SARAH Garforth’s exhibition of Upper Nidderdale and coastal scenes will
open at Village Gallery, Colliergate, York, on December 3.
Wanderings is a new body of work focusing on the North Yorkshire reservoirs
around Sarah’s home and favourite locations on the East Coast.
Sarah, a keen walker,
works in a traditional way, collecting sketches out in the field and developing
her ideas once back in the studio.
Last Light, Gouthwaite Reservoir, by Sarah Garforth
“Her aim with this new work is to try to bridge the gap between spontaneity and over-thought contrived work,” says Village Gallery owner Simon Main.
“By continuing to play with
ideas, pieces can evolve, rather than have pre-determined elements.”
Sarah has introduced
mixed media into the oils, using cold wax, marble dust, pigment sticks and
gambasol, applied with spatulas, scrapers and knives, but no brush at all.
Huts At Boulmer, by Sarah Garforth
“By working in layers,
it has allowed her to scrape and draw back into the paint, reconnecting
to the original image,” says Simon.
A preview evening
will be held on Monday, December 2, when Sarah will be on hand to discuss her work.
Tickets are available from Simon at the gallery.
“Aside from our regularly
changing art exhibitions, we are York’s official stockist of Lalique glass and
crystal,” says Simon.
“We also sell a selection
of art, craft, ceramics, glass, sculpture and jewellery, much of it being the work
of local artists – and with Christmas around the corner, there’s lots to
choose from.”
Sarah Garforth’s Wanderings will be on show until January 11 2020. Village Gallery’s opening hours are 10am to 5pm, Tuesday to Saturday.
Alison Britton: giving the Annual CoCA Lecture this evening
THE Centre of Ceramic Art’s annual Day of Clay is expanding into two
Days of Clay this weekend at York Art Gallery.
The event involves hands-on activities, talks and workshops by experts
and the launch of Gillian Lowndes’ exhibition, At The Edge.
CoCA’s Days of Clay offers the chance to watch, make and hear about the
art of clay from leading figures from the world of ceramics, including working
with animal sculptor Susan Hall and participating in performances from Milena
Dragic and Mila Romans, while David Horbury will discuss Emmanuel Cooper’s
memoirs.
This evening’s CoCA lecture will be given by potter Alison Britton OBE
on the subject of being part of the emergence of a radical abstract
expressionist style of ceramic work.
The Days of Clay coincide with the opening of a display of works by
Gillian Lowndes, the most radical ceramicist of the 20thcentury.
Fiona Green, assistant curator at York Art Gallery, says: “This year we
have extended our popular day event to a whole weekend, with fantastic
opportunities to celebrate, discuss and work with clay.
“We have some incredible experts involved, who are looking forward to
discussing their work and sharing experiences and techniques with visitors, and
there are plenty of opportunities to get hands-on and have a go yourself.
“Don’t miss this fantastic opportunity to join other experts,
enthusiasts and novices who all share an appreciation of clay.”
All activities are included in admission to York Art Gallery with the
exception of the CoCA Lecture. Visit yorkartgallery.org.uk for more
details and tickets.
Days of Clay is being held in conjunction with York Ceramics Fair 2019,
running concurrently at the Hospitium, York Museum Gardens, with support from
the Craft Potters Association.
Tickets to York Ceramics Fair are on sale at yorkceramicsfair.com; tickets
to York Art Gallery can be bought at a reduced rate if you hold a York Ceramics
Fair ticket.
Days of Clay full programme
Saturday, November 23
10.30am to 4.30pm: Artist Susan Halls in the Studio.
Come and help fill part of the gallery with a crowd of watchful clay
rabbits. Animal sculptor Susan Halls will be running a hands-on workshop
showing you a quick and effective way to make a hollow rabbit that will form
part of her Meadow installation.
Annual CoCA Lecture 2019: Alison Britton OBE,
lecture at 6pm; Q&A, 6.45pm; drinks in Gillian Lowndes exhibition, 7pm;
close, 8pm.
Alison Britton was part of a group of radical women artists graduating
from the Royal College of Art’s ceramics course in the early 1970s.
