“We cannot wait to get back on the road and this time play Boyzlife original material,” say Brian McFadden and Keith Duffy
BOYZLIFE, the Irish superboyband formed by long-time pals Keith Duffy and Brian McFadden, will play York Barbican on October 14 on their 27-city Old School tour.
Boyzone’s Duffy and Westlife’s McFadden will be performing songs from their upcoming studio album of original material, Old School, alongside multiple hits from their Nineties and Noughties’ boybands.
Boyzone have chalked up six UK number one singles and worldwide sales of 25 million records; Westlife have notched 12 UK and Irish number one singles and four chart-topping albums.
Boyzlife’s debut album, Strings Attached, revisited nine Boyzone and Westlife number ones, performed by Duffy and McFadden with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Angel Studios, London.
Released on July 17 2020, it topped both the UK and Irish iTunes and Amazon music charts and peaked at number 12 in the UK Official Album Chart.
Duffy, 47, and McFadden, 41, wrote and recorded Old School in studio sessions in between last year’s tour dates. Giving a glimpse into what fans can expect of the May 6 release, McFadden says: “Keith and I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s; the sound of that era is what made us want to be musicians in the first place.
The album cover artwork for Boyzlife’s Old School, out on May 6
“When we first started talking about making this record as Boyzlife’s first studio album, we naturally talked about those influences a lot and have loved bringing these familiar sounds into our studio sessions and onto this record and cannot wait to take those songs live.”
Boyzlife add: “Working with our producer Jackson has been an extremely creative process. We went into the studio with lyrics ideas, worked together to find a melodic sound to go with the lyrics and built the songs from there.
“Some things just fit into place and others get chopped and changed until we all agree we are on the right track. We are very excited about this album and can’t wait for people to hear it.”
The track listing will be: Burn For You; first single The One (co-written by McFadden with Guy Chambers); A Little Saving; All This Time; Glory Days; Because I Love Somebody; Coming Back To You; Her; If I Asked You To Love and Distant Sun.
Boyzlife, who made their York Barbican on October 17 2021, say: “We cannot wait to get back on the road and this time play Boyzlife original material alongside all of our music over the last 25 years. The show will be a Rolla-coaster through old and new songs and we cannot wait to take our fans on the ride.”
Boyzlife’s Old School tour will take in further Yorkshire shows at Sheffield City Hall on September 29 and St George’s Hall, Bradford, on October 15. Box office: York, yorkbarbican.co.uk; Sheffield, sheffieldcityhall.co.uk; Bradford, Bradford-theatres.co.uk.
Russell Kane: Pandemic pontifications in The Essex Variant! show
ON football’s January transfer deadline day, York Barbican made three big signings of its own: comedian Russell Kane, Barnsley heavy metal veterans Saxon and blues guitarist/singer-songwriter Joanne Shaw Taylor.
Enfield humorist Kane, 46, offers his “gut-punch funny, searing take on the two years we’ve just gone through” on December 14 in his new stand-up tour show, Russell Kane Live: The Essex Variant!.
Comic, writer, presenter and actor Kane presents two podcasts, Man Baggage and BBC Radio 4’s Evil Genius and is a regular on Channel 4, BBC and ITV. “I drink lots of coffee and I’m ‘like that in real life’,” he says.
He was the first comedian to bag the two most prestigious comedy awards on Earth in the same year, for the same show: The Dave’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards (formerly known as the Perrier) and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award, (formerly the Barry Award). “I’m also a raving bighead that likes listing my achievements,” he says.
Saxon invaders: Barnsley heavy metal veterans take over York Barbican in November
After 15 million album sales and four top ten albums in a career-spanning 44 years, heavy metal stalwarts Saxon visit York on November 23 on their Seize The Day tour.
Plugging new album Carpe Diem in 14 cities with Diamond Head as their special guests, Saxon frontman Biff Byford, 71, says: “Can’t wait to get out on a real tour again. It’s gonna be monumental. See you all out there. Seize the day!”
