Category: Theatre

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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 horse-riding accident on October 5, requiring hospitalisation, and 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

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Alice Rose Palmer and Joe Parker to perform Pocklington Arts Centre’s festive adventure, A Christmas Sparkle

Alice Rose Palmer: Playing Sparkle in A Christmas Sparkle at Pocklington Arts Centre

ALICE Rose Palmer and Joe Parker will be the cast for Pocklington Arts Centre’s Christmas production, A Christmas Sparkle, from December 11 to 24.

Marking the fourth collaboration between playwright Elizabeth Godber and PAC, the festive show will take families on a new adventure with best friends Sparkle and Fitz as they search for the Sugar Plum Fairy and Sparkle’s true destiny.

Cue festive magic, songs and local references aplenty in Godber’s third Christmas show at PAC, following 2025’s Jingle All The Way and 2024’s Jack Frost’s Christmas Wish.

In the fairy grotto, everyone has a role and knows what they have to do: from the secretary fairies to the tooth fairies, the Christmas tree fairies to the famous Sugar Plum Fairy! Everyone, that is, except for Sparkle, who does not know what type of fairy she is.

A Christmas Sparkle playwright Elizabeth Godber

Pocklington Arts Centre director Kelly Munro-Fawcett says: “We’re really excited to bring A Christmas Sparkle to PAC this year. We want to create more opportunities for local children and families to experience live theatre and creativity at PAC. We hope you’ll make our Christmas show part of your family tradition and join us for some fun, creativity and sparkle this December.”

Alice Rose Palmer, a multi-faceted performer from Hull, will play Sparkle. Her theatre credits include Isabelle (Middle Child Theatre), How To Be Brave (Other Lives Productions), Beverley Does Broadway, Bombshells and It’s Different For Girls (She Productions), as well as Toad On The Wolds (East Riding Theatre).

Alice is co-artistic director of She Productions, where she has co-written and performed in 15 original shows.

Joe Parker will play Fitz. His extensive theatre credits include Robin Hood (The Dukes Theatre), Prince Charming in Cinderella (CAST Doncaster), Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet (Teatro Stabile Verona), Laertes/Rosencrantz/Player in Hamlet (Iris Theatre), John Thorpe in Northanger Abbey (Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds/UK tour) and Hotspur in Henry IV (Waterloo East Theatre).

Joe Parker: Cast as Fitz in A Christmas Sparkle at Pocklington Arts Centre

Among his television credits are Stevo in The Baby (Sky/HBO) and Archie Campbell in Doctors (BBC), alongside short film credits including A Dog’s Life, Safe, Drifting and Compulsion and radio work for BBC Radio 4.

Joining Elizabeth Godber in the creative team for A Christmas Sparkle are director Millie Gaston, producer Kelly Munro-Fawcett and stage manager Siobhan Ashton. Dylan Allcock returns as musical director after taking on the role for last winter’s Jingle All The Way.

A Christmas Sparkle, Pocklington Arts Centre, December 11 to 13, then December 19 to 24, including a special relaxed performance with British Sign Language interpretation on Sunday, December 13 at 10.30am.

Performances: December 11, 7.30pm; December 12, 13, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23, 10.30am & 2.30pm; December 24, 10.30am. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

The poster for Elizabeth Godber’s A Christmas Sparkle at Pocklington Arts Centre

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York Ghost Week 2026: Hallowed Guild of Phantom Players in Remember, Remember, York Mansion House, October 29 to 31

Hrafn Rìkharðsson as Guy Fawkes and Andrea Mitchell as Margaret Clitherow in the Hallowed Guild of Phantom Players’ Remember Remember at York Mansion House

THE spirits of former York residents Guy Fawkes and Margaret Clitherow will rise to share their stories in Remember, Remember, a new play written for York Ghost Week 2026.

Staged by the Hallowed Guild of Phantom Players at York Mansion House, St Helen’s Square, York, from October 29 to 31 at 7.30pm, this premiere is a collaboration between actor/playwright Andrea Mitchell and performer/musician/historical re-enactor Hrafn Rìkharðsson and Celtic folk musician/theatre-maker Olivia Graham.

