Category: Theatre

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Last chance to see: Through It All Together, Courtyard Theatre, Leeds Playhouse *****

In the grip of dementia: Reece Dinsdale’s Howard and Shobna Gulati’s Sue in Through It All Together. Picture: Charlie Swinbourne

THROUGH It All Together is the third play about Leeds United after Anders Lustgarten’s ubiquitous, damnable The Damned United and Anthony Clavane and Nick Stimson’s lesser-spotted Promised Land, A Northern Love Story, staged in a community production with Red Ladder at Leeds Carriageworks Theatre in Summer 2012.

“About Leeds United” tells only half the story. The Damned United, adapted from David Peace’s literary psycho-drama, was rather more about Brian Clough, the Richard III of Leeds managers, and his 44-day impact on Revie’s champions versus their corrosive, longer-rooted impact on “Old Big ‘ead”.

A Promised Land, adapted from Clavane’s non-fiction book, interwove the repeat pattern of the rise and fall of Leeds United and the industries of Leeds with the story of the city’s Jewish community, who provided the club’s most successful chairmen, Manny Cussins and Leslie Silver.

Now Leeds United is only half the story once more in Chris O’Connor’s Through It All Together, a title taken from the club anthem Marching On Together (originally entitled Leeds! Leeds! Leeds! as the B-side to the official 1972 FA Cup Final song, Top Ten hit Leeds United, as the Courtyard theatre audience would all know!).

Everal A Walsh’s Leeds United director, left, and Dean Smith’s director of football Victor Orta in Through It All Together. Picture: Charlie Swinbourne

Forever Leeds fan O’Connor – known as “Leeds” at his London school – “could write one strand in his sleep”, and so the Leeds United story, a love letter to sainted Argentine maverick Marcelo Bielsa and his 2020 Championship champions, is indeed penned with all the self-deprecating humour, in-jokes, reverence and irreverence of a battle-hardened yet defiantly optimistic Peacocks supporter. 

The other strand, drawn from the impact of dementia on the grandmother who helped to raise him, again is written from the inside track. “One aspect we really wanted to get right was making sure the show is dementia friendly and accurate to what people go through,” he told Graham Smyth [the Yorkshire Evening Post’s Leeds United reporter since 2019] in his interview for the Playhouse premiere’s excellent programme.

Your reviewer writes with investment too: both as a long-suffering Leeds United addict since 1969 and having experienced his father’s seven-year decline with dementia – it is never a battle – that ended in relief and release in January 2016.

O’Connor said he could be “incredibly confident and happy” with the Leeds United angle. He has taken every care – like the remarkable staff at dementia care homes – to bring similar authenticity to the dementia thread, backed by the work of Playhouse theatre and dementia research consultant Dr Nicky Taylor and the Courtyard corridor exhibition that rewards early arrival for perusal.

The veneration of Marcelo Bielsa in Amanda Stoodley’s church set design for Through It All Together at Leeds Playhouse. Picture: Charlie Swinbourne

Director Gitika Buttoo says O’Connor’s play is “for the people of Leeds, showing how football ripples through all the corners of life…but that story, while rooted in Leeds, is universal”. She’s right. You could transplant the structure to any football club’s origin story, such is the ubiquity of a supporter’s jam-side-down relationship with fate, while dementia is becoming pervasive.

In this story, Reece Dinsdale’s life-long Leeds United fan Howard Wright is in the early throes of dementia, his life-changing diagnosis coinciding with director of football Victor Orta’s left-field pursuit and recruit of Marcelo Bielsa to end LUFC’s wilderness years amid the Championship tundra.

The volcanic Orta is represented physically by one of two Paul Madeleys in Buttoo’s cast, the multi-role-playing Dean Smith (regular “Championship will Championship” contributor to The Square Ball podcast, by the way).

He teams up with Everal A Walsh in three partnerships, representing the club management (Orta and a calmer presence alongside); the fans, a diehard Elland Road attendee and a disaffected deserter newly magnetised by Bielsa’s beautiful game; and the media, podcasting and match dissecting much in the healthily cynical/sceptical/supportive style of The Square Ball, quirky adverts et al.

So many ups and downs: The life and pub philosopher times of Leeds United fans, played by Everal A Walsh, left, and Dean Smith

Unlike the omnipresent Clough in The Damned United, Bielsa is not portrayed physically (save for a delightful fantasy sequence where he dances the Argentine Tango with Shobna Gulati’s Sue in Newell’s Old Boys kit in his 1970s’ defender days). Nor is he symbolised by Bielsa’s Bucket (on which he would surely perch if the club were ever to bestow him a statue).

Instead, as mystical as Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name turning up out of nowhere, and more in keeping with Irek “Tankpetrol” Jasutowicz’s Bielsa mural at Hyde Park Corner, St Marcelo appears in a stained glass window, beatific, aura aglow, high above his Peacock flock, within set designer Amanda Stoodley’s open-plan framework of a church. How fitting!

Church structure meets the kitchen-sink drama of the Wright household’s kitchen and sitting room, home to Dinsdale’s Howard and fellow Leeds devotee Sue (Gulati), joined regularly by daughter and putative chef Hazel (Natalie Davies).

They will, in the words of the club anthem, go through it all together, both Howard’s descent into dementia and Leeds United’s typically flattering-to-deceive yet, hardly a spoiler alert, ultimately sublime rise to the Premiership’s golden gates that coincided with Covid’s lockdowns.

Shall we dance? Dean Smith’s Marcelo Bielsa, in his Newell’s Old Boys playing days in Argentina, struts the Tango with Shoba Gulati’s Sue in a fantasy scene in Through It All Together. Picture: Charlie Swinbourne

Two forms of distancing then play out: the fans consigned to listening to Adam Pope on BBC Radio Leeds, and Howard’s losing his sentient powers to dementia’s corrosion and erosion.

O’Connor writes brilliantly and so movingly of this struggle: the “forgetfulness”, the  sudden moments of lucid clarity (such as naming Don Revie’s champion team); Howard’s wish to not be a burden to his family by listing preparations to move to a care home while he still has the mental minerals to make that decision.

More and more sticker messages are placed around the house to help Howard navigate his way through each day’s routines; daughter Hazel starts to question whether the measures they take are worth it; Sue is consigned to hospital with Covid, at which point Dinsdale’s performance hits new heights.

All the while, Howard and Sue will sing Marching On Together as the couple’s love song, “We love you, Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!” replaced by “I love you Sue, Sue, Sue”.  

We know how it ended for LUFC, with promotion, only to be followed inevitably by Leeds falling apart again (as Walsh’s fan laments to the biggest knowing laughs).

Making plans: Reece Dinsdale’s Howard in discussion with Natalie Davies’s Hazel in Through It All Together

We know how it will end for Howard, so we don’t need to see it. They will go through it all together, like Leeds United’s motto, side before self.

