“The health and safety of the team and our audiences always comes first,” says Badapple Theatre Company artistic director Kate Bramley
BADAPPLE Theatre Company are postponing their spring premiere of Elephant Rock amid the creeping spread of Coronavirus.
The “decline in audience confidence for travelling to events following confirmation of Covid-19 as a global pandemic” has prompted Kate Bramley’s company, from Green Hammerton, York, to call off the April 16 to May 31 tour, now re-arranged for the autumn.
Badapple Theatre Company in 2016 production The Last Station Keeper. Picture: Karl Andre
“These are unprecedented times and while the current advice is for
events to continue as normal, we are conscious this could change at any point,”
says Kate.
“The financial risk of the project for us and our partner venues
has become prohibitive. Postponing now, before our actors are in rehearsal, is
much less stressful for them as they can plan more effectively around their own
families.”
Kate continues: “Of course, the health and safety of the team and
our audiences always comes first, so we understand people’s reluctance to book
tickets for shows scheduled in April. We have already managed to rearrange most
of the tour performances for September and October 2020, so we look forward to
seeing our audiences later in the year.”
Badapple Theatre Company’s Theatre On Your Doorstep logo
Purveyors of “theatre on your doorstep”, Badapple were to have
toured Elephant Rock to 30 venues to mark their 21st anniversary with
founder and artistic director Bramley’s 21st original script for the
North Yorkshire company.
Badapple’s previous shows have toured to predominantly rural areas,
all written and directed by Bramley, who was born in Yorkshire, grew up in
Cornwall and worked as associate director for Hull Truck Theatre before
embarking on her own theatre business.
Danny Mellor and Anastasia Benham in Badapple Theatre’s 2019 Christmas show, The Snow Dancer. Picture: Karl Andre
Not only has Bramley sustained a long career as a playwright and a
director, but she also has built a company that employs three permanent members
of staff and countless actors, musicians and technicians every year.
In a sector that relies heavily on external funding from Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery UK and charities, more than 50 per cent of Badapple’s tours are self-funded, meaning box-office sales speak for themselves. The company had been offered project support of up to £15,000 towards the spring tour.
Harri Marshall and Jake Williams: the partnership behind the next stage of Technical Difficulties
YORK theatre director Harri Marshall and
associate artist Jake Williams are to hold a group interview session on March
21 for their new work, Technical Difficulties.
The open meeting will be held at Theatre @41
Monkgate, York, from 10.30am to 1pm to add research to their verbatim piece on
relationships and technology and how this has evolved over the years.
“We’re inviting the Yorkshire community to share their experiences about relationships when we host interviews that day,” says Harri, a deaf director, who directed York Settlement Community Players’ production of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes last October.
“By gaining new stories and opinions, we’ll be able to enhance and enrich the script by adding voices from different communities and create a play that’s ultimately for everyone. If you’d like to be involved in the group session, please follow our social media links (see below).”
Harri continues: “After the new interviews have been added to the script, we’ll cast the six roles with local actors, rehearse and go on to perform the piece, not only in a Yorkshire preview, but we’ll also take it to the 2021 Edinburgh Fringe.
“We feel this project is really exciting as it’s not only made for
an audience but by the audience too.”
Defining Trechnical Difficulties, Harri says: “It’s a verbatim
play about the search for human connection in an increasingly digitised world,
where we unpick what it means to fall in and out of love as well as all the
technical difficulties about relationships.
“I first created the play two years ago at the Oxford Playhouse
with the Young Playmakers, led by Renata Allen. Like much of my work, it relies
heavily on collaboration with the performers and the participants, who have
given their voices to this script.
“Staying true to their original words by using verbatim
techniques, we bring to life their experiences of relationships through
ensemble work, movement and an immersive audience experience – such as rhetoric
and shared stories – unlocking the dramatic potential of documentary theatre.”
The documentary form of theatre has always inspired Harri’s work,
both as a director and writer. “I feel that verbatim theatre is an art form
that doesn’t dictate what the audience should think,” she says.
“Rather, it works with them through shared experience to create a
piece of work that discusses and debates an experience or topic that’s shaped
by the writer, then shared through the medium of theatre. To me, theatre is
about shared story-telling that brings us together, which ultimately is what
verbatim aims to do.”
Harri continues: “The piece creates a sense of belonging between
the actors and the audience, as relationships, while very personal and unique
to each individual, can be relatable and offer insight on the full spectrum of
relationships. This shared experience makes the production real in a way that
no other genre of theatre can replicate, creating a rich tapestry of shared
experiences and genuine voices that unite the audience and allow them to see
reflections of themselves within the characters on the stage.
“It’s the idea of reflection that the audience will take away with
them, allowing a better understanding of how we form our relationships, be that
sexual or platonic. In our current society, with all its political upheaval and
anger, it’s more important than ever to understand how we communicate to each
other, which is why this play is important to share with the city of York.”
