IN the week when Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s terrifying play Ghost
Stories will be spooking out the Grand Opera House, now there is to be even
more paranormal activity at the York theatre.
On March 12 and 13 at 10.30pm each night, Paranormal Research York (PRY)
will lead The Ghost Hunt in a theatre lit only by the emergency lighting
systems.
Those attending this after-dark theatre tour will be encouraged to
participate throughout the interactive event, where PRY will employ assorted traditional
methods, such as a human pendulum and divination activities, using crystals and
divining rods.
A variety of technical equipment will be on hand for guests to try out, such as a “stick
man” camera and gadgets that can detect spirit energies. In a nutshell, guests
can be “as involved as they dare to be”.
Paranormal Research York’s team of experienced and professional paranormal investigators
from York have come together to investigate predominantly in “Britain’s most
haunted city”.
Their work involves accessing a range of haunted locations in and around
York and then researching their findings to go with the legends.
Looking forward to conducting The Ghost Hunt in a building built in 1868,
PRY’s Clare Bryant says: “We’re very excited to be hosting the first ever ghost
hunt at this amazing, historical building. From our first walk around at the
Grand Opera House, we could feel the spirits already coming forward.”
Kevin Spindloe, from PRY, adds: “Wow! Friday the 13th and we have the
privilege to be investigating here. It’s so active here and the spirits seem
keen to tell their own ghost stories. As a guest you can be involved in the
activities or just watch. Either way you will experience an event like no
other.”
The Ghost Hunt on Friday, March 13th has sold out – unlucky for some! – but tickets for March 12 and the Ghost Stories run from March 10 to 14 are on sale on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
THE Grand Opera House, York, already
has its own ghost, one said to call out the first name of a new member of staff
in the quiet of the auditorium on first acquaintance.
No doubt that will intrigue Professor
Goodman, ahead of the lecturer’s visit to the Cumberland Street theatre from
March 10 to 14 as the investigative fulcrum of writer-directors Andy Nyman and
Jeremy Dyson’s “supernatural sensation”, Ghost Stories, on its first national
tour.
On the road since January 7 after
completing its latest West End run at The Ambassadors Theatre, London, the
Lyric Hammersmith Theatre production should feel at home in York, the
self-proclaimed most haunted city in Europe.
What’s more, with the Grand Opera
House’s proximity to the York Dungeon, “York’s scariest tourist attraction”,
where better for Nyman and Dyson’s global hit to be spooking?
Premiered a decade ago and turned into
a film too, Ghost Stories invites its captive audience to “enter a nightmarish
world, full of thrilling twists and turns, where all your deepest fears and
most disturbing thoughts are imagined live on stage”.
Expect a “fully sensory and
electrifying encounter in the ultimate twisted love-letter to horror, a
supernatural edge-of-your-seat theatrical experience like no other”, as
Professor Goodman strives to prove the supernatural is “purely a trick of the
mind” in the face of three stories that beg to differ.
“Ghost Stories has never really gone
away, running in various incarnations since the original production a decade
ago, going into the West End, then Canada, Moscow,” says co-writer Jeremy
Dyson, best known for his work with those twisted humourists The League Of
Gentlemen.
“It was done in Russian in Russia but we
had to maintain that it was set in Britain because apparently no Russian is
afraid of a ghost.”
The latest British incarnation opened
at the Lyric Hammersmith last March, whereupon it was picked up by commercial
producers keen to take it on the road. “We’d always wanted to do that but never
been able to do so, even though we knew just how much people wanted to see it,
but we were told it ‘wasn’t tourable’.”
Until now, until Jon Bausor came up
with a design that could play both The Ambassadors Theatre and theatres around
the country.
“He’s made it possible to squash the
set into a van!” says Jeremy, who lives in Ilkley, by the way. “Each time we’ve
staged the play, we’ve been able to solve another problem, get rid of another
niggle, and finally we have the production that is totally to our satisfaction.
“The show’s been going down really well
on tour, and it will fit perfectly into York with all its ghost stories and the
York Dungeon opposite the Grand Opera House.”
Why are we so drawn to ghost stories,
Jeremy? “I think there are lots of reasons,” he says. “One of them is obvious: death
and the afterlife, which is a personal concern to all of us, and ghost stories
are a way to approach such an overwhelming concern.
“That’s particularly so in our
increasingly secular society, where there’s a hunger for the mysterious, the
uncanny, the inexplicable, which once upon a time would have come under the
auspices of the church and religion.
