Kit Stroud’s Ebenezer Scrooge in NE Theatre York’s A Christmas Carol
NE Theatre York revisit Alan Menken’s musical take on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, from tomorrow to Saturday.
“We first performed this version of the show in 2018, when it was such a fantastic experience and so successful that it’s been our most requested show to perform again,” says director Steve Tearle. “We were even asked if we could tour with the show.”
In Dickens’s harrowing yet redemptive tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean man with a dislike for mankind, he will be clanking his chains for a second time as Scrooge’s late business partner Jacob Marley. “I’ve only played Marley in A Christmas Carol as he’s such a brilliant character that it’s a joy to play,” he reasons.
Director Steve Tearle and lead actor Kit Stroud in rehearsal for A Christmas Carol
“Five years ago, we staged it very differently to our new production. While still referencing the traditional dance moves of 1856, we’ve added a lot more contemporary moves into the show.
“Marley’s appearance will be very different, using 100 metres of fabric, plus we’re adding a circus. On top of that, the audience experience will start outside: as they walk up to the theatre, they will be treated to a typical London street in 1856.
“Once inside the auditorium, they’ll see we’re using a very similar set to our award-winning Oliver! as both Dickens stories are set in exactly the same place and time.”
John Mulholland’s Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Be in NE Theatre York’s A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol features music by Alan Menken, best known for such Disney musicals as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty And The Beast and Newsies, with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and book by Mike Ockrent and Ahrens.
From 1994 to 2003, the show was staged annually at New York City’s Theatre at Madison Square, where Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham, Jim Dale, The Who’s Roger Daltrey and Frank Langella were among those to play Scrooge.
The London run in 2020 featured Brian Conley as Scrooge and now Kit Stroud takes the role for NE Theatre York as the miser is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Tearle’s Marley, who died seven years previously.
Ghosts galore: clockwise, Chris Hagyard’s Ghost of Christmas Past, John Mulholland’s Ghost of Christmas-Yet-To-Be, Perri Ann Barley’s Ghost of Christmas Present and Steve Tearle’s Jacob Marley
“Scrooge is a very challenging role as he only leaves the stage for a couple of moments in Act One; he is on stage for the rest of the time, and we’re delighted to have Kit playing him,” says Steve.
Marley forewarns Scrooge to expect a visit from three ghosts – the Ghost of Christmas Past (Perri Ann Barley), the Ghost of Christmas Present (Chris Hagyard) and the Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Be (John Mulholland) – who urge him to mend his ways if he is to avoid the horrible consequences of treating people badly.
“With more than 60 people in the cast, this show will be a true Christmas spectacular featuring hilarious comedy characters such as Mr and Mrs Fezziwig (Ali Butler Hind and Greg Roberts) in a festive musical story that will definitely kickstart your Christmas,” says Steve.
Greg Roberts and Ali Butler Hind as Mr and Mrs Fezziwig
“It’s going to be magical, with books that light up, ghosts that appear out of nowhere and time travel, which is always exciting, and the ending, when Scrooge becomes good, is such a heartwarming moment.”
Any newcomers to look out for in the company? “Rebecca Jackson, who plays Scrooge’s Mother as we are transported to the past,” highlights Steve. “She has a beautiful stand-out song.”
Naming his favourite character, he picks Tiny Tim, to be played by Alice Atang. “She brings such innocence to the role, and when she sings her solo song, it’s so touching.”
NE Theatre York in A Christmas Carol, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, November 28 to December 2, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Tickets update: last few tickets still available for Friday and Saturday night; the rest, sold out. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk
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NE Theatre York ensemble members in rehearsal for A Christmas Carol
James Swanton: Ghost Stories for Christmas returns to York Medical Society
GOTHIC York York actor James Swanton is reviving his Dickensian Ghost Stories for Christmas trilogy at York Medical Society, Stonegate, from tomorrow.
Soon to appear in the BBC Christmas ghost story Lot No. 249 too, he will be presenting hour-long solo renditions of A Christmas Carol, The Chimes and The Haunted Man, before transferring to the Charles Dickens Museum, located at the author’s only London home to survive, 48 Doughty Street.
“I’m starting and finishing my run in York a little earlier than usual,” says James. “Mainly because there’s been such demand for the shows in London, 21 shows there from December 13 to 23, so the York run of ten feels fairly relaxed by comparison.
“York’s winding alleyways and tumbledown buildings are so beautifully suited to Dickens that it would have been inconceivable to strike it from my schedule. There really couldn’t be a more fitting venue than York Medical Society.
“Accordingly, I’ll be giving six performances of A Christmas Carol – you can never have too much of it, particularly with this year being its 180th anniversary – and two showings apiece of The Chimes and The Haunted Man, both lesser known but fascinating follow-ups.”
All three stories are richly rewarding, says James: “They brim with Dickens’s eye for capturing the weird, the strange and the odd, from human eccentricities to full-blown phantoms. Dickens’s anger at social injustice also aligns sharply with our own – and of course, there’s a lot to be angry about at the moment.
James Swanton in The Haunted Man. Picture: Alex Hyndman
“But beyond anything, these stories are masterful exercises in theatrical storytelling, with a real sense of joy emerging from the Victorian gloom.”
When did James first encounter A Christmas Carol? “I have a feeling that my first exposure was watching the rather exquisite Richard Williams animation from 1971, though I have no way of proving this. A particularly frightening Marley in that one,” he says. “The Muppet masterpiece won’t have been far behind. Two particularly musical Marleys in that one.”
Picking a favourite screen version of A Christmas Carol, James plumps for: “Alastair Sim’s Scrooge from 1951. The screenplay’s unusually sophisticated – and has the hubris to invent reams of credible Dickens! – but Sim himself is the reason it’s a cut above, because he was primarily a comic actor (and a comic actor of genius).
“It’s tempting to get an ageing Shakespearean titan to play Scrooge, but I think this misses the point of Scrooge, who’s hilarious even at his most wicked. He’s not King Lear – except to character actors!
“In more recent years, the one-man films starring Simon Callow and Jefferson Mays have thoroughly gripped me.”
Assessing why Dickens’s story still so popular after 180 Christmases, James says: “It’s that fool-proof structure that’s protected the material across constant (indeed, ongoing) reinterpretations. Provided you stick with the basic five acts – Past, Present and Yet To Come, as bordered by Scrooge’s before and after – you can play around with the details.
“York’s winding alleyways and tumbledown buildings are so beautifully suited to Dickens that it would have been inconceivable to strike it from my schedule,” says James Swanton. Picture: Jtu Photography
“For all their merits, both The Chimes and The Haunted Man lose their hold on the memory by this structure’s omission.”
Since last December’s run of Ghost Stories for Christmas, James has been hard at work on various filming jobs. “It’s been my year for Christmas ghost stories!” he says. “At the start of 2023, I made two short films, The Dead Of Winter and To Fire You Come At Last, that were indebted to the BBC’s legendary M. R. James adaptations from the 1970s.
