Sugar and spite and all things not so nice: Ellen Carnazza’s TV baking celebrity Petronella Parfait in Badapple Theatre Company’s Crumbs. Picture: Karl Andre
IN the week when jettisoned American TV institution The Late Show turned into the late show, as Stephen Colbert signed off, British TV’s favourite baking queen, Petronella Parfait, was cancelled too.
Mystery surrounds her disgraced exit, but ruthless, rather than rueful, Petronella is determined to bounce back, and tonight we are her audience – her “Crummies” – as she launches her online cookery channel, Dough My Gosh, as hot on gossip as tray bakes, as she looks to ride the social media influencer wave.
Will the cook crumble or rise anew like the dough for her signature Athenian Caraway Loaf? Will it be Crumbs of comfort or discomfort for the axed Bake-Up judge?
Find out in writer-director Kate Bramley’s latest comedy for Green Hammerton’s “theatre on your doorstep” rural-travelling troupe Badapple Theatre Company, newly installed as York Theatre Royal’s associate company for the next year.
To mark that partnership’s launch, Badapple are concluding their spring tour with four days of performances in the Theatre Royal Studio, where virtuoso Harrogate actress Ellen Carnazza is cooking on gas mark five as Petronella, the bad apple or good apple of the piece.
Bramley affectionately calls Carnazza “the hardest-working woman in theatre”, because although Petronella has an ego too big to accommodate anyone else in her kitchen, chameleon Carnazza will play multiple characters, foes, friends and family alike, glowing under the lights from so much physical exertion in this one-woman show of two 45-minute halves.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, as the old chestnut says, but Carnazza’s Petronella can very much stand the (self-inflicted) heat and stay in Petronella’s Perfect Kitchen to bake the bread that audiences will devour at the finale.
Will they, however, swallow everything else she says as the layers surrounding the mystery of her swift exit are peeled back with each new interruption of her live broadcast that takes the form of a series of phone calls and interviews, where Carnazza is framed by an oversized mobile phone case. Already her West Country assistant Demelza Meek has walked out, tired of being her Cornish patsy and vowing to bring her down.
One by one, we meet Petronella’s mother, Lady Payne, a still glamorous former Bond Girl; barrister Gloria Gluten, who shared her schooldays, and Mrs Crumble, the Welsh cook from her childhood whose recipes she may well have purloined for her own gain.
As she fights to prove she does not put the fake into bake, secrets are exposed and everything collapses around her on AJ Lowe’s amusingly Mischief Theatre-echoing misbehaving kitchenette set, with its malfunctioning tap, tumbling shelf of cookbooks and non-stick apron hook, topped off by the lights going out.
Now her last friend and sponsor, Penny Puttanesca, proprietor of the neighbouring Pizza Inferno chain, with her Gina/Sophia Italian allure and Mafia hauteur, has finally had enough of her freeloading.
After so much back-and-forth patter and constant changes of voice and character, with the aid of scarves, hats and glasses, Carnazza and Bramley surpass it all with the Puttanesca family’s henchman, Big Tony, who says nothing yet everything behind dark glasses with shrugs, grimaces and the folding of arms, before Carnazza plays both Petronella and Big Tony on the chase with all the madcap joy of a cartoon, all the funnier for being conducted in a small space, maximum gesture, minimal movement.
Bramley’s Petronella Parfait is an absurdist caricature, even more so for her script revelling in more puns than buns, yet for all the comic exaggeration in Carnazza’s performance, Crumbs is bang-on in its exposé of the cult of celebrity.
Petronella is sweet on the TV surface, yet sour when the heat is on; more back off than Bake-Off. She is a baker as needy as kneady; constantly plugging products, pushing her “brand” and placing endorsements. Ultimately, her cherry on top cannot hide the soggy bottom beneath.
Your reward is a feast of laughs in a comedy with bite, followed by a chunk of bread at the close, whose “secret recipe “ can be unlocked by scanning the QR code on the back of the programme.
Purely by coincidence, what should be playing on the main stage next door but another story of a TV celebrity fighting for her career (after being exposed as a charlatan in losing a court case with £500,000 costs): namely psychic medium Sheila Gold in Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman’s twisted thriller The Psychic, now in the last week of its world premiere.
Badapple Theatre Company in Crumbs, York Theatre Royal Studio, baking at 2pm and 7.45pm today. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The Wizard of York (Dan Wood): Presenting the second WizardFest in York city centre. Picture: The Story Of You
FROM WizardFest to the Wizard of Prog, Roman festivities to musical & poetic nature lovers, Charles Hutchinson picks his hot spots for the Bank Holiday weekend and beyond.
Magical event of the week: WizardFest, York, today until Monday
WIZARDFEST, York’s official Festival of Wizardry, waves its magic wand over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend as The Wizard of York conjures up spellbinding events, tours, trails, workshops, shows and fantastical food and drink.
Wizardry fans can book for the Wizard Walk of York, Brick Magic LEGO workshop, Wizard Family Rave, Giant Bubble Show or Wicked at City Screen Picturehouse. Expect owl appearances, dragons and the new Wizard Activity Zone on Parliament Street with wand making, face painting and more. Dress to impress for the free fancy dress parade from St Helen’s Square on Monday at 3p.m A digital map and full list of events with booking links can be found at wizardwalkofyork.com/wizardfest.
The Roman Camp in York Museum Gardens, part of the Eboracum Roman Festival in York. Picture: Gareth Buddo
Festival highlight of the week: Living History, Crafts and Combat, Eboracum Roman Festival, York, today and tomorrow
THIS weekend showcases the best of Eboracum with live performances, creative storytelling and historical demonstrations alongside fun family activities, insightful talks and opportunities to dive into archaeology in York.
At the Living History Camp in York Museum Gardens, discover how the Romans lived by talking to the legions in their camp and watch demonstrations of weaving, carpentry, pottery and blacksmithing. Check out military demonstrations and formations with Ermine Street Guard or join York Museum Trust’s Garden Team for a guided tour of the Edible Garden today. Look out too for artillery demonstrations and the Kids Barbaric Battle. For full festival details, visit: yorkshiremuseum.org.uk/eboracum-roman-festival-2026.
Live baking on stage: Ellen Carnazza’s TV cook in crisis Petronella Parfait in Badapple Theatre Company’s Crumbs. Picture: Karl Andre
Bake-off of the week: Badapple Theatre Company in Crumbs, York Theatre Royal Studio, today, 2pm and 7.45pm
DISGRACED TV baking celebrity Petronella Parfait is out of a job and out of her depth, trying to reinvent herself in the cut-throat world of social influencers. Can she keep the lights on – and the oven – as her live comeback show descends into devilishly delicious disaster?
Expect big laughs, bold flavours, live bread making and a tasty treat for the audience at the end of Kate Bramley’s play as Green Hammerton’s Badapple Theatre returns to the Theatre Royal Studio, where solo performer Ellen Carnazza plays multiple roles. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The Upbeat Beatles: Celebrating the Fab Four from the Cavern to Abbey Road at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre
Tribute gig of the week: Joseph Wilson Productions presents The Upbeat Beatles, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
THE Upbeat Beatles travel the Fab Four’s long and winding road from the early Cavern days through Beatlemania and Shea Stadium, New York City, to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road, with narrative and full multi-media presentation. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Nobody puts Baby’s poster in the corner: Dirty Dancing In Concert at York Barbican
Film event of the week: Dirty Dancing In Concert, York Barbican, May 28, 7.30pm
RELIVE the film that stole the hearts of generations with this live-to-screen concert event featuring Emile Ardolino’s 1987 American romantic drama projected in full, accompanied by a live band and singers performing every song from the soundtrack.
