Category: Breaking News

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Leo Sayer and Squeeze’s Chris Difford to join Jools Holland for York Barbican gig

Jools Holland: on tour for 32 autumn and winter dates

BOOGIE WOOGIE pianist Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra will be joined on tour for the first time by veteran singer Leo Sayer, as well as original Squeeze compadre Chris Difford.

Both Sayer and Difford will perform at York Barbican on November 11, Harrogate International Centre on November 27 and Leeds First Direct Arena on the 32-date itinerary’s closing night, December 20. Sayer, but not Difford, will be a guest at Holland’s Sheffield City Hall show on December 3.

Tickets for Holland’s 24th autumn and winter tour will go on sale at 10am on Friday (February 7) via Ticketmaster, See Tickets, Ticketline and Stargreen, as well as the venues.

Leo Sayer: touring with Jools Holland’s orchestra for the first time in 2020

Joining jaunty Jools too will be two long-term participants, gospel, blues and soul singer Ruby Turner, who has written songs with Holland, and original Squeeze drummer Gilson Lavis. Regular vocalist Louise Marshall will be there each show too.

Sayer, 71, who became an Australian citizen in 2009 after moving to Sydney, New South Wales, in 2005, charted in the Top Ten with all of his first seven hits between 1973 and 1978: The Show Must Go On, One Man Band, Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance), Moonlighting, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, the chart-topping When I Need You and How Much Love.

Further success followed with I Can’t Stop Loving You (Though I Try) and More Than I Can Say in 1978, Have You Ever Been In Love in 1982 and Thunder In My Heart, contributing vocals to Meck’s number one in 2006.

Chris Difford: Squeezing in autumn and winter dates with Jools Holland

Difford, Holland’s fellow Squeeze co-founder, has worked through the years with Glen Tilbrook, also writing with Elton John, Paul Carrack, Lisa Stansfield, Bryan Ferry, Helen Shapiro, Elvis Costello and Holland too, who calls him “the John Lennon of London, the John Betjeman of Blackheath and the Alain Delon of Deptford”.

Holland and his orchestra have performed previously with Eddi Reader, Lulu, Joss Stone, Fine Young Cannibals’ Roland Gift, Spice Girl Melanie C and Marc Almond. For his 2020 tour, UB40 featuring Ali and Astro will join him for three November gigs in Guildford and London.  

Jools is recording his next album, whose focus will be on piano stylings, duets and collaborations with top instrumentalists, for autumn release.

Tickets for York Barbican, where Holland last played on October 31 2019, will be on sale on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; Leeds, firstdirectarena.com; Sheffield, 0114 278 9789 or sheffieldcityhall.co.uk.

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A Green Knight and painter Pablo’s women take over Theatre Royal Studio tomorrow

What if the story of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight were to be retold by the woman at its heart ? Debbie Cannon does exactly that in Green Knight

STUDIO Disoveries, a week of new theatre chosen by the Visionari community programming group, continues tomorrow with a brace of shows at the York Theatre Royal Studio.

Writer and performer Debbie Cannon’s Green Knight, at 6.30pm, is a one-woman version of the medieval poem Sir Gawain And The Green Knight.

The setting is Christmas at Camelot, where a monstrous green warrior issues an unwinnable challenge to Arthur’s finest knight, but what if the story were to be retold by the woman at its heart?

Flying Elephant’s premiere production, Picasso’s Women, delivers a unique look at Picasso’s life through the voices of his wives, mistresses and muses at 8.30pm.

One of three of Picasso’s Women at York Theatre Royal Studio tomorrow

Written by Brian McAvera, directed by Marcia Carr and performed by Judith Paris, Colette Redgrave and Lucy Hunt, it takes the form of three monologues featuring French model Fernande, Russian ballerina Olga and 17-year-old mistress Marie-Therese.

Originally produced for the National Theatre and BBC Radio 3, the women’s stories provide an insight into the influence these women had on Picasso’s life and art.

