Twinnie’s poster for her November 28 homecoming gig at The Crescent, York
TWINNIE, the Nashville country pop star with York roots, returns to her home city on her five-date Crazy Ex tour to play The Crescent on November 28.
She will be promoting her second album, Something We Used To Say, released last Friday with no fewer than 22 tracks, in keeping with 2024’s most expansive records, Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.
Documenting the devastation of the end of her long-term relationship and her attempt to move on with the songs that featured on her Blue Hour project, the album arrives with Twinnie on the crest of a wave. She has made history as the first British artist to perform the American national anthem at Geodes Park, home of MLS team Nashville SC – “proper football, and I won’t call it ‘soccer’,” she says – in the the wake of making her Grand Ole Opry debut last November.
“It was an amazing experience, making history with my background as the first Romany Gypsy singer to sing there,” she says.
Twinnie: Making her mark in Nashville
Earlier this month, on November 2, she had the honour of performing a special Songwriter Session at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.
On top of all that, Twinnie is appearing on prime-time television screens as new character Jade in Emmerdale on her long-awaited return to soap opera after being nominated for Best Newcomer at the Inside Soap Awards for her role as Porsche McQueen in Hollyoaks (a part she played from November 2014 to December 2015).
“My life has been a bit crazy recently juggling music and acting, lots of back and forth, but loving it!” says Twinnie, who made her Emmerdale debut on October 11. “I’ve loved being back on screen, especially as the show is shot in Yorkshire. Being able to be home with family and go to work on such an iconic show has been nothing short of amazing!”
Having landed BBC Radio 2’s Album of the Week for her 2020 debut, Hollywood Gypsy, exceeded 25 million streams for her first American label EP, Welcome To The Club, and released the ambitious, two-chapter Blue Hour project, Twinnie set about making her second album. “It was recorded in Nashville, where I moved last year, and in England too,” she says.
The artwork for Twinnie’s November 8 album, Something We Used To Say
“I really put the work in. With anything I do, I try to do it 110 per cent, drawing from other artists. I’ve really honed my craft. I’ll write twice a day at different sessions, sometimes three times. In Nashville writing rooms they realise ‘she knows how to write songs’, so they guide me rather than write songs for me.
“I’m that ‘5ft 8 British girl that talks funny’ – and there aren’t many doing that! I’ve really embedded myself in Nashville, where it really reminds me of being at home, going round for a cup of tea with my grandma, whereas in London I was missing that sense of community.
“I’d been going to Nashville on and off for seven or eight years, but as soon as I moved there, I made my Grand Ole Opry debut within eight months. Jamie Johnson made that happen for me: such a class act. A complete legend.”
You can take Twinnie out of Yorkshire but you can’t take the Yorkshire out of Twinnie, after first catching the eye as Twinnie-Lee Moore on the York musical theatre scene in her teenage days. “I’m big on authenticity. I still feel like I’m the same person,” she says. “I’m really proud to be putting Yorkshire and England on the American country music map, and my big ambition is to be the first British solo artist to have an American number one country album.”
Twinnie-Lee Moore, aged 21, in the role of double murderess Velma Kelly in Chicago, The Musical on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, in April 2009. Six years earlier, she had played Dorothy in the Summer Youth Project’s The Wizard Of Oz on that same stage
It is not a case of Twinnie jumping on a country bandwagon. “Country music is pop music, it’s in the pop culture, and I was doing it before The Shires became The Shires, when I was working with Ben [Earle] from that group,” she says.
Explaining how the album took shape, Twinnie says: “After the last two Blue Hour EPS, I wanted to put out a body of work telling people what I’d been through, being dropped in 2022 by a major label [BMG] and by my boyfriend. We had a break-up: I’ve gone independent and there was nothing keeping me there any more, so I moved to Nashville.
“I’m so glad that I did with all the experiences I’ve had, with my new album celebrating my new life, grieving my old one, moving away from my family. I don’t want to be famous; I want to be infamous and to have people resonate with the sentiments of my music. Just go for it; you only have one life, so you might as well make it an adventure. That’s why I’m going to stay in Nashville.”
Twinnie plays The Crescent, York, on November 28, 7.30pm. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
Sam Griffiths: Singer, songwriter and frontman of The Howl And The Hum. Picture: Stewart Baxter
TONIGHT the new The Howl & The Hum play Leeds Irish Centre, still led by singer and songwriter Sam Griffiths but with a line-up wholly changed since the York band’s trio of elegiac, unforgettable valedictory gigs at The Crescent last December.
In the tradition of a seven-year hitch, Sam parted company with bassist Bradley Blackwell, guitarist Conor Hirons and drummer Jack Williams, who had first met at open-mic nights in his University of York days.
Now living and working in Leeds, he addresses his feelings over the impact of the band’s break-up, together with the pandemic and his life-changing future direction, on Same Mistake Twice, the second album under The Howl And The Hum’s moniker, the first as a solo project with musicians friends on hand.
Available on CD and digitally since September 6 and now on vinyl too after a not-uncommon delay in printing, the album is self-released on Miserable Disco Records with distribution by AWOL. To buy, either head to thehowlandthehum.com or townsendmusic.store/products/artist/The+Howl+%26+The+Hum.
Those are the facts. Let’s now quote Sam’s official statement on The Howl And The Hum chapter two. “This is an album about dread. About a very real, everyday dread so many of us feel surrounded by screens showing us how we should be, what a good person is, what a bad person is.
“It’s about trying to have and handle and process big, messy emotions in a world that wants things to be small, simple and quickly decided. Every person is flawed, every person has baggage, shrapnel they take with them that makes the airport security beep.”
The Howl & The Hum, 2016-2023: Conor Hirons, left, Jack Williams, Sam Griffiths, and Bradley Blackwell
Sam continues: “This album is about acknowledging that shrapnel, poking it, flipping it and seeing what lives under it, and learning to fall in love with the version of yourself full of holes and missing pieces.
“This is a break-up album mourning the loss of a band, and all that comes with it: ego trips, insecurities, lost friendships, fading love, rekindling old fires and a path to acceptance.”
In keeping with the confessional, frank tone and vulnerable soul-searching of an album that opens with the title track lyric “You left for London like everyone else does/I stayed in Yorkshire avoiding success”, Sam says: “I don’t think I have come up with any consistent label for what this new phase is – not to sound like an ambivalent polyamorist – and the reason I say that is I don’t like to put labels on it, though I’ll call it an expansive solo project with an elaborate number of co-writers, co-musicians and co-producers.
“Fifteen-plus musicians contributed and then there’s another whole team for distribution and PR. But as Mark E Smith used to say, ‘if it’s me and your Nan on bongos, then it’s The Fall’!”
As it happens, Sam’s grandmother’s upright piano does feature on the album. “She left it to me in her will,” Sam recalls. “She was a piano teacher and that piano was my musical upbringing. Three quarters of the new songs were written on there.”
