First Doncaster Racecourse, now The Piece Hall in Halifax as Shed Seven head outdoors for the summer
YORK’S Shed Seven will top an all-Yorkshire bill at The Piece Hall, Halifax, on June 26.
Joining the Sheds will be Leeds bands The Pigeon Detectives and The Wedding Present and Leeds United-supporting York group Skylights, plus the Brighton Beach DJs.
Tickets for this Futuresounds Events show will go on sale on Friday at 9am at lunatickets.co.uk, seetickets.com and gigantic.com.
This is the second outdoor show announcement by the Sheds in quick succession, after confirming they will be chasing winners as well as Chasing Rainbows at Doncaster Racecourse on August 15, when they play Live After Racing, under starter’s orders at 5.45pm.
“We’re doing this Piece Hall show partly because our 2018 gig at Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl went so well,” says Shed Seven lead singer Rick Witter, whose revived Britpoppers drew 8,000 that June day and now will perform in the 5,500-capacity square of the renovated 18th-century Halifax cloth hall that now houses history exhibits and independent shops, bars and restaurants.
The Sheds have just mounted their biggest ever Shedcember winter tour, chalking up their record run of 23 shows between November 21 and December 21, with Leeds First Direct Arena on December 7 at the epicentre.
“After we did the Shedcember gigs, we just fancied doing something similar to Castlefield Bowl this summer, but this time a Yorkshire gig,” says the Stockport-born Witter.
Stockport, Mr Witter?! “I know, but I consider myself a Yorkie now,” says Rick, who attended Huntington School in York.
David Gedge of The Wedding Present, part of the June 26 bill at The Piece Hall, Halifax
“I remember Embrace playing The Piece Hall [Elbow have done likewise], and it’s taken a few months to confirm our gig since we came up with the idea of playing there. We wanted to do an outdoor show, and to do it in such a salubrious setting will be a great buzz.”
As the Sheds look forward to their Halifax and Doncaster concerts, complemented by seven summer festival gigs, with two more to be added, Rick says: “It’s a weird one for us: as the Shedcember tour showed, it seems we’re more popular than ever now. It’s a strange phenomenon but long may it continue.
“Having a new album out [Instant Pleasures, released in November 2017], has definitely helped, because the shows aren’t just nostalgia now; there are new songs too.”
Given that fresh impetus, backed up by October 2019’s gold vinyl re-issue of the Sheds’ greatest hits compilation, Going For Gold, Rick says: “Now we need to do that again: write some more new songs, and as busy as everyone is doing their own thing, there might be room to meet up once a week.”
Definitely new this year will be Shed Seven’s first racecourse concert at Donny. “I went as a guest to see Kaiser Chiefs play at York Racecourse [July 22 2016], and it was a great day out. People love it because it’s a full day out with racing and music. Let’s feel the love that day as everyone makes a big day of it. We can’t wait.”
Tickets for Shed Seven’s Music Live performance at Donny are on sale at ticketmaster.co.uk, with more information available at doncaster-racecourse.co.uk. Gates will open at 11.15am for the 1.10pm racecard,
Jess Gardham: on the road from York to Pocklington Arts Centre for a Busking-in-the-Bar night
YORK blues and soul singer, songwriter,
musical actress and MasterChef semi-finalist Jess Gardham performs at Busking-in-the-Bar,
Pocklington Arts Centre’s free music night, on Friday night (January 17).
Jess, of South Bank, York, has toured Britain, Europe, the United States and Canada, supported KT Tunstall, Paul CarrackandMartin Simpson and played at festivals across Britain, not least PAC’s Platform Festival at The Old Station, Pocklington last summer.
In York, she has starred in three York Stage Musicals’ productions, playing “Motormouth” Maybelle in Hairspray in April 2015 and spiritualist Oda Mae Brown in Ghost The Musical and appearing in Rock Of Ages in April 2017.
“We’re delighted that Jess Gardham will play our first Busking-in-the-Bar event of 2020,” says Pocklington Arts Centre director Janet Farmer
“Busking-in-the-Bar is an opportunity for everyone to experience some fantastic free live music, from emerging local artists, all within the comfort of our intimate and luxurious bar,” says PAC director Janet Farmer.
“We were fortunate enough to have Jess Gardham open Platform Festival 2019 and she was sensational, so we’re delighted that Jess will play our first Busking-in-the-Bar event of 2020.
“There’s fantastic live music, a wide
range of drinks to choose from and it’s free entry: what a perfect start to the
weekend.”
