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When Harry met Christine on York Theatre Royal stage for a grand Yorkshire night out

In the news: Christine Talbot and Harry Gration

YORKSHIRE broadcasting legends Harry Gration and Christine Talbot host a journey down memory lane at York Theatre Royal tonight on a rare occasion when these friends but former news-breaking rivals will have presented together.

Once the familiar faces of the BBC’s Look North and ITV’s rival Calendar respectively, the duo will be looking back at memorable stories, plus a smattering of their crazier fundraising exploits, from tandem rides and a sofa push to Harry being tied to weather presenter Paul Hudson for days on end.

Special guests at A Grand Yorkshire Night Out will be production team members from the original All Creatures Great And Small series, vet Julian Norton, Leeds band The Dunwells and Harry’s musical son, Harrison, singing songs from the shows.

“I’ve never done anything on stage, apart from when I was 11 at dance school,” says Christine, 52. “I stuck to the TV studio, but seeing this theatre at the press launch, what a beautiful place it is. It’s going to be fun to be on that stage. There’ll be a lot of ad-libbing on the night to go with everything we’ve planned and we just want everyone to have a nice, relaxing time.”

Son of York Harry, 71, is no stranger to the St Leonard’s Place building. “It’s a place I’ve been coming to for so many years to see shows or occasionally be on stage,” he says. Not only on stage, but Harry was a fixture in the infamous film sequences in Berwick Kaler’s pantomimes too.

How did A Grand Yorkshire Night Out take shape? “We’d been talking about doing a show as soon Christine announced she’d be leaving Calendar,” recalls Harry. “I got in touch to say, ‘should we do something together?’ as we’d always discussed the possibility but had been working on opposite sides of the TV world in Yorkshire, though we did do a joint Look North and Calendar broadcast on the first anniversary of the Covid pandemic.”

Christine says: “We’ve always been friends, we’ve never been rivals, and I’ve always had great relationships with all of the news teams on both Calendar and Look North. A lot of them cross over between the two programmes.”

Covering Yorkshire is a newshound’s dream: in a nutshell, biggest county, big, big stories. “You can say almost with total confidence that there’ll be ten belting stories in Yorkshire each year,” says Harry.

“We’ve met and interviewed fantastic people over the years, and we’ll be talking about those experiences in this show,” says Christine.

Harry Gration and Christine Talbot on stage at York Theatre Royal on their press day

The duo had looked at the format of one-man and one-woman shows around the Yorkshire patch, coming to the conclusion it would be better to broaden the focus, combining their stories with a celebration of God’s Own Country. “We didn’t want it to be just us but a Yorkshire show with good chat and brilliant music,” says Harry.

“That’s why, as well as clips from the shows down the years and some funny stuff, we’ve got some amazing guests like Julian Norton, from The Yorkshire Vet, and members of the production crew from the BBC’s original All Creatures Great And Small, director Tony Virgo and production manager Mike Darbon, and author Oliver Crocker, who’s written All Memories Great And Small.

“For the music, we have The Dunwells, from Leeds, who have an EP coming out at the same time, and my son Harrison, who’s 18 now and training to be an opera singer at the Royal Academy of Music. He’ll be singing popular songs.”

Looking back over his days in the TV studios, Harry says: “When I started , the way I presented was very formal, but later I became more animated. Des Lynam was my hero – I did a few Grandstands in the 1980s – and I loved his presenting style, though I’m not sure you could get away now with some of the things he said.

“It’s more scripted now. You have to be careful, more than ever before, about quips with you co-presenters. There’s a lot more sensitivity.”

Christine notes how she changed from her early days. “When I left Calendar they did a look back at when I started, when my voice sounded so posh after I moved over from the BBC!” she says.

“People have to be able to connect with you and see you as a friend when they watch as you become part of people’s lives, where they’re used to seeing you in the corner of their living room each night, so you have to be relatable.

“Wherever we go, people will come up and say ‘Hi’ because they feel they know you well, and I really like it that they do that, and in a sense, A Grand Yorkshire Night Out is an extension of that.”

The show, nevertheless, is something of a journey into the unknown for Harry and Christine. “Is it a gamble?” Harry ponders. “Well, it is in one sense as we don’t know how many people will turn up, but we can guarantee we will relate to the audience, respond to how they react, as we all celebrate our region.”

Have they missed presenting the news since their TV exits? “The thing I found really strange at first was not having that structure to the day, missing the Calendar team, that family, after being in one place for 30 years, but since then doors have opened up and you have to shake the tree and see what falls out,” says Christine.

The Dunwells: Heading over from Leeds to York tonight

“Various projects are in the book, like doing an on-stage chat show at the Great Yorkshire Show, and I’m on the board of the children’s hospital in Leeds and Harrogate Flower Show.”

Harry “doesn’t really miss” presenting Look North. “I felt I’d gone as far as I could with it, and at 70 it was the natural time to go,” he says. “Ultimately, I would have been having to compete for a job with Amy [Garcia}, and I didn’t want to go down that line.

“I don’t ever wake up thinking I wish I was working there today. I don’t want to do broadcast news now. I see where I am now as semi-retirement: I still get to do lots of things and I’ll be going to a lot of cricket.”

Tonight’s show may be A Grand Yorkshire Night Out but Christine has a confession to make. “I’m from the wrong side of the Pennines – I was born Christine Standish, near Wigan – but luckily I’ve been welcomed with open arms and I’ve lived here in Yorkshire longer than anywhere else. My daughter was born at Jimmy’s [St James’s Hospital] in Leeds, so hopefully I have my Yorkshire passport now!”

Harry’s career path took him to BBC Southampton for four years. “I loved it but I came back north in 1999, and Yorkshire really has been the only place I’d want to be. The twins, Harvey and Harrison, are probably not going to come back to live in York; one’s at Exeter University, the other’s in London, but my wife Helen’s businesses are in Yorkshire, running two children’s nurseries in York and two in Leeds, and York is our home.”

As for Christine: “I’d never dare leave Yorkshire. My husband’s a Huddersfield Town fan!” she says.

A Grand Yorkshire Night Out with Harry Gration & Christine Talbot, York Theatre Royal, tonight (11/4/2022), 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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Director Janet Farmer leaves Pocklington Arts Centre after 25 years and 900 live shows at ‘the little place the big acts play’

Farewell: Departing director Janet Farmer in the Pocklington Arts Centre auditorium

DIRECTOR Janet Farmer hosts her leaving party at Pocklington Arts Centre tonight as she ends her 25-year association with the East Yorkshire venue.

Earlier this week, on Tuesday, she oversaw her last concert: a strikingly strong double bill of Devonian folk musician John Smith and Eastern Pennsylvanian husband-and-wife duo Native Harrow, who reviewer Paul Rhodes observed “would have been worthy headliners in their own right”.

Janet will retire in mid-April after 22 years in post, preceded by three years of fundraising to transform the market town’s former cinema into a theatre, concert venue, cinema and studio gallery. The recruitment process to appoint her successor is under way.

From a standing start in 2000, Janet has led Pocklington Arts Centre (PAC) into becoming a leading small-scale arts venue, recognised nationally as a beacon of good practice with a significant cultural reputation.