“The Dead Of Winter was done in Farnham in January. I’m playing a rough sleeper who becomes a ghostly form of embodied conscience. To Fire You Come At Last was filmed in the wilds of Shropshire in March. I play an alcohol-ravaged wastrel who – along with three equally reluctant men – must carry the coffin of the Squire’s son down the corpse road to the graveyard.
“It’s in black and white and feels like something out of [Samuel] Beckett; the best part I’ve had in years. Both films have been doing the festival rounds, and I know that at least one of them will be getting a physical release before too long.”
A few months ago, League Of Gentlemen alumnus Mark Gatiss asked James to play the ghost in Lot No. 249, his retelling of an Arthur Conan Doyle short story, as part of a cast led by Kit Harington and Freddie Fox.
Television viewers will see James as what the BBC press release calls a “horrifying bag of bones”. Although the precise broadcast time is still to be announced, “this BBC Ghost Story for Christmas coincides very nicely with my ongoing commitment to Dickens’s slightly earlier Victorian Gothic,” says James. “Based on the past few years, I suspect it’ll go out on either December 23 or Christmas Eve itself.
James Swanton, left, and Mark Gattis rehearsing The Quatermass Experiment. Picture: Sonia Sanchez Lopez
“Obsessed with the Gothic as I am, it was a dream fulfilled to become a part of this great tradition. I’d just performed with Gatiss in a stage production of The Quatermass Experiment. He’s steeped in Conan Doyle, and his adaptation is at once gratifyingly faithful and wickedly surprising.
“I’m encased in particularly ghoulish make-up by Dave Elsey, who won the Oscar for The Wolfman. And I do the most dreadful things to Kit Harington! I’m tremendously excited about it all.”
James points out further opportunities to see him at work this Christmas. “As well as Lot No. 249, my one-man film of The Haunted Man will be streamed by the Dickens Museum again on December 11,” he says. “And my on-and-off colleagues, the York Ghost Merchants, in Shambles, might have a few announcements of their own to come.”
More immediately, James has strategic advice for securing tickets for Ghost Stories for Christmas. “Early on is best. Most of my A Christmas Carol showings are crammed into the first week, and there are seats left for all of them,” he says.
“For reasons that remain unclear, November 30 has been a conspicuously slow seller, so I’ll be gladdened if people book for that! The second performances of both The Chimes and The Haunted Man have all but sold out (as of this moment, a single seat remains for each), but tickets can be procured for their first outings.
“With tickets being only £15 each, this could be the perfect way to kick off your festive celebrations. In any case, I look forward to gathering people together for some heart-warming storytelling: traditional to the bones, but speaking to us just as powerfully as it did 180 years ago.”
What’s coming up for James in 2024? “So far, absolutely nothing!” he says. “My tendency has always been to develop pre-show rather than post-show blues, though, so I don’t find this too daunting. I’ll be glad of a slight rest, and perhaps a chance to read Victorian literature instead of act it.”
James Swanton presents Ghost Stories for Christmas at York Medical Society, Stonegate, York: A Christmas Carol, November 27, 28 and 30, then December 1, 5 and 6; The Haunted Man, November 29 and December 7; The Chimes, December 4 and 11. All performances start at 7pm and last approximately one hour. Box office: 01904 623568 or www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
’TIS the season for Dickens shows to begin, from solo shows to a musical, and to venture into Neverland too as Charles Hutchinson gets his festive skates on.
Fantastical adventure of the week and beyond: Christmas In Neverland, Castle Howard, near York, extended until January 7
CASTLE Howard is transformed with floristry, installations, props, soundscapes and projections to create an enchanting festive experience inspired by J M Barrie’s Peter Pan in Charlotte Lloyd Webber Event Design’s sixth magical installations inside the 300-year-old country house.
Look out for the Darling children’s London bedroom, Mermaid’s Lagoon, Captain Hook’s Cabin and the Jolly Roger as the design team prioritises sustainability and recycled materials, such as paper and glass, and teams up with Leeds theatre company Imitating The Dog, whose immersive projections and soundscapes feature for the first time. Tickets: castlehoward.co.uk.
Nunkie Theatre Company’s artwork for Casting The Runes
Thriller of the week: Nunkie Theatre Company in Casting The Runes, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Sunday (26/11/2023), 7.30pm
M R James wrote his ghost stories to perform to friends in the years leading up to the First World War. Today they have lost none of their power to terrify and amuse in the hands of Nunkie Theatre Company, presenting two tales in a one-man show.
Casting The Runes’ story of the unforgettable Mr Karswell, magic lanternist, occult historian and scourge of academics, is partnered by James’s most neglected masterpiece, The Residence At Whitminster, wherein a dark shadow looms over the precinct of a peaceful English church. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Who am I? The answer is Bridget Christie, feeling the heat at Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Natasha Pszenicki
Comedy gig of the week: Bridget Christie: Who Am I?, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday (26/11/2023), 7.30pm
BRIDGET Christie is hot, but not in a good way, she says, in her menopause comedy, where she is confused, furious, sweaty and annoyed by everything. At 52, she leaks blood, sweats, thinks Chris Rock is the same person as The Rock and cannot ride the motorbike she bought to combat her mid-life crisis because of early osteoarthritis in her hips and RSI in her wrist.
In Who Am I? Christie wonders why there are so many films, made by men, about young women discovering their sexuality, but none about middle-aged women forgetting theirs. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
James Swanton: Presenting Ghost Stories For Christmas at York Medical Society
Dickens of a good storyteller: James Swanton’s Ghost Stories For Christmas, York Medical Society, Stonegate, York, select dates from November 27 to December 11, 7pm
SOON to be seen in Lot No. 249, Mark Gatiss’s retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Christmas ghost story for the BBC, gothic York storyteller and actor James Swanton revives his seasonal Charles Dickens trilogy: A Christmas Carol (six performances), on the book’s 180th anniversary, The Haunted Man and The Chimes (two each).
“‘All three stories are richly rewarding,” says James. “They brim with Dickens’s eye for capturing the weird, the strange and the odd, from human eccentricities to full blown phantoms. Dickens’s anger at social injustice also aligns sharply with our own – and of course, there’s a lot to be angry about at the moment.” Box office and performance details: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Joanne Clifton’s Princess Fiona in Shrek The Musical at Grand Opera House, York
American musical of the week: Shrek The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, Monday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinee
LEAVE winter troubles far, far away to join the musical adventure as ogre Shrek (Antony Lawrence) and his buddy Donkey (Brandon Lee Sears) endeavour to complete their quest to defeat the dragon and save Princess Fiona (2016 Strictly champ Joanne Clifton). Look out for James Gillan’s Lord Farquaad too.
