Category: Theatre

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Wharfemede Productions mark Halloween week with deeply kooky The Addams Family Musical at Theatre@41, Monkgate

Henrietta Linnemann‘s Morticia and Zander Fick’s Gomez Addams in Wharfemede Productions’ The Addams Family Musical. Picture: Simon Trow

WHAT better way for North Yorkshire company Wharfemede Productions to mark Halloween week than by staging The Addams Family Musical.

Running at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, from October 27 to 31, artistic director Helen “Bells” Spencer’s production of this deeply kooky, definitely spooky American musical comedy follows award-winning productions of Little Women and A Little Night Music. “We look forward to seeing you at Halloween – if you dare!” she says.

Combining music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa with book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, The Addams Family Musical opens with Wednesday Addams (played by Abbie Law) falling in love with a “normal” young man and inviting his respectable parents to dinner, whereupon chaos, secrets and macabre mayhem ensue in a celebration of family, love and embracing the wonderfully weird.

“We are thrilled to return with a show full of heart, humour and Halloween spirit, performed during Halloween week itself, when audiences can expect the perfect seasonal treat packed with gothic glamour, mischievous fun and spectacular entertainment,” says Bells. 

Director Helen “Bells” Spencer” holding two of Nick Sephton’s 3D-printed masks for the Ancestors in Wharfemede Productions’ The Addams Family Musical. Picture: Simon Trow

“The Addams Family is darkly delightful, gloriously gothic and wickedly entertaining. Whether you’re a life-long fan of the Addams clan or discovering them for the first time, this is one family reunion you won’t want to miss!”

The success of the Netflix series Wednesday has stimulated renewed cultural interest in The Addams Family. “It had got into a nostalgic space, but by making it relevant to modern audiences, it’s led to the musical coming to the fore again,” says Bells.

Zander Fick, who will play Gomez Addams, concurs. “Wednesday has almost ground the family in more reality, whereas the old family was more of a caricature,” he says. “Now they seem to have a feeling of being eccentric but relatable.”

Helen first encountered the musical two years ago when her fiance, Nick Sephton, was cast as  Fester Addams in a production in Wetherby. Her early expectations of a “very panto show – and I hate panto” were confounded. “I thought I’d just be going along as the devoted partner, but I absolutely loved it. It was a really good musical,” she says.

Nick Sephton’s Uncle Fester in Wharfemede Productions’ The Addams Family Musical. Picture: Simon Trow

“Unfortunately, Nick tore the cruciate ligament in his knee when dancing on the graves of the Ancestors on the first night, and for the rest of the run he had to deliver his Uncle Fester from a large armchair at the side of the stage. He was gutted that he didn’t get the chance to do the part properly, but I thought, ‘actually I think we can make this show work.”

Now Nick will reprise his Uncle Fester in Wharfemede’s production. “People will be surprised by his Fester as he usually plays authority figures, like generals, but with Nick you’re genuinely moved by Fester’s ‘oddness’, and with Nick being autistic he’s identified with that, having felt different from other people through his autism.”

Zander comments: “A key message in the show is that it’s OK to be different, so Fester is really loved by his family, The show has more depth than just having kooky characters, so you can really empathise with them. The story presents a conflict with outsiders who are uncomfortable with them, but  the show celebrates that difference, celebrating what makes you you.”

The masked Ancestors in Wharfemede Productions’ The Addams Family Musical. Picture: Simon Trow

Helen rejoins: “The show says we are all unique. We’re all happier as human beings if we embrace our differences. Wharfemede was created by our wish to create a space where people can be themselves to make high-quality work. We have multiple people in the cast who are autistic or neurodivergent, and we always start rehearsal sessions with a check-in, asking if everyone feels comfortable in the space. That seems to work well.”

Zander, who moved to York from South Africa in 2023, is enjoying those rehearsals as he prepares to play Gomez, the father of the family. “I’m loving him so much,” he says. “He’s so comfortable in who he is, so unapologetic about who he is, when quite often male characters in theatre tend to be moulded as reserved, guarded and always holding back, but Gomez is not like that at all. I can relate that to when I feel in a comfortable place, striving to be myself in that place. I always leave rehearsals feeling energised.

“We’ve had discussions about who Gomez is, as this naive, aloof child in a man’s body, but with a very healthy relationship with his wife, Morticia, so that’s been really interesting to explore.”

Helen has handled the design brief for this Gothic tale. “I want it to be as realistic and gritty as it can be within the realms of the Addams Family,” she says. “I didn’t want everything to be Halloween costumes, but instead with every character having an individual sense of themselves. So we discussed it with the actors, like Abbie Law wanting to wear a black velvet dress for Wednesday: a classic Wednesday look, but in velvet, which is something Abbie really wanted.”

The Addams family in Wharfemede Productions’ The Addams Family Musical: Abbie Law’s Wednesday, left, Matthew Warry’s Pugsley, Henrietta Linnemann‘s Morticia, Chris Gibson’s Lurch, Zander Fick’s Gomez and Nick Sephton’s Uncle Fester. Picture: Simon Trow

Bells is particularly excited to be bringing elements of commedia dell’arte into Wharfemede’s interpretation of the show, not least in putting all the Ancestors in masks, created in 3D-printed form by Nick Sephton, to make them imposing in unison. 

“Having had the privilege of working with commedia companies in Trieste and Venice, I have long admired the genre’s physical storytelling, heightened characters and joyful theatricality,” she reasons.

“Those influences feel perfectly suited to the world of The Addams Family, and I look forward to blending them with the musical’s unique humour to create something that is both fresh and deeply entertaining.”

Wharfemede Productions presents The Addams Family Musical, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, October 27 to 31, 7:30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: www.tickets.41monkgate.co.uk

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REVIEW: York Shakespeare Project in The Comedy Of Errors, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, making waves until Saturday ***

Laura Broughton-Janes’ Antipholus  of  Ephesus, second from right, and her servant, Liz Duggan’s Dromio, in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead

KATIE Leckey and Emily Carhart buckle up to steer Shakespeasre’s “shortest and possibly funniest play” into piratical waters, replete with lusty sea shanties and the sound of crashing waves.

“The morally questionable, yet still comedic, nature of many (if not all) of the characters put us in mind of some of our favourite piratical antiheroes,” they said in their mission statement.

“We felt like the framing device of piracy gave us the chance to include slapstick violence between ‘masters and servants’ in a way that wouldn’t seem too brutal or alien to a modern audience.”

