“I’m incredibly lucky to be a part of this wonderful show, which has such a great message and allows people to be, unapologetically, who they truly are,” says Jennifer Caldwell, who plays queen No. 2, Anne Boleyn
DIVORCED, beheaded, Covid-19’ed, SIX The Musical could have passed this way before, but “localised lockdowns” hit Live Nation Entertainment’s six drive-in shows at Church Fenton airport for six in August 2020.
Now, the newly refurbished Grand Opera House, in York, has the delight of hosting the first North Yorkshire run of the “electrifying musical phenomenon that everyone has lost their head over”, fully booked up from October 11 to 16.
First presented by Cambridge University students in a 100-seat Sweet Venue room at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s musical has been catapulted into a West End and international hit en route to being named the Musical of the Decade by WhatsOnStage (as well as Best Musical 2020). Nominations for five Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical, came the show’s way too.
Songs from the SIX studio album are streamed on average 450,000 times per day, making it the second-highest streaming musical theatre recording in the world after Hamilton.
SIX The Musical’s debut York run has sold out already, but why is there all this hoo-ha over the vengeful wives of Henry’s irreverent musical romp?
Welcome to their Queendom where Tudor queens turn into pop princesses as the six wives of Henry VIII take to the mic to tell their tales, remixing 500 years of historical heartbreak into a 75-minute celebration of 21st-century girl power. These queens may have green sleeves (a reference to the Henry VIII-penned Tudor chart topper) but their lipstick is rebellious red.
“To be able to play the iconic Anne Boleyn and fill the iconic boots of the incredible humans who have played her before is a dream come true,” says Jennifer Caldwell
Among the cast for a third year is Jennifer Caldwell, playing Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, the one who was beheaded by a French swordsman on May 19 1536 after being found guilty of charges of adultery, incest and conspiracy against the king.
“I’m incredibly lucky to be a part of this wonderful show, which has such a great message and allows people to be, unapologetically, who they truly are,” says Jennifer, feeling very definitely luckier than Anne B.
“Having previously covered all the roles and had the opportunity to tell all those women’s amazing stories, to be able to play the iconic Anne Boleyn and fill the iconic boots of the incredible humans who have played her before is a dream come true.”
After covering the role of Anne Boleyn previously, “I had a lot of time to prepare and learn my own little nuances. I also read – a lot! – and watched documentaries to learn as much about our dear Anne Boleyn as I could,” Jennifer says.
She found rehearsing for the latest tour “great fun”. “Being able to go back to the drawing board and discover who my Boleyn is and be able to have ownership over that was really special,” she says. “Getting to bond with the new cast was wonderful too.”
SIX The Musical: Next week’s Grand Opera House run has sold out already
SIX is a very vocally demanding show, 75 minutes straight through and no interval. “I often live a little like a nun! I steam every morning and drink loads of water,” says Jennifer.
Picking out a favourite moment on the tour so far, she plumps for: “Being able to reopen after Covid. Feeling the love and appreciation from the audience. I cried!”
What should York’s audiences expect from the show, Jennifer? “Stupendous vocals, incredible choreography, laughter by the bucket load and…a whole lotta history,” she says.
“I want audiences to take away the message that we’re all enough on our own! We don’t need to be defined by anything other than who we are!”
Anything else? “I want them to leave with a stomach ache from laughing and aching cheeks from smiling too hard.”
SIX The Musical, directed by Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage, heads into Grand Opera House, York from October 11 to 16; performances at 8pm, Tuesday to Thursday; 6pm and 8.30pm, Friday; 5pm and 8pm, Saturday; 3pm, Sunday. ALL SOLD OUT. Don’t lose your head still trying to acquire a ticket.
Joe McFadden’s Jason Rudd and Sophie Ward’s Marina Gregg in the Original Theatre Company’s production of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
2017 Strictly champion Joe McFadden is appearing in his first Agatha Christie mystery, The Mirror Crack’d, on tour at York Theatre Royal all this week in the role of Jason Rudd.
Joining Glasgow-born Joe, 46, in Rachel Wagstaff’s stage adaptation of Christie’s 1962 psychological thriller will be Susie Blake’s Miss Marple and Sophie Ward’s Hollywood star Marina Gregg for a story of revenge and the dark secrets that we all hide, presented by the Original Theatre Company.
In the sleepy village of St Mary Mead, a new housing estate is making villagers curious and fearful. Even stranger, a rich American film star [Gregg] has bought the Manor House. Cue a vicious murder; cue Jane Marple defying a sprained ankle to unravel a web of lies, tragedy and danger.
Here Joe answers questions, but not those posed by Miss Marple.
Who is Jason Rudd?
“He’s a film director who put his career on the back burner because his wife, Hollywood star Marina Gregg, is going through a hard time. Now he’s going to make a film about Henry Vlll and his wives with Marina as Catherine Aragon.
“He manages to tempt her back with a script that he’s been working on for quite a long time. You’re suspicious of his motives. There are so many people circling around Marina, this Hollywood star from a bygone era and you ask yourself: why are they so interested in her? What are they getting out of it?”
Cast an eye over your CV…theatre, TV, Strictly…
“I feel very lucky that I get to do musicals and to do plays – and to do the odd bit of telly now and again. It’s really an actor’s dream in that I’m not stuck doing the one thing. The usual thing is that you either do plays or you do musicals or you do TV, and it becomes hard to break into the others. I feel very fortunate I get to do all of them.”
Joe McFadden in the role of film director Jason Rudd in The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
What have been your favourite roles?
“I couldn’t pick a favourite, honestly. It’s brilliant doing a play because you get a lot of time to sit down, as we have during The Mirror Crack’d rehearsals, and talk about the story. Working on something like Agatha Christie, it’s absolutely necessary because it’s so textured, so layered and there’s so much in there. On the face of it, it seems a simple whodunit but they’re all such complex characters. Nobody is really what they first appear to be.”
What’s the enduring appeal of Agatha Christie stories?
“They’re so rich, there’s so much in there and it really keeps you guessing. It’s not so much a whodunnit as a social commentary. The Mirror Crack’d is, as I’ve discovered, about mental health. At the time it was written, Agatha Christie was very much ahead of the curve.
“It’s a real examination of this movie star, Marina, and how, when you get to a certain age, you’re not in the running for the parts and you’re cast aside. It’s about the tragedy and unfairness of that. My character adores Marina and will do anything to protect her.
“We discover he’s been there for her in the past but you’re not sure what his motives are and, as is the way with Christie, discover he’s not all he seems to be by the end of the evening. So, it’s really great charting how much you show to an audience and who the red herrings are. Quite exhausting mentally”.
Have you gone back to the book, the TV versions or the film?
“I haven’t really read the book because some details have changed. Rachel Wagstaff has done a wonderful adaptation. It’s kind of confusing for me because I’ve watched the Julia McKenzie TV version and the Rock Hudson/Elizabeth Taylor film version and they’re all slightly different.
“What you do get from them is a feel for the period, the style and the characters. It’s difficult when you’re so familiar with the other source material because you’re torn between what you’re doing and what they’re doing.
“I feel like I don’t need to read the book or watch the films again. Not at the moment. Perhaps when we’re all finished I will.”
2017 Strictly champion Joe McFadden in a waltz with Sophie Ward in The Mirror Crack’d. “I’m trying to dredge up from the corner of my mind how to do it,” he says. Picture: Ali Wright
You are appearing in your first Agatha Christie thriller…
“Absolutely my first. My mother was a massive mystery fan. She loved a sleuth, Murder She Wrote, Poirot, all the detective shows, so I was brought up watching these films and TV shows. I do have a real fondness for them because they get you involved.
“You’re not passive when watching, you’re actually trying to work out whodunit. And while you’re working it out, you’re being entertained and getting a real insight into these human beings and their particular circumstances.”
The Mirror Crack’d brings together three regulars from ITV’s Yorkshire series Heartbeat: you, Sophie Ward and director Philip Franks. Plenty of conversation points, no doubt?
