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REVIEW: Charles Hutchinson’s verdict on the revival of Roddy Doyle’s Dublin soul musical The Commitments ****  

Ian McIntosh’s Deco: A soul voice to be in heard in the midnight hour…or night and day at the Grand Opera House this week. Picture: Ellie Kurttz

 Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly plus 2.30pm, Thursday and Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/york

RODDY Doyle has resisted any temptation to update his 1980s’ story of the “hardest-working band in Dublin” for its first tour in five years.

“The vibrancy is still there but so is the tension caused by lack of communication,” he reasons. “For instance, will Deco, the obnoxious lead singer, turn up on time? These days, you’d track him down on your mobile in no time at all. But there wasn’t that option in the late-’80s.”

Back then, he chose Sixties’ music – Motown and Memphis soul – for his young, working-class band because “at the time, it felt timeless”. “Thirty-five years later, I was right,” he says.

What’s more, he went for a “a big band with a brass section and [female] backing vocals, as opposed to three or four young men that was the norm back then”. Right choice number two, as confirmed by a passer-by’s terse reaction to three young men busking Depeche Mode’s 1984 synth anthem Master And Servant: “Sh*te”.

Conor Litten’s jazz-filtering Dean and Stuart Reid’s much trumpeted soul brother Joey The Lips in The Commitments. Picture: Ellie Kurttz

The songs of Otis, Wilson, Marvin, Aretha and co are so familiar, more popular than ever, that we are on first-name terms with their makers. Put a multitude of Motown and Memphis staples in one exuberant show, wrapped inside a Dublin comedy drama full of whimsy, wit, pathos, bluster, booze, banter, too much testosterone and a classic rise and fall arc, and here comes a cracking night out, whatever the year. The craic, writ large and loud as Doyle “captures the rhythm of Dublin kids yapping and teasing and bullying”.

Continuity accompanies this revival in other ways too: from the February 2017 tour visit to the Grand Opera House, Andrew Linnie has stepped up from playing silver-tongued dreamer and putative band manager Jimmy Rabbitte to taking over the director’s chair. Meanwhile, Nigel Pivaro follows another Coronation Street alumnus, Kevin Kennedy, into the role of Jimmy’s Da, forever offering curt advice, slumped over a newspaper in his battered seat beneath the stairs.

Represented by Tim Blazdell’s set design of rundown apartment and garage frontages, The Commitments is set in 1986 in the north side of Dublin, where Jimmy Rabbitte (James Killeen), a visionary manager with the lip of a Malcolm McLaren and the cheek of a Stevo, wishes to build a band on the foundation of his black American soul and blues idols: Redding, Pickett, Gaye and Franklin.

His reasoning: the Irish are the blacks of Europe; Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland; northsiders are the blacks of Dublin, and soul music is the politics of the people; a mantra as familiar as the Choose Life speech in Trainspotting.

Dublin double act: Nigel; Pivaro as Jimmy’s Da, left, and James Killeen as Jimmy Rabbitte. Picture: Ellie Kurttz

The show opens with the first sighting of a Christmas party in York in 2022, as a drunken Deco (Ian McIntosh) bursts into the Regency pub and leaps unsteadily onto a table in his Irish football shirt. This bored factory worker has the sweetest of soul voices – “the voice of God”, as soul brother Joey The Lips will say later – but the attitude of an ass-soul: a Deco heading for a decking.

McIntosh’s incorrigible Deco, rather more of a Celtic dish than Andrew Strong’s Meat Loafian frontman in Alan Parker’s 1991 film, has the swagger and soul fervour of Kevin Rowland in Dexys Midnight Runners’ Projected Passion Revue pomp.

Anything but a Rabbitte in headlights, Jimmy holds auditions with clarity of thought and purpose, the Eighties’ wannabees sent packing in a revolving door of a comical scene, each rapid exit accompanied by a withering word or look from Pivaro’s Jimmy’s Da, eyebrows raised as high as Salvador Dali’s.

The last to join is the mysterious, mystical, scooter-riding soul sage Joey The Lips (a sublime Stuart Reid). Trumpet player to the stars, he may be ageing, but soon Joey will be work his way through the backing singers, Natalie (Eve Kitchingman) pocket dynamo Bernie (Sarah Gardiner) and everyone’s crush, Imelda (Ciara Mackey). Are they a chain of fools? Well, who can resist when Joey tries a little tenderness in grey Dublin town? Oh, and, for the record, their take on Chain Of Fools is fab-u-lous. So too is Think.

Scene stealer: Ronnie Yorke’s ska and scar-loving skinhead bouncer Mickah

Rabbitte strives to spark a Dublin soul revolution with the vim of a Bob Geldof, but such a path to soul salvation can never run smoothly, not when band members are as fractious as Deco and drummer Billy (Ryan Kelly), and scene-stealing bouncer Mickah (Ronnie Yorke) is doing his nut.

Doyle’s narrative is lyrical, colourful, impassioned, fiery, furious and funny, if prone to caricature when painted with broader brush strokes on stage, but like a Mickah punch, The Commitments is a knockout. You may not connect with all the cast of rowdies as there are so many, but you will with the way they play.

Favourite songs this time? Proud Mary, Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone and McIntosh’s rendition of It’s A Thin Line Between Love And Hate, a song to define Deco’s antagonistic character.

If you can’t get no satisfaction, then you ain’t got no soul. Make a commitment to see The Commitments. NOW!

Review by Charles Hutchinson

Make a date to see James Killeen’s Jimmy Rabbitte and Ciara Mackey’s Imelda, in a clinch, in The Commitments. Picture: Ellie Kurttz
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One love affair, two accounts, told from opposite directions, make up The Last Five Years in White Rose Theatre’s musical

Simon Radford and Claire Pulpher in rhearsal for White Rose Theatre’s York premiere of The Last Five Years

GIVE a round of applause to actor Simon Radford, who has been travelling back and forth from Edinburgh to rehearse with director and fellow cast member Claire Pulpher for York company White Rose Theatre’s production of The Last Five Years.

One week of crossing and re-crossing the border has been followed by a further week of rehearsals, now in situ in North Yorkshire, but still involving plenty of movement, taking in Our Lady’s Church Hall in Acomb, a day at Ripon Arts Hub, in All Hallowgate, Ripon, followed by two performances there last Thursday and Friday, and a day of rehearsing and filming a promotional video at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York.