The artwork for Technical Difficulties
The creative duo behind Technical Difficulties:
Harri Marshall is a deaf
director, working in York. Since 2016, she has directed seven productions, in
venues such as the Theatre Royal, Winchester, Canal Café Theatre, London, and John
Cooper Studio, Theatre @41 Monkgate, York. in York, where she directed ‘The Red
Shoes’ for the York Settlement Community Players.
Jake Williams has joined
Harri, as an associate artist, on her journey to continue to turn Technical
Difficulties into a fully fledged piece of work. As a founding member of Out Of
Bounds Theatre, he has produced and performed theatre and street arts since
2017. At the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe, he produced and performed in 44 Inch Chest at
theSpace on North Bridge.
How you can be involved in the next stage of Technical
Difficulties:
For more details and updates, or if you have any questions, go to:
SLUG and Caterpillar are starving and the only leaf left in the garden is just out of reach.
So begins Slime, Sam Caseley’s squelchy, squishy, surreal, slimy play for two to five-year-old children at the De Grey Ballroom, York Theatre Royal, on April 15 at 10.30am, 1pm and 3.30pm.
Directed by Ruby Thompson, The Herd Theatre’s show is a playful interactive adventure where young theatregoers and their families can expect to “get stuck in with slime” as they help Slug and Caterpillar to work together to form an unlikely friendship, despite their differences.
Just out of reach: the only leaf left in the garden for Slug and Caterpillar
Slug thinks they should work together,
but Caterpillar has other ideas, saying slugs are gross, covered in gooey slime
and have terrible taste in music.
The Hull company’s fully immersive and accessible experience will transform the De Grey Ballroom into a “Slime-tastic undergrowth for all”, with British Sign Language integrated throughout.
“This isn’t a traditional play performed in a
traditional theatre,” says Ruby, the director. “We’re delighted to host a
unique theatrical experience for the very young. During the show, children and
their grown-ups can be as loud as they want: giggle, dance, wriggle and talk.
We can’t wait to welcome York audiences into the undergrowth, created by designer
Rūta Irbīte.”
“Slugs are gross, covered in gooey slime and have terrible taste in music,” says Caterpillar in The Herd Theatre’s Slime
Playwright and composer Sam adds: “Slugs are amazing and their slime is like no other material on Earth, but they get such a bad rep. So, we’ve made a show that confronts this prejudice, and in doing so explores how we judge others before we know them. And you get to invade the stage and play with Slime at the end.”
Defining their brand of theatre, The HerdTheatre say they “make innovative shows about the world young people live in today”. At the heart of everything is collaboration as they play, chat, imagine, share, and create with groups of children.
Slime has only has 12 words in the show, and every word is spoken and signed by the characters in British Sign Language. Furthermore, every performance of Slime is relaxed. “The audience area is well lit. It’s OK to come, go and make noise if you need to,” say The Herd, whose 45-minute play is followed at each performance by 15 minutes of Slime play.
Tickets for the three performances with British Sign Language and Relaxed Performance access cost £8 on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Tom Tom club: the two Toms in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Tom’s Midnight Garden, Jimmy Dalgleish, left, and Jack Hambleton, with Olivia Caley’s Hatty. All pictures: Matthew Kitchen
SPRING is on its way, gardens are perking up, good timing for Pick Me Up
Theatre to stage Tom’s Midnight Garden from tomorrow at Theatre @41
Monkgate, York.
Who better to direct David Wood’s adaptation of Philippa Pearce’s beloved book than the York company’s artistic director Robert Readman, a garden and gardening enthusiast, as a visit to his Bubwith abode would affirm.
In Pearce’s 1950s’ story, Tom is sent away sent to stay with his Aunt
Gwen and Uncle Alan in their upstairs flat in a big Victorian house after his
brother Peter catches the measles and is now quarantined.
Lonely and bored, Tom has little to do until one night he hears the
hallway grandfather clock strike 13. Creeping downstairs to investigate, he
throws open the back door to…no longer a small yard but a large and beautiful
garden instead.
Something strange is happening: every time the clock strikes 13, Tom is
transported back in time to the secret garden. There he befriends an unhappy
Victorian orphan, Hatty, and a series of adventures ensues, but what is behind
the magical midnight garden?
“It’s such a magical story, all to do with time,” says Robert. “I love
how it jumps between a young boy’s dull life in the 1950s, and his adventures
with Hatty in the 1880s.”
“The lighting and sound will be vital to the transformation between the
two times; the characters dress according to the era they’re from, and there’ll
also be a lot of mime in the show, so it’ll be a mixture of the real and the
unreal, with the cast doing roles from the two eras.”