Dinsdale, a Playhouse luminary since 1990’s debut production of Wild Oats after the Quarry Hill relocation, is terrific in his King Lear for the football masses, all the more so for putting his Huddersfield Town allegiances to one side to embrace Leeds United.

The ever supportive Gulati, always a hit with Leeds audiences, the doughty Davies and the Smith-Walsh double act at the treble are tremendous too under Buttoo’s direction that makes the play work for fan and theatre lover alike.

You will laugh, you will cry, you will cheer and groan, you will sing the songs, just like at Elland Road; you will miss Marcelo and you will know someone like Howard. At some we shall all have to go through it together, as we have our ups and downs.

Chris O’Connor has told a story of the everyman (Howard) and the extraordinary (Bielsa) with dignity, distinction and devotion.

Through It All Together, Leeds Playhouse, at least until the world stops going round, or more precisely July 19. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk.

Review by Charles Hutchinson

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REVIEW: Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, Keighley & Worth Valley Railway and York Theatre Royal present The Railway Children, Oxenhope Station *****

Farah Ashraf’s Roberta in the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture revival of York Theatre Royal’s The Railway Children at Oxenhope Station. Picture: James Glossop

FULL steam ahead for The Railway Children becomes even fuller steam ahead as E Nesbit’s story returns to the railway line where Lionel Jeffries’s charming 1970 film was filmed, Jenny Agutter’s red petticoat, Bernard Cribiins’s bluster et al.

This re-sparking of York Theatre Royal’s Best Entertainment Olivier Award award winner for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture becomes even more resonant in highlighting Nesbit’s call for tolerance, integration, safe sanctuary and understanding of “otherness”, in our overheated age of Reform, rejection, division and more overt racism. It reemphasises how Bradford has always been a beacon for multiculturalism, a cornerstone of this year’s festival.

In 2008, in the audacious apex achievement of Damian Cruden’s 22 years as York Theatre Royal artistic director, he teamed up with prolific York playwright Mike Kenny to transform the National Railway Museum freight depot into a tented traverse theatre in the heart of York, the most-storied railway city in the north.

The Railway Children felt right at home there, so much so that it booked a return ticket in 2009. Now, The Railway Children has “come home” to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway (when Jeffries transferred Nesbit’s rural location from Kent to Oakworth station up north in an inspired move).

Excited City of Culture and Worth Valley volunteers are omnipresent as audience members board the steam train – eight carriages long – at Keighley Station to travel the line’s full money’s worth to Oxenhope Station, to the accompaniment of Stand & Be Counted Theatre’s immersive scene-setting soundtrack on the themes of exile, sanctuary, compassion and kindness.

Stalls are selling beer, pies, railway and E Nesbit & Co merchandise, all part of the 2025 event theatre experience, if you wish, and a large poster is advertising  this winter’s “tale by rail”  production of  The Christmas Carol (Haworth Railway Station, tickets www.kwvr.co.uk).

A sign denotes Oxenhope stands 600ft above sea level – York is only 49ft by comparison – and Tuesday’s audience  is already on a high, its mood best captured by Cruden’s dandy pink linen suit, as we enter the Engine Shed, denuded of its locomotives since work began on site in May.

Normally functioning as the “Exhibition  Shed”, home to the highly recommended autumn beer festival, it has been temporarily renamed the Auditorium (rather less evocative than the Signal Box Theatre at the NRM), as the 500 seats fill either side of a track, divided into Platform One and Platform Two.

The air is filled with the chatter and clatter of the railways: station announcements, the porter’s whistle, engines pumping and Yorkshire bird song, the herald to the brilliant sound design engineered by Craig Vear throughout.

Cruden has got all the old band back together: same director, writer, set and costume designer, Joanna Scotcher, lighting designer, Richard G Jones, composer, Christopher Madin, and sound designer, Vear. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, unlike Peter’s model train that needs soldering.

Oxenhope has become Oakworth station, where Scotcher’s design is a work of wonder suffused with a nostalgic Edwardian beauty: a wooden station bridge at one end, the station porter’s office at the other. On the track run wooden pulleys on wheels, pushed along the line by stage hands in railway staff attire to facilitate scenes being played out at various points to ensure everyone has a close-up. Her period costumes are a delight too, from top hat to coat tail, school cap to immaculate suits and the prettiest of dresses.

Jones’s lighting, whether for moorland sunlight, midnight gloom or a murky tunnel, complements every dramatic mood, twist and turn, evoking soot and fresh air alike. Look out especially for the flickering of lights as the rattling sound of  a train thunders by, doing the loco-motion in dazzling style. All the while, Madin’s score could not be more evocative.

In Kenny’s adaptation, the adult “Railway children” look back at their childhood Yorkshire re-location from London, seamlessly morphing into the childhood selves, Farah Ashraf’s concerned Bobby, Raj Digva’s ripping Peter and Jessica Kaur’s puppy-enthusiastic Phyllis.

Equally seamless is Kenny’s nod to Bradford UK City of Culture.  Father (Paul Hawkyard) married Mother (Asha Kingsley) while working in India, then brought his young South Asian family to London, doubling up on their “otherness” when Mother brings her children to Yorkshire in 1905 after Father’s mysterious arrest. 

Kingsley’s Mother stands out with her Indian accent; the children with their refined London airs that can find them putting their foot in it, but always unintentionally.

In a later change, Kenny has transformed Hawkyard’s Russian refugee, the great writer Shepansky, into a Ukrainian Russian: a topical and impactful decision typical of his playwriting prowess.

Dramatic set-pieces, humour, tragedy and triumph combine with the searing social politics in Kenny’s script, the humour exemplified in Graeme Hawley’s portrayal of station porter Mr Perks, sometimes prickly, certainly as punctual as he is punctilious, but avuncular too, topped off by the famous birthday-present scene that moves you to tears.

From the three leads, with their combination of playfulness, squabbling and knowing adult reflection, to Kingsley’s burdened Mother; Moray Treadwell’s grand Old Gentleman to the young people’s ensemble; the multitude of multi-purpose battered suitcases to the delayed-for-maximum-impact of the locomotive, Cruden’s return to The Railway Children is a triumph. Whisper it quietly in York, but bouncing back in Bradford UK City of Culture,  it may be the best production yet.

The Railway Children, Keighley Station and Oxenhope Station, West Yorkshire, on track until September 7. Box office: https://bradford2025.co.uk/event/the-railway-children/.

By Charles Hutchinson 

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What’s On in Ryedale, York and beyond. Hutch’s List No. 31, from Gazette & Herald

Dr Adam Parker, curator of archaeology at York Museums Trust, holding the Thor’s Hammer Pendant at the Viking North exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum, York

VIKING treasures, street art indoors, Fringe comedy previews and Ryedale Festival’s Austen celebration bring out the summer smiles in Charles Hutchinson.