Janet has drawn more than £1million in public funding to support the venue’s presentation of 3,500 film screenings and staging of 900 live events, numerous festivals, from Pocktoberfest to the Platform Festival at the Old Station, plus hundreds of community events, workshops, exhibitions and private hires.

“When I started here, we borrowed an artists’ contact file; there were no agents online!” recalls Janet. “You had to buy a book with agents’ contact details and then contact them by fax.

“All the deals were down over the phone or by fax, whereas now it’s mostly by email, which can be seen as sad progress as you don’t always have that verbal contact any more.”

Over the past 22 years, Janet has programmed a diverse range of acts, naming her personal favourites as Joan Armatrading and Shed Seven, who both rehearsed at PAC for upcoming tours, Lesley Garrett, John Bishop, The Shires, Rhod Gilbert, Sarah Millican, Lucinda Williams, Baroness Shirley Williams, KT Tunstall, The Unthanks, Mary Chapin Carpenter, David Ford and Josh Ritter.

When informing PAC staff and volunteers of her decision in January, Janet said: “I am sure this will be said on many occasions over the next few months, but I want to thank all of the staff and volunteers for their tireless support, hard work, dedication and friendship. This has been vital to making PAC the success it is today.

“It has been an absolute pleasure and honour to lead PAC over two decades and it fills me with immense pride knowing what has been achieved during this time. I look forward to returning as a customer and perhaps a volunteer in years to come.”

Twenty-five years, Janet, can you believe it? “People keep saying they’re surprised, but, yes, it really has been that long. I did think I would finish in 2020, and but for the pandemic, I would have done, but I felt I had to see out the time when we were closed,” she says.

“A big part of that was to apply for the Government’s Culture Recovery Funding, and only one application was necessary, what with the support we received from East Riding of Yorkshire Council, and the furlough scheme, which meant we could continue to pay even part-time staff.”

Amid the ebb and flow of three pandemic lockdowns from March 2020, PAC continued to function by mounting 50-plus online events and workshops, staging a series of outdoor exhibitions by Sue Clayton and Karen Winship and launching Primrose Wood Acoustics concerts in June 2021 before reopening with two socially distanced performances by comedian Sarah Millican last July.

“We took Sue and Karen’s exhibitions into Askham Bar Vaccination Centre’s Tent of Hope in York and we took part in the online Your Place Comedy double bills, streamed from comedians’ living rooms and organised by Chris Jones of Selby Town Hall, with a host of independent Yorkshire venues involved,” says Janet.

“We did online shows with our beloved Lip Service too, and online has proved a really good way for people to discover acts like [York singer-songwriter] Rachel Croft and (Leeds band] The Dunwells, who were doing nightly streams at one point in lockdown.”

Janet wanted PAC to regain momentum before leaving this spring. “We’re doing all we can to make people feel safe as they return to coming here, such as having medical-grade air purifiers,” she says.

“I wanted us to get back into the swing of what we do, so we could show we could still do concerts, films, theatre, comedy and exhibitions well with good attendances again, and we have.”

She will continue to live in Pocklington while undertaking plenty of travel too. “This summer I can start the gap year I never had, going round the festivals, such as Cambridge Folk Festival; Kilkenny Arts Festival in August; Telluride Bluegrass Festival, in the Colorado mountains, where it’s a ski resort in the winter. Sitting in the mountains, watching a bluegrass festival, I’ll be in my element.”

Born and bred in York, trained in theatre, film and social sciences at York St John and later in theatre programming and policy through Leeds Playhouse, Janet first became the focal point of fundraising to establish Pocklington Arts Centre.

She then took on the role of running PAC once it opened. “I had to learn very quickly on the job, but I always had a handle on what people liked, like booking Johnny Vegas before he was well known,” recalls Janet.

“There were financial constraints, so I couldn’t be too adventurous at the start, and then there was always a bit of a problem of people not knowing where Pocklington was. But once we started getting bigger names, we could quote that to agents, and we became the little place that big acts wanted to play.”

That will be Janet’s legacy. “I’ve done my bit and it’s time to retire from here, though no doubt I’ll do some volunteering,” she says.

Janet Farmer: On stage at a Platform Festival, run by Pocklington Arts Centre at the Old Station, Pocklington

Janet Farmer’s Pocklington Arts Centre timeline

2000: First live event, French-Algerian guitarist Pierre Bensusan, February 2.

2000: First film, The Last September, directed by Deborah Warner, February 24.

2000: First outdoor festival, staged in April.

2001: First arts festival to be staged across the market town by PAC, continuing for four more years.

2001: James Duffy employed as box office assistant in October. Now general manager.

2002: Janet directs Fiddler On The Roof for Pocklington Dramatic Society.

2003: First film festival, including An Audience With Barry Norman.

2004: Second film festival, including Q&A with BAFTA chair Duncan Kenworthy and film journalist Quentin Falk.

2010: Forgotten Voices Community Choir launched.

2011: First full-colour A5 live events brochure launched.

2011: PAC cinema projection converted from 35mm to digital.

2011: PAC joins forces with Pocklington’s Roundtable to launch large-scale festival of beer and music

2016: Platform Festival of music and comedy launched.

2016: £600,000 refurbishment.

2018: Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation status awarded with annual funding.

2018: Sara Morton appointed as PAC’s first marketing and administrative officer.

2019: Dementia Choir launched.

2020: PAC closes under Covid pandemic restrictions in March.

2020/2021: PAC stages 50-plus online events and workshops during lockdown.

2021: PAC stages series of outdoor exhibitions by Sue Clayton and Karen Winship during lockdown.

2021: Primrose Wood Acoustics launched in June.

2021: PAC reopens in July with two socially distanced performances by comedian Sarah Millican after 17 months of closure.

2022: Director Janet Farmer to leave in April after 25 years’ involvement.

Pocklington Arts Centre’s statistics under Janet Farmer

£1 million raised in public funding for PAC.

3,500 film screenings programmed since 2000.

900 live events programmed.

100s of community events, workshops, exhibitions and private hires staged.

20-plus arts, music and film festivals mounted.

Joan Armatrading: Rehearsed at Pocklington Arts Centre in preparation for a national tour

Music acts brought to Pocklington by Janet Farmer since 2000:

Joan Armatrading; Richard Hawley; Lucinda Williams; Mary Chapin Carpenter; Rosanne Cash; The Unthanks; Edwyn Collins; The Staves; Josh Ritter; Hothouse Flowers; Kate Rusby; The Shires; Adam Cohen; Amy Macdonald; KT Tunstall; Lesley Garrett.

The Searchers; Barbara Dickson; Beth Orton; Eric Bibb; Nick Mulvey; Roger McGuinn; Elkie Brooks; Eddi Reader; The Magic Numbers; Gretchen Peters; Levellers; Ron Sexsmith; Ruby Turner; Kathryn Williams; Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

Echo & The Bunnymen; Fairport Convention; Teddy Thompson; Mary Coughlan; David Ford; Clare Teal; Ward Thomas; The Blockheads; Raul Malo; Lissie; Dr Feelgood; Newton Faulkner; Georgie Fame; Lau; Fishermen’s Friends; Seth Lakeman; Alvin Stardust.

