred to television, whereupon her performance won her a 2015 National TV Award and TV Choice Award and she was nominated for a BAFTA and EMMY Award too.
Now, expecting a baby in May, 38-year-old Smith has agreed to step inside the role of Cilla once more in impresario Bill Kenwright’s stage production, penned again by Pope.
Sheridan Smith in the role of Cilla Black for ITV’s 2015 mini-series Cilla
Her past theatre credits include her first Olivier Award nomination for Little Shop Of Horrors at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, and her first Olivier Award and WhatsOnStage Award for playing Elle Woods in Legally Blonde The Musical.
Smith, from Epworth, near Doncaster, then won an Olivier Award and an Evening Standard Theatre Award for her role as Doris in Flare Path. Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at The Old Vic brought her another WhatsOnStage Best Actress Award and she enjoyed a celebrated run in the West End as Fanny Bryce in Funny Girl in 2018.
Cilla The Musical’s heart-warming musical adaptation of Pope’s television series first toured in 2017, when nominated for Best New Musical in the WhatsOnStage Awards.
Kara Lily Hayworth played Cilla after
ten rounds of auditions and a final four sing-off at The Cavern in Liverpool
for the tour that visited the Grand Opera House, York, in January 2018.
Kara Lily Hayworth played Cilla in the tour of Cilla The Musical that visited the Grand Opera House, York, in January 2018
Directed by Kenwright and Bob Tomson,
Pope’s story “follows the extraordinary life of an ordinary teenage girl from
Liverpool, Priscilla White, and her rocky, yet incredible, rise to fame”.
By the age of 25, she was recognised as
international singing star Cilla Black. By 30, she had become Britain’s
favourite television entertainer, leading to such series as Blind Date and Surprise Surprise.
The musical score features such Cilla landmarks as Anyone Who Had A Heart, Alfie and Something Tells Me.
Tickets are on sale on 0844 848 2700
or at leedsgrandtheatre.com.
Did you know?
JEFF Pope wrote the screenplays for Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman; Essex Boys; Philomenaand Stan & Ollie. His television work includes the BAFTA-winning ITV drama Mrs Biggs and Cilla, both starring Sheridan Smith.
THERE’S still life in the boyz! Boyzlife, the supergroup of Irish boy
band graduates Brian McFadden, from Westlife, and Boyzone’s Keith Duffy, will
play York Barbican on October 15.
Their live show is drawn from a joint back catalogue of 18 number one
singles, nine chart-topping albums and combined global record sales of 60
million. Expect to hear World Of Our Own, Mandy, Uptown Girl and Flying Without
Wings among many fan favourites.
First playing together in 2016, Boyzlife embarked on part one of their
2020 travels on February 1 at Hull Bonus Arena, selling more than 35,000
tickets for a 32-date tour that will run until March 28, with limited tickets
still available for Sheffield City Hall on March 24 (box office, 0114 2
789 789 or sheffieldcityhall.co.uk).
Part two of the tour is booked in for September 1 to November 1, taking in
further Yorkshire dates at Victoria Theatre, Halifax, on September 10, The
Dome, Doncaster, October 17, and Scarborough Spa, October 23.
McFadden, 39, featured on all Westlife’s number one singles and albums before
leaving in 2004, since when he has released five albums and 17 singles in a
solo career launched with the UK number one Real To Me in September 2004.
Duffy, 45,finished touring with Boyzone on October 25 last year
on their Thank You And Goodnight Tour after six UK number one singles and five
number one albums in a career where he also has branched out into acting in
Coronation Street, Broken Nation and Fair City.
York tickets go on sale from today on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office; Halifax, 01422 351158 or victoriatheatre.co.uk; Doncaster, 01302 370777 and 08442 770700 or dcit.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 821888 or scarbroughspa.co.uk.
Tom Tom club: Olivia Caley’s Hattie with the two Toms, Jimmy Dalgleish, left, and Jack Hambleton, in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Tom’s Midnight Garden. Pictures: Matthew Kitchen
REVIEW: Tom’s Midnight Garden, Pick Me Up Theatre, John Cooper Studio, Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568; at pickmeuptheatre.com or in person from York Gin, 12, Pavement, and York Theatre Royal box office
IT is grimly impossible not to see everything anew
in the context of the crippling Coronavirus.
Within moments of Tom’s Midnight Garden opening,
the word “quarantine” is mentioned, and audience members turn to each other – keeping
a certain distance, of course – in recognition of its heightened resonance.
Adapted for the stage by David Wood, the doyen of
such transitions from print to boards, Philippa Pearce’s beloved novel is a
testament to the power of imagination, perhaps the most precious gift of all in
childhood, but one that dims through experience as we age.
Right now, we might all wish that the clock could
strike 13 and take us to somewhere magical, as it does in Tom’s Midnight
Garden, although George Orwell’s opening line to 1984, where the clocks en
masse were doing exactly that, is contrastingly heavy with sinister
forewarnings.
