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J M Barrie’s Regency rom-com Quality Street does exactly what it says on the tin in Northern Broadsides factory story

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.

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REVIEW: Heathers The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, terms ends on Saturday

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

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REVIEW: Gus Gowland’s Mayflies, York Theatre Royal, flying until May 13 ****

Not always seeing eye to eye: Nuno Queimado’s May and Emma Thornett’s Fly in one version of Gus Gowland’s Mayflies at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Sam Taylor

OH, the app-hazard nature of modern love under Covid’s black cloud.

You shadow box tenderly, tentatively, expectantly, for two years online after dating app initiations, then finally meet for one fateful night in a seaside hotel, shedding skins as much as clothes, a knockout blow that turns the morning after into the mourning after. The chatter, then the shatter.

All this mirrors gone-in-24-hours life of the mayfly (the insect here making an appearance on the cover of May’s jigsaw, Mayfly On River, Germany).

What a brief breath of life in flight, after up to two years spent twiddling thumbs and knotting scarves in gestation underwater, only to crash and burn on impact.

York Theatre Royal artist-in-residence Gus Gowland’s musical world premiere has followed a similar path of anticipation. Already an award winner for Pieces Of String (Mercury Theatre, Colchester, 2018), he had tantalised York audiences with five-minute showcase contributions to Love Bites in 2021 and Green Shoots in 2022, and now the wait is over.

Be assured, Mayflies will not die after one day (or three if you choose to see all three configurations of Tania Azevedo’s flexible casting). An afterlife is deserved by Gowland’s concept, book and songs alike.

Gowland eschews burdening his putative lovers with defined gender, race, sexual orientation or age, further extending its potential shelf life.

For +Juliet director Azevedo’s premiere, two from three will perform in any show. It could be Nuno Queimado’s May with Emma Thornett’s Fly; Rumi Sutton’s Fly with Queimado’s May or Sutton’s May in a gay coupling with Thornett’s Fly. Clear so far?

Raising a glass: Rumi Sutton’s May and Emma Thornett’s Fly in a second configuration of Mayflies. Picture: Sam Taylor

It is not essential to see all three combinations, but the potential of both Gowland’s book and in particular his songs are better revealed the more pairings you meet, rather than only one match of the day. Both the idealistic Fly’s restless urges in Looking Back and realist May’s pile of relationship debris in Running On Empty will fly, whoever sings them. Queimado’s account of that heartrending ballad is especially affecting.

As much as the mayfly is Gowland’s motif for a love affair’s arc from joy to sorrow, matched by the mayfly hanging lamps’ choreographed movements in TK Hay’s design, equally significant is May’s love of jigsaw puzzles, one of the quirky revelations that builds a picture of a character.

The audience is invited to piece the jigsaw together, not without a picture, but with the extra challenge of Gowland detailing the relationship in both flashbacks and flashforwards.

As with jigsaw pieces, some scenes have jagged edges, others are rounded, and gradually the full picture emerges before the pieces are put back in the box for reassembling in different hands (as the magician’s flourish of a finale portends).

Just as the casting presents differing versions of the coupling, so Gowland highlights how we present differing versions of ourselves depending on the circumstances. Which is the truthful version: the one played out online, at a distance, or in the compression, the intensity, the heat of the moment, in that hotel hothouse?

Does May not want children, as is revealed at the hotel, or want them, as had been indicated in passing conversation online? Preferences on custard creams or shortbread, pizza consumption and more besides provoke doubts on what may have been said and whether it matters whose recollection is right.

Where goofy awkwardness has never blighted them behind the online shield, once May and Fly are together, in that room, wondering what to do next – whether and when to make a move, watch TV, eat a biscuit, order pizza – the sheer ordinariness of it all has the tea cup stain of familiarity that elicits both humour from cringy own goals  and vulnerable deeper emotions in Gowland’s dialogue as he walks the tightrope between warm-hearted romcom and angsty kitchen-sink drama.

The best speech – and the longest – goes to Fly, an epistle to love, to connection, to being a “defining feature in someone else’s story”, that signals the death knell to May and Fly and has you thinking, not for the first time, “Shut up, please shut up, you’re blowing this”, but also recognising the truths within the compulsive behaviour.

The juddering rhythms of the staccato scenes, a fusillade of snapshots that go to the heart, are countered by beautiful, choreographed scene changes where May and Fly entwine, flit flirtatiously or throw a prop from one to the other as if living their best life.

In the heat of the long-awaited moment: Nuno Queimado’s May and Rumi Sutton’s Fly in the third pairing of Mayflies. Picture: Sam Taylor

The songs, closer to Sondheim and Willy Russell than Lloyd Webber, contain wit, authorial wisdom and sometimes withering truths, ranging in content from conversational to confessionally dramatic, from playful, wishful or jousting duets to hopeful or wistful internal monologues.

Gowland doesn’t write OTT chart bangers, but consistently his storytelling songs – intelligent, incisive, funny or poignant – have an impact. Tellingly, Queimado, Sutton and Thornett find full expression in their nuances.

Azevedo’s direction is both musical and lyrical, orchestrating scenes as much as directing them, complemented by musical director’s Joseph Church’s lean, clean arrangements for his piano and Joel Benedict’s guitar.

This intricate but never ornate production is full of work of the highest standard, not only from the performances that can switch from charming to charmless, funny to foot in mouth, thoughtful to thoughtless in both characters, but also in Chris Whybrow’s sound designs and David Howe’s lighting, in turn transforming from warm to chill to match the ever-changing moods.

T K Hay’s breath-taking set design for Nick Payne’s multiverse in Constellations last November at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre whetted the appetite for his creativity for Mayflies. The profusion of ever-moving mayfly lamps delights, while he cleverly wraps a standard-fare hotel room inside multi-levelled building blocks, with a staircase leading to a balcony/kitchenette above.

This enhances the contrast between their online ‘connectivity’ in separate spaces – using the Theatre Royal stage to the full – and the sudden sardine-tin claustrophobia of the hotel.

Previously Gowland played with time, setting Pieces Of String simultaneously in the 1940s and present day (just as Alan Ayckbourn did in The Girl Next Door in 2021). Now he joins Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years and University of York alumnus Payne’s Constellations in giving differing perspectives on the path and fragile nature of love, the greater truths emerging from the writer rather than his players on life’s stage. How wonderful if Mayflies could match their success.