On Friday, the bar opens at 7pm, the music starts at 8pm. For more details, call the box office on 01759 301547 or visit pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Pavel Kolesnikov, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, January 10
IT pays to invite big names. The Lyons was justifiably packed for this piano recital promoted by the British Music Society, which was built around two Beethoven sonatas. For anyone just returned from outer space, 2020 is set to be a big year for the great man, as we celebrate his 250th birthday.
Kolesnikov began, however, with a Chopin group, in which he probed the composer’s yearning for the Polish homeland he left at the age of 20, never to return. Rather than plunge straight into the tempestuous Fantasie-Impromptu, he opened with a minor-key nocturne not on the programme. It was magnetic. From then on his audience hung on his every note (some ill-timed, uncovered coughs apart).
Another nostalgic nocturne led into a passionate Third Scherzo in which drama took precedence over clarity. Nobody minded. By then we were in thrall to the seemingly effortless charisma of a man who never plays an unmusical note. Besides, there were always these inner voices that he kept bringing out of the texture.
At this point he allowed the first applause – we were desperate for the release. He then used Chopin’s so-called “Raindrop” prelude as his introduction to Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata, with barely a pause between the two (not such a bad idea when you consider that they are effectively in the same key, except that the former is major, the latter minor).
” It was thrilling for being so close to the edge,” says Martin Dreyer of Pavel Kolesnikov’s piano playing.
The opening movement was a little distorted by rubato. What followed was unexpected. I have never heard the Scherzo played so slowly and deliberately. By contrast, the finale could hardly have been speedier. It was thrilling for being so close to the edge.
The theme of night continued after the interval in pieces by Schumann, Debussy and Bartok. Kolesnikov brought an eerie edge to Schumann’s halting first Nachstück, elongating the many rests dotting its texture. Debussy’s fireworks (Feux d’artifice) were predictably more colourful, superbly varied, while Bartok’s trademark Night Music from his Outdoors suite chillingly evoked things that go bump in the night.
There was a dignified restraint to the opening movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Op 53, dedicated in 1804 to his erstwhile patron Count Waldstein, which lent its chorale a certain hauteur. The slow movement was less convincing. But the final rondo grew in excitement towards its closing prestissimo, with a riveting wealth of detail throughout.
At a mere 30 years old, Kolesnikov could be adorning our concert platforms for another half-century. Let us hope he can be lured back to York very soon.
Dame Berwick Kaler’s final wave at the end of his 40 years of pantomimes at York Theatre Royal on February 2 2019. All pictures: Anthony Robling
“Things have not gone well and it’s not the fault
of the cast. The sets do not do what the script requires.” Dame Berwick Kaler,
The Press, York, January 9.
IT should not have come to this, and yet it was
inevitable. Berwick Kaler told the full house on the last night of his 40-year
damehood on February 2 last year that he would be “back like a shot” if the
Theatre Royal came a’calling.
Now, in a move without consultation with those above him to match the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in the very same week, and always a law unto himself, he has used the pages of The Press newspaper to tell the Theatre Royal to “take me back”, backed by long-serving principal girl Suzy Cooper.
“I made the biggest mistake saying I
was going to retire,” said Dame Berwick. “I want to jump out of my suit and
perform.”
Let’s remember that the dame called
time; he was not pushed into retirement, and a 40th anniversary
show gave Britain’s longest-serving dame a right royal and loyal send-off in
The Grand Old Dame Of York.
The knives are out…but from Berwick Kaler and Suzy Cooper in The Press, and not A J Powell in Edward Scissorhands mode in Sleeping Beauty.
Fully fit after his double heart
bypass, Dame Berwick has “retired” but, unlike Elvis, not left the building, writing the script for
Sleeping Beauty and co-directing the show with Matt Aston, purveyor of the past
three rock’n’roll pantomimes at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall in Leeds.
Like the dame, many a boxer later
decides he has made a mistake by retiring, but then makes a bigger one by
returning, having lost his punch or, in Berwick’s case, his punchlines.
The splash story in The Press amounts
to an act of mutiny by Berwick Kaler and Suzy Cooper, openly taking on the
management and the board with a series of criticisms that have been refuted
swiftly by executive director Tom Bird. In doing so, they are in essence saying
“Back us or sack us” and calling on the public, “our audience”, to support
their case.