Museum launch of the week: Viking North, Yorkshire Museum, York

VIKING North is filled with magnificent objects, many unseen for generations and others that have never been on public display, adding up to “the best collection of Viking finds to be shown outside London” as these Viking treasures reveal the North’s power base, wealth and skills.

Telling the story of the Viking Age in the North of England from AD866 to 1066, the exhibition is underpinned by new archaeological research and cutting-edge technology and features objects from Yorkshire Museum’s own collection, the Vale of York hoard, co-owned with the British Museum, and specially loaned national and regional items, including from the Viking Army Camp at Aldwark, North Yorkshire.

Sea, Swell, Scribe: Jo Walton, Ruth King and Nicky Kippax combine in Pyramid Gallery’s exhibition of paintings, pottery and poetry

Exhibition of the week: Sea, Swell, Scribe, Jo Walton, Ruth King and Nicky Kippax, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, until August 31, open 10am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday

WHAT happens when you let a poet loose in an art gallery with a piece of charcoal? If the juxtaposition of sumptuous curvy and pointy pots against a backdrop of textured metallic atmospheric paintings is inspiring her, then she will scribble words and phrases all over the plinths

York artist Jo Walton, from Rogues Atelier, potter Ruth King, from the Craft Potters Association, and poet Nicky Kippax, from Bluebird Bakery, combine in a show planned and organised by Pyramid  gallery manager Fiona Macfarlane and curated by Walton. Kippax has written Eksphratic verse in response to the paintings and pots.

Street artist Al Murphy in his Naughty Corner at VandalFest at 2, Low Ousegate, York

Street art takeover of the summer: Vandals At Work present VandalFest, 2, Low Ousegate, York, Friday to Sunday, then July 25 to 27, 11am to 6pm

VANDALS At Work reunite with youth homelessness charity Safe and Sound Homes (SASH) for VandalFest, the immersive street art takeover of a disused office block at 2 Low Ousegate, York, with a 2025 theme of the playful, cheeky, witty and mischievous.

The stripped-out interior provides four floors of blank canvas for bold, site-specific “intervention” that cover walls, floors and ceilings, complemented by live DJ sets.  Among more than 30 artists from the UK and beyond are Bristol graffiti pioneer Inkie, subversive stencilist Dotmasters, inflatable prankster Filthy Luker, master of optical illusions Chu, rooftop renegade Rowdy and York’s own Sharon McDonagh, Lincoln Lightfoot and Boxxhead. Entry is free, with a suggested £3 donation to SASH. 

Dame Harriet Walter: Pride And Prejudice celebration at Wesley Centre, Malton

Ryedale Festival theatre event of the week: Pride And Prejudice, Dame Harriet Walter, Melvyn Tan and Madeleine Easton, Wesley Centre, Malton, Sunday, 7pm

THIS theatrical retelling of Pride And Prejudice by novelist and Austen biographer Gill Hornby marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Star of stage and screen Dame Harriet Walter brings the romance of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy to life in an intimate drawing-room setting, in much the same way that Jane herself first read the story aloud to family and friends.

Carl David’s score for the 1995 BBC television adaptation will be performed by pianist Melvyn Tan and violinist Madeleine Easton. The festival runs until July 27; full details and tickets at ryedalefestival.com. Box office: 01751 475777.

Rob Auton: Barmby Moor comedian previews his Edinburgh Fringe show, CAN: The Story Of A Man Called CAN, at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York

Comedy event of the week: Halfway To Edinburgh, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday

IN a week of Edinburgh Fringe previews and comedy nights, Nina Gilligan discusses memory loss, health anxiety and goldfish-related trauma in Goldfish tonight (8pm) and Hayley Ellis navigates middle age in Silly Mare (Work in Progress) tomorrow (8pm).

Susan Riddell and Kate Dolan, on Friday (7.30pm), and Barmby Moor surrealist Rob Auton and Chloe Petts, on Saturday (7.30pm), round off the festival tasters. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Georgi Mottram: Classical BRIT Award nominee performing at Voices United concert in aid of St Leonard’s Hospice

Charity event of the week: Ian Stroughair presents Voices United: Rubies For Our Angel, Grand Opera House, York, Friday, 7.30pm

YORK cabaret artiste and West End musical actor Ian Stroughair co-hosts this fundraiser to mark St Leonard’s Hospice’s 40th anniversary with radio presenters Joanita Musisi and Laura Castle, introducing a night of musical theatre and rock and pop classics.

On the bill will be Stroughair in Velma Celli drag diva regalia; York singer Jessica Steel and guitarist Stuart Allan; York musical theatre actress Joanne Theaker; retro party band Jonny And The Dunebugs; The Voice UK 2024 semi-finalist Lois Morgan Gay and West End classical singer Georgi Mottram. Box office: https://shorturl.at/G3qhV or atgtickets.com/york.

Strictly between us: Anton du Beke and Giovanni Pernice team up for Together Again at York Barbican

Dance show of the week: Anton Du Beke and Giovanni Pernice in Together Again, York Barbican, Friday, 7.30pm

STRICTLY Come Dancing alumni Anton Du Beke and Giovanni Pernice promise “more fun, more dance, more song and even more entertainment than ever before” in the terpsichorean double act’s new show Together Again, full of breathtaking routines, stunning choreography and a seamless blend of Ballroom, Latin and musical theatre. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Craig David: In party mood at Scarborough Open Air Theatre this weekend

Coastal gig of the week: Craig David TS5 Show, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, Saturday; gates open at 6pm

SOUTHAMPTON rhythm & blues musician Craig David parades his triple threat as singer, MC and DJ at his TS5 party night, patented at his Miami penthouse. On the 25th anniversary of debut album Born To Do It, expect a set combining old-skool anthems from R&B to Swing Beat, Garage to Bashment, while merging chart-topping House hits too. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

Amelia Donkor and Antony Jardine: Playing Gulie Harlock and Seebohm Rowntree respectively alongside 100-strong community ensemble in His Last Report at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Millie Stephens

Community play of the week: His Last Report, York Theatre Royal, Saturday to August 3  

FOCUSING on pioneering York social reformer Seebohm Rowntree and his groundbreaking investigation into the harsh realities of poverty, Misha Duncan-Barry and Bridget Foreman’s play will be told through the voices of York’s residents, past and present.

Seebohm’s findings illuminate the struggles of the working class, laying the foundation for the welfare state and sparking a movement that will redefine life as we know it. However, when fast forwarding to present-day York, what is Seebohm’s real legacy as the Ministry begins to dismantle the very structures he championed in His Last Report’s York story with a national impact? Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

In Focus: Clap Trap Theatre in Pennyroyal, Helmsley Arts Centre, July 19 & 20, 7.30pm

Florrie Stockbridge’s Daphne, left, and Natasha Jones’s Christine in Clap Trap Theatre’s Pennyroyal

HELMSLEY Arts Centre artistic director Natasha Jones and musical partner Florrie Stockbridge take to the stage this weekend in Clap Trap Theatre’s production of Lucy Roslyn’s Pennyroyal.