Ralph McTell; Bellowhead; Benjamin Francis Leftwich; The Coal Porters; Martyn Joseph; Irish Mythen; Courtney Marie Andrews; The Manfreds; Otis Gibbs; London Community Gospel Choir; Hugh Cornwell; Thea Gilmore.

Shed Seven; Benjamin Francis Leftwich; Curtis Stigers; Graham Coxon; Greg Lake; Glenn Tilbrook; Badly Drawn Boy; Courtney Pine; Joe Brown; Grace Petrie; Martin Simpson; Marty Wilde; Vonda Shepherd; Martha Wainwright and The Young’Uns.

Regional music:

The Howl & The Hum; Beth McCarthy; Dan Webster; Gina Dootson; Boss Caine; Amy May Ellis; Joshua Bunell; Edwina Hayes; The Dunwells; Rachel Croft; Charlie Daykin; Katie Spencer; Jessica Simpson; Gary Stewart; Josh Savage; The Grand Old Uke Of York; Mambo Jambo; Miles Salter; Nick Hall.

Spoken word:

Kae Tempest; Simon Armitage; Bob Harris; Pam Ayres; John Cooper Clarke; Sandi Toksvig; Keith Floyd; Jay Rayner; Baroness Shirley Williams; Michael Portillo; John Hegley; Tony Benn; Simon Callow; Jeremy Vine.

Robert Powell; Michael Dobbs; Andrew Motion; Paddy Ashdown; Ian McMillan; Barry Norman; Chris Packham; Amanda Owen; Clive James; Matt Abbott; George Melly; John Sergeant; Martin Bell; Gyles Brandreth and Julian Norton.

Theatre:

Trestle Theatre; Opera North; Northern Broadsides; Red Ladder Theatre Company; Reduced Shakespeare Company; Idle Motion; Reform Theatre; Talegate Theatre; Magic Carpet Theatre; North Country Theatre; Hull Truck Theatre; BlackEyed Theatre; Lempen Puppet Theatre; MultiStory Theatre; NTC; Vamos Theatre; ShowStoppers! and Badapple Theatre Company.

Comedy:

John Bishop; Sarah Millican; Dylan Moran; Jenny Éclair; Al Murray; Ross Noble; Fascinating Aida; Andrew Maxwell; Chris Ramsey; Jason Manford; Omid Djalili; Sue Perkins; Rob Beckett; Lucy Beaumont; Jon Richardson; Stewart Lee; John Shuttleworth; Rhod Gilbert.

Arthur Smith; Luisa Omielan; Phill Jupitus; David Baddiel; Greg Davies; Paul Merton’s Impro Chums; Henning Wehn; Stephen K Amos; Patrick Monahan; Dave Gorman; Russell Kane; Jeremy Hardy; Mark Steel; Rich Hall; Gary Delaney and Barry Cryer.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond as the eyes have it in museum’s new Roman display. List No. 77, courtesy of The Press

The Roman bust, key handle, plumb bob and horse and rider from the Ryedale Hoard at the Yorkshire Museum, York

FROM Roman remnants to re-discovered early Pink Floyd gems, Charles Hutchinson reveals highlights of the week ahead.

Exhibition of the week: The Ryedale Hoard, Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens, York, open daily during half-term, then Tuesday to Saturday from April 25

THE Yorkshire Museum has re-opened with the new exhibition The Ryedale Hoard: A Roman Mystery. For the first time, visitors can see some of Yorkshire’s most significant Roman objects, while exploring an intriguing archaeological mystery: who buried them 1,800 years ago?

Discovered by metal detectorists, on permanent show are a rare bust, made to adorn the top of a sceptre and thought to show Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from AD 161 to 180. An intricate figurine of a horse and rider, probably made in Britain, represents the god Mars.

A horse-shaped handle for a key, for magical purposes, may have been deliberately broken before burial. A plumb bob, large and finely created, would have been a weight for establishing a “plumb” vertical line. To book tickets: yorkshiremuseum.org.

Living for today: Bite My Thumb Theatre Company in Rent The Musical at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre

York musical of the week: Bite My Thumb Theatre Company in Rent The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Thursday to Saturday, 7.30pm

ARTISTIC director Neil Knipe directs Bite My Thumb in a spring tour of Jonathan Larson’s ground-breaking 1994 American musical about falling in love, finding your voice and living for today.

Set in the East Village of New York City, Rent follows a year in the life of a bohemian group of impoverished young artists, struggling to survive as they negotiate their dreams, loves and conflicts. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

 Forever thinking up new rules for Crunchem Hall Primary School: Joshua Lewis’s headmistress Miss Trunchbull in Ryedale Youth Theatre’s Matilda Jr The Musical

Ryedale musical of the week: Ryedale Youth Theatre in Matilda Jr The Musical, Tuesday to Saturday, 7pm; 3pm matinees, Thursday, Friday, Saturday

BORN with astonishing wit, intelligence, a vivid imagination and special powers, school pupil Matilda rebels against the mean, monstrous, rule-ridden regime of headteacher Miss Trunchbull.

Scripted by Dennis Kelly with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin, Matilda Jr is packed with multiple featured roles. Given the profusion of young Ryedale talent, director Chloe Shipley has decided on double casting to give everyone who auditioned the opportunity to perform in the principal parts. Box office: yourboxoffice.co.uk.

BalletBoyz: Deluxe dance delight at Grand Opera House, York, on Monday

Dance return of the week: BalletBoyz Deluxe, Grand Opera House, York, Monday, 7.30pm

MICHAEL Nunn and William Trevitt’s BalletBoyz return to York with what began as the boisterous, bold company’s 20th anniversary show but is now running into a 23rd year.

Eight young dancers interweave in two mesmeric dances, fused with the BalletBoyz’ trademark witty use of film and behind-the-scenes content.

Deluxe features a commission from choreographer Xie Xin and composer Jiang Shaofeng, followed by a collaboration between Punchdrunk’s Maxine Doyle with jazz musician and composer Cassie Kinoshi, from SEED Ensemble. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Dance, dance, wherever they may be, they are the Lord Of The Dance dancers, arriving for a four-night run at York Barbican

Anniversary show of the week: Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance, York Barbican, Monday to Thursday, 8pm

MICHAEL Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance show is “going to the next level” in 2022 for its 25th anniversary travels, wherein high-energy Irish dancing combines with original music, storytelling and sensuality.

Expect new staging, costumes and choreography plus cutting-edge technology, special effects and lighting, in a production featuring 40 young performers directed by Flatley, dancing to new compositions by Gerard Fahy as tradition meets the excitement of the innovative. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

News headliners: Harry Gration and Christine Talbot fronting A Grand Yorkshire Night Out at York Theatre Royal

Yorkshire event of the week: A Grand Yorkshire Night Out with Harry Gration & Christine Talbot, York Theatre Royal, Monday, 7.30pm

YORKSHIRE broadcasting legends Harry Gration and Christine Talbot, formerly of the BBC’s Look North and ITV’s rival Calendar respectively, join forces to host a journey down memory lane on a rare occasion these friends will have presented together.

The duo look back at memorable stories, plus a smattering of their crazier fundraising exploits, from tandem rides and a sofa push to Harry being tied to weather presenter Paul Hudson for days on end. 

