Category: Theatre

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REVIEW: Black Sheep Theatre Productions in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York *** 1/2

Ayana Beatrice Poblete’s Esmerelda in Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. All pictures: Ryan Healey

THIS is Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ biggest show – by far.  Company founder and director Matthew Peter Clare has assembled five leads, an ensemble of seven and a choir of 23; numbers to match the grandeur of Notre Dame cathedral.

Alas ticket booking has not been of a matching scale: last Thursday’s first night and Sunday’s two shows were pulled, and maybe Black Sheep are unfortunate to be playing against the irresistible tidal wave of SIX The Musical’s sold-out return to the Grand Opera House this week.

Or, sometimes, who knows why, a show just does not light a flame at the box office, but in the case of ‘Hunchback’, that is baffling. Both Victor Hugo’s 1831 source novel and Disney’s animated 1996 film are ever popular, and the stage show is all the better for adding more Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz songs and for being closer in tone to the book.

Imagine a show more aligned to the dramatic heft and impassioned song of another French tale, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les Miserables, et voila, ‘Hunchback’.

The people of Paris taunting Jack James Fry’s Quasimodo in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

“Our mission has been art with a point,” says Clare, who relocated Black Sheep to York in 2022 from Lancashire beginnings. “Art that matters and art that connects with the human experience, in its glories or its pain.”

In those words in his programme note, you can hear his zeal for making theatre that “speaks to the heart of everyone watching” and see why he wanted to present ‘Hunchback’ as his next big challenge, one that could not be more topically timed in light of the rising intolerance of immigrants and “otherness”.

Clare’s resulting choral production is not only his largest but his most ambitious too, hence the big cast that must be accommodated on the JoRo stage, making their entry, heads covered, in cloaks, mysterious and full of foreboding.

Like a church building, he has kept much of the stage bare, save for scaffolding that provides a mezzanine level for the cathedral bell tower and a row of church pews to either side below.

Robbie Wallwork’s Captain Phoebus in an ensemble number in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

The choir either stands behind them or beneath the scaffolding, in view but always rather distant, to the extent that it is not always clear who is singing when it is a solo voice.

Furthermore, on press night, that individual singing could not always be heard, although one should make allowance for technical tweaks to remedy what is a difficult sound balance with so many players on the fringes of the stage.

I stress, however, that there was no deficiency in commitment, and the presence of a choir adds a new element to Black Sheep. Hopefully, their impact can be at full throttle for the rest of the run in Ollie Nash’s sound design.

Clare is an audaciously talented musical director, and here he leads his 13-strong band through the intricacies of Menken’s score with elan. Every gorgeous note, every soaring climax, breathes with passion and the highly technical playing is beautifully balanced, heart-felt, dynamic, moving.     

At the double: Jack James Fry as Quasimodo and Dan Poppitt as the Voice of Quasimodo, a five-star partnership at the heart of Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ show

The big talking point, the big selling point too, is the role of Quasimodo, here impeded more by loss of hearing from all that bell ringing than his bodily disfigurement that does not rob him of his extraordinary physical strength. He is isolated by his powers to communicate being so denuded.

Quasimodo is played by two actors; one, the deaf Jack James Fry, being his physical embodiment, utilising British Sign Language that has sound and fury, but huge human heart too, signifying everything as Quasimodo craves understanding and acceptance.  He can sure swing a bell rope too.

The other, Dan Poppitt, is Quasimodo’s voice, interpreting the sign language in speech and song by Fry’s side. Poppitt has been a rising light on the York stage as Tunny in Green Day’s American Idiot, Alonso in The Tempest and Roger in Rent. Now he rises higher still, whether mirroring Fry’s movements or in the show’s most powerful, dramatic singing.  What a magnetic, heartbreaking partnership he and Fry make.

Quasimodo’s fellow “outsider”, the gypsy dancer Esmerelda, is played with fearless fervour by Filipino-born Ayana Beatrice Poblete, while Emily Pratt’s Florika has the show’s outstanding female voice, classically pure in tone.

Jack James Fry’s Quasimodo and Emily Pratt’s Florika

Robbie Wallwork’s Captain Phoebus, caught between the romantic heroic figure of the Disney film and the flash vainglorious womaniser of Hugo’s novel, favours the former but his performance could be more assertive.

James Robert Ball, ever nimble, quick, light as a Malteser, recalls his Puck in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in May, taking the narrator’s role as Clopin Trouillefou, jester, Romani leader and Festival of Fools master of ceremonies, but this time beneath the mischief-making front lies a darker soul, saddened by experience, closer to Cabaret’s Emcee.

Clare plays the joker in casting Jack Hooper as the turbulent Judge Claude Frollo, the embittered Minister of Justice and guardian of Quasimodo.

From such roles as bubbly Mr Poppy in Nativity and the profusely sweaty cop Eddie Souther in Sister Act, we know of his comic prowess, but now he switches to the dark side in a transition to rival Alan Carr’s treachery in Celebrity Traitors. Hell fire, villainy suits him in his buttoned-up, suppressive air, the balloon popper of the piece, topped off by his raging version of Hellfire.

Darkness descends: Jack Hooper’s volte face into villainy as Judge Claude Frollo

In a further directorial decision that pays off, the full “carcase” of the stage is left exposed, and so we can see the flymen, Jon Drewry and Georgia Legg, in action on the ropes, pulling both a stained glass window and three bells of Notre Dame into view, matching Quasimodo’s own rope work.

Adam Kirkwood’s lighting design works best in scenes of close-up focus but less so for the choir, lost in the shadows. Charlie Clarke’s choreography, however  draws the production forward to fill the stage with life in big numbers, as if in defiance of Frollo.

Take a hunch by ignoring the disappointing box office so far and booking to see the Hunchback, especially for Fry & Poppitt.

Black Sheep Theatre Productions in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 7.30pm, Tuesday to Saturday, plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 501395 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

James Robert Ball’s Clopin Trouillefou and Ayana Beatrice Poblete’s Esmerelda at the Court of Miracles in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

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Badapple Theatre Company’s study of celebrity comes with live baking in Crumbs

Ellen Carnazza’s Petronella Parfait mid-sprinkle in Badapple Theatre Company’s new baking comedy Crumbs

THE long-awaited sequel to Badapple Theatre Company’s groundbreaking “live baking” hit comedy is on tour until October 26 and heading to York Theatre Royal next May.

