Spring in his step: Michael Flatley to mark 25th anniversary of Lord Of The Dance with four shows at York Barbican next April
THE 25th anniversary tour of Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance will leap into York Barbican from April 11 to 14 on its 2022 British tour.
Billed as “the most successful touring show in entertainment history”, Flatley’s Irish dance extravaganza has visited 1,000 venues worldwide and been watched by 60 million people in 60 different countries on every continent.
Riverdance innovator Flatley will revive and update the original Lord Of The Dance for new generations of fans in a show with more than 150,000 taps per performance as it “transports the audience to a mythical time and place, capturing hearts in a swirl of movement, precision dancing, artistic lighting and pyrotechnics.”
“I’m so excited to bring the original Lord of the Dance back to UK Theatres in 2022,” says the American dancer and choreographer of Irish ancestry, who turned 63 on July 16. “I feel like this is the most vital tour in our 25-year history. The return of the arts is so incredibly important. I hope the tour will help renew spirits and put a smile back on everyone’s faces.”
The journey to Lord Of The Dance began with Chicago-born Flatley’s dream to create the greatest Irish dance show in the world, first catching the eye with a performance at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest at The Point Dublin. “Nothing is impossible. Follow your dreams,” he vowed.
Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance combines high-energy Irish dancing and original music with storytelling and sensuality, “transcending culture and language as it soars into the soul on astounding aerial moves, unparalleled precision dancing and state-of-the art theatrical effects”.
For the 25th anniversary tour, Flatley is promising new choreography, staging and costumes and new music by Gerard Fahy, plus cutting-edge technology for special-effects lighting, as he directs 40 young performers. In a nutshell, the best of tradition meets the excitement of new music and dance.
Tickets for the four 8pm performances are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Whistle blower: Sean McKenzie as James ‘Parky’ Bell in Mike Kenny’s The Park Keeper. All pictures: Northedge Photography
The Park Keeper, Park Bench Theatre, The Friends Garden, Rowntree Park, York, until July 17. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
MIKE Kenny has been thinking about retirement but has no thoughts of retiring.
The prolific York playwright has turned 70, and only the other day, as he crossed Millennium Bridge, a teenager chirped up: “You won’t be here in ten years, mush”. Kenny was not offended, instead smiling at what he thought was probably a fair point after a life lived to the full in the allotted span of three score years and ten.
As a writer, save for a sudden shortage of commissions, inspiration or writer’s block, the conventional clocking off with a watch does not apply, but whatever hand is dealt, Kenny nevertheless has been contemplating the impact of retirement.
His landmark birthday has its played, but it is as much to do with the subject matter of his latest commission from Matt Aston, artistic director of Engine House Theatre and director of Park Bench Theatre, the York company Aston set up last summer after the first lockdown to stage three monologues in the socially distanced Friends Garden.
Now, after lockdown three, Park Bench Theatre returns with The Park Keeper to mark Rowntree Park’s centenary with the story of its first park keeper, James ‘Parky’ Bell, who was in charge from 1921 to 1945.
When the cap still fits, but time is up: Sean McKenzie’s ‘Parky’ Bell contemplates a future after being “kicked out of paradise”
July 16 was his retirement day, and as the 55-minute monologue opens, Sean McKenzie’s immaculately dressed and well-groomed Bell is preparing his retirement speech, breaking down theatre’s fourth wall to ask us if he can try it out on us.
At the same time, Bell has his beady eye on the park, quick to blow his famous shrill whistle when he spots a miscreant. “I know where you live,” he shouts. “I don’t,” he admits to the audience.
Where Kenny has a choice whether to retire or not but won’t because the creative juices still flow so zestfully, Bell has no such choice and does not feel ready to concentrate on gardening or whatever.
Like so many men, he is defined by his job; his validation, even if the physical strength is not what it once was. “I can’t do as much as I once did,” he concedes. Retirement? “I don’t know how to stop. What will I do,” he asks, forlornly. “If I’m not ‘Parky’, who am I? What am I.”
All this is supposition because Kenny has worked from skeletal information. What is known is that Bell and his family did live in the lodge that now houses the Reading Room café; the blast of the Bell whistle was feared by all; he did make a retirement speech.
Bench duty: York playwright Mike Kenny, commissioned to write the play marking the 100th anniversary of Rowntree Park
Kenny fleshes out the story to make Bell a Rowntree cocoa factory worker, a survivor of the First World War (unlike his best friend) and what ensues is a study of the futility and terrible impact of war; the senseless death of so many young men; father-and-son relationships; the value of recreation and public play areas for the ordinary man, woman and child; the denuding effect of retirement.
This is the “what’s it all been for?” moment of reflection for a man who has no faith in religion, for whom hope has been hollowed about by the experience of a war that left him angry at everything and everybody; for whom heaven is empty.
“We all came back with stories. We just couldn’t tell them,” says Bell. That said, in the absence of faith, he found purpose, subsequently loving his work in his “back garden”, Rowntree Park, calling it a “miracle”, where 54,000 plants and trees were planted by the Rowntree family and the park life made him well again.
All the while, The Park Keeper becomes as much a story of Mike Kenny as James ‘Parky’ Bell, who keeps rising from his park bench note-making, still on duty to the last, but suddenly in the grip of a memory, something that troubles, angers or baffles him, and troubles the playwright too.
Consequently, it is both the most personal piece Kenny has ever written and yet a tribute to a stoical, staunch, hard-working pillar of a bygone time, when as many as 12 gardeners worked at Rowntree Park.
Taking his last stand: Sean McKenzie’s ‘Parky’ Bell in the Friends Garden at Rowntree Park, York.
