BONNEVILLE And
The Bailers, the York band du jour you just have to see, will play The Crescent
in York on February 20.
“This show is
what I’ve been working towards for the past six months with my fabulous new
band The Bailers,” says Bonnie Milnes, the fast-rising York combo’s singer and country-noir
songwriter. “I’ve loved smashing out hits with these world-class musicians and
can’t wait to take it to the stage at a venue I’ve always dreamed of
headlining.
“Next Thursday’s audience can expect a mix of heart break and
full-frontal sass as I write material on some tough times with some kickass
comeback songs. I’d describe the show as feminist, sexy and straight from
heart.”
Before then, on Wednesday, Bonnie is “so excited to be sharing a new single, Baby Drive, with an absolutely beautiful video shot by Luke Downing on a beautiful day at Rufforth Airfield, starring myself and my best friend and bass player Jack Garry”. “The song’s about thinking you’re in love with your best friend,” she says.
Bonnie Milnes and Jack Garry in a still from Luke Downing’s video for Baby Drive, Bonneville And The Bailers’ new single. View the video at https://youtu.be/h6H9Va9RNjA
Looking ahead, Bonnie says: “We don’t have any other York shows lined up
but we have got an exciting little tour of gigs that kicks off tomorrow
(February 11) in Hull [at 9.15pm at The Sesh at The Polar Bear, in Spring Bank]
and we’ll be supporting York’s own Benjamin Francis Leftwich at Komedia, Brighton,
on February 26.”
Meanwhile, Bonnie has been building a rehearsal studio with Young
Thugs’ sound technician Matt Woollons. “Called Boom, this has been my base for
writing, rehearsing and – before long – recording something new,” she says.
Tickets for February 20 cost £8 at eventbrite.co.uk/e/bonnie-and-the-bailers or seetickets.com, or in person from Earworm Records, in Powells Yard, Goodramgate, or The Crescent, off Blossom Street. Alternatively, pay more on the door from 7.30pm.
SAXON frontman Biff Byford will release his debut solo album, School Of
Hard Knocks, on February 21, backed up by his first ever solo tour in the
spring.
Among the ten British dates for the 69-year-old West Yorkshireman will
be Leeds City Varieties Music Hall on April 21.
In a show of two halves in ”An Evening With…” format, Honley-born Byford will be in conversation with American comedian Don Jamieson in the first, discussing his life and career with the That Metal Show star. After the break, Byford and his band will perform new tracks, covers and maybe a sprinkling of Saxon gold dust.
The tour poster for Bill Byford’s ten spring dates
“It’s a show I’ve wanted to do for a long
time and one which I don’t think has been done in hard rock before. It’s going
to be something a little bit different, it will be very cool and a lot of fun,”
says Byford, who played bass for assorted Barnsley bands as a teenager by night
while working at a colliery by day.
“The second half will
consist of some old songs, some new songs, some cover versions and some songs
off the solo album. It’s going to be great and I’m really looking forward to it.
So, I’ll see you there.”
The album artwork for Bill Byford’s School Of Hard Knocks
Produced by Byford at Brighton Electric Studios, School Of Hard Knocks reflects
the personality of this “Heavy Metal Bard of the North”, his loves
and musical versatility. Fulfilling his long-standing wish to explore rock’n’roll
a little more, the album takes a personal journey, highlighting his life and
his passionate interests, from growing up in the industrial north to the
history of the Middle Ages.
Byford’s old-school British hard rock album embraces a variety of
musical genres, taking in the Yorkshire folk classic Scarborough Fair, most
famously covered in the 1960s by Simon & Garfunkel and now given a new
arrangement by Byford and guitarist Fredrik Åkesson.
Tickets for April 21 are on sale at myticket.co.uk, cityvarieties.co.uk or on 0113 243 0808.
Louis Tomlinson: set fair for Scarborough this summer
LOUIS Tomlinson is
extending his debut solo world tour to take in Scarborough Open Air Theatre on
August 15.
Tickets for the
chart-topping Yorkshire singer-songwriter go on general sale at scarboroughopenairtheatre.com
on Friday at 9am.
One fifth of One
Direction, Doncaster-born Tomlinson, 28, released his debut album Walls on
January 31.
“I feel like this is
the start of my career, with so much to look forward to and all the plans in
place,” he says. “Honestly, I’ve been through every emotion possible in the
past few years and come out the other side stronger and more confident than
I’ve ever been.