Premiered in 2022 at the Finborough Theatre, London, this heartrending play about sisterhood and motherhood, enduring love and regrets many years in the making explores the things expected of women and what happens if life does not go to plan.

When Daphne (played by Stockbridge) is diagnosed with Premature Ovarian Insufficiency at 19, her sister Christine (Jones) steps in to help in the only way she knows how: by donating her eggs. For a while, the world seems corrected. However, as the years go by – and Daphne sets out on the long road of IVF – the sisters’ relationship begins to twist.

“I think of my body sometimes like it’s stubborn,” says Daphne. “We’re not good friends. Like it’s a spooky hotel, and I’m just a ghost haunting it. ’Cause you don’t live in a hotel, you just pass through.”

Pennyroyal is inspired by Edith Wharton’s 1922 novella The Old Maid, a 1922 novella adapted ten years later into a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Zoe Akins. One hundred years on, the story is re-imagined by Roslyn, an award-winning Camden Town performer and writer.

Her most recent work includes Orlando, a previous collaboration with director Josh Roche and Jessie Anand Productions that won the Origins Award at VAULT Festival before transferring to the Pleasance, Edinburgh.

Other work includes Showmanship (Theatre503) and Goody (Pleasance, Edinburgh and Greenwich Theatre – Les Enfants Terribles’ Greenwich Partnership Award 2017). Her debut, The State vs. John Hayes, started life at the Edinburgh Fringe, before touring to Theatre Royal Bath, The Lowry, Salford, the King’s Head Theatre, London,  and OSH Brooklyn, New York.

Jones and Stockbridge have received directing and production support from Libby Pearson. Roslyn’s 80-minute play contains strong language and discussion of infertility and domestic violence. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.

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York Theatre Royal’s The Railway Children back on track for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture on Keighley and Worth Valley line

Farah Ashraf’s Roberta in the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture revival of York Theatre Royal’s The Railway Children at Oxenhope Station. Picture: James Glossop

YORK Theatre Royal first staged The Railway Children in the purpose-built Signal Box Theatre at the National Railway Museum, York, in 2008 and 2009, later transferring to London’s Waterloo Station, Toronto in Canada and King’s Cross Theatre, London.

From this evening, York playwright Mike Kenny’s refreshed stage adaptation of E Nesbit’s novel is back on track in Yorkshire, as the Theatre Royal teams up with Keighley & Worth Valley Railway for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, in a revival of Damian Cruden’s Best Entertainment Olivier Award-winner.

All on board once more are the same director, writer, set and costume designer, Joanna Scotcher, lighting designer, Richard G Jones, composer, Christopher Madin, and sound designer, Craig Vear. “We’re all still here – somehow!” says Damian.

The setting is the railway line famously used as a location for Lionel Jeffries’ 1970 film, the one starring Jenny Agutter and Bernard Cribbins that transferred Nesbit’s rural setting from Kent to Yorkshire.

Audiences will begin by taking a steam train from Keighley to Oxenhope Station, a journey accompanied by an immersive scene-setting soundscape provided by Stand & Be Counted Theatre on the themes of exile, sanctuary, compassion and kindness.

Damian Cruden: Directing The Railway Children on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway line. Picture copyright: The York Press

Kenny’s re-worked adaptation will be staged in an adapted engine shed at Oxenhope, a location closest in character to the National Railway Museum premiere with a steam train from the Keighley & Worth stock and the audience on either side of the railway track in the 500-capacity auditorium.

“It’s very similar to when we first did it inside a tent [over the freight depot] at the NRM, partly because it’s another heritage railway environment, whereas Waterloo and King’s Cross had a very different railway atmosphere. Seven hundred volunteers work for Keighley & Worth, which tells you something about our relationship with the steam age,” says Damian.

“We’re using what’s a sort-of museum shed [officially the Exhibition Shed], a proper period engine shed, where they keep the locomotives, and it’s customary to hold live events there [such as the October beer festival], but usually on a much smaller scale, so we’ve had to empty the shed of all its ‘bits’.

“The steam engine we’re using is a full locomotive with a tender, from the 1880s, along with a Third Class carriage and the ‘Gentleman’s Carriage’, shunted from further down the line.”

Damian is delighted to be staging arguably his biggest ever hit again. “Bringing The Railway Children to Bradford this year offered us a unique opportunity to restage the production as part of the UK City of Culture programme, starting on the tracks where the iconic 1970 film was shot in the beautiful Worth Valley.

The poster for the Bradford 2025 UK City Of Culture production of The Railway Children

“It’s great that it’s part of the festival and that it’s coming to the point of origin, the railway line that goes through Oakworth station, the primary location in the film.”

Set in 1905, The Railway Children tells the story of three children forced to move from wealthy Edwardian London to rural Yorkshire after their father, an official in the Foreign Office, is imprisoned falsely on charges of espionage. Living in newly impoverished circumstances, they find adventure and hope on the railway that passes nearby.

“The reality is it’s a made-up story, a construct, set in the past, but very strongly as a metaphor of what a journey does, taking you from one way of being to another, while looking at the nature of being human and the benefit of integrating with others, so in some ways it’s a moral tale  for today, showing us how we can be better as humans and how we can know ourselves better.

“It’s constructed as a mythical tale, but the fact is the train delivers things that are good and brings justice with it, in this case for the Russian political refugee Schepansky.”  

In a significant adjustment by playwright Mike Kenny for the Bradford UK City of Culture production, the children and their mother will be a South Asian family, played by Farah Ashraf (Roberta), Raj Digva (Peter), Jessica Kaur (Phyllis) and Asha Kingsley, latterly seen as  Surinder in York company Pilot Theatre’s Run Rebel. Father (Paul Hawkyard), high-ranking Foreign Office civil servant Charles Waterbury, met and married Mother while working in India, then brought up his family in London.

Farah Ashraf’s Roberta, Raj Digva’s Peter and Jessica Kaur’s Phyllis in a scene from The Railway Children at the gates of Oakworth Station. Picture: James Glossop

Damian notes the story’s resonance with Bradford’s own story: “Bradford is a wonderful example of a city that has welcomed people throughout its history, and this theme of welcome and global connection resonates through The Railway Children, which at its heart is brilliant family entertainment – a classic adventure yarn with a famously emotional ending,” he says.

“In so many ways, Bradford’s strength is the diversity of its community, so it felt important to have that as part of the story this time. Just as the notion of needing to find sanctuary as refugees is an important theme too, when so many people fit that description. It’s up to us to meet them and that need.

“That might be frightening at times…so it’s an interesting time in national and international history to bring the story back to the stage, with a huge amount of paranoia of strangers coming into people’s minds, as being something to be feared, but that fear does not match up to scrutiny.”