What’s more, just as Fly says there is a difference between running and knowing when to leave, so Gowland judges his running time spot on at 90 minutes of longing, loss and love in its all ridiculous yet enriching madness.

Mayflies, York Theatre Royal, tonight, 7.30pm (Emma & Rumi); Thursday, 2pm (Nuno & Emma) and 7.30pm (Rumi & Nuno); Friday, 7.30pm (Emma & Rumi); Saturday, 2.30pm (Nuno & Emma) and 7.30pm (Rumi & Nuno). Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

Mayflies composer, lyricist and writer Gus Gowland, seated, with cast members Emma Thornett, left, Rumi Sutton and Nuno Queimado

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Paul Burbridge (1953-2023): A tribute

Paul Burbridge: Artistic director of Riding Lights Theatre Company for more than 40 years

A SERVICE of thanksgiving and celebration for the life of Riding Lights Theatre Company artistic director Paul Burbridge (1953-2023) will be held at St Michael le Belfrey, High Petergate, York, on June 10 at 2pm. All are welcome.

Paul, who ran the Christian theatre company and Friargate Theatre artistic programme in Lower Friargate, York, died on April 19 after a short illness.  

A statement from the board and staff on the Riding Lights website reads: “Paul, along with Nigel Forde and Murray Watts, founded Riding Lights in 1977, and led the company for over 40 years with unwavering vision and extraordinary creativity.

“His commitment to the company and to all who encountered it in any way was inspiring and infectious, as were his kindness, warmth and humour.

“He was an encourager, guide, mentor and friend to many, whose faith and faithfulness to God flowed into the lives of others. Riding Lights was his life’s work, his calling, and a source of deep joy to him.

“We know that this will come as a great shock and sadness to many, and that you may wish to be in touch with the company. Any messages can be sent to info@rltc.org , and we will do our best to respond in due course.”

The statement concludes: “There will be an opportunity to make donations to Riding Lights in memory of Paul, in order to continue the work he loved. In the meantime, we value your prayers of thanksgiving for Paul’s life, for all of us at Riding Lights, and most of all for Bernadette [Paul’s wife], Patrick, Caitlin and Erin, that they may be comforted and surrounded by the love of God.”

Here CharlesHutchPress reflects on Paul Burbridge’s contribution to York’s theatre world with Damian Cruden, artistic director of York Theatre Royal from 1997 to 2019.

“WHEN I started, we met up, and right from the word go, Paul was one of those people who was always very welcoming and very easy to have a conversation with and always very constructive too,” remembers Damian, now CEO and artistic director of Alnwick Playhouse in Northumberland.

“The first major piece we did together was the Riding Lights/Theatre Royal collaboration on African Snow [Murray Watts’s play about slave ship captain John Newton, of Amazing Grace fame], directed by Paul in 2007. We then did Three Men In A Boat, directed by Paul at the Theatre Royal in April 2008.”

Paul had first adapted Jerome K Jerome’s late-Victorian tale of a trip up the Thames 18 years earlier for Riding Lights, reuniting with his original designer, Sean Cavanagh, for his Theatre Royal version of Jerome’s riparian mishaps and ineptitudes.

A community production of Anthony Minghella’s Two Planks And A Passion, co-directed by Paul and Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster in the round at the Theatre Royal in July 2011, was to be the precursor to the zenith of the Theatre Royal and Riding Lights creative partnership: the 2012 York Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens.

“Paul was just very easy to work with because he always gave space,” says Damian, his co-director for that unforgettable open-air production. “He didn’t have an ego about himself. Instead, his artistic ego connected with the work of the community that he inspired. Above all, he was just really good fun to be with.

“For years, around the time of the opening of the panto, we cooked  a Christmas dinner in two sittings, one for the panto cast in the afternoon and then everyone else from the two companies in the evening, with the executives of the Theatre Royal and Riding Lights doing all the cooking.

“Afterwards, Paul would usually arrange a cabaret of some sort, with music and Paul doing some sketches as he was very amusing. Very Pythonesque, with a real sense of the absurdity of the world.”

Damian recalls how Paul’s faith was his bedrock. “We talked about it in depth when we were doing the Mystery Plays together; Paul as someone of faith, me as someone not of faith, wondering whether that would be difficult, and what it would mean in terms of creating the work, which I saw primarily as a big story, but for him it had a very different resonance,” he says.

“It was very important to have that mix,  people who have faith, people who were agnostic,  with me and Mike [writer Mike Kenny] as non-believers, Paul and Sean (designer Sean Cavanagh) as believers. It never got in the way at all. It was always very much about focusing on the telling of the story, and I think that faith was an important aspect in how we discussed it.

“I don’t think the production would have been as meaningful without that balance. The community cast that told that story was of a similar diversity of belief and non-belief, who discovered respect for each other’s position, and that was testament to Paul’s ability as an artist and leader to be magnanimous, to allow space, to be so highly inspirational in that way.

“He always wore his faith lightly but with an incredible depth of belief. I would say his faith was unshakeable, and his perception of the world found him working with faith groups in Palestine, stretching across faiths and the barriers that had been created.”

Paul was instrumental in Riding Lights establishing its headquarters in Lower Friargate in May 2000, taking over the 19th century building that previously had housed the Friargate Wax Museum until its closure in 1996.

Aptly, the opening production in the 100-seat studio theatre was Ben Jonson’s satire, The Alchemist, Paul having converted the base metals of a redundant museum into the universal elixir of theatrical gold.

“He was a very good leader, very intelligent, very knowledgeable, very talented,” says Damian. “He wasn’t self-obsessed and always knew why he was doing what he was.

“Riding Lights has been very successful in terms of its shows but also in terms of fulfilling its purpose. It’s a really important venue in York with a really strong commitment to youth theatre and a very clear sense of the community around it, which all theatres need to have.

“While its mission revolves around faith, you don’t feel like you’re going to have a religious diatribe when you go to a show. In many ways, Paul’s work has been superbly humanist, focusing on humanity. Very grounded, very connected.”

Reflecting further on Pauls’ leadership prowess, Damian says: “He would be one of the first people to say Riding Lights wasn’t just about him. He chose people around him that were good at what they did and that let Riding Lights become a potent organisation.”