The full programme for Visionari’s second Studio Discoveries season can be found at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. The festival begins today (February 4) with Not Now Collective’s Pepper & Honey, a new play with live Croatian pepper biscuit-baking, at 11am and 2pm. Box office: 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the Theatre Royal box office.

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A word with Poet Laureate Simon Armitage before his York Theatre Royal shows

Power of the pen: Poet Laureate Simon Armitage

YORKSHIREMAN Simon Armitage performs in York tonight and tomorrow for the first time since being appointed Poet Laureate last May.

The 56-year-old Huddersfield poet is presenting Seeing Stars: An Evening With Simon Armitage at York Theatre Royal in two fundraising shows to support the theatre’s community work.

Confirmed to be joining Armitage for the 7.30pm shows are actors Kacey Ainsworth (best known for playing Little Mo in EastEnders), Richard Bremmer, Charlotte Mills and Tom Kanji.

Curated by Scarborough-born theatre director Nick Bagnall, Seeing Stars features readings from Armitage’s works inspired by Sir Gawain And The Green Knight and The Death Of King Arthur on the tenth anniversary of Seeing Stars, his “very dramatic, very theatrical” book of dramatic monologues, allegories and absurdist tall tales.

Nine months into his Poet Laureateship, how would Armitage, the first Professor of Poetry at Leeds University, define poetry? “I’ve always taken the view that poetry is not just one thing,” he says.

“There have been recent times when people think it’s just words in a book, but performance has always been important and that has come back into fashion and been re-imagined too with spoken-word slams. There is room for everybody creating the language.”

Armitage continues: “One of the roles of the Poet Laureate, as I see it, is to promote poetry and speak up for the arts.

” I know it can have a strange effect on people when you say you’re a poet,” says Poet Laureate Simon Armitage

“My feeling is, if you’re involved with the arts, you’re more comfortable with yourself and you bring that to the inner universe you exist in, even if it’s only being more comfortable about language and how you think.”

At a time of cutbacks in arts funding and schools putting science before the arts in the curriculum, Armitage says: “You stifle creativity at your peril because, if you don’t offer an outlet, if you antagonise, it will still find a way out.”

Where does Armitage see sitting poets sitting in the public’s perception in 2020? As minstrels? Prophets? Commentators? Outsiders? “I know it can have a strange effect on people when you say you’re a poet. Definitely there’s something of the outside, the alternative, about it,” he says.

“It’s been a ‘peculiar’, not ever a mainstream, artform but I think people have a soft spot in their heart for poetry, especially at moments in their life, happy or sad, whether reading it or even writing it in those moments, so I still don’t think it’s a remote artform.”

As for his aims in his ten-year tenure as Poet Laureate, Armitage says: “By the end of those ten years, I would like to have seen my projects come to fruition [such as the newly founded Laurel Prize for nature poems and the establishing of a National Centre for Poetry].

“I’d also like to be judged for my writing, either myself seeking to maintain standards, or writing in a communicative, engaging way, and my Poet Laureate poems have to satisfy me too.”

Seeing Stars: An Evening With Simon Armitage, York Theatre Royal, tonight and tomorrow, February 4 and 5, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

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York Guildhall Orchestra marks 40th anniversary with special Barbican concert

Cello soloist Jamie Walton. Picture: Wolf Marloh

YORK Guildhall Orchestra will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a special York Barbican concert on February 15.

Almost 40 years to the day from when the orchestra was founded by John Hastie and played in a “one-off” in the York Guildhall in February 1980, the anniversary will be marked with a 7.30pm programme of works and composers from that first concert.

Who could have foretold the amazing journey, reputation, critical acclaim and popularity of the Guildhall group that has developed in the intervening years?

The anniversary concert will begin with the first piece the orchestra played in 1980: Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite (Mere L’Oye), a showpiece for glorious orchestral tunes featuring the talents of the wind section.

This will be followed by the return of soloist Jamie Walton, founder of the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival, for Elgar’s evergreen Cello Concerto.  A celebratory orchestral work by John Hastie will open the second half that will conclude with Brahms’s Symphony No 2 (Symphony In Norahms).