Based on the first animated Shrek film, DreamWorks’ musical features such David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori songs as Big Bright Beautiful World and I Know It’s Today alongside Neil Diamond’s climactic I’m A Believer. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Kit Stroud as Ebenezer Scrooge in NE Theatre York’s A Christmas Carol
Festive musical of the week: NE Theatre York in A Christmas Carol, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
STEVE Tearle first staged Alan Menken’s musical version of Charles Dickens’s heart-warming story A Christmas Carol for NE Musicals five years ago. Once more he will combine directing a cast of 60 with playing the chain-clanking Jacob Marley.
Kit Stroud plays Ebenezer Scrooge, whose deep dislike of mankind is interrupted on Christmas Eve by three ghosts who, one by one, warn him of the consequences of the suffering he has caused. Will he join them, or will he mend his ways? Tickets update: all but the first two performances have sold out; last few tickets for Tuesday and Wednesday, 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Mark Farrelly in Jarman at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York
Solo play of the week: Mark Farrelly’s Jarman, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm
MARK Farrelly, the writer-performer behind Quention Crisp: Naked Hope and Howerd’s End, turns his attention to Derek Jarman, iconoclastic filmmaker, painter, Prospect Cottage gardener, gay rights activist and writer.
“His influence remains as strong as it was on the day AIDS killed him in 1994, but his story, one of the most extraordinary lives ever lived, has never been told. Until now,” says Farrelly, whose passionate, daring reminder of the courage it takes to truly live when alive takes Jarman from Dungeness to deepest, brightest Soho. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Paul Weller: Returning to York Barbican next spring
Gig announcement of the week: Paul Weller, York Barbican, April 17 2024
THE Modfather Paul Weller will head back to York Barbican next spring after kicking off 2024 with a long-awaited January return to Japan and a trip to Australia, highlighted by three nights at the Sydney Opera House. He last performed at the Barbican in April 2022.
In 2023, Weller has played around Europe, performed a handful of Forest Live shows and had a special guest slot to Blur at Wembley Stadium. Next spring’s 14-date tour also takes in Sheffield City Hall on April 11. Tickets go on sale from Friday, December 1 at 10am at ticketmaster.co.uk, seetickets.com, gigantic.com and paulweller.com.
“It’s my favourite role I’ve ever done,” says Joanne Clifton of playing P:rincess Fiona in Shrek The Musical
JOANNE Clifton loves the Grand Opera House, York, and not only for theatrical reasons.
“I’ve done three musicals there but it’s also where I signed off on my first house in Dressing Room 2,” says the 2016 Strictly Come Dancing champion.
From Monday, Joanne returns to the Cumberland Street theatre to play Princess Fiona alongside Antony Lawrence’s Shrek, James Gillan’s Lord Farquaad and Brandon Lee Sears’ Donkey in Sam Holmes and Nick Winston’s “Shrektacular” 2023-2024 touring production of David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeannie Tesori’s musical.
“We’re on the road from the end of July to April next year: a long tour, I know, but it’s my favourite role I’ve ever done, so I’m happy to do it as long as possible,” says the 2013 World Ballroom Showdance champion, who turned 40 on October 26.
Splashdance! Joanne Clifton as welder and dancer Alex Owens in the iconic scene in Flashdance at the Grand Opera House in November 2017
“Fiona’s someone I really relate to. I know she’s a cartoon character, but if ever there was a princess I should play, it would be Fiona, as I’m not your typical princess. Maybe that’s because I’m from Grimsby.
“I’m never going to be the same as Cameron Diaz [who voiced Fiona in the Shrek films]. I’m told I’m more feisty. I shout a lot, especially at Shrek in my first few scenes where I want him to rescue me right now from the tower.”
Joanne loved the original Shrek animated film that spawned this official Dreamworks Theatricals musical. “Everyone knows the film, and how the film wasn’t the same as other cartoon films,” she says. “It’s a feelgood, funny musical, and of course it’s for kids but there are lots of jokes for adults too that go over kids’ heads.
“There are some important messages behind it too: be who you want to be, rather than living up to other people’s expectations. Princess Fiona starts out trying to be like how people expect a princess to be but ends up fighting and burping, falling for an ogre and getting on with a donkey!”
Fab-u-lous! Joanne Clifton as Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millieat the Grand Opera House in February 2017
Summing up the humour, Joanne says: “It’s a very, very funny show, especially Lord Farquaad, and all that trumping that Shrek does and Fiona does. The kids absolutely love that! So there’s adult humour and toilet humour – at the end of the day trumps are just funny!”
Nick Winston’s choreography includes a big tap number for the former Strictly winner at the opening to Act Two. “I’m tap dancing with loads of rats as I’ve met the Pied Piper, who’s being followed by all these rats,” she says. “Especially as I’m 40 now, it’s one of the most demanding parts of the show – apart from the quick chase with the ogre at the end – because I’m singing, then I’m tap dancing and then have to finish by singing these big notes.”
The song in question is Morning Person. “I’m absolutely not a morning person!” says Joanne. “I’m very much an evening person. I’ll stay up until 2am, and if I could, I’d stay in bed all day.”
Nevertheless, the weekly performance schedule demands plenty of matinees. “We’ve recently done two weeks where we’ve had ‘double doubles’, matinees and evening shows on Wednesday and Thursday and then two shows on Saturday too. Sometimes we do eight shows in five days, but we just have to make it fun, and this cast is really good fun.
Shocked in pink: Joanne Clifton’s prim and proper Janet Weiss in The Rocky Horror Show at the Grand Opera House in June 2019
“On those matinee days, we’ll get breakfast, do the show, where we’re all buzzing after doing I’m A Believer at the end, and then everyone’s in the green room, having fun, some cast members doing jigsaws, and we have a Lego club too.”
Neil Diamond’s I’m A Believer – best known for The Monkees’ 1966 hit version – is joined by original songs aplenty in the musical. “There are extra bits to the story too that make it better,” says Joanne. “Like my first song, I Know It’s Today, where Fiona goes through the stages of her life in the tower, from the age of seven, reading books, then teenage Fiona, older and brasher, and then I come on as Fiona as she is now, going out of her mind stuck in the tower.”
Joanne will be appearing in an American musical for the fourth time at the Grand Opera House after playing prim and proper college student Janet Weiss in The Rocky Horror Show in June 2019 and starring twice in 2017, first as demure Kansas flapper girl Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie in February, then combustible Pittsburgh steel mill welder Alex Owens in Flashdance in November.
“It’s one of my favourite theatres,” she says. “I love old, traditional theatres, and York has such happy memories for me.”
Shrek The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, November 27 to December 2, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york
Copyright of The Press, York
“Be who you want to be, rather than living up to other people’s expectation,” urges Joanne Clifton, in reaction to playing convention-busting Princess Fiona in Shrek The Musical
Who’s next as the death count rises in Lucy Bailey’s production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Manuel Harlan
AND then there were thrillers, music, spoken word and comedy gigs, a cricket legend show and smooth crooner tribute for Charles Hutchinson to recommend.
