Effie Ansah and James Arden, left, in rehearsal for Pilot Theatre’s Noughts & Crosses. Picture: Robert Day
YORK company Pilot Theatre’s revival of Noughts & Crosses is even more topical than its award-winning 2019 premiere.
Sabrina Mahfouz’s adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s young adult novel of first love in a dangerous fictional dystopia, rife with racism, will be on tour from this autumn to spring 2023, opening on home turf at York Theatre Royal from September 16 to 24.
“Yeah, things have changed,” says Pilot artistic director Esther Richardson, whose original production played the Theatre Royal in April 2019. “That makes it really interesting to put it on again now.
“What’s changed is that, obviously the pandemic was a huge moment, but what also happened in 2020, the murder of George Floyd, had a massive impact across the world.
“There we were, teetering out of the first lockdown, with this huge anger about the state of the world; people taking to the streets to have a proper conversation for the first time about racial injustice, which had been swept under the carpet before that.
“Even though it was deeply painful, there are always possibilities of change at these times, and so people who hadn’t had the opportunity to take part in the discussion, or hadn’t been aware of the issue, were suddenly alive to it because of Black Lives Matter.”
In Blackman’s Romeo & Juliet story for our times, Sephy is a Cross and Callum is a Nought. Between Noughts and Crosses come racial and social divides as a segregated society teeters on a volatile knife edge.
When violence breaks out, Sephy and Callum draw closer, but this is a romance that will lead them into terrible danger. Told from the perspectives of two teenagers, Noughts & Crosses explores the powerful themes of love, revolution and what it means to grow up in a divided world where black rules over white.
Pilot’s premiere – launched before the BBC television adaptation – was seen by more than 30,000 people on tour, 40 per cent of them being aged under 20, en route winning the award for excellence in touring at the 2019 UK Theatre Awards.
The 2022-23 revival is expected to draw big numbers again, not least among the young target audience. “The whole topic of racial equality has really been taken up by university institutions and teachers talking about it, especially about decolonising the curriculum,” says Esther.
“So, suddenly there was a wider focus on what Pilot had been focusing on before the pandemic, but this is a conversation that everyone should have been participating in, just as we were by staging Crongton Knights, Noughts & Crosses, and before my time at Pilot, Roy Williams’s Antigone.”
George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer has been the tipping point for racial equality to be taken more seriously, not least in the classroom. “Continuing Proficient Development sessions for teachers now sell out to help them address prejudice, racism and every other form of discrimination that young people may encounter at school,” says Esther.
Pilot Theatre artistic director Esther Richardson
“But the downside is that we’re in a time where so-called ‘culture wars’ are prevalent, where it’s prescribed that you must be on one side or the other, and that doesn’t help, stirring up strong feelings and even hatred.
“I’ve just been looking at the statistics for hate crimes in 2020-2021 and regrettably they’ve increased. The Home Office points to the reaction to Black Lives Matter as the most likely reason, leading to a rise in right-wing intolerance.
“That’s why Noughts & Crosses is so important because it’s an educative piece of theatre, a powerful story, a love story too, where young people get caught up forbidden love, and very often people have left the show seeing things through a different lens.
“We have a lot of evidence of how it’s not only been taken on in schools, but also by audiences in general who say how it has helped to change their awareness. That will be our mission again in bringing the play back.”
The Noughts & Crosses cast – bigger by two than last time – will be fronted by Effie Ansah and James Arden in their first leading roles as Sephy and Callum.
“I saw the open call, which was great, because opportunities like this don’t often come around,” says Effie. “So, I submitted a self-tape and contacted my agent to let her know.
“Prior to this, I’d actually submitted a time the first time Pilot did it, but I didn’t hear anything so perhaps I’d missed the deadline.”
This time, she was picked, to her delight. “I feel like I’ve wanted for the longest time to get my head around a black, confrontational female lead, and Sephy is all those things,” says Effie. “She’s young, complex, naïve, going on this incredible journey where she discovers her flaws and the flaws of her society.”
James, who is not represented by an agent at present, was tipped off about the auditions by his housemate. “The only experience I had of Noughts & Crosses was auditioning for the TV series, and I have to say Callum is a completely different beast in the play; much more exciting,” he says.
“Sephy and Callum get to tell the story more themselves, and telling it through soliloquies is an amazing opportunity. The play is epic, Shakespearean.”
Tickets for the York run are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Pilot Theatre’s Noughts & Crosses will then tour from September 27 to November 26 and January 17 to April 1 2023.
All Swings And Roundabouts, by Adele Karmazyn, from her Pleasure Gardens exhibition at Village Gallery, York
POLITICAL division and soul power, sturdy stilettos and string sextets, doomed comedy and surreal gardens spark Charles Hutchinson’s interest for the week ahead.
Exhibition of the week: Adele Karmazyn, Pleasure Gardens, Village Gallery, Colliergate, York, until October 25
YORK Open Studios regular Adele Karmazyn is exhibiting new works in Pleasure Gardens, demonstrating her love of Victorian antiquities and oddities, weathered surfaces and nature.
Using her digital camera, scanner and Photoshop, Adele creates playful, surprising, surrealist digital photomontages, printing the images on to archival paper before hand-finishing with paint, pastel and gold leaf.
Drawing on idioms, metaphors and musical lyrics for narrative inspiration, she chooses her characters, then brings them back to full colour, intertwining them with creatures big and small, coupled with delicate foliage.
Nostalgia of the week: Giants Of Soul, York Barbican, Saturday (10/9/2022), 7.30pm
HOSTED by Smooth Radio’s Angie Greaves, the three-hour revue Giants Of Soul assembles performers from the late-1970s to the modern day, who have notched 18 British top ten smashes and 47 top 40 entries between them.
Step forward The Lighthouse Family’s Tunde Baiyewu; Grammy winner Deniece Williams; Rose Royce’s Gwen Dickey, on her farewell tour; Alexander O’Neal; Jaki Graham; Janet Kay and American Candace Woodson, who will be accompanied by an all-star ten-piece band of British and American musicians. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Chris de Burgh: Playing songs and telling stories at York Barbican
Rescheduled show of the week: An Evening With Chris de Burgh, His Songs, Stories & Hits, York Barbican, Thursday, 7.30pm
BRITISH-IRISH singer-songwriter Chris de Burgh heads to York for a night of songs, stories and hits, showcasing his latest album, 2021’s The Legend Of Robin Hood, on guitar and piano.