From tomorrow until Saturday, Simon and Claire will perform Jason Robert Brown’s emotionally charged American musical there with a six-piece band led by musical director John Atkin, who accompanied the duo on piano in Ripon.

Joining Atkin will be Marcus Bousfield on violin; Rachel Brown and Lucy McLuckie on cello; Paul McArthur on guitar and the ubiquitous Christian Topman on bass.

Claire Pulpher: Actress, director and debutant producer

“It’s been pretty intensive in rehearsal, more like a professional process, crammed into a short time,” says Claire, who plays struggling Ohio actress Cathy Hiatt opposite Simon’s rising novelist, Jamie Wellerstein, as Brown charts the path of two lovers over the course of five years of courting and marriage, trials and tribulations.

She is delighted to be working with Simon as they unite for York’s newest theatre company. “We first met when doing Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods with Pick Me Up Theatre at the Grand Opera House in 2014,” recalls Claire. “The Last Five Years is my favourite show and Simon’s favourite show, and ever since I met Jon Atkin, when he was the musical director for Chess in 2019, we’d wanted to do the show together.

“We thought, ‘let’s make it happen’, and we’ve all put ideas together and it’s somehow happened!”

She first saw the show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008/2009. “But we’ve never seen it done locally, so I set about organising the licence. I’ve directed shows, choreographed shows, but I’ve never produced a show before, so that was a new challenge, me being a novice!

Close together and drifting apart: Simon Radford’s Jamie and Claire Pulpher’s Cathy in a montage of their five-year relationship in Jason Robert Brown’s American musical

“But as a two-person, one-act show, it was affordable, and we didn’t have to panic about getting the rights as no-one else around here was after it,” she says.

“It’s over an hour long, more like 90 minutes with no interval, and when I saw it at the Fringe, it was staged in a pub off the beaten track, and it’s stayed with me as a show ever since.

“The way I saw it presented, the band was on stage and they became immersed in the performance, with each performer singing alone, Cathy to an imaginary Jamie, and vice versa, except in the duets. We’re doing the same.”

In Brown’s theatrical structure, Cathy’s side of the story starts at the end of the relationship; Jamie tells his tale from the beginning, but will they ever meet in the middle in a musical full of laughter, tears and everything in between, played out to a score of upbeat songs and beautiful ballads?

“It’s a rom-com but so relatable as it’s a bit more naturalistic, maybe even uncomfortable,” says Claire Pulpher of The Last Five Years

“It’s a rom-com but so relatable as it’s a bit more naturalistic, maybe even uncomfortable, because we’ve all been through those trials and tribulations,” says Claire. “It’s showing things the creative arts don’t normally show.

“The relationship is seen from each perspective, presented as internal monologues rather than discussions, as they go in opposite directions on the time line with each song.

“Jamie is 23 at the start when he gets his first book deal, and he’s hugely successful from a young age with everything moving so fast that gradually everything spirals out of control. Cathy is struggling in her acting work, and so their career paths are contrasting and are not aligning.”

The Last Five Years will be staged over the next four days with a sound design by Ollie Nash and lighting by Ruth Symington. Tickets for tomorrow to Saturday’s 7.30pm performances and Saturday’s 2.30pm matinee are on sale at tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

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REVIEW: Charles Hutchinson’s verdict on Guy Fawkes, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday ***

The Gunpowder Plotters: Jamie Zubarai’s Kit Wright, left, David Reed’s Guy Fawkes, Robin Simpson’s Robert Catesby, Greg Haiste’s Thomas Percy and Andrew Pollard’s Thomas Winter. Picture: Sam Taylor

Guy Fawkes, Rumours and Rebels season, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly plus 2pm, Thursday and 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

FOR all the teeth-breaking toffee apples, pumpkin soup, fizzing fireworks and sausages – two forms of bangers, if you will – we take Guy Fawkes very seriously in York, more so than that scoundrel Dick Turpin. Born in this city, Christened at St Michael le Belfrey, no effigy burns on Bonfire Night at his old school, St Peter’s (likewise in Scotton, where Fawkes lived in his teenage years).

Yet just as he was mocked for his affected moniker Guido Fawkes, he is ridiculed for the ultimate incompetence of the Gunpowder Plot that ended with the treasonous traitor’s execution in January 1606, along with the hanging, drawing and quartering of his fellow conspirators. Cue comedic stereotyping of Popish knave Fawkes down the centuries.

Like the bungling incompetents in Guy Ritchie’s 1998 crime thriller Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, Fawkes’s story lends itself to black comedy, but like Vinnie Jones’s notorious line, “it’s been personal” for York-born writer and actor David Reed.

He first wrote a radio drama of Guy Fawkes for The Penny Dreadfuls, his troupe of purveyors of historical comedy spoofs, aired in 2009 on BBC Radio 4. Director Gemma Fairlie thought it should transfer to the stage, and rather later than first planned, it now forms Reed’s first stage play, billed as “an explosive new comedy”, one that takes the form of interlocking sketches more than a play in full flow, on Carla Goodman’s revolve set (to signify revolution).

Reed and Fairlie decided it should seek to weave together the two faces of theatre – comedy and tragedy – by combining high farce in the manner of Blackadder, Upstart Crow and Monty Python with the pathos of the futility-of-war finale to Blackadder Goes Forth, forever entrenched in the memory, like the poems of Owen and Sassoon. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder? Seriously serious. One barrel of home brew among them. Comedy! The play seeks a more even balance, but ultimately to the detriment of both, never becoming a tragicomedy.

Lace in brief, witty bursts of metatheatre, referencing Shakespeare’s King Lear, the audience’s changing standards of theatre attire and a nod to Covid naysayers, dismissing the Plague as “a hoax”. Apply Horrible Histories’ flair for debunking history. Toss in a sword fight with The Three Musketeers panache. Crumbs, so much to play with, to squeeze in, so many elements to rub against each other, like sticks to start a fire. More of which later.