Feel the romance, rhythm and emotion as the love story of Baby and Johnny (Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze) comes to life on a full-size cinema screen. A dance-along encore party follows the final scene. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk
John McCusker: Leading his trio at the NCEM on Friday
Recommended but sold out already: John McCusker Trio, York Festival of Ideas, National Centre for Early Music, York, May 29, 7.30pm
SCOTTISH violinist John McCusker is joined by virtuoso multi-instrumentalist and singer Sam Kelly and flute, whistle and guitar player Toby Shaer in his trio to perform a thrilling combination of instrumental dexterity, heartfelt songs and live energy. Their fusion of original compositions, traditional melodies and contemporary folk bursts with innovation, joy and soul. Box office for returns only: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
The Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox poster for the The Future Is Vintage tour, visiting York Barbican on Friday
Retro gig of the week: Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, The Future Is Vintage Tour 2026, York Barbican, May 29, doors 7pm
SCOTT Bradlee’s troupe of singers, dancers and instrumentalists perform a new show in signature time-twisting style, putting a retro spin on everything from Seventies’ rock classics and Britpop hits to the latest chart toppers and movie and video game soundtracks.
“We’re humbly presenting our own unique vision of a spectacular future; one that is built upon the timeless musical genres of the past and the authentically human spirit of creativity that inspired them,” says founder and arranger Bradlee, who invites you to dress in your vintage best for the full time-travel experience. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Mike Amber: Performing Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock songs with Lola-Mae at The Basementnext Saturday
Nature lovers of the week: Navigators Art presents Back To The Garden, York Festival of Ideas, The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York, May 30, 7.30pm, doors 7pm
NAVIGATORS Art has invited York performers to celebrate and explore the York Festival of Ideas theme of Place and Space with a focus on the peaceful, wild, mythical, inspirational green worlds of gardens.
Original words and music features alongside well-loved works by familiar names in the company of storyteller Lara McClure; Mike Amber & Lola-Mae, taking on Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock; poet and novelist Janet Dean; performance poet Carrieanne Vivianette and alt folk band Sofa Sofa, whose songs are rooted in nature and people, woods, weather, long walks, short thoughts, longing and love. Box office: ticketsource.com/navigators-art-performance or on the door.
Rick Wakeman: Performing with English Rock Ensemble in The Wizard of Prog show at York Barbican next March
Gig announcement of the week: Rick Wakeman, The Wizard of Prog, Ultimate Highlights Concert Tour with English Rock Ensemble, York Barbican, March 11 2027
KEYBOARD player extraordinaire Rick Wakeman, who turned 77 on May 18, will be reuniting with the English Rock Ensemble to focus on a broad sweep across Wakeman’s classic back catalogue, including extracts from epic concept albums Journey To The Centre Of The Earth and The Myths & Legends Of King Arthur & The Knights Of The Round Table, Yes material and surprises.
The band line-up reunites from 2025’s Return Of The Caped Crusader Part 2 tour: Wakeman, Jesse Smith (lead vocals), Adam Wakeman (keyboard, guitars and vocals), Dave Colquhoun (guitars and vocals), Lee Pomeroy (bass and vocals), Adam Falkner (drums) and backing vocalists Sara Davey, Jo Goldsmith-Eteson and Jo Marshall. Tickets go on sale on May 29 at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk/whats-on/rick-27.
Coming to terms with loss: Alexa Chaplin ‘s Annie in York Musical Theatre Company’s Calendar Girls The Musical
WRITTEN by two Honorary Yorkshiremen from the Wirral, friends-since-schooldays Tim Firth and Gary Barlow, Calendar Girls The Musical plays an immediate crowd-pleasing ace card by opening with a song called Yorkshire.
Premiered under the name The Girls at Leeds Grand Theatre in 2015 and first staged in York by York Stage Musicals at the Grand Opera House in 2022, the show now plays out against All In One Productions’ photographic scenery of the rolling Yorkshire Dales at their most green and pleasant pastured. In front is a dry stone wall with a gate. You can almost smell the ‘Yorkshireness’ of it all.
Welcome to director-choreographer Kathryn Addison’s production for York Musical Theatre Company, with musical director John Atkin in the pit to conduct a band wherein Rosie Morris’s piano is to the fore (as to be expected when Take That keyboardist Gary Barlow is the composer), complemented by Cameron McArthur’s keys and guitar, Paul McArthur’s bass, Andy Jennings’ percussion and the emotive Yorkshire brass of Ross Simpson’s trumpet and Martin Farmery’s trombone.
From the Yorkshire-wide grin of that opening number, Firth and Barlow then introduce ‘The Girls’, the Knapely Women’s Institute members who will go on to pose for the fundraising artistic nude calendar that launched so many doppelgangers.
Eve Clark’s Jenny
The new WI chairwoman Marie (Andrea Copeland) may be old-school, all Jam and Jerusalem, dull guest speakers and duller regulations, but as second song Mrs Conventional establishes, these girls can be unconventional, especially Katie Melia’s rebellious Chris, whose sparky individuality so attracted husband Rod (Jack Hooper), who runs a flower shop.
However, the sunshine dims when John ‘Clarkey’ Clarke (Peter Melia), National Park officer, gardener and sunflower-loving husband of best friend Annie (Alexa Chaplin), is diagnosed, spoiler alert, with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Struggling to come to terms with the impending loss of this gentle, gregarious giant, Chaplin’s Annie delivers a beautiful rendition of Barlow and lyricist Firth’s outstanding number, Scarborough, with its devastating closing lyric: “And who will protect me/While telling me lies/If you’re not here.”
Those lines are typical of the observant golden touch of Firth, whose script judges perfectly what the crescendo should be (the stripping off one by one for the calendar), while also introducing three teenage children (James Hepworth’s Danny, Eve Clark’s Jenny and Frankie Jackson’s Tommo), who show another side to their parents.
Alison Taylor’s Ruth performing My Russian Friend And I
Firth applies the right balance of pathos, sadness, northern humour and bloody-minded defiance, the tears and the cheers, all heightened by the piano-led storytelling songs that show off another side to Barlow’s songwriting in modern musical set-pieces such as Yorkshire, the carol-singing Who Wants A Silent Night (led by Amy Greene’s Cora at the piano) and Sunflower, (fronted by Melia’s Chris).
Barlow’s mastery of balladry is affirmed by Chaplin’s performances of not only Scarborough but also Very Slightly Almost and Kilimanjaro, while Firth’s lyrics lend exuberant humour to So I’ve Had A Little Word Done, the big, brassy, belter for Sarah Brown’s Celia, then a darker sting to vodka-swilling Ruth’s My Russian Friend And I, sung with confessional candour by Alison Taylor, bordering on self-loathing.
Melia and Chaplin bring out all sides of Chris and Annie’s friendship, the light and the shade, the highs and the lows , the contrasting temperaments, the fun and the fall-outs, the grief and the renewal. Around them, Greene’s Cora, Brown’s Celia, Taylor’s Ruth, Copeland’s Marie and the ever-wonderful Sandy Nicholson’s former teacher Jessie savour their moment in the spotlight.
So too does Nicola Dawson in her cameo as Knapely show judge Lady Cravenshire, Janie Woolgar’s ill-fated WI lecturer, Brenda Hulse, and Paula Stainton and Samantha Cole’s two Miss Wilsons, a double act forever offering pots of tea and coffee.
Kate Melia’s Chris and Jack Hooper’s Rod in York Musical Theatre Company’s Calendar Girls The Musical
Peter Melia’s John is affable, phlegmatic, humorous, even in the face of a terminal illness, while Jack Hooper’s Rod delivers two homespun homilies on love and marriage that will make even a cynic go all warm and fuzzy.