Ed Atkin as Peter, left, Jimmy Dalgleish as Tom, Olivia Caley as Hatty, Jack Hambleton as Tom and Beryl Nairn as Aunt Grace in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Tom’s Midnight Garden
To convey the two
contrasting worlds with his black-box design, director-designer Readman has
constructed two platforms, one at either end, one for Peter’s bedroom, one for
Tom’s, with a doorway to each one and the hallway clock at Tom’s end.
“It’s nothing like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden,
which was written in Victorian times, whereas Tom’s Midnight Garden is
a tale of children stuck in the drabness of the 1950s creating an exciting
world by travelling back to Victorian days, and that’s what we’re conveying in
both the design and the performances.”
Reading the book as a child and now re-reading it in preparation for the
Pick Me Up production, Robert says: “What struck me is that it’s all to do with
children’s imaginations. It’s a piece about how children can conjure up
adventures with make-believe.
“It’s a beautiful book that can be read by adults just as much as by
children; it treats children as being intelligent in their own right, and I
love how it takes you on a journey where there’s both sweetness and sadness, so
everything is doubled.”
Company regular Jack Hambleton and Pick Me Up newcomer Jimmy Dalgleish
will share the role of Tom; Olivia Caley will play Hatty, and Ed Atkin, Peter.
“At the beginning, it’s quite hard to like Tom because he complains
quite a lot and seems ungrateful, but then you can see that he was just feeling
lonely and was missing his brother,” says Jack.
“His friendship with Hatty shows how caring and thoughtful he is, and he
also shows his curiosity and intelligence when approaching the puzzle of how
his time travel is possible.”
“All Hatty wants to do is have adventures and not grow up,” says Olivia Caley, pictured with Jimmy Dalgleish, left, and Jack Hambleton, who will share the role of Tom
Jimmy, similar in stature to Jack but differing in his interpretation of
the role according to Readman, says: “Stuck inside at his aunt and uncle’s
house, Tom is lonely and ‘longs for someone to play with’.
“Tom is very playful and somewhat cheeky! He’s intelligent, adventurous
and loyal to his new friend Hatty. He’s very inquisitive and a logical thinker
as he tries to work out that he’s somehow able to go back in time!”
Summing up Victorian Hatty’s character, Olivia says: “She’s a curious
and playful young girl with a great imagination, despite her sad upbringing.
All Hatty wants to do is have adventures and not grow up!”
Ed plays not only Peter, but Hubert and “Voice” too. “But I spend most
of my time as Peter, who’s got measles, so he has to spend all his time in bed.
The letters written by Tom are his only entertainment, which means he’s
fascinated by the stories that are sent to him.”
Given that time travel is so central to Tom’s Midnight Garden, if they
each could go back in time to one era to live in, what would it be and
why? “Probably Ancient Egypt as I’m fascinated by how they lived and how much
they achieved,” says Jack. “I would love to know how they really built the
pyramids and how much influence the gods had on their lives.”
“The Tudor era because I would love to live among the people of the
court of Henry VIII and experience the grandeur the scandal and politics
of his life,” reckons Jimmy.
“I actually experienced what it was like to be a young girl in the
Regency era in a short film called Mr Malcolm’s List,” reveals Olivia. “So, I’d
probably want to travel back to that era. The dresses were beautiful, and I
loved getting to wear them! Not so much the corsets!”
Pick Me Up Theatre’s poster for this month’s production of Tom’s Midnight Garden
Ed picks the 1960s. “This was such an exciting time in the development
of the music industry,” he reasons. “I just think it would have been so
fascinating to learn about music at a time when it was constantly changing and
being upgraded.”
While on the subject of music, Ed has written a beautiful score for
violin, cello and piano for musical director Tim Selman’s forces. “It
definitely draws on the theme of ‘time no longer’,” he says.
“I took inspiration from the likes of Vaughan Williams and Benjamin
Britten, who wrote music that was modern at the time but also harked back to
the Victorian Romantic styles.
“Additionally, I tried to incorporate the idea of childhood and
playfulness into what I wrote, so lots of the music is fun and slightly quirky.
However, it’s all shrouded in a sense of mystery.”
Not only director
Readman has a love of gardens, so do his cast principals. “Some gardens are very magical,”
says Jack. “I particularly like gardens with hidden corners and
an air of mystery, such as Castle Howard and Beningbrough Hall.”
Jimmy concurs: “A garden is
a place where anything can happen,” he says. “A garden inspires imagination and
can subsequently transport you to a whole new world of your own creation
away from the stresses and strains of ordinary life, and that in itself is
magical!”
Olivia enthuses: “I absolutely think gardens are magical!
There’s so much scope for the imagination. When I was little, I was always
playing in my garden, so I can really relate to Hatty on that.”