Assessing Paul’s legacy, Damian starts by saying: “If you just think about the number of people who got up and strutted their stuff because Paul made it possible: whether through the youth theatre, summer projects, presenting work by community theatre companies and welcoming touring performers, on top of putting on all those Riding Lights productions.

“He made all that possible within York, and I can’t imagine how many people he’s influenced. All those people who started out at Riding Lights, it’s a huge list, all inspired by Paul and what the company stands for.”

Looking at Paul’s wider legacy, Damian says. “I hope that York continues to be a place that is absolutely engaged in presenting work that is there for the community and the creativity of that community, and that it remains something that is valued and given proper support.

“In a way, that’s the thing that would most upset Paul: if community creativity were left to wither on the vine. Community theatre, and the broad spectrum it covers, requires constant nurturing: the way Paul did it.

“He was a theatre gardener, knowing how to make sure the garden of theatre could survive in straitened time and be rich and productive in good times.”

God bless you, Paul, and thank you, guiding light of Riding Lights and Friargate Theatre.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond – outside or even in the schoolroom. Hutch’s List No. 19 for 2023, from The Press

Heathers The Musical: Too cool for school at Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Pamela Raith

FROM a dead-cool musical to a ‘Sueperfan’, a Strictly ten to guitar pyrotechnics, Charles Hutchinson has tips on how to have a better week.

School outing of the week: Heathers The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees

WELCOME to Westerberg High, 1989, where Veronica Sawyer (played by Jenna Innes) is just another nobody craving a better day, until she joins the beautiful and impossibly cruel Heathers. Now her dreams of popularity may finally come true.

Enter mysterious teen rebel Jason  ‘JD’  Dean (Jacob Fowler), who teaches her that it might kill to be a nobody, but it is murder being a somebody in Andy Fickman’s touring production with electrifying choreography by Gary Lloyd. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Federico Pendenza: Lunchtime concert at St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel

Tributes of the week:  York Late Music, Reginald Smith Brindle, 1pm today; Sir Harrison Birtwistle: A New Matrix, 7.30pm today, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York

YORK Late Music pays tribute to two British composers, both Lancastrian, one a major name, the other an unjustly forgotten figure surely due for a revival.

The lunchtime programme celebrates the work of Reginald Smith Brindle, best known for his solo guitar work. Guitarist Federico Pendenza plays four works by Smith Brindle, pieces by Poulenc and a Chris Gander world premiere.

The evening’s tribute to Sir Harrison Birtwistle, based around the clarinet, acknowledges the work of York musician Alan Hacker, his musical associate. Works by Birtwistle, Messaien and Peter Maxwell Davies will be complemented by short pieces composed following Birtwistle’s death in April 2021. Box office: latemusic.org or on the door.

Lulo Reinhardt & Yuliya Lonskaya: Guitar duo at the NCEM

Guitar duo of the week: Lulo Reinhardt & Yuliya Lonskaya, National Centre for Early Music, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm

LULO Reinhardt, from Koblenz, Germany, is the grandnephew of Django Reinhardt. As to be expected, Lulo has a repertoire of gypsy swing, but he has extended his musical horizons to embrace music from North Africa and India.

Yuliya Lonskaya, from Mogilev, Belarus, performs her own style of classic, folk, jazz and bossa nova arrangements. Together they make beautiful music. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.

Katie Melua: Love & Money tour date at York Barbican

Singer-songwriter gig of the week: Katie Melua, Love & Money Tour, York Barbican, Monday, 7.30pm

KATIE Melua, the Georgian-born, West London-based singer-songwriter, returns to York Barbican to promote her ninth album, March 2023’s Love & Money, 20 years on from her chart-topping debut, Call Off The Search.

Melua, 38, will combine such hits as The Closest Thing To Crazy, Call Off The Search, Nine Million Bicycles and If You Were A Sailboat, with songs from the new release. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Sueperfan Eleanor Higgins with her cardboard cutout of Sue Perkins

Sue Perkins superfan of the week:  In PurSUEt, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Tuesday, 8pm

IN Eleanor Higgins’s LGBT confessional comedy drama, ‘Woman’ is seated in a therapist’s office, sent there to deal with her drink problem. But she does not have a problem and nor does she need therapy. She needs Sue Perkins. They are meant for each other. If only Sue could see that too, but how can she when she is too busy being a celebrity?

‘Woman’ sets out in pursuit of her love, following Sue’s every move online, breaking in backstage at the BBC. But can she keep it all together while battling her out-of control boozing? Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Chris Singleton: Giving tips on How To Be A Better Human at Theatre@41

Conversation of the week: Chris Singleton in How To Be A Better Human, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm

THIS spoken-word comedy about grief and self-acceptance tells Chris Singleton’s story of losing two of the biggest relationships in his life – father and wife – in the space of a few months.

Directed by Tom Wright, Singleton uses PowerPoint comedy, autobiographical storytelling and poetry to open conversations on mental health. Finding lightness and humour in death, loss and divorce, he explores how we can lose everything but find strength to rebuild. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Can you namet them all? Strictly Come Dancing: The Professionals at York Barbican

Dance show of the week: Strictly Come Dancing: The Professionals, York Barbican, Friday (sold out) and May 31, 7.30pm

TEN Strictly professionals – count’em – partner up for a tour directed by the BBC show’s creative director, Jason Gilkison, promising “world-class dance, stunning choreography and sparkling sets and costumes”.

In the theatrical ensemble will be: Dianne Buswell; Vito Coppola; Carlos Gu; Karen Hauer; Neil Jones; Nikita Kuzmin; Gorka Marquez; Luba Mushtuk; Jowita Przystal and Nancy Xu. Tickets for the second performance are still available at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Pete Oxley and Nick Meier of the Oxley-Meier Guitar Project

Guitars galore: Oxley-Meier Guitar Project, National Centre for Early Music, York, May 18, 7.30pm

THE Oxley-Meier Guitar Project head for York with a new album ready for release. In the line-up are Pete Oxley and Nick Meier, guitars, Raph Mizraki, bass and percussion, and Paul Cavaciuti, drums, who specialise in melodically and texturally driven contemporary jazz.

Oxley-Meier bring ten differing guitars to each concert, including fretless nylon, acoustic and electric 12-strings, sitar-guitar and 11-string fretless. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.