In 1993, Britton co-curated The Raw And The Cooked with Martina Margetts,
at the Barbican and Modern Art Oxford, which then toured in East Asia and
Europe.
In her lecture, Britton will reflect on this exhibition and on being
part of an emergence of a radical abstract expressionist style of ceramic work.
Sunday, November 24
In the CoCA 1 gallery:
1pm to 3pm, Clay Participatory Performance.
Joinperformers Milena Dragic and Mila Romans as “artist” and “clay”
as they sculpt out clay movements and then invite you to participate in making,
looking and moving clay to become part of the performance.
3.30pm to 4.30pm, Talk: Making Emmanuel Cooper.
David Horbury discusses how editing Emmanuel Cooper’s memoirs has provided
fresh insights into his pots and practice. David’s book on Emmanuel will be on
sale in the shop and he will be available to sign them.
In the Studio:
11.30am to 12.30pm, The Life Of A Slipware Potter.
Join potter Doug Fitch and his wife Hannah for a talk about their lives
as slipware potters, followed by a hands-on session where you can try out slip
trailing yourself.
2pm to 3.30pm,Texture and carving workshop.
Learn about hand building with artist Wendy Lawrence. Take the
opportunity to get hands on yourself and create a piece of carved, textured
clay to take home with you.
In the CoCA 2 gallery:
11.30am to 12.30pm, Children Curate in conversation
with Anthony Shaw and artist Susan Halls.
Meet the collector and the artist who helped inspire the children who
curated the current Anthony Shaw Collection display.
2.30pm to 3.30pm,Alison Britton in conversation with
Anthony Shaw.
Alison Britton will be talking with Anthony Shaw about the practice and
work of Gillian Lowndes in CoCA’s new exhibition, Gillian Lowndes: At the Edge.
Burton Gallery:
2pm to 3pm, Book Reading: The Ups And Downs In The Life Of The Fabulous
Bernard Palissy.
Join Jane Hamlyn for a reading of a quaint little book
about the 16th century French Huguenot potter Bernard Palissy and his
desperate struggles to discover the lost secrets of Italian tin-glazed
earthenware.
3pm to 4pm, Film Showing.
Watch a screening of Potshots, starring Johnny Vegas as Bernard Palissy.
Produced by Roger Law and Anya Course. Running time: 25minutes. Jane will be
available to answer any questions.
Both Saturday, November 23 and Sunday, November 24
Installation: Recycling the Tower of Pots.
The tower of pots was created by artist Lou Gilbert Scott and visitors
during the 2018 Day of Clay event. Now you are invited to watch as it slowly
dissolves, returning to soft malleable clay ready for re-use.
Hands on Here.
Get hands on with York Art Gallery’s historic and contemporary ceramic
collection; sessions usually run between 11am and 1pm and 1.30pm to 3.30pm.
Children’s ceramic trail available at front desk all day.
Gillian Lowndes: At the Edge
November 23 to May 2020
See the ground-breaking works of Gillian Lowndes (1936-2010), the most
radical ceramicist of the 20th century, in this major new exhibition.
From the 1970s onwards, artist Gillian Lowndes was at the forefront of a
new style of contemporary ceramics which explored the materiality of clay.
Her abstract expressionist way of working brought together a range of
materials and found objects that she recycled to create new sculptural work she
called collages. This exhibition showcases more than 40 artworks drawn from
CoCA’s collection, alongside loans from Anthony Shaw’s collection, many on
public display for the first time.
Accompanying the exhibition will be further displays featuring new
acquisitions by artists including Kate Malone, Emmanuel Cooper and David
Seeger.
THE Shires, Britain’s biggest-selling country act, will return to York
Barbican on May 20 2020.
The announcement coincides with today’s release of New Year, a taster
single from their upcoming fourth album, Good Years, a title whose sentiment
reflects on the impact of Ben Earle and Crissie Rhodes’ two gold-certified
albums and three top ten singles.
The Shires will be playing 25 dates, with York as the only Yorkshire
destination, having last performed at the Barbican in May 2018.
As with 2015’s Brave, 2016’s My Universe and 2018’s Accidentally On
Purpose, Good Years was recorded in the home of country music, Nashville.