York Theatre Royal, Keighley & Worth Valley Railway and Bradford 2025 UK City Of Culture present The Railway Children, Keighley Station and Oxenhope Station, West Yorkshire, July 15 to September 7. Box office: https://bradford2025.co.uk/event/the-railway-children/.

Copyright of The York Press

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Clap Trap Theatre’s Natasha Jones & Florrie Stockbridge to perform Lucy Roslyn’s Pennyroyal at Helmsley Arts Centre

Florrie Stockbridge’s Daphne, left, and Natasha Jones’s Christine in Clap Trap Theatre’s Pennyroyal

HELMSLEY Arts Centre artistic director Natasha Jones and musical partner Florrie Stockbridge take to the stage this weekend in Ryedale company Clap Trap Theatre’s production of Lucy Roslyn’s Pennyroyal.

Premiered in 2022 at the Finborough Theatre, London, this heartrending play about sisterhood and motherhood, enduring love and regrets many years in the making explores the things expected of women and what happens if life does not go to plan.

When Daphne (played by Stockbridge) is diagnosed with Premature Ovarian Insufficiency at 19, her sister Christine (Jones) steps in to help in the only way she knows how: by donating her eggs. For a while, the world seems corrected. However, as the years go by – and Daphne sets out on the long road of IVF – the sisters’ relationship begins to twist.

Clap Trap Theatre’s montage of Pennyroyal pictures featuring Florrie Stockbridge and Natasha Jones

“I think of my body sometimes like it’s stubborn,” says Daphne. “We’re not good friends. Like it’s a spooky hotel, and I’m just a ghost haunting it. ’Cause you don’t live in a hotel, you just pass through.”

Pennyroyal was inspired by Edith Wharton’s The Old Maid, a 1922 novella adapted ten years later into a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Zoe Akins. One hundred years on, the story is re-imagined by Roslyn, a Coventry-born, award-winning performer and writer.

Her most recent work includes Orlando, a previous collaboration with director Josh Roche and Jessie Anand Productions that won the Origins Award at VAULT Festival before transferring to the Pleasance, Edinburgh.

Natasha Jones and Florrie Stockbridge, front, in a scene from Lucy Roslyn’s two-hander Pennyroyal

Other work includes Showmanship (Theatre503) and Goody (Pleasance, Edinburgh and Greenwich Theatre – Les Enfants Terribles’ Greenwich Partnership Award 2017). Her debut play, The State vs. John Hayes, started life at the Edinburgh Fringe, before touring to Theatre Royal Bath, The Lowry, Salford, the King’s Head Theatre, London,  and OSH Brooklyn, New York.

Jones and Stockbridge have received directing and production support from Libby Pearson. Roslyn’s 80-minute play contains strong language and discussion of infertility and domestic violence.

Clap Trap Theatre in Pennyroyal, Helmsley Arts Centre, July 19 and 20, 7.30pm. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk. Watch the trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alYKAml0ffQ&t=4s

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More Things To Do in York beyond as the Vikings reveal power-base life skills. Here’s Hutch’s List No. 31, from The York Press

Dr Adam Parker, curator of archaeology at York Museums Trust, holding the Thor’s Hammer Pendant at the Viking North exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum, York

VIKING treasures, street art moved indoors, Fringe comedy previews and Ryedale Festival’s classical lustre bring out the summer smiles in Charles Hutchinson.

Museum launch of the week: Viking North, Yorkshire Museum, York

VIKING North is filled with magnificent objects, many unseen for generations and others that have never been on public display, adding up to “the best collection of Viking finds to be shown outside London” as these Viking treasures reveal the North’s power base, wealth and skills.

Telling the story of the Viking Age in the North of England from AD866 to 1066, the exhibition is underpinned by new archaeological research and cutting-edge technology and features objects from Yorkshire Museum’s own collection, the Vale of York hoard, co-owned with the British Museum, and specially loaned national and regional items, including from the Viking Army Camp at Aldwark, North Yorkshire.

Sea, Swell, Scribe: Jo Walton, Ruth King and Nicky Kippax combine in Pyramid Gallery’s exhibition of paintings, pottery and poetry

Exhibition launch of the week: Sea, Swell, Scribe, Jo Walton, Ruth King and Nicky Kippax, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, from today, 11am, to August 31, open 10am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday

WHAT happens when you let a poet loose in an art gallery with a piece of charcoal? If the juxtaposition of sumptuous curvy and pointy pots against a backdrop of textured metallic atmospheric paintings is inspiring her, then she will scribble words and phrases all over the plinths

York artist Jo Walton, from Rogues Atelier, potter Ruth King, from the Craft Potters Association, and poet Nicky Kippax, from Bluebird Bakery, combine in a show planned and organised by Pyramid  gallery manager Fiona Macfarlane and curated by Walton. Kippax has written Eksphratic verse in response to the paintings and pots.

Street artist Al Murphy in his Naughty Corner at VandalFest at 2, Low Ousegate, York

Street art takeover of the summer: Vandals At Work present VandalFest, today and tomorrow, July 18 to 20 and July 25 to 27, 11am to 6pm

VANDALS At Work reunite with youth homelessness charity Safe and Sound Homes (SASH) for VandalFest, the immersive street art takeover of a disused office block at 2 Low Ousegate, York, with a 2025 theme of the playful, cheeky, witty and mischievous.

The stripped-out interior provides four floors of blank canvas for bold, site-specific “intervention” that cover walls, floors and ceilings, complemented by live DJ sets.  Among more than 30 artists from the UK and beyond are Bristol graffiti pioneer Inkie, subversive stencilist Dotmasters, inflatable prankster Filthy Luker, master of optical illusions Chu, rooftop renegade Rowdy and York’s own Sharon McDonagh, Lincoln Lightfoot and Boxxhead. Entry is free, with a suggested £3 donation to SASH. Visitors can support the cause by buying limited-edition artworks and merchandise.

Ryedale Festival artist in residence and soprano Claire Booth

Festival of the week; Ryedale Festival 2025, until July 27

THIS North Yorkshire festival of delights will be led off by 2025’s artists in residence, saxophonist Jess Gillam, soprano Claire Booth and viola player Timothy Ridout, along with Quatuor Mosaiques, VOCES8 and composer Eric Whitacre.

Pianists Sir Stephen Hough and Dame Imogen Cooper, organist Thomas Trotter, Arcangelo, York countertenor Iestyn Davies and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s festival debut are further highlights. Jazz, folk and literature weave into the programme too: reeds player Pete Long and vocalist Sara Oschlag salute Duke Ellington; Barnsley’s Kate Rusby showcases her new album, When They All Looked Up, and Dame Harriet Walter channels Jane Austen’s wit in Pride And Prejudice. Full details and tickets at: ryedalefestival.com. Box office: 01751 475777.