A pre-show chat with York actress Florence Poskitt, of musical comedy duo Fladam, and her father revealed he had once written a comedic musical version of Guy Fawkes. So many possibilities, and yes, this Guy Fawkes has music, of the incidental variety in the Jacobean style, by composer and sound designer Eamonn O’Dwyer.

Comic aside: Cassie Vallance’s Martha Percy in her farthingale that requires her to enter sideways. Picture: Sam Taylor

The way it plays out, Reed’s Fawkes treacherous trigger man is the grave one, driven by the detremination to return Roman Catholicism to the throne by blowing up Westminster, haunted by seeing the pregnant Catholic martyr Margaret Clitherow compressed to death in York, struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder from years of fighting in Spain, and now hell-bent on death and destruction back home.

Whereas Rowan Atkinson’s Edmund Blackadder is a cynic, full of putdowns, Reed’s Fawkes is already too damaged to be a clown with a frown. Darkness to the light around him, let others do the historical mockery; he is a man on a mission, and Reed wants us to better understand his motives, to tell his side of the story, to highlight his tragic flaws, rather than merely decry him as a pantomime villain, just as the Richard III Society seeks to paint a fuller picture of another derided son of York, Richard III, to counter the slings and arrows of Shakespeare’s play.

Fawkes is the northern late arriviste to a bunch of southern-softie amateurs: revolutionary fops who gather regularly at their local to discuss and plot James I’s overthrow, keener on the snacks and the gossip than getting the job done under stressed-out, coffee bean-chewing ringleader Robert Catesby (a delightfully nuanced, dyspeptic comedic turn from Robin Simpson, continuing his run of superb autumn performances after a trio of roles in Harrogate Theatre’s H2 Rep season).

Broader comedy is to be mined in Greg Haiste’s blustering, preening Thomas Percy, aping Rik Mayall’s Lord Flashheart with chutzpah; Northern Broadsides favourite Andrew Pollard’s more melancholic, thwarted idealistThomas Winter (of discontent), donning a bear’s costume as a forlorn distraction, and Jamie Zubairi’s camp Kit Wright, still in thrall to Fawkes from York schooldays.

Guy Fawkes is two clashing plays within one, matched by the theatricality of Goodman’s costumes, with the gap being bridged by Cassie Vallance’s Martha Percy, Fawkes’s rekindled love from yore, who begins as a riff on Blackadder’s Queenie, but grows to match Fawkes’s political zeal. Their showdown is Reed’s best scene, one that shows the alternative direction that this play could have taken from the start, potentially far more combustible, more dramatic too, for being more troubled, like Fawkes himself.

Ironically, both in Reed’s script and Fairlie’s direction, the comedy is the play’s stronger suit, but as the plot thickens, the gunpowder never catches fire. Or rather, when it briefly does, symbolically it is stamped out.

Maybe the truth is Guy Fawkes could never be a tragic hero, such were his intentions, but when Reed’s Fawkes says at the close “God, I’m weird”, no-one laughs. In an out-and-out comedy, you would, but the line belongs in a wholly darker drama.

Review by Charles Hutchinson

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REVIEW: York Settlement Community Players in Vanya And Sonia And Masha And Spike, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, today at 2.30pm, 7.30pm ****

Victoria Delaney, left, Sanna Jeppsson and Mick Liversidge in Vanya And Sonia And Masha And Spike. Picture: John Saunders

DURANG? Durang? His name didn’t ring a bell with your reviewer, but Christopher Durang is a Tony Award-winning New Jersey playwright, performed off-Broadway, on Broadway, internationally, in London last year and now in York.

Director Jim Paterson read the award-garlanded Vanya And Sonia And Masha And Spike in lockdown, marking it down as a New York-seeded play demanding discovery in old York in a Settlement Players premiere.

How right he is, his good judgement extending to his casting and directorial choices for a heightened comedic drama that typifies Durang’s predilection for “verging on parody in dealing with issues of mental health, culture and homosexuality”. Or, more expressly here in this 2013 play, modern-day concerns of celebrity, social networking and the troubling onset of middle age in a world blighted with Chekhovian ennui.

Echoes of Neil Simon’s comedies and Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods permeate through Durang’s tale, as does his flair for metadrama. Vanya (Mick Liversidge) and his adopted sister Sonia (Victoria Delaney) were named by their parents after Chekhov characters from Uncle Vanya.

So too was their famous film-star sister Masha (Susannah Baines), from The Seagull. Not so Spike (Andrew Roberts), her latest bit of stud-muffin from La-La-Land, who turns up impromptu with the vainglorious, needy Masha at the Buck County, Pennsylvania farmhouse where the three siblings grew up.

Quietly waspish Vanya and insecure Sonia had already been squabbling over routines; Delaney’s gloriously storm-in-a-teacup Sonia hurling the crockery across the room; Liversidge’s outwardly laissez-faire Vanya having a way of being ever so irritating.

Enter Baines’s look-at-me-me-me Masha – the Norma Desmond of the piece despite her protestations – with plans to sell the house after her new personal assistant, the never-seen Hootie Pie, tells her it is a crippling drain on her finances.

Cue chaos, stirred up further by Sanna Jeppsson’s Cassandra, the hippy home help, who lives up to her name’s Greek mythological origins: the Trojan priestess, whose truthful prophecies are never believed. Durang and in turn the Swedish-born Jeppsson play this to the max, not so much a scene stealer as a show stealer.

That said, the performances all round are terrific, Delaney just as good as she was in Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman In Mind; Liversidge, with his lovely timing; Roberts, as tongue in two-cheeks as he could possibly be, and Baines suitably over the top yet vulnerable.

Here comes the neighbour, the sweet, innocent, star-struck, delicate flower of an aspiring actress Nina (Livy Potter), named after the Chekhov character in The Seagull that Potter just happened to play in Settlement’s February 2020 production! She too is a hoot in this six-of-the-best cast.

As the resentments, rivalries and premonitions bubble away and boil over amid much noise and a bonkers costumed party, Durang explores the theme of longing for the past and yet hoping for a better future with delicious wit, plenty of grit and a sitcom sense of the absurd.