Hepworth’s disgraced head boy Danny and Clark’s wayward schoolgirl Jenny, who leads him astray, delight in their awkward teenage journey of discovery, joined by Jackson’s ever-cheeky, work-shy Tommo.
No less awkward is Joe Marucci’s Lawrence, the shy photographer who suggests how the traditions of the WI – knitting, baking, piano playing, flower arranging – should be adapted for the calendar shoot featuring the ladies of Knapely in all manner of shapely.
Aside from some technical difficulties with the sound, Wednesday’s opening night reaffirmed what a wonderful celebration of community, Yorkshire, life, flowers, love, humour, humanity and the power of song Calendar Girls remains.
York Musical Theatre Company in Calendar Girls The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight, 7.30pm; tomorrow, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 501935 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
In full bloom: Kathryn Addison’s cast in the finale to Calendar Girls The Musical at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre
Bharti Patel’s Sanjana, landlady of The Albion in Our Public House. Picture: Pamela Raith
THE premiere of Our Public House, Barney Norris’s big-hearted story of community, connection and what might happen if everyone truly had their say, is running at Leeds Playhouse this week.
When an entire community spoils its ballot papers and refuses to vote, angry at being unheard but wanting to show those in power they will not to be taken for granted, a pub on the brink of closure becomes the only place left to talk in touring company Dash Art’s agitated agitprop drama.
As a storm rages outside, The Albion landlady Sanjana (Bharti Patel), a family in mourning, familiar regulars, unexpected guests and local Labour MP Mary (Gabriella Leon) are thrown together for a night of debate, confession and open-mic speeches.
In a town divided by politics, secrets spill. Songs rise. Jokes crackle. Ideals clash. People fall in love. People fall out. Something shifts.
Inspired by the real words of more than 600 people nationwide,Our Public House transforms the state of the nation into a play with original live music where “drama and voices like yours take centre stage”.
At every show, a local community ensemble will be part of the action onstage, performing alongside the cast and highlighting the issues they feel are most important locally. Hence no two performances will be the same on Dash Art’s tour that will take in Prescot, Coventry, Cornwall, Sheffield Playhouse (June 17 to 20) and London’s Marylebone Theatre
Lauren Moakes as released prisoner Jo in Our Public House. Picture: Pamela Raith
Told through spoken English, British Sign Language (BSL), Sign Supported English (SSE), creative captioning and with original live music, Our Public House considers what happens when your voices take centre stage and those with influence start to listen, as explored by Norris, who also wrote the book for Sting’s shipbuilding musical, The Last Ship.
Patel and Leon are joined in Josephine Burton’s cast of hearing and deaf actors by Kit Esuruoso, Chaya Gupta, Lauren Moakes and Fergus O’Donnell for a topical play created over three years of research and workshopping that integrates the words of people from across England – some of whom will appear on stage.
The Albion, such an evocative name for a divided state-of-the-nation play, is an emblematic setting, where landlady Sanjana is the fulcrum. “She is running a speechwriting club early doors in the pub, before punters come in for the open-mic night,” says Dash Art artistic director Josephine Burton. “She’s had enough of the people feeling that they’re not heard, so she’s teaching them how to write and deliver speeches.”
Dialogue is delivered alongside songs, composed by Jonathan Walton, with lyrics co-written by workshop participants from across the country. In addition, every night throughout the play’s run, the audience will hear two speeches written and delivered by local people.
“It will be a new ensemble every night. That’s amazing” says Josephine. “So, all the way down the line, the whole process is really dynamic, and it’s constantly changing and evolving.”
The politics and the pints come with a potent chaser of humour, served with meaty ideas too. “Dash Arts asks the big questions of our time and attempts to answer them over multi-year programmes of work, with artists, with academics, with participants, and with audiences,” says Josephine.
Chaya Gupta, left, Lauren Moakes, Kit Esuruoso, front, Fergus O’Donnell, Gabriella Leon and Bharti Patel in the Buller Buller Buller, Oy Oy Oy! scene in Our Public House. Picture: Pamela Raith
Post-Brexit, she detected a fracturing of British UK identity, stirring her interest in “who we are in England today. What does it mean to be English?”
Three years ago, that question prompted the beginning of a process wherein Dash Art became involved in a speech-writing project, fronted by academic Alan Finlayson, that aimed to help people make and deliver speeches on issues they cared about.
Or as Josephine puts it: “Things that they felt we could do today, that would make tomorrow better. And my instinct was, if we supported the project – went round the country, went into community centres, and deaf communities, and prisons, and schools, and worked with young activists in Sheffield, and in Coventry, and in Norwich, and in Cornwall, and in Prescot – we’d get a real picture of who we are as a country.”
Those early stages “coincided with the dying days of the last Conservative government”. “We were hearing people talk about cost of living, and mental-health crisis, and special-needs education, and social housing. I always knew we were gonna make a play of some sort. I just didn’t know what,” she says.
Inspiration struck when Josephine realised a local pub would best suit those conversations. It was at this point that she brought playwright Barney Norris on board – with source material aplenty to utilise.
“I read 125 speeches before my initial workshop, and it was up to 200 by the time I delivered the first draft – and it’s kept growing,” he says. “So it’s kind of been a continual live document. This is my fourth play set in a pub.
Fergus O’Donnell’s Scott: Pub regular standing for Reform in the local election in Our Public House. Behind the bar is Lauren Moakes’ Jo.Picture: Pamela Raith
“I love a pub play, because I think the complex dynamics of status, and home, and performance in those spaces, are wonderful metaphor territory – for society, and also the kind of toxicity and ‘exclusionary-ness’ of pubs to some people, and the concept of welcome, the concept of a place you’re allowed to go in and get a glass of water, and not spend any money. And all the best stories happen around the fires.”
The creative process with Dash Arts felt very natural for Barney. “It’s a really exciting collaborative culture clash,” he says. “We’ve sustained the social-realist context that’s the basis for the majority of my work, and then, from time to time, we’ve exploded it – with music, or the public getting up on stage and speaking. So the play feels like this interesting meeting place of styles and languages, in the same way that society, of course, is also a meeting place.”
A further influence was Shakespeare’s The Tempest. “Could the Albion be like Prospero’s island, and could our landlady be a version of Prospero, conjuring magic, bringing people into her world?” ponders Barney. “And we’re touring to Shakespeare North, which feels appropriate.”
Barney describes Our Public House as “a play that engages with big ‘P’ politics”. “That’s a real new frontier,” he says. “Obviously, all theatre is political, but I hadn’t done a play about a politician.”
Coincidentally, the playwright had decided to enter politics himself, standing for the Greens in his hometown of Salisbury in the 2024 General Election. “That was really fun – an opportunity to amplify the lessons and share them, because I never imagined a world in which I won the seat of Salisbury off the Tories,” he says.
“But what I could do was to try and learn lessons about that process and feed them into the wider discourse – and the play was so exciting in that context, a way to talk about all that.”
Chaya Gupta, centre, leading the singing in Our Public House with Bharti Patel, left, Fergus O’Donnell, Kit Esuruoso, Lauren Moakes, and Gabriella Leon. Picture: Pamela Raith
Given that political office might seem an unlikely career swerve for a playwright, Barney cheerfully admits that it was not particularly on his to-do list. “I did it partly because I’d been going along to the meetings of the local Green Party, and honestly, at that time, there were only two of us attending the meetings regularly who were still a working age.