Kenny’s authorial voice is strong – typified by his townie quip that “in the country[side], everywhere belongs to someone” – but Sean McKenzie’s rounded performance makes Bell’s voice equally strong and opinionated under Aston’s well-balanced direction. “First of all they take all your time, then you get a watch, so you can see all your seconds tick away,” Bell says of his retirement gift.
McKenzie’s eyes say it all in a performance where he finds the poetry, the profundity, but also the guiding principles of the working man.
Kenny makes reference to cheeky lads calling Bell a “jumped-up caretaker”, but he has Bell saying, “If we take care of it, it will take care of us”, a message for our times when climate change threatens our future as much as war ever did.
Bell hopes for a fairer world, wishing that something can be done to make this world right. Clearly, Kenny has the same wish. “I’m about to get kicked out of paradise,” bemoans Bell. “On with the future. Cheers,” his speech concludes, but with all the uncertainty whether peace will last after the handshakes in Romeo & Juliet.
Kenny has placed us in the last chance saloon, but who will blow ‘Parky’ Bell’s whistle to stop the pattern of bad behaviour?
Sean McKenzie on a Rowntree Park park bench in the lead-up to The Park Keeper opening. The beard has since gone! Picture: Northedge Photography
SEAN McKenzie hasn’t had a job for 18 months. An acting job, that is.
“I have been working, at Thorntons, at their Alfreton factory in Derbyshire, just off the M1,” said Sean, whose lockdown-enforced break from the boards has come to an end in York, the most famous home of chocolate of all, in the role of Rowntree worker ‘Parky’ Bell in The Park Keeper.
“I’ve been learning how to ice at Thorntons; I became one of their main ‘icers’, so if anyone has had any icing from Thorntons in the past year and a half, chances are it’s been my icing. Either me or Paul, the only other bloke doing the icing.”
The cherry on the icing on Sean’s cake is that he has returned to performing at last in York playwright Mike Kenny’s 55-minute monologue about Rowntree Park’s first park keeper, the shrill whistle-blowing James ‘Parky’ Bell, running until July 17 in the Friends Garden at the York park.
“Before this, I was last on stage playing Widow Twankey for Theatr Clwyd, with Hannah Chissick directing, who I’ve done five or six pantomimes for now,” said Sean, still sporting a lockdown beard in rehearsals as he met CharlesHutchPress in the Reading Café at Rowntree Park, beneath the very lodge where ‘Parky’ Bell and his family lived during his 24 tenure as park keeper from 1921 to 1945.
“I won’t lie, it’s scary. If nothing else, I’m honest,” said Sean, as he faced brushing off the ring rust from being out of action for 18 months. “But I’ll say this, and I know every actor says it, when doing a new piece, but it’s a beautiful piece of writing by Mike, based on the real character of James ‘Parky’ Bell.
“Bell’s story is intertwined with Mike’s own story, and there’s so much in there drawn from Mike’s life now and his past relationship with his father, and the big thing in the play is wrestling with all these things: life, death; nature; religion.
“Hopefully, it’s funny in parts, but it’s also really heartwarming, reflective and very poignant. That means, for me, as an actor, it’s an absolute gift and I just hope can deliver the gift.”
“Getting the job as the park keeper, after everything he’d been through, was ‘Parky’ Bell’s paradise on Earth,” says Sean McKenzie
Analysing ‘Parky’ Bell’s character, as depicted by Kenny, Sean said: “He’s obviously very old school; he fought in the First World War; became a corporal, and survived the war, but what suddenly occurred to me when reading Mike’s play was that though Bell survived and came home, can you imagine what he saw in those four years?
“He had all that stuff on his shoulders, but eventually getting the job as the park keeper, after everything he’d been through, was his paradise on Earth, and in a way, he was ‘God’ there: ruling the roost, stopping trouble, stopping the littering.
“He was a strict man, a disciplinarian, who couldn’t talk about what he’d seen in wartime – ‘if you haven’t been through it, you can’t understand it, so what’s the point of telling you?’, he says at one point – but he had found his paradise, though now he’s being asked to leave it after 24 years.
“So there are elements of Prospero in The Tempest, having to let go of the magic, because being the park keeper is his identity.”
Sean has taken on such roles as sleazebag talent agent Ray Say in The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre and Leeds playwright Alan Bennett in Bennett’s Lady In The Van for Hull Truck Theatre.
He has handled lines aplenty in myriad comedy roles in the National Theatre’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime, as Bottom in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in Jim Cartwright’s two-hander Two at Derby Theatre and a long stint in War Horse at the National Theatre and British, Irish and South African tours.
The Park Keeper is, however, his first monologue. “It’s my first play for 18 months, and I’m flying solo. It feels like being Chris Bonnington or Donald Campbell,” he said. “I’ve gone from Two to one! I know an hour ‘on stage’ on your own doesn’t sound a lot, but it is!
“I got a call on the Friday from my agent, saying ‘they want you to read on Monday’, so I had two days to read it before my chat with Matt [Matt Aston, director of producers Engine House Theatre and director of Park Bench Theatre].
Unlocking a character: Actor Sean McKenzie during the rehearsal period for playing James ‘Parky’ Bell in The Park Keeper at Rowntree Park, York. Picture: Northedge Photography
“I’m offered the part and that’s when the adrenaline kicks in and you think, ‘Can I do this?’. There’s a niggling voice going, ‘Can you still do this?’, but once I made the decision that yes, I could, it was a massive weight off my shoulders.”
That still left Sean with a massive pile of words to learn. “Before starting rehearsals, I did five 12-hour days to learn the script, when normally you’d have more like five weeks. So, between line learning and rehearsals, I’m doing everything in 18 days, rather than eight weeks,” said Sean, who brought a bench indoors to help him “get into character” at his village home in Heage, near Belper, in Derbyshire’s Amber Valley. “I called it my ‘Judi bench’, as I love Dame Judi Dench!”