“We’re having a great time reminiscing and comparing experiences. I’ve done a number of long-running series and there’s something to be said for knowing the other actors and knowing the crew. It’s nice with a job like Heartbeat or Holby City, where you have a shorthand with people and a relationship with people. Those were particularly lovely jobs to do.
“I was happy to do them for as long as I did: two years of doing Heartbeat and five years in Holby. I’m sure every job is not as happy as those but I was very happy to do them for so long.”
What made you sign up for Strictly Come Dancing in 2017?
“I did agonise over the decision to do it because back in the day, 20 years ago, actors didn’t really do reality TV shows. It was a new thing. I thought long and hard about it and took advice from various people, friends in the industry, but ultimately my reason for doing it was I wanted to learn how to dance. I wanted to have this world champion teach me to dance. That opportunity only comes along once in a lifetime. I felt it would be silly not to grab it with both hands.”
It could not have worked out better: you won!
“I’m so glad I did it, not because I won but because it was such a brilliant experience. It was about saying yes to things and not being afraid of the unknown. As human beings we like the familiar, the same thing, and that’s a dangerous place for an artist to be because you want to challenge yourself and challenge people’s perceptions of you. Strictly was good for that.”
Champion Joe McFadden’s advice to this year’s Strictly Come Dancing contestants: “Get as much sleep as you possibly can because the tiredness is like nothing you will have experienced in your life”
What was the hardest part of doing Strictly?
“Being myself on screen, which I hadn’t really done before. The most daunting thing was all the speaking and the live television but even that stuff ended up being massively enjoyable. Talking to Zoe Ball on It Takes Two became one of my favourite parts of the week because she made it so lovely. The fans are so appreciative and so warm that you feel the love everyone has for that show, something I perhaps wasn’t aware of going into it.”
What’s your advice to celebrities taking part in the new series of Strictly?
“Just to enjoy every moment, because you never know when it’s going to end, and get as much sleep as you possibly can because the tiredness is like nothing you will have experienced in your life. Just enjoy it because it will be over in a flash. It goes so quickly. Don’t take it too seriously, throw yourself into it and do exactly as your partner tells you.”
Will there be any dancing in The Mirror Crack’d?
“We do a bit of a waltz. I’m trying to dredge up from the corner of my mind how to do it.”
How do you feel about touring?
“I toured with Priscilla Queen Of The Desert for seven months and toured with two different Ghost Stories before that. I love touring. As an actor, you either love it or hate it. I try to get out to see places and not stay in my digs all the time.
“The great thing for Priscilla is that I didn’t drink for the whole time I did the show, which meant I got up in the morning, went to the beach, did the museums. I love how we get to go to these places that you never would at any other time.”
Joe McFadden fact file
Television credits include: Raffaello Di Lucca in Holby City from 2014 to 2020; Alistair in Casualty in 2009; PC Joe Mason in Heartbeat, 2007 to 2009; Jack Marshland in Cranford; Dallas in Sex, Chips & Rock’n’roll; Prentice McHoan in The Crow Road and Gary McDonald in The High Road.
Theatre includes: Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical; Torch Song Trilogy (Menier Chocolate Factory); She Loves Me (Chichester Festival Theatre); Rainbow Kiss (Royal Court Theatre); How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (Chichester Festival Theatre); Aladdin (Old Vic Theatre) and Rent (Shaftesbury Theatre, London).
Joe won BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing glitter ball with partner Katya Jones in 2017.
Sophie Ward: Cast as Hollywood star Marina Gregg in The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
Questions for Sophie Ward, an actor playing an actor in The Mirror Crack’d
SOPHIE Ward returns to the York stage this week for the first time since playing the lead role of Eunice in the Classic Thriller Theatre Company’s staging of Ruth Rendell’s tale of murder, A Judgement In Stone, at the Grand Opera House in October 2017.
In the Original Theatre Company touring production of The Mirror Crack’d at York Theatre Royal, Sophie, 57, is cast as Hollywood star Marina Gregg.
Is The Mirror Crack’d your first experience of performing an Agatha Christie story?
“No, I did a television version of A Caribbean Mystery with Joan Hickson as Miss Marple and also Go Back For Murder, which was a play by Agatha Christie.
Is Marina Gregg based on anyone in the movie world?
“There was a star called Gene Tierney who was the inspiration for this character, and quite famously Elizabeth Taylor played the character in a film, when Angela Lansbury was Miss Marple. Marina is entering a new chapter in her life, a bit more peaceful. She’s doing films she likes with her husband and finding some respite in buying this big house in an English country village. It’s a new start for her.”
Marina is an actor, as are you, do you identify with her in any way?
“There are lots of things that I understand and I’ve worked in a lot of productions from that period. So, it’s a world I know a little bit about but I hope it’s not too close to my own life.”
Did you experience Hollywood when you were commuting between England and America?
“I did quite a lot of television in various shows but not films in the US. I met my wife [Rena Brennan] in Los Angeles so we like to spend time there. I’d like to get over there more, but my mother-in-law lives in Florida, my mother is in London, and I have grandchildren in England. With work and family, it’s not been easy to get over there in the past few years. A small matter of the pandemic.”
Sophie Ward’s Marina Gregg and Susie Blake’s Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack’d. Picture Ali Wright
Have you and The Mirror Crack’d co-star Joe McFadden comparrd experiences working on Heartbeat?
“Joe was in the series after my era on Heartbeat, but we have that in common, which is really nice to be able to talk about. I was on the show for two years, quite a big chunk of time to do one job when you’re an actor. We’ve been catching up on our time in Heartbeat.”
How was lockdown for you?
“When we had our first lockdown, I was quite happy doing a lot of gardening for a while. But I think we all had thoughts of a reassessment of life and of what we were doing. I had time to ask myself, ‘Am I going to carry on with acting when this situation finishes’.
“As it turns out, I do want to carry on and I did miss it during lockdown, but it was really great to have that time to think about things. You’re on a wheel, which you get on and keep going round and round. It was good to think ‘I’m choosing to do this and not just carrying on’.”
Where does Marina Gregg fit into the kind of roles you play these days?
“I’ve had the opportunity to do lots of different parts. Marina is very much a movie star with all the charm and challenges that can bring. I’m thrilled to be playing her.”
What are the strengths of Rachel Wagstaff’s new adaptation of The Mirror Crack’d?
“This is one of Christie’s later books and things are changing in society and in St Mary Mead. Rachel’s version shows that they’re quite conscious of that in the village. The characters aren’t stock characters; they are all interesting, three-dimensional people and Rachel has managed to include all their stories.
“As an audience we need to care about them. You want to understand people and not just see another character murdered. Every character is valuable to the story.”
Sophie Ward in the role of misfit Eunice in Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement In Stone at the Grand Opera House, York, in October 2017. Picture: Geraint Lewis
Have you returned to the book or film and TV versions?
“Obviously what we’re doing is our version. Rachel has done an amazing job so that’s what we work on and that’s where my imaginative world is: in Rachel’s world. But I’m really interested to see other versions and find out more about that world. Then you have to focus on Rachel’s version.”
You have written two novels, the first one, Love And Other Thought Experiments, being longlisted for the Booker Prize. Is a third book on the horizon?
“My second book [The Schoolhouse] came out in May and I’m hard at work on the third one. It takes me about five years to write a book.”
What prompted you to ‘go back to school’?
“First I did an undergraduate degree part time, then I did an MA, and I’ve just finished my doctorate at Goldsmiths. There’s a lot of waiting around in our job and I left school after my A-levels, didn’t go to university, just carried on working.
“I really wanted to go back to school. I knew my children would be coming up to that age soon and wanted to be able to talk with them about going to uni, what it meant and what it was. I studied, it took me about 15 years, and out of that came the idea for my first novel, which was a mixture of the things I’d been studying.”