Thriller of the week: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Grand Opera House, York, November 22 to 25, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees
AFTER Pick Me Up Theatre’s September staging at Theatre@41, Monkgate, here comes Lucy Bailey’s “genuinely terrifying” touring production of Agatha Christie’s best-selling 1939 crime novel, starring, among others, Andrew Lancel as William Blore, David Yelland as Judge Wargrave and Sophie Walter as Vera Claythorne.
Ten strangers – eight guests and a butler and his housekeeper wife – are lured to a solitary mansion off the coast of Devon. When a storm cuts them off from the mainland, the true reason for their presence on Soldier Island becomes horribly clear. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Spanish sarcasm of the week: Ignacio Lopez, YO1 Live Lounge, York Barbican, November 18, 8pm
SPANISH export Ignacio Lopez, from Live At The Apollo, The Now Show and Stand-Up Sesh, scrutinises his immigrant upbringing and family tree in a show about clashing cultures and never fitting in.
Sharing his biggest failures with a globe-trotting story of music, comedy and admin cock-ups, exotic outsider comedian Ignacio skewers Britain and Spain with an armada of stand-up sarcasm, silliness and songs. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Simon Brodkin: Screwed Up revelations from prankster at Grand Opera House, York
Comedy times two at Grand Opera House, York: Simon Brodkin, Screwed Up, November 18, 8pm; Lucy Beaumont, The Trouble & Strife, November 19, 8pm
THE most viewed British comedian of all time on TikTok, notorious prankster and Lee Nelson creator Simon Brodkin rips into celebrity culture, social media, the police, Putin, Prince Andrew and Jesus in his new stand-up show, Screwed Up. Nothing is off limits, from his mental health to his five arrests and his family.
An award-winning stand-up (and actress) before she met Leeds comedian and now husband Jon Richardson, Hull-born Lucy Beaumont lets slip on her rollercoaster world through a surrealist lens. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Not just cricket: Henry Blofeld discusses “flannelled fools” and much besides at York Theatre Royal
Chat show of the week: An Audience With Henry Blofeld, York Theatre Royal, November 20, 7.30pm
TEST Match Special alumnus Henry Blofeld, 84, will discuss rather more than the art of cricket commentary. “If you think you’re going to learn how to play a forward defensive, you’ll be sadly disappointed,” he forewarns.
Instead, expect his colourful life story in a tongue-in-cheek show, full of after-dinner anecdotes and meandering digressions where Blowers pokes fun at himself and his TMS gaffes and his subjects veer from intergalactic travel to horticulture to mountaineering. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The Trials Of Cato: Twisting folk into new shapes at Pocklington Arts Centre
Folk gig of the week: The Trials Of Cato, Pocklington Arts Centre, Thursday, 8pm
2019 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winners The Trials Of Cato pay homage to the folk tradition while twisting old bones into something febrile and modern, combining stomping tunes and captivating stories.
Formed in Beirut, Lebanon, the Welsh/English band have been based in Britain since 2016, releasing the albums Hide And Hair in 2018 and Gog Magog, named after the mythical giant of Arthurian legend and a Cambridgeshire hilltop, last year. Mandolin player and vocalist Polly Bolton has joined the trio after leaving The Magpies. Support act will be Annie Dressner, once of New York City, now of Cambridgeshire. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk
Jess Gardham: On Navigators Art & Performance’s Basement Sessions bill at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York
Underground movement of the week: Navigators Art & Performance, The Basement Sessions, The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York, November 25, doors, 7pm
YORK creative hub Navigators Art & Performance launches the Basement Sessions series of Music, Spoken Word and Comedy – Live, Local and Loud! with a bill of performers from the York area and “a few surprises up the sleeve”.
In the line-up are punk/post-punk/alt. rock/indie band What Fresh Hell, playing their farewell gig; pop, soul and acoustic singer-songwriter Jess Gardham; comedian John Pease; performance artist Carrieanne Vivianette, exploring the legacies of radical women through voice, movement and improvisation, and jazz-turned-punk Battle of the Bands finalists Attacker TV. Box office: bit.ly/nav-base-1 or on the door.
Stepping out of the shadow: Atila Huyesin celebrates the music of Nat King Cole at the NCEM, York
Tribute show of the week: Atila Huseyin in King For A Day: The Nat King Cole Story, National Centre for Early Music, York, November 26, 7pm
ATILA Huseyin combines live music, narration and projected archive images and footage in his concert celebration of one the 20th century’s greatest vocalists and entertainers, Nat King Cole. of the Twentieth Century: Nat King Cole.
Accompanied by world-class musicians, Huseyin performs such favourites as Nature Boy, Unforgettable and When I Fall in Love alongside stylish reworkings of his lesser-known gems. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Chris McCausland: Warming up at Selby Town Hall for a year of travels on his 2024 Yonks! tour
Looking ahead: Chris McCausland, Yonks!, Grand Opera House, York, November 10 2024
LIVERPUDLIAN comedian Chris McCausland will follow up his 140-date Speaky Blinder tour with 104 shows on his Yonks! travels in January to May and September to December 2024. Why Yonks? “I’ve been called an ‘overnight success’, even though I’ve been doing this for yonks,” he reasons after more than two decades on the stand-up circuit.
This year, McCausland, 46, has hosted his own travel series, Wonders Of The World I Can’t See, on Channel 4. His Work In Progress show at Selby Town Hall on Wednesday (8pm) has sold out. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
In Focus: Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company Autumn Theatre Festival, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, November 21 to 25
Helen ‘Bells’ Spencer: Leading the musical theatre workshop for age 16 upwards at Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company Autumn Theatre Festival
THE Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company will raise funds for the JoRo with a participatory four-day theatre festival that kicks off with Pirates Of Penzance: Come & Sing on Tuesday at 7pm and closes with a concert performance of the much loved Gilbert & Sullivan opera on Saturday at 3.30pm. This is an opportunity to throw yourself into G&S over a week of fulfilling fun.
JRTC will hold an open rehearsal for next February’s production of Kander & Ebb’s musical murder mystery Curtains on Wednesday at 7pm: a chance to sit in the stalls and peek at how a show is put together, hopefully with no spoiler of whodunit!
Musical director and actor James Robert Ball will lead the Youth Musical Theatre Workshop for seven to 15-year-olds on Thursday at 7pm, when he will look at such theatre skills as vocal technique and acting through song while working on a number that attendees will have the option of performing during the interval of the Saturday Night Musical Theatre Quiz.
JRTC principal actress Helen ‘Bells’ Spencer will oversee Friday’s 7pm Musical Theatre Workshop for age 16 plus, featuring audition skills and top tips, acting through song and vocal techniques. Again, participants can sing in the interval at Saturday’s quiz.