Special guests will be production team members from the original All Creatures Great And Small series, Leeds band The Dunwells and Harry’s musical son, Harrison, singing songs from the shows. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Barry Humphries: Revealing The Man Behind The Mask in first performance for three years

Confessions of the week: Barry Humphries, The Man Behind The Mask, Grand Opera House, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm

BARRY Humphries takes to the stage for the first time in three years on Wednesday to reveal The Man Behind The Mask, playing the Grand Opera House in the only Yorkshire show of his 2022 tour

The Australian actor, comedian, satirist, artist, author and national treasure, aged 88, conducts a revelatory trip through his colourful life and theatrical career in an intimate, confessional evening, seasoned with highly personal, sometimes startling and occasionally outrageous stories of Dame Edna Everage, Sir Les Patterson, four marriages et al. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets: Re-visiting Pink Floyd’s early days

Pink Floyd show of the week: Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, York Barbican, August 16, 7.30pm

PINK Floyd drummer Nick Mason teams up with Spandau Ballet guitarist Gary Kemp, Guy Pratt, Lee Harris and Dom Beken for this re-arranged show with original tickets still valid.

The 2022 tour finds Mason and co further expanding their repertoire on a journey of Pink Floyd re-discovery, playing songs from their early catalogue up to the 1972 album Obscured By Clouds. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Oh, and another thing

THIS is the second weekend of York Open Studios, 10am to 5pm today and tomorrow. Go discover at yorkopenstudios.co.uk.

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Matilda J The Musical is so good, Ryedale Youth Theatre cast it twice in revolutionary step for double trouble at Crunchem Hall

Thinking up yet another punishment: Joshua Lewis as Miss Trunchbull in Ryedale Youth Theatre’s Matilda Jr The Musical

ATTENTION, maggots! Join the revolt in Roald Dahl’s Matilda Jr The Musical when Ryedale Youth Theatre take over the Milton Rooms, Malton, from April 12 to 16.

Full of rousing songs, witty lyrics and fun ensemble roles, this Broadway Junior adaptation of the Tony-winning musical is ready to bring the smell of rebellion to Malton with director/choreographer Chloe Shipley and musical director Rachael Clarke in charge.

In Dahl’s story, Matilda is born with astonishing wit, intelligence, a vivid imagination and special powers! Unloved by her parents, unfortunately her less-than-brilliant family fails to value the qualities that make Matilda so special. 

Sent to the abysmal Crunchem Hall Primary School, she impresses loveable, kind teacher Miss Honey, but monstrous, mean headmistress Miss Trunchbull hates children and just loves thinking up new punishments for those who flout her rules.

Ryedale Youth Theatre’s poster for Matilda Jr The Musical , featuring the two extra performances

Buoyed by the help of her friends and Miss Honey, Matilda has the courage and cleverness to start a revolution. Could she be the pupils’ saving grace, the one to prove that everyone has the power to change their own story?

“Matilda Jr The Musical is a tribute to those who think outside of the box and feel misunderstood,” says Chloe. “The show will teach actors and audience alike that you ‘mustn’t let a little thing like ‘little’ stop you and that sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty’.”

Matilda Jr will be Ryedale Youth Theatre’s 30th annual show, a milestone that should have been marked by their production of Oliver!, until Covid-19 forced its cancellation.

Scripted by Dennis Kelly with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin, Matilda Jr is packed with multiple featured roles. “Blessed with so many talented and enthusiastic young people within the company, we decided to double cast the show to give everyone who auditioned the opportunity to perform in the principal roles,” says publicist Barbara Wood.

Miss Honey, Matilda, Miss Trunchbull and the school pupils at Crunchem Hall Primary School in Ryedale Youth Theatre’s Matilda Jr The Musical

Consequently, two extra performances have been added to allow both teams four performances each of a show that runs to just over one hour with no interval.

Chloe and Rachael have been joined once again in the production team by former Ryedale Youth Theatre leading light, professional West End actress and singer Lauren Hood as assistant director/choreographer.

Lauren, who is living in Spain at present, flew over for the February half-term rehearsals, held at Malton School.

Yesterday was the get-in day for tech preparations for next Tuesday’s opening at the refurbished Milton Rooms. “The refurbishment work and upgrade to the sound and lighting systems is complete and the decorators are due to finish in time for our production,” says Barbara.

Tickets for the 7pm evening shows and 3pm Thursday, Friday and Saturday matinees cost £12, concessions £10, at yourboxoffice.co.uk.

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REVIEW: Blood Brothers, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday *****

Niki Evans, as Mrs Johnstone, and Sean Jones, as her son Mickey, as the Blood Brothers principals reunite at the Grand Opera House, where they previously performed together in May 2011

OUT of nowhere in The Rocky Horror Show’s March return to the Grand Opera House, narrator Philip Franks suddenly mischievously mimicked Blood Brothers. Oh, how everyone chortled.

That’s rich, CharlesHutchPress thought, given that Willy Russell’s tragi-comic Liverpool musical is a vastly better structured show without the fall-away in song quality and story in Richard O’Brien’s stupendously silly second act that seemingly all and sundry chooses to ignore.

The chance to compare the two hit shows with the Jacobean tragedy finales comes quickly with the return of Blood Brothers to the Cumberland Street theatre, and if there is any rivalry, it can only be in the number of visits being stacked up.

Rocky Horror? Lost count, but it must be heading for two full sets of fingers. Blood Brothers? Bill Kenwright and Bob Tomson’s perennial production keeps on giving blood, sweat and tears, having chalked up eight runs since 1996.

The ninth is better than ever, bolstered by the return of Niki Evans to the role of Mrs Johnstone after a decade and the chance to see Sean Jones, so synonymous with Mrs J’s son Mickey, on his “last ever tour” after 23 years on the road on and off.

More on, than off, with only eight of them in total spent away from Blood Brothers, his latest break coming since 2019 to tend to his poorly parents. When impresario Kenwright invited him back for the 2022 tour, Jones accepted, and here he is at 51 “running around as a seven-year-old in a baggy green jumper and short trousers”, promising to keep going for as long as Kenwright wants him. Like Bob Dylan’s never-ending tour.

More on Jones’s performance later, but first, what a delight to see Niki Evans reviving her Mrs Johnstone, the mother with the fateful family secret, in a devastatingly moving performance of pathos and pain, jagged-edged Scouse humour, love and desperate resilience.

For Mrs Johnstone, struggling with too many children on an impoverished Liverpool estate and deserted by her waster of a husband, the discovery she is pregnant again, this time with twins, is too much for her budget on the never-never.

She can only “afford” one more child, not two, she tells Mrs Lyons (Paula Tappenden), the barren wife of a travelling businessman from up the posh hill for whom she cleans.

All too rashly, a pact is agreed, one where she gives away one of the baby boys to the cold-hearted Mrs Lyons, setting in motion the superstition that if twins separated at birth ever discover each other’s existence they will die instantly.

Brothers in arms: Sean Jones, as Mickey, left, and Joel Benedict, as Eddie, in Blood Brothers

Clodagh Rodgers, Stephanie Lawrence, Bernie Nolan, Sharon Byatt, Marti Webb, Maureen Nolan and Lyn Paul have all played Mrs J in York; Evans is the first to do so twice, in her case divided by 11 years.

