Ward Thomas: Playing Leeds City Varieties this spring
COUNTRY-POP twin sisters Ward Thomas will play Leeds City Varieties
Music Hall on April 30, the second night of their Unfiltered acoustic tour.
After winningthe Global Artist Award at the 2019 CMA Awards,
Catherine and Lizzy Ward Thomas have announced a seven-date tour for Spring
2020.
The Hampshire twins will be complementing fan favourites from 2019’s top
ten album, Restless Minds, 2016’s chart-topping Cartwheels and 2014 debut release
From Where We Stand with new compositions.
The stripped-back arrangements will show off the sisters’ harmonies in
an intimate setting after a year when they toured Europe with Jack Savoretti, joining
him in a duet of The Killers’ Human at his sold-out Wembley Arena show. They
also played the Isle of Wight Festival, supported David Gray on his Australian tour
and performed Whiskey Lullaby with Brad Paisley at London’s O2 Arena.
Tickets for April 30 are on sale on 0113 243 0808 or at cityvarieties.co.uk or seetickets.com.
Charles Hutchinson reflects on the YORKshire year in the arts in 2019
NOTHING special happened in the arts scene in 2019…or did it? Find out tomorrow when the Hutch Award winners are announced for what made the art beat race faster across YORKshire at charleshutchpress.co.uk.
Kate Rusby wearing her Holly Head, the title of her fifth Christmas album. Pictures: David Lindsay
Kate Rusby At Christmas, York Barbican, 18/12/2019
“HOW nice to be back in mighty Yorkshire,” said the Barnsley
nightingale. “Don’t have to calm mi accent. Don’t have to worry about saying
the word ‘mardy’.”
That said, there is nothing mardy about Kate Rusby At
Christmas, her joyous celebration of South Yorkshire carols still sung heartily
in pubs, complemented by Rusby’s own winter songs and a brace of novelty
numbers.
It turned out Rusby was the only Yorkshire-born musician on stage, her sparkling green party dress twinkling like a Christmas tree in the forest of men in black: her folk band and regular winter guests, the “Brass Boys” quintet.
“Ruby Twosday”, the decorative reindeer, was there too,
bedecked with fairy lights, her head nodding when Rusby asked her a series of
questions. Rusby had been given the option of a “Yay” or “Nay” reindeer, and in
keeping with the surge of positivity and humorous banter that accompanies these
winter-warmer concerts, she chose the affirmative.
Hark, hark: Kate Rusby at Christmas
As evocative as the crisp sound of walking in newly settled
snow, Hark Hark, from 2017’s Angels & Men, opened the set with the Brass
Boys in situ, before Rusby explained the roots of these Christmas concerts, now
in their 12th year, with Christmas album number five, to showcase.
Holly Head, so named by Rusby to equate her love of
Christmas music with petrol heads’ love of cars, featured prominently in her
two sets, each also sprinkled liberally with versions of While Shepherds
Watched too. More than 30 exist, apparently, and Kate is working her merry way through
them.
Here We Come A Wassailing and Sunny Bank (a variation on I
Saw Three Ships) were early festive highs before the bleak midwinter’s chill of
Lu Lay (aka The Coventry Carol) brought an eerie night air to the Barbican,
Duncan Lyall’s Moog keyboard sending temperatures dropping. Not for long,
however, as Rusby introduced her row of knitted miniature hippos to herald
Hippo For Christmas, a particularly perky rendition of John Rox’s novelty
wish-list song, parping tuba and all.
The album cover for Holly Head
Rusby’s own Christmas compositions are among her very best,
never more so than this year’s newcomer, The Holly King, played early in the
second set, where she evoked Clannad while stretching out fruitfully into folk-prog
terrain.
Santa Never Brings Me A Banjo, a Canadian ditty by David Myles, wholly suited Rusby’s tightrope walk between melancholia and hope, and after a break for Damien O’Kane to lead the band through dexterous instrumentals and unexpected Christmas classics, Rusby steered us towards Christmas with an extended Hail Chime On, a delightful Walking In A Winter Wonderland and the latest heroic rescue mission for Barnsley’s Big Brave Bill.