A Tech Demo & Backstage Tour will be held at 2pm on Saturday, when participants can venture behind the scenes and meet the tech team for demonstrations of light and sound equipment.
The festival will conclude with Saturday’s aforementioned quiz night: a chance to play for prizes and bragging rights as teams of up to four are challenged to show their musical theatre knowledge.
Tickets cost £5 per event, £12 for three or £16 for full festival access at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Lucy Bailey’s cast in And Then There Were None, on tour at Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Manuel Harlan
A WELL-TOLD story doesn’t lose its power to capture the imagination. Agatha Christie’s work continues to be enjoyed decades later. Times change, our love of a good murder mystery does not. While the original venue for the play was bombed out during the Second World War, this York performance looked sold out and deservedly so.
And Then There Were None is the story of ten strangers, lured to an island by various deceits in order to reveal their past sins and receive their comeuppance. The opening scenes play out leisurely, perhaps too leisurely, as we are introduced to the locked-down guests. In lesser hands, these characters could easily come across as dated clichés, but the longer they live, the more depths we see.
Blessed with director Lucy Bailey at the helm and a top-flight cast, you are in for an enjoyable tense evening. Bailey has wisely not deconstructed Christie’s bomb-proof plot. The updates are mostly to bring depth and nuance. Modern tastes are thrown a bone with a slow-motion sequence here, a memory there.
Most of the deaths thankfully still take place off stage and the social order remains implacably fixed. The same-sex kiss between Lucy Tregear as George Rogers (updating the original male butler) and Jane Pinchbeck (Nicola May-Taylor) drew gasps in Cambridge but barely raise an eyebrow in York.
This is an ensemble piece and now mid-tour is operating at its peak. Once the thrilling machinery of murder is running, each comes to the fore. Movement director Ayse Tashkiran has cleverly arranged the characters’ comings and goings so that each is both inquisitor and “inquisited” upon.
Joseph Beatie as adventurer Philip Lombard keeps his head more than others, and his performance is commendably textured. Bob Barrett, once the rumpled doctor Sacha Levy in Holby City, is again a rumpled doctor. He clearly relishes his character’s dark night of the soul after the interval.
David Yelland is more debonair than ice as Judge Wargrave; suavely seeking to control proceedings as he once did in court; hiding his steel beneath an impeccably unruffled exterior. He could have made mincemeat of General MacKenzie, played with refreshing humanity and without bombast by Jeffery Kissoon.
The female members of the cast struck different notes; Treagar brings both resolve and enough drunken tenderness to her butler, while Katy Stephens is a formidably trenchant force as religious Emily Brent. The minor roles remain more one dimensional: callow, nervy or late with the milk as the plot demands.
Mike Britton’s set functions on a number of levels, a concave beach/sky in the background to represent Soldier Island, minimalist furniture (ageless but for the rug) and employing layers (both physical and psychological) seen through see through curtains. Bailey makes good, if sparing use of these layers to give us flashbacks into what ails the characters. The audience are the faces watching safely in the dark.
The suspense becomes irresistible. It’s hard to imagine a modern thriller without Christie’s contributions to the final twist and this one does not disappoint, pulling no punches.
This is a play where the characters watch each other closely. There is no let-up in the second act. Chris Davey’s lighting becomes more stark; up lit to really accentuate the faces and their claustrophobia. The red lighting for the scene reminiscent of A Midsummer’s Night Dream is effective, but the tableau itself is drawn in too broad strokes. The sound from Elizabeth Purnell is gentle, distant and understated – quietly drawing you in.
Without giving too much away, Andrew Lancel’s William Blore and Sophie Walter’s Vera Claythorne really stand out as the play rolls mercilessly on. Retired police inspector Blore is a very welcome guest, with many of the best lines, most of the laughs, and the biscuits. Lancel performs with assured timing and a depth and subtlety to his gradual breakdown.
You really don’t know what to believe about Vera Claythorne, thanks to Walter’s ability to convince you of anything she pleases. By turns modern and strong, damaged and vulnerable, Walter is arguably the most, perhaps only, sympathetic character. Or is that Christie playing tricks again? Guilty or not, her performance is unmissable.
Low numbers of tickets remain for the rest of this week’s run, but time is running out to work out whodunnit. Performances: tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm, 7.30pm. Box office: atgtickets.com/york. Age guidance: 12 plus.
Andrew Lancel’s retired Inspector William Blore in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, on tour at Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Manuel Harlan
ANDREW Lancel returns to the Grand Opera House stage in York next week in Lucy Bailey’s “genuinely terrifying” touring production of Agatha Christie’s most successful thriller And Then There Were None.
“I think I first played there [in October 2014] in The Small Hand, a Susan Hill play produced by Bill Kenwright, the first of 14 I did with Bill, who became a great friend,” says Andrew. “He meant so much to me.”
Andrew, best known for his villainous role as Frank Foster in Coronation Street, has since appeared at the Grand Opera House as a jury member in Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men in December 2014 and manager Brian Epstein in Cilla The Musical in January 2018.
Now he is eight weeks into the first leg of a nationwide tour that will take a break after the York run before resuming from January to April 2024 and later travelling all over the world. “It’s been doing very well,” he says. “We’re rammed in every town, with standing ovations after every performance. Agatha Christie plays are going to last as long as Shakespeare will be done. She’s a genre in herself.”
Christie’s stage version of her best-selling 1939 crime novel revolves around ten strangers – eight guests, a butler and housekeeper – being lured to a solitary mansion off the coast of Devon. When a storm cuts them off from the mainland, the true reason for their presence on Soldier Island becomes horribly clear. One death at a time.
“People are getting bumped off. I don’t recommend anyone going near the stage!” jokes Andrew. “It’s a very timely production, with that thing of strangers going off to an island together. Look at TV shows, people going off to places and being eliminated one by one.
“In the hands of Lucy Bailey, who’s the reason I’m doing this show, she brings layers and textures of theatricality and darkness to this good old-fashioned thriller that starts very traditionally but then goes to another level. It’s shocking, but there’s also humour and the familiar characteristics of Agatha Christie.”
Christie has written more than one ending to And Then There Were None, but Andrew will not reveal the outcome in Bailey’s “reinvention for the 21st century”, except to say: “It’s very true to the novel, but what people are going to see at the Grand Opera House, as they are seeing up and down the country, is something unique, shocking. Our base line is the novel…but I ain’t gonna give anything away!”
Andrew continues: “Even if you know the play, you’ll see it in a new light in the way Lucy has done it. Its appeal spans the generations and it’s great to see some schools coming to it as their first piece of theatre. You hope they will pick up the Christie novels and come back to the theatre.”