Mitchell and Rìkharðsson developed the script together using archive material while Graham provides the haunting soundtrack to the two-act drama. 

Margaret was crushed to death on Ouse Bridge in 1586 after her trial conviction for having hidden Catholic priests in her home on Shambles in York. Gunpowder Plot protagonist Guy Fawkes was born in York and attended St Peter’s School.

As the sainted “Pearl of York” Margaret Clitherow relives the tragic day of her death, she is joined by the spirit of one believed to have been present at her execution in his youth: Guy Fawkes

The play explores the possibility that witnessing her death – her body being compressed by stones – was a key event in radicalising him against the Protestant English state, inciting one of the most explosive (pardon the pun) episodes on the stage of English history?

Haunting period folk music, played on traditional instruments, will flow hypnotically through historically informed storytelling in this atmospheric two-hour performance created exclusively for York Ghost Week 2026.

Andrea says: “We’re thrilled to be telling the stories of these two well-known York residents, whose lives overlapped in 16th century York, in the two acts of the play.

“We’ve researched a wealth of archive material to develop the script together and were very grateful to be able carry out some of our research in the Bar Convent library.”

The pair also used genealogy websites, Spanish archives and letters written at the time, as well as books, including a 1926 publication written about the life of Margaret Clitherow by Lady Lindsey Smith for her husband, in defence of Catholicism.

Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre special collections manager Dr Hannah Thomas says: “We were delighted to help Andrea with her research into the life of Margaret Clitherow, a subject which continues to fascinate and inspire so many.

“The convent has a critical role to play in telling the story of Tudor York, particularly through our fascinating living heritage exhibition, supported by a wealth of information in our archives and library facilities, and we are delighted that the team have been able to use this material to bring Margaret’s story to life.”

Remember, Remember, York Mansion House State Room, York, October 29 to 31, 7.30pm. Tickets: £25 including an interval drink. Box office: mansionhouseyork.com/whatson.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond. Hutch’s List No. 41, from The York Press

Amelia Bullmore in rehearsal for her lead role as Penelope in The Penelopiad at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

FROM The Penelopiad’s feminist twist on The Odyssey to Alan Carr testing new material, the Brontë  sisters’ other story to Jamie’s blossoming, Charles Hutchinson Hutchinson watches autumn find its fifth gear.

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

Nancy Cadogan: Exhibiting At The Bend In The River at Beningbrough Hall from today

Exhibition opening of the week: At The Bend In The River: Paintings by Nancy Cadogan, Beningbrough Hall, Beningbrough, near York, today 11am to 4pm

LONDON figurative artist Nancy Cadogan explores how a place is shaped by memory, artistry and human connection in At The Bend In The River, an exhibition spread across four rooms of Beningbrough’s Reddihough Galleries that brings together newly commissioned large-scale  paintings, drawings and immersive creative spaces that respond  to the National Trust  estate’s Ouse riverside setting, historic house and changing landscape.

Through art, film, drawing and creative writing, Cadogan invites visitors to “pause and reflect on the journeys we take and the places and memories that sustain us”. Look out too for intimate works that reflect on women, time and storytelling. Tickets (as part of National Trust admission): nationaltrust.org.uk/beningbrough.

Alan Carr: Two gigs in one day at Pocklington Arts Centre

Comedy gigs of the week: Alan Carr, Work In Progress, Pocklington Arts Centre, tomorrow, 3pm and 7.30pm

THE Celebrity Traitors 2026 winner, comedian, television presenter and quiz host Alan Carr is heading to Pocklington for a brace of “very special work-in-progress shows” ahead of his Have I Said Too Much? tour, when  he will play York Barbican on March 13 2027. Box office: Pocklington, pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk; York, yorkbarbican.co.uk.

James Fountain: Trumpet soloist for York Guildhall Orchestra’s concert at York Barbican

Classical concert of the week: York Guildhall Orchestra, York Barbican, tomorrow, 3pm

YORK Guildhall Orchestra launches its new season with a Sunday afternoon programme of works by Malcolm Arnold, William Walton and Spanish composer and pianist Manuel de Falla.