Gardens can be magical, especially for a child, suggests Ed. “There’s a
moment in the play where Tom and Hatty go through a ‘secret passage’. This
feeling of exploring a new world is one I remember well from playing in such a garden when
I was younger,” he says.
Let the clock strike 13. A garden awaits.
Pick Me Up Theatre in Tom’s Midnight Garden, John Cooper Studio, Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, tomorrow (March 13) until March 21. Box office: 01904 623568; at pickmeuptheatre.com or in person from York Gin, 12, Pavement, and the York Theatre Royal box office.
Ghost Stories from the past: lecturer Professor Goodman making a point (when Simon Lipkin played the role in London in this picture)
REVIEW: Ghost Stories, presented by Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, scaring all and sundry at Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york
IT is not every play day that the writers send out a polite
request to reviewers, and normally it would be a red rag to that most bullish
of breeds: the hacked-off hack.
However, the seriously bearded duo of Andy Nyman and Leeds-born
Jeremy Dyson, he of the deeply, madly, darkly twisted League of Gentlemen, do
have a point.
Ghost Stories has been around for a decade now, going global
and being transformed into a film too, but all the while “it has meant so much
to us that critics the world over have kept [secret] the plot and secrets of
our show when writing about it,” they say.
“We appreciate it makes life a little trickier for you by not
divulging [the] plot, but because of your help, Ghost Stories remains a rare thing: a modern experience you have to
see ‘spoiler-free’.”
Spoiler alert: there will be no spoiler alerts in this review
to blow the cover of their audacious spooky conceit. What your reviewer can
reveal, however, dear reader, is that he first saw this immersive fright-fest
at the Ambassadors Theatre – a typically compressed, crowded, everyone-close-to-the-stage,
venerable West End locale – only last autumn, and frankly it was just as joyously,
seat-of-the-pants, phew, glad-to-have-got-through-that scary, second time
around at the Grand Opera House on Tuesday night.
Not-so-secret request: writer-directors Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson
Even when knowing what was coming next. Much like returning
to a favourite fairground ghost train or high-speed ride. In fact, that even added
to the experience, and apparently others share that view, gleefully inviting
the uninitiated to join them to break their Ghost Stories virginity. Just do as
Andy and Jeremy say: tell them nothing, except maybe pass on this message: “We
hope you have a great night and maybe even scream a bit.”
A bit? In reality, there is as much laughter as screaming in
response to the brilliantly executed storytelling, stocked with its 15-rated “moments
of extreme shock and tension”. “We strongly advise those of a nervous
disposition to think very seriously before attending,” says the programme cover,
which is a tad late for a warning and amounts to more of a dare.
Do note this, however. Anyone who leaves once the ghosts have
started their work for the night is not allowed back in, and nor is there an
interval. So, the strongest advice is to think very seriously of heading to the
loo beforehand, should that fear of a discomfort break be more likely to make
you nervous.
Unlike Stephen Mallatratt’s The Woman In Black, Ghost Stories
is not one ghost story but three ghost stories, wrapped inside an over-arching,
far darker psycho-drama that begins with Joshua Higgott’s Professor Phillip Goodman,
a parapsychologist in obligatory brown corduroy, delivering a lecture, glass of
water and dry wit at hand.
In a theatre with its own ghost, opposite the York Dungeon tourist attraction with its love of gory history, and in “Europe’s most haunted city” with a ghost tour around every corner, even a ghost bus ride and a York Ghost Merchants shop to counter the spread of Pottervirus in Shambles, Goodman should be feeling very much at home as he guides us through the history of our fascination with ghosts and expert ghost analysis of the past. So far, so para-normal.
All of this is a way to trap us into a false sense of
security/strap us in for the very bumpy ghost rides ahead, each more alarming
than the last, as lecture and lecturer seep in and out of each suspenseful story.
The night-watchman on his guard in Ghost Stories (again pictured in the 2019 London production)
Without giving anything away, these involve a seen-it-all-before night-watchman in a depository (Paul Hawkyard); a novice motorist in a car at night in a murky wood (Gus Gordon) and a flashy father-to-be in a nursery (Richard Sutton, still as outstanding as he was in the London run). What happens next? Relax, Andy, relax Jeremy, my bitten lips are now sealed.
Except to say, writer-directors Nyman and Dyson and fellow director Sean Holmes work their ghostly magic deliciously devilishly in tandem with Jon Bauser, a sleight-of-hand magician of a designer, far outwitting Hammer Horror.
James Farncombe’s lighting adds heart-stopping menace to the juddering frights, hand-held torches and all; Nick Manning’s disturbing, disorientating, jagged, sometimes deafening sound design assaults you from all sides, and Scott Penrose’s climactic special effects are terrifically terrifying.
Do keep what happens secret, but don’t keep the show secret. It
deserves big houses, being all the better, the more who share the experience, even
amid the worrisome shadow of Coronavirus.
