Ah, humbug…An unexpectedly sweet moment for Andy Barrow’s Scrooge in Oddsocks Productions’ A Christmas Carol
NO year can go by without jocund joshers Oddsocks Productions playing the Joseph Rowntree Theatre in York, not even a Covid-compromised year.
Sure enough, the madcap Derby company return on Saturday for 60 minutes of socially distanced, slapstick-heavy festive fun with their very fast-moving adaptation of a Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol.
Make that 120 minutes because there will be two performances, the first at 3pm, the second at 7.30pm.
“Experience the ghostly tale of greed and comeuppance from the safety of your own table for up to six,” comes the Oddsocks invitation.
“Has Scrooge had his last humbug? Will he join the festive carollers and get some figgy pudding? Will Tiny Tim warm his stone-cold heart?” they ask.
“Find out when Oddsocks serve up a Victorian feast of a family show in their own inimitable style using comedy, music and song.”
Oddsocks’ cracking crack at A Christmas Carol combines ghostly puppets from puppeteer Josh Elwell (CBeebies, Disney and The Jim Henson Company) with Oddsocks actor/director Andy Barrow as Scrooge and Joseph Maudsley (Ratty in Oddsocks’ The Wind In The Willows) as Bob Cratchit, also introducing Harrie Dobby to the Oddsocks family as Mrs Cratchit.
Suitable for all from age seven upwards, A Christmas Carol will be performed without an interval but Humbug galore at the Covid-secure JoRo Theatre. Tickets are on sale at: josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/all-shows/a-christmas-carol/1327# or on 01904 501935.
Martin Barrass, attired in the late Bev Jones’s favourite colours of black and pink, is pictured publicising the now-cancelled Strictly Christmas Live In The Park
STRICTLY Xmas Live In The Park, with a singalong songsheet led by York pantomime perennial Martin Barrass, is off.
Organiser Lesley Jones confirmed the cancellation of Sunday’s open-air Bev Jones Music Company show at the Rowntree Park amphitheatre on Facebook.
“It is with huge sadness I have had to cancel the Xmas Concert on Sunday 13th. External circumstances forced the decision,” she revealed.
Charlotte Wood in the role of Silly Billy for Bev Jones Music Company’s Strictly Christmas Live In The Park
“However, we will be singing at Tesco, Askham Bar, on Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th December from 1.30pm. Look out for our 2021 calendar. Thank you all as ever.”
In an earlier post, she wrote: “For many, many reasons we are beaten in this strangest of years! We must confess that we have taken the hardest decision to cancel our Strictly Live In The Park.
“You all know how I do always my best to give you the show I promise, but Covid, Tiers, illness, personal etc etc….force the decision.
The cast of Strictly Christmas Live In The Park, with Marin Barrass, front, centre, gathers for a socially distanced early rehearsal
“All ticket monies will be refunded in full. Roll on 2021. Keep in touch, join our Bev Jones Music Group page to find out what’s next.”
On November 29, Lesley had expressed excitement at the upcoming show’s progress. “Only two weeks to go! Tier 2 means we have the green light and we are good to go!” she posted
Strictly Xmas Live in The Park would have added up to a “3 in 1 Xmas experience” with Christmas songs through the decades, carols by candlelight and a one-of-a-kind, specially written pantomime, Once Upon A Pud.
Martin Barrass, Dame Berwick’s stalwart comic stooge, was already missing out on the Covid-cancelled Kaler comeback in Dick Turpin Rides Again at the Grand Opera House. Now he has to forego leading the pantomime section of Strictly Xmas Live In The Park on Sunday afternoon too.
What? No show? Alas not for Melissa Boyd’s Princess and Terry Ford’s villain in the pantomime section of Bev Jones Music Company’s Strictly Xmas In The Park
In the Covid-secure, socially distanced performance, Martin would have reactivated his first ever song-sheet in a York Theatre Royal panto – all about Yorkshire Puddings – as well as telling a few seasonal jokes.
Joining him in the festive concert’s panto sequence would have been Melissa Boyd’s Princess, Terry Ford’s villain and Charlotte Wood’s Silly Billy, plus a Dame, Fairy Godmother, Prince Charming and Jack Ass.
Favourite Christmas songs, such as Santa Baby, Jingle Bell Rock and Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?, and a visit from Father Christmas were in Sunday’s programme too. All audience members were to be temperature tested on arrival and placed into family private bubble areas.
Rehearsals were booked in for Rufforth Institute Hall, socially distanced and under a full Covid risk assessment.
“He’s just a dreamer, who wants to be up in the clouds,” says Jordan Fox of playing Jack. “I can get on board with that: I’m an actor; I can get lost in stories” Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
EVERYTHING should have been Beautiful for Jordan Fox in 2020.