The cover artwork for The Howl And The Hum’s Same Mistake Twice album
The album, the follow-up to 2020’s Covid-blighted Human Contact, takes its title from the defining opening couplet: “I never make the same mistake twice, I always aim for a third time”. “It’s a very human thing to do: to repeat a mistake,” says Sam, who was amused at the prospect of being asked “Why would you want to give your second album that title?’.
“But I’d already written that opening track, so let’s talk about mistakes. We can make mistakes and learn from them, but we can also go back to them and repeat them and that tells us more about us. The more fallible the human is, the more interesting.”
Talk turns to the album’s focus on dread. “There’s a lot to dread sadly, and it feels like there are a lot of reasons for it. The most inescapable moments in our lives are filled with dread,” says Sam.
“The way those moments build up, if I ignore them, it’s like the ivy growing on the side of a house, but if you shine a light on them it feels braver and maybe they will not be as devilish as they first seem.
“The album is an absolute exploration of dread but hopefully with a sense of fulfilment and coming out into the light, with music standing for joy and embracing the community around you.
“It’s trying to find our own version of the light, finding strange reflections in the gloom, rather than being as obvious as just walking into the light. You can find things that are closer than the light at the end of the tunnel, which is often unobtainable, whereas you could appreciate the earth under your feet in the tunnel.”
“We have this screwed-up version of what success is, but surely it should be about different versions of fulfilment,” says Sam Griffiths. Picture: Stewart Baxter
As indicated by that lyric quoted earlier – the act of staying in Yorkshire avoiding success – the album reflects on “the dream I had to be a super, mega pop star and then year by year that peels away and you get a little older and you think, ‘may I will not be a Premier League footballer’.
“’Maybe, at 32, I’m not going to be an astronaut’,” says Sam. “It’s about appreciating the things you do have, like a fine wine. You begin to see the problems in the dreams you have.
“Why do we hold success up to the light? We have this screwed-up version of what success is, but surely it should be about different versions of fulfilment, not financial or social mores, but security and space in this world?”
Among those making the album with Sam were tonight’s support act, Elanor Moss, and Matthew Herd, whose saxophone playing is now a prominent feature of the new The Howl & The Hum live line-up.
“Elanor and I met over Zoom in the middle of lockdown and started writing together,” says Sam. “We both got into songwriting while we were studying English Literature at university, starting at open-mic nights, and she introduced me to producer Joseph Futak, who’s based in Hackney. Matthew is the principal songwriter in a band called Seafarers and he’s London based too.”
Joining Sam and Matthew on stage tonight at the sold-out Leeds Brudenell Social Club will be drummer Dave Hamblett, London guitarist Arun Thavasothy and bass player Naomi McLeod, Sam’s house-mate in Leeds. Doors open at 7.30pm.Stage times: Elanor Moss, 8.15pm; The Howl & The Hum, 9.15pm.
Gerard Savva: Leading the York Stage cast as Bobby in Company at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York
LOOK out for Godber at the double, Sondheim sophistication, a ground-breaking Black pioneer and Hull humour in the week ahead, recommends Charles Hutchinson.
Musical of the week: York Stage in Company, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
ON Bobby’s 35th birthday, his friends all have one question on their mind. Why is he not married? Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s bold, sophisticated and insightful revolutionary musical comedy follows Bobby as he navigates the world of dating and being the third wheel to all of his now happily (and unhappily) married friends, exploring the pros and cons of settling down and leaving his single life behind.
Nik Briggs directs a York Stage cast featuring Gerard Savva as Bobby, Florence Poskitt, Julia Anne Smith, Alexandra Mather, Joanne Theaker, Dan Crawfurd-Porter and Jack Hooper, among others. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
The poster for Lightning Seeds’ show at Scarborough Spa Grand Hall tonight
Pure and simply joyful every time: Lightning Seeds, Tomorrow’s Here Today, 35 Years Greatest Hits Tour, Scarborough Spa Grand Hall, tonight; The Welly, Hull, December 4; Leeds Beckett Students’ Union, December 6
TO mark their 35th anniversary, Liverpool singer, songwriter and producer Ian Broudie leads Lightning Seeds on their Tomorrow’s Here Today tour to accompany a new greatest hits album.
Here come Pure, The Life Of Riley, Change, Lucky You, Sense, All I Want, Sugar Coated Iceberg, You Showed Me, Emily Smiles, Three Lions et al and many more. Tonight doors open at 7pm; Casino play at 8pm, Lightning Seeds at 9pm. Box office: Scarborough, scarboroughspa.co.uk; Hull, giveitsomewelly.com; Leeds, leedsbeckettsu.co.uk.
Tom Gallagher, Annie Kirkman and Laura Jennifer Banks in a scene from John Godber’s revival of Perfect Pitch
Touring play of the week: John Godber Company in Perfect Pitch, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tonight to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 1.30pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
WHEN teacher Matt (Frazer Hammill) borrows his parents’ caravan for a week on the Yorkshire coast with partner Rose (Annie Kirkman), they are expecting four days of hill running and total de-stressing. However, with a Tribfest taking place nearby, Grant (Tom Gallagher) and Steph’s (Laura Jennifer Banks) pop-up tent is an unwelcome addition to their perfect pitch.
The class divide and loo cassettes become an issue as writer-director John Godber reignites his unsettling 1998 state-of-the-nation comedy, set on an eroding coastline, as Matt and Rose are inducted into the world of caravanning and karaoke. Box office: Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
The Highwayman cast of Dylan Allcock, left, Emilio Encinoso-Gil, Matheea Ellerby and Jo Patmore in John Godber’s new historical play. Picture: Ian Hodgson
New play of the week: John Godber Company in The Highwayman, York Theatre Royal Studio, tomorrow to Saturday, 7.45pm plus 2pm Friday and Saturday, sold out
AFTER more than 70 plays reflecting on modern life, John Godber goes back in history for the first time in The Highwayman. “It’s 1769 and Yorkshire’s population has exploded, the races at York are packed, the new theatre in Hull is thriving, and the Spa towns are full,” he says.
“Everyone is flocking north. Yorkshire is the place to be; a region drunk on making money, social climbing, gambling and gin, but with wealth in abundance, the temptation is great.” Enter the highwayman, John Swift and his partner, Molly May. Box office for returns only: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Paterson Joseph and Charles Ignatius Sancho: Storyteller and subject in Sancho & Me at York Theatre Royal
Story of the week: Paterson Joseph, Sancho & Me, York Theatre Royal, tomorrow, 7.30pm, with post-show discussion
CHARLES Ignatius Sancho, born on a slave ship on the Atlantic Ocean in 1729, became a writer, composer, shopkeeper and respected man of letters in 18th century London – the first man of African heritage to vote in Britain.
Actor, author and Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University Paterson Joseph tells his story, accompanied by co-creator and musical director Ben Park, built around his book The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho. Joseph explores ideas of belonging, language, education, slavery, commerce, violence, politics, music, love and where these themes intersect with his own story of growing up Black and British. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Irish band Adore: Headlining at The Crescent tomorrow. Picture: Fnatic
Indie gig of the week: Road Less Travelled presents Adore, Fuzz Lightyear and Tom Beer, The Crescent, York, tomorrow,7.30pm
RISING stars of the Irish music scene, Adore are a three-piece garage punk band from Galway, Donegal and Dublin, who refract surf, disco and pop through punk sensibilities, grounded in crunchy guitar, drum and bass.