You are an advocate for gay and lesbian rights…
“I try to be supportive and feel open about my life. I did write about equal marriage for the Guardian. I felt very strongly about it, about everyone being able to have that option to get married. I am involved to that extent but there are people whose whole careers are seriously applied to gaining our rights. I’m a very small part of that.
“There have been a lot of changes, changes in the law and people’s attitudes, which has been amazing to see and experience. But I never take it for granted because, as we see in other countries, either things don’t progress in the same way or they’re going backwards. You can’t be complacent.”
Sophie Ward: Actor, gay rights advocate and novelist
What’s coming next for you after The Mirror Crack’d tour?
“I have a research trip for my next book.”
Somewhere exotic?
“I can’t really say as I’m still developing the ideas and immersing myself in a new world. Let’s just say ‘travelling’!”
Sophie Ward fact file
Her first acting role was at the age of ten.
Now playing Rachel Johnson, opposite Kenneth Branagh’s Boris Johnson, in This Scepred Isle on Sky Atlantic/Now TV.
Appeared opposite Claire Foy and Paul Bettany in A Very British Scandal (BBC); starred in Troubled Blood (BBC/HBO), an adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s novel.
For the past four years, Sophie has hosted the European Diversity Awards and she works closely alongside Stonewall.
Original Theatre Company in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly; 2pm, Thursday; 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
Richard Digby Day: Theatre director, professor and lecturer
RICHARD Digby Day, artistic director of York Theatre Royal from 1971 to 1976, will talk about his life and work in the theatre world at a fundraising event there tonight at 7pm.
Now 80, this esteemed stage director, international professor and lecturer in Britain and the United States is credited with discovering actors Hugh Grant and Ralph Fiennes in a career where he served as artistic director of Bournemouth Theatre Company, New Shakespeare Company at Regents Park Open Air Theatre, Welsh National Theatre Company, Nottingham Playhouse and Northcott Theatre, Exeter.
He is well-known for his work in classical theatre, notably the plays of William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. He is vice president of the Shaw Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has staged more productions of Shaw’s work than any other living director.
Richard is noted for his productions of Stephen Sondheim musicals too, and his work has been seen in the West End and on tour extensively throughout the UK, Canada, Denmark and Ireland.
He has worked with many of the theatre greats, not least bringing Dame Judi Dench to the Theatre Royal stage, and he is a contemporary of Sir Ian McKellen, the two having begun their professional careers working on many of the same productions with Digby Day serving as assistant director.
He came back to York three times to direct waggon plays from the York Mystery Plays with the York Settlement Community Players for the Merchant Adventurers’ Guild, presenting The Last Judgement in 1998, 2002 and 2006. “The last one was the most modern, and I wouldn’t have done it twice more after the first time if it wasn’t so rewarding,” he says.
“There was a great stock of actors, like Ruth Ford, who was not just a wonderful actor but a wonderful person.”
Now Richard returns to the city for 50 Years On: Richard Digby Day In Conversation in the Theatre Royal Studio tonight when creative director Juliet Forster will host the event to raise funds to support ongoing work at the St Leonard’s Place theatre.
“I look back on my days as York Theatre Royal as a time of great excitement, a very good time,” says Richard. “What those days meant to my career and showed to other people was that I could run a theatre, because I was not just the artistic director but also director of the whole thing. I really had the final say in relation to whatever the board wanted.
“I was thinking about this, how the Sixties and Seventies were a wonderful time for the theatre in a way that has not been replicated since. I was in the right place at the right time, as I was at Exeter too. I’d just finished working for the Welsh National Theatre Company at the Casson Studio, in a very rough street in Cardiff: Ruby Street in Splott. I’d founded the company and started it but couldn’t cope with the Welsh politics, so I left.”
What happened next? “There was as an advertisement in The Stage saying York Theatre Royal was looking for a new artistic director, when Donald Bodley was leaving, having made that wonderful addition to the building [the foyer],” Richard recalls.
“I was interviewed in September 1971 and all the candidates were told to hang around…and then it was announced that I’d got the job, in front of all these disappointed-looking other people.”
Richard can reel off the productions that came thick and fast under his artistic direction: “We did The Circle, by Somerset Maugham, starring Jessie Matthews, who appeared twice in the first year. In York Minster was Murder In The Cathedral by T S Eliot, and because there was no studio at the Theatre Royal at that time, we did two plays at York Arts Centre [in Micklegate], Tiny Alice by Edward Albee and Old Times by Harold Pinter. There was an extraordinary range of performances going on,” he says.
“That’s the difference when you compare it with today’s theatre. That time was the flowering of theatre, whereas today money is short and very rarely do actors stay together for more than one play.”
More work comes to Richard’s mind. “We did some work at the University of York; two plays in the De Grey Rooms and a whole series of poetry readings at York Art Gallery,” he says.
He settled in quickly. “York Theatre Royal was well set up: long before I arrived there, it was a working regional theatre with its wardrobe and carpentry departments, and York always tended to have actors that stayed for more than one production,” he says.
“For the second season in Spring 1973, Phyllis Calvert [the English film actress], who’d been in the company before the Second World War, began a long association with me directing her in five plays. The first Shakespeare I did here was The Tempest, in association with the New Shakespeare Company at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre, in London, where I was artistic director for a long time.
“A city without the arts will never be a complete place,” says Richard Digby Day
“We had Michael Dennison playing Prospero, and the production began in York, went on a little tour, then played Regents Park.”
Judi Dench would return to her home city with Michael Williams to appear in a new play, Content To Whisper, adapted by television writer Alan Melville from a French work. “I can tell you this now, because Judi and I often laugh about it: we knew on the first day of rehearsals that we shouldn’t be doing it, but we did the best we could with it and it packed the theatre! I don’t know if people liked it or not, but they were just content to see Judi back home,” says Richard.
“Looking back, I was able to do a lot of interesting productions and the seasons were a lot more classically based than they are now: Strindberg, Ibsen, Chekhov, but a lot of modern plays too, like the first out-of-London production of Peter Shaffer’s Equus. The National Theatre offered us the rights for it, so we said yes, and then followed it with Hamlet, starring the Scarborough-born Frank Barrie as Hamlet.
“That was the third time I’d directed Hamlet and the nearest one I felt to getting it right. Frank’s father died in the middle of the run and he had to keep going, with all that connection with Hamlet’s father dying.”
Just as Damian Cruden would do later during his 22-year tenure as artistic director, Richard enjoyed using the theatre space in different ways. “We had all the seats taken out and did a promenade production of The Two Noble Kinsmen [Shakespeare’s play co-written with John Fletcher]: the first time it had been done for many years, for York Festival in 1973,” he says.
“In my last season, we had seven plays by Samuel Beckett to celebrate his 70th birthday and we did them on the stage with the safety curtain down and the audience seated on the stage too, and we did this in a repertory season where we closed the main-house auditorium one night a week for the Beckett plays.”
Typical of Richard enjoying the challenge of “making theatre in places that aren’t necessarily theatres” was his production of Ibsen’s Little Eyolf in the Assembly Rooms, “I had the belief that wherever there was an audience, wherever there were actors, that could be a theatre,” he says.
As he heads back to York once more, where he once lived on Tadcaster Road in a “dear little cottage and courtyard” overlooking the racecourse, Richard says: “The city has provided many memories, 50 years of history, but it’s not the place I came to in 1971. I don’t say it in an entirely negative way but any city that has its manufacturing heart taken away can never be as interesting as it was.
“I used to get up at six in the morning and walk down to the shop to buy a paper, and you would see all these workers bicycling to work. You could smell that work. I find what’s happened to Britain so sad, though of course York has so many attractions that it’s made an industry out of tourism.
“There were always tourists but it was completely a working, industrial city, where under all that history was the industry that was supporting it.”