McFly: Heading to the Scarborough seaside today

Coastal gig of the week: McFly, TK Maxx Presents Scarborough Open Air Theatre, today; gates open at 6pm

MCFLY’S Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter and Harry Judd head to the Yorkshire coast to perform 5 Colours In Her Hair, Obviously, All About You, You’ve Got A Friend, I’ll Be OK, Star Girl, Don’t Stop Me Now, Obviously et al. Twin Atlantic and Devon complete the bill. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

Josie Long: Opening Theatre@41’s week of Edinburgh Fringe previews and comedy nights. Picture: Matt Crockett

Comedy event of the week: Halfway To Edinburgh, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, July 13 to 19

A WEEK of Edinburgh Fringe previews and comedy nights takes over Theatre@41, Monkgate, kicking off with comedian, writer, podcaster and filmmaker Josie Long’s Work In Progress on July 13 at 2pm, followed by two Mark Watson selections, Sam Nicoresti and Lulu Popplewell’s Fresh For The Fringe double bill at 7.30pm.

Molly McGuinness and Phil Ellis are in preview mode on July 14 (8pm); Nina Gilligan discusses memory loss, health anxiety and goldfish-related trauma in Goldfish on July 16 (8pm), and Hayley Ellis navigates middle age in Silly Mare (Work in Progress) on July 17 (8pm). Susan Riddell and Kate Dolan, on July 18 (7.30pm), and Barmby Moor surrealist Rob Auton and Chloe Petts, on July 19 (7.30pm), round off the festival previews. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Phil Grainger, left, and Alexander Flanagan Wright. Picture; Charlotte Graham


News just in: Wright & Grainger in The Gods The Gods The Gods, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, July 15, 7.30pm

IN a very late addition to Theatre@41’s packed programme for next week, Easingwold duo Wright & Grainger return their Edinburgh Fringe gig theatre hit The Gods The Gods The Gods to North Yorkshire soil for one night only.

Combining 12 tracks, four stories, three performers and one exhilarating experience, Alexander Flanagan Wright and Phil Grainger mix big beats, heavy basslines, soaring melodies and heart-stopping spoken word into a show that has headlined festivals and sold out venues from Wānaka Festival of Colour in New Zealand to the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, India, to Stillington Mill. Please note: this event is standing room only; chairs will be available for those unable to stand. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Georgi Mottram: Classical BRIT Award nominee performing at Voices United concert in aid of St Leonard’s Hospice

Charity event of the week: Ian Stroughair presents Voices United: Rubies For Our Angel, Grand Opera House, York, July 18, 7.30pm

YORK cabaret artiste and West End musical actor Ian Stroughair co-hosts this fundraiser to mark St Leonard’s Hospice’s 40th anniversary with radio presenters Joanita Musisi and Laura Castle, introducing a night of musical theatre and rock and pop classics.

On the bill will be Stroughair in Velma Celli drag diva regalia; York singer Jessica Steel and guitarist Stuart Allan; York musical theatre actress Joanne Theaker; retro party band Jonny And The Dunebugs; The Voice UK 2024 semi-finalist Lois Morgan Gay and West End classical singer Georgi Mottram. Box office: https://shorturl.at/G3qhV or atgtickets.com/york.

Dance is SO embracing: Dancefloor double act Anton & Giovanni reunite for Together Again at York Barbican

Dance show of the week: Anton Du Beke and Giovanni Pernice in Together Again, York Barbican, July 18, 7.30pm

STRICTLY Come Dancing alumni Anton Du Beke and Giovanni Pernice promise “more fun, more dance, more song and even more entertainment than ever before” in the terpsichorean double act’s new show Together Again, full of breathtaking routines, stunning choreography and a seamless blend of Ballroom, Latin and musical theatre. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

The Wedding Present’s David Gedge, right, walking in Leeds with Reception writer-director Matt Aston

Gig announcement of the week: An Evening of Conversation and Music with David Gedge from The Wedding Present, Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb Road, Acomb, York, July 20, 8pm, doors 7pm

DAVID Gedge, long-time leader of The Wedding Present, discusses his “semi-legendary” Leeds indie band’s 40-year-career and his life in the music industry, in conversation with Amanda Cook. York writer/director Matt Aston join him too on the eve of rehearsals for Reception – The Wedding Present Musical, ahead of its premiere at Slung Low, The Warehouse, Holbeck, Leeds, from August 22 to September 6.  

Next Sunday’s event concludes with Gedge’s 20-minute acoustic set drawn from The Wedding Present’s cornucopia of arch, romantic yet perennially disappointed songs of love, life’s high hopes and woes, chance and no chance. Box office: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-david-gedge-from-the-wedding-present-tickets-1472506409309?aff=oddtdtcreator.

Listen to David Gedge discuss 40 years Of The Wedding Present, the Reception musical and his Rise@Bluebird Bakery show with Two Big Egos In A Small Car podcasters Charles Hutchinson and Graham Chalmers at:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/episodes/17507606-episode-233-interview-special-with-david-gedge-from-the-wedding-present

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REVIEW: Black Treacle Theatre in The Watsons, finishing Austen business at Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York ****

Sisters doing it for themselves? Jennifer Jones’s Elizabeth Watson, left, Livy Potter’s Emma Watson and Florence Poskitt’s Margaret Watson in Black Treacle Theatre’s The Watsons. Picture: Dave Lee

WHEN studying semiotics and semantics in year three of Cardiff University’s English Literature degree more than 40 years ago, one discussion point was ‘Who’s in control of a novel’. The writer?  The characters? Or the reader?

Roll forward to York company Black Treacle Theatre’s York premiere of The Watsons, where writer Laura Wade and indeed the characters ask that same question. The reader is replaced by audience members, whose control here is whether to laugh or not at Wade’s ever more anxious comedy.

The question is heightened by the playwright’s challenge. Wade penned Posh (the Royal Court one about the Oxford University dining club of Cameron and BoJo notoriety) and Home, I’m Darling (the darkly comic one about sex, cake and the quest to be the perfect 1950s’Welwyn Garden City housewife): two social studies of English behaviour. The Watsons is a third such study, but with a difference.

Not a fan: Victoria Delaney’s oft-disapproving Lady Osborne. Picture: Dave Lee

Wade picks up the unfinished business of a Jane Austen novel with all the familiar tropes of young sisters desperately having to seek husbands as the only way to improve their circumstances from a pool of unsuitable cads and awkward aristocrats, but with one sister demanding to do it on her own terms. For Pride And Prejudice’s  Lizzy Bennet, read The Watsons’ Emma Watson (Livy Potter).

Emma is 19, new in town in 19th century English society, but promptly cut off by her rich aunt and consigned back to the family home with her sisters, the more earnest  Elizabeth (Jennifer Jones) and ever excitable Margaret (Florence Poskitt).