Berwick may have been in for a shock
when The Press’s invitation to Have Your Say on whether he should be back on
stage next winter evoked such responses as: “No. Big ego.” “Time for completely
new blood.” “Time to move on, Berwick”. “Definitely not.” “Stay retired
Berwick. The pantomime has run its course.” Or, in the words of Farmer Tom:
“Time to have a completely fresh start. The Kaler days were legendary but
they’re gone. New blood needed.”
What the Kaler-Cooper outburst has
done is bring the debate out into the open, just as was the intention of the
headline in the charleshutchpress.co.uk review:
“Sleeping Beauty awakes at York Theatre Royal but should Dame Berwick era
be put to bed?”
A picture of innocence: Suzy Cooper as the young Princess Beauty, with her cuddly toy, in Sleeping Beauty
At the request of the rest of the “Not
Famous But Famous Five in York”, David Leonard, Suzy Cooper, Martin Barrass and
AJ Powell, Berwick was taken on once more as writer and co-director, also
appearing in the brace of films and voicing, aptly, a skeleton. The effect,
however, was like Banquo’s Ghost haunting this halfway house of a show.
And now, within the bubble of self-preservation, Berwick wants to be back, Suzy wants him back. However, while a bad workman blames his tools, as the saying goes, this particular workman, Berwick, blamed someone else’s tools – the “cheap sets and cheap costumes” – for “things not going well” for Sleeping Beauty. It is true Anthony Lamble’s designs did not match the spectacular heights of predecessor Mark Walters, but that slur is a cheap, inaccurate shot, and although he is right that Sleeping Beauty’s failings are “not the fault of the cast”, what of his own tools as writer and co-director?
Berwick is deluded in believing the
script was not at fault either, and it is no secret that the new, experimental Aston-Kaler
directorial partnership did not gel, alas.
Where does York Theatre Royal go
next? Bird and board cannot answer only to the needs and wishes of Berwick,
Suzy and their “loyal audience”. There is a wider audience to consider; those
who do not go to a Dame Berwick pantomime, but would like to see in this new
decade with a new beginning for the Theatre Royal’s winter show.
In particular, a show for the next generation of theatre-goers, children, who are noticeably outnumbered by adults at the Kaler brand of chaotic meta-panto, in contrast to the audience profile of pantomimes across the country.
David Leonard as Evil Diva in Sleeping Beauty, but will the greatest villain in pantoland return to York Theatre Royal next winter?
The CharlesHutchPress review of Sleeping Beauty on December 12 ended by pondering the Theatre Royal’s vision for 2020. “Are the days of this brand of pantomime behind you?”, it asked, “because the patented but weary “same old rubbish” won’t suffice next year.
“This is no
laughing matter, and here are the options,” it went on. “Bring back Dame
Berwick full on, working from the inside, not the outside, with all that goes
with that; or freshen up the panto in a different way, or find a new vehicle to
utilise the talents of Leonard, Cooper, Barrass and Powell. Many a theatre has
moved on from pantomime, whether Leeds Playhouse, the Stephen Joseph Theatre or
Hull Truck, and still found a winter winner. We await the Bird call…”.
The future of the Kaler pantomime is uncertain, says Suzy, who
fears the axe, but the future of pantomime at York Theatre Royal is not
uncertain. Will the Theatre Royal “take Berwick back” into the panto fold on
stage? No. No player is bigger than the club, as the football world is fond of
saying, and to continue the football analogy, Berwick and Suzy have scored an own
goal in going to The Press.
If Berwick, now 73, really does want to “jump out of my suit and
perform”, then how about doing so in plays for the veteran stage of acting:
Lear in King Lear, Prospero in The Tempest or Sir in Ronald Harwood’s The
Dresser with Martin Barrass as his Norman?
Come early February, we shall know the answer to the pantomime conundrum. Is it too outrageous to suggest that if it came to a choice between who is now more invaluable to the Theatre Royal panto, it would be the villainous David Leonard, not the mutinous Dame Berwick?
Alex Hill, left, Beth Scott, Jami Richards and Laura Castle with £5 student tickets for Once The Musical at the Grand Opera House. Picture: David Harrison
THE Grand Opera House, York, is teaming up with City of York Council to offer anyone aged 26 and under £5 tickets for the Broadway and West End show Once The Musical.
Running from February 3 to 8, the show is based on the 2007 Irish indie hit film, telling the uplifting yet yearning story of two lost souls – a Dublin street busker and a Czech musician – who unexpectedly fall in love.
Charting their relationship across five short days, big changes happen to both of them in little ways in this romantic musical drama. Celebrated for its original score, including the Academy Award-winning song Falling Slowly, Once is a spell-binding story of hopes and dreams.