From 1980 to 1984, Richard was at the helm of Nottingham Playhouse. “That was not a happy time,” he says. “I would have to say that Mrs Thatcher interfered in the arts. In particular, William Rees Mogg wrote a ghastly report on the arts when he was made chairman of the Arts Council: a most unsuitable person for the post.
“It was not an easy period and eventually I thought, ‘I just don’t want to go on running a theatre’, so I left and I’ve never really run a theatre since then, but I’ve done lots of other things, like being the director of the National Theatre Institute, in Waterford, in Connecticut, for eight years.”
Richard directed plays aplenty at the Lyric in Belfast. “It was at the height of the troubles, which was a very interesting experience,” he says. “Where I was staying, one night the windows were shattered by an explosion nearby, but on the whole, you learned to get on with things and not be distracted by the divisions.”
Richard has directed star names in one-person shows, from Edward Fox to Eileen Atkins, Margaret Wolfit to Geraldine McEwan. “Most recently, Eileen Atkins put me in touch with Dame Joan Plowright for a show where I interviewed her: it was a wonderful opportunity to get to know a wonderful person, doing the shows at the National Theatre and Chichester,” he says.
Reflecting on the contrast between now and 50 years ago, Richard says: “Theatre is not funded properly, with very few exceptions. The most worrying thing is the lack of performances of classic plays, and often when they’re done now, they’re very badly spoken, even at places where there’s no excuse, like the Royal Shakespeare Company.
“By comparison with Peter Hall’s days, what the National Theatre is doing now is not what it should be. So, I am concerned. I say this as an old man, but one who tries try not to have too many set ideas, but if you look at the list of what was playing in the West End 30 years ago and what’s on there now, I’m deeply concerned.”
His passion for theatre, his conviction in its importance, remains unbowed, however. “A city without the arts will never be a complete place,” he says.
50 Years On: Richard Digby Day In Conversation, York Theatre Royal Studio, tonight at 7pm. Tickets cost £20 plus an optional additional donation to York Theatre Royal. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Paul French’s Prospero, right, with Effie Warboys’ Miranda and Jacob Ward’s Ferdinand in York Shakespeare Project’s The Tempest. Picture: John Saunders
PAUL French first performed in a Shakespeare play in his York Shakespeare Project debut in All’s Well That Ends Well in 2014.
By 2016, he was playing Lear in King Lear and now is the lead once more, cast as Prospero in The Tempest, in YSP’s climax to performing all 37 Shakespeare plays in 20 years, concluding at York Theatre Royal tonight.
“I’d never done any Shakespeare until 2014, so it was an amazing development for me,” he says. “I didn’t start acting until my early forties, then I moved up here, and I had no idea I would like doing Shakespeare until I did it.
“I had a family and job but now I’ve retired, though it’s been a slow process with doing theatre, after doing a job that gave me the flexibility to do the York Mystery Plays [in York Minster] in 2016, and it just so happened that Ben Prusiner, from that production, was directing Lear, and then I did Volpone with Ben’s own company [Re:Verse Theatre].
Paul French’s Lear and Charlotte Wood’s Cordelia in Ben Prusiner’s King Lear in 2016. Picture John Saunders
“It’s all been pretty fortuitous. None of it was planned. My wife is now asking, ‘is this going to be your last Shakespeare?’, and I say, ‘I don’t know’, because I didn’t know I’d ever do one, but I love it, especially the rehearsals.”
Over the past few years, Paul has attended acting classes to develop his skills further and done films to diversify his craft too. Everything helps towards playing such a demanding role as Prospero.
“I remember when I did All’s Well That Ends Well, playing the king, which is not a huge part, saying to a fellow actor, ‘I’d love to do Lear and I’d love to do Prospero’, and you think, ‘how will that work out, with all the people who can do it?’, and yet here we are now, with all these blessed words to get out of my head!” says Paul.
He has enjoyed that experience. “It’s been very interesting to develop Prospero from having first read the play and having ideas of what he’s about and then exploring it. It’s a pleasure working with the other actors, starting with the huge scene with Miranda [Effie Warboys], setting up the story,” he says.
Paul French’s Prospero and Effie Warboys’ Miranda in rehearsal for Philip Parr’s production of The Tempest. Picture: John Saunders
“It’s fascinating how it all develops, and I now think Prospero is more like me than I first thought he was.”
Director Philip Parr chips in: “That’s sort of how it should work. The part should become greater than the actor by an alchemical process.”
Assessing the art of acting, Paul goes on to say: “Acting is reacting; acting is listening; acting is being in the moment.” Philip chips in again: “Acting is not acting!”
“I think it won’t happen with this cast, but with actors who are not experienced, there’s a tendency to not know how to react if the performance is suddenly different on one night,” says Paul. “But here, for The Tempest, we want it to be different, to just see what happens!”
York Shakespeare Project in The Tempest, York Theatre Royal, tonight (1/10/2022), 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
On the case: Susie Blake’s bandaged Miss Marple and Oliver Boot’s Detective Inspector Craddock in the Original Theatre Company’s production of The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
COINCIDING with Miss Marple’s arrival, Charles Hutchinson applies his investigative skills to to pick out the best prospects to see, whether usual or unusual.
Mystery of the week: Original Theatre Company in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm; 2pm, Thursday; 2.30pm, Saturday
SUSIE Blake’s Miss Marple, Sophie Ward and Joe McFadden lead the cast in Rachel Wagstaff’s stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1962 psychological thriller, a story of revenge and the dark secrets that we all hide.
In the sleepy village of St Mary Mead, a new housing estate is making villagers curious and fearful. Even stranger, a rich American film star has bought the Manor House. Cue a vicious murder; cue Jane Marple defying a sprained ankle to unravel a web of lies, tragedy and danger. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
On the move: Dance time for the Barbara Taylor School of Dancing at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre
Every body dance: It’s Dance Time 2022, Barbara Taylor School of Dancing, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, today, 2.30pm and 7.30pm
IT’S Dance Time is “a festival arrangement of dance, infused together to arrange a variety of dance styles”, featuring the whole Barbara Taylor School of Dancing intake.
From tiny toes to fully grown, this song-and- dance parade through the years takes in Commercial Ballet, Tap, and Freestyle Jazz, finishing off with excerpts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Bingham String Quartet: Playing the first Saturday evening concert of the new York Late Music season
Season launch of the week: York Late Music presents Jakob Fichert, today, 1pm, and Bingham String Quartet, today, 7.30pm, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York
ON the first weekend of its 2022-2023 season, York Late Music returns with its regular format of a lunchtime and evening concert. First up, pianist Jakob Fichert marks the 75th birthday of American composer John Adams by performing his works China Gates and American Berserk.
Later, the Bingham String Quartet play string quartets by Beethoven, Schnittke, LeFanu and Tippett, preceded by a talk at 6.45pm by Steve Bingham with a complimentary glass of wine or juice. Tickets: latemusic.org or on the door.
Graham Norton: Discussing his darkly comic new novel, Forever Home, at York Theatre Royal
Novel event of the week: An Evening With Graham Norton, York Theatre Royal, Monday, 7.30pm
BBC broadcaster, Virgin Radio presenter and novelist Graham Norton is on a promotional tour for his new book, Forever Home, published this week by Coronet. Set in a small Irish town, it revolves around divorced teacher Carol, whose second chance of love brings her unexpected connection, a shared home and a sense of belonging in a darkly comic story of coping with life’s extraordinary challenges.
In conversation with author and presenter Konnie Huq, Norton will discuss the novel’s themes and how he creates his characters and atmospheric locations, share tales from his career and reveal what inspired him to pick up a pen and start writing, with room for audience questions too. Tickets update: sold out; for returns only, check yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Sax to the max: Jean Toussaint leads his quintet at the NCEM
Jazz gig of the week: Jean Toussaint Quintet, National Centre for Early Music, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm
SAXOPHONIST Jean Toussaint, who came to prominence in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1982, after his Berklee College of Music studies in Boston, has released 12 albums since moving to London in 1987.