“I’d only been in the area for a short time, so I wouldn’t normally have muscled in, but I thought, oh, go on. I’d love that. It was this amazing opportunity to tramp the streets and meet people. One of the secret privileges of it was that I revisited and reintegrated into the landscape of my youth, having not lived in Salisbury since I was 18. You come back, you’re walking down every street you’ve been drunk underage on in your life. It was great.”
More seriously, Barney was struck, both on the doorstep and on the hustings, by the way politicians “have to pretend to listen in order to get a vote, and they will sort of half-promise some stuff or whatever”.
“There’s an extraordinary fakeness around what they’re allowed to say,” he says. “For example, the Labour manifesto had just 85 words on their agricultural policy – and that was what the Labour candidate was allowed to say. He didn’t have any other insight, and couldn’t answer any specific question. That was really interesting: to see the limits of language, the straitjacket of what an individual politician is allowed by head office to say.”
As a writer, Barney relished the colour and flavour of the environment: the Reform candidate was openly an admirer of Putin, “which, in the city of Novichok, felt like a bold move,” he says.
Also standing for election was the king of the Druids, Arthur Pendragon. However, the most significant contribution to the play’s plot from Barney’s brief time in politics was the idea of a vote strike.
Gabriella Leon’s MP Mary holding centre stage in Our Public House. Picture: Pamela Raith
“On election night, you have to look at every single spoiled ballot, and collectively agree that they are spoiled, and that they shouldn’t be counted,” he says. “There were hundreds more than usual at the last election. Many of them were penises drawn on the ballot, which turned out to be a campaign organised by a local anarchist who worked in a bar.
“That felt arresting to me. I thought, well, there’s something in the water, isn’t there? The rage and rejection that people feel towards mainstream politics was there, in those endless daubings on the ballot paper.”
This is not, however, a symptom of disengagement, suggests Josephine. “People are incredibly inspirational. If you give them an opportunity to speak, everyone has ideas about what we could do that would make things better, but they don’t feel heard,” she says. “People feel politics is broken because the system does not enable change. It’s definitely not apathy.”
Key to the play’s vision is the central politician character, MP Mary, being deaf. “We spent time in the deaf community around the UK,” says Josephine. “It was so powerful to hear what they felt, and to be able to provide a platform for those feelings and thoughts to be expressed. It was important for us to bring a deaf actor into the room alongside a hearing cast.”
Actress Gabriella Leon “helped us and gave us permission to build a deaf character,” says Josephine. “That the politician in our play is deaf lends some irony to the fact that she is the first person to listen to the voices of the local community.”
The creation of Our Public House has been rich in its variety of lived experience. “The work that we’ve done in prisons has been unbelievable,” says Josephine, after company members visited HMP Styal, a women’s prison just outside Manchester.
The “community ensemble” supporting cast changes at every performance of Our Public House to represent differing voices from the public. Picture: Pamela Raith
“My heart went out for the women in the room, and they have inspired one of the characters in our play. These are people who are so silenced in society. It was very moving.”
For Harvey, creating the character of a putative Reform councillor was among his most invigorating challenges. “The arc of political zeitgeist across the period that we’ve been making the show has mirrored the journey we’ve been on with that,” he says.
It was essential to avoid approaching the character “from a place of demonisation and snobbery and dismissal,” he posits. “It’s such an incredibly prominent element of our contemporary politics. So I’ve really tried to articulate that empathetically from the inside out.
“My process of writing is very much to ‘be’ the characters, and I write out loud with my mouth, and then I write it down later. I just wander around the fields, talking to myself in their voice until they’re funny, you know?
“And so, to become that person – coming from the modern urban Left – that felt like a stimulating adventure. I hope what we’ve done is write a person of great dignity and integrity, with real concerns and problems – but who is coming up with, to my mind, the wrong solutions for them.”
Both Josephine and Barney emphasise that Our Public House should not feel like a lecture. “It’s just really, really funny,” she says “It’s a comedy. A really good night out.” Crucially, it is relatable too. “It’s a play about everywhere. Your place. Your local.”
Dash Art in Our Public House, Leeds Playhouse, tonight, 7.45pm; tomorrow, 2.30pm & 7.45pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk. Sheffield Playhouse, June 17 to 20; sheffieldtheatres.co.uk.
The full cast in the finale to John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers The Play. Picture: Hugo Glendinning
WHEN Monty Python alumnus John Cleese opened Fawlty Towers The Play at London’s Apollo Theatre in May 2024, he was “more confident about it than almost anything I’ve ever done”.
After two sold-out West End seasons, a ten-month 39-venue UK tour was launched in September 2025, visiting Leeds Grand Theatre in early January and now the Grand Opera House in York this week.
“I know all the lines,” said the lady in the stalls row behind your reviewer at Wednesday’s well-attended matinee. Such has been the permeation of the coastal hotel shenanigans of Cleese and Connie Booth’s beloved BBC sitcom, whose 50th anniversary was the trigger for Cleese to mount the stage show, directed with comedic elan by Caroline Jay Ranger.
Just as Eric Idle adapted the 1975 film Monty Python And The Holy Grail for the hit stage musical Monty Python’s Spamalot, so Cleese, now 86, is on to a winner with Fawlty Towers The Play. Hapless Spanish waiter Manuel may say “I know nothing”, but Cleese knows everything about how to transfer Basil and Sybil’s trials and tribulations from small screen to stage.
Whereas Idle affectionately subtitled Spamalot “A New Musical (Lovingly) Ripped Off From The Motion Picture”, Cleese has adapted three of the most cherished episodes – The Hotel Inspectors, Communication Problems and The Germans – to form two Acts, concluding the madcap proceedings with a new finale.
“The English do love a farce,” observed Cleese, whose play has the classic structure, physical silliness and comic verve of the works of Ben Travers, Brian Rix and Ray Cooney. He named Michael Frayn’s Noises Off and Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors too, and you will be laughing equally as frequently at Basil’s antics in Fawlty Towers live on stage.
There is an added factor here: familiarity, a feeling as comforting as a well worn pair of slippers or a favourite sofa or the sound of Dennis Wilson’s TV theme tune. That familiarity begins the moment you settle in your seat and take in Liz Ascroft’s open-plan set design of the hotel reception desk, the stairs to Mrs Richards’ first-floor bedroom, the dining room and the doors to the kitchen.
Above, to one side, stands a model of the frontage of Fawlty Towers, in the English Riviera town of Torquay. In the middle is a cut-out of the roof; to the other side is the Fawlty Towers sign – and yes, the order of the letters will be changed for Act Two in the tradition of the TV series. The first word becomes ‘Flowery’; over to you to work out the second!
Ascroft’s design sticks faithfully to the British mid-Seventies, with its ghastly colour palette, and her costume design does likewise, from ill-fitting shiny suits for assorted men to Sybil’s trademark pink two-piece The Malcolm Macdonald-style massive sideburns of Adam Elliott’s Mr Walt are a particular retro joy.
Elliott is part of a 17-strong cast – so rare to have such a large troupe for a tour these days – that is led by Danny Bayne as the deluded, crane-legged hotel proprietor Basil Fawlty and Mia Austen as his acerbic, haughty, exasperated but exasperating wife Sybil.
Cleese once described bolshy Basil as “rude but inefficient”, and Bayne’s characterisation captures that essence, relishing Fawlty’s irascibility, his propensity to ingratiate guests one moment, then treat them as a verbal punch bag the next.
Throughout, Bayne’s Basil finds Austen’s always right Sybil to be the bane of his frustrated life, and the more you watch his pratfalls, the more it strikes you how he is the opposite of many comedy favourites.