Born Christopher John Davison in Venado Tuerto, Argentina, de Burgh will be delivering “an exciting evening full of your favourite songs”, accompanied by a large lighting production. Here come The Lady In Red, Don’t Pay The Ferryman and A Spaceman Came Travelling. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Howell of anguish: Comedian Daniel Howell peers through the gloom in search of hope in We’re All Doomed
Doom’s day booking of the week: Daniel Howell, We’re All Doomed, York Barbican, Friday, 7.30pm
WOKINGHAM comedian, YouTuber, presenter and author Daniel Howell’s new solo show, We’re All Doomed, finds him as stressed and depressingly dressed as ever but nevertheless resisting temptation to give into apocalyptic gloom.
Armed with sarcasm, satire and a desire to skewer everything deemed wrong with society, Howell vows to find hope for humanity or at least to “laugh like it’s the end of the world (because it probably is)”. Prepare for savage self-deprecation, soul-searching and over-sharing of his deepest fears and desires. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Tim Lowe: Programming York Chamber Music Festival at the NCEM
Festival of the week: York Chamber Music Festival 2022, National Centre for Early Music, York, September 16 to 18
ARTISTIC director and cellist Tim Lowe turns his festival focus on the string sextet repertoire in the company of Tristan Gurney and Jonathan Stone, violins, Sarah-Jane Bradley and Scott Dickenson, violas, and Marie Bitlloch, cello, plus Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson.
“We’ll play four of the very greatest sextets: Boccherini, the first string sextet, as far as we know; Brahms’s heart-warming/glowing Sextet in B flat; Richard Strauss’s sextet embedded at the beginning of his last opera, Capriccio, and Tchaikovsky’s joyous recollection of his favourite place in his Souvenir de Florence.” Full programme and ticket details at ycmf.co.uk.
Angels in Kinky Boots: York Stage’s musical is a shoe-in for joyous songs and staggering stilettos at the Grand Opera House, York
Musical of the week: York Stage in Kinky Boots, Grand Opera House, York, September 16 to 24
FACTORY owner Charlie is struggling to save his family business. Lola is a fabulous entertainer with a wildly exciting idea. Both live in the shadows of their fathers in seemingly different, yet surprisingly similar ways.
Learning to embrace their differences, they create sturdy stilettos unlike any the world has ever seen.
Up step York Stage director Nik Briggs and choreographer A J Powell to oversee a joyous show with 16 songs by Cyndi Lauper and a book by Tony-winning Harvey Fierstein. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Effie Ansah (Sephy) and James Arden (Callum), left, in rehearsal for Pilot Theatre’s Noughts & Crossesat York Theatre Royal and on tour. Picture: Robert Day
Political drama of the week: Pilot Theatre in Noughts & Crosses, York Theatre Royal, September 16 to 24
YORK company Pilot Theatre revive their award-winning production of Sabrina Mahfouz’s adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s young adult novel of first love in a volatile fictional dystopia, first toured in 2019.
Sephy is a Cross and Callum is a Nought in a segregated society of racial and social divides. As violence breaks out, the teenagers draw closer, but their forbidden romance will lead them into terrible danger in this exploration of love, revolution and what it means to grow up in a divided world. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Phil Ellis: Headlining The Comedy Network’s first triple bill at Selby Town Hall
Comedy launch of the week: The Comedy Network at Selby Town Hall, September 18, 7.30pm
PITCHING up at Selby Town Hall for the first time this autumn, The Comedy Network is launching a series of showcases of national circuit acts, each night featuring a master of ceremonies, support act and headliner.
First up will be Edinburgh Comedy Award panel prize winner Phil Ellis; Mancunian actor and comedian Katie Mulgrew, daughter of Irish humorist Jimmy Cricket, and compere Travis Jay, a writer for Spitting Image. Box office: 01757 708449 or selbytownhall.co.uk or on the door from 7pm.
York National Book Fair in the Knavesmire Suite
Looking for a book?York National Book Fair, Knavesmire Suite, York Racecourse, today, 10am to 5pm
“BRITAIN’S largest antiquarian book fair” is booked in for its second day in the Knavesmire Suite with all manner of book sellers, book binders and restorers, books, maps and prints to discover.
In its 48th year, this Provincial Booksellers’ Fairs Association event brings together an array of rare and antiquarian booksellers offering material for sale to collectors, scholars, dealers, readers and the curious. Items are priced from only a few pounds up to many thousands. Complimentary tickets can be booked at yorkbookfair.com; alternatively, pay £2 on the door.
An ensemble scene in the Duluth boarding house in Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson
THERE has been a previous Bob Dylan musical: a dance one set “somewhere between awake and asleep” in a dreamy circus of clowns and contortionists, spun around a coming-of-age conflict by director-choreographer Twyla Tharp.
Would it surprise you to learn that the Broadway run of The Times They Are A-Changin’ ground to a halt after only 35 previews and 28 performances in November 2006?
Girl From The North Country just sounds more apt: written and directed by Conor McPherson, elegiac Dublin playwright of The Weir, who had been sent a box gift of 60 career-spanning Dylan CDs by Bob’s management with free rein to select songs to wrap his story around.
That story is set in Duluth, Minnesota, birthplace of one Robert Zimmerman, as The Depression weighed as heavy as stones on saint Margaret Clitherow, in the America of November 1934, a place of racism, broken businesses and abused women.
Eli James’s Reverend Marlowe works his salesman’s pitch on Ross Carswell’s Elias Burke in Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson
Nothing is glitzy about Rae Smith’s scenic staging: a boarding house of worn furniture and worn, lost souls, complemented by panoramic backdrops in black and white.
And yes, McPherson’s cast of 19 actor-musicians do dance, but, like the revolving door of stories blown in on the wind, the pace tends to be slow in Simon Hale’s orchestrations and arrangements, unhurried, some in waltz time, peppered with sporadic bursts of freewheelin’ joy and abandon.
Narrated by the local doctor, weaving his way in and out of the plot as much as the 20 Dylan songs, McPherson’s episodic drama of troubles past, present and in-bound, has the widowed, weary Dr Walker (Chris McHallem) guiding the to and fro of drifters and dreamers, scammers and schemers “trying to figure out their lives” as they pass through the welcome-all boarding house.
If one Dylan chorus were to sum up McPherson’s Eugene O’Neill-inspired story of dysfunctional families, love lost, love never found, and the dangers in strangers, it would be: “How does it feel, ah how does it feel/To be on your own, with no direction home/Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.”
