Baritone Sam Hird and guitarist Tom Bennett outside the Royal College of Music
JOIN York baritone Sam Hird and his fellow Royal College of Music graduate, guitarist Tom Bennett, for classical music by candlelight at All Saints’ Church, North Street, York, tomorrow night (9/12/2022).
A Winter Night’s Recital will feature songs from around the world including Schubert, Faure and Britten, complemented by festive favourites such as Adeste Fideles, O Holy Night and A Cradle In Bethlehem to stir the Christmas spirit at this cosy evening of December entertainment.
The 15th century All Saints’ Church will be the “perfect backdrop” to this 7pm to 9pm concert. A glass of mulled wine and a mince pie is included in the ticket price of £10 plus booking fee, available from samhirdmusic.co.uk or on the door.
Heading north for Christmas: Tom Bennett and Sam Hird
Here, CharlesHutchPress welcomes Sam Hird back home to York ahead of his first professional solo recital
Why did you choose All Saints for this concert, Sam? What makes it a “perfect setting”?
“I fell in love with this church a few years ago after being taken to a traditional service there. The acoustics were gorgeous, the church was beautiful – especially the mediaeval stained glass windows – and above all the atmosphere was incredible. As with so many places in York, you can really feel the history when you’re inside the building.”
Have you sung there before?
“I rehearsed there around the same time as that service. A particularly memorable moment was getting to sing Make Our Garden Grow from Bernstein’s Candide. Surrounded by a host of marvellous singers, I remember getting shivers from the sound ringing round the whole church after we’d finished the final ‘grow!’ of the piece.”
Congratulations on graduating this year with a First, Sam. How have you found the experience of studying at the Royal College of Music?
“It has always been an exhilarating experience from day one. Getting to learn from incredible industry professionals and singers that I’ve always looked up to, like the brilliant Sally Burgess, was invaluable. The astonishing feeling of walking through the same corridors that Benjamin Britten would have walked through has never worn off.” How has the training had an impact on your singing?
“It’s had a huge impact. Most of my experience in York before moving to the Royal College in London was in acting through song in musicals such Sweeney Todd, Assassins, My Fair Lady and playing Jean Valjean in Les Miserables.
“The vocal training at the RCM, through so many top-notch practitioners, including my singing teacher, the baritone Peter Savidge, has built up my classical voice and given me a whole new toolkit for singing at a different level.”
Sam Hird and Tom Bennett performing an Elizabethan ballad in Pick Me Up Theatre’s April production of Shakespeare In Love, directed by Sam’s father, Mark Hird, at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York
When did you first perform with Tom?
“We used to play through Benjamin Britten folk songs in my room in halls in our first year, as and when we wanted some respite from pizza and the students’ union bar!
“But we first performed in front of an audience for my third-year recital, where we did some French folk songs and an aria from Don Giovanni.
“We also performed in York together in April when Tom’s guitar playing was an important part of Pick Me Up Theatre’s production of Shakespeare In Love at Theatre@41, Monkgate, and we performed a beautiful Elizabethan ballad together. We’ll reprise it in our winter concert in a sequence of Shakespeare songs.”
What do you enjoy about performing to guitar accompaniment?
“It’s a completely different experience to singing with a piano; somehow it instantly feels more intimate. I find the sound-worlds of the voice and guitar blend really beautifully, and I like that there’s more scope to be a little more daring in terms of the quieter moments.”
When choosing a programme, what factors do you take into consideration to achieve balance?
“When Tom and I set out with programming, one of the key factors is available music, as most of what is written for voice and guitar is for tenors – lucky things! But we like to have sections in different languages with ebbs and flows in each part.
Sam Hird and Tom Bennett in a light moment outside the Royal College of Music
“We really enjoy putting in the first few pieces from a song cycle (like Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin) as that gives us a clear, defined journey to try and take the audience on with us.”
How has the winter season infiltrated tomorrow night’s programming?
“We’ll be covering a lot of ground in terms of styles and sound worlds but the candlelit winter setting with mulled wine definitely made us want to find some ‘cosy-sounding’ songs to suit the season – and a few classic Christmas tunes tucked themselves in early on in the planning stages.”
On leaving college, how do you go about building your career?
“Thankfully, I have another two years of Masters to try and get the definitive answer to that excellent question! I’ll be putting myself forward for quite a few competitions and keeping an eye out for auditions for appropriate solo opportunities.
“But the dream would be to join a Young Artist’s Programme, where I would hope to cover some main roles and perform smaller parts in operas. That would be an incredible learning experience and hopefully an important stepping stone for my musical career.”
The Ebor Singers: Christmas concert at St Olave’s Church
THE Ebor Singers serve up a double festive treat of Part One of Handel’s Messiah and Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols in A Christmas Celebration in York on Sunday, December 18.
