Bird watch: Mikron Theatre Company cast members Eddie Ahrens, Hannah Baker, Rachel Hammond and Harvey Badger in Poppy Hollman’s Twitchers. Picture: Anthony Robling
POPPY Hollman is on song in her second commission for Mikron Theatre Company.
After A Dog’s Tale in 2021, the Marsden company is undertaking a nationwide tour of Twitchers, her new play about birds, birders and the work and history of the RSPB, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
As part of Mikron’s 51st season, Twitchers will be on its travels by land and water from April 7 to October 21, visiting York on Sunday afternnon in the company’s regular May slot at Scarcroft Allotments, a suitably outdoor setting for a play rich with bird song.
“It’s like an itch I can’t stop scratching: writing about animals,” says Poppy. “First dogs, now birds [Mikron had already done a play about bees and beekeeping, Deborah McAndrew’s Beyond The Veil in 2013].”
In Poppy’s story, performed by debutant Mikron actor-musicians Eddie Ahrens, Hannah Baker, Harvey Badger and Rachel Hammond, Springwatch is coming to the RSPB Shrikewing nature reserve (“notionally in Yorkshire, but completely fictional,” says Poppy).
From raucous rooks to booming bitterns, the birds of Shrikewing are its stars, but can Jess take inspiration from the RSPB’s tenacious female founders and draw on its history of campaigning to save them? What’s more, can she find her own voice to raise a rallying cry for nature?
“Twitchers is about the RSPB, Europe’s largest conservation charity, and their struggles to protect birds and wildlife since 1889,” says Poppy. “The play offers a fun swoop into the colourful world of birds and birdwatching. Our feathered friends are the real stars of the show; you’ll see them flirting, bickering and making their own indelible impression on the plot.”
Twitchers is nevertheless “driven by the human story”. “It’s a modern-day account of what the RSPB is coming up against in its work. Set on a bird reserve, it gives the human side of the story through telling the history of the RSPB – in the way you can do that in two 45-minute halves in a Mikron show.
“The RSPB was started in 1889 by four indomitable women, before women had the vote and pre-dating other wildlife organisations too. They were seeking to stop the trade in feathers and exotic plumes, mainly for hats,” says Poppy.
“That trade was worth the equivalent of £200 million today, so it was incredibly valuable, and at the time women were not only wearing feathers but dead birds too, and they did so well into the 20th century.
“But in the 1920s, a ban on the import of feathers was finally secured. Gradually the campaigners had made that trade seem so unsanitary and so cruel.”
The dilemma, the dichotomy, that we face more than ever in our age of climate change is how humanity can destroy yet have the potential to save nature. “One RSPB worker in the play says, ‘it would be best of we just closed down and left nature to itself’, but actually that would not be a good idea,” says Poppy.
The RSPB’s membership of one million and volunteer workforce of 12,000 would testify to the importance of their shared concern. “The area covered by RSPB reserves is four times the size of the Isle of Wight, so they need that membership and the volunteers in order to do such vital work, with events like the Big Garden Birdwatch, held every January, when we gain an accurate count of our native birds,” says Poppy.
“The Operation Osprey campaign launched in 1959 was a very important turning point for the RSPB, when these birds were endangered because of egg collectors. By raising awareness of the osprey’s plight, they made it harder for the [egg-collecting] crime to happen.”
Mikron’s multi-talented cast will play the birds in Poppy’s play. “Two of the main characters are a pair of rooks, Barry and Freda, who take on the role of the Greek chorus, commenting on what’s going on at Shrikewing,” she says.
“They see the challenges that are going on in trying to run a reserve and all the problems that go with that. Like the pollution incident, where yet again humans have done something that threatens life there.”
Bird song: Hannah Baker, left, Eddie Ahrens, Harvey Badger and Rachel Hammond in a scene from Twitchers. Picture: Anthony Robling
Poppy’s own love, appreciation and awareness of birds dates back to her childhood. “I grew up in a village in north Buckinghamshire, and I now live only 20 miles away from there in Bedfordshire,” she says.
“I’ve noticed how we no longer see the birds I saw as a child: the chaffinches and the starlings. I’ve definitely developed more of a relationship with birds in my garden, buying feeders.
“A lot of young birders now do low-carbon birding, travelling by bicycle, or focusing on the patch around them, avoiding creating massive emissions by not travelling great distances to go birdwatching. They’re a very inspiring generation, really helping nature.”
Such positivity is extended to the play’s finale. “I wanted to end it on a high, even though optimism is quite hard with what we’re doing to our planet right now, but the people who work at the RSPB reserves are so passionate and optimistic about what they do,” says Poppy.
“I’ve tried to not make it too polemical. Someone described it as ‘quietly polemical’ and I agree with that.”
Mikron Theatre Company in Twitchers, Scarcroft Allotments, Scarcroft Road, York, Sunday (21/5/2023), 2pm. No reserved seating or tickets are required, and instead a ‘pay what you feel’ collection will be taken after the show.
Twitchers is on tour nationally by canal, river and road until October 21, in tandem with Mikron’s premiere of Amanda Whittington’s A Force To Be Reckoned With.Full tour details atwww.mikron.org.uk.
Playwright Poppy Hollman
Poppy Hollman: the back story
TWITCHERS is Poppy’s second play for Mikron Theatre Company.
Her first, 2021’s A Dog’s Tale, was commissioned after she took part in the Mikron New Writer’s Scheme in 2018.
Her other plays include Bells Of Turvey (community play, 2017); Little Shining Eyes (No Loss Productions and Lifebox Productions, Bedfringe 2019); Moon Calf (2019) and Nobody Talked (Glass Splinters, Pleasance Theatre London, 2020).
As well as writing plays, Poppy works as a creative producer for the Living Archive in Milton Keynes.
Alan Park in one of those “things in stripes” that makes the seven-year-old boy’s list of brilliant things in Every Brilliant Thing
Make a list of reasons why you should see Every Brilliant Thing.
Thank Duncan Macmillan for writing Sleeve Notes, his book of lists.
Thank actor Jonny Donahue for helping Macmillan to turn it into a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe and in London and New York.
Put yourself in the shoes of the seven-year-old schoolboy who writes a list of every brilliant thing, every small miracle, to make his suicidal mum realise life is worth living.
Ice cream.
Water fights.
Staying up past your bedtime and being allowed to watch TV.
The colour yellow.
Things with stripes.
Rollercoasters.
People falling over.
Often ordinary things, but brilliant in their own way.
Mum keeps trying to take her life, and so he keeps adding to the list.
You should do the same. Make a list, I mean.
Especially if you are feeling listless.
Start now.
Well, not until you have read this review.
Thank Theatre@41 supporter Cate Birch for recommending Every Brilliant Thing to chair Alan Park.
Thank Alan for reading it.
Thank Alan, professional actor to boot, for deciding he should perform it himself.
Thank Duncan Macmillan for saying yes to York’s new company Shared Space Theatre making it their debut production.
Thank Alan for asking Maggie Smales – responsible for York Shakespeare Project’s best ever production, the all-female Henry V – to direct him.
Thank brainbox Alan for having the mental powers to remember the script for his lead role in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing and Every Brilliant Thing in quick succession.
Thank his Maths teacher of bygone years for Alan being good with numbers. So many numbers, one for every brilliant thing on a list now running to 1,000,000.
Alan doesn’t have to remember all that list but he does have to remember what goes with each number that features in the show.
And remember a running order that is not as easy as 123 to remember.
Because it is not in numerical order.