Leeds four-piece Fuzz Lightyear, freshly signed to independent label Nice Swan Records, match the intensity of Idles and Gilla Band while applying wit and a lyrical openness to their songs. Bull frontman Tom Beer kicks off the triple bill with a solo set. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
New York Brass Band: Bringing New Orleans Mardi Gras jazz from old York to Milton Rooms, Malton
Jazz night of the week: Acorn Events presents New York Brass Band and The Ryedale Stray Notes, Milton Rooms, Malton, Friday, 7pm
NEW York Brass Band, from York, perform with a seven or eight-piece line-up of sax, tuba, trumpets, trombones, guitar and sousaphone in the New Orleans Mardi Gras jazz band tradition. Formed by James Lancaster in 2010, they are inspired by Rebirth Brass Band, Soul Rebels, Hot 8, Youngblood and Brassroots.
They have played at Glastonbury for the past eight festivals and at celebrity parties and weddings for Danny Jones, of McFly, Ellie Goulding, comedian Alex Brooker, Liam Gallagher and Jamie Oliver. Support act The Ryedale Stray Notes feature 25 talented young musicians “ready to raise the roof”. Proceeds go to Acorn Community Care to support vulnerable adults with physical and learning disabilities. Tickets: acornevents.org.uk or phone Ali on 07891 3889085.
Paddy Young: Topping the Rye Humour bill at Helmsley Arts Centre. Picture: Lucas Smith
Variety night of the week: Rye Humour, Comedy vs Climate Change, Helmsley Arts Centre, Saturday, 7.30pm
RYE Humour’s variety bill of up-and-coming comics will be headlined by Chortle Best Newcomer winner Paddy Young, a stand-up with Scarborough roots. The 2023 BBC New Comedy Awards finalist and Edinburgh Comedy Awards Best Newcomer nominee has attracted 100 million views online for his sketches with Ed Night. His comedy special, filmed by American record label 800 Pound Gorilla Records, will be released shortly.
This gig has been developed in collaboration with the Ryevitalise Landscape Partnership scheme, as part of a project that uses humour to explore environmental issues based around North Yorkshire’s rivers. Any questions about the evening, or accessibility, will be answered at events@comedyvsclimatechange.org.uk. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.
Lucy Beaumont: Off-beat stories, unusual anecdotes and bizarre journeys through modern-day womanhood at Grand Opera House, York
Comedy gig of the week: Lucy Beaumont Live, Grand Opera House, York, Saturday, 8pm
HULL humorist, BAFTA nominee and Taskmaster star Lucy Beaumont is determined to let loose and let slip on her rollercoaster world with off-beat stories, unusual anecdotes and bizarre journeys through modern-day womanhood.
From the co-host of the chart-topping podcast Perfect Brains with Sam Campbell and creator of Meet The Richardsons comes a look at life through the Lucy lens. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Kris Drever: “Beautiful and precise playing throughout his 80-minute set”. Picture: Paul Rhodes
THE Crescent and the Black Swan Folk Club keep finding the sweet spots.
Kris Drever has played in York many times (almost flaunting the fact he’s a Scotsman so close to the city walls after dark, and joking about it too).
He started around 2007 when the protégé was the junior partner and target of Eddi Reader’s jokes. He stole the show that night, and 17 years on he was the epitome of graciousness to Heather Cartwright (a fellow Glasgow resident), who opened for him.
Cartwright has a voice like a bonny sunlit stream. Her material draws on some interesting source material. The striking opening number, Dark Times, uses Bertolt Brecht’s memorable words “In the dark times/will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times”.
When Drever later sang “Strong men come, and strong men go” (from I’ll Always Leave The Light On), it was hard not to think they both had a certain president in mind.
As Cartwright relaxed, the performance grew stronger. She had the courage to stop and start her take on The Creggan White Hare again. Like Drever, Cartwright doesn’t just operate in the folk realm, and her closing love song, written from the perspective of a dog to its owner, could capture a billion cynophile hearts if she took it a little further.
Heather Cartwright: “A voice like a bonny sunlit stream”. Picture: Paul Rhodes
Where Cartwright’s ambition occasionally got ahead of her technique, Drever’s playing was precise and beautiful throughout his 80-minute set of 14 tunes. Drever wears his years well, but his Cranmer guitar was still more handsome (another Glasgow link).
The sounds his hands coaxed from it were simply glorious (and didn’t require that much tuning). An absolute highlight was his spare version of the Shetland traditional fiddle tune The Unst Bridal March.
Drever talked about aiming for the universal in his songwriting, and with Hunker Down/That Old Blitz Spirit he caught hold of the Covid zeitgeist. Commissions and collaboration certainly seems to bring the best out of him, but there was no room in the set for the likes of Scatterseed or its close relative Catterline, two of his very finest. Scapa Flow 1919 was a century adrift of any zeitgeist, but that in no way diminished its power.
The set included two new and unrecorded tunes being tested before a live audience, with Save A Space For Me the pick of the crop. He is not one for resting on his laurels, and his breakthrough album, Black Water, had to wait until the encore for an airing.
Assuming Drever ducked the English crossbows after the gig, York would be wise to set their gig-going cross-hairs on him next time he visits. Highly recommended.
JakoJako: “Perpetually adjusting the various sound modules”. Picture: Katja Ruge
AS the auditorium lights diminished, our focus was immediately locked into an illuminated JakoJako, aka Sibel Koçer, sitting at the modular synthesiser, headphones on, zoned in and calmness personified.
It was fascinating to see the performer-composer perpetually adjusting the various sound modules. Like a micro-electronic orchestra with these modules (instrumental tools): firstly, sliders – allowing pitches to slide between notes like glissando in string instruments; secondly, switches – kind of router selection circuits (putting me in mind of my Hornby train set functions); thirdly, panels – e.g. voice panel, and fourthly, patch cables – cables connecting sections of the synthesiser, such as oscillators.
OK, this may be a long-winded window into the tech side, but it is important to describe the ‘interconnectivity’, which is the core of JakoJako’s performance and compositional journey. We see it as well as listen to it; the performance is, in its own way, musical theatre.
The performance began with a kind of distorted electronic vocal prologue that brought to mind mildly ominous instructions from Tolkien’s Mordor. Little did I know at the time that Sauron would indeed become manifest later that night. Although this was distinct and effective, it was not really used again, which seemed a pity.
The main body of the performance was one of modulating layers of slowly unfolding sounds. I loved the melodic simplicity, familiar electronic transformations, for example pizzicato strings, echoes of the Caribbean steelpan drums.