The first week of rehearsals with Matt Aston were conducted on Zoom, focusing on the text, before the two met up in the second week in an impromptu rehearsal room at Southlands Methodist Church, and then transferring to the Friends Garden for final preparations on a park bench.
“Rather than just being a monologue, you have to try to flesh out the characters that ‘Parky’ Bell talks about,” said Sean. “There’s so much in this play, and the language he uses is not how we’d speak today; sometimes sentences would even be the other way round to now! That’s how precise Mike Kenny is.
“This is my first Mike Kenny script, and when you think what a great writer he is, how could I say ‘No’ to such a beautiful piece, with lots of comedy, lots of pathos. I really hope that after lockdown everyone will come out and enjoy it, as we do what we’ve always done, tell stories, like the ancient Greeks did, by the fire. Or in this case, the audiences bringing their own ‘fire’ in the form of Prosecco!”
Sean is “just the other side of 50 now” with a career in performing stretching back to the age of 11, raised in Blackpool, the son of Henry (“Harry”) Joseph Patrick McKenzie, the “Golden Voice Of Ireland”, who himself used the stage name of Sean McKenzie.
“I used to go and see all the Blackpool shows, all the great singers, the variety acts and the great comics, Doddy, Les Dawson and Frank Carson,” said Sean. “My dad was one of seven, I was one of four, and though I came from a singing family – my dad first sang in the group The Gale Brothers – I never wanted to be a singer; I always wanted to be an actor.
“I loved Buster Keaton, Abbott and Costello, Harold Lloyd, The Three Stooges, Will Hay and my particular favourites, Laurel and Hardy. That’s where I learnt about timing. You’ve got to have funny bones; you can’t teach timing, but I did learn it to an extent by watching.”
Laurel & Hardy: Sean McKenzie’s favourite comedy act
Sean trained at RADA but, as this interview encounter over a late lunch revealed, he is naturally humorous company. “Believe it or not, I am shy, and I know it’s a cliché, but there’s something about becoming another self on stage, and after 18 months of doing no acting, this has been a right baptism of fire,” he said.
Shy? That leaves Sean once he is on stage, when all that performing energy surges through him. “I think why I’ve survived for so long in this business is that people can rely on me. I will never sell an audience short,” he said. “Whatever I play, they always ‘get me’, even as the dame!”
He and Matt Aston have long wanted to do a show together. “About 15 years ago, I first came to him with an idea after seeing Tom Courtenay in Moscow Stations in the West End, to see if he would do it at the Nottingham Lakeside, when he was there,” recalled Sean.
“It didn’t happen but we’ve remained in contact and he came to see me playing Toad in The Wind Of The Willows. Now we’re doing The Park Keeper together.”
Did you know?
Sean McKenzie played opposite Berwick Kaler’s dame when they starred as the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella at York Theatre Royal in 1995-1996.
“He asked me to do it after we worked on a film together,” said Swan, who will be “frocking up” again this winter as dame in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs at Stafford Gatehouse Theatre.
“I don’t wear any false eyelashes. Just a bit of red cheeks, a bit of red nose and a bit of mascara to open the eyes.”
Park Bench Theatre in The Park Keeper, The Friends Garden, Rowntree Park, until July 17. Box office: yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or on 01904 623568.
Travelling players: top row, Ali Azhar and Ulrika Krishnamurti; bottom row, Eddie Mann, left, Dora Rubinstein and Emilio Iannucci, the cast for Around The World In 80 Days
YORK Theatre Royal is going global, visiting all four corners of York in 23 days with its family show Around The World In 80 Days.
After taking the Theatre Royal’s debut Travelling Pantomime to 16 of York’s 21 wards at Christmas, creative director Juliet Forster will be at the helm once more for this summer spectacular.
Juliet’s new circus-themed adaptation of the Jules Verne novel will play four York playing fields from August 6 to 21 before heading home for a finale at York Theatre Royal from August 25 to 28.
“As one of the characters in the play says: ‘If you can’t travel to exciting parts of the globe this summer, don’t despair, we are here to bring the world to you!’,” says Juliet. “That’s the spirit of this production really.
“Many of us are feeling disappointed that there are still a lot of restrictions around travelling this summer, so this show is the perfect opportunity for some armchair tourism – or, rather, picnic-blanket tourism.”
Juliet continues: “Jules Verne’s story is a lot of fun as the characters race against time to complete a full circuit of the Earth, and in this version, fact and fiction also go head to head as real-life investigative journalist Nellie Bly puts in an appearance. It’s going to be a joyful, very energetic, very silly and highly acrobatic re-telling of the story, delivering the kind of experience that live theatre does best.”
“It’s going to be a joyful, very energetic, very silly and highly acrobatic re-telling of the story,” promises Juliet Forster, director of York Theatre Royal’s Around The World In 80 Days
Forster, who also directed Love Bites, the love letter to live performance that re-opened the Theatre Royal after Covid restrictions eased on May 17, will be joined in the outdoor production team by Sara Perks, designer of the Theatre Royal productions of Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes and Brideshead Revisited; movement director Asha Jennings-Grant; composer and sound designer Ed Gray; lighting and sound engineer Mike Redley and assistant director Sam Bond.
Around The World In 80 Days will be staged outdoors on school playing fields at Carr Junior School, August 6 to 8; Copmanthorpe Primary School, August 10 to 12; Archbishop Holgate’s School, August 14 to 16, and Joseph Rowntree School, August 18 to 21, followed by the Theatre Royal home run.
Tree-climbing enthusiast Emilio Iannucci, previously seen at York Theatre Royal in The Book Of Dragons and Hello And Goodbye and at Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre in Romeo & Juliet, Richard lll, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2018/2019, will lead the cast as the Ringmaster and Phileas Fogg.