Crumbs, a one-woman show starring Harrogate actress Ellen Carnazza from the pen of Green Hammerton writer-director Kate Bramley, features baking on stage for the audience to taste, as the story of former TV baking show host Petronella Parfait unfolds.

After being “let go” from a high-profile TV show under dubious circumstances, Petronella is trying to re-style herself within the fast-paced and cut-throat world of influencers and social-media millionaires.

“It’s always fun to create a villain as a lead character,” says Kate. “Especially one who then bakes bread live on stage. We’re very lucky to have the brilliant talent of Ellen in the starring role, and she has proven to be an audience favourite already.”

Follow Petronella Parfait’s slips and trips as she tries to keep the lights – as well as the oven – on in the face of almost certain doom.

Combining comedy, song, original music and bread, Crumbs is touring Yorkshire, Northumberland, the South-West and the Midlands in Badapple’s 27th year of delivering original works “on your doorstep”, placing theatre at the heart of rural community life.

Badapple Theatre Company artistic director and writer Kate Bramley

Here Kate picks up the Crumbs story in discussion with CharlesHutchPress.

What gave you the idea for this show, Kate? The popularity of TV baking/cookery shows? Controversies surrounding presenters? The bread-like rise of influencers?

“So it’s a companion play to Daily Bread that I wrote ten years ago about the financial crash. And yes, the recent controversy about TV hosts and the power of influencers has fed into the story of this character.

“But one of the inspiration points was the court case where four female BBC presenters (Martine Croxall, Annita McVeigh, Karin Giannone and Kasia Madera) claimed they were discriminated against, based on sex and age, when they lost their senior roles at the BBC in 2023 as part of a channel re-launch. 

“This play isn’t about that event, but it did get me thinking about having a female heroine character, who ironically turns out to be a villain in this piece!” 

How would you sum up Crumbs?

 “It’s a study of celebrity, especially those like our heroine who have a flexible relationship with the truth…and how food – and the stories we tell while making it – have a universal language, just like laughter, that brings everyone together.”

Ellen Carnazza? With that surname, she should be an Italian bread! Why did you pick her for the role of Petronella Parfait?

“Ellen is a legend. She’s from Leeds originally, now in Harrogate, who first came to us for The Frozen Roman about four years ago and she’s so talented.

“Her skill with accents, her physicality, clowning techniques and all-round sunny personality have all come into play.

“And thankfully when I told her she had to make bread as well as everything else she wasn’t too scared!”

Ellen Carnazza’s Petronella Parfait kneading the dough in Crumbs

What are the challenges of a solo show, as opposed to your productions with bigger casts? 

“It’s a real challenge for Ellen, no doubt. So what we’ve done to support her is make sure she gets all the tech and tricks, and a beautiful Badapple full set – from AJ Lowe – that our audience have come to expect.

“I really have pushed the boundaries of what one performer can physically achieve as a storyteller…but our audiences have responded amazingly, so I guess we are doing something right!”

Do you bake bread yourself?

“I do. In fact during Covid I bought flour by the sack and kept making it with my son.”

Is there a crumb of comfort to be drawn from Crumbs?!

“I hope so. As you know, we are all about spreading joy to our audiences, and this is one of our most joyous pieces to date. As a contrast to the times we are living in I guess.

“And you get to have a laugh and get free bread, baked by Ellen during the show, so what’s not to like about that?” 

Crumbs plays Green Hammerton Village Hall, near York, on October 14, 7.30pm, sold out ; box office for returns only, 01423 331304.

Further Yorkshire shows will be at Kilham Village Hall, near Bridlington, October 25, 7pm (tickets, 07354 301119) and The Old Girls’ School Community Centre, Sherburn in Elmet, October 26 (tickets, 01977 685178). The show dates for next May at York Theatre Royal are yet to be announced.

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REVIEW: Anna Soden: It Comes Out Your Bum, The Old Paint Shop, York Theatre Royal Studio, October 11

Anna Soden: No bum notes to her songs or scatalogical subject matter

I HAVE in my hand a piece of paper. Or, more precisely, a piece of loo roll, handed out by our jocund hostess for It Comes Out Your Bum, comedian and actress Anna Soden, last seen on the York stage as a talking, trumpet-tooting pantomime cow In Jack And The Beanstalk.

On the sheet, she had written “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” Not as momentous as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s Peace In Our Time document, waved at Heston Aerodrome on September 30 1938: a bum deal when it turned out we were rather more than “halfway there” to the Second World War.

Anna, in party dress and party mood, swished among the tables at York Theatre Royal Studio , re-booted in Old Paint Shop livery for October’s cabaret season of comedy, burlesque and live music. She had penned a loo-roll bon-mot for each of us, a strip of positivity to be shared.

Now based in Brighton, but still bearing her York roots in her frank comedic manner, she had planned a grand entry, but in the absence of a stage curtain, there could be no element of surprise, no hiding place for the pair of buttocks, designed by York puppeteer and fellow comedian Freddie “Does Puppets” Hayes, through which Anna would announce her arrival.

What a bummer? No, she played on the absurdity of it all, having already broken down theatre’s fourth wall by explaining what should have been the ideal opening, establishing her facility for putting the cheeky into the butt cheek.

Poking her trumpet through the backside, she would soon emerge on the front side for an hour of “talking out of my ass”.  And yes, Anna, not to put too fine a word on it, did talk s**t, whether bodily functions of celebrities; stools colour; being caught short (like Paula Ratcliffe, when winning the 2005 London Marathon, she recalled).

She even imagined if we were to excrete flowers instead. Would that be poo-pourri, your reviewer ponders.

On a roll : Anna Soden’s bon-mot handed out to CharlesHutchPress

Not that Anna poo-pooed other subjects. Far from it. She turned herself into a string of sausages for five increasingly surreal minutes; she issued a tongue-deep-in-cheek apology to Andrew Lloyd Webber for dissing his musicals in her comedy videos that went viral on TikTok and YouTube.