And sometimes a number is repeated.
And repeated.
Again.
Much later.
It all adds up to a breathtaking and sometimes breathless display of skills in breaking down theatre’s fourth wall.
Result: The audience immediately feels part of the hour-long show.
Whether reading out a brilliant thing from the list on a number cue.
Or having fun when gently enticed by Alan into playing a role.
Such as?
A teacher with a sock puppet of a dog, requiring Alan’s recruit to remove a shoe and sock to play the part.
Or the boy’s father, but then switching with Alan for him to play the father and you, the son, en route to hospital, asking “Why” in response to everything he says.
Why?
Because that’s what children do.
Why?
Don’t ask.
Later play the father again, this time in a wedding breakfast speech…revealing a Texan accent.
Prompting Alan’s character – he has no name – to comment on suddenly discovering unexpected American roots.
Describe a woman with an orange top and blonde hair from Macmillan’s story…and promptly ask a woman in the front row in orange, with blonde hair, to play that character.
Make eye contact with another female member of the audience.
She happens to be an actress, serendipitously. A rather good one.
Flo Poskitt.
One half of Fladam.
York’s musical comedy double act with Adam Sowter.
Catch them in Green Fingers at next week’s TakeOver Festival at York Theatre Royal.
May 27, 3pm.
Box office: 01904 623568.
Or yortheatreroyal.co.uk.
She willingly plays a woman called Sam with whom Alan’s character bonds over a love of books.
They fall in love.
They marry…after Flo’s Sam goes down on one unsteady knee to propose to him in an equally unsteady voice.
Prompting a comment from Alan.
He’s good at that.
The impromptu stuff.
Off the cuff.
On the mark.
It all helps that we are seated in two rows in the round, with no-one allowed upstairs under Macmillan’s strict rules of democracy to create a shared experience.
There are a few empty chairs.
But that’s good.
Because Alan is only too happy to occupy any empty chair, next to whoever, and spring from chair to chair.
Because, as George Osborne once said: “We are all in this together.”
Although not in Chancellor George’s case, we weren’t.
But definitely in Every Brilliant Thing.
The list keeps growing.
Music.
Lots of music.
The way Ray Charles sings “You” in Drown In My Own Tears.
But not jazz.
Instrumental jazz, to be precise.
Music that “sounds like it’s falling down the stairs”.
Music to signify you should stay out of dad’s way at that moment.
The marriage ends. Wham bam, exit Sam.
The list stops.
Suddenly.
Well past 800,000.
Only to start again years later.
Like suddenly revisiting an old diary and feeling inspired to begin Dear Diarying all over again.
Alan’s character has a serious point to make.
Suicide. Don’t do it. There has to be something to live for, he says. Hence the list. Hence this show.
And if the play has troubled you, Alan will be on hand afterwards to talk about its themes.
This week’s production happens to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week.
More details at mentalhealth.org.uk.
Every Brilliant Thing does address depression, suicide, death (beginning with the family pet), but it is uplifting, joyous, funny too.
A difficult balancing act.
But negotiated skilfully by Macmillan and Donahue, and now Park and Smales. Never glib. Often profound. Comforting. Thought provoking.
Life changing?
You decide.
There are still three opportunities to see Every Brilliant Thing.
Tonight at 7.30pm.
Tomorrow at 2.30pm and 7.30pm.
At the venue that won Best Entertainment Venue at Thursday night’s YorkMix Choice Awards 2023.
Congratulations, Alan and all the team at Theatre@41.
Another reason to…
Add Every Brilliant Thing to your list of what to do this weekend. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Next Door But One chief executive officer and artistic director Matt Harper-Hardcastle directing a rehearsal for Operation Hummingbird
YORK community arts collective Next Door But One are taking part in the 2023 TakeOver Festival at York Theatre Royal next week, performing a revival of Operation Hummingbird.
NDB1 premiered artistic director Matt Harper-Hardcastle’s one-act two-hander to sold-out audiences in the socially distanced summer of 2021. Now, buoyed by being among 984 arts organisations to be granted National Portfolio (NPO) status by Arts Council England and winning the award for Resilience and Innovation at the 2023 Visit York Tourism Awards, they have launched their new programme.
“It’s quite apt that our first touring production as an NPO is Operation Hummingbird,” says Matt. “‘We’ve spent ten years working hard, dreaming big and forging fruitful partnerships. That’s how we got here. Now we’re looking into the future and are so excited for what the next three years hold. A reflective, hopeful story about looking back and looking ahead feels perfect for now.”
Already this month NDB1 have staged Operation Hummingbird in library performances York Explore, Haxby Explore, Clifton Explore, Tang Hall Explore and Acomb Explore, from May 9 to 12, and now they are heading to the theatre and arts centre circuit.
Midday and 7pm performances on May 23 and 24 on York Theatre Royal’s main stage will be followed by Pocklington Arts Centre on May 25 and Helmsley Arts Centre on June 2, both at 7.30pm.
David Lomond, back, and James Lewis-Knight in Next Door But One’s 2023 tour of Operation Hummingbird
“I realised it could work as a main-house piece when I watched Pilot Theatre’s Run Rebel, when they had sold only the stalls, but there was something nice about playing a performance to the stalls,” says Matt. “We’ll make it intimate by using only the front half of the stage, working with a new lighting designer, Abi Turner, from London, who has designed previously for the Donmar Warehouse.”
Based on his own memoir of living with loss, Matt’s two-hander tells the story of teenager Jimmy, who is dealing with his mum’s terminal diagnosis by diving into computer games. Through this virtual reality, he meets his future self and asks: will everything turn out OK?
“Operation Hummingbird is a humorous and uplifting exploration of grief, loss and noticing just how far you’ve come,” says Matt, whose cast features NDB1 associate artist James Lewis-Knight, returning in the role of Jimmy, and Scarborough actor David Lomond, joining the company for the first time to play James, the future version of Jimmy, 35 more years on the clock.
“For me, the concept is: this play is a really specific look at terminal illness, death and bereavement, but the narrative is universal. If we could fast-forward time and then be able to go back, older and wise, to stop our younger self by passing on advice. We’ve all had those questions that our older selves would like to have been able to give the answer to our younger selves.”
The two-hander format is ideal, suggests Matt. “After Covid, people are wanting shorter shows – this one is only 50 minutes – where you don’t have to travel far to see it and you could even see it at lunchtime if you went to a library performance.
James Lewis-Knight’s Jimmy in a scene from the 2021 premiere of Matt Harper-Hardcastle’s Operation Hummingbird. He returns for the new production
“We’ve brought Operation Hummingbird back after we had brilliant feedback from the first run, when we had only just come out of Covid restrictions and so only small, socially distanced audiences were allowed.
“For the 2023 revival, we decided we’d go to the satellite Explore York libraries we didn’t play before. Now we’ve been able to pick up the project and say, ‘we know it works but what’s the full iteration?’.
“That means also performing it on the Theatre Royal main stage and taking it to Pocklington and Helmsley. It’s actually our first ever show at the Theatre Royal because we’ve never looked into doing one there before, as the heart of our work is taking it to the community, places on people’s doorsteps, such as libraries, community centres and the Camphill Village Trust (with our show The Firework-Maker’s Daughter).”
Matt continues: “It feels like a significant moment of growth for us. We’re known to the communities we engage with, like the Snappy Trust and York Carers Centre, who appreciate our values, and this revival is an introductory chance for us to say, ‘if you don’t know our work, this is what we do’.