We love Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin because they ultimately win, like Shakespeare’s clowning fools. Fawlty, by contrast, only worsens his situation, tripping himself up with every utterance and foiled plan, and he is all the funnier for that, sharing the loser status of Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder, albeit but without the intelligence and cunning to keep escaping.
Caroline Jay Ranger chalked up an earlier West End touring hit with the musical version of Only Fools And Horses that shared Fawlty Towers The Play’s sense of celebration of a British classic, while drawing performances from her cast that mirror the television versions but still bring new life to them too.
Especially so here from the veteran Paul Nicholas, still twinkling in marvellously mischievous comic form as the bumbling Major and Hemi Yerohem’s Barcelona waiter Manuel, the butt of so much Basil intemperance. Seeing such characters in the flesh adds still more to the comedic joy.
Joanne Clifton, swapping the song and dance of musical theatre for the straightest role here, is a delight as unflappable chamber maid Polly Sherman, echoing Connie Booth’s distinctive voice too. Jemma Churchill’s Mrs Richards, even grouchier than Basil, is the nightmare hotel guest personified, barking and snapping while refusing to turn up her hearing aid.
Look out too for the double-act cameos of Emily Winter and Dawn Buckland’s old ladies, Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby, and Greg Haiste’s Mr Hutchinson, Mrs Richards’ rival as Basil’s most irritating hotel guest.
Fawlty Towers The Play is fawltless: British comedy at its best, farcical and furious, utterly Seventies yet timeless too. Make a reservation, now.
John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers The Play, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Eileen Walsh’s TV psychic Sheila Gold in York Theatre Royal’s world premiere of Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman’s The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
JEREMY Dyson and Andy Nyman’s world premiere of The Psychic is into its last week at York Theatre Royal, where lead actress Eileen Walsh and professional theatre newcomer Megan Placito have been enjoying every twist and turn of the writer-director duo’s psychological thriller.
Eileen is playing popular TV medium Sheila Gold, who loses a high-profile court case that brands her a charlatan, costing her not only her reputation but also a fortune in legal fees. When a wealthy couple ask Sheila to conduct a séance to attempt to make contact with their late child, she senses an opportunity to bleed them for money. What follows makes her question everything she has ever believed, leading her on a journey into the darkest corners of her life.
Joining her on that journey is Megan’s Tara, Sheila’s ambitious, resolute niece, who combines vulnerability and underdog defiance with a determination to inherit her family’s fairground wisdom and tricks.
“I did a Zoom meeting with Jeremy and Andy two months before we started rehearsals after they’d seen my work and said, ‘Can we send you the script?’,” says Eileen. “I’d never done a play like this, but the lads were so enthusiastic about their subject, the magic and the jump scares that it was an easy ‘yes’ for me.”
Megan, who trained at ArtsEd, had appeared in the television series Father Brown, Casualty and Doctors and the films Peter Pan’s Neverland, Decode Me and The Salt Path, but not yet on stage when she was contacted by casting director Arthur Carrington.
“Jeremy and Andy had asked him, ‘can you find any girls from a showman background?’, and I was the first one they saw in January, after I was sent the script on my birthday in December – on the same day that my boyfriend bought me a book on witchcraft! It was like all these things were coming together,” says Megan.
“I’d done some indie films and the usual rites-of-passage TV shows, but I was desperate to do theatre, although Arts Ed was more focused on TV and film training, but all the performances that had captivated me had been on stage. Like seeing Eileen’s performance in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at the National [Theatre], playing John Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth.”
Megan met Jeremy and Andy at the Umbrella Rooms in Shaftsbury Avenue. “I was just wanting to rack their brains as I grew up in a travelling showman community in Chertsey in Surrey, who worked on fairgrounds,” she says.
“My mum is a showman and my father is a ‘joskin’ [a non-traveller], as she wanted to get out of the showman world, where, in a lot of the communities, there are pressures. But I had freedom, I went to a regular GCSE school, and when I said I wanted to be an actor, my mum said, ‘yeah, do it’. Showmanship is in my heart; it’s in my blood to perform.”
Megan Placito’s Tara in The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
At her first meeting with Jeremy and Andy, Megan was “asking them about the language in the play, and how they’d written about a matriarchal world when it’s called ‘showman’ – though actually the community is run by the women.”
Eileen was drawn to Dyson and Nyman’s fascination with the powers of psychics. “The way the guys spoke about ‘reading people’ intrigued me,” she says.
“I’d just done a show called The Second Woman with an Australian company at Cork Opera House, when it was an opportunity to see how I could hold up for 24 hours, playing the same scene 100 times opposite 100 men, so I felt it was moving in the right direction for me to come out and talk with a live audience straightaway in The Psychic.
“It was not something scary for me to deal with, bringing the audience on a journey into the play through direct address.”
Eileen continues: “It’s really interesting to give people in the audience the chance to talk if they fill out the ‘share card’: they’ll share their stories, share eye contact with you, and it’s amazing how many people will share intimate details about themselves.
“I love the bravery that it takes for them to do that, standing up in front of the audience, who actually become the eighth character in the play.”
York Theatre Royal is running a 35 Live ticket offer for 18 to 35-year-olds, where they can acquire two tickets for £15 each. “People in that age group should see The Psychic because it’s on-trend with TikTok and Tarot card reading, and so many people are interested in spiritualism, ‘the other’ and ‘manifesting’,” says Megan.
“I do think that people will enjoy that side of it: the question of whether any of it is real or unreal. There’s so much interest in ghost stories, and I love how it feels like a Victorian melodrama too.”
The Psychic, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees.Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The Psychic: York Theatre Royal is offering 35 Live ticket offer for 18 to 35-year-olds
Leading light: Dan Crawfurd-Porter’s Melchior in Inspired By Theatre’s Spring Awakening. Picture: Mia Scudds
MIKHAIL Lim played Georg in York Stage Musicals’ northern premiere of Spring Awakening at the Vaudeville Theatre, Joseph Rowntree School, York, in November 2010.
Roll forward to May 19 2026 when his startling production of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s rock musical was launched with a 20th Anniversary Preview Event, 20 years to the day since the off-Broadway premiere opened at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York City.
Entry came with a tote bag emblazoned with a lyric from the show. Inside were a notepad and pen (tools for the reviewers, received gratefully) and a Welcome note from Inspired By Theatre, the York company fast establishing a reputation for injecting thrilling new life into landmark musicals.
Spring Awakening director Mikhail Lim, right, in rehearsal with actor-musician JJ Thornton, who plays Hanschen. Picture: Tiggy-Jade
“What you are about to witness is a production that aims to honour the heart and spirit of Spring Awakening whilst bringing fresh and contemporary ideas to the piece through thrust staging, actor-musicianship, expressive movement and an intimate, visceral approach to storytelling,” the statement read, emphasising the desire to highlight the kinetic musical’s continued relevance two decades later.
Your reviewer would argue that Sheik and Sater’s raucous musical take on Frank Wedekind’s late-19th century play has taken on even more resonance in those 20 years. The original play’s controversial themes of rape, abortion, teenage suicide, gay first love and adolescent sexual discovery led to Spring Awakening being judged too scandalous to perform in Wedekind’s lifetime, with no public performances until November 1906.
Rianna Pearce’s Wendla, centre, with Maz Nachif’s Martha, left, and Skye Pickford’s Ilse in Spring Awakening. Picture: Mia Scudds
Wedekind was damning the lack of birds & bees tuition and protection provided both by hand-washing and wringing parents and teachers when faced by their young charges’ burgeoning sexual feelings and search for identity. Now, the world has gone the other way, in the era where social media and the dark web provides a tsunami of information, but teenagers can still feel overwhelmed.