First time around, in May 2011, your reviewer observed: “Above all others, Evans will stick in the mind, for being the most real. What makes her performance all the remarkable is that the Birmingham mother of two had never seen a theatre show, except for pantomimes, nor heard of Blood Brothers or impresario Bill Kenwright when she was offered the role on the West End stage after making the semi-finals of The X Factor in 2007”.

Eleven years on, benefiting from more rings on the tree of theatre life, Evans remains a natural for musical theatre, more than she was for a burst of X Factor-fuelled pop stardom.

At 49, her voice is even more powerful, her broad face an expressive canvas for so many emotions, played out in a Scouse accent that accentuates light and dark alike. Evans’s council-house upbringing and her experiences as a working mum both bring authenticity to the performance too, not least in her renditions of the show’s supreme numbers, Tell Me It’s Not True, Marilyn Monroe and Easy Terms.

The harshest songs aptly go to Robbie Scotcher’s ever-present Narrator, a Faustian debt collector full of social truths and spooked folklore, as he steers the path of Russell’s 1983 cautionary tale.

In football parlance, Blood Brothers is a game of two halves, as one face of theatre, comedy, is ultimately overwhelmed by the other, tragedy, as it befalls the split-up brothers, scally Mickey (Jones) and scholarly Eddie (Joel Benedict).

Divided by class, their paths nevertheless keep crossing through fate, and once more Jones plays it with all the conviction of a man who believes there is no role in musical theatre to rival Mickey on his journey from cheeky, blissfully innocent child’s play, through tongue-tied teenage love pangs for Linda (Carly Burns), to the forlorn broken adult reliant on mind-numbing pills.

More than ever, you note the changes in his movement, his voice, from skip to slouch and slump, from up to down. Sean, whatever you do next, thank you for making this reviewer laugh and cry down the years.

Benedict more than holds his own as Eddie, the charmer in the making with a rebellious streak that then turns to steely political activism as a councillor. The role is more emotionally contained, to emphasise the contrast in nurturing, but nature permeates the brotherly bond in Jones and Benedict’s performances. Burns burns brightly too as lovely Linda.

Andy Walmsley’s familiar street scenery, Nick Richings’ lighting, Matt Malone’s musical direction and Dan Samson’s sound design all add to the hard-hitting impact of Russell’s unsentimental yet heart-rending doomed drama. Evans and Jones, reunited from 2011 to even more telling effect, make Blood Brothers a Must See once more.

Blood Brothers, Grand Opera House, York, 7.30pm tonight (7/4/2022) and tomorrow; 2.30pm and 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 7615.

Review by Charles Hutchinson

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‘You must realise as an actor you’re naturally ridiculous,’ a director told Barry Humphries. Cue Dame Edna and Sir Les

Hat’s off to Barry Humphries for revealing the man behind the mask at the Grand Opera House next Wednesday

BARRY Humphries will reveal The Man Behind The Mask at the Grand Opera House, York, on April 13.

This one-man show comes fully eight years after his supposedly valedictory Yorkshire visit in February 2014, when the creator of Dame Edna Everage presented Eat Pray Laugh!, Barry Humphries’ Farewell Tour in a five-night run at Leeds Grand Theatre.

Now, in the only Yorkshire show of his 2022 tour, the veteran Australian actor, comedian, satirist, artist, author and national treasure will take a revelatory trip through his colourful life and theatrical career in an intimate, confessional evening, seasoned with highly personal, sometimes startling and occasionally outrageous stories of Dame Edna et al.

Peeling off his mask at the age of 88 to introduce the man behind the clown, Humphries says: “This is a show in which I am the principal character; it’s not Les [Sir Les Patterson], it’s not Edna, it’s not Sandy Stone. It is really about this character called ‘me’. I’m not in disguise.”

Superstar Melbourne housewife Dame Edna’s sequined frocks and uncouth Sydney cultural attaché Sir Les’s food-spattered ties may make cameo appearances – or “interruptions” – in film clips, but the primary focus will be on Humphries relating anecdotes and observations from life on and off stage.

“Frankly, I thought it would be a little easier. No need to dress up,” he says. “I’ve had a lot of extremely interesting, colourful, scary, joyous experiences in my life – and I’m quite good with audiences.”

Humphries premiered The Man Behind The Mask in Australia, where it was “very, very successful”. “In a way, it was my out-of-town try-out. Now I’m bringing it here,” he says. “I’ve written the whole show plus a new song called Alone At Last, which would bring a tear to a glass eye.’”

When he appears at the Grand Opera House next Wednesday, Humphries will be setting foot on stage for the first time in nearly three years. Is he scared? “Oh no, I’ll get back in the groove very quickly,” he asserts.

Reflecting on his stage renaissance at 88, Humphries says: “Yes, but it’s not as though I’m going to pass away mid-performance like poor Tommy Cooper. But is it brave? On the contrary, I’ve always thought of myself as quite cowardly. The sound of a cricket bat hitting a ball invariably causes me to duck.”

First and foremost, Humphries’ show is a comedy. “The most important thing is to get that first laugh. Then I’ll be back in my comfort zone,” he says.

Hello, possums! Barry Humphries in superstar Melbourne housewife Dame Edna Everage mode

It was ever thus. After working in the wholesale department at EMI in his native Melbourne for a year in his late teens, he was taken on by Australia’s only touring repertory theatre company and was cast as Prince Orsino in Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night. “Or should I say miscast? I had to wear tights and, when I walked on stage, I thought I heard a titter running round the audience,” recalls Humphries.

“Immediately, I tried to disguise the bottom half of my body. After three performances, the director said that my entrance was terrible. Why was I skulking behind the furniture?

“I explained that I thought my legs were ruining this serious play. He assured me his wife was of the opinion that I had very good legs, but then he added: ‘You must realise as an actor that you’re naturally ridiculous’.”

“Naturally ridiculous”, Barry? “Now, some people might regard that as a bit of an insult. I was 18 at the time and it could have shaken my confidence, but it didn’t,” says Humphries. “What it made me realise was that I was in the wrong department of theatre. Whether I liked it or not, I belonged in comedy.”

At the time, he considered himself to be a painter, mostly of landscapes, but caricatures too. Once at university, however, he began writing sketches for revues in the style of Noel Coward or Terence Rattigan.

‘Later on, I tried my hand at writing about what was in front of me,” Humphries says. “No-one at the time wrote about Australia in general and the suburbs in particular.”

Come the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956, the repertory company director decided to present a revue and asked the 22-year-old Humphries to contribute material.

“There weren’t enough hotel rooms in the city, so people were encouraged to let international athletes stay in their spare rooms, so I wrote a sketch about a housewife called Edna who invited a muscular sportsman into her home,” he recalls.

In that first incarnation, Edna was “rather shy, very suburban, a little dowdy”. “But, in time, that changed. It was as though she started to assert herself,” says Humphries. “I’d wake up one day and she’d acquired those trademark glasses. Her confidence grew. Suddenly, there was an invalid husband, Norm; a gay son; a delinquent daughter, a silent bridesmaid, Madge.

“She took on a life of her own. It was as though she’d started writing her own script. I’d be on the side, observing with some admiration, Edna’s quips.”

Barry Humphries in ‘Early Edna’ days

Nevertheless, by the early 1960s, Humphries decided that Edna had run her course. “But no, she proved indestructible, and she’s turned out to be a very useful mouthpiece,” he reappraises. “She can say things, for instance, about political correctness that I couldn’t possibly express.”