“I hope I have turned a story that started from a very personal place into something that we can all relate to,” says writer-director Matt Harper-Hardcastle
“One of the first pieces of feedback we had was someone saying, ‘I can’t believe how much you can tell in a story with so little. We’re the opposite of doing big-scale theatre productions. It’s still a big story, about death and bereavement, and for me, as a director, the main thing has to be the story.
“You could detract from it with a big set and a light show, so we tell a story with three boxes, a few props and two actors and no blackouts of the auditorium. The focus is on the story.”
Matt concludes: “There’s something in this show for everyone. I hope I have turned a story that started from a very personal place – with the sudden death of my mum in 2016 – into something that we can all relate to. I know that audiences in 2021 left entertained and reflective about their own life. I hope we can achieve the same this time, but reach an even bigger audience across the region.”
Tickets for all venues can be booked at www.nextdoorbutone.co.uk.Also: York Theatre Royal, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Pocklington, 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk; Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.
Jamie Smelt’s Recruiting Officer, Paula Lane’s Phoebe Throssel, Aron Julius’s Captain Valentine Brown and Alex Moran’s Ensign Blades in Northern Broadsides’ Quality Street
EVERYONE has a favourite Quality Street – purple, green…orange, not so keen – but there is only one Quality Street play to bite into.
Nevertheless, Northern Broadsides artistic director Laurie Sansom gives it a new wrapper, “stirring in a good helping of Yorkshire wit” from the retired workers of Halifax’s Mackintosh factory, makers of Quality Street.
And so a work from Toffee Town heads to Chocolate City this week, much later than first planned. Sansom’s Broadsides debut had to be put back in the sweetie cupboard after only four weeks when Covid put a red line through theatre shows in March 2020.
This spring he picks up the mantle with plenty of new flavours in the cast, only two of the originals still making the selection for the revived co-production with Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre.
Here is the history bit. Quality Street is a “delicious Regency rom-com” from the 1901 pen of J M Barrie, pre-dating the better known Peter Pan but a huge hit on Broadway in its own right.
Come 1936, Mackintosh’s management hit on the idea of assembling beautifully wrapped toffees, chocolates and sweets in a tin encased in a picture of Quality Street’s principal characters, Phoebe Throssel and Captain Valentine Brown.
Cue Sansom’s idea to weave verbatim recollections from the Quality Street factory floor into Barrie’s play, the red-hatted workers serving as a Greek chorus cum collective narrator, passing comment on the play’s unfolding dramas, recalling their working days and their own romances, and reflecting on how courting has changed.
The to-and-fro format takes a while to settle, not least because the ‘Mack’ workforce open the play with their fourth wall-breaking gossip and nostalgia. They are never more than convivial commentators by comparison with the fateful scene-setting of the Witches in the thunder and lightning prologue to Macbeth and their subsequent encounters with the murderous Macbeth .
Something sweet and nutty this way comes as Barrie introduces his Regency romp with Paula Lane (once Kylie Platt in a different cobbled street, of the Coronation soap variety) in the role of Phoebe Throssel, a woman scandalised by having allowed Captain Valentine Brown (Aron Julius) to kiss her on the cheek. Ten years ago.
Aron Julius’s Captain Valentine Brown and Paula Lane’s Phoebe Throssel in Quality Street: Picture: Andrew Billington
Ten years when he has been away fighting Napoleon, while Phoebe and sister Susan (Louisa-May Parker) have had to make a living, running a school for unruly children. They look exhausted, enervated, contemplating the prospect of having to add algebra to the curriculum without any enthusiasm. Understandable caution, you might say, in spite of PM Rishi Sunak’s enthusiasm for adding more Maths to the curriculum.
At this juncture, aside from Gilly Tompkins’ blunt-speaking maid Patty, more humour has been mined from the factory workers’ chatter than Barrie’s story, as supporting cast members switch between tea-break comment and rom-com roles. But once Julius’s Captain reacts so negatively to the older-looking Phoebe, still only 30, the play finds its sweet spot.
For a lavish ball, Phoebe transforms herself into lively, vivacious, flirty, flighty Miss Livvy, her “niece”, an alter-ego that will soon require her to be in two places at once in one of comedy’s favourite devices, from Shakespeare comedies of mistaken identity to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest, chaotic Mischief capers to myriad pantomimes.
Not before Jessica Worrall’s witty design has served up the gorgeous spectacle of all the ladies in Quality Street wrapper dresses, Miss Livvy in the most popular purple, of course.
Not only Captain Brown is smitten, so too are Jamie Smelt’s Recruiting Sergeant and Alex Moran’s Ensign Blades as the comedy picks up pace and impact. Cross-dressing Jelani D’Aguilar’s Fanny Willoughby adds to the fun, and Parker’s Susan, forced to play a straight bat to keep Phoebe/Livvy one step ahead, personifies resourceful understatement.
At first you may wonder – as your reviewer did when watching a performance at Leeds Playhouse – why Quality Street made Barrie a fortune, but as should always be the case, the second half is better than the first, In particular in the all-important frank discussions between Phoebe and Captain Brown, where Barrie’s writing, suddenly more serious, goes to the heart of a woman’s woes, mistreatment and frustrations.
From the brief appearances of puppets to Ben Wright’s choreography for the ball, the design’s colour palette and the cast’s colourful northern vowels to Sansom’s beautifully judged direction, Quality Street ends up being a tin of purple and green ones.
Lane’s performance, especially when she has to have a filling of Phoebe within a chocolate coating of Miss Livvy, is top Quality too.
Northern Broadsides and New Vic Theatre present Quality Street at York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Also: Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, May 25 to 27; Hull Truck Theatre, May 31 to June 3; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, June 6 to 10; Victoria Theatre, Halifax, July 4 to 7. Box office: Sheffield, 0114 249 6000or sheffieldtheatres.co.uk; Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com; Halifax,01422 351158 or victoriatheatre.co.uk.
Eddie Ahrens, left, Rachel Hammond, Hannah Baker and Harvey Badger in Mikron Theatre Company’s A Force To Be Reckoned With. Picture: Anthony Robling
MIKRON Theatre Company are pursuing enquiries into the role of the pioneering women of Britain’s police force in Amanda Whittington’s new play A Force To Be Reckoned With.
After opening at the West Yorkshire company’s home of the Marsden Mechanics Hall on May 13, the premiere will be on tour nationally by canal, river and road until October 21, taking in Clements Hall, in York, on September 17 at 4pm.
Press performances will be at The Wetherby Whaler, Guiseley, tomorrownight and the Greater Manchester Police Museum & Archives, Manchester, on Saturday afternoon.
Billed as “more Heartbeat than Happy Valley”, A Force To Be Reckoned With captures a century of change in an arresting story directed by Gitka Buttoo with music by Greg Last and design by Celia Perkins.
In the cast are four actor-musician new to Mikron’s entertaining, enlightening and educational brand of theatre: Hannah Baker, Harvey Badger, Eddie Ahrens and Rachel Hammond, who played the punkish, free-spirited Peggy, one of the Amazons sisters, in Swallows And Amazons, Damian Cruden’s farewell production after 22 years as artistic director at York Theatre Royal in July-August 2019.
Equipped with a handbag, whistle and a key to the police box, WPC Iris Armstrong is ready for whatever the mean streets of a 1950s’ market town throws at her.
Fresh from police training school, she prepares for her first day on the beat. The reality is different, however. Stuck at the station, she soon finds her main jobs are typing and making brews.