“I know I’ve made an
album that my fans will like, one that sounds like me and has its own identity.
There were times I wasn’t sure if this was what I should be doing. Now I can’t
imagine doing anything else.”
Opening in Barcelona
on March 9, Tomlinson’s world tour will play Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Sydney,
Tokyo, Rio De Janeiro and five sold-out British dates nights before heading to
North America.
Peter Taylor,
director of Scarborough OAT promoters Cuffe & Taylor, is delighted to be
bringing Tomlinson to the East Coast. “Louis was an integral part of the
biggest global pop phenomenon of the past 20 years and is also a proud
Yorkshireman, so this is going to be a must-see date for his fans.
“His debut album is
brilliant and demand for tickets for his World Tour has been immense. We cannot
wait to welcome Louis and his fans to this special arena for what will be a
fantastic night.”
Post One
Direction, Tomlinson began his solo days with two collaborations, Just Hold On
with Steve Aoki
and the brooding duet Back To You with Bebe Rexha. Last year, the singles
flowed: the raucous Kill My Mind; the heartfelt Two
Of Us; the reflective We Made It and the soaring Don’t Let It Break Your Heart.
Now comes Walls, an
album with a nod to his love of indie-rock and lyrics “rooted in real life that
dig deep on subjects ranging from relationships and family to the folly of
youth and days of self-doubt”.
Tomlinson’s August 15 tickets
also will be available from Friday on 01723 818111 and 01723 383636 or in
person from the Scarborough Open Air Theatre box office, in Burniston Road, and
the Discover Yorkshire Coast Tourism Bureau, Scarborough Town Hall, St Nicholas
Street.
YORK Opera members past and present have been saddened to
hear of the death of founder member, director and chairman Roy Gittins.
A chemistry teacher – indeed head of chemistry at Tadcaster Grammar
School until his retirement – Roy also had a lifelong love of theatre.
Initially, this was as an amateur actor in roles ranging from William Shakespeare to Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, before he was introduced by teaching colleague John Warburton to a group of young singers on the cusp of “graduating” from the York Youth Operatic and Choral Society.
Not finding a company in York to suit their love of opera and
operetta, instead they formed City Opera Group in 1966, Roy joining as their
mentor and first chairman.
Over a 25-year span, he directed around 40 operas, including Verdi’s Nabucco and Macbeth, Rossini’s William Tell and Vaughan Williams’s unjustly neglected English folk opera Hugh The Drover, a production highly praised by the composer’s widow, Ursula Vaughan Williams, who came to see it.
After working for many years in the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, Roy oversaw the move of major shows to York Theatre Royal with his production of Puccini’s Turandot in 1986, when the company became known as York Opera.
His contribution to York Opera and the musical and artistic life of York has been immense and he will be remembered with great affection and gratitude. Roy leaves a daughter, Rachel Morgan, and son, Paul Gittins, to whom York Opera send their love and deepest sympathy.
REVIEW: Made In Dagenham, The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm, 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk
MADE In
Dagenham, re-made in York, is the third production by the Jospeh Rowntree
Theatre Company, formed to raise funds for the Haxby Road community theatre.
A good cause, in other words, and the more companies that use this ever-welcoming theatre, the better. The more companies that rise up to tread its boards, the better, too, because York is suffused with musical theatre talent and also with audiences always keen to support such productions.
This week represents the chance to see the York premiere of Made In Dagenham, transferred from screen to stage by composer David Arnold, lyricist Richard Thomas and Richard Bean, the Hull playwright whose comedy dramas revel in confrontations, spats and politics on stage (witness One Man, Two Guvnors and Toast, for example).
Bean re-tellsthe true 1968 story of the women in the stitching room of Ford’s Dagenham car plant being stitched up by both management and corrupt union, bluntly told their pay is to be dropped to an “unskilled” grade. What follows is a fight for equal pay, standing up against an American corporation, and if the battle is less well known than the Suffragette movement of the 1900s, it is a women’s rights landmark nonetheless.
From the off, once an ensemble number loosens limb and voice
alike for Kayleigh Oliver’s cast, the banter amid the graft of the sewing machinists
is boisterously established, the humour full of double entendres and sexual
bravado, as characters are drawn pleasingly quickly. So too are their
interactions with the men at the car plant, and in the case of Rita O’Grady
(Jennie Wogan), working wife and mother of two, her home life with husband
Eddie (Nick Sephton).