Earlier she had made rather shorter shrift of putting down Boris Johnson with a pictorial one-liner and delivered a longer tongue-lashing to the propensity for actors from posh schools to do best, at the expense of state-school talents such as herself.

Albeit with a self-deprecating wink, she bragged of her prowess at slam poetry, duly delivering a fusillade of stream-of-conscious wham-bam-slam raps from audience suggestions. “Planes,” said  one. Planes promptly soared and crashed. Next? “Ships,” chipped in another. “No,” said Anna, sensing one mode of transport was enough. That ship had sailed.

She used the audience regularly, whether asking communal questions for hands-in-the-air answers or inviting individuals to read from her “script” for a “serious” play she was writing. Here is when the show went off-script, impromptu, unpredictable, Anna at her freest to respond how she saw fit. Using the audience, yes, but never going quite as far as abusing the assembled bums on seats.

The pace was snappy, the tone was chatty, the humour batty, peppered with bursts of satirical songs, each preceded by an exhortation for the tech desk to “Hit it”.

And hit the mark, she did. On a night of the scatological, Anna scattered logical thoughts from her playful “brain-bum” about the “been-there-done-that” universality of her subject matter; so much so, she should give herself a PooHD for her “toilet humour”. And there wasn’t a party pooper in the house.

Review by Charles Hutchinson

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Dance show of the week: Shobana Jeyasingh Dance in We Caliban, York Theatre Royal, October 17, 7.30pm; October 18, 2pm & 7.30pm

Natnael Dawit in Shobana Jeyasingh Dance’s We Caliban. Picture: Foteini Christofilopoulou

SHOBANA Jeyasingh, one of the most dynamic and distinctive forces in UK dance, turns her sharp creative eye to Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest, in a new co-production with Sadler’s Wells.

The Bard’s tale of power lost and regained is the starting point for Jeyasingh’s dramatic and contemporary reckoning, We Caliban.  

Written as Europe was taking its first step towards colonialism, The Tempest is Prospero’s story, wherein Caliban, the island’s original native inhabitant, is the enslaved, deformed “son” of the witch Sycorax.

We Caliban is Caliban’s untold story that started and continued long after Prospero’s brief stay, presented by Jeyasingh as “an abstracted and impressionistic take that draws on present-day parallels and the international and intercultural discourse around colonialism, as well as the personal experiences of Jeyasingh and her co-dramaturg Uzma Hameed”. 

Performed by eight dancers, Jeyasingh’s bold and imaginative 80-minute new work is partnered by projections by Will Duke and music by Thierry Pécou. Lighting design is by Floriaan Ganzevoort; set and costume design by Mayou Trikerioti. 

The production is supported by Shobana Jeyasingh Dance’s touring engagement project, Window Into The Tempest. The company is partnering with venues, higher education institutions and dance organisations to deliver tailored participation opportunities for students, early career artists, intergenerational groups and communities to connect with and to gain insight into the creation of We Caliban. 

The York programme, Tempest Rising, is a four-day co-creation project with York St John University students, resulting in a seven-minute curtain-raiser performance before next Saturday’s 7.30pm show, featuring an original score by We Caliban composer Thierry Pécou. 

Next Friday’s performance will conclude with a post-show discussion. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Age guidance: 12 plus.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond monsters, ghosts, banjos and bratwurst. Hutch’s List No. 45, from The York Press

Anna Soden: No bum deal, bum steer or bum’s rush, for that would be a bummer at tonight’s hour of comedy, It Comes Out You Bum, at The Old Paint Shop

FROM royal history re-told to Dickens’ ghost stories, magical monsters to banjo brilliance, Charles Hutchinson delights in October’s diversity.

Homecoming of the week: Anna Soden, It Comes Out Your Bum, The Old Paint Shop, York Theatre Royal Studio, tonight, 8pm

NOW based in Brighton but very much shaped in York, comedian, actor, writer, TikTok sensation and award-nominated Theatre Royal pantomime cow in Jack And The Beanstalk, Anna Soden delivers her debut hour of madcap comedy, full of brainwaves, songs, revenge and talking out your ass. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Robin Simpson: Monster storyteller and York Theatre Royal pantomime dame, performing at Rise@Bluebird Bakery

Spooky entertainment of the week: Robin Simpson’s Magic, Monsters And Mayhem!, Rise at Bluebird Bakery, Acomb, York, Sunday, doors 4pm

YORK Theatre Royal pantomime dame Robin Simpson – soon to give his Nurse Nellie in Sleeping Beauty this winter – celebrates witches, wizards, ghosts and goblins in his storytelling show.

“The audience is in charge in this interactive performance, ideal for fans of spooky stories and silly songs,” says Robin. “The show is perfect for Years 5 and upwards, but smaller siblings and their grown-ups are very welcome too.” Tickets: bluebirdbakery.co.uk/rise.

Out for revenge: Henry VIII’s wives turn the tables in SIX The Musical, returning to the Grand Opera House, York, from Tuesday. Picture: Pamela Raith

Recommended but sold-out already: SIX The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, October 14 to 18; Tuesday & Thursday, 8pm; Wednesday & Friday, 6pm and 8.30pm; Saturday, 4pm and 8pm

FROM Tudor queens to pop princesses, the six wives of Henry VIII take to the mic to tell their tales, remixing 500 years of historical heartbreak into an 80-minute celebration of 21st century girl power. Think you know the rhyme? Think again. Divorced. Beheaded. LIVE!

Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow’s hit show is making its third visit to York, but it’s third time unlucky if you haven’t booked yet. Like Anne Boleyn’s head, every seat has gone.

Eddi Reader: Performing with her full band at The Citadel

Seven-year itch of the week: Hurricane Promotions presents Eddi Reader, The Citadel, York City Church, Gillygate, York, October 15, 7.30pm

EDDI Reader, the Glasgow-born singer who fronted Fairground Attraction, topping the charts with Perfect, also has ten solo albums, three BRIT awards and an MBE for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts to her name.