Into Austen’s whirl spin the irresistible cad, Nick Patrick Jones’s Tom Musgrave, the tongue-tied toff, Cameron O’Byrne’s Lord Osborne, and his grandstanding mother, Victoria Delaney’s  Lady Osborne, with daughter Miss Osborne (Effie Warboys) in tow. A vicar is on the marital march too, Andrew Roberts’s awfully nice Mr Howard.

Livy Potter’s 19th century Emma Watson looks startled as Sanna Jeppsson’s Laura uses her 21st century phone in The Watsons. Picture: Dave Lee

So far, so Austen, if  Austen mini, and then…enter Laura (Sanna Jeppsson in her stage return after time out for yoga-teaching studies). Laura, wearing period costume when first seeking to fit in, turns out to be Laura Wade, wading in to explain that Austen’s story went no further (beyond notes to her sister containing advice on who Emma should not marry).

What happens when the writer loses the plot? Jeppsson’s Laura takes over, but it is not as straightforward as that. She does not merely grab Austen’s reins and gallop to the finishing line as the affairs of their heart play out. Instead, The Watsons becomes a piece of meta-theatre, exploring the role, the motives and the creative process of a writer, who, spoiler alert, ends up losing the plot herself.

What’s more, Laura will not have it all her own way. Potter’s feisty Emma speculates: what if she decides what she wants to do, rather than going along with Laura’s plotlines. Trouble is brewing, trouble accentuated by Emma’s fellow abandoned Austen characters rebelling too. Time for a breather, plenty to discuss.

Livy Potter’s Emma Watson puts Andrew Roberts’s clergyman, Mr Howard, to use carrying parcels in The Watsons. Picture: Dave Lee

Re-enter Jeppsson’s Laura, mobile phone in pocket and by now wearing jeans. Re-enter Austen’s increasingly errant characters as The Watsons heads ever further off-piste.

Not everything works – after all, this a reactivated novel in progress with room for trial and error – and you will not be surprised when Jeppsson’s Laura has an exhausted, exasperated meltdown, but you will surely love the characters’ philosophical discussions on Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, led by Matt Pattison’s scene-stealing Robert Watson.

What begins as stilted Regency period drama becomes free-form modern theatre of the absurd, mischievous yet smart, like the works of Austentatious, wherein Wade examines the art of storytelling, the right to free will and who has the final say on our finales.

Cry havoc: Effie Warboys’ Miss Osborne, centre, leads the battle charge in Black Treacle Theatre’s The Watsons. Picture: Dave Lee

Under Jim Paterson’s playful yet still sincere direction, The Watsons keeps the surprises coming, the energy dynamic, the intellect busy and the humour unpredictable. All the while, Jeppsson’s vexed Laura is the serious one, coming up with a theory to Potter’s Emma as to why Austen put the pen down on her.

Amid the social commentary, the parallels with today’s values, the ever dafter comedy, this union of writer, character and audience hits its peak.  

Black Treacle Theatre in The Watsons, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight, 7.30pm; tomorrow, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: York, 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

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Ryedale Festival opens today for feast of classical, jazz, folk & literary performances

Yorkshire soprano Bibi Heal at Ryedale Festival location Castle Howard. She will perform Songs That Move on July 18 at Helmsley Arts Centre at 2pm and the National Centre for Early Music, York, at 5pm. Picture: Rob Cook

THE 44th Ryedale Festival begins today, inviting audiences to experience 58 performances in 33 spectacular locations across North Yorkshire until July 27. 

Castalian String Quartet and one of the festival’s 2025 artists in residence, violist Timothy Ridout, open the festival with a coffee concert this morning at 11am at St Mary’s Church, Lastingham, performing Mendelssohn’s  Quartet  No 5 in E-flat and Brahms’s String Quintet No. 2 in G.

Castalian String Quartet: Opening the 2025 Ryedale Festival today at St Mary’s Church, Lastingham. Picture: Kirk Truman

Ryedale offers a diverse programme that extends beyond classical music to embrace jazz, folk, poetry and participatory events. These performances unfold against Yorkshire backdrops ranging from historic castles and abbeys to market towns and ancient churches. 

This year’s festival welcomes a multitude internationally renowned musicians, among them Ridout’s fellow artists in residence, trailblazing saxophonist Jess Gillam, Grammy-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre and Royal Philharmonic Society Singer of the Year Claire Booth.

Soprano Claire Booth: Festival artist in residence, performing Speak Of The North with violinist Tamson Waley-Cohen and pianist Christopher Glynn tomorrow at All Saints Church, Hovingham, at 8pm, and Kafka Fragments with Waley-Cohen at Helmsley Arts Centre on July 13 at 9.30pm. Picture: Sven Armstein

They are joined by two ensembles in residence, the Austrian string quartet Quatuor Mosaïques and vocal ensemble VOCES8. 

Look out for distinguished visiting artists such as pianists Sir Stephen Hough and Dame Imogen Cooper and organist Thomas Trotter, while the orchestral highlights will feature the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orchestra of Opera North, Arcangelo and the festival debut of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. 

Dame Imogen Cooper: Playing Beethoven at St Peter’s Church Norton, on July 26 at 8pm. Picture: Sussie Ahlburg

The festival champions new music too, topped by the Yorkshire premiere of Gavin Higgins’s major song cycle, Speak Of The North, exploring northern identity. Additionally, the world premiere of a newly orchestrated Arthur Bliss work will be performed by Timothy Ridoutand the Orchestra of Opera North. The programme also features rare UK performances of works by Michael Tippett, including his chamber cantata Crown Of The Year. 

Beyond classical offerings, the festival integrates jazz and folk, such as reeds player Pete Long and vocalist Sara Oschlag saluting Duke Ellington andBarnsley folk singer Kate Rusby showcasing her new album, When They All Looked Up, with her Singy Songy Session Band.

Dame Harriet Walter: Theatrical retelling of Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen biographer Gill Hornby, with pianist Melvyn Tan and violinist Madeleine Easton, at Wesley Centre, Malton, on July 20 at 7pm

Literary events include Dame Harriet Walter’s theatrical retelling of Pride And Prejudice, to mark the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, in a drawing-room setting, accompanied by violinist Madeleine Easton and pianist Melvyn Tan’s performance of Carl Davis’s score for the 1995 television adaptation.

In a new commission, poet and playwright Caroline Bird reads poems she has chosen and written to accompany cellist Joely Koos and Ryedale Festival’s Waverley Young Artist, pianist Firoze Madon, at the Schumann’s Suggestion coffee concert on at the Wesley Centre, Malton, on July 24 at 11am.