Arnold’s ebullient Trumpet Concerto, composed in 1981, will be played by soloist James Fountain after the opening orchestral fanfare of Walton’s Crown Imperial. De Falla adapted his 1919 ballet Three Cornered Hat, featuring Spanish folk and dance music, into two orchestra suites; the second will be performed tomorrow. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Jess Murray’s Emily, left, Lara Stafford’s Charlotte and Millie Rhodes’s Anne Brontë in York Settlement Community Players’ Underdog: The Other Other Brontë

York premiere of the week: York Settlement Community Players in Underdog: The Other Other Brontë, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, October 13 to 17, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

CHARLOTTE Brontë (played by Lara Stafford) has a confession about how one sister (Emily, Jess Murray) became an idol, and the other became known as the third sister. You know the one. No, not that one. The other, other one: Anne (Millie Rhodes).

Claire Morley directs Settlement Players in Sarah Gordon’s irreverent retelling of the life and legend of the Brontë sisters as you have never seen the Yorkshire scribbling sisters before. Premiered at the National Theatre in 2024, this not a story of well-behaved women but of the power of words, sisters and sisterhood, love and jealousy, support and competition. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Henry Raby: Wrestling with the twin emotions of hope and anger at The Old Paint Shop

Poetry gig of the week: The Old Paint Shop presents Henry Raby, Hope and Anger, York Theatre Royal Studio, October 14, 8pm

YORK punk poet and Say Owt artistic director Henry Raby wrestles through the twin emotions of hope and anger with a spoken-word cocktail of poetry and comedy as he seeks to understand the righteous and the rotten. “Come and share in fist-clenched frustration and celebrate examples of the world, and the heartfelt people in it, at their shiniest and brightest,” says Henry. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

“Reaching 25 years in music is incredibly emotional,” says York Barbican-bound Katherine Jenkins

“Reunion with old friends” of the week: Katherine Jenkins, 25 Year Anniversary Tour, York Barbican, October 15, 7.30pm

WELSH mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins, 46, the biggest-selling classical artist of the 21st century, plays York Barbican as the only Yorkshire venue on her 25 Year Anniversary Tour, her first in five years. “Reaching 25 years in music is incredibly emotional, but this tour is truly a celebration of the fans who have been there from the very beginning,” she says. 

“To be heading out across the UK and Ireland for 18 special shows feels less like a celebration of a career and more like a reunion with old friends, and I can’t wait to stand on stage, look out into those familiar faces and share it all over again.” Jodok Cello supports. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

York Stage’s cast for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, starring Frankie Bounds as Jamie New

Bold and unapologetic musical of the week: York Stage in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Grand Opera House, York, October 16 to 24, 7.30pm, Tuesday to Saturday, plus 2.30pm Saturday matinees and 4pm Sunday

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 love of his mum, the support of his friends and 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.

Tom Stade: Playing by his rules at York Barbican

Come and see for yourself why…Tom Stade Rules, YO1 Radio Live Lounge, York Barbican, October 16, 7.30pm

CANADIAN free spirit Tom Stade takes aim at the absurdities of modern times with his incisive, gloriously unfiltered wit as he grapples with rebellion, responsibility and the tension between the old and the new. From unspoken social codes to cultural divisions, identity to marriage, Stade dismantles all the rules and redefines them his way. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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REVIEW: Pick Me Up Theatre in Noises Off, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, running riot farcically until tomorrow ****

Alexandra Mather’s Brooke Ashton, mezzanine level, left, Mark Simmonds’ Tim Allgood and Andrew Isherwood’s Garry Lejeune; Adrian Cook’s Frederick Fellowes, seated, Jessica Hardcastle’s Belinda Blair, Pearl Mollison’s Poppy Norton-Taylor and Helen Spencer’s Dotty Otley in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Noises Off. Picture: Matthew Warry

COMPANY founder, director and designer Robert Readman will sign off his directorial duties for York company Pick Me Up Theatre with Merrily We Roll Along at Theatre@41, Monkgate, next April.

First, however, this week’s production of Michael Frayn’s 1982 farce Noises Off is his last at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, where his distinctive laugh can be heard booming out at each performance, as if encountering Frayn’s fractious dialogue and comedic mayhem for the first time.