Earle and Rhodes describe it as a poignant project after becoming the
first British artists to win Best International Act at the CMA Awards.
“We’re so excited to be releasing Good Years, our fourth album recorded
in Nashville, and also to announce our next UK tour,” say the duo, who played
this July’s Platform Festival in Pocklington. “Honesty and storytelling have always
been such an important part of our songwriting. We’ve poured some of the
incredible experiences and life we’ve lived into these songs.
“We can’t wait to hit the road next year and play them live across the
country. The songs mean so much to us personally, but there really is nothing
like looking out at our fans in the crowd and seeing how much of an impact they can have in someone
else’s life. It’s truly a very special thing.”
Tickets will go on sale on Friday, November 29 at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk, on 0203 356 5441 or in person from the Barbican box office.
Rick Astley: the first name to be confirmed for next summer’s concerts on Knavesmire
EIGHTIES’ pop icon Rick
Astley is the first headliner to be confirmed for next summer’s Music Showcase
Weekend at York Racecourse.
The Lancastrian crooner, 53,
will perform after the seven-race card on Saturday, July 25, in his return to
the North Yorkshire open air after his Dalby Forest concert on June 23 2017.
Tickets for the Astley
and racing double bill go on sale today at yorkracecourse.co.uk and on 01904
620911.
Astley, from
Newton-le-Willows, topped the charts in 25 countries in 1987 with Never Gonna
Give You Up, setting in motion a career that brought him eight consecutive British
top ten hits and 40 million sales.
After stepping aside to
focus on his family, he returned from his long hiatus in 2016 with his third
platinum seller, 50, a number one album on which he played all the instruments,
as well as writing and producing it.
He repeated that creative process
for 2018’s Beautiful Life, and last month he released the career-spanning
compilation The Best Of Me, a double disc that included
an independently recorded set of reimagined interpretations of
his songs, old and new.
This year, Astley joined
Take That’s 38-date stadium tour as their special guest, playing to more than
500,000 people. In the summer too, he graced Reading Festival’s main stage,
performing Never Gonna Give You Up with Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters, no less.
Since releasing 50, he has sold more than 100,000 tickets to his own British headline
shows, including Leeds First Direct Arena last year, and his forthcoming tour
dates take in gigs in Australia and Japan, plus his New
Zealand debut, before arriving at York Racecourse next July.
James Brennan, head of marketing and sponsorship at York Racecourse, says: “Everyone at the course is really excited that a northern boy is set to play York. Add in the spectacle of the racing itself and we hope it will prove a summer day to savour.”
Astley’s show will be one of three race-day concerts on the Knavesmire course next summer, with further acts to be announced for Saturday, June 27 and the evening meeting on Friday, July 24.
John Whitney as Jesus and Marlena Kelli as Mary Magdalene in York Musical Theatre Company’s Jesus Christ Superstar
YORK
Musical Theatre Company will stage Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus
Christ Superstar from November 27 to 30 at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York.
Company
newcomer John Whitney will lead director Paul Laidlaw’s cast for this 1972 rock
opera, a “musical phenomenon” that follows the last week of Jesus’s life through
the eyes of Judas Iscariot, exploring the struggles and personal relationships
between his followers and disciples.
For this
gritty and touching emotional rollercoaster ride, Lloyd Webber and Rice’s score
parades such favourites as Superstar, Everything’s Alright and I Don’t Know How
To Love Him.
Laidlaw is
joined in the creative team by musical director John Atkin, overseeing a cast
led by Whitney’s Jesus, Marlena Kelli’s Mary Magdalene, Peter Wookie as Pilate
and Chris Mooney as Judas.
“We were thrilled
to have such a great response to auditions, particularly from so many new faces
to the company,” says Laidlaw. “We’ve always been proud of the fact that we
welcome any new people to join any show that we do, and if you’re new, you can
walk into lead roles, and that’s what’s happened.
“Our
actors playing Jesus, Judas, Pilate and Mary Magdalene are all new to the company
and it’s really encouraging to see. The strength in the singing is staggering
and is going to sound just fantastic on stage. We really can’t wait to show
York audiences all our hard work.”