“I was in the tour of Beautiful, the Carole King musical, at the start of the year, and then that got cancelled by the pandemic lockdown,” says the West End actor from West Yorkshire. “The tour had been such fun, but when I got back to London from Cardiff, I got the email to say ‘Don’t go to the next theatre’.”
Based in London for the past couple of years, starring in Kinky Boots and Friendsical, the Friends-parodying musical, Jordan has moved back to Yorkshire in lockdown.
Now he finds himself in the title role – Jack, not the allotment staple – in York Stage’s pantomime, Jack And The Beanstalk, from Friday at Theatre @41 Monkgate, York.
“Me and Nik [writer-director Nik Briggs] went to university together at Bretton Hall [the Grade 2 listed building on the Yorkshire Sculpture Park estate, near Wakefield]. It was like Hogwarts! I loved it!” says Jordan, who studied there from 2006 to 2009.
“I was in the first year when Nik was in the second year and we ended up doing some projects together and getting on really well.”
Now 32, Jordan says: “We’ve chatted a few times, but because he’s based in York and I’ve been in London we’ve kind of missed each other’s paths. So, it feels really lovely to be doing this panto.
“Nik messaged me and said, ‘I know you’re based in London but we’re looking for Yorkshire actors’, and I said, ‘well, I’m coming back, can I do it?’.”
Jordan was born in Bradford and grew up in Huddersfield and his family now lives in Holmfirth. “I’ve moved back home, living with my partner in Holmfirth, and if I get a West End show again, I’ll rent down there and keep the house up here,” he says.
He performed in Lawrence Batley Theatre pantomimes in Huddersfield in his childhood. “Then, in 2014-2015, I was Peter Pan in Peter Pan with Dean Gaffney as my Captain Hook, and now I’m doing Jack And The Beanstalk, so I’ve had a green theme to my pantos, it seems!”
Deep into tech week now for his role as Jack, Jordan says: “The great thing that Nik has done with the script is that he’s really massively acknowledged the present pandemic situation, with all the social distancing.
Feeling good to be back: Jordan Fox in an early rehearsal for York Stage’s Jack And The Beanstalk. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
“We make lots of references: we can air-hug, play air guitar, without us breaking any rules. We’re using a traverse stage design too [with the audience seated in bubbles to either side], and we can really fill that space in a different way when, even though we can’t do traditional panto things, we can figure out new ways and it’s always nice to do that.”
Jordan is enjoying reacquainting himself with the pantomime world for a second time. “For me, there was a really big gap between doing it when I was young and then getting back into it for Peter Pan, and now it’s good to be doing it again,” he says.
“I love the simple fairy-tales, the silliness of it all, whereas normally [with musicals] you don’t ever have the free rein to do anything like that. With panto, if something goes wrong, it’s great to be able to include the audience in it.”
As for playing Jack, Jordan says: “As I’ve read him, he’s northern, probably sounding like I did before going to London! I’ll be letting my Yorkshire heritage take over.
“He’s just a dreamer, who wants to be up in the clouds. I can get on board with that: I’m an actor; I can get lost in stories! Jack is simplistic in his ideals, not weighed down by anything. Instead of the norms of adulthood, he’s still letting himself dream, which we can all connect with.”
Dreams have been put on hold in Covid-19 2020. “It was so disorientating when Beautiful stopped. A lot of actors, when we’re not working in shows, work in bars, teach kids, do gigs, basically anything where there’s a crowd, but because everything stopped, it was an anxiety-ridden couple of months,” says Jordan.
“It felt like the world falling from beneath you, but luckily I had some savings, and I started doing some ‘assisting engineering’ work, basically handing people tools.”
Then came Nik’s invitation to climb a beanstalk in a York theatre. “This is a dream come true and I’m so happy to be here,” says Jordan. “It’s been so frustrating for the theatre world this year, when it seems like the Government doesn’t make the effort to go and get someone like [theatre producer] Cameron Mackintosh to ‘tell us what we should be doing’.”
Treading the boards once more at last, Jordan says: “When you come to a show, you never leave the theatre the same person as when you arrived, and that’s what we’ve all been missing.”
Dare to dream, like Jack, like Jordan, of better times ahead. In the meantime, enjoy the uplift, the joy, the daftness, of pantomime.
York Stage presents Jack And The Beanstalk at Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, from December 11 to January 3; show times, Monday to Saturday, 2pm and 7pm; Sundays, 1pm and 6pm; Christmas Eve, 12 noon and 5pm; New Year’s Eve, 12 noon. Box office: online only at yorkstagepanto.com. Please note, audiences will be seated in household/support bubble groupings only.