No Rusby At Christmas show would be complete without the fancy-dress encore, and this year they really made a meal of it, Rusby dressing as a Christmas pudding, the Brass Boys as sprouts and O’Kane as, wait for it, a roast turkey for Sweet Bells and Yorkshire Merry Christmas.
Ruby Twosday was not the only one nodding in approval as Kate
Rusby At Christmas grows ever better by the year.
Ben Fry’s Town Crier and Mark Little’s Lord Chamberlain of Trumpville in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs at the Grand Opera House, York. . Picture: David Harrison
FOURTEEN years had passed since Ben Fry’s one and only appearance
in pantomime, but the City of York Town Crier was quick to say Oyez, Oyez, Oyez
to starring in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs this winter.
The Minster FM breakfast show co-presenter is playing, you guessed
it, the Town Crier at the Grand Opera House until Saturday, in the company of ’Allo,
’Allo! star Vicki Michelle’s Wicked Queen and Australian comedian Mark Little’s
Lord Chamberlain of Trumpville.
“I did panto once before at the Scarborough Spa in 2005 when
I was at Yorkshire Coast Radio, and I played one of the Ugly Sisters – she was
called Ugly Sister Whitby – in Cinderella,” recalls Ben.
“I remember it was a Tony Peers production: he was a panto
legend, who gave me plenty of good advice, so I was able to go from nothing to
playing Ugly Sister in one leap! It felt like an episode of Big Brother, where
every experience is heightened; every emotion is heightened.”
Ben may have the gift of the gab as a cheeky radio presenter,
speaking off the cuff each morning, but performing in pantomime makes contrasting
demands. “Having to follow a script and learn lines is a different experience, which
is interesting to do, though once you’re into the show, the performances are
flexible, and the next show can be nothing like the last one!” he says.
“Part of the fun with pantomime is that no two performances
are ever the same, and while it might be a bit of a treadmill, it’s never boring.”
Ben is candid about his acting skills. “Let’s be honest,” he
says. “I’m not in Snow White for my acting prowess, am I?! I’m a walking,
talking PR machine on the radio, to make as many people as possible know about
it.
“So, I’m being the Town Crier for the show almost as much
off stage as I am on stage. I see my job as being to get bums on seats, then I
hand it over to the professionals.
“I think we only agreed I should be in the show once the
rest of the cast was in place, so Chris [Three Bears Productions’ director and
co-producer Chris Moreno] then shoe-horned me into the show here and there. No-one
is coming specially to see me, but hopefully because I’ve plugged the show.
“I don’t think anyone will be saying, ‘it was fantastic, but
I’d hoped there would be more bell ringing’.”
Vicki Michelle as the Wicked Queen in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. Picture: David Harrison
Ben is being unduly modest. He more than holds his own in
the Busy Bee, Busy Bee slapstick scene with Martin Daniels’ Muddles, and he plays
not only the Town Crier but also a second uncredited role.
Ben’s “costume” is the official City of York Town Crier
livery, coupled with the City of York bell. “So, anyone who’s seen me around town
since May will recognise me on stage,” he says. “It’s all a bit ‘meta’: the real
Town Crier being the real Town Crier ion pantomime, whereas Vicki Michelle is
not playing a wartime French waitress!”
As a son of York, Ben is “very proud to represent the city”
both in his presenter’s role on Minster FM and now as the Town Crier too. “The
Town Crier is the embodiment of York: I like the pageantry, the history, and it
adds something else to people’s experience when they come to the city,” he says.
Picking out highlights from his first year in office, Ben
selects pop star Ellie Goulding and Casper Jopling’s wedding ceremony at York Minster
on August 31. “Welcoming Ellie to the Minster…and meeting Katy Perry that day was
obviously the greatest day of my life – and that includes my wedding day and
the birth of my two children,” he says, with his tongue by now nudging his
cheek.
“The Mayor-making ceremony was a good day too, and I enjoyed
the ceremonies for Yorkshire Day [August 1] , reading out the declarations at four
bars where you enter the city, and the Christmas Lights switch-on in front of
the Minster was pretty special too.”