Ali Azhar will play The Clown and Passepartout; Ulrika Krishnamurti, The Trick Rider and Aouda; Eddie Mann, The Knife Thrower and Detective Fox, and York actor Dora Rubinstein, The Acrobat and Nellie Bly.
To add to the international flavour of Forster’s production, Ali Azharis a French-Moroccan actor born in Paris, where he studied classical theatre before further training at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, London, and Broadway Dance Centre in New York.
Emilio Iannucci, the son of satirist, writer, director and radio producer Armando Iannucci, is of Italian heritage; Ulrika Krishnamurti is a singer of Indian classical music and this summer Eddie Mann celebrates his tenth year of traveling around the world in 24 hours to settle in Britain after leaving his native New Zealand.
Who’s playing which roles?
As a member of post-punk trio Circus Of Bones, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mann has toured Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, France and Cyprus, as well as Britain five times, and had a residency at Cafe de Paris in, er, London.
Stretching things a little, Dora Rubinstein runs workshops in flexibility, contortion, acrobalance, handstands, and aerial adroitness in York and Leeds.
Looking forward to a summer of globe-trotting in York, Theatre Royal chief executive Tom Bird says: “Following the success of our hugely popular indoors family summer shows, including Swallows And Amazons and The Wind In The Willows, we’re excited to be going outdoors and to all four corners of York with Around The World In 80 Days. This madcap adventure, full of fun and frivolity, is just what we need right now. Enjoy!”
York Theatre Royal in Around The World In 80 Days:
Carr Junior School, August 6, 7pm; August 7, 3pm and 7pm; August 8, 2pm and 6pm.
Copmanthorpe Primary School, August 10, 7pm; August 11 and 12, 3pm and 7pm.
Archbishop Holgate’s School, August 14, 7pm; August 15, 2pm and 6pm; Aug 16, 3pm and 7pm.
Joseph Rowntree School, August 18, 7pm; August 19, 3pm and 7pm; August 20, 7pm; August 21, 2pm and 6pm.
York Theatre Royal, August 25 to 28, 2pm and 7pm. Signed performance: August 26, 2pm.
Suitable for age 7+. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
This one will run and run, as Daniel Bye takes to the hills. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Bye and Boff Whalley’s play These Hills Are Ours will play St Wilfrid’s Church, Harrogate; on Friday, York Theatre Royal
KEEP on running. Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson hit Episode 50 of their chatty art podcast Two Big Egos In A Small Car.
Time to discuss Chumbawamba guitarist Boff Whalley & Daniel Bye’s hill-running play These Hills Are Ours and Brit dementia film Supernova, and to hear a first extract from Graham’s biography of Magna Carta’s mainstay, North Yorkshire folkie Chris Simpson.
In a field of one: Alexander Wright, playwright, poet, storyteller, musician, director, facilitator, theatre builder…and now solo performer
ALEXANDER Wright is nervous about tonight, but why?
Let Alex tell the story: “In a potentially remarkable act of narcissism, I am doing a solo gig of my own work in a theatre I built [with Gobbledigook Theatre’s Phil Grainger and dad Paul Wright] in my back garden at 7.30pm.
“It’s the first time I have ever done a solo gig. I write lots of stuff, direct lots of stuff, tour Orpheus, Eurydice & The Gods The Gods The Gods to hundreds of places.
“I’ve released Half Man//Half Bull, a double narrative-led album, with Phil and Olivier Tilney. My production of The Great Gatsby has been performed across the UK, in Belgium, Ireland, and Korea to hundreds and thousands of audience members.
“But I’ve never really stood in front of people and performed my own stuff, on my own, for an extended period. So, now, I am…and I’m nervous about it.”
Double at t’ Mill: Phil Grainger and Alexander Wright at Stillington Mill last August when performing a week of shows back on home turf in Alex’s “back garden”. Picture: Charlotte Graham
Expect beautiful stories, beautiful poems, a few beautiful special guests and hopefully a beautiful sunset under the sails of the At The Mill outdoor theatre on the re-appropriated disused tennis court at Stillington Mill, Mill Lane, Stillington, near York.
Tongue in cheek in its title, Alex’s Remarkable Acts Of Narcissism night is part of the anything but narcissistic inaugural Summer At The Mill season at At The Mill, the Wrights’ family-run business at the mid-18th century former corn mill.
Not only theatre, children’s shows, spoken word and concerts have found a home here but so too has a Saturday morning pop-up café with unicorn ice cream and blissful cakes spun from the culinary imagination of Alex’s sister, Abbigail, and a welcoming wood-burner in the corner.
Then add supper clubs (up next, Tom Smith, from Oxfordshire, cooking an entire lamb on July 17, tickets available); special events; community gatherings; weddings and accommodation in a fairy-lit woodland shepherd’s hut or the two-bedroom Mill Cottage in a converted cow byre.
The stage is set for a night of Theatre At The Mill
Stillington Mill’s pond-side grounds have housed magical performances in previous years, whether on the woodland grass or under canvas, but the outdoor theatre is new for 2021, all because of a vow witnessed one August night by CharlesHutchPress among others at a Grainger and Wright performance in the first socially distanced summer of Covid.
“Phil has a habit of saying what he’s thinking out loud in public, and then being beholden to it. I’m fine with that and so is Phil!”, says Alex, recalling how best friend Phil had announced that a massive pile of wood had just arrived at the mill from G H Brooks, the timber merchants up the road.
They would build a theatre, he promptly promised, with a boldness worthy of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald pronouncing he would construct an opera house in the middle of a jungle in Werner Herzog’s infamously trouble-beset 1982 film Fitzcarraldo. Thankfully, the task proved less arduous, and no-one behaved like loose-cannon prima-donna lead actor Klaus Kinski.