Rita, together with Rosy Rowley’s Connie Riley, become the protagonists
of the struggle, but at a cost: for one, her relationship, for the other, her health.
Wogan and Rowley are both tremendous in the drama’s grittier scenes and knock the
hell out of their big numbers.
Bean writes with more sentimentality than usual, charting the fracturing
of Rita and Eddie’s relationship, but it suits the heightened tone of a musical.
Sephton handles his ballad lament particularly well.
Jennifer Jones’s Sandra, Izzy Betts’ Clare and, in particular, Helen
Singhateh’s lewd Beryl add to the car plant fun and games, as does Chris Gibson’s
ghastly American management guy, Tooley. All your worst Stetson-hatted American
nightmares in one, and post-Brexit, there’ll soon be more where he came from!
You will enjoy Martyn Hunter’s pipe-smoking caricature of Prime Minister Harold Wilson and director Kayleigh Oliver’s no-nonsense Barbara Castle too. Richard Goodall is good all round as the machinists’ hard-pressed union rep.
Supporting roles and ensemble serve the show well too, and if
sometimes the sound balance means lines are hard to hear when the Timothy
Selman’s orchestra is playing beneath them, it is a minor problem. Selman’s
players, Jessica Douglas and Sam Johnson among them, are on good form throughout.
Lorna Newby’s choreography could be given a little more oomph but
with so many on stage at times, space is tight. One routine, where the women
move in circles one way, and the men do likewise the other way, outside them, works
wonderfully, however.
Made In Dagenham may be a car plant story, but its factory politics resonate loudly nanew in York, the industrial city of chocolate and trains.
Please note, Made In Dagenham features some very strong language
and may be unsuitable for children.
Film-maker Tony Palmer with The Beatles’ John Lennon
TONY Palmer, one of Britain’s greatest-ever music film-makers, will make a rare appearance at an exclusive event at next month’s Harrogate Film Festival.
The BAFTA-winning director, now 77, will reflect on working with a glittering array of Sixties and Seventies musicians in their heyday in Rock Goes To The Movies at the RedHouse Originals Gallery, Cheltenham Mount, Harrogate, on March 12.
Under discussion at 7pm will be The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Leonard
Cohen, Rory Gallagher, Cream, Frank Zappa, The Who, Donovan and many more,
complemented by a special screening of rarely-seen footage of The Beatles, shot
at the height of the 1960s by the influential and ground-breaking Palmer.
The festival event will be hosted by stalwart Harrogate Advertiser journalist Graham Chalmers, promoter of Charm events in Harrogate, in conjunction with Harrogate Film Society.
The sleeve artwork for All You Need Is Love, Tony Palmer’s series on The Story Of Popular Music
The London-born film-maker and cultural critic has more than 100 films to his name, ranging from early works with The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Rory Gallagher (Irish Tour ’74) and Frank Zappa (200 Motels), to his classical profiles of Maria Callas, Margot Fonteyn, John Osborne, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Wagner, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams and more besides.
Palmer, who served an apprenticeship with Ken Russell and Jonathan
Miller, made the landmark film All My Loving, the first ever about pop music
history, first broadcast in 1968.
He was responsible too for the iconic live film Cream Farewell Concert, shot at the supergroup’s last-ever show at the Royal Albert Hall: a memorable night with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker in 1968.
All You Need Is Love, Palmer’s prime-time, 17-part TV series documenting popular music in the 20th century, was hailed as “the best and most important television survey of popular music ever” when first shown in 1977.
The Beatles: rare screening of Tony Palmer’s film of the Fab Four will be a highlight of the Harrogate Film Festival event on March 12
Among more than 40 international prizes Palmer has won over the past 50 years are 12 gold medals from the New York Film Festival, along with numerous BAFTAs and Emmy Awards.
Rock music aficionado Graham Chalmers will conduct a question-and-answer session with Palmer, and all eyes will be on the rare screening of Palmer’s Beatles film, featuring All You Need Is Love and a script by Fab Four insider Derek Taylor. Clips from Cream Farewell Concert 1968 will be shown too.