The same freedom applies to Sir Les’s coarse outbursts. “Absolutely. For example, I never swear in real life,” says Humphries. “Both characters are wonderful outlets. I’m very careful myself about what I might say. Edna and Sir Les, on the other hand, can point to the nudity of the emperor.”

Off stage, Humphries has conducted a somewhat lively private life. Married four times and father to two daughters from his second marriage and two sons from his third, he and fourth wife, Lizzie, tied the knot in 1990. Why has marriage endured this time? “Oh, because I’m a bit smarter now,” he says.

“The truth is that I’m not a very easy person to be married to. For over ten years of my life, I had a serious alcoholic illness.” So much so, his out-of-control drinking culminated in Humphries being found unconscious in an Australian gutter.

“I’d been beaten up, almost certainly by two or three policemen who I’d been cheeky to – let us say – the previous day. They didn’t like that and took their revenge,” he says.

It was to prove a turning point. ‘If you’re dependent on alcohol for your happiness or your comfort or merely to function, it’s not only degrading but you head in one direction – and that’s downwards,” Humphries says.

“I finally put the cork in the bottle when I was 38 and I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol from that day to this. But I know many alcoholics who have chastening experiences and yet carry on drinking.”

His long-held philosophy is to live in the present. “That’s a very hard thing to do but a very good spiritual exercise,” Humphries says. “I’m happier since the arrival of my grandchildren. I’m relating to them in a way I didn’t get round to doing with my own children. That’s a major regret. I’m trying to make up for the years lost to alcoholism.”

Barry Humphries, The Man Behind The Mask, Grand Opera House, York, April 13, 7.30pm, with an opportunity for audience questions. Tickets update: Still available on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/york.

By Charles Hutchinson and Richard Barber. Copyright of The Press, York

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‘I’m definitely doing it!’, says York panto star Martin Barrass. ‘See you at Opera House’

Berwick Kaler and Martin Barrass, pictured in last winter’s Dick Turpin Rides Again

YORK pantomime star Martin Barrass WILL be in this winter’s Grand Opera House show, he says.

Dame Berwick Kaler’s perennial comic sidekick has posted a reassuring message on social media after his name was missing from those confirmed for The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose’s run from December 10 2022 to January 8 2023.

The familiar team of dowager dame Kaler, dastardly villain David Leonard and “luvverly Brummie” AJ Powell have been signed up by the Ambassador Theatre Group theatre’s new pantomime producer, UK Productions, but yesterday’s press release made no reference to either Barrass or principal golden gal Suzy Cooper. “Further casting will be announced soon,” the announcement concluded.

This prompted spring-heeled Barrass to bounce back on social media: “I’m definitely doing it! Worry not! I think there was a blip in the publicity dept methinks. Either that or they’ve never heard of me lol. See you at the Opera House for the GRAND LAUNCH 13th April at 10!!”

Yesterday’s announcement stated Kaler and Leonard would be on hand at next Wednesday’s ticket sale launch.

The official confirmation on Barrass’s panto participation is awaited. Likewise, whether Suzy Cooper will or will not be returning.

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Dame Berwick is back in The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose but could his pantomime team be broken up at Grand Opera House?

Grand Opera House return for Dame Berwick Kaler, pictured in last winter’s Dick Turpin Rides Again

DAME Berwick Kaler will pull on his big bovver boots for his second Grand Opera House pantomime, but will his “Famous In York Five” reunite?

The grand dame, 75, definitely will be joined in The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose by indomitable villain David Leonard and ‘luvverly Brummie’ AJ Powell, but two fellow regulars in the Kaler panto fixtures and fittings are yet to be confirmed. Or not.

“Further casting will be announced soon” is the official line. Watch this space for news of Kaler’s perennial sidekick, Martin Barrass, and principal golden gal Suzy Cooper as the Grand Opera House pantomime moves on to a new producer, UK Productions, after only one year under the Crossroads Pantomimes umbrella.

Dame Berwick and dastardly David will be on hand to launch ticket sales at the Cumberland Street theatre from 10am on Wednesday, April 13.

“I can’t wait to welcome Me Babbies and Bairns back to the Grand Opera House,” enthused Kaler, Britain’s longest-running dame. “But be warned – I’m under the not unreasonable delusion that I’m far too young to play a granny! So, brace yourself to expect the unexpected.”

Last December, Kaler returned to the York pantomime stage for the first time since February 2019, writing, directing and starring as dame Dotty Donut in Dick Turpin Rides Again alongside Barrass, Cooper, Leonard and Powell in their debut Grand Opera House panto.

Unlike so many pantomimes, they navigated the winter Covid wave without losing any performances or principal performers until the final week when both Kaler and Barrass had to step down after testing positive (despite experiencing no symptoms). In came Scotsmen Alan McHugh and Jack Buchanan, from the His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, pantomime cast, to play dame and stooge respectively.

Kaler had exited the York Theatre Royal pantomime stage bereft after 40 years, announcing The Grand Old Dame would be his farewell, but soon regretted his retirement decision, even more so after writing and co-directing the 2019-2020 show, Sleeping Beauty.

Pantomime villain David Leonard: Launching ticket sales for The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose with Berwick Kaler at the Grand Opera House on April 13

Dame Berwick and co duly signed up for Qdos Pantomimes’ new partnership with the Grand Opera House in January 2020 in the most sensational crosstown transfer since Denis Law swapped Manchester United for Manchester City in 1973.

The pandemic put a spoke in Dick Turpin’s planned return ride in 2020, and Qdos Pantomimes had been taken over by Crossroads Pantomimes by the time the show did go ahead last winter.

Now, Berwick will be back once more, presenting his second ageing variation on a Mother Goose theme after Old Mother Goose at York Theatre Royal in December 2014. It is yet to be confirmed if it will still be a traditional Kaler triple-threat show as star, writer and director or whether UK Productions will shake up the formula, not only in the casting but in the production team too.

In the meantime, the Grand Opera House publicity machine invites you to “discover for yourself why Berwick and his team have become a true rock of family entertainment over many decades with their hilarious anarchic approach to pantomime. It’s wonderfully madcap and is truly enjoyed by all ages. You may not remember the plot, but you will remember the laughs during the winter months.”

Producers UK Production have presented Christmas pantomimes across Great Britain for nigh on 30 years. During the 2022/23 season, they will produce 11 pantomimes of their own and provide productions to around another 30 nationwide.

Producer Martin Dodd said: “It is truly a privilege to be working with the legendary Berwick Kaler and his co-stars, including the deliciously devilish David Leonard and the lovely Brummie AJ Powell with further casting to be announced.

“I really am excited to be presenting this fabulously unique and much-loved pantomime that is as much a part of the York Christmas tradition as Turkey (or Goose!) and stuffing. We can promise a cracking good show full of laughter, music, and mayhem”.

The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose will run from December 10 2022 to January 8 2023. Next Wednesday morning’s general sale launch will be preceded by Priority TheatreCard Membership tickets from Monday, April 11. Prices will start at £13 at atgtickets.com/York or on 0844 871 7615.