Directed by Peter Rowe, with musical direction by regular accomplice Ben Goddard, Once The Musical has embarked on its first major British tour after Broadway and West End productions, leading to a Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album, eight Tony Awards and an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music.
To book £5 tickets, go to atgtickets.com/sho…/once/grand-opera-house-york/ Code: ONCE5. Proof of age must be shown when collecting tickets.
The poster for next weekend’s Tadcaster soul night
SOUL At The Riley-Smith Hall, Tadcaster, returns by popular demand on
January 18 with the promise of floor-filling Northern Soul and Motown in the main
room.
“We’ve started to hold these nights every four months and they’re proving
quite popular,” says Ian Smith, from Harrogate and Ilkley Soul Clubs, who will
be among those spinning the discs next weekend.
“All the music is played on the original vinyl releases and the resident
DJs are well known on the county’s soul scene.”
Joining Smith will be Diane Layton, of Moortown and Haworth Soul Clubs, Andy
Carling, of Wetherby Engine Shed and Moortown Soul Club, and Keith Hudson, Smith’s
fellow DJ from Harrogate and Ilkley Soul Clubs.
“All four DJs have extensive record collections and will be playing
tunes specifically to get dancers on to the floor,” says Smith. “The Riley-Smith
Hall has an excellent sprung wooden floor and is perceived to be one of the
north’s top soul venues for dancers.”
Next weekend’s special guest will be radio presenter John Kane, who
hosts the Saturday evening Northern Soul show on BBC Radio Leeds and Radio
York. “John is very popular and is sure to attract a number of his local
listeners,” says Smith.
The Riley-Smith Hall has a choice of two dance rooms, the second room upstairs catering for fans of soul tunes post 1980 with sets by Mally Meah, Diane Layton and guests.
Admission is £7 on the door from 7.30pm and the dancing rolls on until 12.30am.
Making him smile: Steve Harley looking forward to playing with his Acoustic Band at Harrogate Theatre next month. Picture: MIke Callow
STEVE Harley, the original Cockney
Rebel, will lead his Acoustic Band in an Uncovered gig at Harrogate Theatre on
February 21, the very day he releases his album of the same title.
Uncovered features interpretations of “nine painstakingly chosen songs” created in many instances by peers and contemporaries of 68-year-old Harley; those with shared histories and some that he admired from afar.
These are songs with heft and honesty, Harley says, that have
always connected and resonated within him; material he has always wanted to
perform and may even wish he had written.
Those tracks are David Bowie’s Absolute Beginners; Robbie Burns’s Ae Fond Kiss; Hot Chocolate’s Emma; Cat Stevens’s How Can I Tell You?; The Beatles’ I’ve Just Seen A Face; Jagger and Richards’s Out Of Time; the traditional Star Of Belle Isle; Longpigs’ Lose Myself and Bob Dylan’s When I Paint My Masterpiece.
These are complemented by two re-worked Harley compositions: (Love) Compared With You (Your Eyes Don’t Seem To Age), replete with a new third verse, and Only You, played live for several years but here recorded for the first time.
This diverse collection of Interpretations is “in some ways an
almanac, rather than a set of great tracks”. Harley’s links with some of the
songwriters go back to the start of their careers: Bowie in Beckenham; Dylan
throughout his early teens; Cat Stevens/Yusuf and Paul McCartney, both early
influences.
The newly founded Steve Harley Acoustic Band features Barry
Wickens on viola, violin and acoustic guitar; Oli Hayhurst on double bass; Tom
Hooper on percussion and roots music luminary Martin Simpson on the album,
although the unavailable Simpson will be replaced by David Delarre on lead acoustic
guitar on tour.
At the recording sessions, Scottish singer Eddi Reader joined Harley
on Star Of Belle Isle, while Jim Cregan contributed a stirring guitar solo to
Emma.
Those sessions were a joy, full of virtuosity and grit, recalls Harley. “I was roaring with stamina and passion when I went in to sing the final versions. I sang all 11 in one and a half days,” he says. “The hunger and desire to perform was almost primitive. Engineer Matt Butler has recorded my voice up-close and unaffected. I sing out but seem mostly restrained.”
Londoner Harley is no stranger to acoustic music, having toured
with his Acoustic Trio – as well as the full Cockney Rebel rock band – for years
en route to receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award for Acoustic Music in 2018.
His acoustic set at Harrogate Theatre will combine songs from Uncovered with such Harley highs as Mr Soft, Judy Teen, Sebastian and Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me).