What might be termed ostinato figures in classical terminology were used throughout; beautiful melodic loops, sometimes syncopated, always rhythmically transforming. Quite often they would surface, for want of a better term, from the depths of a ‘harmonic’ sound world into prominence. These looping melodies had a relaxing timeless quality.
I think the term ‘minimalism’ is a good one to describe the music and, just maybe, the influence of Philip Glass or Steve Reich can be felt. But it is the continual evolution or variation of these elements that makes the music so enriching. There was also a sense of fun.
The overall impression was of beautifully crafted interconnecting, layering musical moments to create a patchwork quilt of sound; musical clouds drifting by. Meditative, hypnotic and very distinct.
DEAR Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day, and here’s why. If you miss this week’s run at Leeds Grand Theatre, the Nottingham Playhouse touring production of Benji Pasek, Justin Paul and Steven Levenson’s musical will be visiting the Grand Opera House, York, from June 22 to 25 2025. Tickets go on general sale from Tuesday (12/11/2024) at atgtickets.com/york.
Promoted by ATG Productions, this is the first British production of the Olivier, Tony and Grammy Award-winning Best Musical to utilise an ensemble. Busy stage, and very busy Leeds Grand auditorium too on press night, a performance that crackled with excitement at the first chance to experience the Olivier, Tony and Grammy Award winner close to home. Not least because Pasek and Paul were the Oscar-gilded composers of The Greatest Showman and La La Land
“I am beyond thrilled with the talented cast we have assembled: an exciting mix of musical theatre legends and rising stars,” said director Adam Penford of a stellar company led by Ryan Kopel (from Newsies) as Evan Hansen, Lauren Conroy (Into The Woods)as Zoe Murphy and West End luminary Alice Fearn (Wicked, Come From Away) as Evan’s mum, Heidi. Today is going to be a good day to reveal all three are scheduled to play York too. Hurrah.
“It’s been nine years since the original show premiered, and it’s an honour to be the first production to re-imagine this powerful story through a contemporary lens,” Penford added.
That lens focuses on Ryan Kopel’s Evan Hansen: a friendless, bullied, 17-year-old American high school senior struggling with social anxiety and depression, who would like nothing more than to fit in and befriend Zoe Murphy. Especially with his mother Heidi (Fearn) always being too busy with her work to see him and his father long absent.
Evan’s therapist (the never-seen Dr Sherman) asks him to write letters to himself – the Dear Evan Hansen letters of the title – as a therapeutic exercise to explore his feelings and boost his positivity when courage and words desert him in the presence of others.
“Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day, and here’s why,” each letter should start. Except that for Evan, they either don’t start at all or when one finally does, today is going to be anything but a good day. That letter is snatched off him by fellow friendless school outsider, Zoe’s brother, Connor (Killian Thomas Lefevre), Dear Evan Hansen’s riff on Heathers’ JD.
It will be the last words Connor ever reads, spoiler alert. When Connor’s parents (Helen Anker’s Cynthia and Richard Hurst’s baseball-loving American jock Larry) assume it to be his suicide note, Evan tries to explain otherwise, but words fail him, and so, trouble this way lies…
…And lies and lies again as the lies pile up, a form of self-preservation that utilises Puck-like family friend Jared Keinman’s (Tom Dickerson) writing skills to concoct past text messages from the outsiders’ “secret friendship” and social media “ambulance chaser” Alana Beck’s (Vivian Panka) drive to set up a fundraising appeal to reopen an orchard where the two teens met.
In doing so, he deceives Connor’s parents and Zoe, as she starts to warm to him. The thing is, it’s not that simple. Yes he is lying, but he is doing so to comfort them, to make them feel better, to build a full picture that puts the destructive, nihilistic Connor in a better light.
The thing is, it’s not that simple either, because suddenly he has Zoe where he always wanted her to be, with him. Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma! What would you have done in these circumstances?
Pasek and Paul’s wonderful songs and Leversen’s witty, sharp, probing dialogue addresses his predicament with admirable complexity. Not only his mother will tell him he is not a bad lad; chances are you will feel that way too, and the compassion that ultimately prevails does not seem unreasonable.
In her opening speech at this week’s Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York, festival director Cherie Federico called for everyone to be kind to each other. Not the usual content on such an occasion, but Cherie had a point. One that resonated all the more when watching Dear Evan Hansen, especially in the wake of Trump’s vainglorious return to the presidency.
Recalling Joshua Jenkins’s remarkable performance as neuro-divergent schoolboy Christopher Boone in the National Theatre’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time – although Christopher was incapable of lying – Ryan Kopel gives the outstanding lead performance of the year in a touring musical. So much pent-up energy, so much inner turmoil, expressed in movement, expression, vocal mannerisms and angelic, pure singing voice.
Conroy’s Zoe excels too, part rose, part thorn; Fearn brings West End star quality to Heidi; Lefevre’s Connor has haunting, gothic presence; Dickerson amuses as prankster Jared; Panka’s Alana is as persistent as a bee trying to escape from a window; you absolutely connect with Anker and Hurst’s struggling parents too.
Michael Bradley’s band are on top form, especially the beautiful strings, in a score of powerful, emotive, melodic song after song from the heart. Top marks too to Penford’s exhilarating, emotionally-layered direction; Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s brisk, punchy choreography to rival her work in SIX The Musical; Morgan Large’s set (and costume) design, with its use of sliding, see-through doors, and the state-of-the-art video design by Ravi Deepres. Do not miss the Generation Z musical with far wider appeal.
Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day and here’s why. If you can’t wait until the newly added run at the Grand Opera House, you can catch Dear Evan Hansen at Sheffield Lyceum Theatre, April 8 to 12, or Hull New Theatre, April 22 to 26 next year.Leeds Grand Theatre, today at 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: leedsheritagetheatres.com or 0113 243 0808.
Did you know?
THIS Nottingham Playhouse production of Dear Evan Hansen is partnering withThe Mix, the digital charity for under-25s. The musical deals with sensitive topics, relevant to young people today, and this partnership will ensure that anyone affected by the issues explored in the show knows where to find support.
Brushing up on her art: Lindsey Tyson, one of the Wednesday Four exhibiting at Pyramid Gallery, York
FROM the Wednesday Four to the sold-out Barbican four, a Sondheim musical to John Godber making history, Charles Hutchinson puts the ‘yes’ into November’s calendar.
Last chance to see: The Wednesday Four, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, today and Monday, 10am to 5pm
THE Wednesday Four, a group of four artist friends who gather in Scarborough each week – busy schedules permitting – are exhibiting together for the first time in York.
Shirley Vauvelle (ceramic sculpture and paintings), Gillian Martin (paintings and prints), Katie Braida (ceramics) and Lindsey Tyson (paintings) have been meeting for three years but have known each other much longer.
Tarot: Performing sketches in nighties in Shuffle at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York. Picture: PBJ Management
Sketch show of the week: Tarot: Shuffle, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight, 8pm
“THEY (our parents, partners, children) say ‘sketch is dead’, but if it’s dead then where’s all our money going?” ask Tarot, a sketch troupe featuring members of Gein’s Family Giftshop and Goose, Adam Drake, Ed Easton and Kath Hughes.