Straddling differing musical styles and making them her own, from the traditional to the contemporary, and interpreting the songs of Robert Burns to boot, she brings romanticism to her joyful performances, this time with her full band in her first show in York for seven years. Eilidh Patterson supports. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk.

Damien O’Kane and Ron Block: Banjovial partnership at the NCEM

Banjo at the double: Damien O’Kane and Ron Block Band, The Banjovial Tour, National Centre for Early Music, York, October 15, 7.30pm

GROUNDBREAKING  banjo  players Damien O’Kane and Ron Block follow up their Banjophony and Banjophonics albums with this month’s Banjovial and an accompanying tour.

O’Kane, renowned for his work with Barnsley songstress Kate Rusby, is a maestro of Irish traditional music, here expressed on his Irish tenor banjo; Block, a key component of Alison Krauss & Union Station, infuses his signature five-string bluegrass banjo with soulful depth and rhythmic innovation. Together, their styles intertwine in an exhilarating dance of technical mastery. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.

Francis Rossi: Solo show of song and chat at York Barbican. Picture: Jodiphotography

Hits and titbits aplenty: An Evening of Francis Rossi’s Songs from the Status Quo Songbook and More, York Barbican, October 16, 7.30pm

IN his one-man show, Status Quo frontman Francis Rossi performs signature Quo hits, plus personal favourites and deeper cuts, while telling first-hand backstage tales of appearing more than 100 times on Top Of The Pops, why they went on first at Live Aid, life with Rick Parfitt, notching 57 hits, fellow stars and misadventures across the world. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

James Swanton: Halloween beckons, so here comes his double bill of Dickens’ ghost stories at York Medical Society. Picture: Jtu Photography

Ghost stories of the week: James Swanton presents The Signal-Man, York Medical Society, Stonegate, York, October 16, 17, 20 to 23, 7pm; October 27 and 28, 5.30pm and 7.30pm

A RED light. A black tunnel. A waving figure. A warning beyond understanding. Here comes the fear that  someone, that something, is drawing closer. Gothic York storyteller James Swanton returns to York Medical Society with The Signal-Man, “one of the most powerful ghost stories of all time and certainly the most frightening ever written by Charles Dickens”.

Swanton pairs it with The Trial For Murder, wherein Dickens treats the supernatural with just as much terrifying gravity. Tickets update: all ten performances bar October 21 have sold out. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Natnael Dawitin in Shobana Jeyasingh Dance’s We Caliban, on tour at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Foteini Christofilopoulou

Dance show of the week: Shobana Jeyasingh Dance in We Caliban, York Theatre Royal, October 17, 7.30pm (with post-show discussion) and October 18, 2pm and 7.30pm

SHOBANA Jeyasingh turns her sharp creative eye to Shakespeare’s final play The Tempest in a new co-production with Sadler’s Wells. A tale of power lost and regained, the play is the starting point for Jeyasingh’s dramatic and contemporary reckoning, We Caliban.

Written as Europe was taking its first step towards colonialism, The Tempest is Prospero’s story. We Caliban is Caliban’s untold story that started and continued long after Prospero’s brief stay. Performed by eight dancers, complemented by Will Duke’s projections and Thierry Pécou’s music, this impressionistic work draws on present-day parallels and the international and intercultural discourse around colonialism, as well as Jeyasingh’s personal experiences. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

John Bramwell: Playing solo in Pocklington

As recommended by Cate Blanchett: John Bramwell, Pocklington Arts Centre, October 17, 8pm

HYDE singer, song-spinner and sage John Bramwell, leading light of Mercury Prize nominees I Am Kloot from 1999 to 2014 and screen goddess Cate Blachett’s “favourite songwriter of all time”, has been on a never-ending rolling adventure since his workings away from his cherished Mancunian band.

His sophomore solo album, February 2024’s The Light Fantastic, will be at the heart of his Pocklington one-man show. . “After both my mum and dad died, I started writing these songs to cheer myself up,” Bramwell admits with trademark candour. “The themes are taken from my dreams at the time. Wake up and take whatever impression I had from what I could remember of my dream and write that.” He promises new material and Kloot songs too. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

Velma Celli: York drag diva lighting up Yorktoberfest at York Racecourse. Picture: Sophie Eleanor

Festival of the week: Yorktoberfest, Clocktower Enclosure, York Racecourse, Knavesmire, York, October 18, 1pm to 5pm and 7pm to 11pm; October 24, 7pm to 11pm; October 25, 1pm to 5pm and 7pm to 11pm

MAKING its debut in 2021, Yorktoberfest returns for its fifth anniversary with beer, bratwurst and all things Bavarian. Step inside the giant marquee, fill your stein at the Bavarian Bar with beer from Brew York and grab a bite from the German-inspired Dog Haus food stall.

The Bavarian Strollers oompah band will perform thigh-slapping music and drinking songs; York drag diva Velma Celli will add to the party atmosphere with powerhouse songs and saucy patter. Doors open at 6.30pm and 12.30pm. Tickets: ticketsource.co.uk/yorktoberfest.

In Focus: Charlie Higson and Jim Moir: A Very Short But Epic History Of The Monarchy, York Theatre Royal, Oct 13, 7.30pm

In the frame: Author Charlie Higson and artist Jim Moir discuss royalty and comedy at York Theatre Royal on Monday

36 kings. Five queens. Two comedy legends. Join Charlie Higson and Jim Moir (alias Vic Reeves) for the rip-roaring story of every English ruler since Harold was shot in the eye at the Battle of Hastings.

Higson has always been interested in the story of the fabled English monarchy: from the b*stardly to the benevolent,the brilliant to the brutal. “Far from being a nice, colourful pageant of men and women in funny hats waving to adoring crowds, it’s a story of regicide, fratricide, patricide, uxoricide and mariticide (you might have to look those last two up),” he says.

Launched for the coronation of his namesake King Charles III, Charlie’s podcast Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee takes a deep dive into the murky lives of our monarchs. Now, his new book of the show features illustrations by artist Jim Moir, his compadre in comedy.