Produced by Judas Priest guitarist Andy Sneap at Backstage Recording Studios in Derbyshire, with Byford and Sneap mixing and mastering, Carpe Diem will be released on Friday (4/2/2022) on Silver Lining Music, in the wake of two singles, Remember The Fallen and Carpe Diem (Seize The Day).
Joanne Shaw Taylor has picked York for one of only five dates on her spring tour, performing songs from last September’s The Blues Album on April 24.
Joanne Shaw Taylor: Feeling the blues in York on April 24
Shaw Taylor, who will turn 37 on February 20, topped Billboard Magazine’s Official Blues Album Chart last year, when her covers record was voted #Number 1 Most Played Blues Album of 2021 by the Independent Blues Broadcasters Association.
The Blues Album comprises the Wednesbury musician’s personalised covers of 11 rare blues numbers recorded by Albert King, Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green, Little Richard, Magic Sam and Aretha Franklin, complemented by some “not obvious choices” by Little Village, Little Milton, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and James Ray.
“I’d known from the beginning of my recording career that one day I wanted to record an album of blues covers; I just wasn’t sure when the right time to do that would be,” she says. “I’ve always found it far easier to write my own material than come up with creative ways to make other artists’ material my own.”
Tickets for all three shows go on sale on Friday from 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
YORK’S Late Music concert season resumes with its first programmes of 2022 on Saturday at the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate.
In the lunchtime concert at 1pm, pianist Jacob Fichert presents The Character Piece Throughout Music History, performing music from Bach to a new work by York composer Steve Crowther.
In the evening, at 7.30pm, soprano Jessica Summers and pianist Jelena Makarova’s Living Songs: Songs Of Love And Exile combines works byDowland and Rihm with new pieces by Patrick John Jones and Silvina Milstein.
Jelena Makarova
Opening with Bach’s serene and pastoral Prelude and Fugue in A major, Fichert explores character pieces throughout different styles. Three of Debussy’s iconic preludes are indeed the prelude to lesser known, yet exquisite pieces by Lili Boulanger (Trois Morceaux pour Piano) and Adolf Busch. The finale will be the premiere of Political Prayer, a powerful and thought-provoking piece by Late Music programmer Steve Crowther.
Summers and Makarova’s Living Songs showcases songs by living composers alongside more well-known classical song repertoire. The world premiere of Patrick John Jones’s Elsewhere 137 will be followed by John Dowland’s Flow, My Tears (from 1600) and the world premiere of Silvina Milstein’s Raise No Funeral Song…, composed this year.
Next come Wolfgang Rihm’s Zwei Gedichte von Marina Zwetajewa (2016); David Lancaster’s The Dark Gate (2016); Richard Causton’s Poems Almost Of This World (2005); Edmund Hunt’s There Is A Blue-Green Eye (2022) and Kurt Weil’s Intermezzo (1917).
Don Walls: late York poet
The penultimate composer will be Steve Crowther once more, who composed a setting of Emma And I, a poem written for his daughter Emma by the York poet Don Walls the year he died in 2017. “I admire the man and poet greatly and miss him,” says Steve.
Two Ivor Novello compositions from 1945, Love Is My Reason and We’ll Gather Lilacs, conclude the evening concert, where a collection will be made in aid of Safe Passage, an organisation that helps refugees access legal routes to safety.
Tickets for Fichert cost £5; for Summers and Makarova, £12, concessions £10, students £5, on the door or at latemusic.org/.
Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant: 44 years and counting…and still too cool to be called a heritage act
ECHO & The Bunnymen are heading out on their spring tour, opening with two Yorkshire gigs at Sheffield City Hall tomorrow (1/2/2022) and Leeds O2 Academy on Wednesday.