Rock Goes To The Movies with Tony Palmer is the latest in an ever-expanding line of contemporary culture events at the independent RedHouse Originals gallery, home to original artwork and limited-edition prints by international artists since 2010. Pop artist Sir Peter Blake, rock music photographer Gered Mankowitz (of The Rolling Stones and Hendrix fame) and Wirral rock band The Coral have made appearances there.
Tickets are on sale at harrogatefilm.co.uk, on 01423 502116 or in person from Harrogate Theatre. More information on the 2020 Harrogate Film Festival at harrogatefilm.co.uk.
A scene from Gary Clarke’s Wasteland, heading for York Theatre Royal next month
THE search is on for singing pitmen to
take part in Gary Clarke’s Wasteland, a new dance event at York Theatre Royal
next month.
Four non-professional singers are being
sought to join the cast for the 7.30pm performances on March 27 and 28.
Wasteland was created to mark the 25th
anniversary of the demolition of Grimethorpe Colliery in South Yorkshire and 30
years since the rise of UK rave culture.
Now the Gary Clarke Company is seeking four singers aged over 40 with experience of singing in a group setting or community choir to play the roles of ex-coal miners.
No professional experience is necessary
but applicants should have experience of learning songs from memory and singing
in unison. The role will involve “some moving on and around the stage and
interacting with other members of the company”.
Down the mines: Another scene from Gary Clarke’s Wasteland
Singers will be supported throughout the process by musical director Steven Roberts, assistant musical director Charlie Rhodes, choreographer and artistic director Gary Clarke and company associate Alistair Goldsmith, who will work with everyone’s individual needs and abilities.
Each participant will receive a food
and travel allowance to help cover the cost of rehearsals and
performances.
For any enquiries or to register
interest, send an email to engagementgcc@gmail.com or call engagement manager Laura
Barber on 07391 621966.
Neil Abdy, who grew up in the mining
community of South Yorkshire and whose father was a miner, was one of the team
of volunteers who took part in a special preview at Cast Doncaster in
2018.
“Being given the opportunity to be part
of this excellent work was unbelievable,” he says. “Everyone made us feel
special and the friendship and camaraderie was excellent. I have a new spring
in my step. If you have the opportunity to take part, definitely give it a go.
It’s one of the best experiences you will ever have working with this wonderful
team.”
Tickets for Gary Clarke’s Wasteland are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Out of step with all around him: Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck in Joker
JOKER – Live In Concert will bring Todd
Phillips’s award-laden film to York Barbican with live orchestral accompaniment
of Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score on May 17 at 7.30pm.
Preceded by the world premiere at the Eventim
Apollo, London, on April 30, the international tour has further Yorkshire shows
at Hull Bonus Arena on May 16 and Sheffield City Hall on June 24.
Central to the emotional journey Joaquin
Phoenix’s character Arthur Fleck takes through Phillips’s film is Guðnadóttir’s
beautifully haunting, BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning and Academy Award- nominated
score.
The fusion of looming industrial
soundscapes with raw, emotive string-led melodies – led by a lone cello – creates a melancholic shroud
marked with moments of hope, unfolding gradually to become a fever pitch of
disquieting tension.
Phillips’s music will be brought to life by a full orchestra to build a “vivid, visceral and entirely new Joker viewing experience”.
The London premiere will be conducted by Jeff Atmajian, the conductor and orchestrator of the original soundtrack; Senbla’s Dave Mahoney will take over for the UK tour dates, including York Barbican.
The poster artwork for Joker – Live In Concert
Hildur Guðnadóttir, the first-ever solo female winner of the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, also won a Grammy for her score for HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl. “I’m thrilled to get to see and hear Joker in the cinema with a live orchestra,” she says.
“When we recorded the music, the
orchestra brought such depth and detailed attention to the performances that we
were all literally holding our breaths during most of the recording sessions.
It was a beautiful trip. I’m so happy to get to go there again and for an
audience to experience that too.”
Director Todd Phillips says: “I speak for the entire Joker team when I say how thrilled we are to be working with Senbla and Ollie Rosenblatt on Joker – Live In Concert. I think it’s a wonderful way for audiences to experience Hildur Guðnadóttir‘s haunting and immersive score, while bearing witness to Joaquin Phoenix’s descent into madness as Arthur.”
Joker already has won the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Critics’ Choice awards for Best Actor and Best Original Score and is nominated for 11 Academy Awards, more than any other film. Those nominations for the Oscars awards ceremony include Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Music/Score.