Further
principal roles go to John Haigh as Herod; Chris Haygard as Simon Zealotes;
Martin Harvey, Caiphas; Matthew Clare, Annas; Simon Trow and Malcolm Poole,
Priests; David Martin, Apostle Peter, and Heather Richmond, Maid.
In the ensemble will be Helen Barugh; Victoria Hughes; Helen Goodwill; Samantha Hindman; Jane Holiday; Elly-Mai Mawson; Karen Mawson; Jennifer Page; Amie Stone; Holly Inch; Amy Lacy; Paula Stainton; Charlotte Wetherell; Matthew Ainsworth; Derek McMahon and Andrew Pilot.
Tickets for the 7.30pm evening shows and 2.30pm Saturday matinee are on sale at £18, concessions £16, at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk or on 01904 501935.
Family wreckage: Jo Mousley as Hester in Athol Fugard’s Hello And Goodbye at York Theatre Royal Studio. Picture: Jane Hobson
Hello And Goodbye, York Theatre Royal Studio, until November 30. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
HELLO again
to in-house productions in the York Theatre Royal Studio with this revival of
Athol Fugard’s 1965 South African play Hello And Goodbye.
Associate artist
John R Wilkinson had lamented the hiatus since the fading away of such Studio works
as Blackbird, Blue/Orange and The White Crow and his own show, Can’t Stand Up
For Falling Down, six years ago, as he spoke of the pride and spirit engendered
by this resurrection: the very last word uttered in Fugard’s “biting yet beautiful
parable”, by the way.
“The blue magic of
that space has always given rise to intense, intimate storytelling,” said Wilkinson,
whose production is exactly that: intense and intimate.
Hello And Goodbye
is a two-hander, albeit with the “presence” of a third family member, the
father to Johnnie (Emilio Iannucci) and Hester (Jo Mousley).
God fearing: Emilio Iannucci’s Johnnie seeking resurrection in Hello And Goodbye, with Jo Mousley’s Hester in the doorway
Hester is making
an unexpected, unannounced visit to the family home at 57A Valley Road, Port
Elizabeth, after an absence stretching back longer than the aforementioned Studio
hiatus.
Iannucci’s Johnnie
already has delivered a restless, psychologically fevered monologue, one that
establishes both the dysfunctional state of the family and the unnerving dark,
even gothic, humour at play in Fugard’s writing.
Chatting afterwards
with Iannucci, he said audiences had laughed at some performances, not at
others, but the play had worked both ways.
The way it goes may
well depend on how you react to Johnnie telling Hester that he and their
disabled Dad have been getting on well enough, but she cannot disturb him because
he is asleep in the room next door. Put bluntly, his sleep could not be deeper.
Director John R Wilkinson: re-awakening the “blue magic” of the Theatre Royal Studio space
If Johnnie is
nervy, neurotic, repeatedly reaching for biblical quotes, Mousley’s Hester is
frenetic in her desperate search for the £500 that she believes their father has
squirrelled away somewhere in the house.
Johnnie can keep
the house if he lets her find and keep the money, a task that involves him
bringing through case after case that trigger traumatic memories of their past.
Their already fractured relationship only worsens as Fugard meditates on
family, selfishness and redemption, set against the social upheaval in South
Africa at large.
Hello And Goodbye brings to mind the discomfiting Sixties’ plays of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, not least in a set design that mirrors the frayed, wounded state of mind of the sparring siblings, as designer Laura Ann Price scatters the stage with debris from the crumbling, smashed-out back wall.
Wilkinson has cast
superbly: after his Studio debut in the children’s show E Nesbit’s The Book Of
Dragons in December 2017 and his Romeo in Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre’s Romeo
And Juliet at Blenheim Palace this summer, Iannucci has hit new heights here,
calling on his physical theatre skills, his feel for black comedy and his
relish for a surprise.
Mousley is a brilliant
pick too, making her Theatre Royal debut after a year of outstanding performances
in the Leeds Playhouse Pop-Up Theatre Ensemble. Her Hester has the disruptive force
of an Ibsen, Chekhov or Greek tragedian female lead, and together with Iannucci,
they settle on a mutual South African accent that is another impressive feature
of Wilkinson’s intriguing, fascinating production.