Paterson has played a blinder in introducing Christopher Durang’s work to York. Don’t miss it; the run from Thursday to today is way too short. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond to put colour in Thomas’s black and white world. Hutch’s list No. 105, from The Press

The Commitments: The return of Roddy Doyle’s story of an Eighties’ working-class Dublin band driven by Sixties’ soul power at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Elllie Kurttz

AS The Commitments return, what other commitments would Charles Hutchinson urge you to put in your diary?

Irish craic of the week: The Commitments, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm; 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees

WHEN schoolteacher Roddy Doyle wanted an excuse to bring a bunch of young people together in book form in 1986 to “capture the rhythm of Dublin kids yapping and teasing and bullying”, he decided to find a setting outside school. “That’s when the idea of a band came to me,” he recalls.

Cue a big band with a brass section and backing vocals, playing Sixties’ Motown and Memphis soul “because it felt timeless”. Cue The Commitments, the novel, the Alan Parker film, and the musical, now revived on tour with Corrie’s Nigel Pivaro as Jimmy Rabbitte’s Da and Andrew Linnie in the director’s chair. Box office: 0844 871 b7615 or atgtickets.com/york.

Dave Gorman: Making his stand in Powerpoint To The People

Analytical gig of the week: Dave Gorman, Powerpoint To The People, Grand Opera House, York, tonight, 7.30pm

DAVE Gorman, the comedian behind Dave TV’s show Modern Life Is Goodish, is touring again, determined to demonstrate how a powerpoint presentation need not involve a man in a grey suit standing behind a lectern saying “next slide please”.

“We’ve all had enough of that, so let’s put it all behind us and never speak of it again,” he says. “There are far more important things to analyse.” Well, they are more important in Gorman’s head anyway. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/york.

Oboe player James Turnbull: Performing this evening’s York Late Music concert with pianist Libby Burgess

Power play of the day: York Late Music: Duncan Honybourne, piano, today, 1pm; James Turnbull, oboe, and Libby Burgess, piano, tonight, 7.30pm, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York

AT lunchtime, pianist Duncan Honeybourne plays David Power’s arrangements of David Bowie (Art Decade) and Bowie & Eno (Warszawa), concluding with Harold Budd/Brian Eno/Power’s Mash Up Remembered. Prokofiev and Satie works feature too.

Power gives a 6.45pm talk tonight ahead of James Turnbull and Libby Burgess’s concert, when his composition Imagine Another receives its world premiere, alongside works by Stravinsky, Tansy Davies, Vaughan Williams, Diana Burrell, Britten and Ravel. Box office: latemusic.org or on the door.

Love’s trials and tribulations: Simon Radford’s Jamie and Claire Pulpher’s Cathy in White Rose Theatre’s musical The Last Five Years

Musical love story of the week, White Rose Theatre in The Last Five Years, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm; 2.30pm Saturday matinee

FOR York’s newest stage company, White Rose Theatre, director Claire Pulpher and Simon Radford perform Jason Robert Brown’s emotionally charged American musical, charting the path of two lovers over the course of five years of courting and marriage, trials and tribulations.

Struggling actress Cathy Hiatt’s side of the story starts at the end of the relationship; rising novelist Jamie Wellerstein tells his tale from the beginning, but will they ever meet in the middle? The Last Five Years promises laughter, tears and everything in between in a score of upbeat songs and beautiful ballads. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Mark Thomas in Black And White, seeking answers and finding hope

Political points of the week: Mark Thomas: Black And White, The Crescent, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm

BURNING Duck Comedy Club presents political comedy firebrand Mark Thomas on his Black And White tour, promising “creative fun” as he takes down politicians, mucks about, ponders new ideas and finds hope.

Londoner Thomas asks: how did we get here? What are we going to do about it? Who’s up for a sing-song? “After lockdowns and isolation, this show is about the simple act of being in a room together and toppling international capitalism,” he vows. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

Kaiser Chiefs: All roads lead homewards to Leeds next Saturday. Picture: Edward Cooke

Homecoming of the week: Kaiser Chiefs, plus special guests The Fratellis and The Sherlocks, All Together UK Tour, Leeds First Direct Arena, November 12, 7.30pm

NOW in their 22nd year, Kaiser Chiefs head home to Leeds on their November arena tour, as well as playing Hull Bonus Arena on November 8. “It’s been a while…and we can’t wait to see you all again,” they say. “We’re looking forward to putting on a big KC show. See you there!”

Alongside Yorkshire anthems Oh My God, I Predict A Riot, Everyday I Love You Less And Less and Ruby, listen out for new single How 2 Dance, produced by former Rudimental member Amir Amor as the first taster off their eighth studio album, set for release in 2023 as the follow-up to 2019’s Duck.

“I hope to hear it at weddings, on the radio, and in the last remaining indie discos across the land,” says lead singer Ricky Wilson. “How 2 Dance is about letting go, not worrying about what other people think you should be doing. It may not be the smoothest of journeys, but sometimes you need a bit of turbulence to remind you that you are flying.” Box office: Leeds, firstdirectarena.com; Hull, bonusarenahull.com.

Pulp fact, not fiction: Jarvis Cocker and co’s poster for next year’s comeback shows

Book early for next summer’s comeback: Pulp, Bridlington Spa, May 26 2023, and Scarborough Open Air Theatre, July 9 2023

LET frontman Jarvis Cocker explain why Sheffield’s Pulp have decided to play their first shows since December 2012. “Three months ago, we asked, ‘What exactly do you do for an encore?’. Well…an encore happens when the crowd makes enough noise to bring the band back to the stage,” he says.

“So…we are playing in the UK and Ireland in 2023. Therefore…come along and make some noise. See you there.”. Box office: gigsandtours.com and ticketmaster.co.uk.

Back in action: Ryan Adams to play acoustic solo gig in York next spring. Picture: Andrew Blackstein

York gig announcement of the week: Ryan Adams, York Barbican, April 14 2023

NORTH Carolina singer-songwriter Ryan Adams will play York for the first time since 2011 on his eight-date solo tour next spring, when each night’s set list will be different.

Adams, who visited the Grand Opera House in 2007 and four years later, will perform on acoustic guitar and piano in the style of his spring 2022 run of East Coast American gigs, when he played 168 songs over five nights in shows that averaged 160 minutes.