This is the second of the York choir’s Christmas concerts, wherein the 7.30pm programme will be performed in the intimate surroundings of St Olave’s Church, Marygate.
The choir will be joined by a string quartet and organist Keith Wright for Handel’s work; harpist Rachel Dent for Britten’s carols. Solos will be taken on by choir members.
“Part One of Handel’s Messiah takes us from prophecy to the birth of Jesus, and Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols takes up the story of the nativity,” says musical director Paul Gameson. “Although 200 years separate these two works, they both speak with similar directness and freshness.
“Handel draws on the most popular musical genres of the day for his Messiah: part-German passion, part-Italian opera, part-English anthem. Britten followed a trend of his contemporaries, exploring medieval poetry, but his music – scored for female voices and harp – established the new quintessential ‘sound’ of Christmas music.
A Christmas Celebration also showcases pieces from The Ebor Singers’ new album of American Christmas music, Wishes And Candles.
Tickets (£15, concessions £12, students aged 16 plus £7, children free) are available from eventbrite.co.uk or on the door.
James on stage: Next spring their ranks will swell by 30 when joined by an orchestra and gospel choir
ENDURING Manchester band James will play York Barbican on April 28 on next spring’s James Lasted Orchestral Tour.
Led as ever by Boston Spa-born singer Tim Booth, this 40th anniversary celebration will come loaded with a 22-piece orchestra and eight-strong gospel choir conducted by Joe Dundell.
The tour title is presumably a nod to both James’s longevity and to the orchestral music once synonymous with James Last, the German composer, jazz double bassist big band leader of the James Last Orchestra.
All 15 dates on the 2023 orchestral tour have sold out already, including Sheffield City Hall on May 4 as well as Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall and a Royal Albert Hall finale in London.
That itinerary will be accompanied by a double album of new versions of James’s greatest hits, fan favourites and deep cuts, plus one new composition, as yet untitled. Full details including release date, tracklisting and formats are to be announced soon.
The poster for the James Lasted Orchestral tour in 2023
Recorded at Blueprint Studios, Manchester, the album was arranged and conducted by Duddell – whose credits include Elbow and New Order – working in tandem with Orca, the orchestra assigned to the tour too, and a gospel choir.
Since playing as James for the first time when supporting Big Country at Manchester’s Hacienda on November 17 1982, they have released 16 studio albums, sold 25 million records, and enjoyed an Indian summer renaissance with a run of Top Five albums with Girl At The End Of The World, narrowly missing out on the top spot in 2016 to Adele’s 25, 2018’s Living In Extraordinary Times and 2021’s The Colours Of You.
Last December’s arena tour, taking in Leeds First Direct Arena with fellow Mancunians Happy Mondays in support, was their biggest selling and most successful to date.
Looking ahead to the 2023 tour and double album release, Booth, 62, says: “There are a number of great bands who have been around for 40 [years]. But to get here and to be having the best time of our lives. To be part of a supportive loving family that still has something to say and new ways to say it. To be turned on by every gig and song. To fall in love over and over again, Groundhog Day, with our bandmates and audience. Damn. That’s time well spent.
James, at Broughton Hall, near Skipton, in May 2021, when gathered for rehearsals and promotional duties for 16th studio All The Colours Of You. Picture: Lewis Knaggs
“We should have recorded the orchestra tour first time round, as many of you have reminded us. Well, we’ve done it now. And here comes the tour. The orchestra and gospel singers expand our palette, heighten the tenderness, heighten the celebration and, despite their numbers, somehow leave us feeling more naked and raw. It will be different, probably each night, because we are James and Joe [Duddell] knows how to dance with us. And because you are different, each night.”
Bassist Jim Glennie, 59, adds: “Has it really been 40 years? In some ways it feels like yesterday and in others, many lifetimes. A family of brothers and sisters, willing to support each other musically and emotionally. Uniquely challenging, always pushing ourselves into the new and taking risks collectively and individually, looking for transcendence.”
Joining Booth and Glennie in the tour line-up will be Saul Davies, Adrian Oxaal, David Baynton-Power, Mark Hunter, Andy Diagram, Chloe Alper and Deborah Knox-Hewson.
Marking diaries for next summer’s outdoor concert season, James are booked in to play Live At The Piece Hall 2023 in Halifax, West Yorkshire, on July 7 and a hastily added second show on July 8, due to “phenomenal demand”.
Already confirmed for The Piece Hall in 2023 are Madness on June 16 and 17; The War On Drugs, June 21; Rag’n’Bone Man, June 23; Embrace, July 1; Sting, July 3, and The Lumineers, July 9, with plenty more acts yet to be announced. Box office: thepiecehall.co.uk.