Livvy Evans: Returning to her home city to wave her wand as Fairy Mary in York Stage’s Jack And The Beanstalk. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
MARCH 17, London. York-born musical actress Livvy Evans is one day away from the opening of her West End role in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical at the Aldwych Theatre.
“After two weeks of tech rehearsals, we were getting ready to open, but instead we got called in to say the theatre would be closing immediately,” she recalls, now sitting in a different theatre, back in the home city she left 13 years ago, as she prepares to play Fairy Mary in York Stage’s socially distanced, Covid-secure Jack And The Beanstalk at Theatre @ 41 Monkgate, York.
Livvy went from Simply The Best to simply the worst of times, as the Coronavirus pandemic left the West End deserted for month after month. “Initially, we expected to go back after a few weeks, but at the last meeting we had with the company managers they told us ticket sales were being taken off for January and February and now, as with most shows, they’re aiming for a spring reopening,” she says. In other words, at least a year of gathering cobwebs will have passed.
In her professional career, Livvy has been “lucky enough to pretty much go from theatre job to theatre job” in such shows as Soho Cinders, Motown at the Shaftesbury Theatre and UK tours of Sister Act and Ghost: The Musical. “When I have had a time where I haven’t worked, I’ve done nannying support in special needs, and I get a lot from it; it’s much more fulfilling than working in restaurants,” she says.
“But right now there just aren’t the jobs available for actors that they might otherwise tend to do in the quiet times, such as teaching or working in bars,” she adds, on top of the blow of no furlough pay. “And we’re being asked to go back for less pay and fewer shows when we do re-start.”
Glory be that Nik Briggs came a’calling, offering Livvy the chance to join his Jack And The Beanstalk company for the panto season. “It must have been the beginning of September, and at that point it still hadn’t been confirmed that Tina wouldn’t be opening this year,” Livvy recalls.
“So, I could only say ‘hopefully’, and I’d need to get permission from the Tina company, so it all took a long time. But once we knew Tina wouldn’t be opening, I said to Nik, ‘I’d love to do it’. I’ve been a professional for many years, but since leaving for London, I’ve never done a professional show in York. Leeds, yes, Bradford, yes, but not York.”
Brought up in Huntington, Livvy moved south to train in musical theatre on a full scholarship at Arts Educational, in Chiswick, London, in 2008. “I normally only spend four or five days in York, but this year it’ll be six weeks, which will be lovely,” she says.
“I don’t think I’ve ever played Fairy before, and the only panto princess I’ve done was Jasmine in Aladdin at the Grand Opera House in 2006 with Syd Little and Michael Starke, who I then did Sister Act with. I remember he used to call me his ‘little Peking duck, his little dumpling’ in the panto!”
Livvy will be performing with York Stage for the first time. “Strangely, I never did a York Stage Musicals show when I was young, but I did a lot of the summer school youth projects with Simon Barry at the Grand Opera House, doing my first professional job in Aladdin on the back of playing Audrey in Little Shop Of Horrors,” she recalls.
“I liked being put in with the older group for York Musical Theatre Company shows, working with Paul Laidlaw and Jim Welsman – and I loved playing little Kate Mullins in the British premiere of Titanic: The Musical for that company.”
As opening night of Jack And The Beanstalk approaches fast on Friday, Livvy says: “It’s great to be in York, especially at this time of year, back in the house I grew up in, and I’ve never been so excited to be playing the Fairy, spreading joy to everyone, although she’s a no-nonsense fairy! As everyone keeps saying, I’m going to be the talk of my niece’s playground!”
York Stage presents Jack And The Beanstalk at Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, from December 11 to January 3; show times, Monday to Saturday, 2pm and 7pm; Sundays, 1pm and 6pm; Christmas Eve, 12 noon and 5pm; New Year’s Eve, 12 noon. Box office: online only at yorkstagepanto.com. Please note, audiences will be seated in household/support bubble groupings only.
Switched on at all times: Robin Simpson’s joke-generation dame lights up York Theatre Royal’s Travelling Pantomime. All pictures: Ant Robling
REVIEW: York Theatre Royal’s Travelling Pantomime, Jack And The Beanstalk, New Earswick Folk Hall, York, 5/12/2020
NO Rolling Stones show goes by without rock’n’roll’s greatest paleontological survivor, Keith Richards, leaning into his microphone to mumble: “It’s good to be here…it’s good to be anywhere”.
Lo and behold, “It’s great to be here…it’s kind of great to be anywhere,” says York Theatre Royal Travelling Pantomime’s comic turn, Josh “Just Joshing” Benson, at the outset of Saturday evening’s Covid-secure, socially distanced, temperature-tested, bubble-seated pantomime.