Whereupon Iris joins forces with fellow WPC Ruby Roberts: an unlikely partnership, a two-girl department, called to any case involving women and children, from troublesome teens to fraudulent fortune tellers.
What starts as “women’s work” soon becomes a specialist role, one where Iris finds she is earning her place in a historic force to be reckoned with.
Along the way, she discovers the Edwardian volunteers who came before her, a lineage of Suffragettes-turned-moral enforcers, and the secrets that the police box hides.
Amanda Whittington made her Mikron debut with her women’s football drama Atalanta Forever in 2021 in a career that has accrued more than 40 plays, such as Be My Baby, The Thrill Of Love, Kiss Me Quick and her Ladies trilogy, plus seven series of D For Dexter and episodes of The Archers for BBC Radio 4.
“I’m delighted to be back at Mikron in their 51st year with A Force To Be Reckoned With. The play takes a light-hearted look at the lives of Women Police Constables in the 1950s, celebrating their spirit, optimism and heroic efforts to break the glass ceiling without a truncheon.”
Based in the village of Marsden, at the foot of the Yorkshire Pennines, Mikron have toured 68 productions over the past 51 years, spending more than 37,000 boating hours on board the vintage narrowboat Tyseley.
They perform their shows in unexpected places: a play about growing your own veg on an allotment; one about bees, staged next to hives; another about fish and chips, in a fish and chip restaurant; hostelling, in YHA youth hostels; the RNLI, at several lifeboat stations. Now into a sixth decade, the company has stacked up 5,300 performances, playing to 440,000 people.
A Force To Be Reckoned With is touring through the summer months alongside Twitchers, Poppy Hollman’s new play about the history of the RSPB (the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), full of birdsong and laughter.
Dates include a 2pm open-air performance at Scarcroft Allotments, Scarcroft Road, York, on Sunday, when no reserved seating or tickets are required, and instead a ‘pay what you feel’ collection will be taken after the show.
For tour dates and information on A Force To Be Reckoned With, visit http://mikron.org.uk
Alan Park: So happy to be performing Duncan Macmillan’s solo show Every Brilliant Thing. Picture: Ben Lindley
YOU are seven years old. Your mum is in hospital. Your dad says she has “done something stupid”. She finds it hard to be happy.
You make a list of everything that is brilliant about the world. Every small miracle to make mum realise life is worth living. 1. Ice cream. 2. Water fights. 3. Staying up past your bedtime and being allowed to watch TV. 4. The colour yellow. 5. Things with stripes 6. Rollercoasters. 7. People falling over.
Prompted by a mother’s attempted suicide, what starts as a small gesture turns into thousands of entries that follow the boy throughout a life spent trying to define and capture happiness.
That list’s mission to prove life is beautiful is the basis of Every Brilliant Thing, a one-man play based on Paines Plough playwright Duncan Macmillan’s short story Sleeve Notes, adapted for the stage with input from actor Jonny Donahoe.
Settled after two years of improvisation and Donahoe performances at the Edinburgh Fringe, in London and at New York’s Barrow Street Theatre, Macmillan’s text now forms the debut production by new York company Shared Space Theatre, directed by Maggie Smales.
Theatre@41 chair Alan Park will be on home turf, performing the solo show only weeks after stepping in to play the lead in York Settlement Community Players’ production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing at York Theatre Royal Studio.
Alan Park and Victoria Delaney in a scene from York Settlement Community Players’ April production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing
“Everyone I have spoken to about doing it has said ‘oh, we need that show now more than ever’,” says Alan. “A friend [Theatre@41 supporter Cate Birch] suggested we try and book the show to tour into York but when I read it, and found there were no other productions around, I decided to apply to do it myself.”
Much to Alan’s delight, Macmillan gave his approval to Shared Space staging a production in York. “It really is one of the most uplifting plays I’ve ever read. It’s a brilliant thing,” says Alan. “The world does feel a bit of a challenge right now, not just because of the Covid years but for longer than that.
“What I like about it is how it responds to our tendency not to focus on brilliant things but on things that go wrong, so we then miss out on appreciating the obvious things, like ice cream, which is the first thing on the boy’s list that becomes a list of 1,000,000.
“On the list at number 123,321 is palindromes, which a nice joke on the meaning of ‘palindrome’, while number 2,001 is movies that are better than the book such as 2001: A Space Odyssey], but basically it’s saying the best things in life are just ordinary.”
Every Brilliant Thing will be staged in the round, lending an intimate atmosphere to Theatre@41, where the audience will play a crucial role in compiling the list of brilliant things.
“The result is an unforgettable communal experience that reminds us of the power found in connecting with the people around us,” says Alan, whose production run coincides with Mental Health Awareness Week (May 15 to 21).
“I’m loath to call it a play about mental depression as it’s about brilliant things,” says Alan Park
“I’m loath to call it a play about mental depression as it’s about brilliant things. The great premise within it is that the audience can play their part, though you can be as involved or uninvolved as you want to be.”
Director Maggie Smales has emphasised the need for Alan to be fleet of foot in each performance. “I have to react to whatever happens. Equally, the audience has the chance to play characters within the story, such as a teacher and the boy’s father, and you have to be prepared for the possibility of everybody’s reaction being different.
“That’s why it’s difficult to rehearse as you will have to come out with all these possible responses.”
Macmillan has decreed that the audience should be seated as democratically as possible. “No-one will be sitting upstairs as that wouldn’t be democratic,” says Alan. “There’ll be two rows of seating in the round, with a very blurred line between the performer and audience and no theatrical lighting, no props and no set.
“It’s very much a storytelling show and that’s partly what drew me to it, that emphasis. I don’t mind shows with sets, but they can be distancing, whereas what you want to do with a show like this is engage people directly in a story for an hour with naturalistic storytelling.”
Shared Space Theatre in Every Brilliant Thing, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk
List entries as a teenager in Every Brilliant Thing include:
Jamie Smelt’s Recruiting Sergeant, Paula Lane’s Phoebe Throssel, Aron Julius’s Captain Valentine Brown and Alex Moran’s Ensign Blades in Northern Broadsides’ romp through J M Barrie’s Regency rom-com Quality Street at York Theatre Royal
LOOKING to make a list of every brilliant thing you could do? Here are Charles Hutchinson’s suggestions for the week ahead.
Play of the week: Northern Broadsides in Quality Street, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm, plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
NORTHERN Broadsides, from Halifax, the home of Quality Street chocs, heads to the chocolate city of York with this delicious J M Barrie farce, whose lead characters featured on the first tin to take the Regency rom-com’s title in 1936.
Artistic director Laurie Sansom stirs a good helping of Yorkshire wit from retired workers at the Halifax factory into Barrie’s story of determined heroine Phoebe Throssel, who runs a school for unruly children, and Captain Valentine, who needs teaching a lesson in love. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The poster for Lisa Cortés’s documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything, showing at City Screen Picturehouse
Film event of the week: Little Richard: I Am Everything, City Screen Picturehouse, York, Tuesday, 8pm
DIRECTOR Lisa Cortés’s documentary tells the story of “the black queer origins of rock’n’roll, exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman”.
Delving into Little Richard’s complicated inner world, with its switchbacks and contradictions and service to both God and music, Cortés conducts interviews with family, musicians and scholars to reveals how he created an art form for ultimate self-expression, and yet what he gave to the world he was never able to give to himself. Box office: picturehouses.com.