Two masts from a shipwreck hang over the stage to evoke seafaring in the black box theatre, where the staging is otherwise minimalist, largely left bare for physical comedy and fast-fizzing farce. 

Ben Reeves-Rowley’s Solinus, the Duke of Ephesus, in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead

A plinth is moved into place to denote the higher status of Solinus, the Duke of Ephesus (played by Ben Reeves-Rowley with the clipped vowels and tightened jaw of King Charles III). Later, two sets of doors – the time-honoured harbingers of imminent  farce – make appearances, one as the entrance to the abbey, the other with skeleton door knockers in keeping with the piratical reboot.

Andrew Wrenn’s vexed Egeon has to wade his way through a chunk of exposition before the play settles into its rhythm of mistaken identities,  spun around two sets of identical twins. Helen Clarke’s  flamboyant Antipholus of Syracuse and her servant, Kat Lazarus’s flirtatious  Dromio arrive on the corrupt pirate isle of Ephesus , where Laura Broughton-Janes’ Antipholus  of  Ephesus and her servant, Liz Duggan’s Dromio, are already caught up in the debauched shenanigans.

Add a tavern and booty, and let the misunderstandings and misbehaviour multiply, involving the likes of Ro Trimble’s haughty Adriana, wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, Leckey’s Luciano, always quick with a jest, and Harry Summers’ oft-baffled Angelo .

You will note that Antipholus times two are now female, all part of the gender fluidity brought to The Comedy  Of Errors by Leckey and Carhart, prompted by being “intrigued by the lack of traditional gender and romantic dynamics in the play”.

“In Elizabethan culture, there was a more flexible understanding of physical and romantic intimacy between same sex partners, as well as a fluid approach to the representation of gender on stage,” they say. “We feel our production is a celebration of relationships of many kinds, platonic, familial and romantic.”

Kat Lazarus’s Dromio of Syracuse, front, and Helen Clarke’s Antipholus of Syracuse in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead

Laura Broughton-Janes’ Antipholus  of  Ephesus and her servant, Liz Duggan’s Dromio, in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead

Luciana becomes Luciano, played by Leckey with a droll air and a cigarette in hand, in a late change of casting that affirms their relish for comic friction and interplay.

The slapstick even features slaps to the face; the likes of Trimble and Reeves-Rowley make the words sing; Andrea Mitchell’s Emilia, the Abbess, gives the peachiest cameo; the musicians on the mezzanine level (Rebecca Jackson, Izzie Burger de Fremol, Vicky Hatt and Emily Rowan) convey matters of the heart and sea, and the sets of twins are so identical that the audience may well have to keep looking twice.

The gender transitions add to the physical comedy, but this is not a play of memorable verbal wit or intellectual insight.

Carhart even called it “silly”, as light as a bubble, and certainly she and Leckey have fun with it, giving it fresh zest, although their claim of its status as “possibly Shakespeare’s funniest play” is debatable.

York Shakespeare Project presents The Comedy Of Errors, Theatre@41, Monkgate, 7.30pm nightly until Saturday, plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

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What’s On in Ryedale, York and beyond. Hutch’s List No. 43, from Gazette & Herald

Teacher Miss Hedge (Katie Spencer) steps in between school bully Dean Paxton (Cain Branton), left, and dreamer Jamie New (Frankie Bounds) in York Stage’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

FROM a couple all at sea at the SJT to Yorktoberfest in a circus big top,  a piratical twist on The Comedy Of Errors to Bison Hip’s blues, Charles Hutchinson recommends ways to stay cheerful.

Bold and unapologetic musical of the week: York Stage in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday; 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

TOM MacRae and Dan Gillespie’s Sheffield musical plays the Grand Opera House for the first time in Nik Briggs’s production for York Stage that restores the grit to both complement and counter the glitz in the uplifting underdog story of Jamie New (Frankie Bounds), a 16-year-old schoolboy from a Steel City council estate with big dreams and the courage to stand out when it would be easier to stay quiet.

Equipped with the strength to face the world head on, Jamie fights prejudice, finds his voice and discovers the freedom of stepping into the spotlight on his own terms. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Over-reaching strategy: Phil Corbitt’s Colin puts yet another plan to Sarah Belcher’s exhausted Deborah in Alison Carr’s All At Sea

Premiere of the week: Stephen Joseph Theatre and Live Theatre, Newcastle, present All At Sea, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 31

MARIA Crocker directs Phil Corbitt and Sarah Belcher in All At Sea, Alison Carr’s new play inspired by the real-life escapades of John and Anne Darwin in the early 2000s.

Colin and Deborah are a couple with spiralling debt, a sky-high mortgage and seemingly nowhere to turn. Then Colin comes up with the idea of faking his own death in a canoeing accident in the North Sea for an insurance payout. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope comes face to face with Charlie Russell’s Odysseus in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

Greek tragedy twist of the week: Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Odyssey: Her Story, York Theatre Royal, until October 31

BOOKER Prize winner Margaret Atwood revisits Homer’s The Odyssey in an exuberantly irreverent and darkly humorous retelling where she gives voice to Odysseus’s silenced wife, Penelope – still awaiting his return 20 years after the Trojan War – and her chorus of maids in a tale of injustice, betrayal and revenge that exposes the truth behind the myth. Creative director Juliet Forster’s cast is led by Happy Valley and Riot Women star Amelia Bullmore. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Ben Reeves-Rowley and Harry Summers in rehearsal for York Shakespeare Company’s piratical The Comedy Of Errors

Shakespeare shake-up of the week: York Shakespeare Project in The Comedy Of Errors, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

KATIE Leckey and Emily Carhart co-direct York Shakespeare Project in “ an exciting take on Shakespeare’s shortest and possibly funniest play”, giving a piratical, gender-swapping twist to The Comedy Of Errors in a convergence of the original text with slapstick, farce and physical comedy and a “celebration of relationships of many kinds, platonic, familial and romantic”.

“The morally questionable, yet still comedic, nature of many (if not all) of the characters put us in mind of some of our favourite piratical anti-heroes,” they say. “We felt like the framing device of piracy gave us the chance to include slapstick violence between ‘masters and servants’ in a way that wouldn’t seem too brutal or alien to a modern audience.” Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

The poster for The Amy Winehouse Band’s Back To Black 20th Anniversary Tour

Going back to Back To Black: The Amy Winehouse Band, York Barbican, tomorrow, 7.30pm

AMY Winehouse’s original band, who played with her from the very start, are marking the 20th anniversary of her iconic second album, Back To Black, the one that brought her five awards at the 2008 Grammy Awards. Performing with Amy that evening, as these musicians had done since her earliest gigs in London pubs, was her band. 