How right he is. Saturday was day four of the new dawn of the York Theatre Royal pantomime, the first after 40 years in the wildness of the Dame Berwick Kaler era. Until Covid-19 became the joyless new villain, out to destroy the land of theatre, Cinderella was to have marked the transition from Kaler capers to a new partnership with regular Great British Pantomime Award winners Evolution Productions.
On his knees but not for long: York Theatre Royal’s inexhaustible pantomime comic turn Josh Benson
When invitations to the ball turned to cinders, chief executive Tom Bird, creative director Juliet Forster and Evolution writer-director Paul Hendy decided to tear up the script and compose three new ones instead to take the panto to the people.
Hence it is indeed great to be here, there and everywhere, because, while the Theatre Royal main stage awaits resuscitation in 2021, the Travelling Pantomime will definitely be pitching up at 16 of York’s 21 wards, possibly more if Covid-safe passage can yet be guaranteed to others. At least four more shows are being lined up for after Christmas and a recording of the second-night preview will be made available for streaming soon too.
On Saturday, New Earswick Folk Hall was transformed into a theatre for the first time, creating an impromptu stage with Hannah Sibai’s red-curtained, green-framed travelling theatre frontage and a traditional pantomime backdrop.
It’s all about the bass: York Theatre Royal’s multi-tasking fairy, singing captain and musician Anna Soden
Everything is slimmed down – a cast of five, no ensemble, no live band, no interval, no panto cow, but less just means being more inventive and cramming so much into what we are told will be an hour but stretches gladly well beyond.
Edinburgh Fringe shows work to tight running times, and quality, not quantity, rules here too. To Paul Hendy, that means bottling up the “the essence of panto” and right now, in Covid-19 2020, that essence is Joy.
Once we are introduced not just to Just Josh’s rubber-bodied comic, but also Robin Simpson’s classic dame, Faye Campbell’s modern hero, super-tall Reuben Johnson’s villain and Anna Soden’s trumpet/guitar/bass-playing fairy, we must vote for our choice of show: Dick Whittington, Jack And The Beanstalk or Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. Seven dwarves, note; there is a knock-out joke a’coming.
Hitting the Jack-pot: Faye Campbell’s super hero in Jack And The Beanstalk
Jack won out on Saturday: Josh becoming, well, Josh, with the daftest streak of blond in his hair since Kevin Petersen pummelled 158 against Australia with a skunk plonked on his bonce in 2005. He is a lovably daft ball of energy, cheeky but not saucy, and if he kept his magic tricks up his sleeve this time, what an asset for the future.
Simpson, on loan from Huddersfield’s Lawrence Batley Theatre, is the penniless but pun-full, mirthful Dame Trott, reaching for both a cuppa and the gin; Johnson, all in black with a dash of red to match his Russian accent, is a Flesh Creep with an amusingly dismissive air and a mischievous hint of Borat.
Campbell’s Jack must fight the old prejudices against girls being fit for purpose for heroic tasks while keeping the name Jack. Soden’s rapping, funky, blue and pink-haired Fairy is more likely to hit the bass line than wave a wand, as flashy as her lit-up boots.
Kill-joy: Reuben Johnson’s Flesh Creep in Jack And The Beanstalk
Juliet Forster directs with momentum, brio and thrills rather than frills, complemented by Hayley Del Harrison’s fun, compact choreography and musical director James Harrison’s rapid-fire bursts of high-energy songs.
Yes, there is a beanstalk and a Giant called Pundemic. Above all, York Theatre Royal have hit the jackpot with Paul Hendy’s script-writing prowess, love of a double-act routine and a knowingly contrived, convoluted path to a pay-off line.
He handles the pandemic crisis with a success rate to make the Government jealous, throwing in topical references galore with witty, often unpredictable Pandemime punchlines, but nothing insensitive in such traumatic times.
Writer Paul Hendy: Bottling the essence of pantomime, labelled with joy
A magazine title slapstick to-and-fro between Benson and Simpson is already a contender for panto scene of the year, and if there are jokes for adults, Hendy favours a Gilbert O’Sullivan song title, rather than adult material or in-jokes.
Pantomime 1, Pandemic 0, the Travelling Pantomime triumphs on its already sold-out run to December 23. Hendy will be back next winter for the full Evolution to roll out; Benson is due to return to the Victoria Theatre panto in Halifax next Christmas, alas, but his Theatre Royal day will surely come, even if he can’t magic his way out of that one.