On Monday, Charlie and Jim will first share stories from their comic collaborations over 30 years, including Shooting Stars, Randell And Hopkirk Deceased and The Smell Of Reeves and Mortimer. Then they will take the plunge into the storied history of this most treasured of institutions. Bloody treachery? Check. Unruly incest? Check. Short parliaments? Check. A couple of Cromwells? Check.

Their rip-roaring journey takes in the Normans, Tudors and Stuarts, not to mention the infamous Blois (how can we forget them?), tin an “utterly engrossing and grossly entertaining primer on who ruled when and why – with never-before-seen illustrations”!

A signed copy of Higson & Moir’s book Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee: An Epically Short History Of Our Kings and Queens (RRP £22) is included when purchasing Band 1 (£55) tickets, available for collection on the night. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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Courtney Brown directs Pickering Musical Society for first time in My Favourite Things – The Music of Rodgers & Hammerstein

Courtney Brown: Directing Pickering Musical Society for the first time in My Favourite Things – The Music of Rodgers & Hammerstein. Picture: Robert David Photography

PICKERING Musical Society opens an exciting new chapter in its history when staging My Favourite Things – The Music of Rodgers & Hammerstein at the Kirk Theatre from October 15 to 19.

For the first time, long-time member Courtney Brown takes the reins as director, while society stalwart and theatre manager Luke Arnold steps into the assistant director’s role to support and guide her in this transition.


Next week’s production marks an inspiring milestone for both the society and Courtney. After serving as assistant director for 2024’s sold-out  Wonders Of The West End, she moves centre stage creatively, shaping a production that promises to be vibrant, polished and heartfelt .

Courtney is relishing the challenge: “It has been such a joy to step into the director’s role and watch this production grow from the rehearsal room into a fully staged concert,” she says.

Poppy Coulson-Arnold, left, and Ruby Featherstone in My Favourite Things – The Music of Rodgers & Hammerstein. Picture: Robert David Photography

“The cast has been incredibly supportive, and seeing everything come together – the  music, the costumes, the choreography – is just magical.

“I feel so grateful to have Luke by my side, offering his experience and encouragement. It’s a true team effort.”

Luke, who has directed many of the society’s productions, has embraced his mentoring role with enthusiasm. “Courtney has a wonderful eye for detail and a real passion for musical theatre,” he says.

“It has been a pleasure to guide her through the process and watch her flourish as a director in her own right. I’m proud of what she and the whole team are achieving. This is going to be a very special show.”

Members of the Pickering Musical Society Junior Chorus with Susan Smithson. Picture: Robert David Photography

Running for six performances, My Favourite Things – The Music of Rodgers & Hammerstein will showcase the very best of Broadway’s most iconic songwriting partnership.

Audiences can expect a glittering selection of much-loved numbers, from the cheeky charm of Honey Bun and the playful fun of The Lonely Goatherd to the rousing barn-dance energy of The Farmer And The Cowman.

Alongside these highlights, the evening will feature songs from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s most famous shows, including The Sound Of Music, Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King And I and more.

The concert brings together the heart, humour and sweeping romance of the golden age of musicals, ensuring there is something for everyone — whether you know every word or are discovering these timeless songs for the very first time.

Will Smithson, left, and Jack Dobson in Pickering Musical Society’s My Favourite Things – The Music of Rodgers & Hammerstein. Picture: Robert David Photography

The company of singers will be accompanied by an orchestra under the baton of Clive Wass, who has reassembled the musicians who wowed audiences at Hello, Dolly! earlier this year. 

Adding sparkle and spectacle, dancers from the Sarah Louise Ashworth School of Dance will light up the stage with elegant and vibrant choreography. Their energy and artistry will bring a dynamic, visual flourish to the evening, complementing the glorious Rodgers & Hammerstein score.

The production will feature a minimalistic but striking set, built by the society’s dedicated Saturday morning volunteers, led by Rob Thomas. This clever design provides the perfect canvas for the music and performances to shine, while still delivering visual impact.

The society’s team of skilled technicians will transform the stage with lighting, special effects, and even a spectacular video wall, creating an immersive concert atmosphere.

Verity Roffe in Pickering Musical Society’s My Favourite Things – The Music of Rodgers & Hammerstein. Picture: Robert David Photography

Courtney reflects on the rehearsals: “The first time we put costumes, lights, and music together, everything suddenly came alive,” she says. “It felt like we’d stepped into the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals themselves. That’s the moment I realised how special this production is going to be.”


Luke adds: “Our society has always been about giving people opportunities, whether it’s new performers on stage, new musicians in the pit, or new directors stepping forward. Seeing Courtney grow into this role has been a privilege, and I know audiences are going to be amazed by what she and the whole team have achieved.”

Pickering Musical Society presents My Favourite Things – The Music of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kirk Theatre, Pickering, October 15 to 19, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee.

Tickets update: selling fast. Box office: 01751 474833, kirktheatre.co.uk or in person at Kirk Theatre box office (Tuesdays, 11am to 1pm).

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REVIEW: Frantic Assembly in Lost Atoms, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday *****

Intertwined: Joe Layton’s Robbie and Hannah Sinclair Robinson’s Jess in Frantic Assembly’s Lost Atoms. Picture: Scott Graham

RELATIONSHIP two-handers keep popping up on the York Stage in recent years, just as Normal People and One Day’s young lovers top the TV viewing charts.

First, in March 2022, came  the multiple universes in Black Treacle Theatre’s York premiere of Nick Payne’s Constellations at Theatre@41, Monkgate, where each scene, such as the first meeting, the first date and breaking up, unfolds in several different ways, showing how nothing is necessarily ‘meant to be’, not least a crisis that could mean the end of their time together.

Next, in November that year, White Rose Theatre staged The Last Five Years, Jason Robert Brown’s sung-through American musical with the novel structure of struggling actress Cathy telling her side of the story from the end of the relationship backwards, while, at the other end of the stage, successful young novelist Jamie does so from the start forwards, as he lands a publishing deal at 23.

Now comes physical theatre specialists Frantic Assembly’s boy-meets-girl tale, or enervated man meets sparky younger woman, if you prefer, in the London company’s 30th anniversary show in a co-production with Curve, Leicester, Mayflower, Southampton and the Lyric, Hammersmith.