“I think it’s important to get on with stuff, whatever the circumstances you face, and we’ve always done that. If you wait for people to give you permission, it will never happen, but we had the space to create a theatre, so we have,” says Alex.
Alexander Wright performing Orpheus at At The Mill earlier this summer. Picture: Fair Dinkum Film
“There’s something wonderful about an old tennis court making way for a stage, especially in a village where the mill has long been a focal point for the community. There’s been a mill here since being recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086 and the house was built in 1754.
“It’s lovely to keep allowing these buildings to be central to the community, and even though it’s no longer flour, I hope it’s still some form of nourishment, whether it’s cake and sausage sandwiches or theatre and music. It’s good to have an industry of sorts still going on here.”
Phil built the wooden stage and the benches – in his own self-deprecating words “making good-quality wood look like palettes” – with help from his Australian partner Angie Alle, while Alex and father Paul did all the structures above, the pillars and posts and sails. “So, if you fall off the stage, it’s Phil’s fault; if something falls on you, it’s my dad’s and my fault,” Alex jokes.
“Some of it’s trial and error, like having to re-enforce the pillar structures, but we’re always trying to do something that’s beyond what we would normally do. Others might find that intimidating, but I like stretching my capacities.”
Courtly love: Out goes tennis, in comes a theatre, game set and match at Stillington Mill
Reflecting on changing times for theatre and performance under the cloud of Covid, changes that have seen Alex and Phil rooted in North Yorkshire, rather than travelling to New York and the Edinburgh Fringe after returning early from Australia last February, Alex says: “I’m sure lots of people have had the profound realisation in the past 16 months that theatre and the arts are a function or a means to the end, rather than an end in themselves.
“We get tied up in theatre being something we consume, when in fact it is so much more valuable as a means for people to gather, to hear news, to share stories, to start conversations, and when we’ve not been gathering for 16 months, it’s such a vital tool for doing that – and I think it’s the gathering that’s most important.”
Alex continues: “I love meeting communities, meeting other people, and I feel that everywhere I go, we always leave having learned something. We always play by the same rules: performers and audience, we are together for two hours, and that sense of hanging out together is more important right now than what we see.
“But when we were setting up Summer At The Mill, I was very clear that it needed to serve the communities I care about: the local rural community and the wider, sprawling arts community.
“We’ve made what I hope is a very honest invitation to artists, to encourage them to ask if they want to come here and play, with either a new piece of work or an old piece that they’re getting back on its feet, or maybe for a collaboration, and it’s felt really nice to be able to do that.
A different writing task for playwright and poet Alexander Wright as he works a shift on At The Mill’s Saturday morning pop-up cafe (which turn into a bar for shows, by the way)
“Phil and I see loads of brilliant mates making work around the world, and we’ll hang around with them for a month. Then, six month later, there’ll be another festival, again with all these acclaimed international artists, and it’s kind of amazing when we say, ‘do you want to muck around in our back garden?’ and they’ll say ‘Yes, I’ll try out some new ideas’, and so they’ll play to a new audience, testing out new material. There’s a nice alchemy to it, and it’s a level playing field.
“We’re even talking to a couple of artists about the possibility of doing short residencies, for a week or a weekend, hosting them to let them road-test something new.”
Tonight, meanwhile, it will be Alex’s own turn to do that in a night of spoken word, storytelling and poetry…and, yes, he’s still nervous!
Alexander Wright: Remarkable Acts Of Narcissism, Theatre At The Mill, Stillington Mill, Stillington, near York, tonight (10/7/2021) at 7.30pm. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill/538906.
When domestic bliss turns to domestic blister: Sandy Foster as Judy and Tom Kanji as Johnny in Laura Wade’s comedy Home. I’m Darling. Rehearsal picture: Ellie Kurttz
SWEET peas in the garden; homemade lemon curd in the kitchen; marital bliss in the bedroom; Judy and Johnny seem to be the perfect couple. Sickeningly happy, in fact.
Yet is their marriage everything it seems? Are there cracks in their happiness? What happens when the 1950s’ family values they love so much hit the buffer in the 21st century, as the couple discover that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be?
So runs the bumpy course of Laura Wade’s comedy, Home, I’m Darling, premiered in 2018 by Theatr Clwyd and the National Theatre and now revived in a co-production between Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre, the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, and Theatre by the Lake, in Keswick, with a cast of Sandy Foster, Tom Kanji, Vicky Binns, Sam Jenkins-Shaw, Sophie Mercell and Susan Twist.
The director is Liz Stevenson, Theatre by the Lake’s artistic director, best remembered in York for her beautiful 2018 touring production of The Secret Garden at the Theatre Royal.
“Home, I’m Darling is the perfect way to welcome back audiences to live theatre again,” she says. “Sharp, funny and incredibly timely, it’s one of those plays that will have everyone chuckling, discussing and debating long into the evening. I can’t wait to bring this brilliant play to life in-the-round with this incredible creative team and with three fantastic northern theatres.”
Director Liz Stevenson in rehearsals for Home, I’m Darling. Picture: Ellie Kurttz
Home, I’m Darling has taken longer than first planned by Liz to find a northern home (or three!). “I’d heard so much about the first production, read the script and thought it would be a really interesting play for Theatre by the Lake, but then the pandemic happened and stopped everything,” she recalls.
“There’d been no firm plans; I just thought, ‘one day I bet this play will sit really well on the Keswick stage’. But when Theatre by the Lake, the Octagon and the SJT started talking about play titles for a partnership, this play came up.
“Then we started an online play-reading club with a group of about 40 people of all ages, and this was one of the plays we discussed, and it just confirmed it would go down really well if we ever did it.”