Led by Amy’s long-time musical director and bass player, The Amy Winehouse Band features members who both toured and recorded with her throughout her career. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Hudson & Hudson: Combining the magical and the marital at Helmsley Arts Centre

Magic show of the week: Hudson & Hudson Magicians: Married At First Sleight, Helmsley Arts Centre, Friday, 7.30pm

ORIGINALLY from Hull, husband-and-wife magicians Alan and Kat Hudson appeared separately on Britain’s Got Talent before eventually forming a double act. Ant & Dec had suggested they should work together while they were on the show, but they both said no at the time. Between them, they have appeared on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, ITV’s The Next Great Magician and in the West End production Wonderville.

Married At First Sleight mixes magic, mind-reading, comedy and audience participation with the realities of being married to the person with whom you also rehearse, tour and perform. Cue marital banter alongside the tricks. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.

York drag diva Velma Celli leading the Yorktoberfest celebrations in the Big Top with The Bavarian Strollers at York Racecourse

Festival of the week: Jamboree Entertainment presents Yorktoberfest, Clocktower Enclosure, York Racecourse, Friday, 7pm to 1pm; Saturday, 1pm to 5pm & 7pm to 11pm

FOR the first time, James Cundall’s Jamboree Entertainment is staging Yorktoberfest, York’s traditional Bavarian beer festival, inside a Big Top, launched last weekend by aerial artist Zoe Kulyk twisting and tumbling from the rooftop. 

Look out on Friday and Saturday for outrageous York drag diva Velma Celli’s powerhouse singing and quick-fire critique of the costumes on display and oompah band The Bavarian Strollers’ traditional drinking songs and disco classics. The Bavarian Bar and the Dog Haus serve up drinks and German-inspired food. Tickets: www.ticketsource.co.uk/yorktoberfest and at the entrance, subject to availability.

Bison Hip: A dose of the Glasgow blues at Ryedale Blues Club

Blues gig of the week: Ryedale Blues Club presents Bison Hip, Milton Rooms, Malton, October 29, 8pm

BISON Hip were formed by long-time friends Paul Sloway, Malcolm Button, Steven Radziwonik, John Gilmour Smith and Graeme Carswell during a lockdown Zoom call in 2020. “Maybe it was the mid-life crisis at play,” says vocalist Sloway.

“We wanted to take our love of blues and rock and mix it up with our experiences of life. Between us, we’ve been through so many things in life, ups and downs, some successes and plenty of failures, we wanted all that in the music. We needed to wrap it up in the DNA of our hometown, Glasgow, and hopefully that’s what we’ve achieved.” Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.

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Premiere of the month: All At Sea, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, till 31/10/206

Sarah Belcher’s Deborah and Phil Corbitt’s Colin in Alison Carr’s All At Sea. Picture: Matt Savage

ALL At Sea, Alison Carr’s new play inspired by the notorious “canoe man” story, is making waves at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough.

Maria Crocker directs Phil Corbitt and Sarah Belcher in this premiere co-production with Newcastle’s Live Theatre. “This sharp and witty play requires two expert actors to bring this extraordinary couple to life, and this casting has delivered just that,” she says.

Drawing inspiration from Seaton Carew couple John and Anne Darwin, whose insurance fraud hit the headlines in the early 2000s, All At Sea is the story of Colin and Deborah, a couple with spiralling debt, a sky-high mortgage and seemingly nowhere to turn.

Then Colin comes up with the idea of faking his own death in a canoeing accident in the North Sea for an insurance payout.

Phil Corbitt’s Colin, the canoe man in All At Sea. Picture: Von Fox Promotions

“I’m often drawn to stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and if they’re rooted in the North East, then even better,” says director Maria.

“I first approached Alison with the idea for a play about the ‘canoe couple’ five years ago. I’d always been fascinated by the story, but during lockdown, in a time of confinement and claustrophobia, when we were all ‘locked in’ our flats and houses, it got me thinking about the reality of it all.”

Maria continues: “I wasn’t interested in putting the ‘real life’ version on stage and was certain that the story needed to be reimagined by someone who could tap into the potential darkness and horror, alongside the humour and absurdity.

Sarah Belcher’s Deborah in All At Sea. Picture: Matt Savage

“I knew Alison had to write it. Thankfully, she said yes. I offered Alison the seed of an idea and handed it over to her imagination. Alison has created something totally unique, inspired by the original story but completely her own; a sharp, witty and moving exploration of a relationship surviving under extreme pressure. It has been a real privilege to bring it to life.”

Stephen Joseph Theatre and Live Theatre, Newcastle, present All At Sea at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 31. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

Did you know?

ALISON Carr’s earlier plays, Caterpillar and The Last Quiz Night On Earth, played the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 2018 and 2020 respectively.

Who is in the creative team for All At Sea?

ALISON Carr, director; Maria Crocker, director; Hannah Sibai, designer;  Roma Yagnik, sound designer; Catja Hamilton, lighting designer, and Ziad Jabero, composer.

Phil Corbitt’s Colin emerging from the shadows in All At Sea. Picture: Matt Savage

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REVIEW: York Stage in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Grand Opera House, York, grit and polish until Saturday *****

Teacher Miss Hedge (Katie Spencer) steps in between school bully Dean Paxton (Cain Branton) and dreamer Jamie New (Frankie Bounds) in York Stage’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

THIRD time, even luckier. After York Stage’s Teen Version at Theatre@41 in June 2023 and Pick Me Up Theatre’s Joseph Rowntree  Theatre run in July 2025, Sheffield musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is being re-made in York for the third time.

This one is the best yet, wholly justifying Nik Briggs’s decision to revisit Tom MacRae and Dan Gillespie Sells’ musical after directing the York premiere in 2023. “When the full version became available I knew I had to bring it to the Grand Opera House,” he said, promising a “truly beautiful, bold and gritty new production, capturing the electricity, humour and heart that has made ‘Jamie’ a modern British classic”.

Electricity. Tick. Humour. Tick. Heart. Tick, tick, ticker. They are all here in abundance in a production driven by Briggs’s thrilling direction, bold and beautiful performances and A J Powell’s choreography, full of punch and panache. What lifts it even higher, to five- star status, is Briggs’s costume and especially set design.