Maybe Ben was destined to put his voice to public use as
York’s Town Crier. “When I was a child, people always said that I had to grow
into my voice, as even then I had a loud, bellowing voice,” he says.
It was a voice that stood out. “! got picked to play Bob Cratchit in Scrooge when I was at Westfield Primary School in Acomb,” Ben recalls.
That voice led him all the way to becoming the matchday pitch announcer at Elland Road during Ken Bates’s turbulent chairmanship of Leeds United, when Ben also would interview “Mr Chairman” on Bates’s station, Yorkshire Radio.
“It was a difficult time for Leeds United, as there was a great
deal of unrest, and I was seen by some as a frontman for Ken as I was doing a
lot of interviews with him, as well as doing the matchday stuff on the pitch,”
he says.
“But I’d always wanted to work in football, and you don’t know
when the chance will come. Those moments under the Elland Road floodlights,
like when Luciano Becchio put Leeds ahead against Chelsea, were special.
“I’ll never forget the game against Bristol Rovers when
Leeds won promotion, going around the pitch with [centre forward] Jermaine Beckford
after the final whistle, in a yellow high-vis jacket, and being asked by the
police to tell all the fans to get off the pitch. It was possibly the most futile
thing I’ve ever been asked to do in my career!”
No stranger to performing to crowds, Ben is taking his
pantomime role in his stride as he sees in the New Year. What’s next? “We’ll be doing the Minster FM
Search For A Local Hero in February, and the Town Crier is available for any
fete or envelope opening, of course,” says Ben. “Just go to the York BID
website and make a request there.”
Ben Fry plays Town Crier in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs,
Grand Opera House, York, until January 4. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
Charles Hutchinson
Dress like Dame Berwick Kaler? Great Panto Run runners will be encouraged to wear fancy dress on January 18. Picture: Anthony Robling
THIS is one show guaranteed to run and run, namely York’s
first ever Great Panto Run on January 18 in aid of the Berwick Kaler Foundation.
“Who knows who might be running? Perhaps Snow White or Aladdin, the Ugly Sisters or even Patricia the pantomime cow,” says York Theatre Royal press officer Steve Pratt.
Event organisers See York Run York are inviting runners to put on their best pantomime costume for a five-mile trail run for the charity established to continue the legacy of retired Theatre Royal panto dame Berwick Kaler.
The inaugural Great Panto Run at Rawcliffe Bar Country Park,
in York, comprises two laps of an out-and-back route through woodland, fields
and pathway on a course suitable for first-time trail runners and experienced
runners alike. In addition, there will be a family fun run of two laps of the
park, just over a mile in length.
“Fancy dress is encouraged but not compulsory, but there
will be a prize for the best fancy-dressed runner,” says Steve.
A team from York Theatre Royal – last seen running the
Yorkshire Marathon Relay – will be putting their running shoes back on for the
Great Panto Run and are looking for sponsors. “Donations via the Wonderful.org
website are fee free, so 100 per cent of your donation will go directly to the Berwick
Kaler Foundation, which aims to bring families, friends and communities
together to enjoy all that theatre has to offer,” says Steve.
Further information on the January 18 run can be found on
the fundraising page at wonderful.org/fundraiser/thegreatpantorunseeyorkrunyork-991a792b.
Will Dame Berwick be involved on the day? Wait and see.
Native Harrow’s Devin Tuel and Stephen Harms. Picture: Brenna Tuel
AMERICAN duo Native Harrow head down from their Celtic Connections show
in Glasgow to play York the next day, January 18.
Singer-songwriter Devin Tuel and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Harms
will be promoting their wistful folk-rock 2019 album, Happier Now, at The
Basement, City Screen.
Signed to Loose Music, the London home to The Handsome Family, Courtney
Marie Andrews and Israel Nash, Native Harrow will be performing 11 British gigs
in January before returning to North Yorkshire for the Deer Shed Festival at Baldersby
Park, Topcliffe, from July 24 to 26.