This year, Adams has released four studio albums: Chris, a tribute to his late brother; Romeo & Juliet; FM, a more traditional rock’n’roll record, and Devolver, given away to fans to mark a year’s sobriety. Box office: ryanadams.ffm.to/tour.OPR and yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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Writer Roddy Doyle is delighted The Commitments musical is on tour again, so good for the soul at Grand Opera House

Ian McIntosh’s Deco and Eve Kitchingman’s Natalie , left, Ciara Mackey’s Imelda and Sarah Gardiner’s Bernie, the not-shy-in-coming-forward backing singers in The Commitments. Picture: Ellie Kurttz

THE Commitments are back on the road in a hit-laden celebration of the bonding powers of soul music, and no-one could be more delighted than creator Roddy Doyle.

“The original stage show in 2013 was a brilliant experience from my point of view,” says the Irish writer. “It stayed in the West End for over two years, then it went on a successful tour.”

Five years on, The Commitments will be touring Britain and Ireland from late-September to July 2023. Next stop: Grand Opera House, York, from November 7 to 12.

Nigel Pivaro, forever associated with playing lovable rogue Terry Duckworth in Coronation Street from 1983 to 2012, takes the pivotal role of Da, Jimmy Rabbitte’s father, while Andrew Linnie, sax player Dean in the original West End production and later Jimmy Rabbitte on tour, is in the director’s seat.

For the West End premiere, Roddy lived in London for 12 weeks, looking on at rehearsals every day, doing daily rewrites. “I attended every preview and then the meetings the next day as we discussed what was and wasn’t working,” he recalls. “My role this time round has been less vital, although sitting in on the read-through with the new cast was just terrific.”

Irish writer Roddy Doyle. Picture: Anthony Woods

Has he felt emotional returning to his first work of fiction, a novel penned in 1987 and then adapted for the screen in 1991 by director Alan Parker, with a screenplay co-written by Doyle, recounting the rise and fall of a young, working-class soul band in Dublin?

“It’s brought back a lot of memories, yes. I was a geography and English teacher at the time when I wrote the novel. I wanted an excuse to bring a bunch of young people together in book form and capture the rhythm of Dublin kids yapping and teasing and bullying,” Roddy says.

“But I needed to find a setting outside school and that’s when the idea of a band came to me. A big band with a brass section and backing vocals, as opposed to three or four young men that was the norm back then.”

Roddy has resisted the temptation to update the setting from the 1980s. “The vibrancy is still there but so is the tension caused by lack of communication. For instance, will Deco, the obnoxious lead singer, turn up on time? These days, you’d track him down on your mobile in no time at all. But there wasn’t that option in the late ’80s,” he says. “And I chose Sixties’ music – Motown and Memphis soul – because, at the time, it felt timeless. Thirty-five years later, I was right.”

For a long time, Roddy was a teacher who wrote on the side. “I loved teaching and the holidays were great, a time when I got into the habit of writing. I wrote The Commitments in 1986, it was published the following year, and I was working on the screenplay in 1988. But I was still teaching up until 1993,” he says.

James Killeen’s Jimmy Rabbitte and Ciara Mackey’s Imelda in The Commitments. Picture: Ellie Kurttz

The Snapper and The Van followed in 1990 and 1991 respectively, joining The Commitments in what became known as the Barrytown Trilogy. Then, in 1993, Roddy hit the jackpot when Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, his novel about a rumbunctious ten-year-old in a north Dublin suburb in 1968, won the prestigious Booker Prize.

“I was delighted,” says Roddy, who was 35 at the time. “It was a great compliment, although I can’t remember what I said in my acceptance speech. But I do recall then being taken away to be interviewed when all I really wanted to do was get back to the table and share the moment with my wife and publisher.

“But it felt as if I’d instantly become public property, and I didn’t like it. What I wanted more than anything was to go back to Ireland and live as near a normal life as possible. I deliberately continued to use public transport, for example. But now, almost 30 years later, I can take it in my stride.”

Pick up any of Doyle’s early books, in particular, and you could almost be reading a screenplay. “That’s true. I think that the best way of establishing characters is to get them talking. That’s especially true of The Commitments – and it gave me a template which I used for some years. The fact is, we talk a lot in Ireland.”

Roddy has an attic office in his home where he writes, but since the lifting of lockdown, he has acquired a room in the city centre where he will tap away too. “At one level, I was asking myself why I’d want another office, but it struck me as a good idea to get out of the house and walk around and experience Dublin opening up, coming alive again. It’s been really interesting,” he says.

Seeing the funny side …or not: Coronation Street alumnus Nigel Pivaro’s Jimmy Da, left, and James Killeen’s Jimmy Rabbitte. Picture: Ellie Kurttz

“Also, my three children are grown up now and no longer living at home, so I’m not surrounded by the rhythm of their speech.”

Roddy takes a disciplined approach to work, usually writing from nine until six each day. “But I’ve become a bit more relaxed as I’ve got older,” he says. “There’s nothing quite as nice as going to see a film at the cinema in daylight, and I never don’t feel guilty.”

Whatever came afterwards, The Commitments will always hold a special place in Roddy’s heart for the simple reason that it was his first published book. He is fond, too, of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, wherein narrator Paula, after a litany of domestic abuse, realises that her husband, Charlo, has been interfering with their daughter and duly brings down a frying pan on his head?

“I’d found it really hard to write in the first person as a woman,” reveals Roddy. “It took a long time to find Paula’s voice. I also had little or no experience of violence or of physical pain. But into the second year, it began to flow really well.”

Even so, he worried whether he had written something authentic. In 1994, he had penned the four-part series Family for the BBC, featuring Paula and her immediate circle. “When it was broadcast in Ireland, it caused an absolute storm,” he recalls. “It was condemned by the Catholic church. Where were the songs from The Commitments? Where was the laughter? There wasn’t any.”

“The best way of establishing characters is to get them talking. That’s especially true of The Commitments,” says Roddy Doyle. Pictured here are 2022-2023 cast members Sarah Gardiner, left, Ian McIntosh, Conor Litten, James Killeen, Ciara Mackey and Michael Mahony. Picture: Ellie Kurttz

Then Roddy was contacted by Women’s Aid, who had heard he was writing the book. “When I’d finished, I gave them the manuscript, which they then distributed among ten women who’d been through abusive relationships,” he says.