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Former head boy Jacob Fowler plays dream role as too-cool-for-school JD in Heathers The Musical at Grand Opera House

Jacob Fowler’s Jason ‘JD’ Dean with Jenna Innes’ Veronica Sawyer in Heathers The Musical, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, from Tuesday. Picture: Pamela Raith

IN August 2021, Leeds Grand Theatre became the first theatre in the world to host a touring production of Heathers The Musical.

Next week, Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe’s American high-school black comedy reports back for a new term in Yorkshire, this time at the Grand Opera House, York.

Welcome to Westerberg High, school year 1989, where Veronica Sawyer is just another nobody dreaming of a better day. When she joins the beautiful, mallet-wielding, impossibly cruel Heathers, her dreams of popularity may finally come true.

Enter mysterious teen rebel Jason ‘JD’ Dean to teach her that it might kill to be a nobody, but it is murder being a somebody.

Playing JD, the Christian Slater role in Michael Lehmann’s savagely satirical cult teen movie, will be Jacob Fowler, whose path to stardom brings girl group Little Mix into his story.

“I’d gone to Trinity Laban Conservatoire to study musical theatre for three years, but I ended up putting my studies on hold, just before Covid, to do the Little Mix The Search talent show – and I actually won the competition!” he says.

More precisely, singer and pianist Jacob was part of the group Since September, put together to compete in the contest.

“The prize was to support Little Mix on their Confetti Tour of UK arenas. I’ve never known an experience like it when you just don’t get to do that as an average person growing up in Nottingham!

“Then in between doing the TV show and the Little Mix tour, I got my contract as first cover JD in the ensemble for Heathers.”

Jacob had first seen Heathers in his drama student days on a gala night at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and did so again in his home city in September 2021. Two months later, he was in the cast. “After only five shows, the actor playing JD had to go off and ended up being off for two weeks. He came back for a few days but then left the show,” Jacob recalls.

“I did 125 shows in that first contract, 26 as The Geek, and 99 as JD, which meant the first night of the new tour at Windsor Theatre Royal was my 100th show as JD…on Valentine’s Day! The 200th show will be while we’re in York.”

Produced by impresario Bill Kenwright and Paul Taylor-Mills and directed by Andy Fickman, the tour carries the warning: “This production contains mature themes including: references to suicide and eating disorders; moments of violence; murder; sexual violence; gunshots and flashing lights.”

“It’s that age-old thing of now being more relevant than it’s ever been, dealing with homophobia and fat phobia too. Apart from racism, it touches on all these horrible things we have in society.

“You hope that with homophobia, for example, maybe some progress has been made but it’s still not enough.”

Jacob considers high-school outsider JD, symbolically always dressed in black, to have the best story arc in Heathers. “As a storyline, as a character, he has this depth, starting as a cheeky chappie, not falling for the idiots,” he says. “But then he falls in love and becomes manipulative, though he always thinks he’s doing the right thing.

“It’s a sombre thing to say, but I don’t think there’ll ever be a role like this for me again,” says Jacob Fowler. Picture: Pamela Raith

“Even at the end, he’s saying ‘let’s build a better world’ with Veronica. When he sings, ‘I’m damaged, badly damaged, once I disappear, clean up the mess down here’, I take it that this is his slight redemption. It’s more of a plea, saying, he knows what he’s done, but please change.”

Jacob talks of himself as being part of “this little group of JDs, because only 15 people have played him or understudied the role”. “From the outset, I take a lot from Jamie Muscato, who I saw on that gala night performance. He was the original JD in London, and there’s that thing that you can’t beat the first person you saw in a role,” he says.

“In fact, I’ve now met or messaged pretty much everyone who’s played JD. I’ve even messaged the original Broadway JD, Ryan McCartan, and his understudy, Dan Domenech.

“I loved the way Jamie played and sang it in London; That was my grounding, my blueprint, but of course there’s a part of any actor that can’t help but put themselves in any performance. For mine, I like to go down the line of the more psychotic JD, rather than a naturalistic one.

“Where others play him as always behaving like he’s 17, I play him with jolts and head ticks to make him look psychotic. I just started doing that, and now people come up after a show and say, ‘go on, do your head tick’!”

Jacob will be on tour in Heathers until the last week of October. “I often say to people, and it’s a sombre thing to say, but I don’t think there’ll ever be a role like this for me again – and I’m saying that when I’m only 23,” he says.

“It just happens to be that my dream role is someone so young, someone who gave me my break in musical theatre and is such an incredible role to play. Though hopefully I’ll have the chance to play the Phantom [in The Phantom Of The Opera] one day.”

Where was Jacob when he was 17? “I was at Trinity Catholic Scool in Nottingham, studying Music, Technolgy and Drama A-levels – all very ‘musical’ things!” he says.

On the Heathers scale, was he a “nobody” or a “somebody”? “I was headboy! The first head boy the school had ever had. We got a new head teacherwho brought in having a head boy or head girl for the first time,” says Jacob.

“Names were put forward and then the final three had an interview. I remember him ringing me up to tell me when I was in the bath! I think there’s a plaque at the school saying, ‘Jacob Fowler, Head Boy 2017-2018’.

“The year before, when there was no official title, the equivalent role went to Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the international cellist, and I thought it was very, very cool to follow him!”

Unlike JD, Jacob was never a rebel. “I very much stuck to the rules, though I would never bow down. I wouldn’t take anything from anyone,” he says. “I’ve never liked authority, which sounds like I’m stubborn and might not fit in with being head boy – but if someone can’t justify something, then I’d challenge it, but I’d always play by the school rules at 16-17.

“It was at such a good school, a normal state school, with such a good music department, and I was lucky to go there. I’m a real advocate for music and theatre in schools. They’re so important.”

Heathers The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, May 9 to 13, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york

Copyright of The Press, York

May Tether in her Liverpool Empire dressing room on the night she played Veronica Sawyer for the first time on the Heathers The Musical tour in 2021

Did you know?

MAY Tether, the York Stage favourite of Goole roots, has performed opposite Jacob Fowler in Heathers The Musical in London.

“May was at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in the year above me, so I knew her already,” says Jacob. “She moved up from ‘cover Veronica’ on the first tour to playing Veronica at The Other Palace with me as JD.”