Your reviewer finds himself laughing almost as much as Readman, having last experienced Frayn’s play in its first-ever staging in the round, after 43 years, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, as recently as August 2025.

Craig Kirby’s sozzled actor Selsdon Mowbray in the guise of The Burglar in Nothing On, the play-within-the-play in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Noises Off. Picture: Matthew Warry

Readman gave the design brief to Rich Musk for the rotating stage that will go from staging the dress rehearsal in Weston-super-Mare to showing a mid-tour Ashton-under-Lyne matinee performance of Nothing On, Frayn’s deliberately clunky, maladroit play-within-a-play from backstage, before spinning 180 degrees again for the even more calamitous last night in Stockton-on-Tees. 

Musk delivers the classic stage for a farce: no fewer than seven malfunctioning and misbehaving doors on two floors of a commodious des-res where everything that could go wrong does go wrong both on and off stage.

Instant calmer: Alexandra Mather’s Brooke Ashton takes a breather in a yogic exercise in Noises Off. Picture: Matthew Warry

Rory Mulvihill’s exasperated, vainglorious director, the ever-thespian Lloyd Dallas, is at the helm of Nothing On, expecting his harassed technical team of Mark Simmonds’s dogsbody Tim Allgood and Pearl Mollison’s overworked stage manger Poppy Norton-Taylor to do his running for him.

Already distracted by his upcoming Richard III in Aberystwyth, Dallas strives against the tide to steer his cast of has-beens (Craig Kirby’s drunkard veteran Selsdon Mowbray and Helen Spencer’s tour-backing grandee Dotty Otley; touring plodders (Adrian Cook’s over-thinking, physically fragile Frederick Fellowes and Jessica Hardcastle’s unflappable Belinda Blair), and aspiring talents (Andrew Isherwood’s Garry Lejeune and Alexandra Mather’s company ingenue Brooke Ashton).

Craving a quick exit? Rory Mulvihill’s acerbic director, Lloyd Dallas, looking as frustrated as ever in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Noises Off. Picture: Matthew Warry

Frayn is in mischievous mood, with no room for pathos, as if throwing his own theatrical frustrations into the maelstrom of a warring company replete with the luvvies and the loveless, the boozer and the philanderer, the sex and drudgery and rollercoaster of fallouts in a claustrophobic world of fragile egos, frazzled minds, over-active bodies and a hopeless desire to somehow ensure the hapless show must go on.

Readman’s cast is crammed with supreme York talent, well drilled in ensemble commotion, topped off by Mulvihill’s veteran relish for a divisive director, Spencer’s persistent battles with plates of sardines, the outstanding Isherwood’s physical comedic prowess and boundlessly quizzical air and Mather’s ditziest of dizzy blondes.

Pick Me Up Theatre in Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm & 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

No British farce would be complete without dropped trousers. Adrian Cook’s forlorn Frederick Fellowes obliges as Andrew Isherwood’s Garry Lejeune looks on in Noises Off. Picture: Matthew Warry

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After Nolan’s The Odyssey, here comes the women’s side of the story in Atwood’s The Penelopiad at York Theatre Royal

Maids and masks: Faye Campbell, left, Nell Baker, Kat Johns-Burke, Pena Liyambo and Olivia Burton-Laws rehearsing for The Penelopiad. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

YORK Theatre Royal’s production of The Penelopiad, The Odyssey: Her Story opens on Saturday with a script by novella writer Margaret Atwood and an all-female production team led by creative director Juliet Forster.

In an exuberantly irreverent and darkly humorous feminist take on an age-old story by the Canadian author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Booker Prize winner Atwood gives voice to those left behind when the silenced Penelope’s husband, Odysseus, took 20 years to return home from the Trojan War. Wandering the underworld, perennial weaver Penelope spins a different kind of thread: her side of the story. Cue a tale of injustice, betrayal and revenge, interwoven with songs, that exposes the truth behind the myth.

“Homer’s The Odyssey is a fantastic piece of storytelling but sadly there is very little in there about the women’s lives,” says Juliet. “What Margaret Atwood does so brilliantly with The Penelopiad is really upend that and give us the female perspective on a story that is so well known.