Roll on to summer 2021, and here comes Liz’s production. “It’s very funny, very entertaining, and because it’s in this 1950s-style household, there’s lots of fun and colour to it, but because the play is set now, there are lots of relatable, modern-day issues: feminism, gender roles…” she says.
… “We spoke to Laura [Wade] during rehearsals about people thinking about spending more time at home when losing their jobs, and then of course that’s what happened with the Covid lockdowns.
“Shutting herself in a world that she’s kept so small”: Sandy Foster’s Judy in Home, I’m Darling. Picture: Ellie Kurttz
“People have had to spend time at home, where we’re all expected to have a family, hobbies, a clean home and a talent for baking. Pre-Covid, in this play, here we have someone who wants that life, who wants to be the contented housewife and wants to see people’s reaction to that.”
Perfect timing for her production, then. “It’s a play that will send people out on a high, and that’s something we all need at the moment after what we’ve been through,” says Liz.
Without giving too much away, Liz, what’s the plot? “Judy is 38, she’s been made redundant, and she’s thinking, ‘Do you know what, I’m not going to get another job, working in finance, working very long days, working at weekends’,” she outlines.
“Now she’s becoming an expert baker, an expert cleaner, and it looks like everything is perfect, but then cracks appear and over a fortnight you see things fall apart, as they think, ‘Do we want to spend our lives like this?’.
“She has a home that’s beautiful, where she has control, looking after that home and husband Johnny, but when you push that, it becomes unhealthy as friends start poking holes into this ‘perfect’ bubble, where she has shut herself in a world that she’s kept so small.
“That’s the realisation that Judy has by the end of the play, where she says, ‘I think I’m scared that I’m going to struggle to catch up with the world’. It’s about balance in your life and Judy doesn’t have that balance; she’s gone from one extreme to the other.”
Sam Jenkins-Shaw and Vicky Binns in rehearsal for Home, I’m Darling
“But what’s brilliant about Laura’s writing is that she’s not being heavy-handed; she’s putting questions out there, rather than coming up with answers, and those questions have become even more relevant with people working from home.”
Home, I’m Darling is a comedy with darkness at its edges. “A few people at the play-reading club who read it likened it to an Ayckbourn play, where it’s very funny, but there’s a lot of tension,” says Liz.
“The whole play is set in one space with the actors doing their brilliant thing as the characters’ behaviour affects each other and you see the tension rise within that concentrated setting.
“This production is the first time this play has been staged in the Round, so whereas previously the stage was like a doll’s house with the roof taken off, the benefit of the Round is you are so close to the actors, you will spot every pulling of a raised eyebrow.”
Like so many who work in theatre, Liz has experienced an unparalleled past 15 months. “It’s been really tough for us at Theatre by the Lake; we closed in March last year and we’re still closed, though we have lots of activity in the community and we’re doing a festival with English Touring Theatre at Crow Park [Keswick] in August,” she says.
“But when we do Home, I’m Darling from October 6 to 30, it will be my first show IN the theatre two years after my appointment as artistic director, though we have been rehearsing it inside the building, which has been lovely, and we can’t wait to see a show being put on here again.”
“Darlings, we’re home,” she can finally say at that point.
Home, I’m Darling, Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough, tonight until August 14. Box office: sjt.uk.com
A Twist at the end: Susan Twist in a scene in rehearsal from Home, I’m Darling. Picture: Ellie Kurttz
Emily Hansen’s Pilgrim as Mary Magdalene in A Resurrection For York. Picture: John Saunders
A Resurrection For York, Residents Garden, Minster Library, Dean’s Park, York
HAPPENSTANCE may have led to this pandemic-delayed production being staged at the Residents Garden in Dean’s Park, but A Resurrection For York made a compelling case for the York Mystery Plays to take up residence there.
The gardens are self-contained, behind iron railings that facilitate curious passers-by taking a look; the acoustics are clear, without echo; the Minster bells chime on the quarter hour to both complement and compliment the atmosphere, and the setting is perfect for open-air theatre: spacious, green and on a hillock that cries out to be used for moments of high drama or an important monologue.
As Saturday morning’s audience gathered under grey clouds, Philip Parr’s cast members for this York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust, York Festival Trust and York Minster tripartite production were already in situ for the first of six performances in two days.
The premise was that they were playing pilgrims, two canvas tents pitched at the back, everyone in walking boots, with roll-up sleeping mats, blankets, rucksacks and picnics in Enid Blyton retro brown paper bags.
Intentionally, community cast and community audience became indistinguishable: we were all in this together, albeit socially distanced; pilgrims all, gathered to tell each other stories, led by Nick Jones and Sally Maybridge’s exhorting narrators.
From this canvas would emerge Parr’s Pilgrims, dotted around the grass, some staying in that guise, others taking on specific roles, both alongside and on the two static wagons rolled out for significant scenes, one to set the cross in place.
The cross always will be the most potent symbol of the York Mystery Plays, and here it was especially central to Parr and 2018 York Mystery Plays director Tom Straszewski’s hour-long story, adapted from the Mystery Plays cycle of the crucifixion and the events that followed.
The most powerful image was in fact an absence, the dying Christ being represented instead by a shroud, wrapped around the cross pulled high by the grafting soldiers, one declaring himself too tired to finish the task in one of those brief interjections of humour that the Mystery Plays – the street theatre of its time – suddenly throw up.
The shroud became the motif woven through Parr’s production, daubed in blood, later folded up across a wagon to signify Christ’s body placed in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea (Tony Froud), and then being worn by a tall, dark-haired figure, again emerging from the crowd.
In keeping with medieval tradition, the pilgrim playing Christ was not credited, although a reference to “plus David Denbigh” in the list supplied to CharlesHutchPress may indicate it was him.