This finale will call on the whole orchestra to do what it loves doing best: play a luxurious, full orchestral work of the Romantic period of classical music.

Tickets cost £6.30 to £17.55 on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.

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Evolution, not revolution, heralds new age of pantomime at York Theatre Royal

New pantomime partnership: York Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster and executive director Tom Bird with Evolution Productions producer Paul Hendy,

THE new age of pantomime at York Theatre Royal will involve Evolution rather than revolution.

For the first panto of the post-Berwick Kaler era, the Theatre Royal is teaming up with award-winning pantomime producers Evolution to present Cinderella.

The show dates will be December 4 to January 10 2021, an earlier start and finish than the December 7 to January 25 run for Sleeping Beauty, Dame Berwick’s last pantomime as co-director and writer after a 41-year association with the Theatre Royal.

Cinderella will be directed by Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster, who directed Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre in York in 2018 and Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge in the Theatre Royal main house last September, as well as children’s shows aplenty.

Juliet Forster, who will direct York Theatre Royal’s pantomime, Cinderella

The script will be written by Evolution co-founder and producer Paul Hendy in tandem with York-born comedy writer and podcaster David Reed, who has returned to his home city and will provide additional material.

The cast is yet to be announced but will not be a star vehicle, with variety acts and blossoming pantomime talent and a “York flavour” likely to be to the fore instead. The set designer, not confirmed yet, will be charged with creating magical transformations and glittering sets to complement the “stunning songs and side-splitting laughs”.

Formed in 2005 by Paul Hendy and Emily Wood, Evolution Productions present “bespoke pantomimes of epic spectacle and hilarity” for the Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield; Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury; The Hawth Theatre, Crawley; Garrick Theatre, Lichfield; Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury; Alban Arena, St Albans; Octagon Theatre, Yeovil, and Grove Theatre, Dunstable, now joined in a co-producing partnership by York Theatre Royal.

Juliet Forster and Theatre Royal executive director Tom Bird were exhilarated by Evolution’s 2019-2020 pantomime for Sheffield Theatres, starring long-running dame Damian Williams in Cinderella at the Lyceum.

Paul Hendy’s script from that hit show will provide an early template for Reed to set to work on giving it a York branding, with Cinderella’s rags-to-riches story being switched to this historic city in a “new pantomime for everyone”.

Evolution producer Paul Hendy: co-writer of Cinderella at York Theatre Royal

Executive director Bird says: “We are over the moon to be creating a spectacular new pantomime for the people of York: one that’s tailor-made for the whole family, while honouring the pantomime traditions that our audiences love so much. 

“Our recipe includes two of the most exciting voices in our city, David Reed and Juliet Forster, together with Emily Wood and Paul Hendy, the finest makers of pantomime in the country – a fairytale combination.”

Bird continues: “This phenomenal team will give the York Theatre Royal pantomime a new lease of life with a fresh, family friendly, fun-filled approach to the story of Cinderella. It’s a pantomime for the new decade, set with pride in our amazing city.”

Evolution Productions has built a reputation for superior, bespoke pantomimes with the emphasis on high-quality production values, strong casting and funny scripts, twice winning Pantomime of the Year at the Great British Pantomime Awards.

Producer and writer Hendy says: “Emily and I are absolutely thrilled to be working with York Theatre Royal on this year’s pantomime. We are huge fans of the theatre and we’re looking forward to collaborating with Tom and his brilliant team to produce a wonderful, family-friendly pantomime with spectacular production values, a superbly talented cast, and a genuinely funny script.”

Ticket prices will remain the same as for 2019-2020. Family tickets and Sunday shows are being introduced, as well as schools and groups discounts so that “everyone can go to the ball”.

Theatre Royal members’ ten-day priority booking opened today; members’ five-day priority booking on February 8; 9am in person at the box office, 10am online and phone booking. General booking opens on February 13; same times as above. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Meanwhile, Berwick Kaler’s first pantomime at his new York home, the Grand Opera House, will be Dick Turpin Rides Again, with writer, director and revived dame Kaler being joined by regular cohorts Martin Barrass, David Leonard, Suzy Cooper and AJ Powell for Qdos Entertainment’s panto partnership with the Ambassador Theatre Group.