”Sweet dreams, Andy and Jeremy,” say the ghost-story weavers
as they sign off their letter to the fourth estate, politely teasing to the
last.
Sweet dreams? Lovers of gripping theatre, devotees of the paranormal world, your nightmare would be to miss Ghost Stories, especially on Friday the 13th. You won’t rest until tickets are safe and secure in your hand.
Denis Conway’s Otto Quangel and Jay Taylor’s SS Officer Prall in Alone In Berlin
Review: Alone In Berlin, York Theatre Royal/Royal & Derngate Northampton, at York Theatre Royal, until March 21. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
IT is rare to have a perspective on the
Second World War from within Germany itself, presented on stage or screen.
What’s more, Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret
was a Broadway musical rooted in Anglo-American Christopher Isherwood’s semi-autobiographical 1945 novel The Berlin Stories, set in Weimar
Republic Berlin in 1931 with the Nazi Party on the rise. There could be no more
cynical voice than that of the nightclub Emcee; entertainment at any price.
This year, New Zealander Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, a
satirical account of the last year of World War Two, as seen through the eyes
of a ten-year-old Hitler Youth enthusiast in a German town, garlanded
nominations aplenty in the Hollywood awards season but opprobrium in equal
measure. How did it end? With the boy and a newly free Jewish girl dancing to
David Bowie’s Heroes, sung in Deutsche.
Joseph Marcell’s Inspector Escherich, Clive Mendus’s Benno Kluge and Jessica Walker’s Golden Elsie in Alone In Berlin
Alone In Berlin is a different beast altogether, still with
songs (more of which later), but far removed from the powder and paint, mirage and
murk of Weimar cabaret or a small-town boy’s loss of innocence. The source
novel, based on a true story, was written by a German, the maverick Hans
Fallada, responsible for Little Man, What Now? too.
Also known aptly as Every Man Dies Alone, it was published in
1947 – the year Fallada died of a morphine overdose – but not in English until
2009.
Since then, there has been Vincent Perez’s 2016 film with
Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson and now this York Theatre Royal and Royal
& Derngate Northampton co-production, translated and adapted by playwright
and political satirist Alistair Beaton and directed by James Dacre, the
Northampton theatre’s artistic director.
We watch it through the 2020 filter of grim, vulnerable
times, in a year of floods, storms, immigration intolerance, Brexit’s cold
shoulder, myopic political leaders, and now the creeping spread of Coronavirus.
“This is war,” an exhausted Italian doctor said yesterday.
Resistance movement: Charlotte Emmerson’s Anna and Denis Conway’s Otto Quangel in Alone In Berlin
On the one hand, there is heightened awareness of the need
for collective responsibility, but, on the other, a fear that other factors may
over-power it, and where does that leave individual action as we wash our hands
ever more feverishly? We are indeed, as everyone is in Fallada’s book, very
much alone, and seemingly not in control of our destiny.
Such a feeling prevails in Alone In Berlin, where the central
question is whether an individual can make a difference through courageous acts
of protest when standing up against the drowning tide of Nazism.
Hard-working carpenter Otto Quangel (Denis Conway) and worn
housewife spouse Anna (Charlotte Emmerson) have just learnt that their only son,
Marcus, has died in action, honourably serving the fatherland, the letter says,
but they see no honour in it. Nor does his fiancée Trudi (Abiola Ogunbiyi), who
joins the Resistance movement, although the subsequent arc of her story shows how
ultimately alone everyone is under duress.
Yes, they had voted for Hitler – more precisely Otto told Anna
which way to vote, she says – with Hitler’s promise of jobs to end the
Depression, but they had since grown disillusioned. Their boorish, bragging bully
of a neighbour Borkhausen (Julius D’Silva), feels empowered to persecute the
Jewish woman next door; he and petty criminal Benno Kluge (Clive Mendus) are
exploiting the vulture opportunities of Nazism’s tyrannical grip.
Jessica Walker’s Golden Elsie, centre, with Charlotte Emmerson’s Anna and Denis Conway’s Otto Quangel in the shadows
What would you do in such testing circumstances? Keep your
head down? Keep making coffins as carpenter Otto now is? Or start a campaign of
civil disobedience, as Otto decides he must, no matter how small the defiant act,
prompting him and then Anna to write to write messages on postcards he stealthily
distributes across Berlin, calling on fellow Germans to resist?
Most fall into the hands of the authorities, represented in
Fallada’s suffocating story by Gestapo officer Inspector Escherich (Joseph
Marcell), a veteran policeman, adapting to do what he must do to survive, and his
superior, SS Officer Prall (Jay Taylor), ambitious, merciless, the embodiment
of all the very worst Nazi stereotypes.