What lies in store in Shuffle? “Joyously silly and uproariously live and in-the-room, we would call it ‘improv’ but we’ve got some self-respect: this is sketch in nighties. Come watch a new tour of big, daft and, above all, live comedy being conjured up in front of your very eyes.” Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Rise Up To Empower Women: Fundraiser for York charity IDAS at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York
Fundraiser of the week: Rise Up To Empower Women, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
YORK and Leeds performers come together to “raise the roof to end gender-based violence”, sharing inspiring and moving stories of female survivors of abuse in a night of musical theatre organised by Hannah Winbolt-Lewis. Proceeds will go to IDAS, the Blossom Street, York-based domestic abuse and sexual violence support charity, and to aid the recovery of Leanne Lucas, a survivor of July’s Southport stabbings.
Performing arts student Daisy Winbolt-Robertson
Performing arts students Kate Lohan, Daisy Winbolt-Robertson, Sara Belal, Rose Scott, Chloe Amelie Lightfoot, Erin Childs, Annie Dunbar, Jasmine Lowe, Declan Childs and Oliver Lawery will sing songs from shows that depict survivors’ stories: Heathers, Spring Awakening, Waitress, The Color Purple, SIX The Musical and the newly premiered SuperYou. Donations can be made via idas.co.uk. Box office: O1904 501935, josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk or bit.ly/RiseUpToEmpowerWomen.
Simon Brodkin: Ripping into celebrity culture, social media, the police, Putin, Prince Andrew and God in Screwed Up
Comedy gig of the week: Simon Brodkin, Screwed Up, Grand Opera House, York, tomorrow, 8pm
SIMON Brodkin, world-famous prankster, Lee Nelson creator and most-watched British stand-up comedian on TikTok, brings his outrageous stand-up show back to York.
In Screwed Up, Brodkin rips into celebrity culture, social media, the police, Putin, Prince Andrew and God. Nothing is off limits, from his own mental health and family to his five arrests and how he once found himself at an underground sex party. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Irish Christmas celebrations in song and dance in Fairytale Of New York
What? Christmas in old York already : Fairytale Of New York – The Ultimate Irish-Inspired Christmas Concert, Grand Opera House, York, November 11, 7.30pm
FROM the producers of Seven Drunken Nights – The Story Of The Dubliners comes a rich tapestry of Irish singers, musicians and dancers performing Driving Home For Christmas, Step Into Christmas, Oh Holy Night, Fairytale Of New York and Irish sing-along favourites The Galway Girl, The Irish Rover, Dirty Old Town and The Black Velvet Band. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Sarah Millican: “Lots of stuff about dinners and lady gardens” at York Barbican
Recommended but sold out alas: next week’s shows at York Barbican
BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Monty Don kicks off a particularly busy week at York Barbican when he shares his passion for gardens and the role they play in human inspiration and wellbeing on Monday night (7.30pm). Jazz pianist, songwriter and BBC Radio 2 presenter Jamie Cullum will be supported by Northampton pianist and singer Billy Lockett on Tuesday (doors 7pm).
On Thursday (8pm), in her Late Bloomer show, South Shields comedian Sarah Millican mulls over her transition from being quiet at school with not many friends and an inability to say boo to a goose to being loud with good friends and goose-booing outbursts aplenty, “plus lots of stuff about dinners and lady gardens,” she says. On Friday (doors 7pm), in her Rockin’ On show, queen of rock’n’roll Suzi Quatro rolls out Can The Can, Devil Gate Drive, Stumblin’ In, 48 Crash, The Wild One et al. “It’s my 60th year in the business and it still feels like I’ve just started,” she says.
The York Stage poster for their “new version” of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s American musical comedy Company
Musical of the week: York Stage in Company, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, November 13 to 16, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
ON Bobby’s 35th birthday, his friends all have one question on their mind. Why is he not married? Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s bold , sophisticated and insightful revolutionary musical comedy follows Bobby as he navigates the world of dating and being the third wheel to all of his now happily (and unhappily) married friends as he explores the pros and cons of settling down and leaving his single life behind.
Nik Briggs directs a York Stage cast featuring Gerard Savva as Bobby, Florence Poskitt, Julia Anne Smith, Alexandra Mather, Joanne Theaker, Dan Crawfurd-Porter and Jack Hooper, among others. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
The Highwayman cast of Dylan Allcock, left, Emilio Encinoso-Gil, Matheea Ellerby and Jo Patmore in John Godber’s new historical play. Picture: Ian Hodgson
New play of the week: John Godber Company in The Highwayman, York Theatre Royal Studio, November 14 to 16, 7.45pm plus 2pm Friday and Saturday, sold out
AFTER more than 70 plays reflecting on modern life, John Godber goes back in history for the first time in The Highwayman. “It’s 1769 and Yorkshire’s population has exploded, the races at York are packed, the new theatre in Hull is thriving, and the Spa towns are full,” he says.
“Everyone is flocking north. Yorkshire is the place to be; a region drunk on making money, social climbing, gambling and gin, but with wealth in abundance, the temptation is great.” Enter the highwayman, John Swift and his partner, Molly May. Box office for returns only: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
In focus: Paterson Joseph, Sancho & Me, York Theatre Royal, November 14, 7.30pm, with post-show discussion
Paterson Joseph and Charles Ignatius Sancho: Storyteller and subject in Sancho & Me at York Theatre Royal
CHARLES Ignatius Sancho, born on a slave ship on the Atlantic Ocean in 1729, became a writer, composer, shopkeeper and respected man of letters in 18th century London – the first man of African heritage to vote in Britain.
Actor, author and Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University Paterson Joseph tells his story, accompanied by co-creator and musical director Ben Park, built around Joseph’s book The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho.
Joseph explores ideas of belonging, language, education, slavery, commerce, violence, politics, music, love and where these themes intersect with his own story of growing up Black and British
Joseph says: “Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) had a most extraordinary life. Born of enslaved African parents, he rose to a position of great influence in British society. A polymath with a talent for music, his vote in 1774 and 1780 made him the first person of African descent to vote in a British Parliamentary election.
“I first came across Charles Ignatius Sancho in 1999. Born and raised in London, by my mid-thirties I had no idea there were thousands of Black Britons in the UK long before the famous ‘Windrush Generation’ who arrived in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. I cannot overstate the powerful sense of belonging this knowledge brought me.
“My desire is to spread that sense of rootedness through spreading the word far and wide: Britain has always been a multi-ethnic country and Black people have been a major part of that story.”
The show incorporates Sancho’s compositions and original music by composer and musician Ben Park. In the words of Sancho: “Friendship is a plant of slow growth, and, like our English oak, spreads, is more majestically beautiful, and increases in shade, strength and riches, as it increases in years.”
Paterson Joseph: the back story
Born: Willesden, London on June 22 1964 to parents from St Lucia. Educated at Cardinal Hinsley RC High School. Worked briefly as catering assistant. Trained at Studio ’68 of Theatre Arts, London (South Kensington Library), from 1983 to 1985, later attending London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA).