His latest, Songs For Sisters Brothers And Others, reflects on the turbulent Covid-19 years. “The pandemic caused me to focus on the fragility of life and the fact we’re here one moment and gone the next,” he says of penning songs as a “tribute to my wonderful siblings while they were still around to enjoy it”.
Joining him in York will be Freddie Gavita, trumpet, Jonathan Gee, piano, Conor Murray, bass, and Shane Forbes, drums. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Feel like dancing? Leo Sayer steps out at York Barbican on Friday
The rearranged show must go on: Leo Sayer, York Barbican, Friday, 7.30pm
DELAYED by the pandemic, Leo Sayer’s York show now forms part of a 2022 tour to mark his 50th anniversary in pop.
Sayer, 74, who lives in Australia, is back on home soil with his not-so-one-man band to perform a setlist sure to feature One Man Band, Thunder In My Heart, Moonlighting, I Can’t Stop Loving You, More Than I Can Say, Have You Ever Been In Love, When I Need You, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and, yes, The Show Must Go On. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Buzzing: Maisie Adam heads home for Harrogate Theatre gig. Picture: Matt Crockett
Homecoming of the week: Maisie Adam: Buzzed, Harrogate Theatre, October 8, 8pm
BORN in Pannal and former head girl at St Aidan’s in Harrogate, anecdotal stand-up Maisie Adam heads home next Saturday on her first full-scale British tour to discuss relationships, house plants, her footballing aplomb, hopefully her beloved Leeds United and that haircut, the one to rival David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane for multiple choices across one barnet.
Adam played her first gig at the Ilkley Literature Festival in 2016 and won the nationwide So You Think You’re Funny? Competition in 2017. Now she pops up on Mock The Week and Have I Got News and co-hosts the podcast That’s A First. She also plays Leeds City Varieties on Friday. Box office: Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.
Digging the digital: The poster for Foto/Grafic’s Human After All digital-media exhibition at Fossgate Social and Micklegate Social
One exhibition, two locations: Foto/Grafic, Human After All, at Micklegate Social and Fossgate Social, York, today until November 27.
TWO sister bars that “show a bit of art every now and then championing local and innovative creativity” present Foto/Grafic’s group show from this weekend.
Human After All features digital-media artwork by young and early-career artists in celebration of their “leap from physical earthbound creations to the stratosphere of the unlimited digital toolbox”.
December Morning, by Judy Burnett
Exhibition launch of the week outside York: Judy Burnett, Time And Tide, Morten Gallery, High Street, Old Town, Bridlington, today until November 13; open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm
YORK artist Judy Burnett’s latest show of paintings and collages at Morten Gallery winds its way across the Wolds from the River Ouse in York to the sea.
Over time, water in all its forms has created the East Yorkshire landscape, firstly as a melting glacier at the end of the Ice Age, gouging out deep valleys and folds on its way down to the Vale of York.
The River Ouse then connects with other Yorkshire waterways to spill out into the North Sea at the mouth of the Humber and return on the tide to crash onto the cliffs of the Wolds coastline.
Judy lives by the Ouse in York, with a view from her studio window directly onto the riverbank, leading to the changing effects of light on moving water being an inspiration for her work. The colours and rhythms of the water alter with the weather, the time of day, the seasons and the frequent floods.
This interest in the luminosity and movement of water is also reflected in Judy’s many paintings of the Yorkshire coast, most particularly at Flamborough Head and Bridlington.
During the past year, she has made many trips across the Wolds, observing the rich tapestry of the countryside that links the river to the sea.
Her sketches are completed on-site in varying weather conditions. Back in the studio, they are developed in a range of media, utilising hand-printed collage paper and paint. The aim is to keep all the mark-making fresh and spontaneous, to echo the power of the elements at the time of observation.
A Meet The Artist event will be held on October 22, from 1pm to 3pm, when “you are welcome to join us for a glass of wine and to enjoy the 30 pieces of work, together with Judy’s sketchbooks on display,” says gallery owner Jenny Morten.
Paul Hawkyard, left, Robin Simpson and Janine Mellor as “the Beverley Sisters” in Men Of The World at Harrogate Theatre
HT Rep in Men Of The World, Harrogate Theatre/Phil & Ben Productions, at Harrogate Theatre tonight, 7.30pm; tomorrow, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk
WEEK three of HT Rep’s season of Three Plays, Three Weeks, One Cast marks the 20th anniversary of John Godber’s melancholic comedy road trip.
Mirroring the old repertory days of a company of actors taking on myriad roles in quick succession, Men Of The World takes that opportunity even further by having Paul Hawkyard, Robin Simpson and Janine Mellor play not only northern coach drivers Stick, Larry and Frankie but also everyone who hops on board.
Godber has them preparing for a mystery trip to Scarborough (ah, the mystery of Scarborough) , but this turns out to be trip down memory lane, in the nostalgic tradition of Godber’s Happy Jack and September In The Rain.
He has always liked to take people out of their comfort zone, to make them travel for new experiences, be they Bet and Al heading to the French capital in April In Paris, the skiing novices in On The Piste or ex-miner Don and teacher Carol on a quarrelsome tandem trip to Europe in Scary Bikers.
Last journey for Robin Simpson’s coach driver Larry…or not?
The difference here is that these are two men and one woman of the world are world-weary: Stick, Larry and Frankie have been there, done that, discarded the T-shirt. Their routes home and abroad are so familiar, the quirks of their passengers likewise, so much so, they have given them nicknames.
Yet Godber’s tone is one of compassion, wonder, whimsy and celebration as they recount the memorable trips that add up to “the small, often overlooked moments of magic in our lives”.
Director Amie Burns Walker and designer Geoff Gilder have given Men Of The World a somewhat abstract, even surrealist air, reminiscent of a circus or cabaret tent with striped tarpaulin, to either side of a white-lined road that climbs to the blue yonder. Bags of luggage and a step ladder complete the scene. Don’t take it too literally: this is theatre; this is performance; they are storytellers with a cabaret flourish.
Indeed, Hawkyard, Simpson and Mellor are so relaxed, so attuned to performing on the hoof in pantomime, that when they fluff the opening, they break theatre’s fourth wall, laugh about it and start again, spinning off and back on their carousel, forever carrying luggage.
Such is their comic craft that they can be on both sides of the story, looking in and taking part, and yet still they shock you on occasion: when Simpson’s heavy-smoking Larry, on the cusp of retirement, blows his big moment in clumsily chatting up Mellor’s Frankie after six years of working together, and later when veteran Larry and cocky Stick have their flare-up, recalling Lucky Eric and Judd’s showdown in Bouncers. For all the comedy, these two shuddering moments bring out the very best in the trio.
Paul Hawkyard’s contemptuous coach driver Stick
No matter where they go, Stick, Larry and Frankie and their passengers are forever English, northern, Yorkshire, their character not so much altered by their experiences but reaffirmed by them instead.
To go with the eye for the absurd, there is a bleakness to Men Of The World too, the shadow of approaching death, the third-age travels being accompanied by bellyaches and pains. That’s why the frustrated, even contemptuous Stick prefers taking young’uns to the Costa del Sol, whereas steady-away Larry is a romantic at heart, with his love of Mario Lanzo and affection for ordinary folk taking trips out of the ordinary in later life to rekindle something inside.
Frankie is the stoical, unflappable, wise one, not at a crossroads, unlike Larry, but going wherever life’s road may take her.
Godber’s way of catching characters just so, to make them recognisable yet more than caricatures, is brought to life in Simpson, Hawkyard and Mellor’s realisation of the passengers, from the Beverley Sisters (from Beverley) to the Marx Brothers (a funnier, gloomier Last Of The Summer Wine trio) and double acts Arsenic & Old Lace to Mack & Mabel. A flat cap, a scarf, a mannerism, is all it takes to evoke each character, like a sketch artist.
Godber, by the way, loved this production so much – “they really caught the decaying humanity,” he said – that he will be back, bringing his dad to a performance. No better recommendation required.