In a story so fast moving, where Jamie’s life is always on the edge of being out of control, where he wants to run before he can strut in heels, Briggs’s revolving stage is the perfect way to encapsulate the commotion. It enables the next scene to be set up out of sight, in transitions from Mayfield School classroom to Jamie’s house; classroom to Victor’s Secret clothes shop; a street bench to Jamie’s house; outside Legs Eleven nightclub to inside.

Nik Briggs: Director-designer of York Stage’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

There is no need for stage hands to be in view, save to push the merry-go-round for the next triangular stage to lock into place. It is so quick and efficient that the only things not to be on the move are the hands of the classroom clock. Then again, time waits for no man, or rather teenage boy in this case.

After Ryan Addyman, at the age of 17 in 2023, and Harvey Stephens, at 15 in 2025, now 16-year-old Sheffield council estate schoolboy Jamie New is played by Huby professional actor Frankie Bounds, who is fully ten years older than Harvey at 25, but still boyish of frame, cherubic in his cheekiness and lithe of limb to complement boundless mischievous energy and singing skills honed by his training in both opera and musical theatre.

Inspired by the Firecracker documentary Jamie: Drag Queen At 16, composer Gillespie Sells (from Horsham pop practitioners The Feeling) and writer/lyricist MacRae draw on an original idea by co-writer Jonathan Butterell for the unapologetic story of the boy who sometimes wants to be a girl, wear a dress to the school prom and be a drag queen in this classic teen rebel story.

Withering wit, northern nous and sassy social awareness all pepper their unflinching account of societal and classroom attitudes towards gender, bigotry, bullying, homophobia, absentee fathers and the right to self-expression. Nine years on from the Sheffield Crucible premiere, post-Covid strictures and the rise of right-wing intolerance, ‘Jamie’ hits home all the harder.

Mum Margaret New (Joanne Theaker), left, and friend Ray (Julie-Ann Smith) organising the 16th birthday party for Jamie (Frankie Bounds) in York Stage’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

Significantly, every Jamie putdown of loathsome, self-loathing school bully Dean Paxton (Cain Branton) is met with cheers, cheers that grew even louder to greet Bounds’ exit from the Stage Door after Saturday’s matinee. Likewise, Jamie’s best friend, assured York Stage debutante Roxanne Hall’s Priti Pasha, the Muslim student destined to study Medicine at Cambridge, puts dunderhead Dean in his place too. This bravura musical not only celebrates difference but what a difference for the better it makes too.

Among the Year 11 pupils of Mayfield School, a typical northern comprehensive classroom of hope-filled, yet cynical and unruly 16-year-olds, Bounds’ Jamie is a restless Yorkshire dreamer in need of escape. He wants to be a performer, not the fork lift driver his  career advisor suggests.

Breaking rules and hearts alike, this lippy kid in lip gloss is outwardly confident but he is naive and vulnerable too, wounded by the barbs of  his stay-away father (Adam Thompson) and discouraged by his narrow-minded  teacher Miss Hedge (Katie Spencer).

The grit promised by Briggs is delivered through the kitchen-sink drama frankness not only of blinkered teacher and bigoted father but also of Jamie’s world-weary, self-sacrificial, ever-supportive mum Margaret (Joanne Theaker, whose rendition of heartfelt ballad He’s My Boy is the Act Two show-stopper).

Class act: Frankie Bounds in his glittering yet shattering performance as teenager Jamie New at the heart of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

High quality is guaranteed by the presence of both Theaker and Julie-Ann Smith’s Ray, who brings a sharp tongue and kind heart to every domestic drama. Together they form a formidably forthright duo taking on both authority and convention.

To go with the grit, here comes the glitz and bravado of dress-shop boss Hugo/veteran drag act Loco Chanelle (Grant McIntyre) and the drag-queen veterans Sandra Bollock (Thompson’s second role),  Tray Sophisticay (George Cornell, reprising his Teen Version role) and Laika Virgin (the thoroughly fabulous Stu Hutchinson), in Sheffield’s answer to The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert.

Supporting roles and ensemble cast are in fine form too, as is Jessica Viner’s band, where James Lolley’s trumpet is particularly potent. Briggs has hit new heights in his director-designer double whammy, bringing out the best in his cast, boosted by Powell’s fabulous choreography, where even the cans on a schoolroom table dance in rhythm.

York Stage presents Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus  2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Year 11 pupils, led by Frankie Bounds’ Jamie New in red nail varnish, turn the classroom into a dancefloor of defiance in York Stage’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

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REVIEW: Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, The Odyssey, Her Story, York Theatre Royal ***1/2

Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope, left, comes face to face with Charlie Russell’s returning Odysseus. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

THE Penelopiad is the heavyweight centrepiece of York Theatre Royal’s autumn programme, Wednesday’s press night being marked by the presence of Arts Council England luminaries.

Creative director Juliet Forster’s plans to mount Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood’s re-spinning of Homer’s yarn in 2020 were scuppered by Covid’s clenches. Roll on to 2026, when Forster’s all-female production finds its counter-Homer home at last with the self-explanatory full title of The Penelopiad, The Odyssey: Her Story in the city where Actors Of Dionysus and Wright & Grainger’s Greek tragedies have made their mark.

Not only is The Penelopiad “her story” but “their story” too. After The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood delivers a multitude of Maids here, Penelope’s hand-picked slaves’ daughters: wronged, vengeful and constantly meddling in Penelope’s wishes to re-tell her tale, post-death, in the Underworld.

The glacial Penelope may want to miss out chunks, just like Christopher Nolan’s film made no mention of Odysseus’s philandering ways in his 20-year avoidance of coming home from the Trojan Wars, but the Maids have other ideas, and they will do anything to re-route The Penelopiad’s journey, from child puppetry to a rather short tap dance, girl group singing to acrobatic aerial skills, macho masks to more macho masks.

Pena Iiyambo’s Helen goes full Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch mode with the masked Maids in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad at York Theatre Royal. Picture:  Pamela Raith Photography

Riot Women actress Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope is still at the core, still an honourable figure of loyalty and  restraint, but the restless riot women of this piece, the Maids, keep breaking her poised rhythm, shattering her sang froid and melancholic air.

Nevertheless, especially in Bullmore’s honeyed tones and elegant white jumpsuit and coat, Penelope’s dry-witted putdowns are the embodiment of Atwood’s own irreverent humour, becoming a particular joy of her ice-queen performance. 