Theatre roles: Oswald in King Lear, Dumaine in Love’s Labours Lost and Marquis de Mota in The Last Days Of Don Juan, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1990. Title role in Othello, Royal Exchange, Manchester, 2002. Lead roles in The Royal Hunt Of The Sun and The Emperor Jones, Olivier Theatre, National Theatre, London, 2006. Brutus, in Royal Shakespeare Company’s Julius Caesar, set in Africa, 2012. Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Old Vic Theatre, London, 2019 into 2020.
Undertook documentary project My Shakespeare, filmed for Channel 4 in 2004, directing version of Romeo & Juliet that used 20 young non-actors from deprived Harlesden area of London.
On television: Mark Grace in Casualty (1997–1998); Alan Johnson in Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show (2003–2015); Lyndon Jones in Green Wing (2004–2006); Greg Preston in Survivors (2008–2010); DI Wes Layton in Law And Order: UK (2013–2014); “Holy Wayne” Gilchrest in The Leftovers (2014–2015); DCI Mark Maxwell in Safe House (2015–2017); Connor Mason in Timeless (2016–2018); Home Secretary, then Prime Minister Kamal Hadley in Noughts + Crosses (2020-2022); Commander Neil Newsome in Vigil (2021); Samuel Wells in Boat Story (2023).
Films include: Benbay in In The Name Of The Father (1993); Keaty in The Beach (2000); Greenfingers (2001), Giroux in Æon Flux (2005), The Other Man (2009) and Arthur Slugworth in Wonka (2023).
His debut play as a writer, Sancho: An Act Of Remembrance, was first co-produced and performed at Oxford Playhouse in 2015, then twice toured United States of America, including Kennedy Center in Washington and Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York. Performed by Joseph in London in 2018 at Wilton’s Music Hall; published by Bloomsbury.
Debut novel The Secret Diaries Of Charles Ignatius Sancho was published in 2022 by Dialogue Books in UK and Henry Holt in USA, charting Sancho’s life through fictionalised diary entries, letters and commentary. Nominated for six literary awards, winning Royal Society of Literature’s Christopher Bland Prize and Historical Writers Association Debut Novel Prize in 2023.
First book, Julius Caesar And Me: Exploring Shakespeare’s African Play, published by Bloomsbury.
Appointed Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University in 2022. Installed in May 2023.
Paterson Joseph, Me & Sancho, York Theatre Royal, November 14, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Suzi Quatro: Using this iconic image from her first photographic session with Gered Mankowitz in 1973 to promote her 60th anniversary tour. York Barbican awaits
SUZI Quatro is marking the 60th year of her reign as “the Queen of Rock’n’Roll” by embarking on a five-date autumn tour.
On November 15, Suzi, 74, plays York Barbican, her only Yorkshire show and the first on the tour to sell out.
“It’s my 60th year in the business, and it still feels like I’ve just started,” she said, when announcing the tour. “Devil Gate Drive, number one, 51 years ago. Are you ready now? Let’s do it one more time for Suzi.”
Sixty years? Yes, Michigan-born singer, songwriter, bass guitarist, actress, poet novelist and radio presenter Suzi started out in bands in Detroit, playing concerts and teen clubs with Ted Nugent, Bob Seger and others, having first played bongos with her father Art’s jazz trio when she was eight.
“I started a band at 14,” she recalls. “I was in ninth or tenth grade. We worked the whole summer, going to New York.
“I talked to my dad about not going back to high school. He was on the phone, saying ‘is there anything I can say to change your mind?’.He quietly put the phone down and that was clever. It gave me time to pause and think about it. I made my choice: I would be in music for life.”
In May 1964, her sister Patti formed the group The Pleasure Seekers with Suzi on bass, leading to their first single coming out on the Hideout Records label in 1965, when Suzi was 15, Patti, 17.
Further singles Never Thought You’d Leave Me and Light Of Love followed in 1966 and 1968 respectively.
In 1971, Suzi flew to England to work with songwriting hit factory Chinn and Chapman after producer Mickie Most saw her perform live at the East Town Ballroom when in Detroit to record Jeff Beck at Motown.
Suzi expected to be in the UK for three months, but stayed. “I go back to America a lot but I haven’t lived there since 1971,” she says. The story goes that she did not take even a coat with her when first leaving.
Significantly, Suzi has used an iconic image from her first photographic session with Gered Mankowitz in 1973 to promote her 60th anniversary tour. The definitive one in the leather jump suit, as memorable as Mankowitz’s portrait of a teenage Kate Bush.
“I’ll try to make a long story short,” says Suzi, explaining how that look was born. “We’d recorded Can The Can and Mike [Chapman] said, it’s going to be number one’. I said, ‘we need to discuss the image’. I said ‘leather’; he said ‘No’, but I got my way.
“Then he suggested a jump suit, and he was right. People thought of it as very sexy, though I didn’t realise that at the time.”
The poster for Suzi Quatro’s 60th anniversary Rockin’ On tour
At the photo session, Mankowitz said, ‘OK, give me that Suzi Quatro look’. “I gave ‘the look’, and that’s when the Suzi Quatro look was created. It was new,” she says.
“I have finally, at the age of 74, accepted it. I didn’t know it at the time. I was just being who I am. I didn’t think it was unusual. I’d played bass since I was 14 but Mike kept saying I was unique.”
Chapman’s prediction was right: Suzi topped the UK charts in 1973 with the 2.5 million-selling Can The Can and had further hits that year with 48 Crash, Daytona Demon and the chart-topping Devil Gate Drive.
More UK hits would follow with Too Big, The Wild One, Your Mamma Won’t Like Me, Tear Me Apart, If You Can’t Give Me Love, She’s In Love With You and Mama’s Boy, her last UK Top 40 entry in 1979, peaking at number 34.
Her native United States was slower to catch on. “There were a lot of things happening on the other side of the world that America didn’t get then, but I did start touring in America in ’74. Happy Days was the thing that catapulted me to success there: the number one TV show. Suddenly they discovered me.”
Suzi made her first of seven appearances on Happy Days, playing Leather Tuscadero, the little sister of Fonzie’s ex-girlfriend Pinky, in 1977. “I then had a number four hit in the American Billboard Hot 100 with Stumblin’ In [her duet with Smokie’s Chris Norman] in 1978,” she says. Ironically, the song reached no higher than number 41 in the UK.
She may live between her Essex manor house and her husband’s German house, but America continues to play its part in her career. “I was in Detroit in September recording with Alice Cooper for my next album. I haven’t got a title yet but it’s got 14 songs, writing with Alice, and I’ve covered MC5’s Kick Out The Jams out of respect,” says Suzi.
“The next night Alice asked me to do School’s Out with him, on bass, which I’d never done before and had to learn real quick to play to 12,500 people at Pine Knob [Music Theatre], just outside Detroit. I was just grinning from ear to ear.