Judith Ireland’s Mary, Mother of Jesus, and Emily Hansen’s Mary Magdalene stood out in a cast strong on diction and clear delivery. Music played its part too, largely acappella, choral or folk, with minimal accompaniment, and used sparingly but sung lustily or movingly.
What comes next? 2022 is very likely to see the York Mystery Plays being staged on wagons in June, maybe at the Residents Garden. Watch this space.
Withholding the truth: Oliver Ford Davies’s Graham Greene and Stephen Boxer’s Kim Philby in A Splinter Of Ice
A Splinter Of Ice, The Original Theatre Company, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
WHAT’S this? A proper printed programme to peruse. Another sign of a return to theatre’s old normal ahead of Monday’s Step 4 pronouncement and its promise of the resumption of full-capacity shows.
What’s this? A not particularly busy first-night audience for spy story A Splinter Of Ice, even making allowances for social distancing in masked times. We could romanticise how theatres will be crammed to the gills once “Freedom Day” arises, but audiences are selective. Always were, always will be.
In between the mothballed lulls in lockdown, we have grown accustomed to seeing theatres and theatre companies adapting to Covid rules with social-bubble casts of one, two or three on main stages. In truth, Ben Brown’s three-hander would have been equally at home on a studio or Edinburgh Fringe stage, where it would have gained from added claustrophobia.
A Splinter Of Ice has its own cases of social distancing and mask-wearing: Brown’s subject matter is the first meeting in 35 years of The Third Man writer Graham Greene (Oliver Ford Davies) and Cold War-era spy Kim Philby (Stephen Boxer) in 35 years, whose friendship had been forged in Greene’s days in Philby’s office at MI6. Greene professed to loving him, maybe explaining the play’s inclusion in the Theatre Royal’s Love Season.
British intelligence officer and double agent Philby’s defection to the Soviet Union ensured an enforced social distancing, despite Philby’s invitations to his old friend to visit him. Greene finally does so when attending a peace conference at Gorbachev’s initiation, along with the likes of Yoko Ono, Gregory Peck and Peter Ustinov.
The date is February 15 1987. Greene arrives for dinner at Philby’ rudimentary Moscow flat, home to the terminally ill spy, his charming fourth wife Rufa (Karen Ascoe) and books and a chair given to Philby by fellow Cambridge Five spy Guy Burgess.
Michael Pavelka’s set is skeletal, bare scaffolding framing the drab flat contents, much like Brown must fill in the blank pages of exactly what went on that night as Greene would later only affirm that the meeting had taken place.
Likewise, Boxer’s Philby opens by saying he will not answer any of Greene’s questions, although subsequently he does, but who knows where the truth lies in his answers. Greene had had the first word, addressing the audience directly to warn that “perhaps he was just playing with me, as he did with others”. Philby’s mask-wearing had been so adroit that he was, in Greene’s words, “the greatest spy of the 20th century”.
The ghost in the writer: Oliver Ford Davies’s Graham Greene, there but not there
“Though they are great friends, they withhold things; they’re not always honest with each other,” Ford Davies forewarned in his interview, and indeed Greene is, in his own way, as a writer, an outsider, an observer, who has to keep his anti-social distance from his quarries. Are his reasons for finally agreeing to see Philby entirely honest, or is there a hidden agenda?
Just as Philby is still in the service of his Russian masters, albeit only sparingly, so Greene still attaches himself to “the firm” (MI6).
The British love a spy story, whether in book or film form, and here we have two of the brightest minds of their generation locking intellectual horns over wine, whisky and a dinner of coq au vin cooked by Rufa (although Philby normally does the cooking).
Tonight, however, he is on washing-up duty, a task that facilitates Brown the opportunity to have a conversation between Greene and Rufa, to bring a third, more sympathetic, perspective into the reunion, a device that also loosens up what might otherwise be all rather too stifling and monochrome.
Brown conducts the first half as Philby sketching in some of the blanks under Greene’s questioning, telling the story his convivial, urbane way, before all that politesse truly turns to politics post-dinner when Greene’s probing becomes more of an inquisition, as Philby starts to show his true colours in “vodka veritas” with what Greene calls his “chilling certainty” – and no sense of guilt. Greene turns out to be the more mysterious character, the ghost in the writer, there but not there.
There is a little brittle wit , there is intrigue, history and mystery too, and then there is the big question: would you choose to be loyal to your friend or your country? Yet A Splinter Of Ice ultimately leaves you as cold as the Cold War; for all the surface finesse of Alan Strachan’s direction and the consummate stage craft of Ford Davies, Boxer and Ascoe, it should reveal and say more, rather than play a chess game in words. From Brown, amid the display of superior grey matter, the play is too grey without enough of his own voice beyond the detailed research.
Truth be told, An Englishman Abroad, Alan Bennett’s marrow story of a defector and British visitor, Guy Burgess and actress Coral Browne, meeting in Moscow in 1958, was more fascinating, more rewarding too.
Given the subject of two men who took such risks, whether in word or deed, A Splinter Of Ice feels just too safe.
Minster, by textile artist Carol Coleman, who is taking part in York Open Studios at 1 Carlton Cottages, Wigginton
AHEAD of Monday’s already trailered Step 4 pronouncement, Charles Hutchinson unmasks events aplenty, from Open Studios to heavy metal heaven, theatre comedy to theatre tragi-comedy, musical celebrations to a triple exhibition.
Big art event of the next two weekends: York Open Studios 2021, preview night tomorrow, 6pm to 9pm; July 10/11 and 17/18, 10am to 5pm
AFTER the Covid-enforced fallow year of 2020, York Open Studios returns this weekend for its 20th parade of the city’s creative talent.
The event sees 145 artists and makers open 95 studios, homes and workplaces, and among them will be 43 debutants, with full details at yorkopenstudios.co.uk.