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Kaiser Chiefs are off to the woods this summer for Dalby Forest return gig

Kaiser Chiefs: striding out for Dalby Forest on June 26

KAISER Chiefs are to return to Dalby Forest, near Pickering, for a Forest Live open-air gig on June 26.

The Leeds band played there previously in 2016, and once more Forestry England’s conservation projects will benefit from the concert takings, as they will from Will Young and James Morrison’s Dalby double-header on June 27.

Tickets go on sale from 9am on Friday (February 7) on 03000 680400 or at forestryengland.uk/music. 

Frontman Ricky Wilson says: “We’re chuffed to be playing a home-county gig in Dalby Forest this summer. We last played there in 2016 as part of Forest Live series and it’s an amazing location to perform deep in the woods, so we hope you can join us on this escapade.”

Chief hits Oh My God, I Predict A Riot, Everyday I Love You Less And Less, the chart-topping Ruby and Never Miss A Beat will be complemented by album selections off Employment; Yours Truly, Angry Mob; Off With Their Heads; The Future Is Medieval; Education, Education, Education; Stay Together and last July’s Duck.

Kaiser Chiefs previously took to the Yorkshire great outdoors to play York Racecourse in July 2016 and Scarborough Open Air Theatre in May 2017.

From December 2018 to March 2019, they brought a new meaning to Pop Art when curating When All Is Quiet: Kaiser Chiefs In Conversation With York Art Gallery. Exploring the boundaries between art and music in this experimental exhibition, they used their position as pop musicians to rethink sound as an art medium.

Did you know?

More than 1.9 million people have attended Forest Live concerts in the past 19 years. Ticket-sale income goes towards Forestry England looking after the nation’s forests sustainably, helping to create beautiful places for people to enjoy, wildlife to flourish and trees to grow.

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Pussycat Dolls are playing York Racecourse this summer, don’t cha know, but when?

Pussycat Dolls: prepare for Doll Domination at York Racecourse in July

REVIVED American girl group Pussycat Dolls will perform York Racecourse’s first 2020 Music Showcase Weekend show after the evening race card on July 24.

Eighties’ soul-pop icon Rick Astley was confirmed already for the weekend, signed up to play after the afternoon racing on the Knavesmire course on July 25.

Pussycat Dolls sold more than 54 million records in a run of hits from 2003 to 2010 and returned to the live platform after a nine-year hiatus at last year’s final of The X Factor: Celebrity: familiar territory for band member Nicole Scherzinger, a long-standing judge on the ITV talent show.

Scherzinger is joined in the Pussycat song-and-dance line-up by Ashley Roberts, Kimberly Wyatt, Jessica Sutta and Carmit Bachar. Expect them to sing the chart-topping Don’t Cha and Stickwitu, Beep, Buttons, I Don’t Need A Man, When I Grow Up, Whatcha Think About That and more besides, all coupled with dance routines.

Rick Astley: July 25 concert at York Racecourse Music Showcase Weekend

James Brennan, head of marketing and sponsorship at York Racecourse, said: “Announcements don’t come much bigger than being able to say that Pussycat Dolls will be bringing their Doll Domination to York Racecourse for a special Friday night performance to open the Music Showcase Weekend.

“Performances on a Friday evening have always had a special atmosphere with the excitement of the stars on the turf and the stars on the stage combining to make this an event to put in your diary now.”

To book, visit yorkracecourse.co.uk; no booking fee applies and car parking will be free. On the race track that evening, the European Breeders Fund Lyric York Stakes will be the centrepiece of a six-race card.

One York race-day concert is yet to be announced: the Summer Music Saturday on June 27. Watch this space.

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Pepper & Honey show about home takes the biscuit as Visionari festival opens

Pepper & Honey: Not Now Collective’s play with live baking opens Visionari’s Studio Discoveries festival at the York Theatre Royal Studio

WHAT happens when the audience selects the shows? Find out at York Theatre Royal from tomorrow in the Studio Discoveries festival of theatre chosen by the Visionari community programming group.