“I’ve known him since I was 15 years old. I did the Welcome To My Nightmare Tour with him in 1975 in America, and it really was a nightmare tour, though I loved it! It was a long tour, doing a couple of flights a day sometimes.”
As well as selling more than 55 million records – she featured in the UK charts for 101 weeks between 1973 and 1980 – Suzi has branched out into acting, writing novels and poetry, broadcasting, making her documentary film Suzi Q and presenting her autobiography Unzipped live in a one-woman show.
Suzi has been a ground-breaker. “Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, Joan Jett, they all said , ‘none of us would have done what we did without Suzi Quatro’, which made me cry, as I didn’t realise what I’d done, but I can now accept it,” she says.
“It had to fall on someone like me because I didn’t know I was doing it, and if I had known, it would have looked manufactured. That’s why I’m still here because whatever you see, it’s real.
“It’s funny. When I’ve done big shows with other acts, you end up talking in the bar and usually the conversation gets round to me and how different I was. ‘But did it look like I was I was just being me,’ I asked, and they said ‘yes’.”
York pantomime dame Berwick Kaler: Suzi Quatro wrote a song for her best friend, The Queen Mother Of Rock’n’Roll
She describes herself as “really stubborn”, giving the example of make-up artists asking if they could make her “bushy” eyebrows smaller. “I said, ‘you can enhance them, but don’t change them, this is me’.”
In 2019, Liam Firmager directed the documentary Suzi Q. “I said yes as I’d always wanted to do one. When we met, he said, ‘I’m not a fan, but I like your music’. I said ‘OK, but why do you want to do a documentary about me?’,” Suzi recalls.
Firmager said he had been fascinated by her. ”I knew that as a ‘non-fan’, you’re going to get the truth, even the ‘cringe’ moments, and he did stick to that,” says Suzi.
“It’s great documentary. There’s nothing I didn’t know, but it brought it to the fore that I’m very family orientated, very soft inside. There’s little Suzi from Detroit and there’s Suzi Quatro, who strides out on stage.”
Suzi says she has a sharp tongue when she is pushed. “Don’t mess with me. I’m a deep thinker.”
How does she feel she has been treated in a male-dominated industry that has had its stories of women being exploited? “Absolutely fine, because I demand that,” says Suzi. “It’s all about my attitude. I’m from Detroit. I’ve got a quick mind. I’ve got a quick mouth. If you touch me inappropriately, you will have a soprano voice.
“My father brought me up to have balls and my mother’s teaching, as a strict Catholic girl, gave me my morals. There’s an invisible line [not to be crossed], but I can play the softer side too.”
What is her advice to women in the business? “You can be tough but don’t lose your femininity,” she says.
Next Friday’s show will be a two-hour set with an interval. “I’ll be taking you on a journey through my life, with a song from every album, two from the album I did with K T Tunstall [2023’s Face To Face], an eight-minute bass solo – it’s not boring! – and some clips on the screen.”
The Wild One will rock on, she vows. “I will retire when I go on stage, shake my ass, and there is silence,” she says. “I’ve always been the same and I will always be the same. I’ve never coasted and I never will.”
Looking forward to playing to a sold-out York audience, Suzi says: “My overall feeling is that I am grateful and I am so happy that people want to see me. I take it very seriously.”
Performing in York brings back memories of working with Berwick Kaler, the legendary, newly retired pantomime dame. “We worked together for about a year in Annie Get Your Gun. We’ve been friends ever since. He was the best man at my second wedding [to German concert promoter Rainer Haas]. He’s my best friend.
“He once asked me to write a song for the panto – I’ve been to his shows many times – and wrote The Queen Mother Of Rock’n’Roll for him.”
Kym Marsh’s Cruella De Vil with her fashion house mincing minions Casper (Charles Brunton) and Jasper (Danny Hendrix) in 101 Dalmatians The Musical. Picture: Johan Persson
NOT everything is black and white with Alsatians, just like with Border Collie sheepdogs, but if one film has shaped a general affection for a breed, then 101 Dalmatians has done a fantastic PR job.
Yes, Dalmatians can be loyal, loving, intelligent, good with children and pets; good watchdogs too, but they can be aggressive towards other dogs, or timid, and easily distracted in training.
Let’s be honest, that popularity comes down to the spots. If a fashion designer were to design a dog, chances are they would go dotty for Dalmatians. Cruella De Vil does exactly that, of course, at her Haus of De Vil fashion house but not as an accessory for the walkway.
No, the fashionista villain of Dodie Smith’s ever-popular tale of wagging tails wants their pelts for her latest fabulous fur coat in 101 Dalmatians, the canine caper re-told here in musical form with music and lyrics by Douglas Hodge and book by Johnny McKnight from a stage adaptation by Zinnie Harris.
Re-imagined from the 2022 outdoor production at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London, Runaway Entertainment’s touring show is led by Kym Marsh, Hear’Say pop singer, Coronation Street soap star, Waterloo Road regular, Strictly 2022 alumna and Morning Live presenter.
What a canny piece of casting she is in her first musical lead-singing role, as she turns to the dark side for the first time at 48, knocking spots off other Cruellas with the De Vil in the detail of her vampish performance, full of pantomimic villainy, spitefully humorous putdowns and dramatic, powerhouse singing that peaks with the Act One climax, Bring Me Fur.
“She’s the most fun character ever,” said Marsh, in an appraisal that might raise eyebrows, given that Cruella is a knife-wielding canine killer, but she is right. More lairy than scary in demeanour, her fiendish “Cruella times ten” is a vainglorious baddie in pantomime tradition, commanding in presence but in need of being taken down.
Marsh, who is given wonderfully sharp costumes by designer Sarah Mercade, is the star turn in Bill Buckhurst’s raucous production, but the show is built on Jimmy Grimes’ puppetry, Lucy Hind’s choreography, Hodge’s humorous songs and McKnight’s love of jokes as cheesy and daft as panto puns. Oh yes, and there are puppies aplenty, of course.
Sorry to keep making comparisons with pantomimes, but characters are played and dressed with those broad, bold strokes, from Samuel Thomas’s gawky Tom Dearly, in his slightly-too-short trousers and specs, to Emmerdale star Jessie Elland’s matching Danielle Dearly in polka-dot coat and specs, their clothing patterns looking as if they were drawn with a child’s eye for exaggeration.
Likewise the spry comedy double act of Cruella’s fashion-hound acolytes, her dimwit nephews Casper (Charles Brunton) and Jasper (Danny Hendrix), could be torn from any of this winter’s upcoming pantos, although they would be equally at home in Shakespeare’s comedy romps.
The ensemble of canine puppeteers are on singing duty too, led by Linford Johnson’s Pongo (you may remember him from Alan Ayckbourn’s The Girl Next Door at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre) and Emma Thornett’s Perdi (last seen in York in Gus Gowland’s musical Mayflies at the Theatre Royal in May 2023). Thornett has one terrific, moving scene where her Perdi will not give up on saving the ailing, frozen-cold Button as the night-time snow falls.