MIlton Rooms, Malton: Seeking donations via Go Fund Me
VACCINATIONS to fight coronavirus are around the corner, but the focus at the Milton Rooms in Malton is on another form of help: donations.
The Market Place community and entertainment venue has spent a large part of 2020 closed under lockdown restrictions, with only a limited reopening in September and October for several socially distanced events.
The Milton Rooms is a charitable trust run by a board of trustees and operated by volunteers, who have spent much of lockdown giving the venue a spruce-up and planning the programme of events for when restrictions are lifted.
Faced by little income coming in, help from the community is needed to meet the considerable costs of keeping the building running, not least insurance and utility bills.
Hence the Milton Rooms has relaunched its Go Fund Me appeal to help in that task until running a full programme of events for the benefit of the community can be resumed. Visit gofundme.com/f/the-milton-rooms-charity to donate.
Chairman Ray King says: “It costs a significant amount to maintain the Milton Rooms, and during the Covid-19 emergency we’ve been unable to run a full programme of events and those we have been able to run have been with a limited audience.
“So, we’re asking our local community to help support us. I do realise how difficult it is for everyone at the moment but all help would be welcomed.”
Venue manager Lisa Rich says: “We were delighted to re-open our doors in September, following nearly six months of closure and received amazing feedback from our audiences.
“We welcomed back some familiar faces with Ryedale Blues Club and Craft & Chat and worked within our community to assist local groups in being able to restart their events safely within our venue.
“However, at the beginning of November, we had to sadly close our doors once more and now we have the new tier [Tier 2] system in place for probably some time. The Milton Rooms is a vital community hub and we are asking for support to help us to survive this most challenging of times.
“We look forward to welcoming our audiences and users back in the very near future and are working on a diverse and dynamic programme of events for when we’re able to reopen fully.”
Three Covid-secure, socially distanced events will be going ahead in December. Both performances of Magical Quests North’s festive children’s show, Emerald The Elf And Father Christmas, on December 13 at 10.30am and 12 noon, have sold out.
Tickets are still available, however, for Taphouse Burnout’s 7.30pm acoustic concert on December 19 and Dickens – The Man Who Invented Christmas?’’, a fun look at the history of Christmas customs and how Charles Dickens influenced modern-day festivities on the afternoon of December 20.
For tickets, go to: themiltonrooms.com/events. For enquiries on hiring the Milton Rooms, email info@themiltonrooms.com.
Dancer Shelley Eva Haden’s Anna II and mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta’s Anna I in Gary Clarke’s Opera North production of The Seven Deadly Sins. Picture: Tristram Kenton
TWO weeks before this Gary Clarke production of Weill’s ballet chanté was due to go into rehearsal, the second Lockdown was announced, making the planned live performance – in a double bill with Acis And Galatea– an impossibility.
So, Acis was quickly dropped and a new physically distanced livestream became the order of the day. Without the normal lead-times, this was a tall order. Clarke rapidly conceived Anna (Anna I, the singer and Anna II, the dancer) and her family as German immigrants fleeing Hitler and thus displaced from the start.
George Johnson-Leigh’s set, imagined as an abandoned film studio, assigned a separate dais or “box” for each sin, with the family displaced into the no-man’s land between the boxes every time the two Annas changed city.
A large Hollywood sign at the back of the set thus pointed the contrast between that promised land, still booming in the 1930s, and the privations of the Depression – and, of course, current stringencies.
The contrast between the two Annas was not quite as strong as it might have been, partly because their roles were filled by two equally fetching performers. Canadian mezzo Wallis Giunta’s Anna I, supposedly the thinker and practical half of her personality, seemed to be enjoying, almost revelling, in the travelogue.
“Wallis Giunta is an actress of many hues and, when her tone is as focused as this, irresistible”. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Whereas a deeper pain was etched into the features of dancer Shelley Eva Haden’s Anna II, as she learnt to moderate her wilfulness to suit the paying customers on their tour.
But the paradox at the heart of this morality tale, about what you need to do to accumulate wealth, could not have been clearer: “Conquer your weaker self to conquer the world”, in Michael Feingold’s translation, sung under a shower of dollar bills. Only the temptations themselves might have been writ larger, although that would be hard to envisage in present conditions.
Giunta was on top form, forthright, even bossy, when need be but able to mine a deep nostalgia in the epilogue. She is an actress of many hues and, when her tone is as focused as this, irresistible.
Haden was no less versatile and utterly tireless. To Clarke’s choreography, she ranged the whole spectrum of dance, from the extravagance of Busby Berkeley (in a splendid, giant-sized feather headdress) in Anger, to Pavlova’s tutu-clad Dying Swan immediately afterwards in Gluttony.