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More Things To Do in York and beyond in the virtual and real world. Here’s Hutch’s List No. 18 for 2023, from The Press, York

Flying Scotsman VR: The virtual reality experience at the National Railway Museum to mark the steam locomotive’s 100th birthday

AS Flying Scotsman meets virtual reality, Charles Hutchinson goes full speed ahead to keep you on the right track for entertainment by rail, on land or indoors.

New attraction of the week: Flying Scotsman VR, National Railway Museum, York

THE new virtual reality experience at the NRM celebrates Flying Scotsman in the iconic steam locomotive’s centenary year, taking visitors on a journey back in time and around the world, bringing the golden age of rail travel to life.

Commissioned by the Science Museum Group and developed in collaboration with Figment Productions and Sarner International, the experience uses free-roaming VR headsets to provide a multi-sensory experience that includes an understanding of how steam locomotion works from inside the boiler. Admission to the NRM is free but a charge does apply for Flying Scotman VR. Booking is advised at railwaymuseum.org.uk.

Steve Cassidy: Back among friends at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre

York stalwart of the week: Steve Cassidy Band, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Sunday, 7.30pm

THE Steve Cassidy Band and friends perform a selection of rock, country music and ballads, combining something old with something new.

York singer, guitarist and songwriter – and former headmaster – Steve recorded in the 1960s with York-born composer John Barry and pioneering producer Joe Meek. Tomorrow night he is joined by his band members and guests at his favourite theatre. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Midge Ure: Synths in synch in Band Electronica concert of two Ultravox albums in full

Retro gig of the week:  Midge Ure & Band Electronica, The Voice And Visions Tour, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday, 7.30pm

ON 2019’s The 1980 Tour, Midge Ure & Band Electronica revisited Ultravox’s Vienna album and Visage’s debut LP. Now, on his twice-rearranged follow-up tour, Voice And Visions, Ure marks the 40th anniversary of Ultravox’s synth-driven, experimental Rage In Eden and Quartet albums. Box office: atgtickets.com.york.

Space exploration: A spaceman lands in York in Lincoln Ligthfoot’s playfully surreal art at the Grand Opera House

Art talk of the week: Lincoln Lightfoot, Grand Opera House, York, Thursday, 6pm

YORK Open Studios 2023 artist Lincoln Lightfoot presents a 90-minute Grand Opera House Creative Learning artist talk and workshop to complement his ongoing exhibition in the Cumberland Street theatre’s box office.

In his retro art, Lincoln explores surrealist concepts reminiscent of the absurdist poster art that captured  the Fifties and Sixties’ B-movie fixation with comical science-fiction disasters, but now played out on the 21st century streets and landmark buildings of York. Tickets:  atgtickets.com/york.

Gary Meikle: Expressing his loathing of stupid questions in 2.5 comedy show at York Barbican

Likely to cause a stir: Gary Meikle, 2.5, York Barbican, Friday, 8pm

SCOTTISH comedian Gary Meikle returns to York Barbican with his third live show, or 2.5 as he calls it. Top professionals and industry people may have advised him not to be so crude or edgy, but “as a kid growing up in the care system, I was told that I’d be either dead or in jail by the time I was 30, so I tend not to listen to others and do things my way,” he says.

In a “continued celebration of me being me” in defiance of cancel culture, Meikle discusses equality between the sexes, medication side effects, his loathing of stupid questions  and “how our ancestors were idiots”. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Guy Masterson: One actor, 69 roles in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood at Theatre@41

Tour de force of the week: Guy Masterson, Under Milk Wood, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Friday, 7.30pm

CELEBRATING the 70th anniversary of Under Milk Wood, Olivier Award winner Guy Masterson portrays one day in the life of Llareggub, a fictional town by the sea somewhere in Wales, as he assiduously conjures up all 69 of Dylan Thomas’s ebullient inhabitants in a feat of memory and physical virtuosity.

Complemented by Matt Clifford’s soundscape, Under Milk Wood is bawdy and beautiful, sad and sensual and, through the music of language, leaves indelible, unforgettable images of humanity. Masterson, Richard Burton’s nephew by the way, has clocked up more than  2,000 performances, from Swansea to the West End, Trinidad to New Zealand, over 30 years. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Jessica Steel: Showcasing debut album Higher Frequencies at The Crescent

Made of Steel: Jessica Steel, The Crescent, York, May 7, 7.30pm

YORK powerhouse singer Jessica Steel performs her October 2022 debut album, Higher Frequencies, in full for the first time.

A fixture at Big Ian Donaghy’s A Night To Remember charity concerts at York Barbican, hairdressing salon boss Jessica made the album with songwriter-producer Andy Firth, late of the Britpop band The Dandys. “There’s an interesting contrast between uplifting music and sad lyrics throughout the album, as well as a recurring theme of finding hope through adversity,” she says. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

Lloyd Cole: First York gig in 23 years

Commotion incoming: Lloyd Cole, York Barbican, October 17

LLOYD Cole will team up with former Commotions compadres Blair Cowan and Neil Clark at York Barbican for the only Yorkshire gig of his 17-date autumn tour to showcase his 12th solo album, On Pain, set for release on June 23.

On his first York appearance since a solo show at Fibbers in May 2000, Cole will play two sets, the first acoustic, the second, electric with the band. Box office: lloydcole.com/live or yorkbarbican.co.uk.

In Focus: Tim Crouch, Truth’s A Dog Must To Kennel, York International Shakespeare Festival, York St John University Creative Centre, tonight, 8pm

Tim Crouch: King Lear and a virtual reality head set combine in Truth’s A Dog Must To Kennel at York International Shakespeare Festival. Picture: Stuart Armitt

TIM Crouch’s 2022 Edinburgh Fringe First winner plays the York International Shakespeare Festival after visiting New York and playing a London season.

Taking on the character of The Fool, Shakespeare’s King Lear meets stand-up comedy meets the metaverse as Crouch dons a virtual reality headset to explore Lear in a post-pandemic world and interrogate theatrical form and the essence of live performance.

“It’s reductive to say I have a favourite Shakespeare play: King Lear. They’re all great but I have a relationship with this play that goes a little deeper,” says the Bognor Regis-born experimental theatre maker, actor, playwright and director, whose work rejects theatrical convention, especially realism, and invites audiences to participate in each performance’s creation.

“I played Lear at university [Bristol] at a King Lear Symposium at Ferrara in northern Italy, at the age of 20, which is a little young! I then directed a 90-minute production for the Royal Shakespeare Company ten years ago.”