Frances McNamee’s Elizabeth Laine and James Staddon’s Mr Burke. Picture: Johan Persson
There may be the hubhub of life, the constant interaction, and yet the abiding state of being is one of loneliness. On your own, even when surrounded. As sung by Elizabeth, the demented wife of exhausted, despairing, play-away proprietor Nick Laine (a tinderbox Colin Connor), Like A Rolling Stone is indeed “Dylan as you’ve never heard him sung before”, all the more so for the voice emanating from Frances McNamee, winner of the UK Theatre Award for her performance as Meg Dawson in Sting’s musical The Last Ship, as seen at York Theatre Royal in June 2018.
McNamee is even more remarkable here, drawing more tears at the finale in the hopeful Forever Young, and taking the acting honours too. Elizabeth, much more than the narrator, is the key voice of truth here, lacking a filter to tone down her thoughts. For all her madness, she is as unguarded, outspoken and eccentrically funny as a Shakespearean Fool. Her silences and juddering, impromptu dancing speak volumes too.
Significantly, to emphasise the loneliness of each character “standing at a turning point in their lives, searching for a future, hiding from the past and facing unspoken truths about the present”, each song is delivered from the front, directly to the audience, not to fellow characters.
This is particularly affecting in I Want To You, a duet where, side by side, the Laines’ writer son Gene (Gregor Milne in his outstanding professional debut) and Katherine Draper (Eve Norris) say what they could never express to each other or bring to fruition, blighted by circumstance.
Writer-director Conor McPherson in rehearsal with James Staddon and Frances McNamee for Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson
McPherson talked of his “little stories” of failing men and the women they fail being like parables in the Bible, simple, human, rather than political statements, made meaningful by Dylan’s songs. They are, it should be said, made even more meaningful by multiple excellent performances that both devastate and uplift you.
Joshua C Jackson’s Joe Scott, a wrongly imprisoned black boxer seeking a new life, and Justina Kehinde’s Marianne, the Laines’ adopted black daughter, are particularly impactful. Nichola MacEvilly understudied most ably for Keisha Amponsa Banson as Mrs Neilsen on press night, and Teddy Kempner (Mr Perry), Ross Carswell (Elias Burke) and James Staddon’s insufferable Mr Burke add much to the torrid tales.
Far removed from the glut of jukebox musicals or the glittering campery of plenty more, Girl From The North Country is more in keeping with the emotional punch, the highs and the lows, the sadness and the joy of Billy Elliot, Once or Spring Awakening.
Oh, and who can resist the sight of Rebecca Thornhill’s heavy-drinking Mrs Burke playing drums in a red dress or Carswell’s nod to Dylan in playing the mouth organ?! Not forgetting a round of applause for the band, The Howlin’ Winds, especially Ruth Elder’s violin and mandolin.
Girl From The North Country runs at York Theatre Royal until tomorrow (10/9/2022). Performances: 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm, 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.Further Yorkshire dates: Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, November 29 to December 3; Sheffield Lyceum Theatre, January 17 to 21.
Justina Kehinde’s Marianne Laine singing out front in Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson
Seat of power: Claire Morley, as Macbeth, in Northumberland Theatre Company’s modern-day Macbeth. Picture: Jim Donnelly
YORK actor Claire Morley is starring in Chris Connaughton’s all-female, three-hander version of Macbeth for Northumberland Theatre Company.
Directed by associate director Alice Byrne, she is joined in Shakespeare’s “very gruesome” tragedy by Gillian Hambleton and Melanie Dagg on an autumn tour to theatres, community venues, village halls and schools that visits Stillington Village Hall, near York, tonight (8/9/2022) and Pocklington Arts Centre on September 29.
This streamlined, fast-paced, extremely physical re-boot of Macbeth with original music will be told largely from the witches’ perspective, exploring ideas of manipulation through the media and other external forces. Expect grim, gory grisliness to the Mac max in two action-packed 40-minute halves.
Claire Morley and Gillian Hambleton in a scene from Northumberland Theatre Company’s Macbeth. Picture: Jim Donnelly
Here CharlesHutchPress puts Claire Morley on the damned spot, demanding quick answers, like Macbeth confronting the “secret, black, and midnight hags”.
How did you become involved with Northumberland Theatre Company, Claire?
“I saw they were holding auditions earlier this year and went along as I liked the sound of the company and its mission to take shows to rural places who might not have regular access to the theatre. Then, about a month ago, I moved up to Northumberland for rehearsals.
What does an all-female cast bring to what is often seen as a toxic, machismo play, where even Lady Macbeth says “unsex me here”?
“To be honest, it’s not something that has massively concerned us in rehearsals as we’ve been exploring the characters and their relationships first and foremost. There are some lines about what it is to be a man, which I imagine might ping out more to the audience and make them see the text in new ways.”
Cut out to be king: Claire Morley, Melanie Dagg and Gillian Hambleton in Macbeth. Picture: Jim Donnelly
How are the roles divided between the three witches?
“Chris Connaughton has adapted the script so that the witches bookend the play; this gives us room to play with the witches in the sense that they are manipulating and telling the story.
“So, in the first scene you will see us choose who gets to be Duncan and Macbeth, for example. As there are only three actors, we do all play multiple roles, which has been really fun.”
What are the benefits of staging Macbeth as a three-hander?
“Well, practically, it’s much easier to tour with only three actors in the van! But I’ve also found that it means we have had to really streamline the script and think about what serves the story and what is superfluous.
“I think this makes the production pacy and easy to follow and will be great when we take it to schools for those students studying it for GCSE.”
“As there are only three actors, we do all play multiple roles, which has been really fun,” says Claire Morley, left. Picture: Jim Donnelly
What is the set design and costume design for NTC’s Macbeth?
“As NTC is a rural touring company, we take everything with us in the van, so, when we get to a venue, we build our stage and lighting rig and set up costumes and props.
“Where we can, such as in Stillington, we’re performing in traverse, which means that the audience sit either side of the stage. I think this gives the show an immediacy as the audience will really feel part of the action, and privy to our thoughts.
“When we’re at Pocklington, for example, we’ll be performing on their stage, so we have to adapt to the venues we’re in!
“The sound and lighting design really add to the atmosphere and help us change scenes and moods without elaborate set changes.”
Claire Morley, centre, as Henry V at Agincourt in York Shakespeare Project’s all-female Henry V in 2015. Picture: Michael J Oakes
Does NTC’s Macbeth have a particular period setting?