Park life: Alan Park enlists for performing list-making solo show Every Brilliant Thing, Shared Space’s debut production
List of the week: Shared Space presents Every Brilliant Thing, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
THEATRE@41 chair Alan Park swaps off-stage duties for on when appearing in Every Brilliant Thing, an hour-long show built around a list that spans a lifetime spent trying to prove life is beautiful, written by Duncan Macmillan with input from Jonny Donahoe.
Based on both true and untrue stories, this play about depression and the lengths we go to for those we love is staged by new York theatre company Shared Space, directed by Maggie Smales. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Morgan Wade: Making her York Barbican debut on Thursday
Country gig of the week: Morgan Wade, Crossing State Lines (And Oceans!) Acoustic Tour, York Barbican, Thursday, 8pm
MORGAN Wade, the 28-year-old country singer from Floyd, Virginia, plays York on the back of her “once-in-a-decade debut”, 2021’s Reckless, first released through Thirty Tigers and later picked up by Sony Music Nashville.
Wade wrote or co-wrote a song cycle that addressed the reality facing teens and 20-somethings, embracing raw desire, the reality of getting high and getting sober and the realm of crawling through the wreckage, with tough vulnerability and hurt in her voice. Kat Hasty supports. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk (limited availability).
Jamie Stapleton’s Cap’n Billy Bones, left, Jack McAdam’s Dirk, Lee Gemmell’s Long John Silver and Paul Toy’s Doctor Livesey in Baron Productions’ Treasure Island
Adventure of the week: Baron Productions in Treasure Island, St Mary’s Church, Bishophill Junior, York, Thursday to Saturday, 7.30pm
YORK company Baron Productions stages Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 coming-of-age adventure story of buccaneers and buried gold, wherein 12-year-old Jim Hawkins finds a treasure map that belonged to the pirate Captain Flint. On board the Hispaniola, he and his friends Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey duly set off to a faraway island.
Daniel Wilmot’s thoroughly dashing cast includes Lee Gemmell’s Long John Silver, Paul Toy’s Doctor Livesey, Ellie Guffick’s Dick Johnson, Jamie Stapleton’s Cap’n Billy Bones, Molly Barton-Howe’s Morgan and Jack McAdam’s Dirk. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk/baron-productions.
The agony and the Ecstasy: Octopus Dream in I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die at York Theatre Royal Studio
Studio show of the week: Octopus Dream in I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die, York Theatre Royal Studio, Friday, 7.45pm, and Saturday, 4pm and 7.45pm
MARK Wheeller’s fast-moving, emotionally charged play tells the true story of the tragic death of Dan, a cool, creative and talented South London schoolboy, who took a lethal dose of Ecstasy at an illegal rave.
At 16, he had plans, plenty of them, but losing his life was not one of them. Directed by Elliot Montgomery, Cobie Scott-Ward, Amy Zoldan, Alex Colley and Sean Radford use Dan’s own words to describe the choices he made and the impact on his family and friends in a journey from tragedy to redemption. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Nicholas Wright: Violin soloist at York Guildhall Orchestra concert at York Barbican
Classical concert of the week: York Guildhall Orchestra, Bernstein, Korngold & Rachmaninoff, York Barbican, May 20, 7.30pm
VIOLINIST Nicholas Wright heads back to York from his Vancouver home to play Hollywood film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D with the York Guildhall Orchestra.
Conducted by Simon Wright, the orchestra’s final concert of the 2022-2023 season also features Bernstein’s Overture to Candide and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No 2, written nine years after his first. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Sarabeth Tucek: Re-emerging as SBT at STH, as in Selby Town Hall
Long-awaited return of the week: Sarabeth Tucek, Selby Town Hall, May 20, 8pm
AMERICAN singer-songwriter Sarabeth Tucek has re-emerged from a decade in hibernation – or more precisely “concentrating on other creative endeavours” – with a May 19 double album, Joan Of All, and a new moniker, SBT, her long-time nickname.
On her first British itinerary since 2011, she will be joined by her band for 18 dates. Support slots go to Kiran Leonard and dbh. Box office: 01757 708449 or selbytownhall.co.uk.
In Focus: Ben Fogle: Wild, York Barbican, May 19, 7pm and Harrogate Royal Hall, May 21, 7.30pm
Ben Fogle: Helping to find “the ocean of possibility” in his Wild show
BROADCASTER and adventurer Ben Fogle’s latest walk on the wild side is a 22-date tour full of hair-raising and uplifting stories from a life of amazing encounters.
Taking in Yorkshire trips to York and Harrogate next week, the Animal Park, Lost Worlds and New Lives In The Wild presenter will be sharing stories of hope, possibility and positivity and offering tips on “finding your ocean of possibility”.
Lessons learned from a career that has taken the 49-year-old Londoner to some of the most extreme locations in the world, whether filming for documentaries or tackling some of mankind’s greatest physical challenges.
A former Reservist in the Royal Navy, Ben embarked on the BBC’s ground-breaking Castaway series in 2000, when 36 adventurous souls ditched the rat race for a year-long social experiment, marooned on the remote Scottish island of Taransay in the Outer Hebrides.
“I think it’s all luck, but you make a bit of that yourself,” he says, reflecting on the past 23 years. “I have always loved travel, nature, the outdoors – that’s why I did Castaway. But it was a much more intense experience than anything I could have had under normal circumstances.
“I get asked about Castaway a lot and will be talking about it on the tour, as it’s a big part of me and relative to so much of what I do and have done.”
“Y2K” was “a definitive time”, Ben says. “It was pre-mobile phones, social media didn’t exist, so many things were very, very different. Now things have changed so profoundly, it would be difficult to go back to that innocence and simplicity.
“A [television] channel might try it again one day but no one has replicated it so far. Partly due to the fact nothing like it existed at that time, and people went for very pure and innocent reasons. The landscape has changed, people go on TV now for fame and fortune and that naturally changes the dynamic.
“Heading off to spend a year on an island with a load of strangers gave me a real grounding and a foundation of what it takes to make a simple, off-grid life.”
Those foundations allowed Ben to build his career and stood him in perfect stead for his many varied TV projects. Perhaps none more so than the 12 years of global travel for New Lives In The Wild, wherein he meets people living extreme, off-grid lives in a world now dominated by ease of communication and all too often dictated by being on-grid.
“Castaway definitely gave me the qualifications to be able to do a series like New Lives – to spend time with people living their whole life the way I did for 12 months,” he says. “I have a better understanding of the trials and tribulations, the highs and lows, the benefits and sacrifices they make.
“The more people I have spent time with over 12 years of making that show, the more I understand what goes into making a sustainable, off-grid life like that. A lot of these people are quite reserved, not anti-social necessarily, but they perhaps don’t enjoy being round other people. But as I have experienced it, they can open up with me – there’s almost a mutual respect between us.”
Ben’s experience of meeting those who live in some of the world’s most diverse environments forms the basis of his Wild tour as he takes audiences on a journey to relive inspiring and uplifting tales he has encountered on his travels to the wilderness of northern Sweden, the jungles of Honduras, the hostility of Chernobyl and the mountains of Nepal.
Having previously filmed in Chernobyl, when he met those who returned to live there as it continues to recover from the 1986 nuclear disaster, Ben made a private visit in September after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Early in the conflict, Russian armed forces seized the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – and soldiers were later reported to have radiation poisoning following their operations in the highly contaminated area.
More than a year after the invasion, he does not foresee the conflict ending soon. “I fear this is in for the long run, decades and decades of unrest in that part of the world,” he says. “I can’t see a quick resolution unfortunately.