The play contains everything, he contends. “Complex relationships. Love. Madness. Families.  Obscene wealth and the hypocrisy of wealth. Towards the end, Lear becomes a socialist champion. He has this moment of enlightenment, realising that everything on top of that is superfluous,” says Tim.

“This egotistical figure has his power removed, his ego removed, discovering compassion in the truest sense.”

Tim then refracted King Lear through the Covid shroud of the past three years. “I also saw Lear in Trump and in some degree in Boris Johnson, seeing the world governed by egomaniacs, of which Lear is an example,” he says.

“Or like Succession [the television series about a wealthy family at war], where Brian Cox plays this grotesque maniacal figure. It’s Rupert Murdoch really!”

Tim views King Lear through the eyes of The Fool. “He doesn’t have a name; he’s slightly mysterious, he’s depressed and he leaves before the end of the play, before anyone has been killed,” he notes.

“He just disappears, and I’m fascinated by people leaving, just getting up and going, so I dramatise his moment of departure in this show.”

“What would a contemporary Shakespearean Fool be? I think it would be Stewart Lee,” says Tim Crouch

Tim exposes King Lear through a modern lens. “I don’t know what’s gone wrong with the world. Maybe it was always this way, but there are these deep schisms that are dividing the world. Men like Trump,” he says. “Playing this show in New York was extraordinary! Over here, there is civil war in Brexit, just as there is civil war in Lear’s family.”

Experiencing theatre only digitally during the pandemic has had an impact on his show too. “As a theatre maker, my passion for live theatre was exacerbated by lockdown when you could only watch theatre online,” says Tim.

“’Live theatre’ is tautological because, to me, theatre is only live, whereas in the pandemic, we had an image of theatre that was only on a screen, so that prompted me to put on a virtual reality headset at times in this play.”

What happens then? “The conceit of this piece is that I take The Fool back to the point of his departure, and now he will witness his exit, the blinding of Gloucester and what I think is the most powerful scene in theatre ever: the Dover cliffs scene where the blinded Gloucester’s imagination is brought into play through his son’s act of imagination, saving his father,” says Tim.

“Theatre is an adult form of imagination, taking us to a different place and learning from that journey, but keeping us safe while doing that. Shakespeare’s lines are very precise; they are an invitation to see what I see through language, to then narrate The Fool’s return through this middle-aged bald guy [Tim is 59] in a headset, that people will experience through their ears.”

Stand-up comedy features in Tim’s performance too. “That’s partly a nod to The Fool, wondering wondering ‘what would a contemporary Fool be’? I think it would be Stewart Lee, a comedian who doesn’t have an agent and does no social media,” he says.

“I don’t claim to be a stand-up but use the form to say things about the experience of being together in a room. When we’re in the same place at the same time, just look at how brilliant and transformative we can be through using our mind, our body, our imagination.

“But theatre is increasingly becoming the preserve of the wealthy, though the imagination dematerialises that, not succumbing to any socio-economic structure. Children have the greatest imagination, but sadly that then gets replaced with wanting to be TV stars and wanting to make money.”

Assessing the “international” in the York International Shakespeare Festival, Tim says: “The thing that I’m endlessly inspired by is that Shakespeare does and yet doesn’t exist in his plays when there’s now a thirst for autobiographical and biographical plays, which limits them.

“Whereas there’s a quality to his work and to the work of many playwrights of that time who didn’t nail their colours to one mast and can be interpreted by each age, nationality and culture. There’s an objectivity to these plays that requires whoever does a production to find themselves in them – which should be the case with every play, I think.”

Box office: yorkshakes.co.uk.

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REVIEW: NE in Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 2.30pm and 7.30pm today ***

Steve Tearle: Director, Narrator and Mystery Man. All pictures: David Richardson

THIS is as much Stephen Tearle’s Into The Woods as Stephen Sondheim’s wickedly witty Broadway show in a fusion of York and New York imaginations.

Sondheim rooted his 1987 Broadway musical in a grown-up twist on the Brothers Grimm stories that casts a new light on such familiar fairy-tale frequenters as Cinderella (University of York student Rebecca Jackson); Beanstalk-climbing Jack (Jack Hambleton); a skipping Little Red Riding Hood (CAPA College and PQA York student Missy Barnes/Rowntree Players panto regular Mollie Surgenor); Rapunzel (Juliette Brenot); Snow White (Elizabeth Farrell) and The Wolf (Ryan Richardson, looking not unlike Sam Smith in their Gloria tour get-up).

James Lapine’s book for Sondheim’s songs centres on the plight of the Baker (Chris Hagyard) and the Baker’s Wife (Perri Ann Barley), a childless couple seeking to lift the curse placed on them by a once-beautiful Witch (a towering performance from Pascha Turnbull).

Flour power: Perri Ann Barley’s barren Baker’s Wife and Chris Hagyard’s Baker in NE’s Into The Woods

Venturing into the woods, they must search for the ingredients that will reverse the spell:  a milk-white cow (Erin Greenley, in white jeans and boots), hair as yellow as corn (from Rapunzel); a blood red cape (from Little Red Riding Hood) and a slipper of gold (from Cinderella).

Here they will encounter the fairy-tale folk, each on a quest to fulfil a wish, and into the story come the likes of Cinderella’s Prince (Sam Richardson), Rapunzel’s Prince (Kristian Barley), Cinderella’s Mother (Rebecca Warboys) and the Ugly Sisters, Florinda (Ali Butler-Hind) and Lucinda (Morag Kinnes).

Sondheim steers a path away from pantomime into terrain altogether darker, behaviour worsening, human foibles bursting through, enchantment turning to disenchantment, living unhappily ever after until the denouement. Steve Tearle nudges the playing style back towards panto, without changing the fruitier post-9pm-curfew content.

Missy Barnes’s Little Red Riding Hood: “Something of the Wednesday Addams about her”

He also introduces a young ensemble to swell the company ranks to 50, playing woodland birds and forest dwellers in pointy ears, who gather at Tearle’s feet in his role as string-pulling Narrator and Mystery Man too. He plays free and loose with the script, interjecting adlibs in his north-eastern accent in the manner of a Dame Berwick Kaler pantomime.