Robert Hollingworth: Conductor of the University of York’s largest choir
University of York Choir & Baroque Ensemble, Central Hall, University of York, November 30
CHRISTMAS music of the Baroque and the 20th century were contrasted here in the five sections of Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit and four carol-anthems by Howells.
Interwoven with these were five extracts from A Child’s Christmas In Wales by Dylan Thomas. It was an ingenious idea, although none of these strands had much in common beyond the seasonal message.
Robert Hollingworth, who is now conductor of this choir, the university’s largest, read the passages from Thomas’s nostalgic view of a childhood Christmas, blanket-wrapped in an armchair and adopting an impressive Welsh lilt (that softened a bit towards the end). It was cosy, fireside stuff, with larger-than-life characters springing from the pages.
Charpentier’s late-17th century mass is almost balletic in its attempt to appeal to popular taste. The Baroque Ensemble, with guests leading three of its string sections, responded stylishly, with keen rhythm and taut ensemble.
The choir did not catch quite the same sense of urgency, perhaps feeling that Hollingworth’s baton was directed more at the players. That said, the tempo changes in the middle of the Credo were well managed. Alexander Kyle took over conducting for the final two sections, including a surprisingly jaunty Agnus Dei.
Variety came with several passages from a semi-chorus that additionally supplied soloists, who were at their most appealing when sopranos intertwined with recorders. A choir this size ranged on three flanks is always going to have difficulties with blend, especially in the very dry acoustic of Central Hall.
So, it was a pity that the least-known – and most recent – of the Howells pieces, Long, Long Ago, came first, before the choir had found its feet.
Here Is The Little Door, conducted by Kyle, was the best-shaped of the Howells. In contrast, A Spotless Rose was a little too fast for there to be no feel of the bar-line and the crunchy harmonies at the end, symptomatic of icy winter, were fudged. Bo Holten’s First Snow made an effective finisher.
Hollingworth is deservedly recognised as a first-class choir trainer. He will need just a little longer to stamp his mark on this choir. Watch this space.
PAUL Gameson directs The Ebor Singers tonight in an evening of beautiful choral arrangements for Christmastide at St Lawrence Parish Church, Lawrence Street, York.
The 7.30pm concert, A Christmas Celebration By Candlelight, also marks the launch of the York choir’s CD recording of Christmas music by contemporary American composers, Wishes And Candles.
Pieces from the disc, featuring works by Morten Lauridsen, Eric Whitacre, Dan Forrest, Abbie Bettinis and Matthew Culloton, will be complemented by festive compositions by John Rutter and Bob Chilcott.
“We’re looking forward to sharing music from our new album,” says Paul. “It took two years to put this together, thanks to a two-year Covid-enforced hiatus between recording sessions, so it was particularly enjoyable completing this in April this year.
“Music by Lauridsen and Whitacre is featured, but so too are other composers whose names and music deserve to be more widely known, such as Forrest, Bettinis and Culloton. There’ll also be some audience-participation carol singing, so bring your voices too!”
Tickets (£15, concessions £12, students £7 (16 plus), children free) are on sale at eventbrite.co.uk or on the door.
A Christmas Celebration is the first of two Christmas concerts in York for the choir, who will perform Part 1 of Handel’s Messiah (featuring the Christmas story) and Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols on Sunday, December 18 at 7.30pm at St Olave’s Church, Marygate. Tickets: eventbrite.co.uk.
Goose by the Ouse: Dame Berwick Kaler, centre, with Martin Barrass, left, AJ Powell, Suzy Cooper and David Leonard, gathering again at the Grand Opera House, York, for The Adventures Of Old Mother Goose. Picture: David Harrison
KALER on the loose, Christmas music, art and crafts and a stellar trio on the horizon have Charles Hutchinson hopping between diaries
Berwick’s back: The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose, Grand Opera House, York, December 10 to January 8
THE script is complete, as of 6am on Thursday morning, for writer, director and perennial York dame Berwick Kaler’s second year at his adopted panto home, presented in tandem with the Grand Opera House’s new partners in pantomime, UK Productions.
At 76, expect a greater emphasis on the verbal jousting from Dame Berwick, but still with slapstick aplenty in the familiar company of sidekick Martin Barrass, villain David Leonard, principal gal Suzy Cooper, luverly Brummie AJ Powell and ever-game dancer Jake Lindsay in his tenth Kaler panto, me babbies, me bairns. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Angel With Gift, linocut print by Anita Klein, part of The Christmas Collection at Pyramid Gallery, York
Exhibition launch of the week: The Christmas Collection at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, today until January 12, open daily
YORK ceramicist Ben Arnup opens The Christmas Collection, the last exhibition of Pyramid Gallery’s 40th anniversary celebrations, at midday today. He will be exhibiting 12 new trompe l’oeil ceramic sculptures too.