Her spat with Pena Iiyambo’s preening Helen, trollop of Troy, could launch a thousand quips, but one withering epithet suffices, although Iiyambo’s pulchritudinous Helen still has her Marilyn Monroe moment in screen goddess frills in the face of Penelope’s enmity.

Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope, surrounded by her Maids with their macho masks to portray aristo Suitors. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

Atwood had been haunted by the fate of the Maids, under Odysseus’s orders, prompting the vengeance of The Penelopiad, where the horror counters the jesting humour that mocks Charlie Russell’s Odysseus for having short legs, much as Eric Morecambe would tease Ernie Wise.

Atwood’s Penelope comes across as “methinks she doth protest too much” with her First World problems, complaints of being busy without being so and eating only asphodel flowers in Hades, while using the Maids’ wiles to stave off the unwanted attentions of the Suitors, whereas the Maids are up against it, putting themselves at risk on her behalf.

They do, however, find common ground when working together to weave and unpick Penelope’s tapestry to ward off those pesky Suitors. Ropes emerge as the motif that weave their way through Forster’s production and Sara Perks’s design, whether in the tapestry, the aerial circus skills of assorted Maids, pulling Penelope’s bed upwards or downwards, becoming a hissing snake or, spoiler alert, a hangman’s mode of execution.

Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope, right, in discussion on her bed with her Maids. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

Bullmore’s Penelope has a stillness and depth of character that contrasts with the Catherine Wheel fizz of the octet of multi-rolling Maids, especially when they play the leery, lecherous aristo Suitors, very much 2D stereotypes. Having women taking these roles is a further way of Atwood taking revenge on Homer’s misogyny, all the more forceful for the choreography of Frantic Assembly’s Michelle Edwards.

These graphic caricatures climax in the form of Russell’s Odysseus, mocked by Atwood not only for short legs, but in no longer being a mighty physical specimen, full stop, but a mendacious trickster with dubious moral values.

The Maids (Iiyambo, Russell, Nell Baker, Danielle Bird, Olivia Burton-Laws, Faye Campbell, Kat Johns-Burke and Syakira Moeladi) achieve both individuality and collective vigour the more they come to the fore, while Bird stands out as Eurycleia, the Odysseus loyalist who besmirches the Maids and cuts Penelope out of nursing her son Telemachus.

The Maids displaying rope and aerial skills in The Penelopiad. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

What are the plus points beyond Bullmore’s elegance with Atwood’s eloquence and the Maids’ zest? Perks’s design, described as chic by Bullmore in her interview, is startling, bright, white, modernist and minimalist, but timeless too, countered by Alexandra Stafford’s palette of colours in her lighting, most notably red to evoke the night of the Trojan Horse.

Edwards’s movement direction maximises the physicality of women playing men; Kate Marlais’s compositions, varying from rousing declamations to quieter underscoring and laments, are at their best when haunting.

The negatives? Whereas the humour in Bullmore’s Penelope is assured, polished and consistent in tone, elsewhere it is more erratic, uneven, sometimes pushing too hard. Given the harrowing denouement to come, it is a difficult balancing act for Forster to achieve, especially when comedy has a tendency to undermine tragedy and outrage, rape and execution. Ultimately, this account of The Penelopiad plays more to the head, the senses of sight and sound, than to the heart.

The Penelopiad, York Theatre Royal, unravelling the strands until October 31. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.  

Amelia Bullmore’s Penelope and Charlie Russell’s Odysseus in The Penelopiad. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Opera North, Eugene Onegin, Leeds Grand Theatre, until October 29 and on tour until November 21

Verity Wingate as Tatyana in Opera North’s Eugene Onedin. Picture: James Glossop

IMAGINE, if you will, a black-tie party, with long dresses and lots of fizz, taking place in the cramped space between two sets of bleachers in a gymnasium, where the paint is peeling off all the doors.

Then again, the same setting has earlier accommodated a young girl writing a letter to her putative lover, scribbling with a ball-point pen in a ring-bound notebook, from which she tears off a page to send.

These scenes may not sound like the stuff of opera, but they are taken directly from Opera North’s new Eugene Onegin, a co-production with Irish National Opera and with Opera Queensland, whose artistic director Patrick Nolan leads this production. They are respectively the ball in Act 3, Scene 1 and Tatyana’s Letter Scene, Act 1, Scene 2.

Tchaikovsky’s setting of Shilovsky’s libretto, in turn derived from Pushkin’s verse novel, inhabits both a country estate and St Petersburg in the 1820s. The current production is set in the 1980s, before and after the time of Gorbachev’s perestroika. In the spirit of glasnost – greater openness – we must seek an explanation.

John Brancy’s Eugene Onegin and Joshua Bloom’s Prince Gremin in Opera North’s Eugene Onedin. Picture: James Glossop

The creatives involved, primarily Nolan, along with set designer Leslie Travers and costume designer Elizabeth Gadsby, begin their production in a small rural community in 1980, as it prepares its contribution to that summer’s Olympics in Moscow, in a gymnasium festooned with portraits of Lenin. It closes in 1991 as the new Russian Federation supplants the collapsed Soviet Union.

While admitting that the correlation between this period and the 1820s is not exact, the group expresses a “desire to bring a contemporary energy to the piece.” It is not immediately apparent that Tchaikovsky’s original lacked energy. Nor is the raw human emotion of that time any less forceful than it was in the 1980s. Indeed general director Laura Canning highlights Tatyana’s resilience as “straight out of Austen”.

While this drab setting may be visually unappetising, there are some musical compensations. Verity Wingate, one of six principals Opera North debutants, makes a properly vulnerable teenage Tatyana.

Although she started uneasily on this opening night, she suddenly found a higher gear for her Letter Scene, which is very much the touchstone of the role. She also achieves a smooth transformation into society’s upper reaches, so that her ultimate rejection of Onegin carries moral weight.

Jingwen Cai as Olga with members of the Chorus of Opera North as villagers in Eugene Onedin. Picture: James Glossop

He is John Brancy, another debutant, whose haughty demeanour is matched by a clean-cut baritone that speaks of self-assurance linked to insensitivity. His friend and ultimate foe, Lensky, is a less appealing figure in Caspar Singh’s hands. While he paces his pre-duel aria delicately, there is also a disturbing unevenness in his focus, now forward, now back, so that the voice comes and goes.