“In true Atwood style, she presents that story in a way that is both deeply arresting and witty. We go on a journey with her through to the bitter climax of the women’s story but it’s also done in such an engaging and enjoyable way.

Director Juliet Forster in rehearsal for The Penelopiad at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

“Audiences can expect a very physical and visual form of storytelling:  we’ll be drawing on everything from acrobatics and dance to aerial, masks and puppetry.”

Juliet first read Atwood’s novella shortly after its publication in October 2005. “I absolutely loved it,” she says. “I personally have a real interest in the Greek classics and whilst I knew a lot about The Iliad and The Odyssey and the history of the Trojan War, I found it genuinely so delightful and invigorating to read Atwood’s feminist take on the story.

“Quite some years later, in 2019, when myself and the Theatre Royal’s former chief executive [Tom Bird] were exploring potential options for our Summer 2020 programme, we looked at The Penelopiad script and once again I was drawn in by the vibrancy of Atwood’s writing. We were all set to stage it in 2020 when, of course, the pandemic hit and our plans were sadly cancelled.”

Cut to 2025 when the Theatre Royal was looking for the right production for the 2026 season: “I felt strongly that this would be a perfect opportunity to bring this project back to life,” says Juliet. “Ultimately the power of the female voice in Margaret Atwood’s version had always stuck with me and sadly in 2026, women in a time of war, violence against women, double standards and inequality are all the more relevant.

Amelia Bullmore rehearsing her role as Penelope. “I’m thrilled I’m going to be working at York Theatre Royal – such a beautiful theatre – on this fantastic play,” she says. “The Penelopiad manages to be funny, dark, moving and provocative by turns. And it’s Margaret Atwood, so the writing is uniquely brilliant. I think audiences will love how playful it is and how directly it connects with them.” Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

“We then also found out about the Christopher Nolan movie adaptation [of The Odyssey], which was set to hit the big screen, and it felt like an interesting time to stage a production which tells the women’s story from a completely fresh perspective.”

Explaining the casting process for the Theatre Royal show, Juliet says: “The play focuses on Penelope as she tells her version of the story and so casting that role was obviously really crucial. Alongside this, we have the story of the maids, who helped her deceive the suitors and who interject with their own version of events.

“The maids really act as a sort of old Greek chorus but in a way that feels fresh and modern. They take on all the other parts and have a significant role in the play so their casting was also equally important.”

She is thrilled to be working with Happy Valley, Scott & Bailey and Riot Women actor Amelia Bullmore in the role of Penelope. “I’d recently watched Riot Women – another fantastic feminist narrative – and Amelia’s performance in that is excellent,” says Juliet.

York Theatre Royal’s cast for The Penelopiad

“She is a very multi-faceted actor that can really immerse herself in a character and I thought she would be perfect for the role. Amelia is super sharp and funny, and her intelligence and dry sense of humour are so well-matched with Atwood’s style of writing.

“For me, what is so important about the character of Penelope is the very closed-off and hidden side to her nature, and I think Amelia has a real inscrutable quality to her performance which feels so right for this role.”

Once Amelia was cast, Juliet turned her attention to the maids. “It was important to me to have a real range of different women cast in these roles,” she says. “Often the maids are almost lumped together as one – in the original only one of them is named! – and the play really unpicks that narrative, so it was important to get that right in our casting.

“The cast we have are super talented: they are all so different and bring such a diverse range of strengths and individuality. What was the most important for me was to find actors who could bring a sense of humour and playfulness to these roles, which are also very physically demanding, with elements of dance, movement, aerial, singing and more.”

The Maids rehearsing a scene for York Theatre Royal’s production of The Penelopiad: Olivia Burton-Laws, left, Charlie Russell, Syakira Moeladi, Nell Baker, Faye Campbell, Pena Liyambo and Danielle Bird. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

Juliet hopes audiences will leave the Theatre Royal feeling they have experienced “a real visual feast”. “It’s going to be witty and funny, powerful and moving – and I think it will give them an insight to the story of The Odyssey from a completely different angle,” she says.