Tickets for Joker – Live In Concert at York Barbican go on sale at Friday at 10am on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office; Hull, 0844 858 5025 or bonusarenahull.com; Sheffield, 0114 278 9789 or sheffieldcityhall.co.uk.
Seth Lakeman: telling A Pilgrim’s Tale to mark the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower setting sail
DEVON folk musician Seth Lakeman heralds Friday’s release of his album A Pilgrim’s Tale with a tour that opens at Cast, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, tomorrow night (February 5).
This year marks
400 years since The Mayflower ship departed these shores for the Americas.
Lakeman was raised and still lives on Dartmoor, within sight of the sea at Plymouth, from where the Puritans sailed on The Mayflower in 1620.
His album tells the epic and soulful tale of the
Pilgrim Fathers, and consequently,
the ten tour dates are routed in a trail of towns and
cities that, for various reasons, hold significance to the Mayflower journey.
Locations such as Immingham – where Separatists made a dangerous escape from England to Holland in their search for religious freedom – and Dartmouth, where the ship was anchored for repairs. Doncaster, Harwich, London and, of course, Plymouth feature too.
“If you’d never heard anything about The Mayflower and the birth of the modern USA, these words and music could be your primer,” says Seth, whose album is narrated by actor Paul McGann and features guest performers Cara Dillon, Benji Kirkpatrick, Ben Nicholls and Seth’s father, Geoff Lakeman.
The
Mayflower carried British and Dutch passengers with hopes of fresh settlement, who
were met by the Wampanoag first nation tribe on arrival. Bottling the spirit of
the 17th century pilgrimage, Lakeman has written and performed a
selection songs that shape a fictional narrative of the journey, informed by
research from text, such as the journals of William Bradford; conversations
with modern-day ancestors of the Wampanoag people at the Plymouth Plantation in
Massachusetts, and information sourced at the national heritage sites that
still exist in the UK.
The artwork for Seth Lakeman’s album A Pilgrim’s Tale
Chronicling
the voyage and early settlement in these songs, Lakeman has created a
drama that celebrates the history but does not lose sight of the journey’s
tribulations. It stays sensitive to important facets of the story; the
religious liberation that passengers were trying to achieve, the nefarious
deeds enacted on the Wampanoag, and the deaths that followed on both sides.
Lakeman
feels linked intrinsically to the story. “I didn’t have far to go for
inspiration,” he says. “The Mayflower Steps, on Plymouth’s cobbled
Barbican streets, are 20 minutes away from me.
“I fished
from this quay as a boy, sang songs on tall ships tied up here and played music
in just about every old sailors’ pub in this Elizabethan quarter.”
The
stories in the songs are told from a variety of perspectives, from personal
accounts, such as the opening number, Watch Out, detailing deadly premonitions
of a Wampanoag girl, to tales of the collective travellers in songs such as Pilgrim
Brother and Sailing Time, each marching at a hopeful cadence, reflecting their
early optimism.
In an
immersive tale of struggle, songs bring to life anew 17th century
characters: a crewman wrestling to control the ship; a pilgrim celebrating in
rapturous faith, or the solemn Wampanoag tribesmen forlornly surrendering to
the new way of life thrust on them.
Inspiration
for the project came when Lakeman was on tour in Robert Plant’s band and
paid a visit to the Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts to talk to the
Wampanoag that still reside in the area.
It did not take long for the songs to form on his return to England. “After I travelled home from the ‘New World’ to Plymouth, everything happened in a quite mystical way. The songs came together so speedily and with exactly the vibe I wanted, and we recorded in a very short time in my Crossways Studio at home on Dartmoor,” says Seth, who at present is hosting the BBC Radio 2 series Seth Lakeman’s Folk Map Of The British Isles on Saturday nights..
To
supplement the recordings, a between-song narration was written by the associate
director of Plymouth’s Theatre Royal, Nick Stimson, and read by Paul McGann,
who Lakeman was elated to have on board.
“As we
finished the album, another quite magical thing happened, when Paul agreed to
voice the narration between the tracks on the record. He pitched it perfectly,”
he says.
Released on BMG, the album track listing is: Watch Out; Pilgrim Brother; Westward Bound; A Pilgrim’s Warning; Sailing Time; The Great Iron Screw; Dear Isles Of England; Saints And Strangers; Foreign Man; Bury Nights; The Digging Song and Mayflower Waltz.