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REVIEW: Pick Me Up Theatre in Shakespeare In Love, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday ****

Sanna Jeppsson in noblewoman Viola’s guise as young actor Thomas Kent. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

SHAKESPEARE In Love was a film about theatre, as much as it was about love. Now it is a play about theatre, with even more theatre in it, more Marlowe as well as Shakespeare, as much as it is still about love.

It makes perfect sense to transfer the period rom-com from screen to its natural bedfellow, the stage, and who better than Lee Hall to effect that transition.  

For the north-eastern mining and dancing drama Billy Elliot, he adapted his own screenplay; this time, he makes merry with Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman’s boisterous and romantic script for John Madden’s 1999 award-winner, ruffing it up to the neck in Shakespeare in-jokes, but not roughing up its sophisticated wit.

Robert Readman: Producer, set designer and builder, costume guru and thespian, playing hammy Elizabethan actor Ned Alleyn. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

Pick Me Up Theatre’s always quick-off-the-mark founder, Robert Readman, was typically speedy to pick up the rights to Shakespeare In Love for the York company’s tenth anniversary, whereupon a series of spot-on decisions were made.

First, appoint Bard buff and Pick Me Up ace card Mark Hird to direct the rollicking romp. Second, bring George Stagnell back to the York stage to play the title role. Third, talent-spot Swedish-born Sanna Jeppsson in York Settlement Community Players’ The 39 Steps (even when it fell at the first step, called off through cast illness after one night last November).

Four, utilise Readman’s skills, not only as producer and designer/builder, but also his dormant love of performing. When you need a thick slice of ham to play larger-than-life Elizabethan actor Ned Alleyn, “prince of the provinces”, who you gonna call? Why, Mr Readman, of course, tapping into his inner plummy Simon Callow.

Sanna Jeppsson’s Viola de Lesseps and George Stagnell’s Will Shakespeare mutually admire his newly quilled lines in Shakespeare In Love. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

Readman has conjured an end-on, raised stage built for the outdoors, but no less suited to the John Cooper Studio’s black box, with its echoes of Shakespeare’s Globe or the Rose; decorative flowers; curtains to cover amorous going-ons behind, and traps for hasty exits and entries.

Ensemble cast members sit beside the stage apron, watching the action when not involved. On a mezzanine level, musical director Natalie Walker and Royal College of Music student Tom Bennett are playing Paddy Cunneen’s gorgeous score.

Hird’s company looks the Elizabethan part too, Readman’s costume brief requiring hires from the Royal Shakespeare Company, no less, as well as York Theatre Royal and Leeds Playhouse, plus ear studs and earrings aplenty (for the men).

Ian Giles’s Henslowe and Andrew Roberts’s Ralph. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

Praise too for Emma Godivala and York College’s work on hair, fake moustaches and make-up, especially for Jeppsson when taking the guise of young actor Thomas Kent.

The make-up for the men is deliberately heavy, in keeping with Shakespeare’s day, but everything else is conducted with a delightfully light touch under Hird’s direction, where the next scene chases the previous one off the stage, such is the gleeful urgency to crack on with such a cracking plot replete with cross-dressing, swordplay and backside-biting puppetry (courtesy of Elanor Kitchen’s Spot the Dog).

The only slowness is in the pace of lines coming to Shakespeare’s quill, surrounded by the company of actors awaiting the next play of his still fledgling career, outshone by dashing, daring Kit Marlowe (Adam Price), amusingly providing his young friend (Stagnell’s Will) with all his best lines.

Adam Price’s devil-may-care Kit Marlowe has a word with George Stagnell’s Will, in desperate disguise for his safety at this juncture. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

Theatre bosses Henslowe (Ian Giles) and rival Richard Burbage (Tony Froud) are vying for Shakespeare’s services; theatre backer “The Money” Fennyman (Andrew Isherwood) keeps applying the financial squeeze, often with menaces; Tilney (Neil Foster), the supercilious Lord Chamberlain with the insufferable killjoy manner of Malvolio, is determined to shut down theatres, whatever excuse he can find.

Queen Elizabeth (Joy Warner) wants a dog to have its day in every play; Guy Wilson’s John Webster just wants a chance; Shakespeare needs a muse. Enter Jeppsson’s Viola de Lesseps, alas promised to the ghastly Lord Wessex (Jim Paterson) against her wishes. Viola is banned from the stage under the rules, but takes the dangerous step of performing as Thomas Kent, and what a performer he/she is.

Viola’s amusing West Country Nurse (Beryl Nairn) becomes the template for that very character in Romeo & Juliet, and as Shakespeare’s work in progress changes from comedy  to tragedy, Alleyn plays Mercutio, fabulously outraged at being killed off so early.

Sam Hird, left, and Tom Bennett, from the Royal College of Music, on song in Shakespeare In Love

Shakespeare In Love gives us a developing play within a play, and while it helps to have some knowledge of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Burbage et al, it echoes Blackadder in having such fun with a period setting and re-writing history, here imagining how Romeo & Juliet and in turn Twelfth Night may have emerged.

What’s more, Stagnell and Jeppsson are a delight in the swelling love story, as well as in delivering Shakespeare’s lines when called on to do so.

Terrific performances abound around them, especially from Price, Isherwood, Paterson and Wilson, a young talent with a gift for physical comedy in the Marty Feldman and Tony Robinson tradition, while Warner’s cameos as Queen Elizabeth are a joy too.

To cap it all, Sam Hird and Tom Bennett’s performance of an Elizabethan ballad is beautiful, typical of  a swashbuckling performance that is a palpable hit in every way. If you love theatre, this play is why you do. If you don’t, go anyway and be converted. Tonight until Friday’s shows have sold out but tickets are still available for 2.30pm and 7.30pm on Saturday at tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Review by Charles Hutchinson

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How America and Britain bonded magically for Penn & Teller’s hit show with Mischief

Magic Goes Wrong: Magical mayhem at York Theatre Royal from April 26

AMERICAN comedy magicians Penn & Teller have been sawing the magic rulebook in half for five decades. Now they have teamed up with British masters of mishap Mischief for Magic Goes Wrong, heading for York Theatre Royal on tour from April 26 to May 1.

Teller, 74, and Penn Jillette, 67, have long specialised in combining bamboozling illusions with dark comedy, their magic often seeming to go horribly wrong in its combination of comic danger, sometimes gore, even violence.

Their notorious habit of repeatedly revealing to the audience exactly how their tricks work has long prevented the duo from being members of the Magic Circle. Not that they mind. Far from it. patter-merchant Penn and the silent Teller revel in the illusion of chaos, typified by one of their stage shows beginning with a giant fridge falling on the pair, apparently crushing them. 

Meanwhile, the Mischief team of Henry Shields, Henry Lewis, and Jonathan Sayer have delivered such calamitous comedy hits as The Play That Goes Wrong, Peter Pan Goes Wrong and The Comedy About A Bank Robbery, along with the BBC One series The Goes Wrong Show, where the comedy is rooted in the show-must-go-on spirit of the straight-faced cast members determinedly defying everything collapsing around them.

Penner & Tell plus Mischief equalled the perfect match in the making. Sure enough, in 2019, the Americans announced they would be teaming up with the Brits. Cue Magic Goes Wrong opening in the West End, London, and subsequently casting a spell on tour.