Spring Awakening – such an apt title – is a devastating, dark musical of youthful yearning rubbing up against austere learning in the strict schooldays of 1891 Germany. Part play, part punk concert, it comes suited and booted with strong language (the best song is called Totally ****ed) and scenes of a sexual nature (staged with the involvement of intimacy co-ordinator Lina Glissman, by the way).
In a tale of sex & drudge & shock’n’roll, company founder Dan Crawfurd-Porter swaps directorial duties for the Hamlet-echoing role of piercingly bright, free-thinking, atheist, rebellious student Melchior, sharing centre stage with Rianna Louise’s awakening young flower Wendla and Eryn Grant’s tormented, workaholic, tragic Moritz.
Blow by blow account: JJ Thornton’s Hanschen and guitar-playing actor-musician Oskar Nuttall’s Ernst in Spring Awakening. Picture: Mia Scudds
Spring Awakening is above all a wake-up call to the damage that ignorance imposes on young people in a sexually repressive era, here represented by the multiple stultifying roles of the Adult Woman (Gemma McDonald) and Adult Men (Stefan Michaels). Righteous, religious, blinkered, they rule by book and sometimes by belt.
The combination of Gi Vasey’s thrust set design, placing the audience close up, and musical director Jessica Viner’s band of keys, drum and string players, bolstered by guitar and piano/bass/Cajon-playing actor-musicians, gives even more intensity to the already heightened drama.
Vasey places a bare tree stump at the back, draped in ribbons, complemented by bare branches to either side. In the centre is a sand pit, framed in stones, that serves as school playground and field and transfers to a school room with the aid of chairs. The sand is of the shifting variety, in keeping with sense of seismic change, of matters going beyond balance and control.
Eryn Grant’s Moritz, centre, with JJ Thornton’s Hanschen, left, Oskar Nuttall’s Ernst, Lewis Jordan’s Georg and Kailum Farmery’s Otto. Picture: Mia Scudds
Freya McIntosh’s choreography matches the anger and frustration of the modern yet instantly timeless songs, breaking out of the formal lines and restrictive behaviour of the classroom for free, explosive expression, often with a microphone in the hand (a style of presentation later seen in Six The Musical).
Julie Fisher’s costume designs, with green school uniforms for the boys and a more diverse palette for the girls’ dresses, work well with Daniel Grey’s lighting design, and Will Nicholson’s sound design blends band and actor-musicians with clarity.
Eryn Grant is particularly impressive as the crushed Moritz, while Crawfurd-Porter’s Melchior has an edge to him, contrasting with the innocence of curiosity of Rianna Louise’s Wendla.
Explosion of punk energy in the classroom, observed by Stefan Michaels’ Adult Man and Gemma McDonald’s Adult Woman in Spring Awakening. Picture: Mia Scudds
Skye Pickford’s Ilse, with her stillness of presence, JJ Thornton’s Hanschen and Maz Nachif’s Martha catch the eye too, performing in tandem with Oskar Nuttall’s Ernst, Lewis Jordan’s Georg, Kailum Farmey’s Otto, Ines Campos’s Thea and Greta Piasecka in a schoolroom cast that has uniformity but bags of individuality too.
Drawing so strikingly on German Expressionism and folkloric imagery, Mikhail Lim has delivered a shattering, alarming, agitated, impassioned Spring Awakening, reaffirming Inspired By Theatre as a major player, a welcome upstart, on York’s theatre scene.
Inspired By Theatre presents Spring Awakening, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Inspired By Theatre marking the 20th anniversary of Spring Awakening’s off-Broadway debut on May 19 2006. Picture: Mia Scudds
The full cast in John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers The Play, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Hugo Glendinning
FROM the hotel shenanigans of Fawlty Towers to the uplifting Yorkshire tale of Calendar Girls, Pixies’ 40th anniversary tour to Daniel Sloss’s bitter comic bite, Charles Hutchinson locates cultural hotspots aplenty.
Don’t mention the war: John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers: The Play, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm today, tomorrow and Saturday matinees
FIFTY years since John Cleese and Connie Booth’s chaotic hotel sitcom graced British television screens, Monty Python alumnus Cleese has adapted three vintage Fawlty Towers episodes for a stage play.
Following a sold-out West End season, Caroline Jay Ranger directs the 18-strong tour cast featuring Danny Byrne’s calamitous Basil Fawlty, Mia Austen’s exasperated wife Sybil, Joanne Clifton’s stoical chamber maid Polly and Paul Nicholas’s bumbling Major. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Pixies: Making their York debut after 40 years tonight
Recommended but sold out already: Pixies: Pixies 40, Celebrating 40 Years, York Barbican, tonight, doors 7pm
PIXIES are playing York for the first time in their 40-year career, opening the 13-date British and European leg of the Pixies 40 tour at the Barbican, the only Yorkshire show. Celebrating four decades since their formation in Boston, Massachusetts, the American alt.rock band’s founding members, Black Francis, Joey Santiago and David Lovering, are joined by bassist Emma Richardson. Gans support.
Jerron Paxton: Singing the blues at NCEM tonight
The Crescent and Brudenell Presents present Jerron Paxton, National Centre for Early Music, York, tonight, 8pm
SOUTH Central Los Angeles-born singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jerron Paxton’s lived-in voice and California drawl underpin a stripped-down concoction of blues, ragtime, folk and old-time Black music styles that originated nearly a century ago, as heard on his latest album, Things Done Changed, released on Smithsonian Folkways in 2024.
“I write and sing about the culture I come from. It seems a bit neglected,” says New York-based Paxton, who plays guitar, banjo, piano and violin. As journalist Lynell George expresses in the liner notes: “It’s all there…you’ll discover context and background: the history of people and place and the come-what-may gamble of life-altering journeys.” Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Sandy Nicholson, front, left, Katie Melia and Alexa Chaplin in rehearsal for York Musical Theatre Company’s Calendar Girls The Musical
Yorkshire musical of the week: York Musical Theatre Company in Calendar Girls The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
KATHRYN Addison directs York Musical Theatre Company in Cheshire childhood friends Gary Barlow and Tim Firth’s musical account of the true story of a Yorkshire group of ordinary Women’s Institute members doing something extraordinary after the death of a much-loved husband.
When they decide to make an artistic nude calendar for a cancer charity, upturning preconceptions is a dangerous business, leading to emotional and personal ramifications that no-one could anticipate but bringing each woman unexpectedly into flower. Katie Melia’s Chris and Alexa Chaplin’s Annie lead the cast. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Dan Crawfurd-Porter in the role of Melchior in Inspired By Theatre’s Spring Awakening. Picture: Dan Crawfurd-Porter
American musical of the week: Inspired By Theatre in Spring Awakening, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
YORK company Inspired By Theatre marks the 20th anniversary of Spring Awakening’s off-Broadway debut in New York City by staging Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s raw, explosive coming-of-age musical in the matching week.
Cutting straight to the heart of youth, desire, repression and rebellion in 1890s’ Germany, Mikhail Lim’s actor-musician production follows a group of young people navigating sex, love and identity in a society that refuses to educate or protect them, drawing on German Expressionism and folkloric imagery to boot. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
1812 Theatre Company’s poster for Goodnight Mister Tom at Helmsley Arts Centre
Ryedale play of the week: 1812 Theatre Company in Goodnight Mister Tom, Helmsley Arts Centre, tonight until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
JULIE Wilson directs Helmsley Arts Centre’s resident troupe, 1812 Theatre Company, in Goodnight Mister Tom. Adapted by David Wood from Michelle Magorian’s novel, the play is set during the Second World War, when sad, young William Beech is evacuated to the idyllic English countryside and builds a remarkable and moving friendship with the elderly recluse Tom Oakley. All seems perfect until William is devastatingly summoned by his mother back to London. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.