“It’s another thing the tour will look at: the effects that war and disaster can have on places, not just the landscape but the people too. It seems harsh to say, but war is part of what happens in a world where seven billion people live. It’s another way that man destroys the environment around us, but can also provide examples of how a place can bounce back.”
Ben’s love of the great outdoors reaches back to his own childhood, where his time was divided between rural Dorset and central London, complemented by extended school holiday trips to the Canadian wilderness to visit his paternal grandparents.
Could he ever step fully out of modern life and would he take his family, wife Marina and children Ludo and Iona, along for the adventure?
“I’m incredibly lucky that I get to straddle two worlds, being in the urban world with all it offers, then going off to the wilderness – and that gives me perspective, which is so important in life,” he says.
“There’s definitely something about that kind of life that appeals to me, but not right now. Ludo and Iona are 14 and 12 this year and are very much involved in urban living.
“They are very well travelled. They have spent time in the jungle, in remote islands, wood cabins, the Norwegian wilderness. But then they go to school and are very much engaged with ‘normal’ society, and love researching on computers, having pizza or going to the cinema.”
Ben’s family lives outside London now. “That helps,” he says. “We ride horses, go wild swimming, long dog walks. But it’s balance; I want them to be street savvy as well as being able in bush craft skills. I want my children to be able to wire a plug and start a fire, to make a bed and to put up a tent. They’re all skills for life and don’t need to be exclusive.
“It’s one of the biggest lessons I think I’ve learnt from meeting hundreds of people all over the world – that too many people follow a prescription for life and don’t think about how you can change that.
“Yes, on one hand I live a prescriptive life with two children, a couple of dogs, paying taxes, being very much part of society. But on the other hand, I have a pretty alternative life, spending the majority of the year away from home because of what I do for a living.
“People ask why I’m not living in a cabin in the woods, but there are sacrifices to make for that life – and I love those great cultural events, arts, cinema, books, so what I have realised is that the search for a perfect balance is what is more important.
“My life is not something everyone could have, not everyone could do it. But I hope that after joining me on the Wild tour, people will consider what kind of things they can do in their own life, the small changes to make to find that balance.”
“Too many people follow a prescription for life and don’t think about how you can change that,” says Ben Fogle
Ben Fogle: the back story
FORMER Royal Navy Reservist Ben appeared on the BBC series Castaway in 2000, marooned on an island in the Outer Hebrides for a year.
He has since presented Animal Park, Countryfile, Wild In Africa, Wild On The West Coast, Crufts, One Man And His Dog, Country Tracks Extreme Dreams, A Year Of Adventures, Storm City, Harbour Lives, Countrywise, Trawlermen’s Lives and New Lives In The Wild.
Hehas made documentaries on Prince William in Africa, disease in Ethiopia, Captain Scott in Antarctica and crocodiles in Botswana.
He has travelled extensively in South and Central America and has toured the world for various broadcasting assignments to more than 200 places including Tristan Da Cunha, Pitcairn, St Helena, East Timor, Nepal, Namibia, Kenya, the Arctic Circle, Zambia, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, Libya, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Tahiti, Maldives, Tanzania and Morocco.
He has worked as a special correspondent for NBC News and has published more than 15 books, including The Teatime Islands, Offshore, The Crossing, Race To The Pole, The Accidental Adventurer, The Accidental Naturalist, Labrador, Land Rover and English.
He has run the Marathon Des Sables, swum from Alcatraz to San Francisco, and is a keen sailor, marathon runner, boxer and cyclist.
Ben married Marina in 2006 after meeting her in the park while walking their dogs, Inca and Maggi. They have two children, Ludo and Iona.
For Wild tickets: York, yorkbarbican.co.uk; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk.
The elephant in the room: Around The World In 80 Days at Hull Truck Theatre
REVIEW: Hull Truck Theatre/Theatre By The Lake, Hull Truck Theatre, until May 20 ***
AROUND The World In 80 Days is a race against time, a race that involves cramming in so much that ironically Laura Eason’s play runs the risk of feeling like it is taking too long.
Such a challenge faces both American writer Eason and director Hal Chambers, although designer Louie Whitemore definitely has the right idea in utilising a revolving stage to build the sensation of constant movement.
Whitemore’s basic set is bare: a set of the imagination on which anything can happen, anything can arrive: an elephant, a sledge, a train, a trading vessel, even a circus to start the second half.
Naomi Oppenheim’s puppetry, Jess Williams’s movement direction and Claire Llewellyn’s fight direction all add to the visual spectacle in a production rooted in physical theatre and dextrous feats as much as symbols of English Victoriana and colonialism.
French novelist Jules Verne’s story finds eccentric Victorian English gent Phileas Fogg (Stefan Adegbola) placing a wager with his stuffy Reform Club cronies that he can traverse the globe in 80 days. His entire fortune is at risk.
Adegbola’s immaculate, precise, tea-drinking, unflappable but not-always scrupulous Fogg takes on his challenge with the help, sometimes hindrance, of French valet Passepartout ( a clowning, Chaplinesque little tramp of a comic turn from Miriam O’Brien).
On his trail and on his tail is Dyfrig Morris’s Inspector Fix, who has convinced himself Fogg is a thief and will go to the ends of the world to prove it. He plays the buffooning fall guy in comic tradition.
As Fogg races from Italy to India, skips ship in Hong Kong and heads into dustbowl America, into the story are woven Tricia Adele-Turner’s Captain Speedy, Purvi Parmar’s Captain Blossom, Nicholas Prasad’s Mr Naidu and Niall Ransome’s scene-stealing, all-American Colonel Stamp Proctor when Chambers’ production hits its stride in the more inventive, more thrilling second half.
The danger rises and suddenly romance is in the air. Saba Shiraz’s Mrs Aouda, joining the protective Fogg from India onwards, has the measure of the Englishman, challenging him in a discussion on Britain’s colonial acquisitions, not least because Adegbola’s Fogg carries himself with an air of arrogant assumption of superiority.
Amid the chaotic humour, the playful music, the crazy commotions reminiscent of a Mischief caper, and the celebration of Britain’s age of invention, that more serious note gives Eason’s script a topical resonance.
Pop of the Gold Tops: Zach Atkinson’s milkman Eddie with fellow cast members Emily Chattle and Richard Galloway in Badapple Theatre’s Eddie And The Gold Tops. Picture: Karl Andre
GREEN Hammerton company Badapple Theatre’s 25th anniversary tour of Eddie And The Gold Tops is doing the milk rounds.
Delighted to have secured “crucial 11th hour funding” from Arts Council England in March, North Yorkshire’s “theatre on your doorstep” practitioners are back on the road with their best-selling show on its first outing since 2017.
“We’re thrilled to have made it to our quarter century,” says funding and media manager Annabelle Polito. “After two unsuccessful requests for funding support across the autumn/winter of 2022, we were looking at having to close the company this year.
“So, this £24,283 in support means a huge amount. We hope it means we can add to the life of the small communities that we serve right across the country and spread a bit of theatre joy and bring folk together.”
Travelling by van rather than milk float, a cast of York actress Emily Chattle, Zach Atkinson and Irishman Richard Galloway has been milking every laugh from artistic director Kate Bramley’s 1960s-inspired comedy since April 15.
The tour will conclude back home at Green Hammerton Village Hall on June 13 after travels to Northumberland, Cumbria, Lincolnshire, the Midlands and down to Bristol, as well as across Yorkshire, on the company’s return to full-scale touring for the first time since the pandemic hiatus.