Gallery curator Terry Brett has invited London printmaker Anita Kelin to fill the walls with 15 large linocut original prints and two paintings in her 28th year of showing her depictions of family life at Pyramid. Exhibiting too will be printmaker Mychael Barratt, sculptors Christine Pike and Jennie McCall, ceramicist Katie Braida and glassmakers Rachel Elliott, Alison Vincent, Keith Cummings and David Reekie, plus 50 jewellery makers.
Sara Davies: Crafty ideas for Christmas at York Barbican
Return to York of the week: Craft Your Christmas with Sara Davies, York Barbican, tonight, 7.30pm
DRAGONS’ Den entrepreneur Sara Davies, who founded her Crafter’s Companion company in 2005 while studying at the University of York, offers practical demonstrations, creative ideas and a healthy slice of down-to-earth know-how.
Taking you from gifts to garlands, cards to crackers, via a peek into the Den and a sprinkling of Strictly Come Dancing sparkle, Sara will help you to create your own unique handmade Christmas. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The Ebor Singers: Christmas music from America and Britain at St Lawrence Parish Church
Christmas concert of the week: The Ebor Singers, A Christmas Celebration By Candlelight, St Lawrence Parish Church, Lawrence Street, York, tonight, 7.30pm
PAUL Gameson directs The Ebor Singers in an evening of beautiful choral arrangements for Christmastide that also marks the launch of the York choir’s CD recording of Christmas music by contemporary American composers, Wishes And Candles.
Pieces from the disc, featuring works by Morten Lauridsen, Eric Whitacre, Dan Forrest, Abbie Bettinis and Matthew Culloton, will be complemented by festive compositions by John Rutter and Bob Chilcott. Expect audience participation in carol singing too. Tickets: eventbrite.co.uk and on the door.
Russell Watson and Aled Jones
Festive musical duo of the week: Aled Jones and Russell Watson, Christmas With Aled & Russell York Barbican, Tuesday, 8pm
ALED Jones and Russell Watson are reuniting for Christmas 2022, combining a new album and tour. Performing together again after a three-year hiatus, the classical singers will be promoting their November 4 release of Christmas With Aled And Russell.
The album features new recordings of traditional carols such as O Holy Night, O Little Town Of Bethlehem and In The Bleak Midwinter, alongside festive favourites White Christmas, It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, Little Drummer Boy and Mistletoe And Wine, complemented by a duet rendition of Walking In The Air. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk
York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust cast members in rehearsal for A Nativity for York. Picture: John Saunders
Nativity play of the week: York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust in A Nativity for York, Spurriergate Centre, Spurriergate, York, Thursday, Friday, 7.30pm; Saturday, Sunday, 3pm, 5pm and 7.30pm
A NATIVITY for York returns to the Spurriergate Centre following a two-year enforced break, staged by York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust (YMPST). After directing the Last Judgement plays on the city streets in 2018 and 2022, Alan Heaven has created a fresh, vibrant and magical retelling of the Nativity, combining “music, dance, sorrows and joys and some audience participation”.
Heaven’s company of actors, dancers and musicians is drawn from a wide range of community volunteers, in keeping with the YMPST productions of A Nativity for York in 2019 and A Resurrection for York in 2021. Tickets: 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the Theatre Royal box office.
Solomon’s Knot: Christmas Cantatas at Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, in York Early Music Christmas Festival 2022’s concluding concert
Festival of the week: York Early Music Christmas Festival, mainly at NCEM, Walmgate, December 8 to 16; online box set, December 19 to January 31
MUSIC, minstrels, merriment, mulled wine and mince pies combine in York Early Music Christmas Festival 2022, to be complemented by an online box set of festival highlights post-festival.
Taking part will be La Palatine (Fiesta Galante); Ensemble Augelletti (Pick A Card!); Solomon’s Knot (Johann Kuhnau’s Christmas Cantatas); Spiritato and The Marion Consort (Inspiring Bach); Ensemble Moliere (Good Soup); Bojan Čičić (Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas); The Orlando Consort (Adieu) and Yorkshire Bach Choir & Yorkshire Baroque Soloists (Handel’s Brockes Passion). Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Guitarist Tom Bennett and baritone Sam Hird, outside their training ground, the Royal College of Music. On Friday, they perform a Christmas recital in York
Homecoming of the week: Sam Hird and Tom Bennett, A Winter Night’s Recital, All Saints’ Church, North Street, York, Friday, 7pm to 9pm
YORK baritone Sam Hird and his fellow Royal College of Music graduate, guitarist Tom Bennett, perfrom classical songs from around the world, by Schubert, Faure and Britten, complemented by festive favourites such as Adeste Fideles, O Holy Night and A Cradle In Bethlehem to stir the Christmas spirit.