Jingwen Cai is a sparky Olga, Tatyana’s younger sister, full of mischief. Hannah Mason is charming as their mother, Madame Larina, and Claire Pascoe makes a personality of Filipyevna, both amply justifying their elevation from the chorus. So too does Simon Grange as Zaretsky. Florian Panzieri makes pleasingly light work of Triquet’s aria. Joshua Bloom’s dry bass as Prince Gremin lacks aristocratic authority.

The chorus projects with its customary vigour but looks uncomfortable with some of the 1980s vibe that Maxim Braham’s choreography is presumably intended to convey, not helped by casual dress. Even the orchestra under Garry Walker was less than compact in Act 1, but was in impressive stride thereafter on this occasion, as doubtless it will be throughout the run.

Opera North, Eugene Onegin, Leeds Grand Theatre, until November 29. Box office: operanorth.co.uk. Sung in Russian with English subtitles.

Review by Martin Dreyer, Leeds Grand Theatre, 9/10/2026

John Brancy’s Eugene Onegin, front left, in a punch-up with Caspar Singh’s Lensky as Chorus of Opera North members look on. Picture: James Glossop

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York Stage pumps up the grit on the path to the glitter in return to Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at Grand Opera House

A shoe-in for standing out: Frankie Bounds’s Jamie New, centre, with his classmates in York Stage’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

WHY will York Stage be returning to Everybody’s Talking About Jamie from tomorrow to October 24 only three years since staging the Teen Edition?

“‘Jamie’ is one of my favourite musicals,” reasons director Nik Briggs. “Having seen it in its early development at the Sheffield Crucible, I always knew I wanted to bring it to York, which we did with the premiere of the Teen Version in June 2023 at Theatre@41, Monkgate, but when the full version became available I knew I had to bring it to the Grand Opera House.

“Having spoken to the then theatre director, Laura McMillan, she knew we’d create a truly beautiful production. Being able to bring this story to York’s biggest theatre for the first time ever is truly an honour, and the bold and gritty new production we’ve created is one I can’t wait to share with York.”

Director Briggs re-imagines Tom MacRae and Dan Gillespie Sells’s award-winning musical with a raw, authentic edge to “capture the electricity, humour and heart that has made ‘Jamie’ a modern British classic”.

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie director Nik Briggs

Inspired by a north-eastern true story, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie follows the path of 16-year-old council estate schoolboy Jamie New, who never quite fits in. Supported by his loving mum and his friends, Jamie overcomes prejudice, defeats the bullies and, spoiler alert, steps into the spotlight to become the star he was born to be.

Staged by a vibrant cast and professional production team, Briggs’s 2026 show will blend Gillespie Sells’s infectious pop score and MacRae’s fearless, funny book and lyrics with York Stage’s trademark theatrical grit and emotional honesty.

“This is a story about identity, courage and the power of self-expression,” says Nik. “Our new production will dive deeper into Jamie’s world – its highs, its heartache and its hope – and celebrate the beautiful mess of growing up different in a small city,” says Nik. 

Taking the role of Jamie New will be professional Huby actor Frankie Bounds, still boyish looking at 25. “Playing a 16-year-old schoolboy will be a good challenge,” he says. “It’s a real beast of a role as Jamie doesn’t ever really leave the stage – and it’s not like anything I’ve done before, having played these super-muscular men!

“I said ‘it’s not my usual cup of tea’, but Nik said he wanted to bring something of that broody demeanour back to Jamie,” says lead actor Frankie Bounds, front

“So when Nik messaged me, I replied very honestly and said ‘it’s not my usual cup of tea’, but he said he wanted to bring something of that broody demeanour back to Jamie, which definitely adds to it as it goes back  to the core of the original Sheffield Crucible production, with Jamie being gay and having to find himself when his mum’s going through difficult things and his [absent] dad has said terrible things about him.

“There’s a lot of myself in my performance, where I like to challenge myself and other people too – the audience – at the shows.”

York Stage’s design for ‘Jamie’ will be “ever-circling”. “The show has the feel of everything unravelling around Jamie and the set mirrors that,” says Frankie, who has carried that sense of unpredictability into rehearsals.

“Working with Jo [Joanne Theaker-Spencer], who plays Jamie’s mum [Margaret] is just so inspiring. We’ve had several conversations where we’ve built up the trust to try things out.

Ryan Addyman’s Jamie New in York Stage’s June 2023 production of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie: Teen Version at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York

“I trained in the Meisner Technique [before graduating with an MA in musical theatre from Mountview Academy of Performing Arts], which is all about being different each time and responding to what’s in front of you. Jo gets that, knowing that I’ll do the work, but it will be different each night, to make it both joyful and heartbreaking.

“There’ll be belly laughs one minute, then you’ll get gut-punched the next, with that special energy in the room, where we’ve really bonded together as a cast that comes from different generations.”

Frankie has been familiarising himself with wearing Jamie’s high heels. “They’re in the car right now!” he says, mid-interview at the Angel on the Green, in Bishopthorpe Road. “For the first ‘performance’ we did at York Pride, Nik said, ‘I’ve got something for you’ – and I saw the shoebox!

York Stage’s cast for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, including Joanne Theaker-Spencer’s Margaret (striped top) and Frankie Bounds’ Jamie New (front, centre)

“Bearing in mind I’d never worn heels before, it was almost like a rites of passage. You don’t walk ‘heel first’; it has to be ‘toe first’ – and it means I’m now over six feet tall! They’re much more comfortable now; bright red, of course. What else could they be?!”

Frankie’s dogs Billy and Bob [both of the small white Coton de Tulear breed, originally from Madagascar] were initially circumspect on encountering him in six-inch heels. “They didn’t like the sound of the shoes, or maybe it was my height in them. Hearing me stomping around in them as I cooked lunch, they would cower away,” he says.

Audiences surely will react very differently at the sight of Frankie, when everybody will be talking about more than Jamie’s shoes at the Grand Opera House.

York Stage in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Grand Opera House, York, October 16 to 24, 7.30pm except October 18 and 19; 2.30pm Saturday matinees; 4pm, Sunday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

York Stage’s poster for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at the Grand Opera House, York

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REVIEW: York Settlement Community Players in Underdog: The Other Other Brontë, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York ****

Lara Stafford’s Charlotte Brontë, the narrator spinning her yarn in Sarah Gordon’s Underdog: The Other Other Brontë. Picture: John Saunders

YORKSHIRE’S most famous yet still mysterious sisters, the literary Brontës of Haworth, turn out to be as much about scrapping as scribbling in Sarah Gordon’s irreverent, coruscatingly honest yet unreliable witness of a play, here making its York debut after its 2024 premiere in a National Theatre-Northern Stage co-production.