Crumb of discomfort: Can castigated TV baking celebrity Petronella Parfait (Ellen Carnazza) mount a comeback in Badapple Theatre’s Crumbs? Picture: Karl Andre Photography
Bake-off of the week: Badapple Theatre Company in Crumbs, York Theatre Royal Studio, today until Saturday, 7,45pm, plus 2.30pm Thursday & Friday and 2pm Saturday matinees
FORMER TV baking celebrity Petronella Parfait is out of a job and out of her depth, trying to reinvent herself in the cut-throat world of social influencers. Can she keep the lights – and the oven – on as her live comeback show descends into delicious disaster? Expect big laughs, bold flavours, live bread making and a tasty treat for the audience at the end of Kate Bramley’s play as Green Hammerton’s Badapple Theatre Company returns to the Theatre Royal Studio. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Daniel Sloss: Acidic comedy at York Barbican tomorrow
Snappiest show title of the week gig of the week: Daniel Sloss, Bitter, York Barbican, tomorrow, 8pm
ACERBIC Scottish wit Daniel Sloss likes to keep his titles brief. After Jigsaw, Dark, X, Socio, Hubris, Now and Can’t, Sloss is Bitter in his 13th tour show, visiting York this weekend after playing 55 countries so far.
He has performed stand-up for more than half of his lifetime, sold out nine New York theatre seasons off-Broadway, appeared on the Conan show ten times on American television, broken Edinburgh Fringe box-office records and published his book Everyone You Hate Is Going To Die (Knopf/Penguin Random House) in 2021. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The Wizard of York welcoming one and all to the magical WizardFest in York. Picture: The Story Of You
Magical event of the week: WizardFest, York, May 23 to 25
WIZARDFEST, York’s official Festival of Wizardry, waves its magic wand over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend as The Wizard of York conjures up spellbinding events, tours, trails, workshops, shows and fantastical food and drink.
Wizardry fans can book for the Wizard Walk of York, Brick Magic LEGO workshop, Wizard Family Rave, Giant Bubble Show or Wicked at City Screen Picturehouse. Expect owl appearances, dragons and the new Wizard Activity Zone on Parliament Street with wand making, face painting and more. Dress to impress for the free fancy dress parade from St Helen’s Square on Monday at 3pm. A digital map and full list of events with booking links can be found at wizardwalkofyork.com/wizardfest.
The Lightning Threads: Playing Ryedale Blues Club at Milton Rooms, Malton
Blues gig of the week: Ryedale Blues Club presents The Lightning Threads, Milton Rooms, Malton, May 28, 8pm
FORMED in 2019, The Lightning Threads are an energetic electronic blues-rock power trio from Sheffield, influenced by The Black Keys, Gary Clark Jr, Cream and The Doors. They feature face-melting guitars, groove-ridden basslines and a multi-instrumentalist drummer simultaneously playing keys. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.
Ellen Carnazza as disgraced TV bakery queen Petronella Parfait in Crumbs, the Badapple Theatre Company play with live bread baking. Picture: Karl Andre
BADAPPLE Theatre Company is celebrating the start of its year as associate company at York Theatre Royal by staging cookery comedy-drama Crumbs in the Studio from tomorrow to Saturday.
Under artistic director and writer Kate Bramley’s leadership, Badapple has been bringing original theatre to unusual locations in Yorkshire and far beyond since 1998, but straitened financial times have seen the Green Hammerton company take the decision to stage a solo show.
Starring the chameleon Ellen Carnazza, Bramley’s study of the cult of celebrity and social media influencers first toured last autumn and is now back on the road this spring with its turbulent tale of the ruthless exploits of disgraced TV baking celebrity Petronella Parfait.
“Let go” from her high-profile TV show under dubious circumstances, Petronella is determined to re-style herself within the fast-paced and cut-throat world of social media influencers, but can she keep the lights on – as well as the oven – in the face of almost certain doom?
The four-day Theatre Royal run follows Badapple’s Theatre On Your Doorstep national tour of 22 rural venues, when North Yorkshire Council provided funding for five performances in “the most remote extremities of North Yorkshire: Clapham-cum Newby, “practically in Lancashire”; Appletreewick; Glusburn, near Keighley; Darley and West Burton, “at the top of the Yorkshire Dales”.
“It’s what we do, taking shows to villages like that, and not only did North Yorkshire Council put in a small amount of money, but also a massive amount of enthusiasm,” says Kate.
In signature Badapple style, Crumbs pushes the limits of live theatre performance with a joyous blend of comedy, clowning and bread baked live on stage.
“We’ve had so much fun touring this outrageous show,” says Kate. “It amazes me every time to see Ellen captivate audiences with the ruthless Petronella, and play five other supporting characters too, some at the same time, while baking bread in front of our very eyes.”
Kate is now spending two days a week at the Theatre Royal. “We’re so delighted to be invited to become associate company at York Theatre Royal this year,” she says. “It’s a real honour and comes as an amazing boost at a crucial time for Badapple, with the hope of some brighter days ahead.
“It’s why I’ve never cancelled a Badapple tour as I believe the sea will trickle over you and someone will step in.”
The proof is the new partnership, where, at the epicentre of Badapple’s year as associate company, Kate will be developing a new play in partnership with the Theatre Royal’s creative team.
“I’ll be working on a script with the support of creative director Juliet Forster over the coming year, to be given a research and development showcase open to the public next March,” she says. “It’s so exciting as I’ve not done work exclusively for a theatre since 2003.
Flour power: Ellen Carnazza’s Petronella Parfait in Crumbs. Picture: Karl Andre
“The association with the Theatre Royal will be built around Badapple pushing into a couple of directions: one is partnerships with theatres; the other is continuing to do what we do in non-theatre spaces.”
Kate continues: “When the Theatre Royal announced it was looking for a new associate company, I went in with my pitch, knowing that we’re not the kind of company the Theatre Royal would usually support, as it’s normally about the building and growth of a company when its first starting out, as a lever to open up opportunities.
“I was hugely aware Badapple was not that company, as we’re long established, but the more I spoke to Juliet and her colleagues, I realised they felt they could help us make a step-change, one of many we’ve made in going back into theatres, but also in helping us on the administration side.
“That means we can access any aspect of the Theatre Royal’s expertise, while we can provide our expertise in rural touring and small-scale touring.”
Kate gives an example. “I’ve been talking with the Futureproof team [the Theatre Royal’s talent development and consultation programme for 18 to 26 year olds], which looks at the future strategy of the Theatre Royal, discussing how the next generation of York theatre practitioners views the way ahead here,” she says.
“It’s exciting that I can offer my expertise and the Theatre Royal can do likewise for Badapple in a symbiotic relationship.”
There will be a practical benefit for Badapple too. “The Theatre Royal will provide rehearsal space for our tours coming up in the autumn, at Christmas and next spring, as well as space for auditions and play development,” says Kate.
In the meantime, let’s see how the cook crumbles – or not! – in Crumbs. “I love Crumbs,” says Kate. “I heard myself saying to someone that it’s Badapple’s ‘fightback show’, and I have to say that Ellen is the hardest-working woman in theatre in that kitchen.
“I don’t know what more we could have done to create this show, so maybe it has an air of defiance after what Badapple’s been through [with a loss of funding].
“The hope is that we can move forward, not to be stuck in becoming known for one-person shows, though we’re very fortunate that there are some massive one-person shows doing so well, even transferring to Broadway.”