The 15th century All Saints’ Church will be the “perfect backdrop” to this candlelit concert, Hird’s professional solo debut. A glass of mulled wine and a mince pie is included in the ticket price of £10 plus booking fee, available from samhirdmusic.co.uk and on the door.
Big jumpers, big songs: Alistair Griffin presents The Big Christmas Concert, St Michael le Belfrey Church, York, December 9, 10 and 17, 8pm; doors, 7.30pm
Alistair Griffin: Christmas hits
BILLED as “the biggest Christmas concert in York”, singer-songwriter Alistair Griffin’s winter warmer returns with classic Christmas tunes, carols and bags of festive cheer, heralded by a brass band.
The Big Christmas Concert takes a festive musical journey from acoustic versions of traditional carols to Wizzard, Slade and The Pogues, as audiences sing along and sip mulled wine while enjoying the fairytale of old York. Christmas jumpers and Christmas attire are encouraged; a prize will be given for the best costume. Box office: www.alistairgriffin.com.
One way or another, you’re gonna get ya ticket for Blondie at Scarborough Open Air Theatre next summer
Booking ahead: Blondie, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, June 22 2023
LOWER East Side New York trailblazers Blondie are off to the East Coast next summer to play Britain’s largest outdoor concert arena.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame icons will be led as ever by pioneering frontwoman/songwriter Debbie Harry, 77, guitarist/conceptual mastermind Chris Stein and powerhouse drummer Clem Burke, joined by former Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock, guitarist Tommy Kessler and keyboardist Matt Katz-Bohen.
Blondie join Sting, Pulp, rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires, N-Dubz, Olly Murs and Mamma Mia! among Scarborough OAT’s 2023 headliners, with plenty more to be added. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.
The Waterboys: 40th anniversary celebrations in 2023, taking in York Barbican
Booking ahead too: The Waterboys, York Barbican, October 12 2023, 7.30pm
GREAT, Scott will be back for yet another evening with The Waterboys at York Barbican, this time to mark the Scottish-founded folk, rock, soul and blues band’s 40th anniversary.
Mike Scott, 63, has made a habit of playing the Barbican, laying on the “Big Music” in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018 and October 2021, since when The Waterboys have released 15th studio album All Souls Hill in May. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Grayson Perry: A Show All About You…and surely about him too at Harrogate Convention Centre?
A brush with an artist: Grayson Perry: A Show All About You, Harrogate Convention Centre, October 1 2023, 7.30pm
ARTIST, iconoclast and TV presenter Grayson Perry follows up A Show For Normal People with A Show All About You, wherein he asks, “What makes you, you?”. Is there a part deep inside that no-one understands? Have you found your tribe or are you a unique human being? Or is it more complicated than that?
Perry, “white, male, heterosexual, able bodied, English, southerner, baby boomer and member of the establishment”, takes a mischievous look at the nature of identity, promising to make you laugh, shudder, and reassess who you really are. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk.
Also recommended but sold out: The Cure, The Lost World Tour 2022, Leeds First Direct Arena, Tuesday, doors, 6pm
ROBERT Smith’s ever-changing band play Leeds for the first time since September 21 1985 at the whatever-happened-to-the Queens Hall. Expect a long, long set of all the heavenly, hippy pop hits, the gloomier goth stalwarts and more than a glimpse of the long-promised 14th studio album, Songs Of A Lost World, pencilled in for 2023.
Pick Me Up Theatre in Nativity! The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, November 29, 30 and December 2, 7.30pm; December 1, 2pm and 7pm;December 3, 12pm and 4pm. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York
THIS is the festive turkey and stuffing in Pick Me Up Theatre’s sandwich of three shows in a matter of autumnal months. First, Matilda The Musical Jr at Theatre@41, Monkgate, in September, now Nativity! The Musical, and lastly Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound Of Music, back at Monkgate, only a fortnight after Nativity’s finale.
As a flyer in the Nativity! programme pronounces, no fewer than six productions are in Pick Me Up’s engagement diary, testament to Robert Readman’s restless pursuit of bringing musicals and more (Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None) to York’s stages.
He made the canny decision of holding open auditions for all this season’s shows simultaneously in June, “so we could get to know the children”, he reasoned.
This is a hugely beneficial experience for his young charges, who are at the heart of all three productions. Matilda The Musical Jr had a wild energy, made great play of words and letters and revelled in the rush and thrill of being unruly in school yet disciplined in choreography and musical numbers on stage.
The school year now reaches the Nativity! season, the climax to the Michaelmas term, in Debbie Isitt and Nicky Ager’s musical adaptation of their hit 2009 British comedy, the first in a frantic franchise of four festive family films that rather fizzled out as the DVD sales nevertheless piled up.
Stuart Piper’s lovelorn Mr Maddens
Readman had directed the 2011 York premiere of Tim Firth’s Flint Street Nativity, in truth a wittier work that definitely would have met with the approval of Nativity’s arch, flouncing critic Patrick Burns.