We’ve had teenage Kate Bush’s chart-topping Wuthering Heights,  Lip Service’s comedic spoof Withering Looks and even an uncredited Sinead O’Connor walking the moors as Emily Bronte in a hooded cloak to book-end Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, the one starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.

Above all, we have had and still have the Brontë books, books that broke their Victorian shackles to speak for themselves, beyond us knowing that the daughters of the Irish-born parson of Haworth, out on the wily, windy West Riding moors, all died all too young, along with their wastrel artist-poet brother Branwell, the first to exit stage left in a white nightgown.

Jess Murray’s Emily, right, and Millie Rhodes’s Anne: The ‘other’ Brontë and the ‘other other’ Brontë in Settlement Players’ Underdog: The Other Other Brontë. Picture: John Saunders

Just as Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss mash up history with punk modern sensibilities  in enabling Henry VIII’s wives to give their side of the story in a competitive concert to be head girl in Six The Musical, so Gordon gives licence to Charlotte, Emily and Anne to do likewise in Underdog’s sisterly rivalries and jealousies and battles with the male-dominated Victorian publishing world of London, 17 hours away by horse and carriage.

As in Six, this introduces competition – flawed sisters doing it to themselves, rather than for themselves – but not on equal terms because Lara Stafford’s Charlotte is designated the role of narrator. Consequently, she tends to dominate, when ostensibly the title suggests the focus should be on the “other other Brontë”, Millie Rhodes’s sweet-natured Anne, “the one who died,” as Anne puts it.

That said, Gordon counters the narrator’s status by showing the ambitious, ruthless, envious Charlotte in anything but the best light, full of withering slights and maternally over-protective of Anne in particular, refusing permission for a posthumous re-print of The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall (and editing Emily’s poems for publication after her death to boot).

Underdog: The Other Other Brontë director Claire Morley. Picture: Tom Barker

Jess Murray’s Emily is an undiluted firebrand, with a temper and potty mouth, but somewhat underwritten by comparison with Anne and especially Charlotte.

Nick Patrick Jones’s Branwell can be heard shouting at his father in the background and in his infrequent appearances he feels like a ghost in this play, even before he is consigned to that status.

Alongside Jones, Jon Cook, Pamela Gourley and Maggie Smales are on multi-rolling duty, Smales taking the honours with her spoilt child, coconut-clip-clopping carriage driver and biographer Elizabeth Gaskell.

Maggie Smales’s spoilt brat Cunliffe and Jon Cook’s Mrs Ingham in Settlement Players’ Underdog: The Other Other Brontë. Picture: John Saunders

Claire Morley’s witty, wily and waspish production is played out with fiery pace and passion on Richard Hampton’s three-sided set of suspended wheat sheafs, page after page torn from books, three boxes bedecked in yet more words and the backdrop of a frame filled with flowers.

At its base is a sign reading “Liar” that Stafford’s Charlotte then places around the neck of Rhodes’s Anne, and yet not everything that Charlotte says can be taken as the truth. Literary licence, maybe; playwright’s impish, knowing humour, certainly.

The sisters are even more fun company than in Lip Service’s Withering Looks, full of surprises, sassy putdowns (not least of Jane Austen’s face being on a bank note) and sisterly interplay, played out to a soundtrack of Self Esteem, Charlie XCX and Billie Eilish snippets.  It could have been deeper, it could have been darker,  but that is the one story that has been told before.

Sisterly rivalries and jealousies in Sarah Gordon’s Underdog: The Other Other Brontë, as played out by Lara Stafford’s Charlotte, right, and Millie Rhodes’s Anne. Picture: John Saunders

On reflection, all the Brontë sisters can be seen as the underdog of the title, sisters with blisters, but fighting against cramped writing conditions, the Yorkshire chill that did for their health, and the inequality and cold shoulder of the book world’s stuffed shirts. The “other” here is as much the other side of their story as a desire to put Anne in the spotlight.

“Young women judge older women more harshly than anybody else…they are conditioned to,” says the spiky Charlotte, in one of her jibes delivered so deliciously by Stafford, whose outstanding performance is befitting of a professional stage.

York Settlement Community Players present Underdog: The Other Other Brontë, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Lara Stafford’s exasperated Charlotte holds her head in her hands as she listens to Maggie Smales’s over-zealous biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell, in the closing chapter of Underdog: The Other Other Brontë. Millie Rhodes’s Anne, back, left, and Jess Murray’s Emily look bemused. Picture: John Saunders

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Julie Lomas fulfils ten-year dream to direct Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman, staged by 1812 Theatre Company in Helmsley

Andy Studdart as Willy Loman and Linda Tester as The Woman, Willy’s mistress, in 1812 Theatre Company’s Death Of A Salesman. Picture: Joe Coughlan

ARTHUR Miller’s Death Of A Salesman will be staged by 1812 Theatre Company at Helmsley Arts Centre from tomorrow to Saturday with a late change of cast.

“Rehearsals have not been without event,” says director Julie Lomas. “Unfortunately our leading lady, Sam Hughes, was involved in a serious horse-riding accident on October 5, requiring hospitalisation and surgery. She is now in recovery at home but is unable to perform this week.

“However, we have a first-rate replacement in Kate Cawte, who will be very skilfully taking the role of Willie Loman’s long-suffering, devoted wife Linda, book in hand.”

Written in 1948, when Miller finished the first act in a single spring day in Roxbury, Connecticut, and premiered on Broadway in 1949,  Death Of A Salesman is performed only rarely by amateurs. “It’s been complex and hard work, but rewarding, with both new and regular performers for the company starring in this clever and layered masterpiece,” says Julie.

Dylan Canton as Happy Loman, Willy’s youngest son, in 1812 Theatre Company’s Death Of A Salesman. Picture: Joe Coughlan

“We have a very strong leading cast, some of whom have not acted with the company before, plus the return to the stage of drama teacher Jonathan Lewis as Biff Loman.”

Miller’s play focuses on the last 24 hours in the life of Willy Loman, the struggling salesman of the title, who , who cannot understand how he failed to win success and happiness. Through a series of tragic, soul-searching revelations of the life he has lived with his wife, sons and business associates, Miller reveals how his quest for the “American Dream” kept him blind to the people who truly loved him. The plot is set mainly in the 1940s, complemented by Loman’s  idealised memories of happier times in the 1930s.