Looking forward to touring with his new
line-up, Harley says: “We have real adventures on tour. I’ve seen the Northern
Lights, the Midnight Sun and dozens of wonderful galleries, museums and great
cities, all on my down-time. I have a great life as a wandering minstrel.”
Tickets for February 21’s 7.30pm concert are on sale on 01423 502116 or at harrogatetheatre.co.uk.
THE first Dementia-friendly Tea Concert of 2020 will take place at St
Chad’s Church, Campleshon Road, York, on January 16 at 2.30pm.
Pianist Robert Gammon will play music by Bach, Mendelssohn, Medtner,
Chopin and Schubert in a 45-minute classical programme to be followed by tea
and coffee, homemade cakes and a chance to chat.
“Everyone is welcome at these concerts,” says clarinet player Alison Gammon,
who will join Robert for a concert on March 19. “The atmosphere is very relaxed
and suitable for anyone who might not feel able to attend a formal classical
concert. There’s no charge for admission, but donations are welcome.”
In further concerts, Paul Milhau will play solo violin on February 20
and The Clementhorpe Piano Trio will perform on April 16. More concerts are
planned for the rest of 2020 too.
Pleas note, St Chad’s has a small car park and street parking is
available along Campleshon Road. Disabled access is via the hall.
YORK artist Sue Clayton
will unveil a new collection of portraits at Pocklington Arts Centre ahead of
World Down Syndrome Day in an exhibition inspired by her son.
Running from January 14 to
March 21, Downright Marvellous At Large celebrates adults with Down Syndrome
and comes on the eve of her son James turning 18.
Look out too for a giant
pair of hand-knitted odd socks, made using hundreds of knitted squares donated
by the public after an appeal last year.
Otto – Drag Queen, by Sue Clayton
Sue, who lives in
Wigginton, will introduce the 12 new portraits and the giant socks in a preview
event open to the public on Thursday, January 16, from 6pm to 8pm.
The portraits feature what
Sue sees as the “unrepresented and significant” social presence of adults with
Down Syndrome, each one depicting a person with the genetic disorder at work or
play.
“I put on the original Downright Marvellous exhibition in 2015, which mainly depicted young children who have Down Syndrome, but this time I wanted to make it more a celebration of adults as 2020 is a milestone year for us as James turns 18,” she says.
Lauren, by Sue Clayton
“A lot of the pieces also
feature siblings, as I wanted to highlight the importance that siblings play in
the lives of those with Down Syndrome too.”
Sue is planning to hold a celebratory event at Pocklington Arts Centre on World Down Syndrome Day (WDSD), Saturday, March 21, the last day of her exhibition. Watch this space for more details as they emerge.
Many people wear odd socks
on WDSD, a global day that aims to raise awareness and promote independence, self-advocacy and freedom of choice for people
with the congenital condition.
James and Lily -Sibling Love, by Sue Clayton
Should
you be wondering “why socks?”, they are used because their shape replicates the
extra 21st chromosome that people with Down Syndrome
have.
“I hope the socks installation will add an extra fun dimension to the exhibition, which the whole community can get behind, while importantly raising awareness of – and celebrating – the uniqueness and diversity of Down Syndrome,” says Sue.
She made a radical change mid-career to become a self-taught, full-time artist. Soon she achieved recognition from Britain’s Got Artists in 2012 and as Outstanding Visual Artist in the 2018 York Culture Awards for her Heroes Of York project in 2017-2018.
David, by Sue Clayton
Those heroes were York
Theatre Royal pantomime dame Berwick Kaler; singer, writer and motivational
speaker Big Ian Donaghy; animal welfare practitioner Mary Chapman; the late
Suzanne Asquith, of North Yorkshire Police; Andrew Fair, from Sainsbury’s, Monk
Cross, and Professor Steve Leveson, of York Against Cancer.
Sue is drawn to painting portraits
because: “It insists upon the idea that the more you look at a face, the more
you see.
“Every single aspect – the
eyelids, the nostrils, and the complexion – reveals the personality and
character of every individual person,” she says. “I feel it’s especially important
to represent those who are sometimes socially ‘unseen’.”
Uncle Ronnie and Oliver – Trisomy 21 United, by Sue Clayton
Influenced by Rembrandt,
York artist William Etty and more contemporary painters such as Jenny Saville and Tim Benson, Sue enjoys
working with dynamic colours to make marks “that should not be there but
somehow work”.
“My approach to portraits
not only apprehends the likeness of my subjects, but their inner life too,” she
says.