How did the marriage in magical mayhem come to fruition? A few years ago, Penn & Teller were performing in London when Penn’s family decided they wanted to see a West End show. “I don’t go to comedy theatre at all,” recalls Penn.

Penn & Teller: Revelling in the illusion of chaos

“I like theatre to be deadly dull, slow and depressing, but my wife and children picked The Play That Goes Wrong. I realised that not only was my family laughing harder than I’ve ever seen them, but I was too.” Immediately, he told Teller to book a ticket. 

Despite being known for his onstage silence, it was Teller who started discussions with Shields, Lewis and Sayer, Mischief’s artistic directors. “I am more shy than Teller, so it never crossed my mind to go backstage,” says Penn. “But Teller took himself backstage and said, ‘hey I’m a star’!”

Teller insists it was a somewhat different story: “As I was sitting in my seat, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You’re Teller, aren’t you? The cast wants to give you free ice cream’. So, afterwards, I went backstage to thank the cast and compliment them, because it really was one of the finest shows I’ve ever seen.”

What’s more, Penn had mentioned to Teller that the show featured a magic trick. “He told me there’s a moment where a person reappears in a grandfather clock, and it’s going to fool you,” Teller explains. “And he was right. It absolutely fooled me. So, I said to the Mischief guys, ‘You do stuff that is so much like magic, we should do something together sometime’.” 

A few months later, all five of them were eating homemade pancakes at Teller’s Las Vegas house and plotting a new stage show. Working with unfamiliar people was a new experience for Penn & Teller who, despite decades in show business, rarely collaborate beyond the two of them. Teller has directed two Shakespeare plays, as well as a documentary film, but for Penn it was nerve-wracking. 

What could possibly go wrong? Magic Goes Wrong up to its tricks on tour

“Teller and I have a dynamic that we’ve built over 46 years, so this was a huge leap of faith,” he says. “We couldn’t go out to dinner with these guys; we had to jump straight into bed. We were told: ‘they are going to be here at 10am on Wednesday and you’ll start writing your show. You won’t even know which one is Jonathan and which ones are Henry [times two]. But it took about 20 minutes before I felt like I was around my closest friends.”

Shields, Lewis and Sayer spent a week and a half putting together the show’s bones in a small side room off the stage of The Rio hotel, where Penn & Teller are the longest-running headline act in Las Vegas history. Penn & Teller taught the team magic – “they picked it up incredibly quickly” – and  suggested tricks to include, while the Mischief trio improvised dialogue and story. 

Just as Mischief were excited to be working with two of their heroes, Penn & Teller were no less in awe of Mischief’s talent.  “There was one moment Henry (Lewis) and Jonathan said, ‘it could kind of go like this’, and then the two of them did a five-minute improvisation,” recalls Penn.

“Now, I have sat in a room with Lou Reed playing Sweet Jane four feet from me. I’ve talked to Richard Feynman about physics. I’ve spoken to Bob Dylan. But I said, ‘this is a moment I will bookmark for the rest of my life’.

“I felt like I was watching the Pythons at their peak, and I thought, ‘this is why I’m in showbiz: to be that near that level of talent and skill’. And when I’m on my deathbed listing the 100 artistic events of my life, that moment will be there.”

Tricky! Magic Goes Wrong combines the trick that goes wrong with the trick that dazzles the audience

Roll on a few more sessions and the show had come together, its storyline built around a disastrous fundraising benefit. However, by adding the trademark Goes Wrong approach, all the tricks had to work on two levels: there had to be the trick that goes wrong, and then the trick that dazzles the audience.

How did they devise these illusions? As Teller explains, the process can be laborious. “You get an idea, which is usually quite grand, then you find that it’s impossible, and you revise it over and over again until it works.

“There’s a trick in the show where one of the cast members gets accidentally sawed in half by a buzzsaw. That was more than a year of work. Part of the trick involves blood, but if you just show the blood on stage, it looks boring; it has no impact at all.

“So a big part of the buzzsaw trick for us was developing it in such a way that when the blood came, it would be sprayed up against a huge backdrop where you could truly enjoy the bright red colour.”

While on the subject of blood and buzzsaws, Magic Goes Wrong is more comically gory than Mischief’s previous work. Was that Penn and Teller’s influence? “Guilty!” says Penn. 
“I’m afraid it might have something to do with us,” Teller admits. “We think that gore is essentially funny. It’s really hard to pull off serious gore in the theatre because people tend to want to laugh. They know that it’s fake, but they see that it looks real. And that’s very much like a magic trick.”

“We don’t ever allow the possibility of something going seriously wrong because if we did, we wouldn’t have been working successfully for 46 years,” says Teller

Penn & Teller’s work thrives on this clash of instinct and intellect. “What you want to do is get the visceral and the intellectual to collide as fast as possible,” says Penn. “It’s like being on a rollercoaster: I’m safe; no, I’m not; I’m safe; no, I’m not. Those two parts of your body are fighting.”

Despite Mischief and Penn & Teller having built their careers on making it appear that everything is going horrifically wrong, they insist that mishaps are incredibly rare in real life. “While we’re rehearsing, we might get a minor cut or bruise,” says Teller. “But we don’t ever allow the possibility of something going seriously wrong because if we did, we wouldn’t have been working successfully for 46 years.”

Indeed absence of safety angers Penn & Teller, who show disdain for “edgy’ magicians who put themselves in actual physical danger, even lampooning them in the show with the character of The Blade, who puts his limbs on the line for art’s sake.

“If you want to see someone actually get hurt, go watch NASCAR [ferocious high-speed car racing with frequent crashes],” says Penn. “If you want your art to be dangerous, stay away from me.” 

Teller concurs: “Anytime I hear that in the making of a movie somebody was actually injured or killed, I’m angry about that, because art is what you do for fun.” The paradox of the magician duo’s work, and of Magic Goes Wrong too, is that everything must be incredibly safe precisely in order to make it look so dangerous.

Magic Goes Wrong: “A full magic show and a full comedy show,” says Penn

For Penn, what makes Magic Goes Wrong so right is the combination of magic and comedy. “It’s a full magic show and a full comedy show happening at the same time,” he says.

Teller highlights a deeper, more unexpected layer to the show: “What’s interesting to me is how well it reflects the actual culture of the magic world,” he says. “It’s mostly populated by well meaning, very nice amateurs. And there is a great, heart-tugging beauty about that to me.

“The poignancy of the magic trick that isn’t quite achieved, where your aspirations are to behave in a godlike manner, and instead you’re slapped in the face by reality – I think that’s such a beautiful thing. That’s what this show is about. It has all these laughs and all these wild, crazy moments, but when it lands at the end, it’s about the sweetness of friends who love magic.”

Mischief and Penn & Teller’s Magic Goes Wrong appears at York Theatre Royal from April 26 and vanishes from York after May 1; performances, 7.30pm, plus 2pm, Thursday, and 2.30pm, Saturday. Please note, show co-creators Penn & Teller will not be appearing on stage.

What happens in Magic Goes Wrong?

A HAPLESS gang of magicians is staging an evening of grand illusions to raise money for charity, but as the magic turns to mayhem, accidents spiral out of control, so does the fundraising target. Cue dare-devil stunts, jaw-dropping feats and magical mishaps.