“But it also raises really pertinent questions not just about the past, but also the present. I personally think it’s a great complement to seeing Christopher Nolan’s movie and will give people the chance to dig more into that story and find out more about the characters of Penelope and her maids.

“I hope people will also come away thinking about the power of storytelling – how we balance competing versions of the same events and which narratives end up being the ones that are remembered.”

The Penelopiad, The odyssey: Her Story, York Theatre Royal, October 10 to 31, Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Olivia Burton-Laws, left, Kat Johns-Burke and Pena Liyambo in the rehearsal room for The Penelopiad. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

One more question for Juliet Forster

How did you prepare for directing The Penelopiad ahead of rehearsals starting?

LOTS of reading! Of course the original novella and The Odyssey but also I read awonderful book called Mythica by Emily Hauser. Emily is a renowned and published classicist who is doing some consultancy with us to help us look at what life for Bronze Age women would have been like, drawing from mythology, history and archaeology – which will be useful for the actors as we delve into their characters.

“Margaret Atwood adapted the script herself but had given me permission to add in some of the original text from the book. So I also spent some time working on fleshing that out and adding some more elements to the script.

“We have a fabulous all-female creative team on board and I really enjoyed meeting with them and shaping how the production is coming together.”

The poster for The Penelopiad, The Odyssey: Her Story, opening at York Theatre Royal tomorrow

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REVIEW: Noel Coward’s Present Laughter, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday ***

Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Geri Essendine in her New York City apartment in Present Laughter. Picture: Simon Annand

IN 2019, in North Yorkshire director Matthew Warchus’s take on Noel Coward’s 1939 study of the temptations and pitfalls of theatrical celebrity, Andrew Scott portrayed vainglorious actor Garry Essendine as gay at the Old Vic.

Now, in her second re-invention and re-imagination of a male character, following her portrayal of Shylock in the Black Shirt and Nazi-shadowed The Merchant Of Venice 1936 that played York Theatre Royal in November 2023, Tracy-Ann Oberman transforms Garry into Geri: Geri With A G, as the poster in her New York City apartment declares (presumably in a nod to Liza Minnelli and Bob Fosse’s 1972 musical documentary Liza With A Z).

Living opposite the newly opened Studio 54, whose muffled disco groves can be heard when she opens one of her multiple windows of her white-walled abode, Oberman’s Geri is a “hugely successful actress and singer”, a grand-standing English ex-pat with a coterie of fans, friends and hangers-on, who has clung on to being 39 for the best part of a decade, although she talks of her face needing work.

On the cusp of heading off on tour to Australia (rather than  Africa in Coward’s original), and still craving the chance to play the elusive Hedda Gabler, she is besieged by would-be, definitely much younger lovers (Seb Carrington’s naive, besotted David Stillington and Kit Young’s cynical, deceitful Johannes) and an obsessed young playwright (Eva Feiler’s Rosina Maule, irritating to Geri and audience alike, alas).

Around her too buzz her humorously eccentric spiritualist (Gabriella Foley’s Miss Erikson), house servant-cum-bouncer (Perry Williams’s ultra-cool Fred), friend Morris (Jonathan Tafler) and his wife Henrietta (Charlotte Randle). 

Present Laughter director Lindsay Posner

They are but drones by comparison with the comic elan of James Dreyfus’s Monty, Geri’s eloquent, exasperated secretary, and Adrian Lukis’s Len, her elegant, arch, implacable ex-husband, still ever present as they never got round to completing the divorce papers.

Such experienced hands, Dreyfus and Lukis are operating in a superior acting stratosphere to the touring company’s younger charges, comfortable with Coward’s waspish wit, with better timing than the rest, and bringing out the best too in Oberman, whose Geri is all Seventies’ blonde glamour, at once tiring of the fame game yet fearful of loneliness and still craving being desired. Whenever soul-searching threatens to consume her, throwaway sex beckons again: as much coward as Coward.

In Oberman’s transformations, the secretary’s change from Monica to Monty and the ex-wife’s switch from Liz to Len are by far the most effective, in part because of Dreyfus and Lukis’s comic prowess, but certainly Carrington, Young and Feiler fare less well, to the detriment of the play’s impact. The first half drags its feet, the second still lacks fire for too long until the sting is drawn at the finale.