“A few weeks later, I went to a meeting to listen to their reaction. I sat down, the only man in the room, and kind of held my breath. The person in charge asked if anyone wanted to say anything. ‘Yes,’ said the woman in front of me. ‘How did you get inside my bleeping head?’ It’s the best review I’ve ever had in my life.”

At 64, Roddy remains prolific, chalking up 12 novels, three collections of stories, eight books for children and a book he co-wrote with Irish footballer Roy Keane, The Second Half. He has written the plays Brownbread and Guess Who’s Coming For The Dinner and co-adapted The Woman Who Walked Into Doors with Joe O’Byrne, as well as his stage adaptation for The Commitments. He also wrote the screenplays for The Snapper, The Van, Family and When Brendan Met Trudy.

Retirement seems unlikely. Indeed, Roddy was once quoted as saying that he hoped to die mid-sentence. “Well,” he says, “It might be nice to get to a full stop.”

The Commitments, Grand Opera House, York, November 7 to 12, 7.30pm; 2.30pm, Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/york.

The tour poster for The Commitments’ travels in 2022-2023
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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Opera North’s La Traviata, Leeds Grand Theatre

Nico Darmanin’s Alfredo Germont and Alison Langer’s Violetta Valéry in Opera North’s La Traviata. Picture: Richard H Smith

ALESSANDRO Talevi’s production, first seen in September 2014, returned without any revival director, so we must assume that he took full responsibility for any shortcomings that remained.

To enable the maximum number of performances, the three principals were double-cast, as were the conductors.

We were spared the bacilli behind the all-seeing eye that dogged Violetta’s every move – it began as a moon – but the slow handclap from masked males behind a screen at her death was still there, as tasteless and inexplicable as ever. Was this supposed to be a judgment on the courtesan and her trade or misogyny pure and simple? The Carmen charade at Flora’s party also stayed in, complete with explanatory signs.

Alison Langer as Violetta Valéry, centre, with the Chorus of Opera North © Richard H Smith

Fortunately, there were musical compensations, not least in the Violetta Valéry of Alison Langer. Her quiet organisation of her Act 1 double aria seemed to emanate from a singer of much wider experience: her coloratura was calmly controlled and her phrasing succulently spacious, where others so often seem anxious to get it out of the way.

She also looked young enough for the role – a rarity in itself – with a touch of frailty that was engaging. On this showing, she is at the start of something really big. Certainly she looks and sounds ready for it.

Nico Darmanin was a diffident Alfredo Germont at the start, almost as if embarrassed by his affair. His tone was also pinched. To give him the benefit of the doubt, it is possible that Talevi saw him as an angry young man in the lead-up to throwing his winnings at Violetta. But we saw the real Darmanin – and Alfredo – in Act 3 when he sounded altogether more relaxed. We needed more of this resonance earlier on.

“On this showing, Alison Langer is at the start of something really big. Certainly she looks and sounds ready for it,” predicts reviewer Martin Dreyer

Damiano Salerno, like Darmanin making his company debut, is an experienced Verdian and brought a certain finesse to his Giorgio. But there was a sense in which he was holding back, that there was more to give.

The conductor for this threesome was Jonathan Webb, certainly a safe pair of hands and ever conscious of balance. The climax of Violetta’s duet with Giorgio in Act 2 needed better preparation and for once he might have let the orchestra off the leash a little. A little untidiness in the cause of bravura is excusable.

The minor aristocrats were given plenty of vim, and there were distinctive contributions from Amy J Payne’s Annina and Victoria Sharp’s Flora. For the record, the other team of principals were Máire Flavin as Violetta, Oliver Johnston as Alfredo and Stephen Gadd as his father, with Manoj Kamps taking the baton.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Further performances on tour in Newcastle, Nottingham and Salford until November 17

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Opera North and South Asian Arts in Orpheus, Leeds Grand Theatre

Nicholas Watts’s Orpheus and Ashnaa Sasikaran’s Eurydice. Picture: Tom Arber

OPERA North originally billed this collaboration as ‘Monteverdi reimagined’. In the absence of much explanation, our own imaginations were allowed to run wild with fears of an East-West confrontation, with Monteverdi’s magic – as near as we regularly get to the fountainhead of opera, after all – irreparably diluted and the Orpheus myth literally shot to hell.

That was the gamble these companies undertook. A brief press release sent to all punters more recently looked like special pleading. One feared the worst. The reality is much different.

For seekers after truth – as we all must be when we undertake to see a new production – there turn out to be many pleasing parallels between music of the Baroque and that of the sub-continent.

It is often forgotten that Venice sits handily at the crossroads of ancient trade routes between East and West. Modal systems of music, typified by Gregorian chant, were another obvious link between the two, surviving as they do in Indian raga procedures, even if some have been gradually ironed away in western tonal patterns.

As Neil Sorrell points out in an exceptionally penetrating programme note, the voice was central to Monteverdi’s musical imagination and remains so in Indian music. Indian players routinely expect to be able to reproduce vocally what they express through their instruments.

To that extent, western musical education has been straitjacketed, not least in the dichotomy between ‘classical’ and ‘pop’, the partial result of the separation of vocal and instrumental musics. For a full rapprochement, perhaps we in the West need to broaden our approach.

Composer, sitar player and OPera North artist-in-residence Jasdeep Singh Degun. Picture: Justin Slee

This production, which has been several years in the making and delayed by Covid, forcefully reminds us of these parallels. Its moving spirit as composer – apart from Monteverdi – is Jasdeep Singh Degun, who worked in close co-operation with Baroque ace Laurence Cummings.

Singh Degun’s work adds almost an hour to Monteverdi, although the result morphs seamlessly between the two. He allows the various Indian singers to use their own languages so that we have eight, Hindu and Urdu foremost among them, jostling alongside Striggio’s Italian. All are helpfully side-titled.

The staging is in the hands of Anna Himali Howard, whose task is undoubtedly lightened by having Leslie Travers as her set and costume designer. Together they work out a way of connecting the real world with the underworld, the living with the dead.

The professed aim of their co-production is to move from a celebration of love through the darkness of grief-laden despair to the eventual rekindling of hope.