Andy Studdart is making his first appearance with 1812 Theatre Company as Willy Loman. “The title role is a tour de force and it will be a remarkable debut by Andy,” says Julie. “He is not the only newcomer in the cast: Dylan Canton, is playing Happy, one of Willy’s sons,  while the other son, Biff, is played by Jonathan Lewis, who is making a welcome return to Helmsley after a prolonged break raising his young family.

“I feel incredibly lucky to have such talented and committed actors on the stage at the same time and working with them has been a joy.”

Regular 1812 players will be in the cast too: Oliver Clive plays the sons’ nerdy friend, Bernard; Beaj Johnson is Charley, said by Willy to be “the only friend I have got”; Richard Noakes is Uncle Ben, Willy’s  recently deceased elder brother; Robert Perry is Stanley, the obliging waiter, and Mike Martin plays heartless boss Howard Wagner.

Andy Studdart’s Willy Loman and Kate Cawte’s Linda Loman in 1812 Theatre Company’s Death Of A Salesman. Picture: Joe Coughlan

The role of Willy’s seductive mistress goes to Linda Tester and Vicki Mason plays both Charley’s secretary and the very glamorous Miss Forsythe.

“Far from being a miserable play, as the title may suggest, this powerful, fast-moving play is peppered with humour and surprises,” says Julie. “It is energetic and passionate throughout, culminating in emotional scenes, the likes of which are rarely seen on stage. There is some beautiful music and performances are worthy of the highest praise.”

In his introduction to the play, Miller described the setting as being “wholly or – in some places – partially transparent”. This has provided inspiration for 1812’s  set, with Julie being guided by Sue Elm in its design and its construction, carried out by a five-strong set-building team led by Michael Goslin and Peter Ives.

Music is integral to Julie’s production too, in particular the melodies, played on a flute to represent Willy’s state of mind. The many sound cues and lighting effects will be operated by Helmsley Arts Centre technical manager James Bentley.

Andy Studdart’s Willy Loman, left, and Richard Noakes’s Ben, Willy’s recently deceased older brother, in 1812 Theatre Company’s Death Of A Salesman. Picture: Joe Coughlan

The evocative costumes and properties are supervised by Julie Wilson and Pauline Noakes respectively and the actors have been guided throughout the rehearsals by production assistant Jean Sheridan. The experienced David Tester is the stage manager, assisted by the ever-positive Billie Billington.

Julie has wanted to put on this play for “at least as many years as it took Arthur Miller to write it – ten”. “Miller carefully thought through the impact his inventive, theatrical elements would present on stage, for example, the co-existence of past and present, and the visualisation of Willy’s hallucinations,” she says.

“This challenge appealed to me, together with the sharp detailing of the characters’ emotional states and the relevance the play’s themes still have today.”

1812 Theatre Company presents Death Of A Salesman, Helmsley Arts Centre, October 15 to 17, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.

The poster for 1812 Theatre Company’s production of Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman

REVIEW: Charles Hutchinson’s verdict on 1812 Theatre Company in Death Of A Salesman, Helmsley Arts Centre, 15/10/2026 ****

WHENEVER Arthur Miller’s 1949 play Death Of A Salesman is performed, its dismantling of the American Dream can be refracted through the latest President’s thoughts on the subject.

In March 2025, addressing Congress, Donald Trump tub-thumped: “The American Dream is surging – bigger and better than ever before. The American Dream is unstoppable and our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never witnessed and perhaps will never witness again.”

Mind you, Forever-Blowing-His-Own Trumpet had earlier declared the dream to be dead, all while promising to bring it back bigger, better and stronger than ever before.

Willie Loman, the Brooklyn travelling salesman of Miller’s title, would have connected most with Trump’s sentiment that “No dream is too big, no challenge too great, nothing we want for our future is beyond our reach”.

Yet it was chasing the dream, for himself and in turn his family, that crushed this American Everyman under the weight of dashed hopes. In Julie Lomas’s production, 1812 Theatre Company debutant Andy Studdart’s fanatical Willie has all the world on his slim but smartly attired shoulders, his manner as agitated as Woody Allen, but defiantly upbeat by comparison with waspish Woody’s bemused melancholia.

Julie Lomas has been wanting to direct ‘Salesman’ for “even longer than it took Arthur Miller to write it” – ten years – and her resulting production is diligent, intense and weightily tragic.

Designer Sue Elm has imbued the colours of the American flag in her open-plan set design, one that places bedrooms and kitchen on one floor beneath askew windows. Further locations, from offices to a restaurant, are brought into focus by stagehands, often in full view: one of the down sides of the confines of the Helmsley Arts Centre stage, but never a distraction.

Instead, the sense of compression in that cluttered, claustrophobic configuration matches the state of Willie’s mind, that feeling of his world collapsing in on itself as his waning mental sharpness and hollowed frame render him unsafe to drive.

In her programme note, Julie writes: “With its time-shifts (Miller did not like the term ‘flashback’) and hallucinatory sections, it is enormously challenging to stage.” True, but those time-shifts to 1932 and especially Willie’s hallucinations of his late brother Ben (Richard Noakes), are handled adroitly by director and her lead actor alike.

The company had to overcome the late withdrawal of Sam Hughes, after her serious horse-riding accident necessitated her hospitalisation and subsequent surgery, from which she is now recuperating at home.

Into the role of doting wife Linda steps the highly experienced Kate Cawte, performing with book in hand but full of physical expression, still interacting with Studdart’s Willie to the max, when faced with his increasingly brusque demeanour.

In the roles of their sons, Jonathan Lewis returns to the 1812 ranks after a hiatus to play the troubled, disillusioned Biff, forlornly seeking his own truth, and Dylan Canton makes an  outstanding1812 debut as Happy, whose swaggering air puts him on the same deluded trajectory as his father. Both performances, with their contrasting physicality, are driven as much by equally contrasting delivery of Miller’s fractious dialogue: the upward versus the downward.

As Studdart’s Willie acquires ever more pathos, and the optimism of his 1932 past dissipates as his lies mount and redundancy at 63 beckons, so Lewis’s Biff excels in their climactic showdown with its devastating consequences for both of them, each a victim of broken dreams.

Warren Mitchell, when playing Loman, described Death Of A Salesman as second only to Hamlet as theatre’s greatest tragedy. This production, delivering a thumping psychological impact on a small North Yorkshire stage, reasserts that it remains America’s very best.

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