Andrew plays William Blore, the retired police inspector summoned to Soldier Island, as it turns out, to answer belatedly to the crime of gaining promotion for himself by sending an innocent man named Landor to a penal colony, where he died.
“There are many sides to Blore. Everyone arrives on the island, lured there by an invitation where their curiosity and greed has got the better of them, but with a history of guilt in a crime for reasons that are revealed one by one,” he says.
“But Blore starts from a very different place [of authority] and it’s fascinating to see him gradually breaking down. Learning everyone’s back story is so revealing.
“The 1939 setting means the shadow of war hangs over them too, and it’s incredible what a harbinger this play is, given what’s going on around us now.”
Andrew is “really enjoying” playing Blore in Bailey’s production. “It’s a very physical part and a very physical play, from fights to montages to almost dances,” he says.
The death toll keeps rising, “but it’s very much an ensemble piece, and without giving too much away, they are there throughout”. Another intriguing reason to dive into the murk of And Then There Were None but be aware that tickets are selling fast.
Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday (21/11/2023) to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
“The long night of the soul”: Ian Giles’s Ratko Ilich, left, and Mick Liversidge’s Phil Goodman in negotiation in Sea Stones. Picture: Chris Mackins
“SOMETIMES we touch, connect, brough together by the tide. Sometimes we grind each other into sand like millstones. Sometimes we just break apart.”
York writer Tim Murgatroyd, eight novels to his name, and now penning his debut play, likes a metaphor. First-time stage director Martin Handsley loves the sound of the sea, and so the crashing of waves will greet this week’s audiences and accompany scenes staged at a lonely, low-key cottage by the coast, where Phil Goodman (Mick Liversidge) has retired after working as a doctor in conflict zones such as Rwanda and Yugoslavia.
In a play about relationships between fathers and daughters, we first encounter Jana Ilich (Ukrainian-born mezzo-soprano and actress Polina Bielova) and her “businessman” father Ratko (Ian Giles).
The year is 2000, ten years after the Yugoslavian Civil War; Jana is a lawyer, determined to prepare war trial prosecutions. Her father, who has more than something of the night about him, is always away on business overseas. He demands she should stop compiling her evidence; she will not be told.
Subsequently Jana will appear very briefly in Goodman’s cottage, without being seen by him and without naturalistic explanation, a moment of intrigue that establishes her presence but puzzles at the same time, until the narrative black hole is filled in later.
Liversidge’s Goodman is looking in his mirror; he appears to have a blood pressure kit around his arm, but again with no elaboration from Murgatroyd’s script. Maybe a daily routine, maybe later explained by the revelation that he is a former doctor, but such a prop is a mere distraction if not used.
Terms and conditions: Ian Giles’s Ratko Ilich talks numbers with Mick Liversidge’s Phil Goodman and Raqhael Harte’s Sophie, Goodman’s Icarus-inclined daughter. Picture: Chris Mackins
Suddenly, Phil’s long-absent daughter, Sophie (Raqhael Harte), arrives. They have not seen each for more than four years; she was brought up by her mother and stepfather (who she calls ‘daddy’ on the phone) since her parents’ split, which may explain her Scottish accent, as opposed to Phil’s north-eastern brogue.
Sophie is brusque, nervous, needs a bath, has chips on both shoulders, doesn’t want to talk, but will have to. She may drive a swish Alfa Romeo – too flash for dad Phil – but she is in big trouble. The year is 2008, as denoted by the large numerals on the calendar on the wall, the year when the banks crashed, and, spoiler alert, Sophie has hit the rocks over her hedge fund-dealing.
Phil may be as good a man as his surname would indicate, but not so in the eyes of his daughter, who still resents him from his absence in childhood days.
Here we have two head-strong daughters whose relationships with their fathers come from the Lear and Cordelia playbook. Stones in the sea that grind each other into sand, but can they learn to touch, to connect, to re-connect?
Would it surprise you to learn that Ratko’s dodgy business dealings (prostitution etc) have brought him into connection with Sophie? Enter Ratko and his heavies, two staying in the car, one out back, as he demands money owed by Sophie.
Cue a long, restless night of confrontation and negotiation, suspense and surprise, truths and lies, revelation and even redemption amid further appearances by Bielova’s spectral Jana. This is a reckoning of good deeds versus bad deeds, of the seeds of greed and the lure of corruption versus the human capacity for helping others rather than helping yourself to others’ goods. Compassion versus contempt too.
Father and daughter discussions: Ian Giles’s Ratko and Polina Bielova’s Jane Ilich in Sea Stones. Picture: Chris Mackins
Catching Monday afternoon’s dress rehearsal revealed a cast adept at building tension and intense, difficult relationships, matched by Murgatroyd’s ear for dialogue and astute perception of human complexities and contradictions.
The staging, however, worked against these attributes. The regular sight of the stage team taking the cottage furniture on and off and pulling the black-box curtain across the stage for scenes in Yugoslavia or by the sea broke the rhythm, a clunky manoeuvre that would have been eased by keeping the furniture in place and placing a curtain in front.
Since the dress rehearsal, music has been introduced to accompany the scene changes, but any re-staging of Sea Stones would require a design re-think.
Music already plays its part at the opening to the second half, Bielova parading her mezzo-soprano chops with haunting beauty to herald further troubles afoot.
A play for today drawn from recent yesterdays, Sea Stones marks a promising start for the Murgatroyd and Handsley partnership for York company Lumar Productions. Murgatroyd is already writing a second play, and Handsley has been bitten by the theatre bug, with a feel for the geometry and chemistry of staging scenes. Be assured he will furnish his next production with more finesse and less fiddling with furniture.
Further performances: 7.30pm tonight and tomorrow; 2.30pm and 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Tracy-Ann Oberman’s East End pawnbroker and single mother Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice 1936, set in Cable Street, London, with Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts on the march
NOTHING will stop The Merchant Of Venice being a problem play, and that’s the problem. Especially against the backdrop of the hell of the Gaza Strip. Suella Braverman’s P45. The English Defence League on the attack. Peaceful Armistice Day protests in London and beyond, demanding a ceasefire, or was that antisemitism?
Amid this tempest, Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman and director Brigid Larmour’s new adaptation of Shakespeare’s vituperative play arrives in York: a city with the darkest stain of history from the Jewish massacre at the site of Clifford’s Tower on March 16 1190, but with a new chapter opened after this autumn’s arrival of Rabbi Dr Elisheva Salamo as the spiritual leader of the York Liberal Jewish Community.
Is The Merchant Of Venice antisemitic, cursed by Shakespeare’s depiction of moneylender Shylock as English literature’s most archetypal Jewish character? “I think its legacy is antisemitic. So yes, I suppose it is an antisemitic play,” Oberman told the Guardian during rehearsals for this Watford Palace Theatre production in February.
Henry Goodman, who won an Olivier Award for his Shylock in Trevor Nunn’s 1999 National Theatre production, said in the same piece: “I think it depicts antisemitism, but is not antisemitic because it humanises.”