The first of six picks in Visionari’s second season really takes the biscuit when Not Now Collective’s new play of love, loss, heritage and new beginnings, Pepper & Honey,is told through the baking of Croatian pepper biscuits.

Known as paprenjaci, they will be baked live in front of the 11am and 2pm audiences as the story of Ana’s preparations to start a new life in the UK unfolds. Babes-in-arms are welcome at the 11am and 2pm shows – and biscuits are included.

So, what is “home”, ask Not Now Collective. Now that the era of post-Brexit Britain is under way, that question has never been more pertinent, in this case for Ana, a young Croatian woman, as she settles in the UK.

Determined to make it home, she focuses on life in this new land, but she is haunted by the voice of her Grandma, calling for her to stay true to national identity and yearning for Ana to come home.  

Grandma bakes her traditional Croatian pepper biscuits – believed  to bring a loved one back home – but will this be enough to be reunited with her granddaughter? What is “home” to Ana now?

Written by a Croatian playwright and performed by a Croatian actor, Pepper & Honey is a poignant, subtle and timely play about the journey of change, cultural differences, trying not to feel like a foreigner in your adopted country, and the conflict between upholding the traditions of the “old country” and embracing those of the new.

As trailered earlier, Pepper & Honey will be “timed to perfection to deliver a perfect Croatian pepper biscuit, baked live with the help of the audience”. Tickets for all the Visionari Studio Discoveries plays are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. The price is £10 per show or £8 when two or more Studio Discoveries shows are booked.

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Kneehigh mount Leeds Playhouse protest with Ubu party games and singalongs

Kneehigh’s Ubu!: party and protest rolled into one riotous show . Picture: Steve Tanner

ALFRED Jarry’s ground-breaking political parable Ubu Roi caused riots when first staged in Paris in 1896. Now, Kneehigh’s Ubu! A Singalong Satire promises an equally riotous night out at Leeds Playhouse’s Quarry Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday.

Conceived by Carl Grose, Charles Hazlewood and Mike Shepherd, it smashes together Jarry’s gleefully rude and deliberately childish script with a crowd-pleasing singalong, party games, inflatable animals and contemporary political satire.   

Kneehigh’s Ubu! is a punk-spirited, comedic study of power, protest and populism. “And what better form of popular culture to demonstrate this than mass karaoke?”, ask the Cornish company.

The show is led by Katy Owen’s tiny, tyrannical Pa Ubu and Mike Shepherd’s pouting, preening Ma Ubu, alongside the ever-versatile Kneehigh ensemble: a six-strong cast and the band The Sweaty Bureaucrats.  

Arranged by Hazlewood, the selection of songs is inventive and cannily chosen, ranging from Britney Spears’ Toxic and Edwin Starr’s War to Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk and The Carpenters’ Close To You, as a festival atmosphere builds.

Writer and co-director Carl Grose explains how Ubu! came to fruition and why the petty protagonist still resonates with modern audiences. “When Alfred Jarry’s play received its premiere at the Théâtre de l’OEuvre in Paris on December 10 1896, there was, so the story goes, a full-on riot,” he says.

Winging it: Kneehigh’s singalong Ubu!. Picture: Steve Tanner

“Audiences and critics alike were confronted with sights and sounds of such outrageousness that pandemonium broke out and the production was shut down after only two performances.”

Grose continues: “Like all great artists, Alfred Jarry was a disrupter, and Ubu was his weapon of mass disruption. A personification of chaos, a lord of misrule, a howling, hysterical metaphor for greed, lies and corruption.

“The main character was designed to be both laughed at and despised, and that’s still the case. He is here to gather us together as his prisoners, his acolytes, his victims – or his potential usurpers.

“He is a reminder that those in power will do their damnedest to make their reality our normality. It’s up to us to collectively remember that there’s nothing normal about Ubu and his ilk.”

Ubu’s behaviour beggars belief, concludes Grose. “He is cruel, nonsensical, cowardly, aggressive and beyond vile in his actions,” he says. “Career mad, he looks totally ridiculous, puts money over humanity in a heartbeat and has a vocabulary that leaves a lot to be desired. What an absurd creation, eh?”