She reached a manic peak parodying punk anarchist dancer Valeska Gert. Her brief spoken interjections were pleasingly clear.
Nicholas Butterfield as Brother and Dean Robinson as Mother in Opera North’s The Seven Deadly Sins. Picture: Tristram Kenton
The family quartet – tenors Nicholas Butterfield and Stuart Laing, baritone Dean Robinson and bass Campbell Russell – carried off their solo work as well as they blended, notably in the Sloth motet and the prayerful strictures of Lust. The ending was suitably ambivalent.
James Holmes, editor of the critical edition of Weill’s orchestral works and former Head of Music at this company, could not have been a better choice as conductor. The differentiation in styles was masterly and the playing, by 15 instruments in a reduced version by H K Gruber and Christian Muthspiel, had a succulent clarity.
It was just a pity that the low camera angles precluded much sight of the orchestra, although it was on stage. This is a minor reservation in the face of such an admirable achievement against near-impossible odds.
Finally, my special thanks to two patient members of the press office, Elizabeth Simmonds and Rowland Thomas, for bailing me out of a technological nightmare. Bring back live performance …
Trott along now: Alex Weatherhill in all Dame Trott’s finery in York Stage’s pantomime Jack And The Beanstalk. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
ALEX Weatherhill took a call from York Stage artistic director Nik Briggs in the quietude of September.
“How do you fancy getting your dame on this Christmas,” asked Nik, having decided he would stage a pantomime at Theatre @ 41 Monkgate to close out a year blighted by the Coronavirus pandemic.
The sight of Alex in full dame attire and face paint at the October 30 photocall to launch Jack And The Beanstalk provided the answer to that request.
“Right now, I would normally be in Spain, as quite often I do a guest musical-directing spot for the Institute of Arts in Barcelona,” he said that autumn day. “I very luckily have managed to get on board to do projects there three times with their second and third-year students, then flying back to go straight into working on pantos.”
Alas, this accursed year has been different, however. No musical directing in Barcelona, nor his usual pantomime commitments for Paul Holman Associates. “I’ve been a musical director for Paul, including for pantomimes at The Carriageworks in Leeds, and then, four years ago, I made the move across to director,” says Alex.
“I directed the panto [at the Spotlight] in Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, for three years and I was due to direct Sleeping Beauty at The Harlequin Theatre in Redhill, Surrey, this winter until it was cancelled.”
Hence the September call from Nik Briggs, inviting him to make the journey from his home in Speeton, the easternmost village in North Yorkshire, on the cliff top between Filey and Bridlington, to be Dame Trott in Jack And The Beanstalk.
Alex Weatherhill, as Bernadette, right, with Joe Wawrzyniak, as Tick, left, and Jacob Husband, as Adam, front, in York Stage Musicals’ Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, The Musical, at the Grand Opera House, York., in September 2017. Picture: Benedict Tomlinson
“I would last have been on a York stage for York Stage Musicals in Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert,” says Alex, recalling his drag-queen role as Bernadette at the Grand Opera House. “It was so much fun to do, but very intense.”
He is no stranger to wearing women’s clothing on stage. “I’ve played a lot of middle-aged ladies: the number is probably running into double figures by now, so I suppose it was inevitable I would play dame one day,” says Alex.
“But I’d shied away from it, as it’s a role unto itself, particularly here in York, with all the history of Berwick Kaler’s shows, but now I’m looking forward to it, my first time as the dame, and any trepidation will go during rehearsals.”
Reflecting on past roles, Alex says: “Everything that I’ve done has been character acting, almost trying to fool the audience so they don’t know they’re watching a man playing a woman, starting with Mary Sunshine in Chicago, where there’s no drag element to it. You are there to trick the audience. The way of becoming a woman for that role is very different from playing the pantomime dame.”
Alex has been settling on his brand of dame “who happens to be in Jack And The Beanstalk this year”. “I’m drawing on Patricia Routledge, Maureen Lipman and Julie Walters as my influences, so Nik has been writing with those influences and mannerisms in mind, and they’ll come out in my voice and movements,” he says.
Routledge crossed with Lipman and Walters? What fabulous fun awaits!
York Stage presents Jack And The Beanstalk at Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, from December 11 to January 3; show times, Monday to Saturday, 2pm and 7pm; Sundays, 1pm and 6pm; Christmas Eve, 12 noon and 5pm; New Year’s Eve, 12 noon. Box office: online only at yorkstagepanto.com. Please note, audiences will be seated in household/support bubble groupings only.