Readman, who never performed in a Nativity play in his schooldays, was delighted to receive the rights thumbs-up for Nativity!, a show marked with “British humour, children being themselves, pathos and daftness, and a romantic, happy end,” he says.
Birmingham Rep, by the way, has picked Isitt’s musical for its Christmas production in the Second City, no doubt drawn to those very qualities so necessary for a family show. Readman serves them all with customary exuberance, to the point of his regularly heard laugh being the loudest in the stalls.
BAFTA Award-winning Isitt’s musical takes the form of a Nativity play within a play, framing her stage adaptation around her original story of flustered, by-the-book teacher Mr Maddens (Stuart Piper) and his unconventional, idiot savant new assistant Mr Poppy (Jack Hooper) struggling with unpredictable children, unruly animals and an unimpressed head mistress, Mrs Bevan (Alison Taylor) when striving to stage St Bernadette’s Roman Catholic primary school’s musical version of the Nativity in Coventry.
Seeking to outdo the bells-and-whistles show mounted at the neighbouring posh school by his scornful ex-childhood friend, Gordon Shakespeare (Stuart Hutchinson), Maddens ups the ante by boasting that Jennifer Lore (Toni Feetenby), his still-missed ex-girlfriend, now working as a Hollywood producer, will be coming to the show with a view to turning it into a film.
Toni Feetenby’s Hollywood-bound Jennifer Lore
Unfortunately, Maddens is lying: he and Jennifer don’t talk any more (and so might she be lying too?!). Doubly unfortunate, Mr Poppy, Mrs Bevan and the local media’s enthusiasm only makes matters worse.
Piper’s Mr Maddens is suitably earnest, self-destructively driven, but, crucially, caring too and a romantic at heart, albeit a deflated one. His beastly bête noir, fellow company debutant Hutchinson’s Gordon Shakespeare, is obsessive, supercilious, priggish, dislikeable but agreeably amusing. Their battle is a highlight, one to be savoured by lovers of long-running theatre wars.
Pick Me Up’s third newcomer among the principals, Jack Hooper, is the show’s five-star turn, reminiscent of both Jack Black’s substitute teacher Dewey Finn in School Of Rock and “silly billy” pantomime characters.
Ignoring the old adage never to act with children or animals, Hooper bonds effervescently with both, his irrepressible Mr Poppy bringing out the best in the excitable pupils, stirring their imaginations with his own inner child, and playing puppy to Cracker the dog. To be serious for a moment, Mr Poppy is also a beacon for why the arts should always matter in schools, encouraging the unconventional among the conventional, as much among teachers as pupils.
Contemplating retirement, Alison Taylor’s Mrs Bevan, a head teacher enervated after so many years of struggle, learns her lessons in life just in time.
Hands up who wants to be in a Nativity musical? Robert Readman’s cast for Pick Up Theatre’s “school” production
Toni Feetenby’s Jennifer, torn between career ambitions and love, is the outstanding singer in a show that complements favourites from the films, such as One Night One Moment and She’s The Brightest Star, with new Christmas-spirited Isitt-Ager additions for the stage version.
The ensemble centrepiece Sparkle And Shine does exactly that, the stand-out in Lesley Hill’s choreography that puts the ensemble emphasis on fun and characterful expression rather more than precision, in the tradition of school Nativity plays, as it happens.
Reaching for the sandwich once more, has Robert Readman bitten off more than he can chew by directing and designing three shows in quick succession, working with children in each of them to boot?!
No, there is plenty to enjoy here, whether theatrical fun and games, school tropes or the climactic bonkers Nativity play in the Coventry cathedral ruin. Not least Jonah Haig’s Ollie and especially Beau Lettin’s Star on press night in the lead children’s roles, amid a scant regard for the Coventry accent among most of the cast, a smattering of technical frustrations and a staccato rhythm to the second half’s scenes, however.
The sound is problematic on occasion, particularly when Faateh Sohail’s Angel Gabriel takes to the air, with wings, yes, but insufficient volume. Hopefully that hitch has been ironed out, but a better sound balance may be more difficult to achieve among so many children.
Sam Johnson leads the band through George Dyer’s orchestrations with a flourish; a bewigged Rosy Rowley is seen in a new light as Mr Parker, a cynical Hollywood bigwig, and your reviewer wouldn’t dare criticise Johnny Holbek’s flamboyant turn as the waspish local theatre critic. Five stars, darling, five stars.
YORKSHIRE duo Kimber headline the Victoria Vaults on Friday, launching their debut EP Slow Moon, Long Night at the pub in Nunnery Lane, York.
Already featured on Steve Lamacq’s show on BBC 6 Music, the EP is released by York label Safe Suburban Home Records.