“We’ve given the play a modern feel. You’ll see how the witches receive some of their prophecies on mobile phones!”
How does this production compare with your previous all-female Shakespeare experiences in York in Maggie Smales’s Henry V, in 2015, and Madeleine O’Reilly’s Coriolanus in 2018.
“I had an absolutely amazing time working with York Shakespeare Project on Henry V and Coriolanus and I hope that all theatre companies continue to implement diverse casting.
“What differs this time is more the circumstances. I’ve never been on tour before and that is the biggest difference! It’s hard work travelling and doing the get-ins and get-outs but I’m in fantastic company and I’m having a great time.”
Something wicked this way comes: Northumberland Theatre Company in Macbeth, Stillington Village Hall, near York, tonight (8/9/2022); Pocklington Arts Centre, September 29, both 7.30pm. Box office: Stillington, 01347 811 544 or on the door; Pocklington, 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
The tour poster for Northumberland Theatre Company’s Macbeth, playing Stillington and Pocklington
Goole by name, ghoul by nature: Liam Brennan’s stern Inspector Goole in An Inspector Calls. Picture: Tristram Kenton, 2019
STEPHEN Daldry’s award-garlanded reimagining of J B Priestley’s haunting family drama An Inspector Calls will return to its York roots next year.
Premiered at York Theatre Royal in 1989, this time it will play the Grand Opera House for the first time from February 7 to 11 2023 on its 30th Anniversary UK and Ireland Tour: so called because the London premiere was staged in 1992 at the National Theatre.
PW Productions are mounting the 2022-23 tour that will see Liam Brennnan playing Inspector Goole, just as he did on the last visit to York when performing to sold-out audiences at the Theatre Royal in September 2018.
Writer-director Daldry’s ground-breaking production has accumulated 19 major awards, including four Tony Awards and three Olivier Awards, and played to more than five million theatregoers worldwide, en route to becoming the National Theatre’s most internationally lauded show.
Written at the end of the Second World War and set before the First, Bradford playwright Priestley’s thriller opens with the mysterious Inspector Goole calling unexpectedly on the prosperous Birling family home. Whereupon their peaceful family dinner party is shattered by his investigations into the suicide of a young, discarded, pregnant factory girl.
A scene of devastation: Brian MacNeil’s over-sized doll’s house design for An Inspector Calls, on tour at York Theatre Royal in 2018
Inside, the year is 1912; outside it is 1945 as urchins play in the rain-swept, thundering wartime streets in the year when Priestley wrote his play. A pillar-box telephone and steam radio denote the latter era, as does the Bogart raincoat of Brennan’s sternly Scottish Inspector Goole.
Under Goole’s forensic, assiduous, tongue-loosening style of questioning, the impact mirrors a wartime bombing raid as the ground buckles beneath them.
Priestley’s socialist uprising of a play dramatises the dangers of casual capitalism’s cruelty, complacency and hypocrisy. Over its 105 unbroken minutes, Daldry’s German expressionist interpretation builds a political layer, one whose resonance renews with each era.
In 1989, his wish was to send Margaret Thatcher’s Tory philosophies to the grave, to damn the pursuit of individual gain; in 2009, when playing Leeds Grand Theatre, parliamentary expense claims and duck ponds were in the headlines.
In 2018, Inspector Goole’s final speech, with its wish for collective responsibility and someone, anyone, willing to say sorry, rubbed against an age of austerity, intolerance, division and worsening working conditions.
Roll on 2022-23, a 12th year of Tory rule, as inflation rises and strikers rise up in an over-hot world but one where people can’t afford to heat themselves through the winter while oil and gas shareholders can afford to burn fivers by the barrowload.
Liam Brennan, left, and Jeffrey Harmer are all smiles as they rehearse for the latest tour of An Inspector Calls, heading for the Grand Opera House, next February
Dorset-born British theatre and film director Daldry will be at the directorial helm once more. Over the years, he has received Academy Award nominations for his films The Reader, The Hours, Billy Elliot and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, while his West End theatre work includes David Hare’s Skylight at the Wyndham’s Theatre and Peter Morgan’s The Audience at the Apollo Theatre.
His multi award-winning production of Billy Elliot The Musical ran for 11 years at the Victoria Palace, London, before embarking on a national tour. Latterly, he has directed several episodes of the Netflix hit series The Crown, taking on the producer’s role too.
Joining him in the production team will be Oscar-winning composer Stephen Warbeck (Shakespeare In Love), lighting designer Rick Fisher and designer Ian MacNeil, whose audacious original set is still extraordinary, still breath-taking: an over-sized doll’s house set on stilts to raise its smug, partying Edwardian occupants for moral examination by Priestley, the inspector and the audience alike.
Alongside Brennan’s Inspector Goole will be Christine Kavanagh as haughty, social-climbing Sybil Birling; Jeffrey Harmer as bumptious former Lord Mayor Arthur Birling; Evlyne Oyedokun as daughter Sheila Birling; Simon Cotton as her arch fiancé, Gerald Croft; George Rowlands as Sheila’s unhappy, inadequate, lush brother, Eric Birling, and Frances Campbell as parlour maid Edna, complemented by understudies Philip Stewart, Beth Tuckey, Maceo Cortezz and Rue Blenkinsop.
Tickets for An Inspector Calls at Grand Opera House, York, cost £13 upwards on 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Evlyne Oyedoken in rehearsal with Jeffery Harmer, left, and Simon Cotton for the 2022-23 tour of An Inspector Calls
Here, George Rowlands (who will play Eric Birling) and Evlyne Oyedokun (Sheila Birling) escape Inspector Goole’s forensic scrutiny to answer questions of a different kind ahead of the 2023 tour of An Inspector Calls.
An Inspector Calls is on the school curriculum, sure to attract GCSE pupils and their parents alike to next year’s tour. Did you study it at school? If so, did you enjoy it? Does your appreciation of the play differ as an adult?
George: “I did read it at school, although I can’t really remember much of it. But I did always like it. I always think at school, when you sit down and analyse every single word, it can make you go a bit crazy, and I always thought it ruined books and plays. But now that I’m an adult, or more importantly now that I’m an actor, I definitely have more of an appreciation for it.”
Evlyne: “I actually didn’t study it at school; I studied To Kill A Mockingbird. I’d heard about An Inspector Calls but I didn’t really know what it was, or really anything about it. It wasn’t until I got this audition that I actually read the play for the first time, and I still didn’t quite understand it. It took me a while to realise how many layers this play actually has.”