Jacob Husband, as Adam, front, Alex Weatherhill, as Bernadette, and Joe Wawrzyniak, as Tick, in York Stage Musicals’ Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, The Musical, at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Benedict Tomlinson. September 2017
May Tether as Jill in her professional debut in York Stage’s pantomime, Jack And The Beanstalk. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
MAY Tether will make her professional stage debut in Jack And The Beanstalk back home in Yorkshire after her graduation from London drama school Trinity Laban in July with first class honours.
From December 11, she will play Jill in York Stage’s debut pantomime at Theatre @41 Monnkgate, as she rejoins the company where she became a favourite in such roles as Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray, Elle Woods in Legally Blonde: The Musical and office martinet Roz in 9 To 5: The Musical: American roles all.
Back then, May was known as Maya, studying musical theatre at York College before heading from Goole to London.
“Do you know what I’m loving about the panto script?” she says on the first day of rehearsals under writer-director Nik Briggs. “It reads really well in my own accent when I’m used to playing parts with heavy American accents or Cockney character roles as I’m a character actress, but for this, when people put on a Yorkshire accent, they sound like me!
“I’ve never had the chance to use my own accent, so this will be the first role in my native tongue, which is great.”
May Tether – in her earlier York Stage Musicals days as Maya – in the lead role of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde The Musical
May, 23, has worked with Nik plenty of times previously, most recently when performing in York Stage Musicals’ first open-air concert to a socially distanced audience at the Rowntree Park amphitheatre in August post-Lockdown 1.
Exciting too is the rehearsal-room presence of West End choreographer Gary Lloyd, a Premier League signing to Briggs’s production team. “I’m thrilled to be working with Gary because doing a show on this scale, with a cast of eight, rather than a big West End cast, gives a lovely insight into how he choreographs,” says May.
“When I was Trinity Laban, I did a piece for my dissertation about Gary’s choreography because some of his work is so abstract!”
In a year when the pandemic brought theatre to a stop, May is shaking off the dust from the quiet months. “What’s strange for me is that it does feel like riding a bike, acting again…though not the singing! With the acting, I was thinking, ‘I’m back and I’m really in my comfort zone!’,” she says.
May Tether performing in York Stage Musicals’ open-air concert in Rowntree Park, York, in August. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
“I’m known as being quite ‘belty’ as a singer, and I couldn’t do it just straight out, so I had a bit of a panic attack, but actually then it was OK for the Rowntree Park concert.
”Singing in that tent in that field, I’ve never been so happy to see everyone there, watching a show in the rain. It was unbelievable to see how much people cared about going out to see a show after so long with no theatre.”
May is looking forward to performing on a traverse stage, a configuration with the audience on either side of the performance space. “I love traverse. It’s my favourite,” she says. “I just enjoy being able to look around and taking in everyone’s gaze. You’ve got to include everyone, be unselfish and keep moving. It’s very Shakespearean and I love Shakespeare.
“With the audience sitting in bubbles, we need to make the panto feel as inclusive as possible. Where normally you have a ‘fourth wall’ to break down, this show isn’t traditional. There’s a pandemic going on, audience sizes have to be reduced, but it’s very exciting to be doing a panto in such an intimate setting. Nik has a way of making everything he does a huge spectacle and this will be no exception.”
May in December is focusing fully on her return to the stage. “Now I’m back working in the theatre, I’m not thinking about Christmas. I just want to do my job again,” she says. “It’s really nice to be thinking, ‘I’m back on my feet, doing something I love so much’. My family haven’t thought about Christmas yet either because they just want to see the show. They can’t wait!”.
York Stage presents Jack And The Beanstalk at Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, from December 11 to January 3; show times, Monday to Saturday, 2pm and 7pm; Sundays, 1pm and 6pm; Christmas Eve, 12 noon and 5pm; New Year’s Eve, 12 noon. Box office: online only at yorkstagepanto.com. Please note, audiences will be seated in household/support bubble groupings only.
Welcome to the dark side: York musical actor, singer and dancer Ian Stroughair casts off his drag diva act, Velma Celli, to play Flesh Creep in York Stage’s Jack And The Beanstalk this winter
YORK has seen plenty of Ian Stroughair this year, online largely, from his Bishopthorpe kitchen in his cabaret guise as drag diva divine Velma Celli.
From December 11, the West End musical actor, singer and dancer can be enjoyed in his home city like never before, making his York pantomime bow in York Stage’s Jack And The Beanstalk at the Covid-secure, socially distanced Theatre @41 Monkgate.
Given his glamorous, glorious-voiced alter ego as Velma, you may have expected Ian to slip into the dame’s costumes, but “perhaps I’m a little young for dame,” he says.
Instead, 6ft 5 in his boots and stove pipe top hat, Ian will be switching to the dark side, entering stage left as Flesh Creep in writer-director Nik Briggs’s 90-minute production on a traverse stage.