Bellyaches and pains: Robin Simpson, Janine Mellor and Paul Hawkyard as Yorkshire’s grouchy Marx Brothers, as played by coach drivers Larry, Frankie and Stick
Bookworm Matilda Wormwood (Aimee Dean-Hamilton) takes on the vile headmistress Miss Trunchbull (Jack Hambleton) with her special powers in Pick Me Up Theatre’s production of Matilda: The Musical Jr. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
HOW would Sam Steel, one of a brace of Miss Trunchbulls on Pick Me Up Theatre school play duty, sum up Roald Dahl’s joyous girl-power romp Matilda: The Musical Jr.
“It’s insane!” he decides. “There’s certainly anarchy. Everything that you think will happen won’t happen!”
Pick Me Up’s bright young things – some as young as six – are revelling in Robert Readman’s ebullient production all this week at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, led by Sam Steel and Jack Hambleton’s outrageous headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, and Aimee Dean-Hamilton and Juliette Sellamuttu’s Matilda, the precocious, courageous pupil with special powers and limitless imagination, as they alternate performances.
“It’s all about beating the child bully with the help of loveable teacher Miss Honey as they take on the hateful Miss Trunchbull, the Olympic hammer-throwing champion of 1969,” says Robert. “Not that any Olympic Games were held in 1969, but the line in the song rhymed!
“Miss Trunchbull is apparently based on Alastair Sim’s headmistress in the St Trinian’s films, when he was so good playing it as a character – and also playing the twin brother – that you don’t think of the headmistress as male or female, just as a character.”
Jack adds: “It’s a woman but she’s so butch! Play Miss Trunchbull as a woman and it doesn’t work, but play it as a man who happens to have boobs and big shoulders and a hairpiece, it works!
“I try to bring out the most grotesque elements of myself and there’s a bit in there too of the teachers that I don’t like! It’s about getting the physicality right and the tone of the voice.”
When Sam is playing Miss Trunchbull, Jack takes the role of Matilda’s dreadful dad, slimy car salesman Mr Wormwood, and vice versa. “We’ve watched each in rehearsal but I don’t think we’ve ever discussed the roles with each other,” says Sam. “We just instinctively took a bit of each other’s performance.”
Robert chips in: “But they’re physically different, their voices are different, their mannerisms are different. Sam is blond, Jack darker, so they have their different hairpieces too.”
Clash of wills: Sam Steel’s headmistress Miss Trunchbull and Juliette Sellamuttu’s highly imaginative pupil, Matilda, in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Matilda: The Musical Jr. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Likewise, Aimee, ten, and Juliette, nine, are “very different actresses”, says Robert, who welcomed the chance to have contrasting Matildas. “They didn’t audition for Matilda, but when did auditions for singing roles, they came out of the pack,” says Robert.
“I was kind of expecting to get a small role, so it was a bit of shock,” says Aimee. “But not like an electric shock!” says Juliette, who felt “very surprised” to be picked for the title role.
If Aimee could choose a special power, it would be “maybe healing people”. Juliette first liked the thought of being able to use the swish of a hand “if someone is being naughty”, then changed tack. “I’d like to make inanimate objects animate, like asking a stuffed animal to barge its way out of a window,” she says.
Juliette, whose father is Sri Lankan and mother, Polish, has been living in York for a year. “Before I came here, in Sri Lanka, I did a line as a witch in a small assembly piece for Halloween, when I was at Gateway College in Colombo,” she says.
Aimee, meanwhile, has performed with one of York’s leading amateur societies. “I’ve done shows in theatres with Steve Tearle for NE Musicals York,” she says.
On Readman’s stage design, bedecked in a multitude of letters to reflect bookworm Matilda’s love of words and spelling, Sam and Jack are throwing themselves with gusto into the appalling behaviour of Miss Trunchbull.
“It’s more interesting that she’s not just a villain, she’s an absolute monster,” says Jack. “It’s probably the most evil person I’ve played, which is a nice contrast after playing Adrian Mole – and I get to throw a girl [Amanda Thripp] by her pigtails!”
Please note, Amanda is played by a doll at this juncture, one of several little tricks up Robert Readman’s sleeve that add to the fun and games of a delightfully unruly show with a gleefully rebellious book by Dennis Kelly and smart, fun, bouncy songs by Tim Minchin, replete with such titles as Naughty, Chokey Chant and Revolting Children.
Pick Me Up Theatre in Matilda: The Musical Jr, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Sunday. Performances: 7.30pm, tonight, tomorrow and Saturday; 2.30pm, Saturday and Sunday. All SOLD OUT. A special performance of songs from a new musical, Prodigy, featuring the cast of Matilda, opens each show. Box office for returns only: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Pick Me Up Theatre’s poster for Matilda: The Musical Jr. All remaining shows have sold out
Writer-performer Rob Ward explores consent, coercion and grooming within the gay male community in The MP, Aunty Mandy And Me
THE MP, Aunty Mandy And Me’s bittersweet tale of political campaigns, sexual consent and steam trains plays out at York Theatre Royal Studio on Saturday night.
Written and performed by Manchester-based Rob Ward, who brought Gypsy Queen’s unconventional love story between two fighters to the Studio in 2019, this 2022 Edinburgh Fringe show relates the story of young gay Dom, who craves being an #instagay #influencer.
The problem is, no-one likes his posts, he cannot find a bloke who shares his love of steam trains and he lives with his MDMA-popping, Simply Red-loving mum in the small, sleepy northern village, where he grew up, five miles from the nearest gay.
“He’d love a fabulous life with the A-Gays in a swanky city-centre apartment, but his crippling social anxiety prevents this from being a reality. It’s all a bit of an effort,” says Rob.
“Then, one day, a chance encounter with his local MP, Peter Edwards, leads to a job, turning everything upside down, but in pursuit of the life he thinks he wants, just how much does Dom have to give up?
“There are many more conversations to be had,” says Rob Ward as he turns the spotlight on gay grooming
The MP, Aunty Mandy & Me – the “Aunty Mandy” refers to Dom’s mum’s MDMA habit – explores consent, coercion and grooming within the gay male community through Ward’s combination of jagged humour and contemporary social commentary.
Rob’s play should have been touring in 2020, but the pandemic put paid to that after only two performances at Curve, Leicester. Yet the 2022 summer run in Edinburgh and autumn tour could not be better timed. “At one point this year, there were 56 MPs facing allegations of sexual misconduct, and when there are 650 MPs, that’s a high proportion,” says Rob.
“The play started as a reflection of personal experiences. I saw a play by a friend of mine, Tom Ratcliffe, called Velvet [about a young actor with a #metoo-style story to tell], and I had a conversation with him about how this behaviour [of coercion] can manifest itself, and I drew on that for my play.
“It’s that very careful planning, almost plotting, that takes place where the abuser gets you in a situation where you’re vulnerable or feel in need of them and then they move on.”
Rob’s research involved reading articles to learn of people’s experiences and having conversations with Duncan Craig OBE, the chief executive officer of Survivors, a Manchester charity for male survivors of sexual abuse.
Rob Ward on the stage set for The MP, Aunty Mandy And Me
“The roots of the play probably go back to the #metoo movement in 2017, listening to those stories, thinking about those power dynamics, and then realising that there probably wasn’t a male gay voice being heard in that movement, though of course it was quite right that the focus was on women with #metoo.
“But then you start hearing about theatre and film directors exploiting gay men, and I started talking with other gay men about how this happens within their community.”
Rob felt driven to highlight how such coercive abuse can prevail. “It’s an issue in society, where we’re coming to terms with it, but there are many more conversations to be had. I thought, ‘let’s open it out beyond the world of theatre’, and as I’m interested in politics, I decided I’d look at gay grooming in that world.
“Frequently, the power imbalance is a key part of it; what you face when you first step on to the gay scene, who you meet.”