Once the trail leads to Otto – spoiler alert – the most
telling scene has Otto confronting Escherich’s expediency. “You don’t believe
in anything,” he scolds him. That shocks Escherich to the core, and in turn it
challenges us too, to cling to our beliefs, to cling to hope for the better path,
to defy, to resist, if necessary, and to go it alone as the starting point, but
with conviction that others will follow.
Dacre’s meticulous, methodical production is one of very high production values, and devastating performances by Conway, Emmerson and Marcell in particular, but it is not wholly successful.
Omnipresent angelic statue: Jessica Walker’s Golden Elsie
Beaton’s script sometimes sails close to the prosaic, and Jessica Walker’s omnipresent angelic statue Golden Elsie, matching the black and white of Jonathan Fensom’s stark set and Nina Dunn’s video designs, will be a divisive figure for audiences.
Essentially a one-woman Greek chorus, she is more reporter than commentator, and while she may echo Weimar cabaret in style, Orlando Gough has given her dissonant, flatlining operatic songs, always eluding a tune and relentless as toothache. This is probably deliberate, but the sheer number of songs is a drag on the play’s momentum.
Jason Lutes’s illustrations from his graphic novel Berlin are used brilliantly, Charles Balfour’s lighting is in turn dazzling, oppressively dark and intimidating; Donato Wharton’s sound design is exemplary.
Ultimately, Alone In Berlin, will have an impact beyond those
fault lines in its telling. It will make you think, reflect, whether alone, or
better still, together in the bar afterwards. Hopefully, too, it will make you want
to make a difference, to push back against the crush, to be the first flutter of
the butterfly’s wing.
Joseph Rowntree Theatre charity chairman Dan Shrimpton, centre, receives the £10,000 award from the J&C Joel workforce at the York theatre
THE Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, has won £10,000 in a nationwide competition run by the Theatres Trust and international stage equipment company J & C Joel.
The Sowerby Bridge company has replaced all the stage curtains and upgraded the scenery-moving equipment to facilitate “even bigger and better” shows at the Art Deco community theatre in Haxby Road.
Graham
Mitchell, the JoRo theatre’s company secretary, fundraising and events director
and charity trustee says: “We’re very grateful to everyone at J & C Joel
and at the Theatres Trust for the work done. The award’s timing could not be
better, as we’re expanding the range and number of shows we host. Coming just
after being voted York’s Best Entertainment Venue in Minster FM’s Listener
Choice awards, this is an immense boost.”
Dan Shrimpton,
the JoRo charity’s chairman, believes the award will make a huge difference to operating
the theatre. “Our audiences will be able to see ever more imaginative settings
for plays and musicals, and, of course, the annual Rowntree Players pantomime,”
he says.
“The
theatre was built in 1935 by Rowntrees for the benefit of their employees and
the citizens of York, so that everyone could experience a wide variety of
affordable entertainment, either by taking part or by just coming to watch
shows, concerts and films.
“We
have big plans to improve our facilities over the next few years to make the
theatre a truly vibrant asset for York, as originally intended by Seebohm and
Joseph Rowntree. It really is a community asset run for the people of
York, by the people of York”.
J&C Joel employees assessing the task in hand at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York
James
Wheelwright, J & C Joel’s chief executive, says: “We celebrated our 40th anniversary
last year and we wanted to mark it in a special way. We worked with the
Theatres Trust, the national organisation protecting and advising theatres, to
create the competition.
“The
Joseph Rowntree Theatre won from a very wide field of theatres from up and down
the country because we loved what they are doing as a community run theatre,
providing affordable entertainment to the people of York and beyond – and who
also have big plans for the theatre’s future.”
Tom Stickland, theatres
adviser at the Theatres Trust, says: “The Joseph Rowntree Theatre is a great
example of the transformational effect that committed community groups can have
on theatres. The Theatres Trust is pleased to be in a position to link up
generous industry specialists like J & C Joel with community theatres, so
that they can offer this vital support.”
Run entirely by
volunteers, the JoRo welcomed 50 hirers last year, who staged 135 performances.
The theatre is used by more than 35 York groups, as well as several professional
touring companies and performers.
This week,
the JoRo is playing host to the York Community Choir Festival until Saturday.
Jessa Liversidge: performing her Songbirds show at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre on April 5
York St John University Musical Production Society will present Guys
& Dolls, March 19 to 21; Bev Jones Music Company, Calamity Jane, March 25
to 28; Flying Ducks Youth Theatre, Crush The Musical, April 2 to 4; Jessa
Liversidge, Songbirds, a celebration of female singing icons, April 5.
For tickets
and more details of upcoming shows, go to josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.Box office: 01904 501935.
Did you
know?
J&C Joel was established in 1978 in Sowerby Bridge, near
Halifax, founded by John Wheelwright whose family had been involved in the
textile industry for more than 150 years.