“Yeah, finally I’m doing a panto in York,” he says, wiping away the face paint from his photo-call session. “Before the pandemic lockdown changed everything, I was supposed to be auditioning for the York Theatre Royal pantomime [Cinderella, pre-lockdown], but that didn’t happen.
Smokin’! The poster for Large & Lit In Lockdown, one of Velma Celli’s kitchen-sing dramas streamed from Ian Stroughair’s Bishopthorpe kitchen
“Just like I was going to be doing Funny Girls for three months, taking over from Betty Legs Diamond, so I should have been going up to Blackpool for that, but then all the theatres shut suddenly. So instead I got on the train and came home to York.”
In globe-strutting Velma Celli mode, Ian had been performing in Australia before the escalating Coronavirus pandemic sent him packing back to Blighty, quarantining in York from a week before lockdown.
He refused to be downtrodden, instead writing and cycling to keep show-fit and embracing the nascent possibilities of steaming concerts live and sparkly from the improvised Case De Velma Celli kitchen stage.
“It was tricky at first because we were trying to navigate the technology to make it look and sound good, so it was a big learning curve, but so many friends were just sitting at home moaning, and I thought, ‘no, there are still ways to be artistic and you just have to think outside the box and work harder than everyone else,” recalls Ian, who began with an April 29 fundraiser by Velma for St Leonard’s Hospice, York.
Later, for his kitchen-sing dramas, he presented Velma in Large & Lit In Lockdown and virtual versions of the cabaret queen’s hit shows Equinox, Me & My Divas and A Night At The Musicals.
Minus the make-up: York actor and international drag queen Ian Stroughair
Usually to be found once a month gracing The Basement stage at City Screen, York, Velma returned to live performance in York by signing up for a rugby club – York RI Rugby Union Football Club, in New Lane, Acomb, to be precise – for An Evening Of Song outdoors under the September stars.
Velma playing to playing a rugby club crowd in York on a Friday night…that’s brave, Ian? “Someone suggested there and I went down and met the lovely Caroline Knight and I was sold. Lovely people there and I grew up in Acomb, so it just felt right,” he says.
“The crowd turned out to be mainly people who come to my shows at City Screen, but we did have a LGBTQ rugby team in!”
Rehearsals for Jack And The Beanstalk began at Theatre @41 on November 23, reuniting Ian with West End choreographer Gary Lloyd, who has headed north to York, where his sister, Jo Theaker, is a leading light with York Stage.
“Gary directed and choreographed me in a show called What A Feeling! for a UK tour and the London Palladium,” Ian recalls. “I was 23, so it was nearly 15 years ago. It’s still the hardest-working show I’ve ever done because Gary’s choreography is always spectacular, so it’s great to be working with him again. He’s one of the very best.”
Ian has previous form in pantomime, playing Dandini in 2015/16 in Cinderella at the Regent Theatre, Stoke. “I loved every minute. We were fortunate to win a couple of Great British Pantomine Awards,” he says.
Ian Stroughair in Velma Celli mode
“I was nominated too, for Best Actor, which was lovely. Julian Clary beat me. It was me, Julian and Samuel Holmes, who were nominated; they’re both panto veterans, Julian with his £20,000 worth of costumes at the Palladium…and then me in my panto debut!”
Now comes the sinister sidestep to playing the baddie Flesh Creep in Jack And The Beanstalk. “I’ve never done baddie before, so I’m going to take out Velma’s ‘potty’ mouth and replace it with some sinisterly articulated elocution,” says Ian, elongating his words.
Having lost his mother a few years ago, Ian says Christmas “can be a difficult time”, but “if you can’t laugh at a pantomime you must be dead inside”. “So, I can’t wait to be spreading the joy this Christmas. I’m loving it, after the only things that got me through this year were fried food and wine!”
Looking to the day when he may yet emulate his “idol and a living legend”, York’s long-running dame Berwick Kaler, Ian says: ”Panto producers do keep trying to get me to play Ugly Sister, and should I ever play dame, it’s a role where it’s all in the rhythm and instinctive comedy timing. That’s something you can’t teach but you can get better at it.
“It’s an exhausting role and should be the heart of every great panto. I prefer the dame to not be too polished aesthetically; a tad rough around the edges ideally.”
York Stage presents Jack And The Beanstalk at Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, from December 11 to January 3; show times, Monday to Saturday, 2pm and 7pm; Sundays, 1pm and 6pm; Christmas Eve, 12 noon and 5pm; New Year’s Eve, 12 noon. Box office: online only at yorkstagepanto.com. Please note, audiences will be seated in household/support bubble groupings only.