Nothing particularly unusual there, you may suppose, except that their true goal is to communicate the universality of the Orpheus myth via musical means far more wide-ranging than Monteverdi ever could have envisaged.

Travers’s set is the back garden of a semi-detached suburban house, with all the instruments arranged down the sides of a ‘V’ which opens embracingly towards the audience. So Cummings’ harpsichord rubs shoulders with Singh Degun’s sitar, Kirpal Singh Panesar’s bowed esraj with Emilia Benjamin’s lirone, while Céline Saout doubleson harp and the zither-like swarmandal and Vijay Venkat covers no less than five instruments from both camps.

Kaviraj Singh: Plays in the orchestra and takes the role of the resolute Caronte in Orpheus. Picture: Tom Arber

There are 19 players in all. From a western standpoint, the juxtaposition of instruments is undeniably exotic, adding a magical, other-worldly aroma, while the extraordinary Indian percussion supplies positively addictive momentum.

In the first half (Acts 1 & 2), the garden is the venue for the wedding of Nicholas Watts’s Orpheus and Ashnaa Sasikaran’s Eurydice, with friends and relatives happily congregating with candles and balloons. Their joy is cut tragically short with the arrival of Kezia Bienek’s Silvia, carrying Eurydice’s red and gold sari, signifying her demise.

After the interval, the sky is black, the buildings expunged and the profuse flowers (‘head gardener’ Ali Allen) disappears, resurfacing only when Orpheus returns home as the Apollo of Singh Panesar offers spiritual relief from his pain.

The earlier guests have become spirits in the underworld, which adds a touch of the uncanny. Choral traditions are slight in India, but all the voices meld well, and the differing solo vocal ornamentations sound complementary rather than antagonistic, implying compromise on both sides.

Watts began nervously but gradually blossomed on opening night until reaching a peak of emotional resonance in ‘Possente spirto’; Sasikaran makes a charming, gentle Eurydice. Bienek is a forthright Silvia and Chandra Chakraborty a lively Proserpina. Kaviraj Singh offers a resolute Caronte and Singh Panesar an equally persuasive Apollo; significantly, both also play in the orchestra. Dean Robinson’s Pluto strikes the right conciliatory note.

Just about the only mild disappointment is the dancing, which is largely circular and rudimentary. But overall, this is a happy conjunction of two powerful traditions, a cross-fertilisation that promises further musical riches.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Further performances on tour in Newcastle, Nottingham and Salford until November 19.

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York Opera head to sea in Gilbert and Sullivan’s love-struck HMS Pinafore at York Theatre Royal from November 16 to 19

Madly in love but kept apart by social hierarchy: Lovesick sailor Ralph (Jack Storey-Hunter) and the Captain’s daughter, Josephine (Alexandra Mather), in York Opera’s HMS Pinafore

YORK Opera will set sail at York Theatre Royal with Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta HMS Pinafore or The Lass That Loved A Sailor from November 16, steered by a new production team of Annabel van Griethuysen and Tim Selman.

Stage director Annabel and conductor Tim will be at the helm of a production at the Theatre Royal for the first time.

HMS Pinafore was G&S’s first big success, both in Great Britain and the United States, establishing their still undiminished position at the pinnacle of light opera in this country.

Although they had had significant success with Trial By Jury and The Sorcerer, the world of light opera in the 1850s and 1860s was dominated by the works of Jacques Offenbach, full of catchy tunes and brilliantly orchestrated. 

Breaking into this field of theatre and dominating it across the English-speaking world must be due greatly to the witty and topical libretti by W.S. Gilbert. In conjunction with Sullivan’s sparkling and tuneful musical settings, HMS Pinafore established the rock on which all the subsequent G&S repertoire would be founded.

Annabel van Griethuysen’s Carmen in York Opera’s Carmen at York Theatre Royal in October 2018. Now dietician Annabel switches from mezzo-soprano singing to stage directing HMS Pinafore

The story follows Ralph, a lovesick sailor, and Josephine, the Captain’s daughter, who are madly in love but kept apart by social hierarchy. The musical numbers, loved by young and old alike, include We Sail The Ocean Blue, Never Mind The Why And Wherefore and When I Was A Lad.

As usual with York Opera’s G & S productions, a healthy mix of youth and experience combines in the cast. New to the company are Jack Storey-Hunter in the leading tenor role of Ralph Rackstraw and Polina Bielova as Cousin Hebe. 

Well-known cast members in the line-up include Alexandra Mather in the leading soprano role of Josephine; John Soper as Sir Joseph Porter; Ian Thomson-Smith as Captain Corcoran; Rebecca Smith as Little Buttercup and Anthony Gardner as Dick Deadeye.

York Opera in Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, York Theatre Royal, November 16 to 19, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

Sea-bound: Jack Storey-Hunter’s Ralph and Alexandra Mather’s Josephine in York Opera’s HMS Pinafore
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More Things To Do in York and beyond as clocks go back for longer nights and festival shorts. Hutch’s List No. 104, from The Press

Filip Fredrik’s Elements: Showing at Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2022

A FILM festival with international pedigree, poetry clashes, comedy aplenty and Constellations shine out for Charles Hutchinson.

Festival of the week: Aesthetica Short Film Festival, across York, Tuesday to Sunday

AESTHETICA Short Film Festival returns for 300 films in 15 venues over six days in York in its 12th edition. The BAFTA-Qualifying event will have a hybrid format, combining the live festival with a selection of screenings, masterclasses and events on the digital platform until November 30.

New for 2022 will be York Days, a discount scheme with the chance to save 50 per cent on prices on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday programmes. Comedies, dramas, thrillers, animation, family-friendly films and documentaries all feature, complemented by workshops, the Virtual Reality Lab, installations and the festival fringe. Box office: asff.co.uk/tickets.

Malaika Kegode: Guest appearance at Say Owt Slam’s birthday party. Picture: Jon Aitken

Birthday party of the week: Say Owt Slam’s 8th Birthday Special, with Malaika Kegode, The Crescent, York, tonight (29/10/2022), 7.30pm

SAY Owt, York’s loveable gang of performance poets, Stu Freestone, Henry Raby, Hannah Davies and David Jarman, welcome special-guest Bristol poet Malaika Kegode to a high-energy night of words and verse, humour and poet-versus-poet fun.