Abigail Graham, Jewish director of The Globe’s “radical” 2022 production, defined the play thus: “It’s not a play about antisemitism,” the Guardian quoted her. “It’s about the intersection between white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, antisemitism and racism”.
Why this preamble? You could make a case for each assessment, but ultimately the argument over whether The Merchant Of Venice is antisemitic will never be decided by any one production.
Ultimately, Graham has it right in referring to the intersection, one that now defines British or, more to the point, English discomfort at our colonial past and its continuing impact.
Let’s call The Merchant Of Venice an “uncomfortable” play, one where Shakespeare has Portia destroy Shylock in court, for the moneylender to slink away never to be heard again, only for a jocund ending to follow with fun and games over wedding rings as if we had strayed into one of his summer-lit comedies.
Unlike Shylock, Oberman and Larmour are not content to let it end there, instead adding a coda to round off the 1936 setting amid the rising tide of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascist Blackshirts, on the march through Cable Street in London’s East End on October 4 that year.
All Larmour’s cast strip off glad rags and fascist appareil to stand with Oberman’s Shylock, behind her banner They Shall Not Pass “We are stronger, prouder and safer together,” is her message, as she urges all the audience to its feet. (Well, that’s one way to ensure a standing ovation as sems to be becoming increasingly obligatory at theatre shows.)
Not everyone obliged, perhaps uneasy that the problems highlighted by this problematic play are more complicated, more nuanced, than that.
Shakespeare’s play has “always fascinated and repulsed” Oberman. “I don’t like it. I’ve never liked it,” she said. Does anyone “like it”, however? It is not Hamlet, nor King Lear, more questions than answers, but she wanted to “reclaim Shylock”, not to play Shylock for sympathy, nor shy away from the villainy, but to show why Shylock “becomes the monster that they make her” in the face of Jewish persecution.
Traditionally a male role, Oberman has taken inspiration from her great-grandmother’s hardy, dignified East London generation to depict Shylock as a Cable Street pawnbroker and single mother with an errant daughter (Grainne Dromgoole’s Jessica), played as righteous, resolute, rigorous and wronged.
This adds gender and misogyny to the degradation of the spat-upon Shylock at the hands of Raymond Coulthard’s sneering Antonio, dressed all in Mosley black, as he mocks her demand for her pound of flesh on failing to meet the terms of his bond.
Liz Cooke’s design depicts Shylock’s Cable Street home in drab, brutalist grey brick. By contrast, Portia’s film-noir high society elegance is denoted by a marble floor, a white curtain and silk dresses; Antonio’s business world by a chandelier.
Greta Zabulyte’s matching black and white video design begins with Mosley mid-speech, to be followed by fascist posters, newspaper headlines and period footage, all leading up to the Battle of Cable Street. Sarah Weltman’s sound design of smashed windows and loud, threatening voices and Erran Baron Cohen’s piano compositions shadow what is unfolding with haunting inevitability. The Star of David is highlighted on the wall, but Jew Dog is scrawled on Shylock’s door.
As mentioned earlier, one problem in The Merchant Of Venice is the contrasting tones: the chortling comedy of Portia’s hapless suitors seeking to win her hand, topped off by Gavin Fowler’s outwardly charming Bossanio, as if in a Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde comedy of manners, but the visceral, shocking hatred of Shylock, as exemplified by the thuggish excesses of Xavier Starr’s Gratiano. You can but choke on the comedy.
The transition of York-born Hannah Morrish’s Portia – my other character is a Portia too – typifies this dichotomy. Aloof but irresistibly attractive society belle, all-hours socialite, scheming aristocrat, as if she were the seventh Mitford sister, but then she becomes, as Oberman has indelicately put it, an effing bitch in her chilling courtroom humbling of Shylock.
This is a high-quality production, from design to vocal delivery, if fast-moving rather than moving, with well edited dialogue and a modernity to its theatricality and tone.
Does Obeman “reclaim Shylock” in what she calls her legacy heritage project? The play, the central character, Shakespeare’s motives, will still divide opinion, and new horrors will always inform them, but what Oberman and Larmour highlight is how unlikeable everyone is in The Merchant Of Venice. Until that unifying coda, but when will such a coda head over the horizon? Not any time soon.
Watford Palace Theatre in The Merchant Of Venice 1936, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly plus Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Father and daughter: Mick Liversidge’s Phil Goodman and Raqhael Harte’s Sophie Goodman in the dark in Sea Stones. Picture: Chris Mackins
AFTER eight novels, with his ninth on the way, Tim Murgatroyd has written his debut play, Sea Stones, an emotional, suspenseful night of the soul when four people are brought together in a lonely house by the sea.
Two fathers. Two daughters. Each confronted with the consequences of the past as a high tide is turning and tests to their relationships are escalating. Tests that might cost them not only their dearest hopes and loves, but their very lives. “The truth can set you free. Or drown you,” says York writer Tim.
Sea Stones will be premiered from tonight (14/11/2023) at Theatre@41, Monkgate, by Lumar Productions, the York company run by film and stage director Martin Handsley, with a cast of Mick Liversidge as Phil Goodman, Raqhael Harte as Sophie Goodman, Ian Giles as Ratko Ilich and Ukrainian-born York Opera mezzo-soprano Polina Bielova as Jana Ilich.
Introducing the storyline, Tim says: “The play opens in 2000 in a small town in the former Yugoslavia celebrating a new millennium. It is ten years since bloody civil war tore the Communist federation apart, unleashing horrific ethnic conflict.
“But some legacies are not easily forgotten, especially when the victims find no justice and the so-called victors are unpunished, even rewarded.”
Roll forward to 2008: “All around the world, greed-fuelled banking systems are collapsing, creating new victims among the ‘little people’ who trusted in their institutions and leaders. New winners and losers, all over the world.
“But some people never accept losing. It’s not just the corrupt bankers who seek to claw back what they can. The stage is set in an isolated cottage by the sea for further crimes against the best sides of human nature: love, reconciliation and compassion. Or perhaps, this time, for redemption.”
Martin was captivated immediately by Tim’s compelling story on two grounds. “Sea Stones delves into the intricate tensions and dynamics between fathers and their daughters, a theme that resonated deeply with me as I’m the proud father of three girls,” he says.
Money talks in Sea Stones: Mick Liversidge’s Phil Goodman and Raqhael Harte’s Sophie Goodman in negotiation with Ian Giles’s Ratko Ilich. Picture: Chris Mackins
“This is also a story how history never quite dies. My personal experience as an aid worker during the Yugoslav Civil War [travelling from Leeds in 1992 to bring refugees from Bosnia to the UK] provided me with a profound understanding of the challenging circumstances the characters in the play find themselves in.