“It took me a while to realise how many layers this play actually has,” says Evlyne Oyedokun
What makes J B Priestley’s play so timeless and Stephen Daldry’s production so engaging?
Evlyne: “Well, the fact that is has three timelines helps. It’s set across three timelines – you’ve got 1912, which is where the play is set; then you’ve got the future, which is the Blitz, 1945, and then you’ve also got the current now, 2022.
“It’s amazing. You’re flicking through the past, present and the now constantly, and it’s so reflective on humanity, so it makes it so relevant, and people can really see themselves.”
George: At the end of the day, at its centre it’s a play about somebody in distress, and that doesn’t get old, does it? I think at different points in time, when we’ve put it on over the last 30 years, it’s been relevant. And this time around I think it’s more relevant than ever because of what’s going on in terms of the strike action and housing crisis.”
Give three characteristics of the character you will be playing?
George: “Eric is well educated because he’s been sent to public school. He enjoys a drink, probably a little bit too much. He really wants to be respected by his dad. Unfortunately, the combination results in some pretty catastrophic things.”
Evlyne: “Well, Sheila’s absolutely besotted with Gerald. She is very self-absorbed and in her own world, as she’s been brought up that way. She absolutely adores clothes.”
“Being an actor beats doing any other boring job,” says George Rowlands
What made you want to be an actor?
Evlyne: “Oh gosh! With me, I actually didn’t ever want to be an actor, it happened by accident. From a young age I was struggling with people and I never really spoke – I was pretty much mute to people I didn’t really know.
“My mum advised me to go and see a youth company at the weekends, so I did that, and I didn’t realise how natural it was to act as it is to live in the real world. I was a lot freer.
“That’s how I realised it’s the only thing I can do. Drama school taught me how to speak and acting taught me how to be more of a human than I ever was.”
George: “I think it beats doing any other boring job. I did find out quite early on in Year 6: for the end-of-school plays we did The Wizard Of Oz and I completely rewrote the script because I thought it was rubbish, and obviously made my parts the best.
“I like storytelling and I like the creative and artistic aspect of it. With this production, it has enabled that part of acting, and it’s been a really good creative process.”
Evlyne Oyedokun’s Sheila Birling and Simon Cotton’s Gerald Croft in the rehearsal room for An Inspector Calls. Picture: Mark Douet
When on tour, are there any essentials to have in your dressing room or top tips for making yourself feel at home in each city?
Evlyne: “I’m really bad at this stuff! A lot of people tend to make their dressing rooms cosy with nice blankets and things. I just bring everything that I have in my bag and that’s pretty much it.
“Some people put up fairy lights and flowers, but for me I’m very simple. With autism, as long as I’ve got really comfy clothes, a phone charger and headphones to cancel out sound, I’m all good.”
George: “I’m sharing a room with Simon [Cotton] who’s playing Gerald. I don’t know…I think a bottle of water goes a long way. A bottle of water and some Vaseline is not a terrible idea – for the lips, obviously! I get chapped lips.”
What is the most challenging part of being a performer?
Evlyne: “For me, it’s not being able to see your work or the story you’re creating because you’re so involved and living in the moment of it. You don’t really see the end result. I feel that the end result is mainly the response from the audience; if they got the story then we’ve done our job.”
George: “With other jobs, you can put a direct amount of work in, you can work more, you can do this and this, and your results will be better because of it. Like if you’re studying for an exam, the more you revise, the better the result.
George Rowlands’ Eric Birling and Christine Kavanagh’s Mrs Birling in rehearsal. Picture: Mark Douet
“But with acting it doesn’t work like that because being good is so subjective – there’s no grade. I think that’s quite hard. Putting lots of work in and not knowing really how it will go.”
Evlyne: “One of the sayings at RADA was, ‘plan it, know it and forget it’. It’s the hardest thing to do, but it’s the most rewarding thing to do.”
If you could swap roles for a performance, would you?
Evlyne: “If I had to be someone out of all the characters, it would definitely be the inspector, because I’m obsessed with crime documentaries and serial killers, everything to do with murder, unsolved murder, unsolved mysteries, death row, all of that! I’ve pretty much seen everything and I re-watch it to go to sleep.”
George: “If I could pick any character, I’d probably pick Edna [the parlour maid]. I would love to play her. If you haven’t seen this production, there’s a special thing that Edna is part of – a little bit of magic. She’s amazing.
“My second choice would be Mrs Birling. I really like Mrs Birling; she’s got such sass and doesn’t have the insecurities that Eric is stuck with.”
Jason Battersby: Actor, dancer, singer and now York Theatre Royal pantomime star
THE actor, singer and dancer who will play the title role in All New Adventures Of Peter Pan at York Theatre Royal comes with “flight experience”, as this winter’s pantomime producer somewhat mysteriously puts it.
Jason Battersby will be taking one giant leap in his pantomime debut, but he is no stranger to the character of Peter, having appeared as the Lead Shadow last Christmas in Wendy And Peter at Leeds Playhouse, where he flew through the air as he shadowed the ever-boyish Peter.
Precisely what flights of imagination Jason will experience in the Paul Hendy-scripted Theatre Royal pantomime have yet to be revealed but definitely he will take to the air again.
Flying lessons for the Playhouse show will come in handy this winter too, although wondering if the pantomime will be working with single-line or double-line flying. Whichever system is used in York , the key to flying is the harness he must wear.
Jason Battersby, back right, playing the Lead Shadow in Wendy And Peter at Leeds Playhouse last winter
“It can be restricting,” he says. “When you rehearse you have all these ideas of what you want to do but then you put the harness on and realise you can’t do them. It can be painful too if you don’t quite put it on the right way.”
Before last winter’s appearance, Jason had neither read J M Barrie’s book nor watched the Disney film. He researched Peter and his creator Barrie for the Leeds show, in particular exploring the parallels between the character and the Scottish writer’s own life.
The Shadows were used at Leeds to represent the many facets of Peter’s complex personality: cocky, childish, curious, naïve, as Jason described the boy who never grew up. Now he is excited to be playing this fly-by-night in York.
“Pantomime is perfect for telling Peter’s story because he never stops playing,” he says. “It’s going to be wonderful to bring that to family audiences and have fun with it.”
As with Peter, there are many sides to Jason: actor, dancer, singer, songwriter and music producer, all by the age of 22. Such is the variety of his work so far that he has chalked up childhood roles in Macbeth, The Nutcracker and Waiting For Godot with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, plus numerous productions for Youth Music Theatre UK and National Youth Music Theatre, most notably performing Whistle Down The Wind in the presence of Prince Edward.