The business exports to more than 80 countries worldwide,
providing products such as front-of-house theatre curtains, stage backdrops,
cycloramas, gauzes, acoustic drapes, projection screens and stage engineering
solutions. J&C Joel has offices in the UK, Europe, Africa, the Middle East,
Asia and Australasia.
The Theatres Trust is the national advisory public body for theatres, championing the future of live performance by protecting and supporting theatre buildings that meet the needs of their communities.
The trust provides advice on the design, planning, development and sustainability of theatres, campaigning on behalf of theatres old and new and offering financial assistance through grants.
Juliet Forster, left, directing rehearsals for Out Of Character’s Less Than Human
SOMETHING strange is happening,
something disturbing, say York company Out Of Character in Less Than Human,
this week’s production at the York Theatre Royal Studio.
After their sold-out November 2017 show about Victorian freak shows and mad doctors, Objects Of Terror, they are collaborating once more with the Theatre Royal, whose associate director, Juliet Forster, again directs the new piece.
Out Of Character’s publicity artwork for Less Than Human
Less Than
Human plays out against the backdrop of Planet Earth having less to give but
its inhabitants
taking more. In this struggling world of diminishing resources, humanity is
forced to wrestle with the true cost of survival. What does it mean to be
truly human? Are some lives worth more than others? Who decides who lives and
dies? A question that suddenly has a new urgency and prescience amid the
rise of Coronavirus.
As evolving technologies offer new
forms of “human being”, is there still hope for a bright future…or do some
people have to pay the price, the play asks.
Out Of Character in rehearsal for Less Than Human
Out Of Character’s company of artists and
performers brings together people who use or have used mental health services.
Their bold, creative and darkly comedic approach to making theatre aims to stir
both the mind and the heart.
The company won the Excellence in
Equality and Cultural Diversity Prize at the 2018 York Culture Awards. Audiences
on social media have described their work as compelling, deeply affecting,
intense, beautiful, clever, articulate, challenging, powerful, poignant and
thought-provoking.
Out Of Character cast members in a tug-of-war scene in Less Than Human
Out Of Character’s previous shows included Tales From Kafka in July 2010, Henry IV in May 2012 and More Tales From Kafka in November 2014.
Less Than Human runs from Thursday to Saturday (March 12 to 14) at 7.45pm nightly. Tickets cost £10, concessions £8, on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Making his point: Luke Dickson’s Brian Clough clashes with David Chafer’s Peter Taylor in Red Ladder Theatre Company’s The Damned United
DOWN the stairs, along the corridor,
round the corner, into the dressing room. His dressing room. Hateful, hateful
place. Spiteful, spiteful place. Dirty, dirty Leeds.
Here comes The Damned United, the story
of Brian Clough’s ill-fated, fetid 44 days as reigning champions Leeds United’s
manager in the summer of 1974.
Adapted for the stage from West Yorkshire
author David Peace’s book The Damned Utd, Anders Lustgarten’s play is presented
by Leeds’s Red Ladder Theatre Company at York Theatre Royal on April 17 at the
familiar kick-off time of 7.30pm.
The strife of Brian: The poster for Red Ladder Theatre Company’s The Damned United
The Damned United invites you to enter
the obsessed head of Brian Clough, already the enfant terrible of English
football management after his exit from Derby County, who arrives at Elland
Road in 1974, seeking to redeem his reputation by winning the European Cup with
his new club, Division One champions Leeds United.
This is the team he has despised for
years, the team he hates and that hates him no less. Don Revie’s Leeds, the
greatest but most grating team of its era.
Let playwright and political activist
Lustgarten’s abrasive play take you inside the tortured, drink-befuddled mind
of a north-eastern genius slamming up against his limits, as The Damned United “brings
to life the beauty and brutality of football, the working man’s ballet”.
Falling out with the chairman: Luke Dickson’s Brian Clough has another fractious encounter in The Damned United
Directed by Red Ladder artistic
director Rod Dixon and originally co-produced with West Yorkshire Playhouse in
2015, this latter-day Greek tragedy adapts Peace’s fictionalised, first-person
account to focus more on the flawed Clough’s fractious relationship down the
years with Peter Taylor, his sage and stoical regular right-hand man, who did
not accompany him to Elland Road.
This bullish character study of bravado,
loyalty and strained friendship is performed by Luke Dickson as Clough, David
Chafer as Taylor and Jamie Smelt as everyone else, while Dixon is joined in the
production team dug-out by set and projection designer Nina Dunn, lighting
designer Tim Skelly and sound designer Ed Heaton.
Tickets are on sale at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk, on 01904 623568 or in person from the Theatre Royal box office.