Billed as “celebrating 40 years of magical songs” – although the Liverpool band formed in 1978 – the 20 dates book-end the February 18 vinyl reissue of the Bunnymen’s first compilation, 1985’s Songs To Learn & Sing.
Available on heavyweight black vinyl and a special-edition splatter vinyl, complete with an exclusive seven-inch pressing of debut single Pictures On My Wall/Read It In Books, the resurrected compilation follows last October’s vinyl re-issue of their first four studio albums, Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here, Porcupine and Ocean Rain, also on black or limited-edition coloured vinyl.
“It’s about making the albums look good,” says guitarist Will Sergeant, who remains at the core of the Liverpool post-punk legends with singer Ian McCulloch. “There’ve been versions out there, like the ones with hard cardboard sleeves a couple of years, that I did some liner notes for. I just got a few copies…with a bit of scrounging!
“There’s loads of Bunnymen records I haven’t got. I never get sent anything! People come up to you and ask you to sign records, and you think, ‘I’ve never seen that one before’.”
Echo & The Bunnymen at Gullfloss, southern Iceland, on the cover of third album Porcupine
Sergeant notes the resurgence in buying vinyl, but says: “I’ve never given up on vinyl. You wouldn’t throw out old photo albums, so why throw out your vinyl? I’d never sell them.
“There was this bloke with all the original Beatles albums on mono, selling them for nothing at a car-boot sale, and I said to him, ‘what are you doing, selling them for that’, and he ended up putting them back in his car!“
He is delighted by the Bunnymen’s ongoing reissue programme, “I’m made up that they’re being brought out on vinyl, as I love it, though all I know is that they’re being re-released. I’ve not really been consulted, though I’m sure they’ll have been tarted up a bit!”
The album sleeves, revelling in their return to the 12-inch canvas, bring back memories for Sergeant, now 63. Like the freezing-cold day in 1982 they shot the cover for 1983’s Porcupine at Gullfoss, the ‘Golden Falls’ waterfall in southwest Iceland.
“It was 30 degrees below! I think Bill Drummond had been there as a kid, going to Iceland on a fishing boat. We just went there to do the album cover. It was the middle of winter, and we had to get up at two in the morning, setting off across the tundra in these four-wheelers. It took all of three hours to get to the end of this glacier.
Echo & The Bunnymen at Carnglaze Caverns, Liskeard, Cornwall, in Brian Griffin’s artwork for Ocean Rain, billed as “the greatest album ever made”
“I was wearing a parka and some boots, and Ian had some ‘ladies’ slippers from with little knots on them and fur inside. He used to call them his banana boots ’cos they went yellow.”
The sleeve image looks spectacular, but doing the shoot was “mental”, says Sergeant. “There was a 200ft drop just two feet away on this ice cap. If we’d slipped, we’d have been down in this chasm,” he recalls. “But I’m glad we did it. The great thing is that it’s real. It’s not photoshopped. We really had to go to these places.”
Next came Ocean Rain, the 1984 masterpiece trailered by McCulloch’s advert boast proclaiming it to be “the greatest album ever made”. “We shot the cover in an old slate mine in Cornwall. Jake Riviera, the big cheese on Stiff Records, had this cave on his land at the bottom of his garden, and the photographer, Brian Griffin, had worked with Jake and knew this place,” says Sergeant.
“We were always looking for natural settings. We’d done the sea, we’d done the woods, we’d done the glacier, so we said, ‘let’s do a cave.”
Once in the cave, at Carnglaze Caverns, Liskeard, they decided to use the rowing boat in there. “It’s naturalistic, but the way Brian lit it makes it look likes the water curves round the tunnel. Beautiful.”
“It’ll be pretty much the greatest hits and maybe a couple of new ones,” says Will Sergeant of Echo & The Bunnymen’s set list for their spring tour
Sergeant has always loved the look of vinyl, the size of the album sleeve, that all contributes to the iconic status of classic albums. “The good thing about records, if you have a collector’s spirit, is that you want all of it: all of The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, so it’s great that vinyl’s coming back. Not just for the old collectors, but the young hipsters.”