“That’s part of it, and also when it
comes to a show like Ghost Stories, there’s the entertainment and the thrill,
the fairground element.”
Nyman, London actor, director and
writer, and Dyson, screen and stage writer and author, have been friends for a
“very long time”. “Since we were teenagers, in fact,” says Jeremy. “We met when
we were 15 and one of the things we bonded over was horror movies at the dawn
of the video age, renting those films to watch them together.
“We’ve had our individual careers and
we’d never thought of working together, but out of the blue Andy called me with
this idea of having three men sitting telling ghost stories after he saw The
Vagina Monologues [Eve Ensler’s show with three women telling stories].
“It was a very intriguing idea that was
enough to hook me straightaway, though we then veered away from that initial
construction over a long gestation period.
“Creating Ghost Stories was very much a
case of sitting in a room together, talking about it for a year, and then
getting together, bashing out the outline, working every day for a week, when
we pretty much hammered it out, because we’d been thinking about it for so
long.”
Ghost Stories has drawn comparisons
with Stephen Mallatratt’s stage adaptation of Susan Hill’s The Woman In Black,
premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 1987 and still running
in the West End, but Jeremy was keen that Ghost Stories should stand in its own
right.
“We wanted very much to create a theatre
experience that we hadn’t had before, in terms of being a very immersive piece
of theatre, and we also like the challenge of taking things that you’re
familiar thematically from horror films and seeing if we could transfer them to
the stage.”
A further element is at play in Ghost
Stories. “Andy and I both have a love of conjuring and magic; Andy has worked
with Derren Brown for 20, so we wanted to build that into the show’s
structure,” says Jeremy. “We wanted to look at how you can create a magical effect
with a combination of storytelling and technology, and that’s what we’ve
achieved.”
Ghost Stories promises “moments of extreme shock and tension” at the Grand Opera House, York, from March 10 to 14. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york. Unsuitable for anyone under 15 years old.
YORK Theatre Royal’s co-production of Alan Bennett’s comedy The Habit Of Art with the Original Theatre Company is heading to New York as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival.
Premiered in York in September 2018, Philip Franks’s show starring Matthew Kelly will be one of eight productions featured in 59E59 Theaters’ annual celebration of theatre from the UK.
Franks’s
production begins its
second British tour in March ahead of the American dates from May 29 to June 28
in one of 59E59 Theaters’ three off-Broadway spaces, having first toured Britain
in Autumn 2018.
Leeds playwright Bennett’s 2009 play imagines a meeting between friends and collaborators W.H. Auden, the York-born poet, and composer Benjamin Britten. Most of the original cast are in the latest production, including Kelly, David Yelland and Yorkshire actor Benjamin Chandler, who made his York Theatre Royal debut in the 2018 company.
Kelly says: “I’ve done Brits on
Broadway before in [Hull playwright] Richard Bean’s play Toast, which is very
different to The Habit Of Art. But Americans are going to love Alan Bennett
because they think they’re going to see something very British.”
Director Franks adds: “New York is the
most wonderful city but there’s a huge challenge because it’s such an English
play. I hope very much audiences will respond.”
The 2020 production of The Habit Of Art is produced by the Original Theatre Company and Anthology with Peter Stickney and York Theatre Royal.
Franks last directed in York in Summer 2019 when his Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre production of The Tempest ran at the Elizabethan pop-up theatre on the Castle car park.
REVIEW: Crongton Knights, Pilot Theatre, York Theatre Royal,
until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
EVER since Lord Of The Flies, York Theatre Royal resident
company Pilot Theatre have made theatre that speaks directly to young
audiences.
Now, Pilot are in the second year of a four-year creative
partnership with Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre, Derby Theatre and the Theatre
Royal, their reach spreading ever wider.
Last year’s gripping adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s radical Noughts & Crosses is followed up by another topical story, Emteaz Hussain’s stage account of Crongton Knights, a young adult novel by Brixton Bard Alex Wheatle, a London writer of Jamaican parentage.
Co-directed by Corey Campbell, artistic director of Strictly Arts Theatre Company, and Pilot artistic director Esther Richardson, it is a play with music, not a musical, but has the punch of West Side Story, the exhilarating beatbox and vocal score by Conrad Murray setting the story’s pulsating rhythm.
The Crongton Knights of the title are the self-styled
Magnificent Six, caught up at a young age in the gangland turf wars of the
Crongton Estate, divided into “North Crong” and “South Crong”, their homestead.