Payne and Brown’s works were both festooned with multiple awards. Anna Jordan’s Lost Atoms is at least their equal and could well be the best of the three in terms of capturing the essence of a life-changing relationship through physicality. When words fail, physical expression takes over, much like how discord in discourse leads to outbursts of singing in opera and musical theatre.

In this truly memorable memory play, the present keeps being interrupted, even elbowed aside, by recollections of a past that began with a chance meeting, sharing a mobile hotspot, in a cafe where Jessie (Hannah Sinclair Robinson) had temped for four years. So stop-starts a run of awkward dates with Robbie (Joe Layton), but gradually blossoming love too.

Is this the stuff of fairy tales, asks Jordan, or maybe of grimmer tales that avid researcher Jess bemoans have had their guts pulled out? Recollection by recollection,  it becomes apparent that both protagonists/antagonists are remembering  their version of the past in accounts that differ. Whose version should we trust, where does the truth lie and why do we need to re-write and embellish what has gone before – and to keep re-writing it every time we recall it? Maybe because the truth is too painful?

Do Jess and Robbie doubt each other or, increasingly, doubt themselves? Can there be a reliable witness in matters of the heart and do we ever really understand love?

For all the clash of present and past, symbolised by flashes of light and soundwaves, everything is played out  in chronological order: love’s vicissitudes; connection and disconnection; Robbie’s preference for staying in, Jess’s need for night outs; parental relationships and pregnancy; infidelity and Robbie’s request of this reunion meeting.

Jordan’s text, as full of frank humour as much as heartbreak, is seductive and insightful in  its own right as she explores how two people’s “perceptions of romantic love affected their experiences”, but works all the better for its symbiosis with Frantic’s theatrical house style. Or, as she puts it, “I am drawn to Frantic’s extraordinary ability not just to tell a story but to create feeling on stage.

“I’m always trying to find words for the things that seem impossible to describe, and I love to watch Frantic find language to describe these things through movement.”

Movement that, in the process, really lifts the impact of the language – and I do mean ‘lifts’. Scott Graham’s movement direction plays out on Andrzej Goulding set, dominated by a towering wall of filing cabinets that serves as a climbing frame for Layton’s Robbie and Sinclair Robinson’s Jessie to go clambering hither and thither, to almost dizzying effect at times, as they express a multitude of emotions from giddy joy to guttural pain, playful fun to vulnerable fall-outs, cautious start to implosive finale.

A floor drops out of the structure like a modern-day drawbridge, for sensual bedroom scenes and scrambling precipice friction alike. Drawers open, sometimes to be used as seats, more often for access to props, clothing, photos, mementoes of childhood and past pursuits that serve as welcome or unwelcome memory triggers and glowing light bulbs that set off new patterns of thoughts. Two armchairs complete the set, theatrically large to emphasise how their every reconfiguration carries significance.

Layton and Sinclair Robinson had worked together previously in Frantic’s Othello and Metamorphosis and that familiarity oozes through their kinetic, magnetic performances in Lost Atoms as, in Jordan’s words, they “recreate the extraordinary energy of falling in love, in a way that is recognisable and palpable for the audience.”

How right she is. Lost Atoms is a love story familiar in its course and feelings, but told in a thrillingly bold way, with feeling, energy and infinite hope from lessons learned for the next wall to climb, the next life file for the cabinet.

Frantic Assembly in Lost Atoms, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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How Anna Soden had the brainy idea of making an ass of herself in It Comes Out Your Bum at The Old Paint Shop

Anna Soden spouts forth in It Comes Out Your Bum

ANNA Soden was last seen on the York Theatre Royal stage as a pantomime cow.

An award-nominated bovine, no less, playing Dave The Talking Cow and Dave the Trumpet-playing Cow, to boot, in Jack And The Beanstalk in the winter of 2023-2024. And neither the back end of a panto cow, nor the front, but a full-on singing, dancing, chatterbox cow.

Now the York-raised, Brighton-based actor, comedian, musician and writer with ten million views for her comedy videos on TikTok and Instagram is returning to her home city to present her madcap debut comedy show, It Comes Out Your Bum, on night three of the new Old Paint Shop season of burlesque, comedy and live music in the Theatre Royal Studio.

Without further delay, let’s address the show title. “Anna’s brain is a bum – Come see all the nice things that come out of it!” reads the tagline on the Theatre Royal website. Cue an hour of songs, revenge and yes, “talking out your ass”.

Anna Soden as Dave The Talking Cow in Jack And The Beanstalk at York Theatre Royal in December 2023-January 2024: Nominated in Best Supporting Artist category at 2024 UK Pantomime Awards

Explain yourself, Anna. “Well, this show has been quite a long process,” she says. “Initially, as long ago as 2018, I thought, ‘why is no-one making a show about poo?’. So, I’ve been writing and re-writing it for years, starting off as a show about poo, then it became poo material, not gross, but really stupid toilet humour, which I love, and a musical fever dream too.”

A work-in-progress version of the show ran in the Wee Yurt at Hoots@Potterrow at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe, billed as: “Girls aren’t allowed to talk about poo. Even though we all do it! Is Anna sensitively exploring how we’ve managed to gender a universal body function? Or is she just talking about how she used to fancy Milo from the Tweenies and pretending to be the tiny nerdy man that lives in all the calculators in the world? Maybe both!”

The show has moved on again. “I had a chat with a comedian who said ‘you can’t call a show ‘Poo’ because there are so many rules to comedy’, but I’ve been doing so much stand-up comedy and so much new material has emerged since then for the show. It’s now a celebration of the weird stuff that comes out of my brain-bum!

“I think It Comes Out Your Bum is such a life-affirming title. It might put people off, but I don’t mind that. If you don’t feel the title’s not for you, I still don’t think that means it’s not a show for you. Maybe it’s just stubbornness on my part, but I just think it’s funny – and it sparks a lot of questions!”

“You have to find yourself funny because you have to spend so much time with yourself,” reasons comedian, writer, actress and writer Anna Soden

What’s more, “I enter the stage coming through a giant-sized bum made by Freddie Hayes [the York puppeteer and fellow comedic talent behind such shows as Potatohead and The Magic Lady}. It then just sits on stage and I make a bit of a joke about that.”