Native Harrow is the nom de plume of Tuel, a former ballerina and classically trained singer, from Newburgh, New York, who says of her third album: “This record is about becoming your own advocate. Realising that maybe you are different in several or a myriad of ways and that that is okay. And further, it is about me becoming a grown woman.”
After nearly two decades of rigorous training in ballet, theatre and singing, Tuel needed to break out of the oppressive rules of academia. She had to find her natural voice, write from her heart, and figure out what kind of performer she truly was, rather than the one she was being moulded into from the age of three. “I spent my early twenties playing every venue in Greenwich Village, recording demos in my friend’s kitchen and making lattes,” she says.
“I felt very alive
then. I was on my own living in my own little studio, staying up all night
writing; the dream I had of being a bohemian New York City artist was
unfolding. I wanted to be Patti Smith.
“I was also
heartbroken, poor and had no idea what I was getting myself into. My twenties,
as I think it goes for most, were all about getting up, getting knocked down,
and learning to keep going. I never gave up and I think if I told 20-year-old
me how things looked nine years later she’d be so excited”.
She and Harms recorded Happier Now at Chicago’s Reliable Recorders over three days in March 2018, working with co-producer Alex Hall on nine songs that addressed fear, love, the open road, ill-fated relationships and coping with the state of the world.
“I wanted to share
that I made it out of my own thunderstorm,” says Tuel. “I had experienced the
high peaks and very low valleys of my twenties.
“I saw more of the
world on my own, got through challenges, revelled in true moments of triumph, but
all the while the world around me was growing louder, wilder, and scarier.
Music for me is a place to be soft. This album was my place to feel it
all.”
Happier Now’s songs
were written in the duo’s “downtime” during three back-to-back tours across
North America, spanning 108 dates, in support of Native Harrow’s second album,
Sorores.
Tuel approached the
sessions like a musicians’ workshop, each morning beginning with the songwriter
presenting her collaborators with the day’s material.
Tuel, Harms and
Hall rehearsed and documented each song live on the floor, tracking as a band
through each take. No click tracks, scratch tracks, or even headphones; just
three musicians in a small room, captured with Hall’s collection of vintage microphones
and subtle retro production techniques.
Overdubs, including vocal harmonies, B3 organ and the rare lead guitar, were added to decorate these live performances. The creative energy of the tightly knit sessions spilled over into Tuel’s songwriting as well: she skipped lunch on the third and final day of recording to pen the road-weary Hard To Take.
Four days after arriving in Chicago, Native Harrow were back on the road and Happier Now was complete, with its songs oscillating between feeling the sting of uncertainty on Can’t Go On Like This, through the beauty of California on Blue Canyon, to the ache for lavish stability on Way To Light.
Hear them live in York on January 18 in an 8pm show promoted by Please Please You. Tickets cost £10 at ticketing.picturehouses.com.
The Buena Vista Social Club musicians playing in Amsterdam in April 1998
JANUARY 7 2020 will mark 20 years since City Screen, York, opened on its
riverside site in Coney Street.
General manager Tony Clarke and associate general manager Cath Sharp
have been there since the opening, and to mark the anniversary they have selected
Buena Vista Social Club for a special show at 8.30pm that night.
Tony says: “Wim Wenders’ film about ageing Cuban musicians has probably
best stood the test of time, and so we’d like to show it again on our 20th
anniversary and offer the screening free to Picturehouse members.” Please
note, tickets are available to members only in person at the City Screen box
office.
The film poster for Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club
The City Screen cinema is partly new-build and partly a conversion of
the old office and printworks of The Yorkshire Herald, whose name is still emblazoned
across the top of the building.
Since May 1987, York Film Theatre (YFT) had operated City Screen at
Tempest Anderson Hall, Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens. In 1997, however,
YFT entered into a ground-breaking public/private partnership with a commercial
arts cinema group, coincidentally called City Screen Limited, to create a new
art-house cinema in the centre of York.
In 1998, the new partnership won an Arts Council Lottery Award of £2.37
million, a sum matched by City Screen Ltd, to buy and renovate the Yorkshire
Herald newspaper building that had stood derelict since 1989.
Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo in Buena Vista Social Club
The new City Screen, York, opened for business in January 2000 with a
first programme of Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club, Martin Scorsese’s Bringing
Out The Dead, Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey and Simon Beaufoy and Billie
Eltringham’s The Darkest Light.
In Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated documentary, Cuba’s rich and colourful past comes vividly to life as the Paris, Texas and Wings Of Desire director documents American musician Ry Cooder’s return to Havana.
There Cooder had recorded the Grammy Award-winning Buena Vista Social Club album, still the biggest-selling world music recording of all time, with veteran musicians Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo and Compay Segundo.
This
dream team of players from Cuban music’s golden age introduced the rhythms of
Son, Bolero and Danzón to a new audience, making them instant international
stars.
Compay Segundo performing with the Buena Vista Social Club musicians
Never a regular band, however, The Buena Vista Social Club had gone their separate ways after that 1997 album, but Cooder’s return brought them together again in 1998 to look back to the halcyon days of Cuba’s music scene, when the rich and famous travelled from all over the world to listen to them.
In the film’s climax, their music comes alive anew as they rehearse for their first – and only – performance in the United States at a sold-out Carnegie Hall in New York
Looking
forward to introducing the January 7 screening, Tony says: “”Our wine
supplier, Bibendum, has generously provided us with some Prosecco to enable us
to give members a free drink on the night to toast City Screen on this
anniversary, and we’ll even have our head chef make some birthday cake as
well.
“What’s more, the celebrations will continue throughout 2020 with more special events once the ‘Oscar season’ is over, so keep an eye out for those too.”
Take a seat and bask in Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience at York St Mary’s
VAN
Gogh: The Immersive Experience is to be given an extended run at York St Mary’s,
having drawn 50,000 visitors since July.
The Vincent
Van Gogh exhibition was set to close on January 5 but now will be open until
the end of the Easter holidays on April 19.
Explaining
the decision, creative director Mario Iacampo said: “We have had such a warm
welcome in York, and incredibly positive feedback about how people have been
moved by the experience, so we’re delighted that we’re able to continue as a
part of York’s vibrant winter programme of events and activities.
Van Gogh: art spread out all around visitors at York St Mary’s
“York
St Mary’s is a wonderful venue for this kind of immersive digital art: right in
the heart of the city for easy access, yet able to be adapted, so visitors feel
as though they are in the French countryside, or overlooking the Rhone, during
their time with us.”
The
multimedia experience centres around a 360-degree projection in the nave of the
deconsecrated church, making use of the stone arches and high ceiling.
Animated versions of more than 200 of Van Gogh’s most famous works are
projected on to the walls, while a specially written emotive soundtrack and
relaxing reclined deckchairs encourage visitors to sink into the environment
around them for a Zen-like experience.
The
main show runs on a continuous loop lasting 35 minutes, and visitors can spend
as much time as they want in the nave.
Feeling blue: the Van Gogh Immersive experience
At
the end of a visit, a virtual reality experience takes visitors through a day
in the life of the artist in Arles during Van Gogh’s time there, depicting locations
that inspired his work, starting with the bedroom in the farmhouse that he
painted three times.
Paul
Whiting, head of marketing and communications at Visit York, said: “We’re
delighted that this innovative exhibition will be extended into 2020. It’s a
wonderful addition to the media arts offering of the city, combining a
beautiful, atmospheric venue with a uniquely immersive art installation. It’s
great news that visitors and residents will have further opportunities next
year as they enjoy their ‘Only in York’ experience.”
Van
Gogh: The Immersive Experience, at York St Mary’s, Castlegate, York, will be
open from Wednesday to Sunday in January, February and March, daily during half
term and then from March 30 until April 19.
Admission prices are £13, £11, concessions, and £9, children, with booking strongly recommended. For more details and opening times, visit vangoghexpo.co.uk.
The doorway to Van Gogh’s bedroom at Arles . Pictures: Charlotte Graham
Here is Charles Hutchinson’s feature on Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, as first printed in The Press, York, on July 15.
WHAT is the difference between an exhibition, a show and an immersive experience, like the one you can encounter at York St Mary’s?