Prepare for a Kneehigh antidote to a divided world that makes a stand against divisiveness and brings audiences together through the joyful act of singing

Kneehigh’s Ubu! A Singalong Satire, Quarry Theatre, Leeds Playhouse, February 4 to 8. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk.

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Opera North’s revival of The Marriage Of Figaro

Fflur Wyn as Susanna and Phillip Rhodes as Figaro in Opera North’s The Marriage Of Figaro. All pictures:. Robert Workman

Opera North in The Marriage Of Figaro, Leeds Grand Theatre, February 1 ****

Further Leeds performances on February 8, 14, 19, 22, 26 and 29, then on tour . More details at operanorth.co.uk. Leeds box office: 0844 848 2700 or at leedsgrandtheatre.com

IT is strange how operatic revivals can vary so much from their originals, even when the same director is on hand to oversee them. Jo Davies’s production of Mozart’s opera buffa dates from January 2015. That is before the Me Too movement really took off in October 2017, when the treatment of women in Hollywood began to come under the microscope.

 Its repercussions on this show are fascinating. The two leading men, Count Almaviva and Figaro himself, are by far the most charismatic here. That is partly down to the singers involved. But it also reflects the relative hardness of their ladies, the Countess and Susanna.

These men are having their very manhood challenged, even as they attempt their various conquests. It could help to explain why Quirijn de Lang’s relentlessly dim-witted Count (though the singer himself is clearly quite the opposite) comes across as a failed Don Giovanni, never quite achieving those desired notches on his cane. The man is libidinous beyond belief. Even at the end you wonder how long he can possibly remain faithful to his wife. He nevertheless sings with plenty of self-belief.

Heather Lowe as Cherubino

The New Zealand baritone Phillip Rhodes relaxes into the title role immediately, despite taking it on for the first time. The part could have been made for him. His Figaro retains unclouded optimism in the face of every setback, helped by warm, clear tone and a pair of eyebrows that crinkle with mirth at every excuse.

Opposite him, Fflur Wyn, also new to her role as Susanna, is a calculating creature – the gardener Antonio’s social-climbing niece – rather than a playful minx. Her soprano is light and clean, her diction less so. Nor is clarity Máire Flavin’s strong point as the Countess. Her first aria was too tense to excite sympathy, her second showed what might have been, with fluent control. But she moves beautifully and always has the moral high ground over her wayward husband.

The lower orders are well represented. It comes as no surprise to discover that Heather Lowe, the tousle-haired Cherubino, is a trained dancer. She is exceptionally nimble as well as vocally adept, not least as girl-plays-boy-playing girl.

Jonathan Best makes a diffident old fogey of Bartolo, well partnered by Gaynor Keeble’s earthy Marcellina. Joseph Shovelton is back with his oily Basilio, as is Jeremy Peaker’s rubicund Antonio. Alexandra Oomens is the peppy Barbarina. Even Warren Gillespie’s Curzio makes a mark, here as a censer-swinging priest. Real incense too.

Quirijn de Lang as Count Almaviva and Máire Flavin as Countess Almaviva

 Antony Hermus makes his first appearance in the pit since being appointed Principal Guest Conductor. He is a mixed blessing. His rigid, hyperactive baton ensures taut ensemble, but allows his woodwinds little flexibility; the strength of his accents regularly swamps the singers’ words in ensemble. On the other hand, conducting from the harpsichord, his recitatives flow idiomatically.

 Leslie Travers’s mobile set shows both the downstairs and the upstairs of this society, the former doubling as the outside of the house for the garden scene. Peeling wallpaper and rickety staircases speak of genteel poverty. Gabrielle Dalton’s socially-layered costumes could be from almost any era.

In the wake of Me Too, we should expect certain aspects of the comedy to be soft-pedalled. But there is plenty of amusement at the expense of the men. And that is as it should be. 

Phillip Rhodes as Figaro

Review by Martin Dreyer

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