In conversation,
he called Hello And Goodbye “weird”, smiling impishly as he said it. Make that
weird good, not weird bad.
Marc Almond: playing Mixtape night at Scarborough Open Air Theatre
MARC Almond, Heaven 17 and Living In A Box will lead the Mixtape line-up of
Eighties and Nineties acts at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on July 10 next
summer.
Tickets will go on sale tomorrow (November 22) at 9am for the second SOAT show to be confirmed for 2020 after McFly were booked in for August 14. Peter Taylor, directorof venue programmers Cuffe and Taylor, says: “We are delighted to announce Mixtape, the much-requested return of an ‘80s and ‘90s night to Scarborough Open Air Theatre.
Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory of Heaven 17
“Previous shows have always been a big party night and, since the last ‘80s and ‘90s night here in 2017, we’ve been repeatedly asked for another one. We’ve listened, and Mixtape is here for summer 2020. “Marc Almond, Heaven 17 and Living In A Box are not only three great artists with a string of major hits between them, but they all have such a strong local connection. We feel sure this will be another great night on the stunning Yorkshire coast.” Lancashire-born Marc Almond first made his mark as frontman of chart-topping Leeds synthpop duo Soft Cell before branching out into a diverse solo career. He was awarded an OBE for services to music and the arts, an Ivor Novello Inspiration Award, an Icon Award by Attitude Magazine and a Mojo Magazine Inspiration Award, as well as receiving an Honorary Fellowship from Leeds College of Music.
Living In A Bx…now featuring Kenny Thomas
Sheffield electronic stalwarts Heaven 17 will celebrate their 40th
anniversary in 2020. Born out of the schism in the original Human League, they still
feature Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware, makers of such hits as Temptation and Come
Live With Me and the albums Penthouse And Pavement and The Luxury Gap.
Fellow Sheffield band Living In A Box have joined forces with double BRIT
nominee Kenny Thomas, the Nineties’ soul singer, who has taken over the lead vocals.
Tickets will be on sale at scarboroughopenairtheatre.com, in person from the SOAT box office, in Burniston Road, or the Discover Yorkshire Coast Tourism Bureau, in Scarborough Town Hall, St Nicholas Street, or on 01723818111 and 01723 383636.
Bah Humbug: Mark Hird plays Ebenezer Scrooge in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Scrooge The Musical. Picture: David Harrison
BAH Humbug! The
Christmas spirit is taking over the Grand Opera House, York, from Tuesday and
not even Ebenezer Scrooge can stop it.
York company Pick Me
Up Theatre are presenting their big winter show, Scrooge The Musical, directed
by Robert Readman, with choreography by Iain Harvey and musical direction by
Sam Johnson.
Quick refresher
course: based on Charles Dickens’s Victorian cautionary tale A Christmas Carol,
Scrooge tells the tale of old miser Ebenezer Scrooge on the night he is visited
by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.
Can he be turned
from sourpuss to saint? What will happen to Tiny Tim? Will everyone have a
merry Christmas after all? “Come and find out in this all-singing, all-dancing,
all-flying show,” invites Robert.
His cast will be led by Pick Me Up regular Mark Hird, fresh from directing this autumn’s musical, Monster Makers, at 41 Monkgate. He now adds Scrooge to a diverse CV that includes Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army, Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady and Uncle Fester in The Addams Family.
Further leading
roles go to Rory Mulvihill as the jolly Ghost of Christmas Present and Alan
Park as Scrooge’s long-suffering clerk Bob Cratchit.
“It started out as a film musical in
1970, adapted for the screen by Leslie Bricusse, with Albert Finney as
Scrooge,” recalls Mark. “But it was one of those musicals that landed at an
unlucky time just as film musicals went out of fashion.
“Everyone thought it was an absolute banker, but times and tastes change,
but now, when you go back to it, it’s actually a really good film.
“So, 22 years later, Leslie Bricusse decided to turn it into a stage
musical, wrote half a dozen new songs, written specially for Anthony Newley’s
Scrooge, and it went down incredibly well.”
Alan Park chips in: “Then it became a vehicle for Tommy Steele for many
years in Bill Kenwright’s productions. Each year, Robert Readman put in a
request for the performing rights, and at last, this year he got a ‘Yes’.