Into the dangerous Notre Dame estate they venture on a teen
quest, a mission to rescue the mobile phone of Venetia (Aimee Powell, the
show’s best singer), in the possession of her ex-boyfriend with incriminating
photographs she needs to erase.
Leading them is big-hearted McKay (Olisa Odele); alongside are
Jonah (Khai Shaw), Bit (Zak Douglas), Saira (Nigar Yeva) and, along for the
ride, and desperate to be their lookout, Bushkid (Kate Donnachie), on her bike.
What follows is a story of “lessons learned the hard way” at
the hands of those more experienced, more streetwise, more ruthless, more desperate,
as represented by Simi Egbejumi-David’s ensemble roles.
In Wheatle’s words, the Magnificent Six must “confront debt,
poverty, blackmail, loss, fear, the trauma of a flight from a foreign land and
the omnipresent threat of gangland violence”, but the tone is not suffocatingly
grim. Even in a world stacked against teens, there is hope; there is
positivity; above all there is the bond of friendship.
Pilot’s press release talked of a madcap adventure, and Simon Kenny’s graffiti-painted, rainbow-coloured, scaffolded set design plays to that spirit, especially when garage lock-up doors open up to show the Magnificent Six running in slow motion. Imagine a cartoon crossed with the black comedy drama of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting.
Not all the dialogue is as clear as it could be, and nor is the story’s passage, but the highly energised performances, especially by Odele and Powell, are terrific, and special praise goes to Dale Mathurin for stepping into the role of Nesta with only two hot-housed days of rehearsals.
Richard G Jones’s lighting and Adam P McCready’s sound
design are important too, both complementing the urban wasteland of troubled
teens trying to find their place when so much is barren.
TWO mothers united in sorrow, unable to escape the tragedy of
knife crime, try to protect their sons, one in life, one in death, in Mel Pennant’s
new play, Seeds, at Leeds Playhouse.
Running in the Bramall Rock Void until Saturday, it tells the
stories of those who fight to keep their children safe from the world they grow
up in, when knife-crime offences in England and Wales have reached a record
high and hate crimes have more than doubled over a seven-year period.
Shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award, Seeds is
billed as “a courageous play that looks at difficult subjects of racism,
violence, death and grief. It describes a hate crime and uses the N word, all
of which may be a trigger for people who have suffered as result of the above
and may be difficult for some audience members”.
The setting is Michael Thomas’s
birthday, when his cake sits in his mother’s living room, its candles burning
undisturbed. Jackie wants to clear her conscience, while Evelyn has a big
speech to deliver on the 15th anniversary of Michael’s fatal stabbing. Are some
things better left unsaid?
Seeds is presented by Tiata Fahodzi
and Wrested Veil in association with Leeds Playhouse, Soho Theatre and Tara
Finney Productions.
Here, first, writer Mel Pennant and, then, director Anastasia Osei-Kuffour discuss the play.
How would you describe the play, Mel?
“Two mums, either side of a racist murder, come together and explore what happened to their sons 15 years earlier. They go to places no-one else would take them to and,, in doing so, come to an agreed truth which is life changing for both of them.”
How would you sum up Seeds in three words?
“Rollercoaster, awkward, emotional.”
What inspired you to write the play?
“In writing the play, I was conscious that we rarely hear, in any depth, the stories of the families of people involved in tragedies and yet as a society we often judge them.
“I wanted to explore those stories through two mothers on either side of such an event and, in doing so, interrogate the very essence of motherhood.
“Those two women have a conversation that couldn’t happen without the other: they can face the depth of their despair and longing, how they define themselves in a space that is becoming even more limiting.”
Why is it important we discuss knife crime from the perspective of mothers?
“Because it’s families, parents, mothers who are left with the aftermath. When the headlines are over, they are the ones who deal with the reality. I wanted to explore that reality.”
What do
you want audiences to take away from Seeds?
“I hope audiences see my play as the beginning of a conversation. I hope that it enables audiences to see and engage with the complexities and layers of the issues discussed.”
How would
you describe the play, Anastasia?
“Seeds is a tense drama where two mothers fight for their sons, bargaining with each other to get what they desperately need and, in the process, bare their souls, leaving them both changed by the encounter.”
How would
you sum up Seeds in three words?
“Tense, emotive, shattering.”
What initially drew you to the play?