Jason Battersby in rehearsal for Wendy And Peter at Leeds Playhouse
This summer has been spent starring in the musical Crazy For You at Chichester Festival Theatre. While York Theatre Royal will mark his pantomime debut, he did appear in Santa Claus The Musical, a show with pantomime elements, when he was seven, having started ballet classes some years before.
Two years later, he was training with the Royal Ballet School and when he turned 11 he faced a difficult choice. “You have to decide at quite an early age if you want to be a ballet dancer and continue with that training,” he says. “I thought ‘yes, it’s something I enjoy’ but I’d never really wanted to focus on one specific aspect of performance.”
Ballet was duly left behind in favour of acting and musical theatre, as well as pursuing his interest in making his own music. “At school, I had a bunch of friends who did music, and I was one of the boys in my school who could sing. Then I found I appreciated watching them write music and dove into that myself,” Jason says.
“I’ve always found writing your own songs very therapeutic. I feel as if I write them for myself and if other people listen that’s fine. Music for me is quite grounding. Communication for me has always been a little bit difficult and there’s something about writing lyrics I really like. Pop songs get right down to the root of what you say. I really enjoy being producing music where I am the creative force behind it, with no outside influence.”
Shadow play: Jason Battersby, left, with fellow cast members in the Leeds Playhouse rehearsal room for Wendy And Peter
When it comes to ambitions, Jason recalls as a young performer often being asked that same question: “What’s your dream role?”. He had a “really stupid” answer he used to fall back on: “It’s anything I get paid for,” he would say.
Now he takes the question more seriously. “In this industry, it’s great to have ambitions and dreams but it’s far more important to be realistic and know that as actors we’re not constantly working,” he says.
Come November, he will be joined in the panto rehearsals by creative director Juliet Forster’s already confirmed cast members for the third collaboration between York Theatre Royal and Evolution Productions: CBeebies’ Mandie Moate in her first pantomime as feisty fairy Tinkerbell; social media sensation Jonny Weldon as Starkey; Faye Campbell as Elizabeth Darling and fellow returnees Paul Hawkyard as Captain Hook and Robin Simpson as Mrs Darling after last winter’s Ugly Sisters double act, Mardy and Manky.
All New Adventure Of Peter Pan will run at York Theatre Royal from December 2 to January 2. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The poster for All New Adventures Of Peter Pan at York Theatre Royal
Writer-director Conor McPherson, second from right, directs a rehearsal for Girl From The North Country. All pictures: Johan Persson
BEFORE Irish writer-director Conor McPherson set to work on his first musical, Bob Dylan’s management company sent him a gift box. Inside were more than 60 CDs by the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature-winning American singer-songwriter.
What ensued in summer 2017 from the Dublin playwright of The Weir and The Seafarer was Girl From The North Country, the West End and Broadway hit with Olivier and Tony awards to its name, now on its debut tour, next Stop York Theatre Royal from Tuesday.
“It was Dylan’s office that approached me, so I had no idea for a musical or even a play at that stage,” Conor recalls. “I thought, ‘oh, that’s an unusual idea, and initially I was reluctant as I had no experience of doing musicals, but then I had this idea of a doing a Eugene O’Neil-style play set in Minnesota in the 1930s before Dylan was born, so it would be outside his time frame and not directly connected to him.
“The Great Depression was happening, and I had this group of people gathered in a boarding house trying to figure out their lives. I went back to Dylan’s management; they spoke to Bob, who said he really liked it, and then it took off from there.”
McPherson duly constructed an elegiac, uplifting and universal story of family and poverty, love and loss that “boldly reimagines the legendary songs of Bob Dylan like you’ve never heard them before”.
The setting is 1934, when a group of wayward drifters and dreamers find their paths crossing in an enervated boarding house in Dylan’s hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. Standing at a turning point in their lives, they search for a future, hide from the past and face unspoken truths about the present.
An ensemble scene from Girl From The North Country
Interwoven into that story are more than 20 of Dylan’s songs. “I was firing into the dark. I’d seen some musicals but it wasn’t something I’d sought to do, but I’m a huge music fan, so using music on stage felt natural to me,” says Conor, who set about listening all 60 of those Dylan albums and was given free rein by Dylan to select songs.
“I knew a good body of Dylan’s work just from having some albums myself. They ranged from the albums of the Sixties to the Seventies, but I hadn’t really listened to much of his album work since then, so I’d listen to them on my walks by the sea, and if something struck me instinctively, if it spoke to me, I’d note it and then made a list of the songs I liked.”
Conor had no preconceptions about what made a song suitable for the musical format. Instead, he evaluated Dylan’s distinctive songwriting. “The thing about Dylan is that the majority of his songs are subjective, providing poetic images but leaving it to the listener to bring meaning and sense to them,” he says.
“That makes him more akin to a literary writer than a pop writer, and the advantage, to me, is that it allows songs to be very malleable as you can put them anywhere and they still mean something to somebody, so in this musical, they reflect each of the characters in different ways.” Perfect for a musical, as it turns out!
In a nutshell, Dylan’s songs have the ring of universality. “He manages to distil his subjective experience into something people relate to. It has the strange, odd contrariness of people’s real thoughts and it’s a language which allows us to transcend our normal way of thinking,” says Conor.
Whereas jukebox musicals are essentially a vehicle for the songs, Conor took a different approach: “We try and wrap our story around his music. Often, I think of them as parables from the Bible in a way, all the little stories that are in the show,” he says. “They are on a simple, human level, rather than being big political statements. It’s Dylan’s artistry that transforms it all into something meaningful.”
Girl From The North Country: “Searching for a future, hiding from the past and facing unspoken truths about the present”
When Girl From The North Country opened at the Old Vic, in London, in 2017, artistic director Matthew Warchus told Conor: ‘You’ve really ripped up the musical rule book’. I told him I didn’t know there was one! I wish someone had told me there was,” says Conor.
Such “innocence” worked to his advantage, however. “It’s a bit of a trap to think, ‘let’s do something that’s sure to be a big success’. If it were that easy, there’d just be a sound you’d recognise: ‘oh, that’s a Broadway musical’, but I just had to instinctively follow my nose and just do what felt right,” he says.
Conor’s story is as important to Girl From The North Country as Dylan’s songs, not least because the Great Depression resonates with our era of Covid strictures and now the cost-of-living crisis. “We all wonder how we would cope when the chips are down, because that’s who we really are,” he says.