Heather Agyepong as Sephy in Pilot Theatre’s Noughts & Crosses at York Theatre Royal last April . Picture: Robert Day
YORK company Pilot Theatre will revive
their award-winning 2019 production of Noughts & Crosses for an autumn tour.
This announcement comes amid the blaze
of publicity for BBC One’s six-part adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s young
adult novel, filmed in South Africa, that began earlier this week.
Sabrina Mahfouz’s stage version of a modern-day
Romeo & Juliet tale of first love in a dangerous fictional dystopia will
be directed once more by Pilot artistic director Esther Richardson, whose
co-production of Crongton Knights played York Theatre Royal from February 25 to
29 on Pilot’s latest tour.
“We’re delighted that this show, which
was nominated for best show for children and young people at UK Theatre Awards,
is returning later this year,” says Esther. “It’s wonderful that even more
young people can experience this production and that Pilot will be able to tour
to areas of England that we haven’t visited, thanks to the support of Arts
Council England.”
Class act: more than school friends Sephy (Heather Agyepong) and Callum (Billy Harris) in Noughts And Crosses last year.
Noughts & Crosses will open at the
York theatre in a September 11 to 19 run before embarking on a national tour
until late-November.
Told from the perspectives of two
teenagers, Sephy and Callum, Blackman’s love story set in a volatile,
racially segregated society, where black (the Crosses) rules over white (the
Noughts), as she explores the powerful themes of love, revolution and what
it means to grow up in a divided world.
Sabrina Mahfouz’s adaptation for
teenagers is based on Blackman’s first book in the Noughts & Crosses series
for young adults, winner of the Red House Children’s Book Award and the
Fantastic Fiction Award, among other accolades.
Noughts & Crosses was produced
by Pilot Theatre, York Theatre Royal, Derby Theatre, Belgrade Theatre Coventry,
and the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, as the first show in a new partnership to
develop theatre for younger audiences. This is the consortium behind the
aforementioned tour of Emteaz Hussain’s
adaptation of Alex Wheatle’s Crongton Knights.
Pilot Theatre artistic director Esther Richardson
Last year, Noughts & Crosses won
the Excellence in Touring award at the UK
Theatre Awards, when also nominated for Best Show for Children and Young
People.
As with Crongton Knights, schools
workshops and outreach projects, along with free digital learning resources,
will be available alongside the autumn production of Noughts & Crosses
Casting will be announced in the coming
months. Tickets for the York run are on sale on 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
or in person from the Theatre Royal box office.
Here is a precis of Charles Hutchinson’s review of Pilot Theatre’s Noughts & Crosses at York Theatre Royal, printed in The Press, York, in April 2019.
“ESTHER Richardson proposed Noughts & Crosses when pitching for Pilot’s artistic directorship after Marcus Romer headed south, and her passion for Malorie Blackman’s twist on a Romeo & Juliet story is writ large in her telling of Sabrina Mahfouz’s electrifying adaptation.
Heather Agyepong’s Sephy in Noughts & Crosses last year
“In Blackman’s Britain, Noughts are the
white underlings; no orange juice; milk only on Fridays; no mobile phones;
second-rate secondary education. Crosses are the black ruling class; apartheid
divisions turned on their head.
“Never the twain shall meet on equal terms, except that Nought
Callum (Billy Harris), 15, and Cross Sephy (Heather Agyepong), 14, have been
friends throughout childhood, meeting secretly on her family’s private beach.
Sephy’s father, Kamal Hadley (Chris Jack), is the Home
Secretary; Callum’s mum, Meggie (Lisa Howard), is the Hadley family’s
housekeeper. When Callum is one of three Nought teens granted a place at
Sephy’s Crosses-only school, how will it affect their relationship?
“Blackman depicts a fractious, tinderbox world: Sephy’s mum
Jasmine (Doreene Blackstock) is an alcoholic, neglected by her preoccupied
husband; Callum’s dad Ryan (Daniel Copeland) and brother Jude (Jack Condon) are
Liberation Militia freedom fighters. Callum’s sister, so damaged in an assault,
has curled up in a ball ever since.
Pilot Theatre cast members in a scene in Noughts & Crosses
“As with Pilot’s first hit, Lord Of The Flies, our ability to
destroy rather than create bonds, to repeatedly take the wrong turn, lies at
the heart of Blackman’s damning, bleak vision that haunts us still more in
intolerant Brexit Britain.
“Sephy and Callum express a wish for a better world, one where
we rub along with each other, but this is a rotten Britain of death sentences,
an intransigent Home Secretary, thwarted love across the divide.
“Given the bold imagination of Blackman’s novel for young adults with its heroine figure of a bright black teenage girl, you might wish she had come up with a similarly bold answer to so many ultimately familiar woes.
“Alas not, but this is nevertheless a superb production with good performances all round, plenty of punch in the direction, and high-quality set, lighting, sound, music and video design.”