“It started as a one-off gig! I can’t believe we’re still slamming eight years later,” says artistic director and host Raby. “Whether you’re a veteran or looking for something new, everyone is welcome at a Say Owt Slam, where each poet has a maximum of three minutes to wow randomly selected judges with their poetry.” Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

David O’Doherty: Change of date for York gig

On the move: David O’Doherty: Whoa Is Me, Grand Opera House, York, changing from Monday to February 5 2023, 8pm

HERE he comes again, albeit later than first planned, trotting on stage with all of the misplaced confidence of a waiter with no pad.

“There’ll be lots of talking, some apologising and some songs on a glued-together plastic keyboard from 1986,” promises David O’Doherty, comedian, author, musician, actor and playwright, 1990 East Leinster under-14 triple jump bronze medallist and son of jazz pianist Jim Doherty. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Flo & Joan: Musical comedy duo offer thoughts on topics of the day

Musical comedy of the week: Flo & Joan, Sweet Release, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday, 7.3pm

FLO & Joan, the British musical comedy duo of sisters Nicola and Rosie Dempsey, play York as one of 30 additional dates on their 2022 tour after their return to the Edinburgh Fringe.

Climbing back out of their pits, armed with a piano and percussion, they poke around the  classic topics of the day with their fusion of comedy and song with a dark undertow.

The sisters have penned five numbers for the West End musical Death Drop and have written and performed songs for Horrible Histories (CBBC), Rob Delaney’s Stand Up Central (Comedy Central) and BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Emilio Iannucci: Starring in Nick Payne’s romantic two-hander Constellations at the SJT

Play of the week outside York: Constellations, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, running until November 12

WHEN beekeeper Roland meets scientist Marianne, anything could happen in University of York alumnus Nick Payne’s romantic and revealing exploration of the many possibilities that can result from a single meeting. Reminiscent of Sliding Doors and Kate Atkinson’s novel Life After Life, this two-hander starring Carla Harrison-Hodge and Emilio Iannucci ponders “What if?”.

“Constellations plays with time and space in the most brilliant way,” says director Paul Robinson. “Deeply human, deeply moving, it genuinely tilts the world for you. I challenge anyone not to leave the theatre just a bit more aware of what a fragile and remarkable thing life is.” Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

Bring It On: “The thrill of extreme competition”

Backflip of the week: York Stage in Bring It On: The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm; Saturday matinee, 2.30pm

THE York premiere of Bring It On backflips into the JoRo in a youth theatre production directed by Nik Briggs. Inspired by the film of the same name, this story of the challenges and surprising bonds forged through the thrill of extreme competition is packed with vibrant characters, electrifying contemporary songs and explosive choreography.

This Broadway hit is the energy-fuelled work of Tony Award winners Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton), Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q) and Tom Kitt (Grease: Live). Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Humour on hand: Harry Hill promises Pedigree Fun on his first tour since 2013

Very silly show of the week: Harry Hill, Pedigree Fun!, Grand Opera House, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm

COMEDIAN, writer, actor, artist and former doctor Harry Hill and his big shirt collars take to the stage for an all-singing, all-dancing surrealist spectacular in his long-awaited return to the live arena for the fist time since 2013’s Sausage Time tour.

“I hadn’t realised how much I missed performing live until lockdown stopped me from doing it,” he says. “The good news is I’m planning a very silly show.” Full of pop-culture spoofs, no doubt.

Audiences will meet Harry’s new baby elephant, Sarah, along with regular sidekick Stouffer the Cat. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

John McCusker: Fiddler supreme on 30th anniversary tour

Fiddler on the road: The John McCusker Band 30th Anniversary Tour, National Centre for Early Music, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm

SCOTTISH fiddle player John McCusker will be joined by Ian Carr, Sam Kelly, Helen McCabe and Toby Shaer for his concert series in celebration of 30 years as a professional folk musician since cutting his teeth in The Battlefield Band at 17.

To coincide with this landmark, McCusker has released a Best Of album featuring tracks from his solo records and television and film soundtracks, alongside a book of 100 original compositions, John McCusker: The Collection.

“I’m delighted to be able to get this special show on the road and celebrate 30 years as a professional musician,” says McCusker. “I’m looking forward to performing the highlights from my back catalogue and revisiting memories associated with those tracks.

“It’s brilliant that I’ve been able to make music and perform for 30 years and I’ve worked with so many incredible people in that time. I’ve never had a plan; good things have just
happened and, so far, it’s worked out as well as I could possibly have dreamed of. I can’t
wait to play with my friends again.” Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.

York Settlement Community Players’ cast for Vanya And Sonia And Masha And Spike: Mick Liversidge (Vanya), top left, Victoria Delaney (Sonia) and Susannah Baines (Sasha); Andrew Roberts (Spike), bottom left, Sanna Jeppsson (Cassandra) and Livy Potter

York premiere of the week: York Settlement Community Players in Vanya And Sonia And Masha And Spike, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Thursday, Friday, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm, 7.30pm

VANYA and his sister Sonia live a quiet life in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where they grew up, but when their famous film-star sister, Masha, makes an impromptu visit with her dashing, twenty-something boyfriend, Spike, a chaotic weekend ensues.

Resentment, rivalry and revealing premonitions begin to boil over as the three siblings battle to be heard in Christopher Durang’s comedy, winner of the 2013 Tony Award for Best New Play with its blend of Chekhovian ennui, modern-day concerns of celebrity, social networking and the troubling onset of middle age. Jim Paterson directs Settlement Players’ production. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Plastic Mermaids: “Emotional exploration of the many facets of heartbreak”

Time to discover…Plastic Mermaids, The Crescent, York, November 10; Oporto, Leeds, February 2 2023

AFTER playing Glastonbury and Camp Bestival in the summertime, Isle of Wight five-piece Plastic Mermaids are off on an 11-date tour to promote their second album, It’s Not Comfortable To Grow, out now on Sunday Best.

Led by brothers Douglas and Jamie Richards, who approach life like an art project, they face up to their dark side in an emotional exploration of the many facets of heartbreak on such psych-rock and electronica numbers as Girl Boy Girl, Disposable Love, Something Better and Elastic Time. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.