“When all the distractions of modern life are stripped away, people think, ‘How strong am I?’ The truth is that humans are very resilient and we don’t need a lot of what we think we need. That’s a good thing to know.”
Dylan, by the way, has seen the show “a few times”. His verdict? “To be associated with Conor is one of the highlights of my professional life,” he said. “It goes without saying the man is a genius for putting this thing together and I’m thrilled to be a part of the experience. My songs couldn’t be in better hands.”
Girl From The North Country runs at York Theatre Royal from September 6 to 10, 7.30pm plus 2pm, Thursday, and 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Alan Ayckbourn directing rehearsals for Family Album, his 87th full-length play. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
NO sooner has the world premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s 86th full-length play All Lies concluded at the tiny, moorland Esk Valley Theatre than his 87th opens at his regular home, Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre.
Family Album is one of five plays penned by Ayckbourn in lockdown, or is it six, as Esk Valley Theatre producer Sheila Carter suggested on press night?
“Oh lord, I’ve rather lost count, but there are two more waiting after All Lies and Family Album,” says Sir Alan, whose number of plays now outstrips his age of 83.
“Once lockdown occurred, I was like one of those ocean liners that chugged on with no brakes until running out of fuel, but there was all that frustration of no productions going on.”
What joy for Sir Alan when he could at last return to the rehearsal room in May last year for the SJT’s summer production of The Girl Next Door. “Doing that play gave me a huge charge of the batteries,” he says.
This year, already he has directed All Lies in its premiere at The Old Laundry Theatre, Bowness, in May and the Robinson Institute, Glaisdale, last month. Now he is pulling the strings on Family Album as writer, director and sound designer, directing Elizabeth Boag, Georgia Burnell, Tanya-Loretta Dee, Antony Eden and York-born Frances Marshall as he tenderly chronicles the trials, tribulations and temptations of three generations of one family across 70 years in the same home.
Presented, as ever, in The Round, Ayckbourn interweaves his account of a moving-in day in 1952, a birthday party in 1992 and a moving-out day in 2022, “when all the skeletons are suddenly jumping out of their cupboards”.
York actress Frances Marshall in an early rehearsal for the 1992 storyline in Family Album. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
Join housewife Peggy (Burnell) and RAF veteran John (Eden) as they proudly move into the first home they can really call their own; daughter Sandra (Marshall), frantically negotiating the challenges of her ten-year-old daughter’s birthday party without her AWOL husband; and granddaughter Alison (Boag) and her partner Jess (Dee), finally escaping the house she has somewhat unwillingly inherited.
“My inspiration was a programme on BBC4 called A House Through Time, a fascinating piece of social history [presented by historian David Olusoga]. I thought, I could do this on a smaller scale – I didn’t want to go back centuries, so I started within my lifetime, in the 1950s.
“We have three time periods layered on top of each other happening simultaneously in the same house, following a family from the grandparents in 1952, to the children in 1992 and then the grandchildren today.”
Ayckbourn is no stranger to playing with time, but not in this way before. “For me it’s new: I’ve used time so much – I’ve run it backwards and forwards, and I’ve run it sideways, and I’ve occasionally run it forwards and backwards simultaneously and at different speeds, but never in this way,” he says.
Parallels have been drawn with Ayckbourn’s 2018 premiere, A Brief History Of Women, a comedy in four parts, each set 20 years apart, focusing on an unremarkable man and the remarkable women who loved him, left him, or lost him over sixty years, and the equally remarkable old manor house that saw and heard it all happen.
“That play was the story of the house seen through the eyes of the people who ‘mucked about with it’, as it changed from a country house to a country-house hotel,” says Sir Alan. “This time, it’s the people, seen through the house.
“I’ve realised with age, when you have a choice, you can either look back, and I can look back to the wartime 1940s, with my first conscious memory of an air raid shelter, right up to 2022, which is one choice, or you can look forward, the other choice.
Antony Eden rehearsing his role as RAF veteran John in Family Album. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
“It’s no coincidence that our most successful children’s writers, Morpurgo and Rowling, have looked at science fiction in order to reach a generation they’re not able to reach otherwise – and the best science fiction reflects what’s happening now.
“I can write plays for my near-contemporaries, but my plays for young people also give me the chance to make up my own rules, which can apply to both me and the children I’m writing for.”
Family Album reflects on the past and its impact on the next generation, especially on women. “One of the themes is the enormous journey women have been on. My God, they have moved a long way, and the most interesting thing for me to do was to write a play set in 1952, 1992 and 2022, that would be much more interesting if I interweaved all three.
“It’s my latest exploration of the theatre space offered by The Round, which goes back to How The Other Half Loves [written in 1969], with everyone in the play occupying one space.”
Ayckbourn says a “stinging contemporary play” is not in his armoury at present – the romantic All Lies, for example, was set in 1957-58 – and he does not foresee writing “directly” about our rotten age. Instead he will continue looking at changing times.
“I do explore the changes in men in future plays,” he says. “I’m very curious to see quite where men will go. Many men have changed; for every dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist, there is a new man.”
Alan Ayckbourn’s Family Album runs at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 1. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Georgia Burnell, who plays housewife Peggy, rehearses a scene from the 1952 storyline in Family Album. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
A MUSICAL with Bob Dylan songs, Wilde wit with chart toppers, heavenly disco and Sunday fairytales promise intrigue and variety in Charles Hutchinson’s diary.
Boarding house tales: Girl From The North Country, the musical with Bob Dylan songs at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Johan Persson
Musical of the week: Girl From The North Country, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday
WRITTEN and directed by Irish playwright Conor McPherson,with music and lyrics by Bob Dylan, Girl From The North Country is an uplifting and universal story of family and love that boldly reimagines Dylan’s songs “like you’ve never heard them before”.
In 1934, in an American heartland in the grip of the Great Depression, a group of wayward souls cross paths in a time-weathered guesthouse in Duluth, Minnesota. Standing at a turning point in their lives, they realise nothing is what it seems as they search for a future, hide from the past and find themselves facing unspoken truths about the present. Box office: 01904 623 568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Story Craft Theatre: A giant leap for storytelling in Once Upon A Fairytale at Stillington Mill
Children’s show of the week: Once Upon A Fairytale, At The Mill, Stillington, near York, Sunday, 10am to 12 noon
IN York company Story Craft Theatre’s new show for children aged two to eight, Sunday’s audience will travel through a host of favourite fairytales and meet familiar faces along the way: Little Red Riding Hood, The Gingerbread Man and some hungry Bears to name but a few.