Kimber are producers, multi-instrumentalists and long-time friends Mikey Wilson and Josh Heffernan, whose northern, working-class roots and work ethic emerge in their approach to making music: DIY, self-engineered, self-produced and self-mixed, with both members putting money aside each week to slowly build their shared home studio.
Their studio space has become a sanctuary, with their passion for production and gear allowing Kimber to experiment sonically as well as be self-sufficient artists.
The results are heavily textured with hints of Mount Kimbie in the woozy production, Beach House in the melancholic melodies and New Order in the dynamic basslines. Favouring looseness in their sound, they apply a “performed-not-programmed” ethos, drawn from their passion for capturing an authentic human feel.
Kimber’s music is neither austere electronica nor the simple bounce of new wave, sitting somewhere between the cracks instead.
Chris White, owner of Victoria Vaults, says: “It’s great to see local talent from the York area appearing here. We’re looking forward to a great night.”
Joining Kimber on the 8.30pm triple bill will be support acts Kitty VR and Everything After Midnight; doors open at 7.30pm. Box office: wegottickets.com.
Winter’s chill: Rebecca Vaughan in Dyad Productions’ Christmas Gothic
GHOST stories, pantomimes and Jools’s annual visit top Charles Hutchinson’s list of winter essentials to keep warm and alert.
Ghost stories of the week, part one: Dyad Productions in Christmas Gothic, Theatre@41, Monkgate, tonight (27/11/2022), 7.30pm
FROM the creators of I, Elizabeth, A Room Of One’s Own, Female Gothic and Austen’s Women comes a dark celebration of Christmas, adapted and performed by Rebecca Vaughan.
Come in from the cold and embrace the Christmas spirit as a spectral woman tells haunting tales of the festive season, lighting a candle to the frailties of human nature and illuminating the chilling depths of the bleak, wintry gloom at this time of feasts and festivities, visits and visitations, ghosts and more ghosts. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
A Dickens or three of a scary night: James Swanton in his Ghost Stories For Christmas
Ghost Stories For Christmas, part two: James Swanton, York Medical Society, Stonegate, York, select dates from November 29 to December 20, 7pm
YORK’S gothic ghost storyteller supreme, James Swanton, presents his most ambitious Dickensian schedule yet, with 12 shows back home and around 20 more around the country, transferring to London’s Charles Dickens Museum in the run-up to Christmas.
Ghost Stories For Christmas is made up of Swanton’s hour-long solo renditions of A Christmas Carol (eight performances) and the lesser-known The Chimes and The Haunted Man (two nights each). Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/show/ghost-stories-for-christmas/.
The Stylistics: Soul power at York Barbican
Good for the soul show of the week: The Stylistics, York Barbican, tonight (27/11/2022), 7.30pm
SOULFUL Philadelphia harmony veterans The Stylistics “can’t wait to be back in the UK, performing all our hits, bringing back great memories and having a great evening with you all” on their 27-date tour.
In the line-up will be founder members Arrion Love and Herb Murrell, complemented by ‘Bo’ Henderson and Jason Sharp, as the 2004 inductees into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame sing I’m Stone In Love With You, You Make Me Feel Brand New, Let’s Put It All Together, You Are Everything et al. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Robert Hollingworth: Director for University of York Choir & Baroque Ensemble’s concert at Central Hall. Picture: Frances Marshall
Christmas concert of the week: Long, Long Ago, Messe de Minuit pour Noel, University of York Choir & Baroque Ensemble, Central Hall, University of York, Wednesday, 7.30pm
UNIVERSITY of YorkChoir & Baroque Ensemble are joined by The 24 for a Christmas concert of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit for voices, strings and flutes, Howells’ four jazz-inflected Carol Anthems and Bo Holten’s First Snow.
Director Robert Hollingworth also will be donning his dressing gown for a reading of Dylan Thomas’s magical A Child’s Christmas In Wales. “All in all, it’s a strange alchemic mix but we know it works!” he says. “Trust us – and come and have your first mince pie of the season.” Box office: yorkconcerts.co.uk.
Bad to the bone: Michael Lambourne’s ABBAnazar in Harrogate Theatre’s Aladdin. Picture: Karl Andre
Yorkshire welcome back of the week: Aladdin, Harrogate Theatre, until January 15 2023
MICHAEL Lambourne, the booming-voiced thespian who needs no introduction to York Theatre Royal audiences, can probably be heard all the way from York when he plays the evil ABBAnazar in his Harrogate Theatre pantomime debut.
Lambourne joins daft lad Tim Stedman’s Wishee Washee and fellow Harrogate panto returnees Christina Harris(Princess Jasmine), Colin Kiyani (Aladdin) and Howard Chadwick, back on spa-town dame duty, as Widow Twankey, for the first time since Snow White in 2019. Ebony Feare’s Genie and Stephanie Costi’s Pandora the Panda are the new faces in Marcus Romer’s cast. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk.