Kate Rusby: Performing her new album, When They All Looked Up, at a sold-out Milton Rooms, Malton, on July 25 at 7pm. Picture: David Angel

The Ryedale Festival believes music is for everyone, offering Concerteenies events for families and children, and Bibi Heal’s Songs That Move for individuals with conditions such as Parkinson’s. Participatory events, such as workshops and Come and Sing sessions led by VOCES8 andEric Whitacre, actively invite public involvement in collective music-making. 

BBC Radio 3 will broadcast five festival concerts, and the re-launched Young Artist Platform provides crucial career opportunities and mentorship for emerging talents. 

Ryedale Festival artistic director and pianist Christopher Glynn

Festival artistic director Christopher Glynn says: “Festivals like Ryedale are more vital than ever. They bring great music and top international performers to beautiful and historic places. They keep faith with live music in an age of digital overload. And they offer a warm welcome and sense of community, showing that classical music isn’t just something to listen to, but something to be part of.

“A festival reminds us of something that is irreplaceable: live music. Shaped by the players, the listeners and the space itself – a genuine, unrepeatable encounter of hearts and minds.”

For the full festival programme and tickets, go to: www.ryedalefestival.com. 

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Settlement Players to stage The Painting Has Gone and Chalkface in Direct Approach performances at Black Swan Inn

York Settlement Community Players’ cast members for Direct Approach performances of The Painting Has Gone and Chalkface

YORK Settlement Community Players has settled on the casts for the next Direct Approach performances at the Black Swan Inn, Peasholme Green, York, on August 31 to September 3.

Irem Saticioglu will direct Andrea Mitchell’s The Painting Has Gone, featuring Frank Brogan’s Steve, Catherine Parker Brown’s Lucy, Emily Hansen’s Sharon, Bryan Bounds’ Sky, Emma Scott’s Geri and Matt Goddard’s Museum Guide/multi-roles.

Lily Geering will be at the helm for P J Thornber’s Chalkface, to be perfoemed by Pamela Gourlay’s Anna, Nick Patrick Jones’s Grant, Em Sinclair’s Louise, Gregor Sweet’s Seb and Darren Barrott’s Mason.

York Settlement Community Players’ poster for The Painting Has Gone

Settlement Players’  Direct Approach project is a regular opportunity for aspiring directors to direct new plays by local writers, all performed by community actors in the relaxed environment of an upstairs room at the Black Swann Inn.

These 30 to 40-minute plays for between four and five actors are designed to equip new directors with the necessary skills to direct a successful production. Directors are supported throughout by the YSCP committee with planning and publicity and  are a paired with an experienced York director to act as a mentor.

York Settlement Community Players’ poster for Chalkface, part of the next Direct Approach double bill

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Meet Harvey Stevens, the new Jamie as Pick Me Up Theatre stages Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at JoRo Theatre

Harvey Stevens’s Jamie New, front left, with his fellow Year 11 pupils at Mayfield School in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

EVERYBODY’S talking about the new Jamie New in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie in York.

From July 22 to 26, GCSE schoolboy Harvey Stevens will play the title role in York company Pick Me Up Theatre’s production of Tom MacRae and Dan Gillespie Sells’s award-winning musical at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York.

This joyous underdog story was last staged in York in its Teenage Version by York Stage in June 2023. “I was too young for that, which I was really gutted about,” says Harvey, 15, from Acomb.

He has loved the story of Jamie New ever since his first experience of the film. “My mum hadn’t heard of it, so she was mortified, not knowing what she’d taken me to, but I loved it!” he says.

“I’ve seen every tour, every cast, since then. My favourite Jamie was Layton Williams, who I went to see at Leeds Grand [Theatre], though I take a bit from every Jamie to be honest, like the riffs in their singing…”

“…But you have your own style, in your singing and in your dancing,” says Gemma McDonald, the Rowntree Players pantomime favourite, who will be playing Jamie’s world-weary, self-sacrificial, ever supportive mum, Margaret.

Harvey Stevens’s Jamie New with the high heels that will transform him from 6ft to 6ft 6ins in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Picture: Colin Wallwork

Premiered at the Sheffield Crucible Theatre in 2017, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is the unapologetic story of the boy who sometimes wants to be a girl, wear a dress to the school prom and be a drag queen. Jamie New, from a Sheffield council estate, but feeling out of place, is so restless at sweet 16 to be “something and someone fabulous”, standing out from the crowd of Year 11 pupils of Mayfield School.

You sense that Harvey has that drive too. He took his first dance steps at the age of three at the Yorkshire Rose Academy of Dance in York. “I then started studying ballet at Let’s Dance, picked up jazz, tap and contemporary there in Year 4, and then I went to Northern Ballet in Leeds for three years,” he says.

From there, he moved on to Elmhurst Ballet School in Birmingham, boarding there as he studied musical theatre, jazz and ballet dancing in Year 7 and 8, adding dancing in heels to his repertoire at SK Dance Fusion in York.

That will come in handy in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. “I’ll be 6ft 6 with my heels on as I’m 6ft,” says Harvey. “I’ll be looking over everyone on stage!

“I first wore heels on stage at the Move It dance convention in London in 2022.” As with all his dance moves, he took it in his stride. “For this role I’ve taken everything I’ve learnt from ballet and contemporary [dance], all the core techniques, taking the styles and joining them together.”

To be playing Jamie is “like a dream come true as it’s my first main role,” says Harvey. “I’ve always said I wanted to play him, and here I am. It’s such a good character to play and story to tell and I feel I can really relate to that age, and what he’s going through.”

“Playing Jamie is like a dream come true as it’s my first main role,” says Harvey Stevens. Picture: Jo Hird

Gemma, a former teacher, whose 15-year-old  son, Ethan, is in the cast too, says: “There’s all those similarities, all those experiences, of  what boys face. When I saw that Robert [director Robert Readman] was doing this show, I was thinking, I’m of an age where I can play this character, the mother, who’s got true Yorkshire grit to her.

“I love her songs, If I Met Myself Again and He’s My Boy, and all the words in those songs resonate with me. With having my son there as well, I know how he feels, having just done his Proms.

“I love how Margaret is so supportive of Jamie and never wants him to feel any of that negativity that he experiences from his dad. What she does is everything you would want to her to do as a mum in that situation.

“Any mum in the audience will sit there thinking, ‘I hope that’s how I am with my child’, even though Jamie’s mum does question it, worrying if he will be bullied.”

Jamie, like Billy Liar’s Billy Fisher and Kes’s Billy Casper, is a young Yorkshire dreamer, one who  must overcome prejudice, beat the bullies and “step out of the darkness into the spotlight”.  Harvey has experienced bullying. “It can be anything, online bullying, but I don’t care what they say online. That just gets a block from me,” he says.

From September, Harvey will study musical theatre at SLP College in Garforth, his next step after taking GCSEs in Maths, English, Art, History and Salon (hair-styling). First, however, everybody will be talking about his Jamie from July 22.

Pick Me Up Theatre in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Joseph Rowntree Theatre York, July 22 to 26, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

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