The Dalmatians, 101 of them by the finale, are a dotty delight, keeping the ensemble on their toes as they multiply. Hodge’s songs are fun and funny, albeit that the tunes are somewhat workmanlike pastiches, but the likes of The Pub Song, the insistent Litterbugs and I Can Smell Puppy hit the right note.
In a crowded musical market, 101 Dalmatians is not quite Premier League. Nevertheless it definitely surpasses the energy level of a typical Dalmatian, a breed that requires more than 40 minutes of exercise per day. These ones give the run-around for two hours.
101 Dalmatians The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7pm plus 2pm Thursday and Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Livy Potter as Katy, left, and Alice Rose Palmer, as mum Natalie, in Louise Beech’s How To Be Brave at Gilling East Village Hall and Helmsley Arts Centre
FROM a devilish yet dotty canine musical to comedians having their moment, a film festival to glowing ghosts, Charles Hutchinson spots plenty to light up dark days ahead.
Touring play of the week: Other Lives Productions in How To Be Brave, Gilling East Village Hall, tomorrow, 7.30pm, and Helmsley Arts Centre, Friday, 7.30pm
IN 1943, Merchant Seaman Colin Armitage’s cargo ship was torpedoed by an Italian Navy submarine in the South Atlantic. He scrambled aboard a life raft. Fifty days later, HMS Rapid rescued him.
Colin was the grandfather of How To Be Brave playwright Louise Beech. Sixty-four years after his ordeal, Louise’s daughter, Katy, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. In order to distract her during insulin injections Louise began to tell the story of Colin’s bravery and determination to survive.
Scenes in this resulting play alternate between the life raft and a house in Hull as York actors Jacob Ward and Livy Potter take the lead roles in Kate Veysey’s production. Box office: Gilling East, gillinjgeastevents@hotmail.co.uk; Helmsley, 01439 771700.
Man of The Moment: Ali Woods, playing York Barbican on his debut stand-up tour
Comedy men of The Moment: Mo Gilligan, In The Moment, York Barbican, tomorrow,8pm; Ali Woods, At The Moment, York Barbican, Friday, 8pm
THE moment has arrived for two comedy tour dates with similar show titles, first up the host of Channel 4’s The Lateish Show With Mo Gilligan, Londoner Mo Gilligan, on his In The Moment World Tour 2024.
The following night, half-English, half-Scottish comedian, podcaster and content creator Ali Woods plays York on his debut stand-up tour. At 30, this viral online sketch sensation has finally fallen in love with an amazing lady. “Come on an embarrassing and cathartic journey of teenage angst, relationship fails and learning how to live in the moment,” he says. Tickets update: available for both shows, whereas An Audience With Monty Don (November 11), Jamie Cullum (November 12), Sarah Millican: Late Bloomer (November 14) and Suzi Quatro ( November 15) have sold out already. Box office: yortkbarbican.co.uk.
Artist CJP with his work The Majestic Oak at Art Of Protest Gallery, York
Exhibition of the week: From Little Acorns Grow Mighty Hopes: An Exhibition of Hand-drawn Natural Wonders, Art of Protest Gallery, Walmgate, York, until November 16
ART Of Protest is the first gallery to show CJP’s work The Majesty Oak in an exhibition of original and rare limited-edition artwork. Look out for the Art Of Protest York Special Edition, only available to be ordered until November 16, featuring the River Ouse-dwelling Tansy Beetle, an elusive insect featured on a resplendent mural near York railway station.
“This is an amazing opportunity to own a truly unique celebration of British fauna with a very special York twist,” says gallery owner Craig Humble. “CJP will add a Tansy Beetle to each piece, along with the gold leafing of the branches.”
Very definitely Pride Of Prejudice * (*Sort Of), sending up Jane Austen affectionately in Isobel McArthur’s play at York Theatre Royal
Theatrical flourish of the week: Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of), York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
MEN, money and microphones will be fought over in Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of), the audacious retelling of a certain Jane Austen novel, where the stakes couldn’t be higher when it comes to romance but it’s party time, so expect the all-female cast to deliver such emotionally turbulent pop gems as You’re So Vain and Young Hearts Run Free.
Writer Isobel McArthur directs this new production of her West End hit, Olivier Award winner for best comedy. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
In the driving seat: Kym Marsh’s Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians The Musical. Picture: Johan Persson
Dog show of the week: 101 Dalmatians The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7pm plus 2pm today, Thursday and Saturday matinees
KYM Marsh’s Cruella De Vil leads the cast for this musical tour of Dodie Smith’s canine caper 101 Dalmatians. Written by Douglas Hodge (music and lyrics) and Johnny McKnight (book), from a stage adaptation by Zinnie Harris, the show is re-imagined from the 2022 production at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London.
When fashionista Cruella De Vil plots to swipe all the Dalmatian puppies in town to create her fabulous new fur coat, trouble lies ahead for Pongo and Perdi and their litter of tail-wagging young pups in a story brought to stage life with puppetry, choreography, humorous songs and, yes, puppies. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
3 Missing 10 Hours, directed by Fanni Fazakas, showing in the Animation programme at Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2024
York festival of the week: Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York city centre, today to Sunday, and UNESCO City of Media Arts EXPO, Guildhall, York, Thursday to Saturday
THE BAFTA-Qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival returns for its 14th year under the direction of Cherie Federico, this time integrating the tenth anniversary of York’s designation as Great Britain’s only UNESCO City of Media Arts. Fifteen venues will play host to 300 film screenings in 12 genres, Virtual Realty and Gaming labs, plus 60 panels, workshops and discussions. For the full programme and tickets, head to asff.co.uk.
The UNESCO EXPO will showcase the region’s creative sector, working in film production, games development, VFX (visual effects), publishing and design, with the chance to try out new projects and speak to creatives. Entry to the Guildhall is free.
Ghosts After Dark: New nocturnal complement to the Ghosts In The Gardens installation in York Museum Gardens
Nocturnal event of the week: Ghosts After Dark, York Museums Gardens, tomorrow to Sunday, 6.30pm to 9.30pm; last entry, 8.30pm
YORK Museums Trust and the York BID present the inaugural Ghosts After Dark, showcasing York’s rich tapestry of historical figures with light, sound and storytellers for four nights only.
Ticketholders will have the exclusive chance to experience York Museum Gardens like never before, by choosing their own path to explore 46 ghostly sculptures, hidden around the gardens and lit dynamically against an atmospheric background of smoke and sound. Box office: yorkshiremuseum.org.uk/ghosts-after-dark/.
Fishermen’s Friends: Playing York Barbican this week, then returning next October
Gig announcements of the week: Fisherman’s Friends, York Barbican, October 3 2025
IN celebration of performing sea shanties for more than 30 years across the world, Fisherman’s Friends will head out from the Cornish fishing village of Port Isaac to play a British tour split between 2025 and 2026.
York will come early, booked for night number two next October on a 32-date itinerary announced even before they have played their sold-out Barbican gig on Friday this week on their Rock The Boat tour, promoting fifth album All Aboard. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