“Its subject matter. It explores racism and motherhood in a way that really resonates with me: placing racism in the context of families, how the ‘seeds’ of racism can grow in families, ‘take root’ and have horrifically dangerous consequences – a point that I feel is so important to highlight.
“It also considers how far a mother would go to protect her son. Having reached an age where I’m thinking about having children, I worry a lot about how safe the world is, whether I can keep my children safe when I bring them into this world, I think about what I would do to protect them.”
Why is it
important we discuss knife crime from the perspective of mothers?
“They are left dealing with the shattering aftermath for years and years after; they bring life into the world only to see it cut down. There’s a need to highlight these people so that, as a society, we can think more about how we support them to survive the deepest of tragedies.”
What do
you want audiences to take away from Seeds?
“I want to inspire greater awareness of the ‘seeds’
of racism in families in the hope they can be rooted out before they cause disaster.
“I believe
people can change and grow. People with racist views – if they would allow
themselves to see it – can change and help to change others if they choose to
take a stand.
“I want
people to see the play as a warning that we all need to take xenophobia
seriously and act to stamp it out. Discourse-challenging racist and xenophobic
rhetoric and events, like this play which allows people from diverse
backgrounds to be in the same space to face these issues, will help and play a
part in creating change.”
Seeds, Bramall Rock Void, Leeds Playhouse, until Saturday, 8pm plus 2.15pm Thursday, and 2.45pm, Saturday. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk. Age guidance: 14 plus.
HARROGATE Theatre is teaming up with Adam Z Robinson to co-produce his Gothic terror tales Upon The Stair.
Traditional storytelling, live music and fully integrated British Sign Language (BSL) combine to bring three macabre ghost stories to life at Harrogate Theatre tonight until Saturday.
In The Cry Of The
Bubák, a haunted man flees to a health facility to escape his past, only to have
it catch up with him in a most horrifying way.
In Mirrorman, a family moves to an old house on the edge of town and discovers that the previous owner may not have left after all.
In The Xylotheque, a
librarian visits the estate of a doctor with a nefarious reputation and comes
face to face with his diabolical practices.
Each tale is scripted by writer/performer Robinson, who was supported by
Harrogate Theatre previously when presenting his ghostly tales from The Book Of
Darkness & Light.
Through Robinson working with deaf consultants and linguists Adam Bassett and Brian Duffy, his latest script has been developed
and translated into British Sign Language and Visual Vernacular, making Upon The Stair accessible
for d/Deaf audiences without the need of an interpreter on stage.
Performed by deaf actor and dancer Raffie Julien, the show is billed as “a
truly remarkable gothic performance like never witnessed before”, featuring a
live violin score composed and played by Chloe Hayward.
After two national tours of his first show, The Book Of Darkness & Light, and 30-plus dates for his follow-up, Shivers – both performed in Harrogate Theatre’s Studio – Robinson returns with his “most exciting, ambitious and gripping production yet”, directed by Edinburgh Fringe First Award winner Dick Bonham.
Upon The Stair is a co-production with Harrogate
Theatres, Square Chapel Arts Centre, Halifax, and producers LittleMight; the
two venues providing support, space and creative input to produce the show.
Robinson’s play premiered at Square Chapel on January
11 and has since played Salisbury Theatre from January 16 to 18. More dates
will be announced soon for Autumn 2020.
Upon The Stair, Harrogate Theatre, February 25 to 29, 7.30pm nightly and
2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01423 502116 or at harrogatetheatre.co.uk
YORK Barbican has a fistful of new shows going on sale on Friday: Modfather Paul Weller, comedians Jason Manford, Joel Dommett and Daniel Sloss and the dance extravaganza Here Come The Boys.
Weller, 61, has sold out his May tour
and will go back out on the road for 19 British and Irish dates in October and
November, playing York on November 3.
Weller will play an acoustic set for
the Teenage Cancer Trust at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on March 25 as a
special guest of The Stereophonics and his new album, On Sunset, will be released
on June 12 on Polydor, his new label.
He performed previously at York Barbican in March 2015 and August 2018 and his last North Yorkshire gig was at Dalby Forest, near Pickering, last June.
His autumn travels also will take in further
Yorkshire dates at Hull Bonus Arena on November 2 and Bradford St George’s Hall
on November 17.
Jason Manford, who reached the final of ITV’s The Masked Singer this winter, will return to York Barbican in almost a year’s time, on February 17 2021, with his new stand-up show, Like Me.