Sondheim’s style is deadpan, even noir, as well as being witheringly witty, as paraded in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street too. Tearle’s style is broader, tongue pushed into the cheek in pursuit of “highly camp fun”, typically expressed in the performances of Richardson and Barley’s Princes and Melissa Boyd as Jack’s Mother, although Missy Barnes’s Little Red Riding Hood on Thursday night had something of the Wednesday Addams about her.

In a “big” joke, Helen Greenley’s diminutive Giant’s Wife arrives in massive platforms and a startlingly deep, echoing, discordant voice – compared by one audience member to Mr Blobby – that brings to mind the Wizard Of Oz at the moment he is exposed as a fraud.

Hagyard and Perri Ann Barley play it closest to Sondheim’s tone, while Pascha Turnbull, regularly cast as “larger than life, formidable women”, takes on the bewitching role she has “yearned to play for many years”, combining the show’s most powerful singing with her suitably domineering presence. Not for the first time, Jack Hambleton stands out as one of York’s rising talents.

Bean there, done that: Jack Hambleton’s Jack of Beanstalk-climbing notoriety

Scott Phillips conducts his musical forces with glee and oomph aplenty; Adam Kirkwood’s rainbow palette of lighting complements Tearle and Faye Richarson’s woodland setting with its camouflage gauze and three rotating scaffolding towers, forever on the move, whether occupied by Jack or Rapunzel or whoever.

The fabulous costumes, designed by award-winning Ashington fashion designer Paul Shriek, go with the many shrieks that pierce the sylvan night air.

Experimental, experiential and wildly ambitious, amber-gambler Tearle’s Into The Woods heads deliriously into the weird. It certainly brings a smile, but would the late Sondheim take Tearle’s tribute as a compliment? We shall never know.

Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

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REVIEW: York International Shakespeare Festival, York Shakespeare Project in Richard III, Friargate Theatre, York ***

Harry Summers’ Richard, Duke of Gloucester addressing the House of Commons benches in York Shakespeare Project’s Richard III. Pictures: John Saunders

ROUND Two of York Shakespeare Project begins with the knockout punch of “the York play”, Richard III. Here come 37 Shakespeare plays in 25 years, plus works by his contemporaries, in the sequel to “the most ambitious project ever mounted on the York amateur theatre circuit”.

Can the second cycle of the First Folio plus one surpass such ambitions, fulfilled after 20 years with The Tempest tour last autumn? Surely there would be no point starting to re-climb this artistic Everest otherwise.

Certainly, Dr Daniel Roy Connelly, former diplomat, actor, writer, academic, podcaster and director home and abroad, is in a fighting mood to match Shakespeare’s Richard in his YSP debut after moving to York.

Frank Brogan: Appearing in York Shakespeare Project’s two Richard III productions 21 years apart

“The opportunity to re-boot YSP’s cycle of the canon was very attractive to me,” he said in his CharlesHutchPress interview this week. “I’m someone who always wants to go either first or last, to set the bar high or to leave everyone with something to go home with.”

As befits the True & Fair Party (“We all deserve better”) prospective parliamentary candidate for York Outer at the next General Election, Connelly has placed Richard’s winter of discontent in our “frenetic, calculating and brutal 21st century Westminster with its endless Machiavellian bloodletting and daily treacheries”.

This is rather more the world of Malcolm Tucker’s The Thick Of It than Jim Hacker’s Yes, Prime Minister, Connelly being in mischief-making mood with his use of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg memes and a photo montage of political fashion statements (Churchill, jogger BoJo and Hague’s baseball cap faux pas) on a video screen kept in regular use from its opening shot of the House of Commons benches and cry of “Order, order”.

Clive Lyons, drink in hand, and a dismissive-looking Nell Frampton in the Westminster wars of York Shakespeare Project’s Richard III

Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping pop up on there too, as do PlantageNews headlines and social-media posts from media manipulators Richard, Duke Of Gloucester (Harry Summers) and the Duke of Buckingham (Rosy Rowley), updating on Richard’s progress to the throne and beyond.

Paranoia is everywhere, laptops constantly being tapped behind twitching drapes to each side of Richard Hampton, Jeremey Muldowney and Sarah Strong’s set design but always in view of the audience, in a merry-go-round of briefing and counter-briefing from the chairs’ ever-changing occupants.

Summers’ Richard, with his rock’n’roll quiff, oversized Harry Hill shirt collars and flamboyant cane, has a vaudevillian air, even a hint of Blockhead Ian Dury. For Shakespeare’s character assassination too, he has a stump of a left arm, a leg calliper and a facial scar, and like Ian McKellen’s film portrayal, he is pretty nifty with his only hand.

Grim prospects: Miranda Mufema’s Lady Anne and Frankie Hayes’s Duchess of York

Summers’ Richard is less the wintry malcontent, more the ever-quotable narcissist who relishes the rough and tumble of politics with a Johnsonsian thick skin and lack of moral compass. He is darkness with the shrug-of-the-shoulders nonchalance of Cabaret’s Emcee and a love of breaking down theatre’s fourth wall for choice asides, almost too likeable in the manner of a camp panto villain. 

Around him, amid the pinstripe suited superficial civility, spin furtive turns by Rowley’s Buckingham and Clive Lyons’s Lord Hastings and Frank Brogan’s fevered performance as a Yorkshire-voiced King Edward IV in a considerable casting upgrade from his Second Murderer/Messenger spear-carrying in John White’s Richard III in YSP’s 2002 debut!

Frankie Hayes (Sir William Catesby/Duchess of York), Jack Downey (an amusingly heartless Sir Richard Ratcliffe), Miranda Mufema (Lady Anne) and YSP’s new Nick Jones (a commanding Earl of Richmond) make their mark too. For stage presence, look no further than Thomas Jennings’s crop-haired hitman, relishing every cull with a glint in his eye and the click of his mobile phone camera.

Eli Cunniff’s costume designs, red and white buttonhole roses et al, together with Connelly’s spot-on soundbite selection of blues, jazz and more, underscore the noir vib, as the cultural references keep a’coming.

If looks could kill: Thomas Jennings’s brazen hitman

Cue a drunken chamber the morning after Richard’s coronation (a la lockdown “parties” at Number 10); Richard calling out to Alexa for answers as much as his kingdom for a horse in his hour of need, and Richard and Richmond sporting stab vests in white and red in the style of Banksy’s Union Flag design for Stormzy at Glastonbury.