Rob does not write with a didactic or polemical tone. “I try to avoid that,” he says. “I’m much more keen on asking questions and seeing what answers the audiences come up with. I prefer to steer clear of polemic. Instead, I like people to say, ‘oh, I hadn’t thought about that before’.
Rob Ward in his publicity picture for “the play about a Labour MP with a fetish”
“It’s essentially an exploration of ideas, rather than coming down on one side or the other, and hopefully people will then want to reflect on it and look into it further.”
Rob writes of the social-media world of the #instagay #influencer in his play. “I’m not a social influencer on Instagram, but it’s important that theatre addresses these issues and keeps our voices being heard in the wider community. As increasingly right-wing governments start to form, you have to be wary that liberties that have been fought for, for so long, can be taken away very quickly.”
After 17 Pleasance Dome performances at the Edinburgh Fringe,” trying it out, seeing what works, what needs working on, like a comedian testing gags, or being in a laboratory”, Rob is on tour, taking in both York and Harrogate in October.
“It’s been going down really well,” he says of an 80-minute eye-opener quickly becoming known as “the play about a Labour MP with a fetish”.
Emmerson & Ward Productions and Curve, Leicester present Rob Ward in The MP, Auntie Mandy And Me, York Theatre Royal Studio, Saturday (October 1), 7.45pm; Harrogate Theatre Studio, October 20, 8pm. Box office: York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk
Susie Blake’s Miss Marple in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, a play where she is on a chair, on crutches and on a stick. Picture: Ali Wright
SUSIE Blake returns to York Theatre Royal to play Agatha Christie’s spinster sleuth Miss Marple in The Original Theatre Company’s touring production of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d.
She last appeared there in February 2017 in the premiere of Murder, Margaret And Me, cast as Margaret Rutherford, such a memorable Miss Marple on the big screen, as recalled in a Philip Meeks drama that explored the relationship between the actress and queen of crime writers.
Now she stars in Rachel Wagstaff’s new adaptation of Christie’s 1962 novel The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side that aims to bring emotional depth and psychological insight to a story of secrets, loss and revenge, performing in a company with strong Yorkshire links.
Co-stars Sophie Ward and Joe McFadden had regular roles in the moorland series Heartbeat, as did director Philip Franks, last seen in York as the devilishly disdainful Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show at the Grand Opera House in March.
Susie Blake with The Mirror Crack’d co-star Sophie Ward. Picture: Ali Wright
“I’ve always wanted to play Miss Marple, since the 1960s when I saw Margaret Rutherford playing her. Her character performance immediately drew you in,” says Susie, who follows in the footsteps of Angela Lansbury in the 1980 film of The Mirror Crack’d and Joan Hickson and Julia McKenzie in television adaptations in 1992 and 2011 respectively.
“I loved her Lady Bracknell in [Oscar Wilde’s] The Importance Of Being Earnest, her Madame Arcati in [Noel Coward’s] Blithe Spirit. I loved her so much. I know she’s not fashionable any more as Miss Marple but I was drawn in as a child, seeing her as this safe, cuddly lady who would work things out for you.
“I thought ‘that’s what I want to do with my life’ – to tell stories and be part of mysteries because every play is a mystery, isn’t it? You don’t know what’s going to happen until the end.”
Playing Rutherford in Murder, Margaret And Me has “not really” influenced Susie’s own performance as Miss Marple. “Philip, our director, said, ‘This is your interpretation now, Susie, no-one else’s. We’ve got to find your interpretation’.
Susie Blake’s Miss Marple, on the phone and on her stick in a scene from The Original Theatre Company’s The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
“Miss Marple is from a certain period. Her boyfriend, whom she talks about, was in the First World War, so she goes back quite a long way. My mum was born in 1917, and she and her friends were, you know, ‘good eggs’. They had a certain turn of phrase. So, I met some quite useful people growing up.”
Revisiting Christie’s books has helped Susie to put her stamp on a beloved fictional character. “I’ve been re-reading Pocketful Of Rye and there are some very good descriptions of her in there. I go back to that rather than watching other people playing her to find out what makes Miss Marple tick.
“I’m absolutely loving re-reading the books. The people are so clearly drawn. Reading them all together, like I’m doing, you think: these are a multitude of people that she’s observed. Agatha Christie is a Miss Marple herself in order to work these intricate stories through.”
Asked to summarise Miss Marple’s character, Susie says: “She’s fascinated by people, she’s obsessed with finding out the truth and she’ll go on nitpicking until she gets it. She hates evil and injustice, and she hunts it down. She’s relentless in her pursuit of the truth and will go on digging away and digging away.
Susie Blake’s Miss Marple in her “rather lovely suit” and string of pearls. Picture: Michael Wharley
“Rachel Wagstaff has written a very good script and she’s made Miss Marple a much clearer character: someone who wants to find out the truth. Not in an unkind way but she will go on at somebody, go on delving until she gets what she wants.
“Rachel is a wonderful writer, like how she gives Miss Marple a bit of history, so you get to know why she’s alone. This is her first Christie adaptation; she’s very in with the family and I hope she does more of them.”
In Christie’s story, a wind of change is blowing through 1960s’ England, even reaching the sleepy village of St Mary Mead, where a new housing estate is alarming the villagers as much as it intrigues them. Still more unsettling, a rich American film star has bought the manor house. Jane Marple, confined to a chair after an accident, is wondering if life has passed her by, but a shocking murder demands she must unravel a web of lies, danger and tragedy.
“Rachel’s adaptation is not what you’re expecting. It worried me at first: are people expecting an old-fashioned Agatha Christie repertory production? But it’s not like that at all! Philip has really brought out the characters, with 12 actors on stage. That’s a lot to deal with and he’s made them very likeable and individual and you kind of don’t want any of them to have done the crime.”
Susie Blake’s Miss Marple sharing a sofa with Oliver Boot’s Detective Inspector Craddock. “It’s like a very good granny and grandson relationship: we bicker!” says Susie. “She’s sitting at home feeling very alone, and then in comes Craddock with this murder. Up she steps, much to his dissatisfaction!” Picture: Ali Wright
Susie’s Miss Marple will spend much of The Mirror Crack’d walking on crutches. “She’s sprained her ankle, right at the top of the show,” she reveals. “I start in a chair, then crutches, then finally a stick. They’re not easy to use, these old wooden crutches – I think they might be museum pieces, beautifully shaped – so I’ve had to learn how to use them.
“I must try not to limp because at my age [72] that could be disastrous. But being on crutches is a good ruse for slowing things down to allow her to work things out!”
Over a long career, “I’ve been very lucky that I haven’t ever had a theatre injury,” reflects Susie. Keeping herself fit, during the tour’s Eastbourne run, she went swimming in the sea each day, chatting with the regulars at the beach huts. Next week, she heads to York, sketch book by her side. “That way you get a good memory of a town,” she reasons.
Susie is working with director Philip Franks for a second time. “We did [Alan Bennett’s play] Kafka’s Dick at Nottingham Playhouse in 1998 with Alistair McGowan in the cast,” she recalls.
“For The Mirror Crack’d, he said, ‘I’ll bring the education, you bring the talent!’, as I’m not well read but I went to [Elmhurst] ballet school, Arts Educational and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art,” says Londoner Susie.
The Mirror Crack’d director Philip Franks: “This is your interpretation now, Susie, no-one else’s,” he advised. “We’ve got to find your interpretation”
“He’s so lovely with actors. He’s given me free rein but made suggestions like, ‘what about if she was at Bletchley Park, doing de-coding in the war, and so she’s intrinsically interested in wanting to work things out, being fascinated in solving things, rather than being ghoulish?’.”
Rather than woolly jumpers and pince-nez, her Jane Marple will be wearing a “rather lovely suit”. “Quite a nice look, with a big collar, a white blouse underneath, a string of pearls, sensible shoes obviously, and no hat because the play moves too fast for me to wear one – and nobody’s missed the hat,” says Susie. “She’s my age, in her seventies rather than in her eighties, in our production.”