York’s biggest annual art showcase spans ceramics, collages, digital art, illustration, jewellery, mixed media, painting, printmaking, photography, furniture, sculpture and textiles.
Still feeling their Old Selves after lockdown easement: Yorkshire four-piece look overjoyed at the prospect of headlining tomorrow’s very heavy metal bill at The Fulford Arms
Hardcore gig of the week: Old Selves, Blight Town, Cast Out and Realms at The Fulford Arms, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm.
“WHAT at an absolute heavy metal treat,” enthuses Fulford Arms supremo Chris Sherrington, ahead of tomorrow’s headbanger fiesta, headlined by fiery Yorkshire four-piece Old Selves.
Playing loud too will be Nottingham progressive post-hardcore/math rock quintet Blight Town, York punk’n’roll/metalcore crossover band Cast Out and Yorkshire post-hardcore act Realms, who “make music for people who never grew out of their emo phase”. Tickets: thefulfordarms.bigcartel.com/ or on the door.
Lead actors Sandy Foster and Tom Kanji in rehearsal for Laura Wade’s comedy of domestic bliss turned to blister, Home, I’m Darling. Picture: Ellie Kurttz
Make a trip to Scarborough for: Home, I’m Darling, Stephen Joseph Theatre, July 9 to August 14
SWEET peas in the garden; homemade lemon curd in the kitchen; marital bliss in the bedroom, Judy and Johnny seem to be the perfect couple. Sickeningly happy, in fact, in Laura Wade’s domestic comedy-drama.
Is their marriage everything it seems, however? Are there cracks in their happiness? What happens when the 1950s’ family values they love so much stop working in the 21st century as the couple discovers that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
Liz Stevenson directs this co-production between Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, Bolton’s Octagon Theatre and the SJT. Box office: thesjt.uk.com.
Back together in Beulah: Actor-musicians Jim Harbourne and Ed Wren reunite next week, having first performed the show for The Flanagan Collective in 2012
Theatre resurrection of the week ahead: The Flanagan Collective in Beulah, Summer At The Mill, Stillington, near York, July 14 to 16, 8pm to 10pm
AN island sets sail into the sunset; a boy watches a lion running out of the sky, and an old man is sleeping as Alexander Wright’s Beulah reawakens in Stillington.
Inspired by William Blake’s world of a “mild and pleasant rest”, Wright plays with notions of reality, of the permeable times of day and liminal states of being, in a show woven with storytelling, puppetry and soaring live music, first staged at York Theatre Royal in the bygone summer of 2012.
Directed by Tom Bellerby, Beulah is performed by actor-musicians and composers Jim Harbourne and Ed Wren. Box office: atthemill.org.
Father Of The Flowers, by York artist Linda Combi, from her exhibition The Last Gardener Of Aleppo at Pyramid Gallery, York
Exhibition launch of the week times three: Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, Friday to September 5
ERUM Aamir, Debbie Loane and Linda Combi form the suitably triangular structure of Pyramid Gallery’s summer show. Not one, but three exhibitions will run in two upstairs rooms.
For Celestial Garden, Manchester ceramic artist Erum Aamir has made intricate porcelain sculptures that fuse her scientific research and artistic imaginations, complemented in the front room by seascape and landscape paintings by Easingwold artist Debbie Loane under the title of The Peace Of Wild Places.
York artist Linda Combi presents The Last Gardener Of Aleppo, a series of original collages and mixed-media artworks and giclee prints that form a moving tribute to Abu Waad in aid of The Lemon Tree Trust and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees agency.
Not having a ball: Luke Dickson as doomed Leeds United manager Brian Clough in The Damned United at York Theatre Royal
Second time lucky: The Damned United, Red Ladder Theatre Company, York Theatre Royal, July 15, kick-off 7.30pm
THE Damned Pandemic curse struck again when June 16’s performance of The Damned United was postponed after one of the actors had an inconclusive lateral flow test. Tickets remain valid for the post-Euro 2020 new date.
Anders Lustgarten’s darkly humorous adaptation of David Peace’s book about Brian Clough’s 44 days in purgatory as Leeds United’s manager is built around the double act of tortured genius Clough (Luke Dickson) and father figure/assistant Peter Taylor (David Chafer).
The beauty and brutality of football, the working man’s ballet, bursts out of a story of sweat and booze, fury and power battles. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
No, that’s not England manager Gareth Southgate, second from left, front row, in Black Sheep Theatre’s line-up
Raise the roof booster: Black Sheep Theatre, For The Love Of Musicals, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, July 24, 2.30pm and 7.30pm
MUSICAL director Matthew Clare and his merry band, plus a heap of York singers, present a concert programme packed with musical delights as they seek to prove that “There’s No Business Like Show Business”.
The song list for this Black Sheep Theatre fundraiser for the Joseph Rowntree York, spans Annie Get Your Gun, the classics and more recent shows, such as Dear Evan Hansen. Box office: josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Joshua Burnell: Live At Forty Five gig in August. Picture: Stewart Baxter
Intimate gig announcement of the week: Joshua Burnell, Live At Forty Five, Forty Five Vinyl Café, Micklegate, York, August 14, 7.30pm
JOSHUA Burnell, progressive York purveyor of folk-fused baroque’n’roll for the modern world, performs in a three-piece line-up, including Frances Sladen, at Forty Five Vinyl Café next month.
Expect a showcase for latest album Flowers Where The Horses Sleep and his new EP, Storm Cogs, featuring songs about a folk singer who went missing for 30 years (Shelagh McDonald), a storm-chasing flying machine and a childhood memory, “written and recorded in lockdown and released as the world recovers”.
Elsie Franklin supports. Tickets are on sale at fortyfiveuk.com/events/joshua-burnell-live-at-fortyfive.