Storytellers Janet-Emily Bruce and Cassie Vallance say: “You’re welcome to arrive any time from 10am as we’ll be running craft activities until 10.45am. The interactive adventure will begin at 11am under the cover of our outdoor theatre, and there’ll be colouring-in sheets and a scavenger hunt you can do too.” Box office: atthemill.org.
From drag queen to society dragon: Daniel Jacob, alias Vinegar Strokes, rehearses for his role as Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest at Leeds Playhouse. Picture: Sharron Wallace
A walk on the Wilde side to a different beat: The Importance Of Being Earnest, Leeds Playhouse, Monday to September 17
DANIEL Jacob swaps his drag queen alter ego Vinegar Strokes for the iconic Lady Bracknell at the heart of Denzel Westley-Sanderson’s Black Victorian revamp of Oscar Wilde’s sharpest and most outrageous comedy of manners.
Premiering in Leeds before a UK tour, this Leeds Playhouse, ETT and Rose Theatre co-production “melds wit with chart-toppers, shade and contemporary references in a sassy insight into Wilde’s satire on dysfunctional families, class, gender and sexuality”. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Tavares: Close harmonies and disco classics revisited at York Barbican
Disco nostalgia of the week: Tavares, Greatest Hits Tour 2022, York Barbican, Wednesday, 7.30pm
GRAMMY Award-winning, close harmony-singing R&B brothers Chubby, Tiny and Butch Tavares, from Providence, Rhode Island, bring their Greatest Hits Tour to York.
At their Seventies peak, accompanied by their Cape Verdean brothers Ralph and Pooch, they filled disco floors with It Only Takes A Minute Girl, Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel, She’s Gone and More Than A Woman, from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Every witch way: The poster for Northumberland Theatre Company’s all-female Macbeth, heading to North Yorkshire
Something wicked this way comes: Northumberland Theatre Company in Macbeth, Stillington Village Hall, near York, Thursday; Pocklington Arts Centre, September 29, both 7.30pm
YORK actor Claire Morley stars in Chris Connaughton’s all-female, three-hander version of Shakespeare’s “very gruesome” tragedy Macbeth, directed by Northumberland Theatre Company associate director Alice Byrne for this autumn’s tour to theatres, community venues, village halls and schools.
This streamlined, fast-paced, extremely physical production with original music will be told largely from the witches’ perspective, exploring ideas of manipulation through the media and other external forces. Expect grim, gory grisliness to the Mac max in two action-packed 40-minute halves. Box office: Stillington, 01347 811 544 or on the door; Pocklington, 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Jess Steel: Soulful leading light of A Night To Remember. Picture: Duncan Lomax
Charity concert of the week: A Night To Remember, York Barbican, Thursday, 7.30pm
BIG Ian Donaghy’s charity fundraiser returns 922 days after he last hosted this fast-moving assembly of diverse York singers and musicians.
Taking part will be members of York party band Huge; Jess Steel; Heather Findlay; Beth McCarthy; Simon Snaize; Gary Stewart; Graham Hodge; The Y Street Band; Boss Caine; Las Vegas Ken; Kieran O’Malley and young musicians from York Music Forum, all led by George Hall and Ian Chalk.
Singer and choir director Jessa Liversidge presents her inclusive singing group, Singing For All, too. Proceeds will go to St Leonard’s Hospice, Bereaved Children Support York and Accessible Arts and Media. Tickets update: still available at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Glass work by Crispian Heath: Selected for the Contemporary Glass Society’s Bedazzled show at Pyramid Gallery, York
Exhibition launch of the week: Contemporary Glass Society, Bedazzled, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, September 10 to October 30
THE Contemporary Glass Society will celebrate its 25th anniversary of exhibiting at Pyramid Gallery with a show featuring 60 works by 25 glass artists, chosen by gallery owner Terry Brett and the society’s selectors.
For this landmark exhibition in Pyramid’s 40th anniversary year, the society wanted a theme and title that suggested celebratory glitz for its silver anniversary. Cue Bedazzled.
The styles and techniques span engraving, blowing, fusing, slumping, casting, cane and murine work, flame working, cutting, polishing, brush painting and metal leaf decoration. A second show, Razzle Dazzle, will include small pieces that measure no more than five by five inches by 60 makers.
KT Tunstall: New album, new tour
Gig announcement of the week: KT Tunstall, York Barbican, February 24 2023
SCOTTISH singer-songwriter KT Tunstall will return to York for the first time since she lit up the Barbican on Bonfire Night in 2016 on next year’s 16-date tour.
The BRIT Award winner and Grammy nominee from Edinburgh will showcase songs from her imminent seventh studio album, Nut, set for release next Friday on EMI. Box office: kttunstall.com and yorkbarbican.co.uk.
FRESH from winning a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Fringe, Tabby Lamb’s joyful trans romantic comedy Happy Meal visits the York Theatre Royal Studio from tonight to Saturday.
Lamb invites the audience to “travel back to the quaint days of dial-up and MSN, where you’ll follow two strangers on their journeys to become who they always were, in a funny, moving and nostalgic story of transition: from teen to adult, from My Space to TikTok, from cis to trans”.
Sam Crerar and Allie Daniel reprise their roles from the Traverse Theatre run in Edinburgh, directed by Jamie Fletcher, whose 2022 production of Hedwig And The Angry Inch drew five-star reviews at Leeds Playhouse.
Allie Daniel and Sam Crerar: “Capturing the intensity of the onlife life of 21st century teenagers”
In a story where Millennial meets Gen Z and change is all around, transgender teenagers Alex and Bette find one another on the internet, become close friends, but then experience whole worlds of estrangement, as relatively middle-class Alex makes a transition to student life as Alec, while Bette struggles to come out as trans to anyone except her online best friend.
As described by the Fringe First judges, Happy Meal “fully captures the intensity of the online life of 21st century teenagers in a simple one-hour tale of young love made complicated by society’s attitudes to shifting gender, but now free enough to find a true happy ending”.
Played out on a witty Ben Stones set, this Roots and Theatre Royal Plymouth co-production in association with English Touring Theatre (ETT) and Oxford Playhouse is suitable for age 12 upwards. Tickets for the 7.45pm evening performances and 2.45pm Saturday matinee are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Sam Crerar and Allie Daniel in Tabby Lamb’s funny, moving and nostalgic story of transition