“So, this must be the first time it will have been done in a theatre of
this size without it being a Bill Kenwright show.”
Park and Hird believe that Bricusse’s songs are vital to the show’s success.
“They provide the vehicle for you to discover more about the characters beyond
Scrooge, like Bob, so that by the end of a song you know more about them,” says
Alan.
“You get the inner
thoughts of the characters in the songs, so you get more than 2D characters,”
suggests Mark. “You really see Scrooge’s progression, through his songs, for
example.
“There’s probably no better show to put you in a good mood for Christmas,” says Mark Hird
“You’re also quite
surprised by the sheer variety of the songs and the music, with some big
set-pieces.”
“There are some
proper Cockney knees-up songs,” says Alan.
“But also some
lovely ballads, like when Scrooge sees the only girl he ever loved as a young
man, Isabel, his fiancée,” rejoins Mark. You go back in time and you hear her singing this gorgeous ballad
with Young Scrooge called Happiness, as old Scrooge looks on.”
“The way Robert has
staged it, you have Young Scrooge and old Scrooge mirroring each other’s
actions, so you kind of feel like Isabel is singing it to old Scrooge,” says
Alan.
Picking up his
earlier point about Scrooge’s character progression, Mark says: “Through his
songs, Scrooge goes from his position of denial, saying how he hates Christmas,
to feeling ‘it’s not my fault, fate has done this to me’, when confronted by
the Ghost of Christmas Past.
“Then, with the
Ghost Of Christmas Present, he starts to think, ‘Could there be a better
life?’, so it’s a fantastic story arc and a fantastic set of songs, with one of
the most perfect stories ever written to hang it all together.”
A Christmas Carol
has been interpreted in myriad ways on screen and stage, even by The Muppets
puppets in 1992 in The Muppet Christmas Carol “My five-year-old daughter is
still convinced I’m playing a frog in Scrooge, because her exposure to A
Christmas Carol is seeing Kermit playing Bob Cratchit in the Muppets’ movie!”
says Alan.
Assessing the
abiding popularity of Dickens’ tale, Alan says: “It’s not just about
redemption. We all reflect on moments in our life, wishing we could have done
things differently, and the story also taps into nostalgia and regret and
worrying about things.
“Watching this story
unfold, it can change your perspective on the world and who you are.”
Mark adds: “It also
says it’s never too late to turn over a new leaf and never too late to start
again.”
“The story is full
of joyful moments that are infectious, even infecting Scrooge, so I do feel
it’s a feelgood show,” says Alan. “If you’re looking at a wider point, we all
tend to focus on what’s getting us down, but this story lets us step out and
think about all the joyful things of Christmas.”
Mark concludes: “There’s probably no better show to put you in a good mood for Christmas.”
Pick Me Up Theatre’s Scrooge The Musical runs from November 26 to December 1 at Grand Opera House, York. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
The arch cynic returns: Romesh Ranganathan adds a third York Barbican gig: Picture: Rich Hardcastle
HE may be a cynic, but Romesh
Ranganathan knows when he’s on to a good thing.
Having sold out his two November gigs at York Barbican, the deadpan Crawley comic, actor and television presenter has wasted no time in adding a third night of The Cynic’s Mixtape next spring.
Ranganathan will complete his hattrick
of Barbican performances on May 10 2020, when the 41-year-old star of Asian Provocateur,
The Misadventures Of Romesh Ranganathan, The Reluctant Landlord and Judge
Romesh will deliver “a carefully curated selection of all the things he has
found unacceptable since his last tour”.
Let the cynicism begin again: Romesh Ranganathan will have plenty more to moan about by next May
On his mind will be why trying to
save the environment is a scam, why none of us is truly free,
and his suspicion that his wife is using gluten intolerance to avoid
sleeping with him.
Ranganathan ditched his burgeoning career as a Maths teacher – maybe it
just didn’t add up to much – in his early 30s to focus on comedy, with plenty
to moan about in such subsequent shows as Rom Com, Rom Wasn’t Built In A Day
and Irrational.