Zach Atkinson, left, Emily Chattle and Richard Galloway in a scene from Kate Bramley’s 2023 tour of Eddie And The Gold Tops. Picture: Karl Andre
Eddie, the much-loved village milkman, becomes a pop star, completely by accident, in the frenzy of 1963’s music fever, when The Beatles were the cream rising to the top. “You could become an overnight star,” says Kate.
No sooner has Eddie inherited the family milk round from his father than suddenly his songs are heading up the charts. If he can arrive by tonight, he will be on Top Of The Pops [Editor’s pedantic note: TOTP did not start until January 1 1964!].
Confusion reigns and when things take a ‘churn’ for the worse, how will Eddie get back for the morning milk round?
“It’s a very cheerful piece, really funny,” says Kate. “People love the Sixties because it was a very full-on time and the songs were great! It’s definitely got a real feelgood factor, and what’s endured in the 12 years since we first did it is that people need to have a good time. This is our vocation: generating joy!”
Recalling the play’s origins, Kate says: “It took a while to come up with the title. We had the story first, and the reason the main character is a milkman came from a wartime land girl telling us about her time as a milk lady just after the war. Green Hammerton was ahead of the times!
“So, I’d already collected stories from Liz Powley about those experiences, storing away that idea, and then when Jez [composer Jez Lowe] and I started talking about doing something rooted in Sixties’ music culture, it came down to putting a milkman in the story!
Voice of the BBC: Richard Galloway in Eddie And The Gold Tops
“It’s not that he’s a ‘singing milkman’, but it’s the contrast between his village life and how he wanders through life saying yes to everything and everybody. He’s just a really nice fellow who, when a producer needs a singer, he says yes, as long as he can be back for morning milk deliveries.”
Compare and contrast with today’s wannabe pop stars. “What’s pure about this story is that Eddie doesn’t want to be a star, he just becomes one by accident, whereas now people say, ‘I’m going to be famous’ and then find a way to do it,” says Kate.
She knew the dawn of the Beatles era would be the ideal setting. “That sound of the Sixties, we were just coming out of the skiffle craze, and everything was really upbeat: Elvis, Eddie Cochran, The Beatles. That’s why people are still drawn to the Sixties’ style. Great fashion; really colourful; anything goes. Teenage led. Politically switched on too. It was a time of excitement and a quest for happiness and not just for yourself.”
As for the cast’s milk tastes, Zach says: “I’m addicted to milk, but it’s got to be refrigerated, not warm.” Richard says: “I don’t really drink milk, but I’d have it in cereals, though I do like coconut milk.” Emily? “I’m vegan, so it’s oat milk or soya milk for me,” she says.
“None of their milk preferences affects their acting,” says Kate, who resides in a North Yorkshire village with dairy herds in the fields. “I’ve written a play about milk. What more do you want?! I’m guilty [of drinking milk] by association!”
Badapple Theatre are on tour with Eddie And The Gold Tops until June 13. For tour and ticket details, go to: badappletheatre.co.uk. Yorkshire tour dates include:Sutton upon Derwent Village Hall, May 13; Cherry Burton Village Hall, May 21; Husthwaite Village Hall, May 24; Tunstall Village Hall, May 25; Otley Courthouse, May 28; June 9, North Stainley Village Hall, near Ripon, June 9, and Green Hammerton Village Hall, June 13 (box office,01423 331304). All shows start at 7.30pm.
Kate Bramley: Badapple Theatre artistic director
Did you know?
IN a brief tour break in June, Badapple Theatre cast member Emily Chattle will be exchanging her wedding vows. Congratulations!
Gilly Tompkins’ Patty, left, and Paula Lane’s Phoebe in Quality Street, on tour at York Theatre Royal next week
QUALITY Street, Laurie Sansom’s “sweet and slightly nutty confection” of a debut production as Northern Broadsides’ artistic director, had to be put back on the shelf after only four weeks in 2020. Covid and all that. “Heartbreaking,” he said.
Definitely not past its sell-by debut, the Halifax company’s co-production with Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre is being revived this spring with only two of the original cast members, playing York Theatre Royal from next Tuesday.
Among the seven newcomers is Gilly Tompkins, a face familiar to Northern Broadsides and Yorkshire audiences at large, who is delighted to renew acquaintances with Sansom after the “very strange experience of ‘audition by Zoom’, not knowing how many people were watching”!
“I was in Ayckbourn’s farce Absurd Person Singular – the one set in three kitchens – in Laurie’s first production at the Watford Palace Theatre: his first job after leaving Cambridge University,” she recalls. “That was in September 1997. He’s 51 now, I’m 59, and he’s always a delight to work with.
“He’s very playful in the rehearsal room, really up for a laugh, like starting a rehearsal with a game. He’s so intelligent, always enthusiastic and loves the job of directing.”
Quality Street is billed as a “delicious Regency rom-com” from the writer of Peter Pan (first staged in 1904 and transformed into the novel Peter And Wendy in 1911).
Premiered at the Knickerbocker Theater on Broadway, New York, on November 11 1901, it made J M Barrie a millionaire, says Gilly. “To think he hadn’t even written Peter Pan at that point, it’s just an amazing success story, and it was so popular that that’s how the Quality Street boxes and tins of chocolates came about in 1936,” she notes.
Gilly Tompkins’ Patty in a scene from Northern Broadsides and the New Vic Theatre’s tour of J M Barrie’s Quality Street
“Because the play was so successful, the Mackintosh confectioners in Halifax thought, what if we put all the favourite chocolates, toffees and sweets in colourful wrappings in a tin with a scene from the play on the tin?”
That scene featured central characters Phoebe Throssel and Captain Valentine Brown from Barrie’s drama. Phoebe (played by Paula Lane, latterly Kylie Platt in a different street, Coronation Street) and her sisterSarah run a school for unruly children on Quality Street. Ten years after a tearful goodbye, her old flame returns from fighting Napoleon, but the look of disappointment on Captain Brown’s face when he greets an older, less glamorous Phoebe spurs the determined heroine to action.
She duly becomes the wild and sparkling Miss Livvy, a younger alter-ego who soon beguiles the clueless Captain.
Gilly plays Patty, the maid to the Throssel sisters. “She’s so rude, so belligerent, though she loves Phoebe really” she says. “But she’s no respecter of status. She’s even ruder than they are!”
Sansom’s version “stirs in a good helping of Yorkshire wit from the retired workers of Halifax’s Quality Street factory”. Among them is Barbara, Gilly’s second character. “She was one of the women Laurie interviewed about their factory life and their thoughts on love, along with women from the Knit and Natter groups in Calderdale, and I’m going to meet her when we play Halifax,” she says, looking forward to their encounter during the July 4 to 7 run at the Victoria Theatre. “Barbara is such a sweet lady. I can’t wait.
“They’re like Shakespeare’s ‘Rude Mechanicals’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, commenting on what they’re watching and sharing their memories of the factory, which feature as verbatim monologues in the show.
“The second half opens with me as Barbara, giving out sweets and doing her monologue, and I’m allowed to improvise while the actors stay in character around me doing a Regency dance.
Quality Street: Regency rom-com bound for York Theatre Royal
“One night in Stoke [Newcastle-under-Lyme, to be precise], the music wouldn’t start, so I kept improvising because, if you give out sweets, people will talk! All the actors left the stage, and I ended up doing ten minutes on my own with people calling out, ‘hey, Barbara, can I have a sweet?’!”
Ironically, Gilly had been “a bit scared in rehearsals about doing a monologue and handing out sweets, but I’ve loved it and so have the audiences,” she says.