Step forward Jodie Comer (Prima Facie), Minnie Driver (Every Brilliant Thing), Rosamund Pike (Inter Alia), Cynthia Erivo (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and Daniel Radcliffe (Every Brilliant Thing). “It’s exciting that small-form theatre shows, one teller with a big story, are being more widely accepted by audiences,” says Kate.
“I’m not saying that theatre should depend on this, but in a positive way, there’s an environment where audiences are enjoying these shows and are thrilled by what can be achieved.
“But there’s a natural growth in the shows I’m planning for Badapple. Our autumn tour will be a reprise of Back To The Land Girls, touring as a two-hander, returning after 15 years. Our Christmas show will be a panto mash-up, Cinderella In Boots: a mash-up that absolutely requires three actors and will be very silly.
Kate Bramley: Badapple Theatre Company artistic director and writer
“I’m really looking forward to it after Richard Kay’s Sleeping Beauty & The Beast mash-up sold out in 2024, and it’s going to be me writing it this time.”
Contemplating the shows ahead, Kate says: “Back To The Land Girls was very popular but it hasn’t been out on tour for a long time, so a lot of people haven’t seen it, and I’ll be doing a bit of re-writing to make it more contemporary for the new tour.
“Then we’ll have our crazy Christmas explosion of panto fun, which hopefully will bring us back to where we were two years ago.”
Next spring’s tour will be A Lady About Town. “It’s a play about suffrage and women aged over 21 getting the vote, as we have the 100th anniversary coming up in 2028,” says Kate. “One of the characters is a newspaper columnist and the other is a suffragette activist. They have different ideas about how to achieve the end game, maybe leading to direct action or not.
“It strikes me that now the same thing is happening with climate change and fuel protests in Ireland. There is that dilemma whether violence, in some way or other, becomes the only route to perceived change.”
Looking ahead to the joint project with York Theatre Royal, Kate says: “I’m working on a play called Mama da Vinci, about the relationship between Leonardo and his mother just before he left for Florence to be an apprentice at the age of 15.
“I’ve been doing a lot of reading around this subject, about the theory of who his mother was, as he lived between his mother’s house and his grandfather’s house as he was an illegitimate child.
“I’m really fascinated by the time before he was 15, building up a portfolio as a young boy growing up in rural Italy, with all these neuro-divergent talents that made him a polymath. He was hundreds of years ahead of what he could materialise. He was already a genius as a teenager, reaching across so many disciplines – and I have a teenage son who constantly surprises me!”
Kate continues: “His mother fears she may never see him again after releasing him to the world to be a genius, so it will be a play as much about being a parent as her son being a genius. That’s where I hope the play will have modern relevance.
“My gut instinct is she was very important to Leonardo from the start…but this is all from my imagination, which means I can explore the humanity, the characters behind the story, not just the factual events.”
Badapple’s link-up with York Theatre Royal is a “total game-changer” for Kate. “To be honest, I can’t quite believe it. I now pinch myself that I’m working here two days a week, whether hot-desking or sitting in the cafe,” she says.
“This is the first time in 25 years that I’m working on a play that doesn’t have a commercial deadline. Normally I have a deadline to write to order, though I could never have done that without partnerships with audiences, but it’s nice to be different with this project, to be able to work on something a little more esoteric.”
Badapple Theatre Company in Crumbs, York Theatre Royal Studio, tomorrow (20/5/2026) to Saturday, 7.45pm plus 2.30pm Thursday and Friday and 2pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.Also: North Stainley Village Hall, near Ripon, June 25, 7.30pm. Box office: 01765 635236.
Badapple Theatre’s poster for Kate Bramley’s baking play Crumbs
Sophie Maybury’s Harper and Sean Cameron’s Andy dancing in condiment costumes in My Mad Mum. Pictures: James Drury
CONSIDER this statistic: 3.7 million under-18s in the United Kingdom have a parent who struggles with a mental illness. That’s one in three children in every UK classroom.
For too many of them, it feels like a secret they have to carry alone, hence their plight is invisible: hidden in plain sight, leaving them to deal with unique challenges at school and at home.
Our Time Charity, the only British charity dedicated to improving the outcomes for children growing up in these circumstances, has teamed up with York community arts collective Next Door But One for a second time, following up 2025’s How To Be A Kid with a schools tour of Ant Stones’ two-hander My Mad Mum, topped off by two public 5.30pm performances at York Explore.
Sophie Maybury’s new teacher, Miss Knowles, and Sean Cameron’s “scary” head of behaviour, Mr Fletcher, in My Mad Mum
The school shows, which began last week for 3,000 York and North Yorkshire secondary pupils, are ccompanied by discussions on the subject of mental health, identity and being a young carer for a parent.
Next Door But One specialises in raising awareness of often unspoken topics, a brief encapsulated in My Mad Mum, Stones’s deeply affecting story of GCSE pupil Andy (Sean Cameron) and Harper (fellow Leeds Conservatoire graduate Sophie Maybury), the new girl at school.
Billed as a “fast-paced, fun and fearless collision of real friendships, messy families and surviving the stuff no-one warns you about as a teenager”, this hour-long drama serves up their conversations with direct-address frankness, yet both pupils are cramped by a carapace of self-protection.
My Mad Mum director Kate Veysey, left, in the rehearsal room with assistant director dramaturg Matthew Harper-Hardcastle and company manager Jane Williamson
Andy is already the subject of “looks, whispers, rumours” of his “mad mum”, whose “health improvements never last”. He shares everything with new soul mate Harper but is unable to tell his teacher, Miss Knowles (Maybury’s colourfully attired second character), of the real reason why he has been late to school three times this week.
Recently qualified, enthusiastic, but with much to learn, her inexperience leads her to respond by rote, sentencing him to detention, rather than investigating further, and it must be hoped that one of the consequences of this play’s exposure of children suffering in silence is a greater understanding, a willingness to dig deeper, to look beneath the surface.
Harper, by contrast, does not reveal her own situation to school poetry champion Andy, instead attributing her father’s need to move to being in the military. She wants to be there to support Andy, rather than burden him with the truth of her “mad dad”, whose doctors are “always holding something back”.
Sophie Maybury’s Harper and Sean Cameron’s Andy in a playful moment in My Mad Mum
When the revelation comes, it is a shattering moment, portrayed with intense emotional impact by Cameron’s initially wounded Andy and Maybury’s caring Harper.
They share a love of dance moves, one expressed throughout in Bailey Dowler’s carefree movement direction, culminating in the joyful finale of their heightened bond, Andy in a Tomato Ketchup costume, Harper in Yellow Mustard, each topped off by a cone (as if for squeezing).
For all the seriousness of the play’s topic, Stones and director Kate Veysey bring out the humour too, whether in those condiment costumes; a “Mustard/must admit” pun; Harper still writing with a fountain pen or Cameron’s portrayal of the frankly scary head of behaviour, Mr Fletcher.
Catherine Chapman’s fold-out set design turns into a house door for Seam Cameron’s Andy to express frustration with Sophie Maybury’s Harper
Catherine Chapman’s set design is minimalist but all the more effective for that economy: two chairs, one yellow, the other grey, matching the contrasting colours of a fold-up framework that can turn into a bus stop, a slide, a school room, a doorway or a house front.
Stones, Veysey and Cameron and Maybury, in their NDB1 debuts, combine with similarly striking effect in an eye-opening, heartfelt, deeply caring piece of theatre in the cause of social change.
Next Door But One presents My Mad Mum at York Explore, May 13 and 14, 5.30pm, and on schools’ tour.