Let Mario Iacampo, the man behind the cutting-edge Van Gogh attraction in Castlegate, York, define it.
“Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is not an exhibition and it’s not a show, which I believe requires a live element; it’s somewhere between the two,” he says. “I wanted to create a Zen environment where you can sit down and watch at your leisure.
“To make it an ‘experience’, first of all there has to be emotion; then there has to be music to go with it; thirdly, there has to be the immersive experience, all around you, even on the floor.”
Iacampo, the creative director and founder of Exhibition Hub, has worked with animation artists at Dirty Monitor to create the 360-degrees digital art installation of 19th century Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings evoking his life story.
Having drawn 82,000 people in Naples and 150,000 in Brussels, it is making its British debut in York, Britain’s first UNESCO City of Media Arts, where it will be on show until January 5 2020.
Why did you choose York, Mario? “We were looking at venues around the UK for a while, and I like to present the ‘experience’ in historical buildings,” he recalls. “We went to the Council of Churches and we started studying possibilities.
“York has a huge number of tourists coming to the city, and it’s placed in the middle of the country, which is why we thought York would work well.
“Then the history adds to the impact of the presentation, and using the columns and alcoves of the church are a big part of the interpretation. York St Mary’s was ideal.”
Nine months of preparation and a fortnight of construction then went into making the York installation. After adapting the technology to the 3D design of the York church – the building has four alcoves, compared to six in Naples – the immersive experience projects animated displays on to the walls of the former St Mary’s Church, where black-out blinds and a dozen projectors have transformed the normally light and airy building into a constantly moving projected gallery of 200 of Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous 19th century works.
At one end is a re-creation of Van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles, the subject of three of his paintings with its cramped bed, two chairs, yellowed window, battered Panama hat and row of jackets.
The central Nave houses a 35-minute immersive display, with a carpeted floor filled with deckchairs, from where visitors can enjoy the 360-degree displays seated, standing up or even lying down as the images move over the walls and floor – and their bodies, should they be horizontal.
Rather than merely projecting the original paintings, the immersive experience provides the twist of digitally animating the works: wheat sways in the breeze, water pours out of the confines of the painting’s frame, and the stars twirl and swirl in the night sky. Spookily, a skeleton suddenly smokes a cigarette. Steam from a train gradually immerses all the walls.
Everything comes alive all around you: the sun’s ever-changing position will lead to ever-changing shadows on the walls. There is so much to take in, visually, orally too, that you will want to stay longer than the 35-minute installation loop. At £13, make the very most of an artistic experience like no other in York previously.
The immersive experience is divided into, or rather flows seamlessly through, three sections: his painting years at Arles; his family, showing the repetitions in his portraits; and his years in the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, 18 miles from Arles, still prolific years, but troubled by mental illness, ending in his suicide. The moment his self-portrait with his bandaged head suddenly emerges on the wall shocks anew.
For an extra £3, you can experience a 12-minute Virtual Reality rollercoaster ride from Van Gogh’s house to the settings of his best known works. Breathtaking. Truly breathtaking. And what’s more, part of the money raised from the VR experience will be donated to SASH, the York charity for the homeless, at Mario’s request.
“Sadness will last forever,” says one of Van Gogh’s quotes liberally sprinkled around St Mary’s, yet Mario points out: “He committed himself to the asylum because he felt he needed help, but he was also extremely prolific during that time, and they’re not all sad. Yes, there are some dark works, but he also painted what he saw around him, the gardens, what people were doing.”
Why did he pick Van Gogh for an immersive experience, rather than, say, Picasso or Dali? “You have to choose an artist whose paintings are ‘filled in’ with colour. You put up Starry Night and it fills the building. It really ‘pops’ into life.
“It’s the same with Monet, who we’ve also done for an immersive experience. You could do the same with Dali, but Picasso, maybe not,” says Mario.
“You also choose an artist that people understand, as you’re creating an experience for the general public, not for academics, though they have been complimentary. “ Van Gogh’s profusion of letters, 844 of them, primarily to his younger brother Theo, have helped hugely with the psychological aspect of the experience, cutting out the need for guesswork in interpreting his works. “It’s much easier when you have those letters, says Mario.