“We keep coming on to pass comment and the audience soon gets used to it. At one point, you’ll see two of the former factory workers peel off their factory costumes to become characters in the play.”
Gilly describes her participation in Quality Street” as “blink and you miss it”. “But I took it on because we’ve been in lockdown and I thought, ‘I might never work again, let’s do it’,” she says.
“It’s been my ‘social tour’, a chance to see friends around Yorkshire, and to work with Laurie and Northern Broadsides again. It’s been so brave of Laurie to take up Barrie Rutter’s mantle as artistic director and to completely reinvent Broadsides.”
One final question, Gilly. Which is your favourite Quality Street chocolate? “It’s the one that when I give out sweets, 90 times out of 100, people say they want: the purple one, because you’ve got that beautiful colour for the wrapping, the chocolate, and then that nut in the middle,” she says.
“But it must be the most people I’ve ever worked with that like the orange and strawberry ones. Not for me! Quality Street is like Marmite that way!”
Northern Broadsides and New Vic Theatre present Quality Street at York Theatre Royal, May 16 to 20, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Also: Leeds Playhouse, all this week, until Saturday; Hull Truck Theatre, May 31 to June 3; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, June 6 to 10. Box office: Leeds, 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk; Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
The damaged young lovers: Jenna Innes’s Veronica Sawyer and Jacob Fowler’s Jason ‘JD’ Dean in Heathers The Musical, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Pamela Raith
DEAR Diary, American school shootings keep mounting up, like Donald Trump lawsuits.
Meanwhile, Heathers The Musical grows darker still, more resonant than ever, 34 years since Michael Lehmann’s savagely satirical, subversive cult 1989 teen movie swaggered in: an iconoclastic all-American high-school black comedy with Winona Ryder and Christian Slater appeal and a died-too-young death toll to rival Romeo And Juliet.
On press night for the cult show’s first York visit, the Grand Opera House is stuffed to the brim, mainly a young crowd, the late-teen and early twenties’ “Corn Nuts”, almost all female, plus some mums, a few stray men. It will be the same all week, but with better ticket availability at the matinees.
As with The Rocky Horror Show, they know the code, not only the Heathers dress code but the performative code too, hollering at the first sighting of the too-cool-for-school, ever-so-cruel trio of Heathers in silhouette, backs to the audience in stockings, miniskirts and buttoned blazers, topped off with scrunchies, in 1989 Sherwood, Ohio.
Here comes Westerberg High School’s dead-mean clique with their croquet-mallet disdain: leader Heather Chandler (Mountview Academy 2022 graduate Verity Thompson) in red, her aspirant acolyte Heather Duke (Elise Zavou) in green and the inwardly anguished Heather McNamara (Billie Bowman) in yellow.
Lit separately in their iconic colours – courtesy of Ben Cracknell’s ace lighting design – they are cheered to the rafters, and yet they represent the apogee of the dysfunctional school’s stultifying culture of derision, bullying, eating disorders, body dysmorphia and homophobia that leads to contemplation of suicide.
Looking on, like a grumpy janitor at this freshman’s party, you might shake your head in bewilderment at those deafening cheers, but Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe’s musical, like Lehmann’s film before it, turns out to be savvy, sassy, switched on, unlike the blinkered school principal (Jay Bryce’s Gowan) or misguided teacher (Katie Payne’s Ms Fleming). SIX The Musical has since tapped into the same vibe.
The hateful Heathers: Elise Zavou’s Heather Duke, left, Verity Thompson’s Heather Chandler and Billie Bowman’s Heather McNamara in Heathers The Musical
Part school inspector’s report, part cautionary tale, but explosively, darkly comical too, with knowing references to Baudelaire, Sylvia Plath and Morrissey, Heathers sings of making the world beautiful in its opening number and carries that hope beyond the graves, and maybe it is the hope that kills.
How can an average joanna of a pupil thrive in such a dangerously competitive school suffused with toxicity? Meet Veronica Sawyer (Jenna Innes), just another nobody dreaming of better days at 17 until her misappropriation of a hall pass prompts the Heathers to take her under their cliquey wing for her skills of deception.
But what is the price of popularity amid the adolescent angst, turf wars, underdogs and bitches of the school room? Enter mysterious teen rebel Jason ‘JD’ Dean (former head boy Jacob Fowler), forever dressed in outsider black, newly arrived in Sherwood with his “deconstruction worker” psycho dad.
JD has one school lesson for Veronica: “while it might kill to be a high school nobody, it is murder being a somebody,” he rules. So begins a twisted teen relationship, as unhealthy as his love of slushy drinks, one where his desire to make school a better place can only end very differently to a jocund John Hughes movie from that era.
Displaying a resolute spirit to break the monopoly of priapic sports jocks and hateful Heathers carries fatal consequences for Veronica once she hooks up with JD on his path from mystery to misery, rebel strut to sinister, vengeful sociopath killer.
O’Keefe and Murphy take a macabre story of broken childhoods, bullying and bulimia, shootings and suicide, then add sassy lyrics and knockout music rich with drama, cheese and brutally honest balladry for an impact on an operatic scale, complemented by dialogue to die for: snappy, cynical, mardy, funny, or seriously troubling, whatever the mood.
At the helm of this classroom and locker-room teen drama is American screen and stage director Andy Fickman, who steers its adrenalised, dead-funny yet poignant path with the right balance of droll, dark and daft humour, pathos, noir cool, fun and fear (of failure, abuse and life itself).
Roll call: The Heathers The Musical 2023 tour cast on stage in the Westerberg High School hall
Choreographer Gary Lloyd, whose West End panache graced York Stage’s pantomime Jack And The Beanstalk in December 2020, brings the crackle of electricity to his bravura routines, especially when the Heathers go hell for Heather.
The ensemble has a ball too, especially in Big Fun, and nothing beats My Dead Gay Son, its camp abandon perfect for Eurovision week, opening the second half with a jolt of unexpected levity as Kurt’s Dad (Bryce) and Ram’s Dad (Conor McFarlane) suddenly get it on – spoiler alert – at their funeral.
Fickman’s direction, as much as Murphy and O’Keefe’s book, spreads the spotlight’s gaze beyond Innes’s steely girl-next-door, Veronica, and Fowler’s magnetic JD, a gothic brooder from a black-and-white B-movie in an otherwise Pop Art-coloured world. Her singing voice is assertive and yearning; his can enchant or ensnare like a snake with its beguiling beauty.
Red could be the only colour for Thompson’s viperous leader Heather Chandler, a warning sign of venom, but it is all a front for the needy insecurity within.
The broadest comic performances come from Alex Woodward and Morgan Jackson’s dunderheaded dudes Kurt Kelly and Ram Sweeney, sports jerks who turn into a camp-comedy double act once stripped to their jocks.
Where Heathers nails it is in its exploration of the needle between pupils and the damage done. Both Veronica and JD sing of being “really damaged”, but the damage is widespread, best expressed in the vulnerable song cameos from Bowman’s disillusioned Heather McNamara (Lifeboat) and Kingsley Morton’s neglected and mocked Martha “Dumptruck” Dunnstock (Kindergarten Boyfriend).
David Shields’ mobile designs shout Eighties’ USA; Will Joy’s musical direction rocks; Heathers receives a mark of 8/10. Class dismissed.
Heathers The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, 2.30pm and 7.30pm today; 7.30pm tomorrow; 2.30pm and 7.30pm Saturday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york