Agent provocateur Ranganathan and his Rob & Romesh Meet co-star Rob Beckett hosted the 2019 Royal Variety Performance on Monday at the London Palladium, to be aired on ITV in December. This was the first time that two comedians had hosted the event together in more than 30 years.
Tickets for Romesh Ranganathan: The Cynic’s Mixtape are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk, on 0203 356 5441 or in person from the Barbican box office.
Flour power: Katy Federman as Mum and Giles Cooper as Nigel in Nigel Slater’s Toast. Picture: Piers Foley
Nigel Slater’s Toast, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, November 23. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
HERE is the
challenge facing director Jonnie Riordan. “Think about how long it takes to
actually make a piece of toast, and then how do you do that on stage when
you’re trying to keep the audience engaged?” he says.
It brings a new meaning to pop-up theatre in York after the summer Elizabeth version at Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, and Riordan and writer Henry Filloux-Bennett have made a wonderful job of adapting cookery writer Nigel Slater’s coming-of-age memoir for the stage.
Like Jonathan
Watkins for Matt Haig’s Reasons To Stay Alive, on tour at the Theatre Royal
only two weeks ago, Riordan is both director and choreographer. However, whereas
Watkins’s show took time to find its footing on a somewhat strange-looking set
– was it a crater or a cracked cloud egg? – Toast is sure footed, even light on
its feet from the start.
Nigel, meet Nigel!: Cookery writer Nigel Slater meets Giles Cooper, who plays his younger self on stage. Picture: Simon Annand
Nigel, our
narrator, guides us through his story like Slater’s lovely writing leads you
through his recipes and epicurean thoughts in his mellifluous books. Played by
the delightful Giles Cooper in schoolboy tank top and short trousers, Nigel is
nine and already drawn to the one cookery book in the Slaters’ Wolverhampton
home: Marguerite Patten’s ground-breaking Cookery In Colour, a full-colour
Sixties’ bolt out of the cordon bleu after the grey gravy of before.
From within
the cream and brown Sixties’ kitchen of Libby Watson’s design, Cooper’s Nigel
likes to orchestrate all the storytelling, stepping in and out of a scene to
converse with the audience, but such is the skill of Filloux-Bennett’s writing
that the events of his young life have a habit of pulling the rug from under
him. At one point, his mother stops him in his tracks and tells him to re-trace
his steps to relate the true, darker version of events.
There is
abundant humour, absolutely true to Slater’s own tone in his books, but the
darkness has to break through too, given what happened to Slater in his childhood
and teenage years.
Table manners: Blair Plant’s Dad, left, Stefan Edwards’ waiter, Giles Cooper’s Nigel, Samantha Hopkins’ waitress and Katy Federman’s Mum in Toast
His love of
food is omnipresent, and yes, we see toast popping up in real time and later
Nigel making mushrooms on toast with a chef’s flair and precision in one so
young. We enjoy the culinary sensations, and when Nigel is regaling us with the
delights of sweets – amid his father’s insistence that certain sweets are for
boys, others for girls – bags of sweets are passed around the audience. The
real Nigel Slater had a bag by his feet as he sat in the dress circle, by the
way!
Food is at
the heart of Toast, glorious food and not so glorious food in the case of
Nigel’s father’s first attempt at making spaghetti bolognaise, mountains of
“sick-smelling” Parmesan dust et al. Part of the joy here is having our own recollections of mishaps around
our own kitchen tables.
Through
food too, we see the difference between Nigel’s relationship with his Mum (Katy
Federman), pretty much tied to the apron strings, such is their bond, and his
abusive Dad (Blair Plant, back at his old Theatre Royal stamping ground).
What’s that on the plate? Nigel (Giles Cooper) nervously scans the spaghetti bolognaise served up by Dad (Blair Plant) as Mum (Katy Federman) looks on
Into the
story comes the dreadful Joan (Samantha Hopkins) and assorted characters played
by Stefan Edwards, as the first stirrings of Nigel’s sexuality play out.
Brilliant performances, a superb choice of soundtrack from La Mer to Dusty, and a finale as warm and toasty as toast make Toast a five-star treat, both measured and deeply flavoured like a Nigel Slater recipe.