Expect “observational comedy mixed with comic gold” from the Salford comedian, presenter and actor who chalked up three Barbican performances of his Muddle Class show in October 2018 and March 2019.
Rockhampton comedian, actor and
presenter Joel Dommett, host of The Masked Singer, will play York on December 11,
delivering a new show after this 2016 I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here runner-up
brought his Live 2018 tour to the Barbican in February that year.
Scottish comic Daniel Sloss will follow up his X show – taken to 40 countries, including Russia – with his new solo outing, Hubris, booked in for his Barbican bow on October 3.
Strictly Come Dancing’s Aljaž Škorjanec sold out his last appearance at York Barbican and will return on June 24, joined in the Here Come The Boys line-up by former Strictly favourite Pasha Kovalev, West End ballet star Sam Salter and NBC World Of Dance champion and Broadway star Michael Dameski, from Australia.
Ballroom, Latin, commercial, contemporary, ballet, acro and tap all will feature in a show where the Boys will perform alongside dancers, gymnasts, tap dancers and more.
Tickets can be booked from 10am on Friday (February 28) at 10am on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from Barbican box office.
THE Blue Light Theatre Company took to the stage once again in January
at Acomb Working Men’s Club, York, to raise money for York charities York
Against Cancer and Motor Neurone Disease Association (York).
“We’re thrilled to announce that we managed to match last year’s amount
of £3,000 – despite our production costs rising,” says cast member Mark Friend,
who played Pinocchio in Oh! What A Circus on January 24, 25 and 29 to 31.
“The money raised has been split equally between the two charities. We’ve
received fantastic support from many of North Yorkshire’s tourist attractions
and businesses; without their generous support, we would not have been able to
raise this amount.”
Oh! What A Circus was the seventh pantomime performed by The Blue Light Theatre Company, made up of paramedics, ambulance dispatchers, York Hospital staff and members of York’s theatre scene, who have raised well over £10,000 over those years.
Writer and co-producer Perri Ann Barley says: “It’s great to see our
audience come back year after year to support us, plus lots of new audience as
the word gets around just how good our productions are.
“Work is already underway for Panto 2021 and the challenge is on to make
it even bigger and better than the last. The title will be announced later in
the year”.
Last Wednesday, the Blue Light company met representatives from York
Against Cancer and Motor Neurone Disease Association (York) MNDA at York’s
Ambulance Station to present them with their cheques.
Julie Russell, from York Against Cancer, says: “Thank you very much for
this generous donation. It will help us make a difference to cancer patients
and their families’ lives. The Blue Light Theatre Company really do know how to
put ‘fun’ into fundraising. Thank you.”
In the cheque presentation picture are Julie Russell, from York Against Cancer; James Chambers, Jen Dodd, Colin Pearson and Val Corder, from MNDA (York) and The Blue Light Theatre Company’s Zoe Paylor, Perri Ann Barley, Christine Friend, Beth Waudby, Mark Friend, Devon Wells, Mick Waudby, Craig Barley and Glen Gears.
REVIEW: Opera North in The Turn Of The Screw, Leeds Grand Theatre, February 18.Further performances on February 21, 25 and 27, then touring until March 19. Box office: 0844 848 2700 or at leedsgrandtheatre.com
PART of the fascination of any ghost story – and Henry James certainly intended The Turn Of The Screw to be one – is its dabbling with a world that we can never fully comprehend or understand.
We are frightened, as James was himself, by his own creation, by the horrors that our imaginations are led to conjure. The sky – or hell – is the limit.
Myfanwy Piper’s libretto retains most of James’s ambiguities, while Britten’s music wonderfully clarifies their existence but offers no definitive answers to the questions they pose.
We know of Britten’s own obsession with the corruption of innocence. We also have plenty of recent examples of the terrors that may befall children put into care, like Miles and Flora here. The question for a director of the opera is how unambiguous to be.
Alessandro Talevi’s production was certainly probing when it first appeared in the autumn of 2010. This time round, he opens up new possibilities: he hardly misses an opportunity to interpret and he has schooled all six of his cast into finely honed acting, without exception.
In Sarah Tynan’s Governess we have a minutely judged, sexually repressed ingénue: she is as surprised as we are by a lonely Mrs Grose’s fondling attentions. She is equally puzzled by Miles’s come-hither kiss, delivered just before he climbs into her bed: this boy may be in thrall to Quint, but is also prey to rampaging hormones.