To find out more about
World Down Syndrome Day, visit worlddownsyndromeday2.org.
Giving him the bird: David Leonard’s Evil Diva in Sleeping Beauty at York Theatre Royal. All pictures: Robling Photography
Sleeping Beauty, York Theatre Royal, until January 25 2020. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
UNLESS you have been asleep for 100 years, you will know Sleeping Beauty is the first York Theatre Royal pantomime since Berwick Kaler hung up his big boots after 40 years as Britain’s longest-serving dame.
Unlike Elvis, however, Kaler has not left the building. Now 73, he is still taking care of business, writing the script; co-directing with Leeds City Varieties rock’n’roll pantomime alumnus Matt Aston; appearing in two film sequences and in doll’s head form for baby Beauty, and providing sporadic voice-overs too. In other words, there is still a Kaler on the loose.
Slice-up: A J Powell’s ever-changing modes transform him into Edward Scissorhands
“You have given me a purpose to life,” he told his adoring panto public as he waved goodbye through the final curtain on February 2 this year. “I’m not going anywhere. If this theatre needs me, I’ll be back like a shot.”
Executive director Tom Bird and co decided they did need him for the first pantomime of the post-dame, post Damian Cruden directorship era. Britain’s best villain, David Leonard, perennially bouncy sidekick Martin Barrass, ageless principal girl Suzy Cooper and chameleon Brummie A J Powell said they needed him too, to write the script.
And so Berwick was back like a shot, ticket sales have passed the 30,000 mark, but how do you fill the black hole, the tornado wreaking havoc, the master adlibber, the smasher of theatre’s fourth wall that is the Kaler dame?
All rise: Martin Barrass’s down-to-earth Queen Aradne with Jack Lansbury’s King and newcomer Howie Michaels’ Funky the Flunky in Sleeping Beauty
This is the elephant in the room, a role more usually taken by Barrass in one of his animal acts. In fact, a better comparison is Banquo’s ghost, haunting this halfway house of a panto.
Sleeping Beauty retains the Kaler template, from Babbies And Bairns theme tune opening to Hope You’ll Return Next Year finale to convoluted plot, via disappointingly unfunny films (one with Berwick and Harry Gration) and a futile slosh scene.
As there ain’t no-one like Berwick’s dame, the remaining panto gang of four spread out their familiar traits without ever filling the gap. Thankfully, there’s no rest for the wicked, and so David Leonard is still fab-u-lous, with a dash of dame, or more truthfully waspish drag queen, about his Evil Diva, and his character switch with Powell’s ever-so-nice Darth Vader is the show’s one coup de theatre.
Principal girl, cuddly toy: Suzy Cooper’s Princess Beauty
Suzy Cooper’s Princess Beauty goes from St Trinian’s schoolgirl with a cuddly toy to leading song-and-dance routines, searching forlornly for better material, especially in a year when she has excelled as Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare Rose Theatre’s Macbeth at Blenheim Palace.
Without his buddy Berwick to bounce off, Martin Barrass is in no man’s land – or even no mam’s land – as Queen Ariadne, not a dame, nor a queen, one with only one good (Bile Beans) costume and only one innovation, a nod to Eric Morecambe, to go with the old Barrass tropes.
Musical theatre newcomer Howie Michaels’s Funky the Flunky, big voice, big stage presence, fares well, and Jack Lansbury’s King/Tarquin Farquhar, dance captain Danielle Mullan and the ensemble work their panto socks off in frankly difficult circumstances, their reward coming in the stand-out Teenage Dirtbag routine, Grace Harrington’s best choreography..
Beauty and the beastly: Suzy Cooper with vainglorious villain David Leonard
Was it a mere coincidence that new designer Anthony Lamble’s sets lacked the sparkle of old, just as the comedy lacked the spark, surprise, timing, topicality and magical mayhem of the peak Kaler years?
Last night (December 11) felt awkward, uncomfortable, indulgent. Bird and the board have to ask: “Are the days of this brand of pantomime behind you?”, because the patented but weary “same old rubbish” won’t suffice next year.
This is no laughing matter, and here are the options. Bring back Dame Berwick full on, working from the inside, not the outside, with all that goes with that; freshen up the panto in a different way, or find a new vehicle to utilise the talents of Leonard, Cooper, Barrass and Powell. Many a theatre has moved on from pantomime, whether Leeds Playhouse, the Stephen Joseph Theatre or Hull Truck, and still found a winter winner. We await the Bird call…