Van Gogh, by the way, signed his paintings “Vincent” for “the simple reason” no-one could pronounce his surname.
For the record, Mario pronounces it Van Goch, as in clock.
Agatha Meehan, from York, in the lead role of Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz at Leeds Playhouse, All pictures: The Other Richard
The Wizard Of Oz, Leeds Playhouse, until January 25 2020. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk
AGATHA Meehan is going places. Right now, the blossoming York acting talent
is travelling in a whirling tornado from her Kansas farm to Oz and the Emerald
City in the lead role of Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz.
Already she has starred in the West End as Summer Hathaway in School Of
Rock and Annie in Annie, a part she first played for York Musical Theatre
Company in March 2017 while a pupil at St George’s RC Primary School.
After adding Jane in the UK premiere of A Little Princess at the Royal
Festival Hall to her London credits, now she is alternating Dorothy with Lucy
Sherman in the first Christmas family musical in the Quarry Theatre since the Leeds
Playhouse’s £15.8 million redevelopment. All this, and she is only 12 years
old. What a whirlwind rise.
Sam Harrison’s Tinman leading a merry dance in The Wizard Of Oz
There’s no place that Agatha feels more at home than on stage, and she
gives a remarkably assured performance, from the moment she sings the iconic
Over The Rainbow.
Her Kansas accent is spot on; her Dorothy, in pigtails and farm dungarees and later the ever-evocative blue gingham dress, is a stoical young girl of moral conviction, passion and determination, challenging adult authority and inertia in Baum’s Kansas of the 1900s and Emerald City alike.
Combining Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg’s songs
from the more innocent 1939 MGM film with John Kane’s witty, somewhat knowing 1987
script for the Royal Shakespeare Company, artistic director James Brining’s
production delivers on an epic, filmic scale, full of heart and humour, joy and
jeopardy, Munchkins and monkeys, mystery and magic.
Eleanor Sutton’s Scarecrow in The Wizard Of Oz
Meehan’s Dorothy is surrounded by a combination of
hi-tech and lo-tech, and likewise the familiar and the freshened up, with
Jitterbug re-introduced as one of two premier league showstoppers alongside The
Merry Old Land Of Oz, choreographed to dazzling effect by Lucy Cullingford.
Phil Cole’s Uncle Henry and Angela Wynter’s Aunt Em are a mixed-race couple; Eleanor Sutton is a female Scarecrow; Sam Harrison’s Tinman is gay and the outstanding Marcus Ayton is a black timorous Lion, with boxing moves and a knock-out singing voice to boot for If I Were King Of The Forest.
Simon Wainwright, from innovative Leeds company Imitating The Dog,
provides the video projections for the twister scene that combine with the
time-honoured skills of spinning aerialists. Toto the dog is played by a real
dog before the storm, then by a puppet animated so expressively by Ailsa
Dalling in Oz. Look out too for the crow puppets, and be sure to duck when the
Wicked Witch of the West and her dive-bombing monkeys are flying overhead.
A roaring success: Marcus Ayton’s outstanding Lion in The Wizard Of Oz at Leeds Playhouse
Polly Lister is terrifically terrifying as the mean, twisted neighbour Miss
Gulch and the cackling, droll Wicked Witch, whose vamp camp air never quite ventures
into pantomime villainy.
As you would expect of a major-city Christmas show, this is a big, big production:
a cast of 20, supported by a young Leeds
community company as the Munchkins; a band of 11 directed with panache by Tamara
Saringer; and wonderful set and costume designs by Simon Higlett, whose palette
progresses from parched, dustbowl Kansas with its plain farmhouse and water
tower, to the spectacular greens and yellows of a futuristic Emerald City.
Click your ruby red heels, make a wish and find yourself having a wizard
time on the Yellow Brick Road at Leeds Playhouse this winter.