Why does Miss Marple’s popularity show no signs of diminishing, Susie? “Almost everything on the telly is a mystery, whatever you’re watching. You want to be taken by the hand knowing that Miss Marple or Poirot will help you work it out,” she says.
“It’s like having a pal, going into a situation with someone by your side. With most shows, you don’t know whose side to be on, but with her you have a familiar friend. And you can read the books again and again and watch the stories again and again and always enjoy them.”
Susie Blake’s Miss Marple in an early publicity picture for The Mirror Crack’d. The hat has since gone. “The play moves too fast for me to wear one – and nobody’s missed the hat,” she says
Best known for her comedy break in Russ Abbot’s Madhouse, her Continuity Announcer in Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV and her regular roles as Bev Unwin in Coronation Street and Hillary Nicholson in Mrs Brown’s Boys, Susie has latterly appeared in series one and two of Kate & Koji (ITV), Not Going Out (BBC One) and The Real Marigold Hotel (BBC One).
Have her roles become more interesting as she has grown older, leading to Miss Marple? “Yes, I think they have – and I’ve probably got better too,” decides Susie. “I’ve never wanted to be a frontliner or a film star. That was never on the cards. Only when you look back, you think, ‘I’ve been busy in my career’. Splendid looks can be quite difficult when you have to do the changeover to middle age. For me, it’s gone seamlessly from girl next door to wives and mothers to grandmothers.”
As for the future, “I’d love to be the next Miss Marple on telly. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
The Original Theatre Company in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, York Theatre Royal, October 4 to 8, 7.30pm; 2pm, Thursday and 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
“I’ve never wanted to be a frontliner or a film star,” says Susie Blake. “That was never on the cards”
Did you know?
The Original Theatre Company’s past productions at York Theatre Royal: Alan Bennett’s Auden-Britten encounter The Habit Of Art, Rachel Wagstaff’s adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’s novel Birdsong and Ben Brown’s Cold War political drama A Splinter Of Ice.
Did you know too?
Susie Blake was born into famous acting stock. Her cousins are the actresses Juliet and Hayley Mills; her great-uncle was the late film star Sir John Mills, and her maternal grandmother was Annette Mills, who fronted the BBC TV children’s series Muffin The Mule from 1946 to 1955.
Just one other thing…
How do you think Miss Marple compares to Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, Susie?
“They are so different. They both have the same interrogating mind, but her methods are very much to do with the fact that she’s a little old lady. She gets chatting to people and shows her vulnerability, all the better to hook into what she needs to know.
“It’s the knife edge quality of her mind whereas Poirot never shows any weakness. She, on the other hand, will knock on someone’s door and say, ‘ooh I feel a bit faint; can I sit down?’.”
Joe Gash’s Lonny Bartlet, left, Kevin Kennedy’s Dennis Dupree and Sam Turrell’s Drew in Rock Of Ages. Picture: The Other Richard
THE last time Rock Of Ages stuck its salacious tongue into both cheeks in York in 2019, a fire prevented the Wednesday show from taking place.
This time, the deliriously daft, self-mocking shock-rock musical is even hotter, saucier too, in Nick Winston’s 2022 direction and choreography: a lewd and loud show to make the woke vigilantes choke and everyone else laugh and scream.
York audiences love its big, brash, kiss-butt comedy, its ballsy attitude, as it time-travels back to the Sunset Strip bars of the mid-Eighties’ Los Angeles on a surfeit of anthemic poodle-rock guilty pleasures, from We Built This City to I Want To Know What Love Is, The Final Countdown to Every Rose Has Its Thorn.
Rock Of Ages is drawing the crowds once more on its fourth Grand Opera House staging in eight years, with Saturday’s finale sold out already, and if the cost-of-living crisis is seeing such one-nighters as Aggers And Cook’s cricket chat on Monday being called off, audiences will still turn out for the big hitters.
Musicals, in particular, and they don’t come cheesier or cheekier than this Broadway jukebox one, with its knowing, rebellious book by Chris D’Arienzo, as he sends up stereotypes galore, both male and female. All roads lead to the exuberant rock arrangements and orchestrations of American AOR radio smashes by Ethan Popp, and they really do snap, crackle and Popp.
Everything in Winston’s direction and choreography has a sure touch, typified by the hell-for-leather first-half finale, Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again, and the show-closing Don’t Stop Believin’, the Sweet Caroline of rock.
Duncan McLean’s video and projection design, Morgan Large’s era-evoking fabulous, fun and fruity costume designs and Bourbon Room bar interior, Ben Cracknell’s lighting and especially Ben Harrison’s on-the-button sound designs add panache and swagger, as does Liam Holmes’s characterful band.
For any newcomers, Rock Of Ages is a satirical tale of the crash and burn of rock demigod Stacee Jaxx (Cameron Sharp), but rather than a cautionary tale of the dangers of excess, it is a caution-to-the-wind retort.
Stud Stacee’s rampant ego has outgrown his band Arsenal and his kiss-off will be a final basement gig back at the Bourbon Room as a favour to veteran bar owner Dennis Dupree (Corrie legend Kevin Kennedy’s amusingly ornery old hippie rocker).
Sunset Strip is losing its lustre (but not its lust), so Dennis could soon be put out of joint by ruthless German developer Hertz Klinemann (Vas Constanti, reprising his 2019 role) and his desperate-to-break-out-of-his-shadow son Franz (a scene-stealing David Breeds, fresh from his lead role in the National Theatre’s tour of The Curious Incident In The Night-Time, now revealing a Norman Wisdom/Lee Evans talent for physical comedy).
Nothing against Sharp’s egotistical jerk Stacee Jaxx (fine rock voice, quick to send himself up) but the one pulling the strings and receiving the biggest cheers is Joe Gash’s narrator cum “dramatic conjuror”, Lonny Bartlet.
Always the best role, Gash takes it to new heights as he steers both cast and audience, reminiscent of a meddlesome Shakesperean Fool, but much funnier and funkier too in his debunking of all around him. A loose cannon, yes, but he constantly hits the target in tearing down theatre’s fourth wall, making a play for Charlie in the front row and stepping out of the plot to pass comment.
His confessional duet with his Bourbon Room boss (Kennedy), I Can’t Fight This Feeling, is the show’s giddiest high.
Amid all the sex & drugs & rock’n’roll, Rock Of Ages shows another side to the Los Angeles experience, in the shape two innocents abroad with lessons to learn fast in love and life.
Sam Turrell has the straight-man role of sweet wannabe rock star/songwriter Wolfgang/Bourbon Room loo cleaner Drew Boley. Is he just too darn reserved to assert himself with Gabriella Williams’s Sherrie Christian, a naive wannabe “actress”, fresh up from the Mid-West to dream the Hollywood dream, only to end up as a stripper? Both are terrific in the show’s will-they, won’t-they love story.
Rock Of Ages shakes it dumb-ass, rather than its finger, at all that Eighties’ hedonism and sexism in LA’s exploitative rock scene and film world, but it shakes it with sass.
Behind all the bravado and cheek, smartness shows its face to make points about cynical property acquisitors and false rock gods, although everyone eventually succumbs to the frenetic comic looning, from Constanti’s Klinemann to Vicki Manser’s Save The Strip protestor, Regina Koontz.
Gash’s Lonny would probably pour scorn on such seriousness in a review, and it’s true, I can’t fight this feeling any more, Rock Of Ages is, above all, a big popcorn rush of a rocktastic musical theatre trip to Eighties’ heaven and hell.
Rock Of Ages, Grand Opera House, York, 7.30pm tonight until Saturday, plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/york
Rock of Ages cast members Phoebe Samuel-Grey, Joe Gash, Kevin Kennedy, Tianna Sealy-Jewiss and Cameron Sharp gather outside the Grand Opera House after the first night. Picture by David Harrison.