Tickets for Lakeman’s 7.30pm concert in Cast’s Main Space tomorrow (February 5) are on sale at castindoncaster.com or on 01302 303959.
Feel the chemistry Emma Lucia’s Girl and Daniel Healy’s Guy in Once , The Musical
Once, The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/York
THREE weeks
into rehearsals at Toynbee Hall in London’s East End, the media were invited to
a press day where director Peter Rowe and musical supervisor Ben Goddard put
their 16-strong cast through their paces in exhilarating fashion.
Sometimes you can feel the magic in the air as early as that, sensing the chemistry between leads Daniel Healy and Emma Lucia and the bonding of the company of actor-musicians as they turned a rehearsal room into an Irish pub full of lusty singing and joyful playing.
You just knew the show was going to be good, but, glory be, it is even better than that. Having cherished John Carney’s micro-budgeted cult romantic Irish film starring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova since 2007, yet aware that many still don’t know that charming movie, save maybe for its multi-award-winning song Falling Slowly, your reviewer urges you to fall immediately for this touring musical version. No time for slowness here.
Broadway, the West End and Dublin have all had a go at doing Once The Musical. Rowe and regular musical partner Goddard first united Scotsman Healy and Durham-born Lucia as Guy and Girl, jilted Dublin busker/vacuum cleaner repairman and immigrant Czech odd-jobs worker and musician, for shows in Ipswich and Hornchurch in 2018, and now they have found the perfect format for a touring version.
What a Guy: Daniel Healy in Once, The Musical
Designed by Libby Watson, the setting is an Irish pub, crammed with pictures and chattering life, where the cast rally the audience with songs familiar from The Pogues, Chieftains and Dubliners to set the Dublin craic.
Scenes are
played out against this backdrop, the musicians fading in and out of scenes,
sometimes acting like a Greek chorus as they lean in, in response to what is
unfolding between Healy’s Guy and Lucia’s Girl.
They are
first encountered as she watches him busking in the chill streets, singing to
his ex, now moved to New York, but still the subject of each pained song,
although he is on the cusp of giving up on those songs too.
Girl is open,
frank, funny for being so serious; Guy is taciturn, guarded, but the shared
love of music speaks volumes and she needs her vacuum cleaner mending. It duly arrives
as if out of thin air, shooting across the stage in one of the show’s many
humorous moments.
Big-hitting Falling Slowly is not held back. Instead, it forms their first song together in Billy’s unruly music shop, tentative at first as she picks out the piano lines, to accompany his singing, then joining in, their voices entwining and overlapping beautifully. Gradually, one by one, the musicians join in too: fiddle, guitars, mandolin, cello, squeezebox and more, in union, in sympathy.
Emma Lucia’s Girl saying hello to the piano – which musicians should always do, she says
Here, in a
nutshell, is why Once works wonders as a musical, being as much a celebration
of the power of music in Dublin’s fair city as a love story of ebb and flow,
rise and fall, surprise and revelation, over five all too short days.
The path of
love is never smooth, as we all know, but for those who have never seen Once,
it would be wrong to issue spoiler alerts of what ensues. Except to say, on the
way home you will want to discuss how the open-ended story might progress, if you
have any romantic bones in your body!
Healy and
Lucia are terrific leads: who would not fall for either of them?! His Guy is
generous, kind, a blue-eyed soul man of song and acoustic guitar playing; her Girl,
his new Czech mate, is feisty, fearless in the face of adversity in her adopted
city, and plays the piano exquisitely too.
Dan Bottomley’s
hapless, bandy-legged, hopelessly romantic, fiery Billy pickpockets plenty of
scenes and Ellen Chivers, last seen in York last summer in the Theatre Royal’s Swallows
& Amazons, is even better as wild-spirited Czech Reza.
From Enda Walsh’s witty, whimsical, love-struck script to Hansard and Irglova’s impassioned songs, you must see Once, a wonderful show that blows away weeks of panto wars and politics, to herald a new year of theatre in York. In fact, it is so enjoyable, you could go not once, but twice…and make sure to arrive early to see York buskers Rachel Makena, Florence Taylor, Owen Gibson and Peter Wookie taking turns pre-show and in the interval in the foyer bar.