Pick Me Up director-designer Robert Readman sets up
the black-box John Cooper Studio in a traverse configuration, the audience to
either side of a stage book-ended by a door and lonely Tom’s bedroom away from
home at one end and a door and bored brother Peter’s bedroom back home at the
other, where he is quarantined with measles.
The setting is the dull 1950s, when Tom (a role
shared by Pick Me Up debutant Jimmy Dalgleish, in action on press night, and
Jack Hambleton) is staying with his kindly Aunt Gwen (Maggie Smales) and
pipe-smoking, Daily Mail-reading Uncle Alan (Andrew Isherwood).
At Tom’s end too is the aforementioned grandfather clock,
with its figure of an angel and an inscription, Time No Longer, taken from the
Book of Revelation, Chapter 10, Verse 6, and still today the subject of much
conjecture as to its possible meaning.
Even within Tom’s Midnight Garden, it draws a
scoffing comment, but if instead it can been seen as advocating that the
limitations, the boundaries, of time be removed, rather than as the end of
time, then it becomes the doorway to limitless imagination.
Ed Atkin as Peter, left, Jimmy Dalgleish as Tom, Olivia Caley as Hatty, Jack Hambleton as Tom and Beryl Nairn as Aunt Grace in Tom’s Midnight Garden
On the John Cooper Studio’s mezzanine level are not
only the bedrooms but also passageways to either side (not ideal, alas, as
anyone moving above you on your side is out of sight, and Readman might need to
re-block those moments to facilitate seeing them better).
Musical director Tim Selman, meanwhile, is
positioned in clear view at his piano beside Atkin’s Peter. Behind him are
cellist Lucy McLuckie and violinist Robert Bates, and together they perform a second
string to Atkin’s bow: his newly composed score that accompanies scenes played
out in the midnight garden of the title.
Occasionally on first night, the beautiful music impacted
on the clarity of the dialogue but the sound balance can be remedied.
A chorus gathers, chiming the mantra “Time no longer”,
as if bringing the clock to speaking life. Each day, that clock is wound up fastidiously
by the mysterious Mrs Bartholomew (Beryl Nairn), so stern of face she unnerves Tom’s
aunt and uncle.
When it strikes 11, 12, 13, pyjama-clad,
inquisitive Tom leaves his bed, makes his way downstairs, across the hall and
out of the door into a magical garden, initially depicted as a bright light. A
garden that only he can enter. A Victorian garden, where he encounters Victorian
orphan Hattie (Olivia Caley), the joyless Aunt Grace (Beryl Nairn, part two),
Bible-reading gardener Abel (Isherwood, part two) and assorted playful Victorian
children.
The garden scenes are played out on the empty
expanse between the two doors. No flowers, no secret passageways, everything
left to our imagination, save for chairs and gathered, elasticated black and
white ribbon strands at all four corners through which cast members pass, not exactly
with the greatest of ease.
Decide for yourself what they symbolise; maybe the
erosion of time; maybe the imagination at work; maybe time travel; maybe they just
look aesthetically pretty, matching the black and white of Readman’s overall design.
Here, across the time divide, Tom and Hattie can see each other when others cannot see him, and time passes at a different rate for each of them. This is a place of mystery and magic, but something darker if Abel’s biblical bent is to be believed, as if Tom were as meddlesome as Shakespeare’s Puck or J M Barrie’s Peter Pan.
Although imaginative, neither Readman’s direction,
nor design, are as magical as his best work. Wood’s script, however, captures fully
Pearce’s possibilities of make-believe, drawing you deep into Tom and Hattie’s
world, where sweetness and sadness elide, brought to life so evocatively by the
outstanding Caley, Dalgleish, Atkin, Smales and Nairn and Isherwood at the
double.
From Strictly to Strictly Ballroom: Kevin Clifton in his dream role as Scott Hastings. Picture: Dave Hogan
KEVIN Clifton will still be in Strictly after all this year…and next
year too.
Not the 2020 series of Strictly Come Dancing, but the 2020/2021 UK and
Ireland tour of Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom The Musical, directed by
Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood, no less.
“Kevin from Grimsby”, 37, will play his dream role of Scott Hastings, with
Yorkshire dates in York, Hull, Sheffield and Bradford, after the 2018 Strictly
champion announced his exit last week from BBC One’s ballroom dance show,
ending seven seasons in annual pursuit
of the glitter ball trophy.
“I really can’t wait to don the golden jacket ,” says Kevin Clifton
Clifton is making a
full-time move into the world of musical theatre, kicking off with the musical
version of the 1992 Australian film that so inspired him in childhood days in
Grimsby.
“I’m
beyond excited to be finally fulfilling a lifelong ambition to play Scott
Hastings in Strictly Ballroom The Musical,” he says. “When I was ten
years old, I first watched the movie that would become my favourite film of all
time. This is my dream role.
“Plus, I
get to work with Craig Revel Horwood again. I really can’t wait to don
the golden jacket and waltz all over the UK from September this year in what’s
set to be an incredible show.”