Anna’s progression into stand-up comedy has been a “natural step”, she says.  “I was enjoying doing a lot of comedy stuff in my acting, though I was also writing serious plays [her adaptation of Five Children And IT and her folk musical Mad For Our Daughters], but I really enjoy stand-up as it scratches an itch that theatre doesn’t.

“Theatre makes you have to be earnest, and I respect that as a jobbing actor, whereas there are no rules to comedy, performing solo, which makes me a better jobbing actor because it keeps my naughtiness, my playfulness, alive – and as a jobbing actor, I’m happy to collaborate with others.”

Performing comedy could be a lonely experience, but Anna takes it in her stride. “The feeling of fear is not that deep,” she says. “If you bomb, it’s not an attack on you personally. It’s just that those people on that night didn’t find it funny. It’s not that deep!

Anna Soden in rehearsal for her adaptation of Five Children And IT

“I was very serious at drama school. I just wanted to do Ibsen plays, and I did that for two years, but you’ve got to have variety – and also I think I have an excellent sense of humour, so why wouldn’t I want to use that?! You have to find yourself  funny because you have to spend so much time with yourself!”

After six successive years of pantomime commitments, Anna will be taking a break this winter. “I did have a couple of offers, including a big Georgian panto, and I’ve loved doing them, but I don’t want my year to revolve around panto,” she says.

“I’ve started being part of the Future Theatre Makers cohort of associate artists, where Chichester Festival Theatre is giving each of us theatre mentorship and then we each write and put on a show in 2027. We’re given funding to support our involvement, enough not to do a panto in a random town.

Anna had planned to do a month-long tour of It Comes Out Your Bum shows. “But then I got cast in Ian Jarvis’s play Steve And Stuff Forever at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, where I was for six weeks,” she says.

Anna Soden’s fairy with her fellow York Theatre Royal Travelling Pantomime cast members, Robin Simpson’s dame, Faye Campbell’s hero, Reuben Johnson’s villain and Josh Benson’s comic turn, in 2020

Robin Simpson’s dame, Anna Soden’s fairy, Faye Campbell’s hero and Reuben Johnson’s villain“It was a romantic play, where I played Steff, not a manic pixie dream-girl, but a spontaneous, free-spirited, heart-on-your-sleeve girl, whereas Steve was very serious and very sensible, planning everything. Classic rom-com!”

What should Saturday’s audience expect in It Comes Out Your Bum? “Don’t expect any narrative or any big meanings. It’s just an hour of ‘stupidness’; five minutes where I pretend to be a sausage; five minutes where I apologise to Andrew Lloyd Webber for what I said about him in my videos, and lots of songs.”

Anna Soden: It Comes Out Your Bum, The Old Paint Shop, York Theatre Royal Studio, Saturday (11/10/2025), 8pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

“Don’t expect any narrative or any big meanings. It’s just an hour of ‘stupidness’,” says Anna Soden of her hour-long comedy show It Comes Out Your Bum

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REVIEW: Griffonage Theatre in FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Sat ***

Making a splash: Katie Leckey’s Darby and Ben Koch’s Taig in The Bogie Men in Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold showcase of Lady Augusta Gregory plays. Picture: John Stead

THIS is a landmark production by Griffonage Theatre, the York company that likes to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.

Certainly Lady Augusta Gregory’s plays would qualify as unfamiliar, but maybe it is not so strange that they are strangers to the British stage. They were, they are, Irish plays about Irish people for Irish actors and Irish audiences, presented predominantly at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre and in America too but rarely crossing the Irish Sea.

Now, Katie Leckey, Northern Irish actor-director, University of York MA graduate and co-founder of Griffonage Theatre, is presenting her adaptation of four of the late-blooming County Galway playwright’s largely forgotten one-act plays, penned from 1903 to 1914 and never previously staged together over here.

This is a passion project for Leckey, a Lady Augusta enthusiast with plans to study the “criminally under-performed” plays of the Roxborough rural estate dramatist, folklorist and Abbey Theatre co-founder for a PhD. Theatre@41, sure to become increasingly experimental under Tom Bellerby’s directorship, is just the place to dust off her ladyship’s light comedies for reappraisal.

Grace Palma’s Mrs Tarpey and Ben Koch’s James Ryan in Lady Augusta Gregory’s one-act comedy drama Spreading The News. Picture: John Stead

The black-box theatre takes on a traverse configuration, the audience seated to either side of the combustible capers that unfold in Baile Aighneas, or “The Town of Dispute”, as Leckey terms it to reflect how each play is so disputatious.

As presented in the Fay Brothers’ house style at the Abbey Theatre, performances would focus on the storytelling, the voice, the lyrical Irish dialect. Leckey emphasises that too, but rather than “park and bark” theatre, she has favoured the injection of physicality, both in the presentation of that language and in the characterisation, now rooted as much in movement as meter.

You might see parallels with Dylan Thomas’s Welsh village Llareggub in Under Milk Wood; Leckey sees the plays as a “snapshot of a very strange rural Irish town: like Royston Vasey, home of The League Of Gentlemen, meeting Father Ted”.

The League Of Gentlemen is closest to the exaggerated comedic style here, where the comedy may be billed as light but is invariably darker and more heavy handed in performance. The audience laughter comes more from the physicality than Gregory’s often truculent dialogue, penned in Irish dialect but now performed in myriad accents.

Clash of coats: James Lee’s Mr Mineog and Katie Leckey’s Mr Hazel, newspaper editors writing each other off in Lady Augusta Gregory’s Coats. Picture: John Stead

What’s more, being convoluted and percussive in sentence structure, its loquacity can make it hard to follow. The tendency is for the playing to be so boisterous in pushing for the laughs that combative voices become cacophonous, but pumping up the volume is no guarantee to tickle the funny bone.

Blarney and bluster are the heartbeat of the four plays, first up the bustling market place of Spreading The News, where town gossip wreaks havoc, rumours spiral beyond control, apples and maybe blood is spilled, tongues wag and Leckey’s tricycle-riding magistrate is a law unto himself, imagination running roughshod over the truth.