So, which of these signals leads up an emotional cul-de-sac? Or are they merely figments of the governess’s fevered imagination? The fact that such questions need to be asked at all is a sure indication that Talevi knows exactly how to provoke.
He also views the tale from the children’s point of view. At one point, we are shown a Narnia-style, fairy-tale landscape – easily taken for a Victorian orangery stocked with exotic flowers – in which younger versions of Miles and Flora can be seen frolicking.
In Madeleine Boyd’s majestic set, Bly is a Victorian pile in need of more than a spring clean, with Quint glimpsed in the tower behind its tall, murky windows. The building itself is part of the oppression all its inmates feel, doubtless compelling them into aberration.
Her costumes are regulation late Victorian, shading into Edwardian, but her hair-styles are notable: the Pre-Raphaelite cast of Miss Jessel’s Titian tresses, Quint’s bright orange thatch and side-burns, Flora’s Alice-curls, all contrast firmly with the governess’s prim blonde bun.
The props are carefully selected too: a manic rocking-horse, a giant four-poster, from whose roof Flora dangles her puppets, a school desk, and a large horn above a turntable, on which Miles “plays” parody Mozart; all bask in Matthew Haskins’ shadow-laden lighting.
After an exceptionally clear prologue, Nicholas Watts fashions a menacing Quint, likely to cause many a nightmare, while Eleanor Dennis’s pregnant Miss Jessel finds an unearthly tone equally guaranteed to spook. Heather Shipp’s seemingly phlegmatic Mrs Grose flashes into emotion more than once.
Tynan’s keenly-observed governess is a study in bafflement as she steadily loses her marbles to guilt and self-reproach. Jennifer Clark’s lively, mischievous Flora suggests someone much younger than she looked, while Tim Gasiorek’s well-tuned, light-voiced Miles acts his socks off.
All have reason to be grateful for the exceptional clarity with which Leo McFall’s orchestra paints their various motifs; one could hardly imagine their playing being more finely nuanced. Talevi’s revival may raise more questions than it answers, but it unquestionably held this audience in rapt appreciation.
THE York Ghost Merchants, at No. 6, Shambles, York, will
hold their inaugural storytelling evening on March 1, hosted by the ghoulish
James Swanton.
At 6pm (sold out), 7pm and 8pm, he will read M R James’s ghost story Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book, written in 1894 and published in his first collection, Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary Of 1904.
In James’s story, a scholar travels to a small French town for a kind of working vacation and there he discovers a small, rather dissolute old cathedral. On entering, he meets with the sacristan, who guides him around.
Eventually, they make their way to the church library where
the sacristan shows him all sorts of old and antiquarian books that peak the
scholar’s interest. One in particular, the sacristan seems especially eager to
show off.
The scholar is captivated by the book, the personal scrapbook of one Canon Alberic, and duly offers to buy it. The sacristan sells it to him for a pittance and his desperation to release it from his possession is palpable.
On his way out, the scholar is given another gift, a
crucifix, by the sacristan’s daughter, who insists he takes it free of charge.
Later that same night, as the scholar is studying his new-found
treasure, he encounters a page with a disturbing illustration that is central
to the story’s suspenseful narrative.
Actor, writer and storyteller James Swanton was born in York, the ghost-infested city that informed his lifelong passion for the macabre. Winner of the 2018 York Culture Award for Outstanding Performing Artist, he has been described as “remarkable” by Simon Callow, as “extraordinary” by Miriam Margolyes and as a “horror star of the future” by Kim Newman.
Whether playing Dracula or Lucifer in The York Mystery Plays
in the Shambles Market or performing his one-man shows Irving Undead and Charles
Dickens’s winter stories at York Medical Society, Stonegate, he continues to
drive his critics to raid their Thesaurus. In times past, they have dismissed
him as “a tattily dressed raven”; “a young Boris Karloff”; “positively stunning
in his grotesqueness” and “lanky”.
The £25 ticket price includes the 45-minute storytelling session
and a limited-edition Canon Alberic ghost. Please note, these ghosts are
available only to those attending the event and not without the ticket.
“Use the word COLLECT at checkout if you would like to
collect your ghost and ticket, rather than having them posted to you,” says
Angus McArthur, of The York Ghost Merchants.
Tickets can be booked at yorkghostmerchants.com or on 01904 896545. Opening hours for The York Ghost Merchants, sited in the former Via Vecchia and Pinder and Scott’s bakery shop, are Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5.30pm-ish, and Sundays, 11am to 5pm-ish.