Connelly conducts parliamentary business briskly, no prevaricating here, before the first-night pace and focus slips at the battlefield finale until Jones’s Richmond steers the reins in the home straight in more classical Bard style.

Throughout, Friargate Theatre’s compact, close-up stage feels crammed to the gills, especially with the shadowy figures in the wings, adding a noose of claustrophobia to Richard’s tyranny in Connelly’s state-of-the-nation’s rotten politics report. As promised, he does indeed “leave everyone with something to go home with”.

York Shakespeare Project in Richard III, Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm and 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk/ridinglights.

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Three actors, two roles, one relationship, add up to Gus Gowland’s musical premiere of Mayflies at York Theatre Royal

Entwined: Rumi Sutton’s May and Emma Thornett’s Fly in a scene from Gus Gowland’s musical Mayflies, in rehearsal at the Central Methodist Church, York. Picture: Sam Taylor

THE world premiere of York Theatre Royal resident artist Gus Gowland’s new musical, Mayflies, opens tomorrow with a cast of Nuno Queimado, Rumi Sutton and Emma Thornett.

Except that you will not see all three of them on stage that night (28/4/2023), nor indeed at any performance in the run until May 13.

To explain, Mayflies tells the story of a romantic relationship between May and Fly, who match up on a dating app and begin a tentative conversation, whereupon their romance grows into something real. Then they meet.

Same story each show, but Gowland uses a rotating cast whereby any performance could feature a configuration of Nuno (May), Emma (Fly) or Rumi (“the super-talented one” because she can play either May or Fly).

“Come on three nights and you will see all three configurations,” advises director Tania Azevedo, a specialist in bringing new musicals to the stage, with credits for the award-winning But I’m a Cheerleader (Turbine Theatre) and as resident director for & Juliet in the West End.

Nuno Queimado’s May and Emma Thornett’s Fly in a touching moment in Mayflies. Picture: Sam Taylor

“Gus has specifically written what to our knowledge is the only musical able to be played by anyone of any age, gender, sexuality or race. May and Fly don’t come from anywhere specific; they have no identity whatsoever, which feels really special because it’s such a joy to watch, whether it’s Nuno and Rumi, Rumi and Emma or Nuno and Emma: we’re making a show that is universal. You get to experience the bravery to fall in love, whether you’re straight, gay, young or old.”

Composer, lyricist and writer Gowland, director Azevedo and musical director Joseph Church ran a full week of auditions, seeing more than 300 actors. “There had to be some decisions made at the beginning,” says Tania. “We could have had just two actors but settled on three, which allows us to really show how flexible the script is.

“Within that, we wanted to select people from different backgrounds and with differing vocal qualities, not just your average musical theatre performers. We also needed playful actors, able to cope with changes, as this show will be as fresh as it can be, with the latest re-write finished only a few weeks ago.

“They need to be playful to discover the juice within it. It will always have their imprint on it, stretching the concept as far as possible.”

Portuguese-born Nuno, who played the alternate Alexander Hamilton in the West End run of Hamilton, says: “Gus hasn’t written specifically drawn characters but doesn’t shy away from very specific themes, but the device he uses to change the configurations is what’s so special. That’s the juice that sets it apart from other shows.

“Then they meet”: Nuno Queimado’s May and Rumi Sutton’s Fly in Mayflies. Picture: Sam Taylor

“What’s great in the rehearsal period is being able to carve out the characters in 3D, finding out what’s different in each of our characterisations.”

To aid that journey, mood boards have been steadily filled with ideas and notes in the rehearsal room at the Central Methodist Church in St Saviouragte.

Tania rejoins: “What’s been really interesting is how generous they’ve been to each other, truly working as an ensemble with a collective understanding of the story while searching for the differing nuances of each pairing, so we’re developing the individuality of each character. Even with the same blocking, each pairing will feel really different.”

Emma, whose credits include War Horse, says: “To get that distinction between the different combinations, Tania has allowed us to develop why my Fly is different from Rumi’s.

“Having two people playing the same character at different performances brings a different dynamic to each scene, which will end up with it feeling like it’s a different show.

Director Tania Azevedo and musical director Joseph Church overseeing a rehearsal for Mayflies. Picture: Sam Taylor

“This is so rare in musical theatre because it usually has a prescribed time and place and specific type of acting, with freedom being somewhat restricted, but here it’s unique for allowing the true actor’s craft to be infused into the songs.”

Nuno says: “Tania, as the director, will go back to what’s important to squeeze as much juice as we can from each scene, whether we have to be busy or relaxed or open to being vulnerable, but always sticking to what the scene needs. Keep asking what each character needs: that way it doesn’t ever let the oven of creativity get cold.”

Another dimension to the show is representing the world of online dating. “What’s fascinating is that for a third of the play they can’t see each other as they’re connecting through online dating, which has had such an impact, especially since the pandemic when it was the only way to connect and find a new partner,” says Tania.

“No longer do people meet in a bar if you’re looking for love now. Chances are they will meet online. It’s interesting to see how the relationships changes when they’re in the same room [at an hotel], reading texts, talking on the phone or voice noting…”

…”And whether they react and how they react or not, in each situation,” says Rumi, who is making her York Theatre Royal debut after appearing in Hex and Heathers The Musical.

Mayflies composer, lyricist and writer Gus Gowland, seated, with York Theatre Royal cast members Emma Thornett, left, Rumi Sutton and Nuno Queimado

“The impact on when they’re in the room together face to face is pretty extreme,” says Tania.

To add another ingredient, Mayflies does not plough the straight furrow from the relationship’s beginning to finale. “It’s not chronological!” says Nuno. “It keeps jumping between online and offline and we keep jumping backwards and forwards too!”

Those worlds have to be represented in the designs of TK Hay, who so thrilled audiences with his innovative geometric carapace of one and a half miles of fibre-optic cable lighting for the multiverse story world of University of York alumnus Nick Payne’s Constellation at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, last autumn.

“The main thing I told him is that it’s a musical with only two people but we need to make it exciting on a big, big stage,” says Tania. “People have an expectation of how opera will look and we have to find a way to present things in a new style.”

Gus Gowland’s Mayflies runs at York Theatre Royal from tomorrow to May 13, 7.30pm; 2pm, May 4 and 11; 2.30pm, May 6 and 13. In a special deal, you can see all three casting configurations for the discounted price of £15. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.