Craig Revel Horwood: directing Kevin Clifton in Strictly Ballroom. Picture: Ray Burmiston
On tour
from September 26 to June 26 2021, Strictly Ballroom will visit the Grand Opera
House, York, from November 23 to 28, as well as Hull New Theatre, October 12 to
17; Sheffield Lyceum Theatre, April 12 to 17 2021, and Alhambra Theatre,
Bradford, May 31 to June 5 2021.
Clifton joined Strictly Come Dancing in 2013,
performing in the final five times, missing out only in 2017 and 2019, and was
crowned Strictly champion in 2018 with celebrity partner Stacey Dooley, the BBC
documentary filmmaker, presenter and journalist.
A former youth world number one and four-time British Latin Champion, Clifton has won international open titles all over the world. After making his West End musical theatre debut in 2010 in Dirty Dancing, he starred as Robbie Hart in The Wedding Singer at Wembley Troubadour Park Theatre and as rock demigod Stacie Jaxx in the satirical Eighties’ poodle-rock musical Rock Of Ages in the West End, a role that also brought him to Leeds Grand Theatre last August.
Kevin Clifton as Stacee Jaxx in Rock Of Ages at Leeds Grand Theatre in 2019
Clifton last performed at the Grand
Opera House, York, in the ballroom dance show Burn The Floor last May.
Strictly Ballroom The Musical tells the story of Scott Hastings, a talented, arrogant and rebellious young Aussie ballroom dancer. When his radical dance moves lead to him falling out of favour with the Australian Dance Federation, he finds himself dancing with Fran, a beginner with no moves at all.
Inspired
by one another, this unlikely pair gathers the courage to defy both convention
and family and discover that, to be winners, the steps don’t need to be
strictly ballroom.
Sam Lips as Scott Hastings and Gemma Sutton as Fran in the British premiere of Strictly Ballroom The Musical at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, in 2016/2017. Picture: Alastair Muir
Featuring a book by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, the show features a cast of 20 and combines such familiar numbers as Love Is In The Air, Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps and Time After Time with songs by Sia, David Foster and Eddie Perfect.
Strictly Ballroom began as an uplifting, courageous stage play that Luhrmann devised with a group of classmates at Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Art in Australia in 1984. Eight years later, he made his screen directorial debut with Strictly Ballroom as the first instalment in his Red Curtain Trilogy.
The film won three 1993 BAFTA awards and received a 1994 Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture. Strictly Ballroom The Musical had its world premiere at the Sydney Lyric Theatre in 2014, and the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, staged the first British production in December 2016 to January 2017.
Joanne Clifton, Kevin’s sister, as Janet Weiss in The Rocky Horror Show at the Grand Opera House, York, last June
Kevin is not the only member of the Clifton dancing family of Grimsby to have graduated from Strictly champion into musicals. Sister Joanne, 36, appeared at the Grand Opera House, York, as demure flapper girl Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie in February 2017; combustible Pittsburgh welder and dancer Alex Owens in Flashdance in November that year and prim and proper but very corruptible Janet Weiss in The Rocky Horror Show in June 2019.
York tickets are on sale on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york; Hull, 01482 300306 or hulltheatres.co.uk. Sheffield and Bradford tickets will be available soon.
Yotam Ottollenghi: letting the flavour flood out in his new book and York talk
CHEF, restaurateur and food writer Yotam
Ottolenghi will reflect on A Life In Flavour and provide cooking inspiration at
York Theatre Royal on September 17.
Ottolenghi, who is of Italian-Jewish
and German-Jewish descent, will discuss the tastes, ingredients and flavours
that excite him and how he has created a career from cooking.
In the 7.30pm event, coinciding with
the publication of his latest cookbook, Ottolenghi Flavour, he will “offer
unique insights into how flavour is dialled up and why it works, from basic
pairings fundamental to taste, to cooking methods that elevate ingredients to
great heights”.
Under discussion too will be his life
and career, from how his upbringing – he was born to a chemistry professor and high-school principal in West
Jerusalem – has
influenced his food, to opening six delis and restaurants in London.
Yotam Ottolenghi: “flavour-forward, vegetable-based recipes” in his September 3 book
Ottolenghi, 51, is chef-patron of the
Ottolenghi delis, NOPI and ROVI restaurants. He writes a weekly column in the
Guardian’s Feast magazine and a monthly column in The New Yorker and has
published the cookbooks Plenty and Plenty More, his collection of vegetarian
recipes; Ottolenghi: The Cookbook and Jerusalem, co-authored with Sami Tamimi; NOPI:
The Cookbook with Ramael Scully; Sweet, his baking and desserts collection with
Helen Goh, and Ottolenghi Simple, his 2018 award winner book with Tara Wigley
and Esme Howarth.
Ottolenghi’s appearance at York Theatre
Royal will come a fortnight after Penguin Books publish his new cookbook of “flavour-forward,
vegetable-based recipes”, Ottolenghi Flavour, wherein he and co-writer Ixta Belfrage break down the three factors
that create flavour.
Please note, there is the chance to buy a copy with your ticket (£15 and upwards) for this Penguin Live evening. Ottolenghi will conduct a book-signing session after the talk. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