Remembered in York for his Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre productions of Romeo And Juliet and Richard III in 2018 at the Eye of York, director Lindsay Posner elicits more style than substance overall, exemplified  by Peter McKintosh’s set and costume designs, featuring two faux portraits by Geri’s Studio 54 friend Andy Warhol.

Like in those Pop Art portraits, there should be more going on beneath the surface, although it is striking that while we never see Essendine’s Geri on stage, she is always acting.

Theatre Royal Bath Productions & Augusta Productions present Noel Coward’s Present Laughter, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

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Cast announced for It’s A Wonderful Life, Theatre@41’s debut community play

Eija Gibson’s cast at the read-through rehearsal for It’s A Wonderful Life at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York

THE cast is in place for Theatre@41, Monkgate’s debut community Christmas production, It’s  A Wonderful Life, adapted for the stage by Mary Elliot Nelson.

Rehearsals have begun already under director Eija Gibson, who has picked a 13-strong troupe of  York performers for the production run from December 10 to 23. Some have performed previously at the independent theatre,  joined by actors new to the  venue.

Eija says: “I am absolutely thrilled to have cast such a talented, creative group of community actors. I am so excited to be working with each and every one of them and see the magic this collaboration creates.”

Eija Gibson: Director of Theatre@ 41’s community production of It’s A Wonderful Life

Mary Elliott Nelson’s stage adaptation of Frank Capra’s festive film – premiered in New York City on December 20 1946 – follows down-on-his-luck banker George Bailey as he is paid a visit by his guardian angel on Christmas Eve 1946.

George will be played by Theatre@41 chair and actor Alan Park, who last performed at the black box theatre in 2023, when he starred in Duncan Macmillan’s one-man show, Every Brilliant Thing, and White Rabbit Red Rabbit with Black Treacle Theatre.

The Bailey family will feature Cassi Roberts as Mary Hatch Bailey, Paul Stonehouse as Uncle Billy and Matthew Wignall in his Theatre@41 debut as Harry Bailey, along with Samantha Goddard as Angel Josephine and Sarah Walker as Violet.

Alan Park: Cast in the lead role of George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life

Sonia Di Lorenzo: Playing George Bailey’s guardian angel in It’s A Wonderful Life

The role of George’s guardian angel goes to Sonia Di Lorenzo, while Dara Klymenko, founder of York’s Ukrainian theatre company DSpace, will play Angel Gloria, as well as joining the creative team as movement director.

In the shoes of antagonist Mr Potter will be Rory Mulvihill, following up his role as temperamental, egotistical director Lloyd Dallas in Pick Me Up Theatre’s production of Michael Frayn’s farce Noises Off this week at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York.

Mark Simmonds, Paul French, Darren Barrott and Lily Geering complete the cast, playing an array of eccentric characters that make up the town of Bedford Falls.

Matthew Wignall: Making his Theatre@41 debut as Harry Bailey

Dara Klymenko: Playing Angel Gloria

Theatre@41 is looking for volunteers to fill backstage roles, including stage managers, set builders, painters and props gatherers. Those interested are encouraged to send an email to [email protected] to find out more.

Theatre@41 trustee Livy Potter says: “Theatre@41 is a volunteer-powered theatre and we’re incredibly proud of this. Over the past five years, we’ve helped dozens of residents learn about putting on shows and creating theatre with and for communities in York.

“We’re keen for this production to be an opportunity for the people of the city to develop new skills whilst bringing the world of Bedford Falls to life in our studio theatre. We can’t wait to throw a lasso around the moon to re-create the most life affirming of Christmas stories.”

Theatre@41, Monkgate, York presents It’s A Wonderful Life for 14 performances from December 10 to 23. Performances: 7.30pm (except Dec 13, 14 and 21) plus 2pm, December 12, 13 and 19. Box office: https://tickets.41monkgate.co.uk/.

Cassi Roberts: Cast as Mary Hatch Bailey

Theatre@41’s poster for this winter’s community production, It’s A Wonderful Life

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