From CBeebies to York Theatre Royal: Maddie Moate’s Tinkerbell in All New Adventures Of Peter Pan
Putting the Pan into pantomime: All New Adventures Of Peter Pan, York Theatre Royal, December 2 to January 2 2023
CBEEBIES favourite Maddie Moate and three stars of last year’s Cinderella – Faye Campbell, Paul Hawkyard and Robin Simpson – fly into action for York Theatre Royal’s third collaboration with Evolution Productions.
Moate plays naughty fairy Tinkerbell, Campbell, Elizabeth Darling, Hawkyard, Captain Hook and Simpson, Mrs Smee, joined by Jason Battersby’s Peter Pan and Jonny Weldon’s pirate Starkey in creative director Juliet Forster’s production, scripted by Evolution’s Paul Hendy. Look out for acrobats Mohammed Iddi, Karina Ngade and Mbaraka Omari too. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Jools Holland: Returning to York Barbican with Vic Reeves as his specual guest
Jools et Jim show: Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra, with Vic Reeves, York Barbican, Thursday, 7.30pm
ON the back of notching the 30th anniversary of his Later…With Jools Holland shows on BBC Two, the boogie-wooogie piano man joins up with fellow Squeeze alumnus Gilson Lavis, vocalists Ruby Turner and Louise Marshall and his exuberant big band.
The special-guest star turn goes to comedian, artist and chart-topping all-round performer Vic Reeves (aka Jim Moir), Holland’s Leeds-born podcast partner on Jools & Jim’s Joyride, fresh from his Yorkshire Rocks & Dinghy Fights exhibition at RedHouse Originals, Harrogate. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Long wait: Diversity bring Supernova to York in…2024
Looking and booking ahead: Diversity: Supernova, York Barbican, March 7 and 8 2024
LONDON street dance troupe Diversity’s 66-date Supernova tour to 40 cities and towns in 2023-2024 will take in a return to York.
Winners of the third series of ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent in 2009, Ashley Banjo’s dancers will be switching to the Grand Opera House from York Barbican, where they presented Connected, a show full of playful, comedic routines with powerful statements on human connectivity, in April this spring. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
University of York Symphony Orchestra (USO) Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, November 26
TICKETS were like gold dust for the USO’s latest foray under its permanent conductor John Stringer.
This is a popular group and its standards are high. The programme encompassed London as painted by Elgar and Paris as seen by Delius and Gershwin, with a couple of brief side-trips from Grainger in between.
Elgar’s concert overture Cockaigne (In London Town) is a series of vignettes of London life. He wanted to lift his spirits in 1901 after the disastrous initial response to The Dream Of Gerontius the previous year. As an establishment outsider, he also needed a way back into the musical mainstream. Cockaigne did the trick.
The violins were immediately bold in the vivacious opening melody but the change of mood to the more serious side of the Londoner was fluently done, even if things only quietened down fully when we glimpsed the lovers in the park. The military march rang out with majestic bravado underpinned by an especially zealous timpanist.
Although premiered the same year as Cockaigne, Delius’s Paris: The Song Of A Great City is quite a different animal, much more personal, indeed almost autobiographical. It started a little uncertainly here, before finding its way into a more shapely impressionism; the sinuous phrasing of the bass clarinet led the way.
The night air was warmed by the saltarello rhythm suggesting distant revels. But after the frenzy of bacchanalia leading to the march we reached an immense climax, which suited the orchestra’s mood perfectly. Thereafter the encompassing lull before the last great chord was serenely controlled.
Percy Grainger struck up a lasting friendship with Delius, so there was a personal link in his Dreamery, which – contrary to the Grainger image of relentless jollity – is a quiet daydream for strings alone. It dates from immediately after the First World War and is clearly nostalgic for calmer times. The orchestra’s fine body of violins were right at home here and all the strings enjoyed the composer’s delicate tapestry.
Equally brief but no less effective was Grainger’s arrangement of Ravel’s La Vallée des Cloches, from his piano suite ‘Miroirs’. Ravel had originally intended to orchestrate it himself. The opening section for tuned percussion was hypnotic. When the strings finally joined them, the violas made succulent use of their time in the spotlight.
We stayed in France for An American In Paris, Gershwin’s jocular parody of the archetypal Yank abroad, bold, brazen, and more than a little loud. He got off to a jaunty start, courtesy of the woodwinds, and the syncopation that followed was nicely edgy.
The sleaze quotient lifted with blues trumpet and tuba. Tempo changes were smoothly negotiated, as this American began to look and listen rather than impose himself. The ending was triumphant. It had all been a tasty travelogue.