Looking ahead to the tour, Sergeant says: “It’ll be pretty much the greatest hits and maybe a couple of new ones. We’ll decide the day before.
“We did start recording new stuff, but the pandemic put the kybosh on that, so the momentum was lost. We’ll see.”
He did use lockdown, however, to bring his book, Bunnyman: A Memoir, to the finishing line for publication last July (and subsequently in the United States in November on Fairman Books, musician Jack White’s publishing house).
Sergeant’s memoir recounts how he grew up in Liverpool in the 1960s and ’70s, “when skinheads, football violence and fear of just about everything was the natural order of things, but a young Will Sergeant found the emerging punk scene provided a shimmer of hope amongst a crumbling city still reeling from the destruction of the Second World War”.
From Read It In Books to writing books: Echo & The Bunnymen’s Will Sergeant pens his memoir, Bunnyman
“I’d already started writing it, in 2019, I think, but the first lockdown helped me to concentrate on it, doing it every day for nine months, then it took time to find the photos – there aren’t a lot, as the book focuses on my time as a kid, growing up, and the first year of the band before Pete [drummer Pete de Freitas] joined, when we had a drum machine. The next book will be about what happened after that,” says Sergeant.
Reflecting on his back story, he says: “I remember a lot of things from when I was a kid, because we had a bit of a tumultuous childhood, with a lot of violence and heaviness in the house because my parents didn’t get on.
“I didn’t keep a diary, but with the Bunnymen, every day is a diary day because people keep details and lots of it has stayed in the memory – and it’s the bits that you remember that are important.
“My big thing is truth. I don’t like people who lie. That’s why there are lots of truths in the first book that some people would have left out.”
Echo & The Bunnymen play Sheffield City Hall tomorrow (February 1) and Leeds O2 Academy on Wednesday. Box office: gigsandtours.com/tour/echo-and-the-bunnymen.
TWO Big Egos In A Small Car arts podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson interview Heath Common, poet, publisher, journalist, presenter and musician, about his Kerouac Lives project.
As part of Independent Venues Week, this cabaret night will celebrate the life, work and impact of legendary Beat writer Jack Kerouac at Wadsworth Community Centre on February 4 at 7.45pm (doors, 6.45pm).
Heath Common will be joined by Simon Warner and John Hardie for an evening of conversation, key readings and a specially composed soundtrack to mark the centenary of the Massachusetts writer’s birth.
Kerouac Lives contends that Jack Kerouac is a voice like no other, transcending his era. “His works become a symbol of change in an increasingly conformist system, leading the iconic Beat movement,” the event blurb states.
“It also inspired the next generation of rebels for decades to come. He was a champion of freedom, individuality, and authenticity.” Tickets are selling fast on 07731 661053 and 07890 205890.
Episode 75 of Two Big Egos In A Small Car concludes with Chalmers & Hutch’s discussion onthe impact of the freezing – and potential easing out – of the BBC licence fee.
Neil Wood (Juan Peron), Emma-Louise Dickinson (Eva Peron) and Jonny Holbek (Che): principal trio from one of York Light’s casts for Evita
YORK Light Opera Company is using double casting for the main roles in Martyn Knight’s production of Evita in response to the pandemic’s abiding impact.
“We are on our 18th cast list, with casting and rehearsals affected by Covid, long Covid and physical injuries,” says Martyn. “We’ve kept the principal casts separate, which has required us to double the number of rehearsals.”
Running at York Theatre Royal from February 9 to 19, Evita tells the story of Eva Peron’s rags-to-riches life as she goes from poor provincial child to First Lady of Argentina on her “Rainbow Tour”. A champion of working-class descamisados (otherwise known as “the shirtless”), she uses popularity and politics to serve her people and herself.
For Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical of people, power and politics, Alexa Chaplin and Emma-Louise Dickinson will share the lead role of Eva Peron; Dale Vaughan and Jonny Holbek will play Che; John Hall and Neil Wood, Juan Peron; Dave Copley-Martin and Richard Weatherill, Agustin Maglidi, and Fiona Phillips and Hannah Witcomb, Peron’s Mistress.
John Hall (Juan Peron), Alexa Chaplin (Eva Peron) and Dale Vaughan (Che): the other principal trio for York Light’s Evitaat York Theatre Royal
“It’s a fully sung show and double casting provides each team with sufficient rest,” says Martyn. “The main character parts are huge and it would be a colossal ‘ask’ of any understudy to learn and have to perform those roles without significant rehearsal.
“Double casting provides the best possible cover, which is needed more than ever when putting on the production during a pandemic.”
Knight is joined in the production team by musical director Mike Thompson for a Tony Award-winning musical that features the pop chart hits Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, Oh! What A Circus and Another Suitcase In Another Hall.
Tickets for the 7.30pm evening performances (no show on February 13) and 2.30pm matinees on February 12 and 19 are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Jonny Holbek as Che in rehearsal for York Light Opera Company’s Evita
Enjoy free admission to York Art Gallery’s Young Gainsborough: Rediscovered Landscape Drawings exhibition as part of York Residents’ Festival. Booking required. Picture: Charlotte Graham
YORK attracts 8.4 million visitors, but this weekend you are invited to be a tourist in your own city, as Charles Hutchinson highlights.
Festival of the week: York Residents’ Festival, today and tomorrow
MORE than 70 events, attractions and offers make up this weekend’s York Residents’ Festival, with the offers continuing all week.
Organised by Make It York, this annual festival invites all York residents with a valid YorkCard to “explore the city and be a tourist for the weekend”, one card per person.
Pre-booking is required for some highlights of a festival that takes in museums, theatres, galleries, churches, hidden gems, historic buildings, food and drink and shops. For more details, visit: visityork.org/residents-festival.
Tall storey in Tall Stories’ The Smeds And The Smoos at York Theatre Royal this weekend
Children’s show of the week: The Smeds And The Smoos, York Theatre Royal, today, 2.30pm and 4.30pm; tomorrow, 10.30am and 1.30pm
SOAR into space with Tall Stories’ exciting new stage adaptation of writer Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler’s joyful tale of star-crossed aliens.
On a far-off planet, Smeds and Smoos cannot be friends. Nevertheless, when a young Smed and Smoo fall in love, they promptly zoom off into space together.
How will their families get them back? Find out in an interplanetary adventure for everyone aged three upwards, full of music and laughter, from the company that delivered The Gruffalo and Room On The Broom on stage. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Bedtime story: Ian Ashpitel and Jonty Stephens as Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise in Eric & Ern
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be; it’s better in: Eric & Ern, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday and Wednesday, 7.30pm
IAN Ashpitel and Jonty Stephens bring you sunshine in their uncanny portrayal of comedy duo Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise in a show that has been touring for more than five years.
Combining renditions of famous comedy sketches with contemporary references, Eric & Ern contains some of the first new writing in the Morecambe & Wise style in more than in 30 years. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Abstract collage, by Peter Schoenecker, at Pocklington Arts Centre
Exhibition of the week outside York: Peter Schoenecker, A New Way Of Looking, Pocklington Arts Centre, until February 19
PETER Schoenecker’s mixed-media artworks open Pocklington Arts Centre’s 2022 season of exhibitions in the studio.
On show are watercolours, acrylics and lino prints by the Pocklington artist, a former graphic designer, who is inspired by the landscape and seascape textures and lighting in and around his Yorkshire home.
“My aim is usually to create a mood or atmosphere using colour or black and white,” he says. “Switching between media keeps me interested and innovative, hopefully bringing a freshness to the work.”
Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant: From Liverpool to Leeds on Wednesday
Gig of the week outside York: Echo & The Bunnymen, Leeds O2 Academy, Wednesday, doors, 7pm
AHEAD of the February 18 vinyl reissue of their 1985 compilation Songs To Learn & Sing, Liverpool legends Echo & The Bunnymen play plenty of those songs and more besides in Leeds (and at Sheffield City Hall the night before).
Available for the first time since that initial release, the “Best Of” cherry picks from their first four albums with the single Bring On The Dancing Horses as the icing on top. On tour, vocalist Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant will be leading a band now in their 44th year, still too cool to be called a heritage act. Box office: gigsandtours.com/tour/echo-and-the-bunnymen.
Granny (Isabel Ford) and Ben (Justin Davies) in the Crown Jewels-stealing scene in Birmingham Stage Company’s Gangsta Granny
Family show of the week: Birmingham Stage Company in Gangsta Granny, Grand Opera House, York, February 3 to 5, 2.30pm and 7pm; February 6, 11am and 3pm
IN David Walliams’s tale, Friday night means only one thing for 11-year-old Ben: staying with Granny, where he must put up with cabbage soup, cabbage pie and cabbage cake.
Ben knows one thing for sure – it will be so, so boring – but what Ben doesn’t know is that Granny has a secret. Soon Friday nights will be more exciting than he could ever imagine, as he embarks on the adventure of a lifetime with his very own Gangsta Granny, in Neal Foster’s touring production, back in York next week for the first time since 2016. Suitable for age five upwards. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
Two out of Seven: Shed Seven’s Rick Witter and Paul Banks to perform as a duo in Scarborough
Compact Sheds: Rick Witter and Paul Banks, Scarborough Spa Theatre, April 17, 7.30pm
SHED Seven shed three when frontman Rick Witter and lead guitarist Paul Banks “go where no Shed has gone before” to play Scarborough over the Easter weekend.
Mr H Presents promoter Tim Hornsby says: “Expect a special night of classic Shed Seven material and a few surprises”.
“You already know this whites-of-their-eyes show is going to sell out, so don’t get bothered with the regular unholy last-minute scramble for tickets and purchase early for a holler-along to some of the best anthems ever,” he advises. Box office: scarboroughspa.co.uk.
James Swanton as Lucifer with cast members of The Last Judgement when plays from the 2018 York Mystery Plays were staged in the Shambles Market. Picture: Lewis Outing
Looking ahead to the summer: 2022 York Mystery Plays, York city centre, June 19 and 26
HERE come the wagons, rolling through York streets on two June weekends, as the Guilds of York maintain their four-yearly cycle of York Mystery Plays set in motion in 1998.
As in 2018, Tom Straszewski is the artistic director for a community production involving nearly 600 people creating hours of drama, performed for free, on eight wagons at four locations, including St Sampson’s Square, St Helen’s Square and King’s Manor.
“The plays will cover the creation of the world, floods, last meals together and resurrections,” says Strasz. “We’re still seeking directors, performance groups and actors, who should email director@yorkmysteryplays.co.uk to apply.”
Sir Willard White as Monterone in Rigoletto, his first Opera North role since 1984. Picture: Clive Barda
EXPECTATION ran high in advance of this new Rigoletto from theatre director Femi Elufowoju Jr, not least because it marked his first venture into the world of opera.
Opera North’s last skirmish with Giuseppe Verdi’s piece was a grubby gangland affair in 2007 that eliminated aristocratic titles along with Giovanna. This time, according to an interview in the programme, the setting was present-day ‘Mantua, UK’, adding racism to the work’s already heavy load of problems in society.
There was absolutely nothing wrong in choosing black singers for all the “outsider” roles, headed by Rigoletto, Gilda and Count Monterone, and including Countess Ceprano and Marullo, but it became a dodgy move.