Ben Koch’s James Ryan, spiralling around his walking stick, and Grace Palma’s bow-legged, bent-double Mrs Tarpey bring clowning personality to their roles.

Coats has the classic comedic structure of a mix-up: two coats being taken off, then the wrong one being put back on, with a piece of paper in the pocket of each coat now being in the possession of the wrong person.

Cheered to the rafters: Ben Koch’s Hyacinth Halvey in Lady Augusta Gregory’s Hyacinth Halvey at Theatre@41, Monkgate. Picture: John Stead

Caught in a war of words are two highly competitive newspaper editors, James Lee’s Mr Mineog and Leckey’s Mr Hazel, who have brought each other’s obituary notice to their club restaurant, where polite etiquette comes under ever greater threat as the heat and volume rises in the serpentine scheming.

Next stop, the post office, where Hyacinth Halvey (Ben Koch) has sent word he is coming to town. The young dandy’s reputation precedes him, sending the townsfolk into a frenzy, hanging on his every word on arrival, no matter what he says. Wilf Tomlinson’s preening James Quirke comes to the fore too as Koch’s Hyacinth takes everything in his stride.

Leckey and executive producer Jack Mackay’s company like their shows to stand at the intersection of the madcap and the macabre. Gregory tends more towards the madcap, although the macabre, or maybe the grotesque, nudges into Spreading The News and Hyacinth Halvey.   

The climactic two-hander The Bogie Men could be a forerunner of fellow Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s 1952 tragicomedy Waiting For Godot, with its chimney-sweep protagonists, Leckey’s Darby and Koch’s Taig, forging a double act in Vladimir and Estragon mode, in matching brace, shirts, trousers, boots and even battered hats at one point.

Helen Clarke-Neale’s Mrs Delane and James Lee’s Miss Joyce in Griffonage Theatre’s Hyacinth Halvey. Picture: John Stead

Rather than passing the time waiting for Godot, they find themselves at a coach stop, “almost indistinguishably similar” but soon finding mutual reasons to argue and fall out. Again, the volume is turned up as high as Spinal Tap’s “11”, but Koch and Leckey elicit the show’s most successful comic friction.

Helen Clarke-Neale, Emily Carhart and Peter Hopwood add to the ensemble’s colourful characterisation, while James Lee cos-plays mischievously as Mrs Tully and Miss Joyce. 

Joined by Leckey’s lusty vocals for Irish pub songs in the interval, Ayse Kaban-Bowers delights with her fiery fiddle when playing between plays.

Truth be told, FourTold is unlikely to spark a nationwide rush to rediscover Lady Augusta Gregory’s obscure curiosities, but Leckey’s enthusiasm is matched by a cast determined to re-light their fire in explosive fashion.

Griffonage Theatre presents FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Griffonage Theatre’s poster for this week’s quadruple bill of Lady Augusta Gregory comedies at Theatre@41, Monkgate

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York Theatre Royal launches Sleeping Beauty with fire show. Who’s in the cast?

Sleeping Beauty cast members, left to right, Tommy Carmichael, Jennie Dale, Robin Simpson, Aoife Kenny, Sophie Flora and Chris Morgan outside York Theatre Royal. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick Photography

THE York Theatre Royal pantomime cast for Sleeping Beauty has met up for the first time.

In attendance too at the costumed press launch were the regular production team of director Juliet Forster, the Theatre Royal creative director; writer Paul Hendy, artistic director of panto partners Evolution Productions, and choreographer Hayley Del Harrison.

Dressing up for the occasion were Robin Simpson, returning for his sixth year as dame, easy to spot in polka dots as Nurse Nellie; fellow returnee Tommy Carmichael, on daft lad duty as Jangles; CBeebies’ star Jennie Dale, making her very first visit to York ahead of playing Fairy Moonbeam, and Irish-Jamaican actress Aoife Kenny, likewise setting foot in York for the first time, in readiness for her title role (also known as Aurora).

Present too for the photoshoot were ensemble cast members Sophie Flora and Chris Morgan – who will be joined in the show by returnees Charlotte Wood and Christopher Morgan-Shillingford. Turning up the heat in a demonstration on stage was fire act Kris Madden, the bright spark who will be the panto’s variety turn.

He is the fire starter: Kris Madden, the specialist fire act, warms up for his variety turn in Sleeping Beauty at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick Photography

Absent on the day, on account of performing commitments elsewhere, but also confirmed for their Theatre Royal pantomime debuts were West End actress Jocasta Almgill, from East Yorkshire, as wicked fairy Carabosse, and Scott Goncalves, a name familiar to York audiences from his days in York Orchard Musical Theatre Company, Pick Me Up Theatre and York Light Opera Company.

“We’re very excited that Scott will be playing our prince, Prince Michael of Moravia,” said Juliet. “He did a couple of York Light Opera shows here and was one of our young Lancelots when we did The Legend Of King Arthur [July 2013], when Anna Soden and Laura Soper, both now professionals too, were also the cast too. Scott went off to drama school and has been doing musical theatre shows.”

Jennie, from Brighton, has made a habit of playing the fairy in panto, “though I did play the Witch in Hansel & Gretel and the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood, which I absolutely loved, but other than that I’ve always been a goodie,” she said, before heading off to Bradford to rehearse and record this winter’s CBeebies’ pantomime, Cinderella.

“The fairy is a bit of a safety net for children because, when they see me, they know everything will be OK,” says Sleeping Beauty’s Fairy Moonbeam, played by CBeebies star Jennie Dale, PIcture: Charlie Kirkpatrick Photography

“Funnily enough, the character I’m known for on CBeebies is a baddie. I play Captain Captain in Swashbuckle, though I also have my own series called Jennie’s Fitness In Five, five minutes of attempting to get children to do some exercises, where it all goes wrong!

“But in panto I love how the fairy has an important thread that’s carried throughout the performance, explaining to the children what’s going on, but also with lovely humour. She’s a bit of a safety net for children because, when they see me, they know everything will be OK.”

Sleeping Beauty will run from December 2 to January 4 2026. Tickets are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.