Toto and puppeteer Ailsa Dalling in The Wizard Of Oz
Tim Stedman’s Happy Harry, left, Howard Chadwick’s Nora the Nanny, Zelina Rebeiro’s Snow White, Pamela Dwyer’s Fairy Ruby Rainbow (back), Colin Kiyani’s Prince Lee (front) and Polly Smith’s Wicked Queen Ethel Burger in Snow White at Harrogate Theatre
Snow White, Harrogate Theatre, until January 19 2020. Box office: 01423 502116 or atharrogatetheatre.co.uk
JUST by the entrance to the stalls is a sign. Snow
White contains Smoke/Haze, Pyrotechnics, Flashing Lights. The usual, in other
words, but then it adds Poison Apples.
A-ha. This is why Harrogate Theatre’s pantomime is
such a joy for adults, as well as the children they bring along. The witty
extra details.
This latest pantomime collaboration between
director Phil Lowe and co-writer and chief executive David Bown doesn’t contain
“And The Seven Dwarfs” in the title, but it does contain Tim Stedman in his 20th year
as Harrogate’s strawberry-cheeked, squeaky-voiced daft lad.
Back to Stedman in a moment, but first more of
those details that make the difference: the sign on stage that points to Base
Camp and Too Camp; Harrogate being renamed Happygate in the county of
Yawnshire; and the pop-culture words to spot in Wicked Queen Ethel Burger’s castle
lair. Spells For Teen Spirits (one for Nirvana fans); Keep Calm & Cast
Spells; Tears/Fears.
Then there are the regular mentions of Harrogate’s
event of the year:September’s week-long cycling festival, the UCI Road World
Championships, that turned the Stray into looking more like a Waif and Stray.
“And the bikes have been put away,” came the first mention. “It’s only grass,
it will grow back,” we were re-assured by Stedman and on the back page of a
mocked-up Happygate Advertiser.
Lowe and Bown certainly have fun stoking the fires
of this hot topic that vexes more than agitated letter writers to the local
paper.
On a happier note, Stedman’s 20 years of putting
the funny ha-ha in Harrogate is a cause for celebration, albeit that his silly
billy is given a new name for these politically correct times: Happy Harry,
rather than the usual Muddles. Happy to report, however, that he is still the
sharpest fool in the foolbox, and the fool is still making fools of others,
just as he did in Shakespeare’s plays.
Stedman’s jaunty jester is in cracking clowning form,
picking his “victim for humiliation” with a Catch The Apple game that ends with
teacher Mrs Smith – an appropriate name, he notes – as his stooge for this
particular performance.
His Wheel of Happiness – we should all have one installed
at home – is a thing of joy with its tension-building Slice of Danger and his hapless
slapstick scene with Pamela Dwyer’s Scottish Hunter the Handyman recalls Laurel
and Hardy, while the terrible Christmas cracker jokes keep rolling by. “What do
call an exploding monkey?” he asks. “A ba-boon!” Cue groans.
Colin Kiyani’s Prince Lee and Zelina Rebeiro’s Snow
White keep the romance and soppy ballad count ticking over and the seven dwarfs
make their appearances as big puppet heads, while Alice Barrott’s Magic Mirror
is a frank-speaking Southerner in a northern town.
In a piece of metatheatre, Dwyer’s Fairy Ruby
Rainbow makes a point of stepping outside the pantomime boundaries to explain
that “technically fairies aren’t allowed to be around humans but you can keep
my secret safe” as she transforms into castle dogsbody Hunter the Handyman.
Both roles are handled with aplomb.
Polly Smith returns to the Harrogate panto, this
time as Wicked Queen Ethel Burger, a role with plenty of bite and spite, while
fellow returnee Howard Chadwick’s grouchy dame lives up to his name of No
Nonsense Nora the Nanny, banning the singing of Baby Shark. Look out for his
paintbrush hair-do, one of many delights in Morgan Brind’s designs that provide
humour and spectacle in equal measure.
Nick Lacey’s sprightly musical direction and David
Kar-Hing Lee’s zesty choreographer add to the enjoyment as Harrogate Theatre
revels in the restlessly cheeky Stedman’s 20th anniversary. He’ll return
for Cinderella next Christmas, and surely the Stray grass will be back by then
too. Won’t it?