During the prelude, we saw Rigoletto being primped in a dressing-room, for what seemed like a play within a play; there was a purfling of lighting round the proscenium. Attendees at the Duke’s orgy were a scruffy lot, mainly in everyday clothes, with men in paint-splattered overalls as if they had accidentally strayed in from backstage workshops. So far, so egalitarian.
Rigoletto’s moanings about his deformity (supposedly a hunchback) fell on deaf ears: here was the tallest man in the cast, a striking figure, standing tall, albeit occasionally writhing and twitching as if having an epileptic fit.
Sharp-eyed programme-readers might have gleaned that his was mental disfigurement caused by Monterone’s curse – hard to believe. To everyone else, it looked dangerously as if skin colour was the cause of the scorn he endured, quite the opposite of the intended effect. In any case, directors should not rely on programme notes to explain what they put on stage.
Jasmine Habersham as Gilda and Eric Greene as Rigoletto. Picture: Clive Barda
There were further difficulties. The whole kidnapping episode had an aura of farce. The (mainly white) thugs were far from menacing in their vermillion onesies, brandishing electric torches in synchronisation like Keystone Cops.
Retreating, they reappeared in Coco the Clown masks. It was hard to tell whether they were intended to be figures of fun or if this was simply a directorial misjudgement. Either way, it had little to do with Verdi, still less his librettist Piave.
Gilda had to be clumsily kidnapped from astride the life-size zebra in her bedroom (her menagerie also included a toucan). Like the duke’s palace, it was gaudily decorated in red and gold designs by Rae Smith more redolent of Bollywood than Brentwood.
Rigoletto’s arrest by two heavily-armed British constables was doubtless intended to evoke the law’s use of excessive force based on colour. Uncomfortable, of course – but also irrelevant here. Indeed, so many superimposed details seemed to cloud the director’s intentions.
Eric Greene carried the title role with surprising grace, given the wide spectrum of attitudes he was supposed to strike. In mid-range, his baritone was flexible and clean, less so higher up where his focus was more diffuse.
His duet with Gilda was touching. She was Jasmine Habersham, who made a virtue of her light soprano in a poignant, delicately ornamented ‘Caro nome’. She also looked every bit the ingénue, kept apart and therefore out of her depth, even if she needed to soar more in ensemble.
Alyona Abramova as Maddalena in Opera North’s Rigoletto. Picture: Clive Barda
Roman Arndt’s self-regarding Duke seemed bent on Italianate tone at all costs, attractive enough but also mannered. Sir Willard White, returning to Leeds for the first time since 1984, injected authority as a stentorian Monterone. Callum Thorpe’s tattooed Sparafucile looked and sounded ruthless, pleasingly complemented by Alyona Abramova’s statuesque Maddalena.
They were certainly masters of the squalid landscape of Act III, with its corpse of a car, assorted detritus and shadowy lighting (Howard Hudson), a stylistic improvement on the tasteless décor earlier.
Despite the upheavals on stage, Garry Walker maintained a cool head and a decisive beat in the pit, and his orchestra reacted with discipline and confidence; the chorus was typically ebullient, if not quite as taut an ensemble as the orchestra.
But sight and sound were rarely synchronised: the director might have paid more attention to what is actually in the score. Opera audiences enjoy and understand history, even – given the chance – that of 16th century Mantua. They do not react well to having modern precepts constantly forced down their throats, especially when these have little or nothing to do with the original opera.
We still await the arrival of a director with the courage to be traditional in this work.
Martin Dreyer
Further performances: January 29, February 4, 11 and 19, then on tour until April 1. Box office: operanorth.co.uk
Zebra crossing stage: part of a Rae Smith design landscape “more redolent of Bollywood than Brentwood”. Picture: Clive Barda
Yard Act: Chasing the top spot with their debut album The Overload. Picture: Phoebe Fox
LEEDS! Are you with us, ask Yard Act on Twitter as the spiky Leeds post-punk band chase the top spot with their debut album, The Overload.