“Even in 2023, the world continues to grapple with the same issues that the play addresses. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine serves as a stark reminder that war and its aftermath still haunt us. That’s why we’re so excited to bring Sea Stones to life on stage, setting free the power of theatre to illuminate and provoke thought about the enduring challenges our world faces.”
Tim felt “more poacher than gamekeeper” when writing Sea Stones. “My career as a published writer has been exclusively as a novelist,” he says. “Eight in print to date, two of them translated into Chinese.
“I have written stories about Ancient China, a dystopian Yorkshire, even silent cinema musicians in York, but I had never written a play. So it came as a surprise when I found myself scribbling down stage directions, then dialogue, that would emerge as Sea Stones.
“It began with a man in a lonely cottage by a pebbly beach startled by the arrival of a car where no-one comes. Dark memories of the Yugoslav Civil War and anger at injustices in the world crept into his home with the sound of waves grinding the shingle.
“Then came a long-lost daughter corrupted by money and greed, dragging far worse in her wake, and the stage was set for conflict: love, morality, and bare survival. As the character Phil Goodman says: ‘Sometimes we touch, connect, brought together by the tide. Sometimes we grind each other into sand like millstones. Sometimes we just break apart’.”
First play for Tim, first stage directing challenge for Martin: “I’ve directed film before, which is completely different,” he says. “I never thought I’d enjoy theatre because it’s so ephemeral, whereas you put everything into getting the image right, you film it and it’s there forever.
“However, what I’ve learned with this production is that theatre’s ephemeral nature is what it’s about, being in the now, what’s going on live in front of you. I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’ve become a volunteer at Theatre@41, doing tech work, working behind the bar. I just love it.
The other father and daughter: Ian Giles’s Ratko Ilich and Polina Bielova’s Jane Ilich in Sea Stones. Picture: Chris Mackins
“The fact that Sea Stones is a great play and we’ve got great actors helps as well! I’ve been with this play for over a year, and still the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when I hear certain lines being said.”
Whether as a novelist, or now as a playwright, Tim says: “At the heart of all this writing is storytelling. If you think about how humans understand the world, it’s through stories, with bigger narratives in plays and novels.
“With novels, you can use descriptions, whereas plays rely on what’s being stated or implied by the characters in speech, so the real challenge was to make sure the play’s dialogue was naturalistic, but not too naturalistic because I wanted to have deeper philosophical and emotional layers to the characters’ experiences.”
Sea Stones has taken three years to evolve. “That’s when Tim first contacted me and sent me a copy of the original script,” recalls Martin. “I read it but just didn’t think I’d be the one to stage it. But then Covid came along, and afterwards I just wanted to do something different after the film.
“Tim contacted me again, we got some actors together, did some readthroughs and made sure that the heart of the story would remain, but we would need to lose some of the dialogue to make it more pacy.”
Further challenges were to secure a theatre for the production and to find the right cast. Tick and tick, albeit with changes in one role. “We’ve ended up with the highly experienced Ian Giles as our fourth iteration of Ratko Ilich,” says Martin. “He’s bringing a level of confidence to the role that we were struggling with before, and lots of humour too, and we have an ensemble that gets on really well.”
Ian has made such an impact that Tim is writing a role expressly for him in his next play. Meanwhile, Tim and Martin have found a way to integrate Polina Bielova’s operatic singing in Sea Stones. “I can guarantee people will have tears in their eyes,” says Tim.
Actress and yoga teacher Raqhael Harte brings 15 years of acting and performance studies, coupled with a few years of York productions, to her role as troubled daughter Sophie. “She’s a Scottish actress and when she auditioned, I just loved her accent and knew it work really well in the play,” says Martin. “Her character is jarring, and her voice can be quite jarring too, so she’s the whole package.”
“These characters can be contradictory in their beliefs and behaviour because people are contradictory,” says Sea Stones playwright Tim Murgatroyd
Summing up his play, Tim says: “Essentially it’s about two parallel father-daughter relationships, with each one casting light on the other, and from that they learn lessons, some hard, some redemptive, but all of them life-changing.
“In many ways, the play is designed to work on two levels: the parent/child relationships and the wider content of the world, referring to the Yugolsav war and to the 2008 banking crisis, with questions about corruption and human behaviour in a difficult, flawed world.
“That makes it incredibly relevant to today, where there’s corruption that’s pretty much not even hidden now, and all the violence and war that we see on our TV screens every night. We ask, ‘are we powerless? What can a good parent do?’.”
Important to Tim too was the need to make the characters believable. “Looking at human nature, these characters can be contradictory in their beliefs and behaviour because people are contradictory, and you have to get that complexity across – which can be challenging for everyone involved, not only the writer.
“What I’m hoping the audience will take from the play is not only an emotional journey but also a lot of tension because the potential for violence is always lurking in what I’ve written, so in that sense it’s not just about their relationships but also about survival.”
As indicated by the title, the sea is a significant character in the play too. “A lot of the meaning of the play comes from the dialogue, but plenty will come from metaphors too, where you’re trying to connect the audience with places and feelings they have experienced. The sea is perhaps the best example of that,” says Tim. “It represents movement and change, and characters being swept along by the tide of history.”
From the moment of arrival in the John Cooper Studio, audiences will be surrounded by the rhythmic roll of crashing waves with the high tide on its way. “I love the sound of the sea, and we use it as background in pretty much all the scenes set at the cottage,” says Martin.
The poster for Lumar Productions’ Sea Stones at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York
Tim adds: “It’s almost like a musical soundtrack in this play. There’s a theory that we evolved from aquatic apes and that’s why we have this immediate bond with the sea.”
Sea Stones is “as uncomfortable as possible” for the audience, or “intimate”, as Tim prefers to describe the viewing experience. “By creating four contrasting characters, I can show the different facets of humanity, so we see good in the play, sometimes incredibly heroic good deeds, but also the bad in people, the potential for corruption, which creates dramatic tension,” Tim concludes.
Lumar Productions present Sea Stones,Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight (14/11/2023) to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk. Running time: 100 minutes plus interval.
Back story: Lumar Productions
SMALL independent film, video and theatre production company dedicated to creating innovative content and storytelling, delivered with energy and passion. Its latest film feature, Wiccan, is scheduled for release in 2024.
The company is run by Martin Handsley, an IT professional, who reinvented himself after a life-altering event as an actor, writer, producer and director.
Writer’s profile: Tim Murgatroyd
READ English at Hertford College, Oxford University, and now lives with his family in York. Internationally acclaimed author of several novels of historical fiction, a dystopian series, whose latest novel, October 2022’s The Electric, is set in the glamorous world of silent cinema in York in 1919.
Former weekly columnist for The Press, York.
Sea Stones is his first play. His next novel, Dust Of The Earth, will be published next year.
For a preview of Sea Stones, visit: https://youtu.be/pviM6iKB0dw