“If half of all of you (pop.521,148) download The Overload for just £4.99 by midnight tonight we’ll be number one EASY!”, the Tweet urges, then adding yardact.lnk.to/TheOverloadTW/…All Leeds Aren’t We to their #YardActForNumber1 campaign.
Should Yard Act pull off the feat, they will be the first album chart toppers from Leeds since Kaiser Chiefs’ second number one, Education, Education, Education & War, in 2014.
“Who knows if we’ll make it but we’ve had a laugh trying to get to number one,” say Yard Act. “If we do become the first Leeds band in a generation to get a number one album, it’ll be down to the support of the city, its venues, its culture that’s made us the band and people we are.”
Recorded in the pandemic, The Overload knits together observations from all walks of modern British life in deadpan storytelling songs, delivered with coruscating, dark humour and knowing cynicism by frontman James Smith on such singles as The Trapper’s Pelts, Fixer Upper, Peanuts and Dark Days with echoes of both The Fall and Arctic Monkeys.
Their January 16 gig at The Crescent, York, had to be postponed, but Yard Act are set to play home-city shows at Belgrave Music Hall on February 1, Leeds Brudenell Social Club on February 26 and Leeds Irish Centre on May 20.
The Overload was released on January 21 on Zen F.C./Island Records. “Lyrically, I think it’s a record about the things that we all do,” says Smith. “We’re all so wired into the system of day to day that we don’t really stop and think about the constructs that define us.
The cover artwork for Yard Act’s January 21 album, The Overload
“But beyond that, it’s kind of exciting, because there’s still so much we don’t understand; how a hive mindset is forged, how information spreads, how we agree and presume things without thinking. Some people think more than others, but a lot of this sloganeering – ‘I’m on the left, I’m not wrong’ – doesn’t achieve anything. Gammons, Karens, Snowflakes, whatever – I find it all so boring. I’m just not into that.”
Latest single The Overload serves as an overture to the album. “It’s written from the perspective of someone sitting in a pub overhearing snippets of all these different conversations from different characters and acting as a vessel, a medium even, for their own thoughts and opinions,” says Smith.
“That cut-and-paste approach means it’s hard to decipher where one person’s musings end and another’s statement begins, and that feels like a fairer representation of why human existence is at the point it is right now. Society doesn’t prevail because of the absolute, it struggles on in spite of it. It’s our ability to compromise which helps us to co-exist.”
The title track also sees the return of fictional narrator Graham, the cocksure home renovator from Fixer Upper. “The second verse is dominated entirely by this character called Graham, a man more sure of himself than most,” says Smith. “Maybe it’s both a blessing and a burden that the rest of us can learn to compromise with the Grahams of the world which allows society to stumble on.
“I’ve defended Graham as a harmless relic of the past, struggling to stay relevant in the modern world, but this Graham is a little more vicious than the Graham from Fixer Upper. Maybe it’s the heightened paranoia that’s come with two years living through the pandemic that’s given him a little more edge. He’s still like the rest of us though, no matter how tough he acts.”
Smith adds: “We all succumb to fear most of the time, and it explains a lot about why we make the decisions we do. I imagine the chorus delivered by a Greek chorus; omnipresent, and encompassing the themes of not only this song, but the whole album. That’s what The Overload is essentially. It’s everything happening at once, and it’s our tiny, feeble minds trying to process and cope with it. Good luck.”
If you have read this story all the way to the end, why? Yard Act want you to have bought The Overload by now.
Who’s listening? Hutch cocks an ear beside Maggi Hambling’s seaside sculpture, The Scallop, on the beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk
DOES Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza top Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood?
Arts podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson mull over two Tinsel Town fables.
Plus re-discovering Bruce Springsteen on scorching form at No Nukes in 1979, on its belated CD and DVD release, and welcoming news of new music venues for York and Edinburgh.
