Badapple Theatre hare down to Joseph Rowntree Theatre with eco-conscious adventure Tales From The Great Wood

York actor Richard Kay with Hetty The Hare in Badapple Theatre Company’s Tales From The Great Wood

BADAPPLE Theatre Company return to live performances this evening with Tales From The Great Wood at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York.

“This is a new short play for children and grandparents – and everyone else – to enjoy together that can be performed indoor or outdoor,” says writer-director Kate Bramley, founder of the Green Hammerton theatre-on-your-doorstep proponents, as she introduces her interactive storytelling eco-adventure.

“Listen! Can you hear the whispering in the trees? The Great Wood is full of stories. It’s a hot summer’s day, perfect for basking in the sun, but instead of resting, Hetty the hare is investigating because someone is missing.

“As she unravels a tall tale that stretches from end to end of The Great Wood, Hetty realises that every creature – no matter how small – can have a huge part to play in the world of the forest.”

One of those “creatures” is the exotic Hoopoe bird from Africa that is blown off course en route to Spain and ends up in Bramley’s British woodland story.

“Although I write daft stuff, the facts behind it are always real,” says Kate. “So this bird with a long beak and a liking for ants really does occasionally turn up in Britain, sometimes Scotland, or the south west of England…and now in The Great Wood!”

Starring York actor Richard Kay, Danny Mellor and a host of puppets made by designer Catherine Dawn, this show for ages five to 95 will be performed at the Covid-secure JoRo tonight at 7.30pm and tomorrow at 11am, 2.30pm and 7.30pm.

“We’ll also be playing Skipsea Village Hall on Sunday afternoon, and we’re looking to do some outdoor performances too, such as at stately homes, with Annabelle Polito working on that for us at the moment,” says Kate.

“I’m trying to create a show that is ‘omni-everything’: suitable for outdoor spaces and for indoors, so it’s not only a play for all seasons, but a play for all eventualities.”

“We want to carry on telling stories; to carry on spreading joy and to make sure we are always eco-conscious,” says Badapple artistic director Kate Bramley

In the spirit of an eco-adventure, Badapple Theatre’s have recycled the set and puppets for use in Tales From The Great Wood. “At a time when all businesses great and small are recognising the need to look at how live events come about, what we want to do is threefold: to carry on telling stories; to carry on spreading joy and to make sure we are always eco-conscious,” says Kate.

“I’ve had 22 years with Badapple since founding the company to bring theatre to your doorstep, and I’ve been thinking, ‘what would I like to do for the next 22 years’?

“I’d now be happy to split my time between telling stories and digging and growing things in the garden.”

In addition to rehearsing Tales From The Great Wood at Hunsingore Village Hall, Badapple have held a puppet day with Haxby primary schoolchildren, combining puppets and poems. “They were just such a beautiful set of children, who were so excited to get involved, making puppets and then working with all the puppets we’d made,” says Kate.

“It was interesting to see just how instinctive it was for them to adopt puppet characters. Right now, they should just be having fun, playing with theatre skills and enjoying storytelling.”

Badapple Theatre Company in Tales From The Great Wood, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, July 2, 7.30pm, and July 3, 11am, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 501935. Also: Skipsea Village Hall, July 4, 2pm; tickets, 01262 469714 or 01262 468640.

Today’s question: Are Radiohead overrated?

TWO Big Egos In A Small Car podcast double act Chalmers & Hutch decide in Episode 48.

Plus what’s happening to Peter Jackson’s Beatles biopic Get Back? Festival overload: is it Glastonbury or Glastonborey?

Carole King’s Tapestry takes on Joni Mitchell’s Blue in a 50th anniversary tussle. The Magic Christian revisited, Ringo Starr et al. Hurry, hurry, to see Cecil Beaton’s gilded photographic days in Sheffield Millennium Gallery exhibition.

To hear the latest podcast, head to: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/8794458

When the Rowntree Park keeper whistled and everyone jumped to attention…

Actor Sean McKenzie at the gates to Rowntree Park, where he will perform Mike Kenny’s monologue The Park Keeper in the Friends’ Garden from July 7 to 17. Picture: Northedge Photography

THE 100th birthday of Rowntree Park, York, will fall on July 16, the penultimate night of Park Bench Theatre’s premiere of The Park Keeper, marking that centenary.

Commissioned from York playwright Mike Kenny by director Matt Aston, the 55-minute monologue will be performed by Sean McKenzie in the Friends’ Garden, the setting for three Park Bench solo plays as the first theatre rainbow across last summer’s skies after the initial release from lockdown.

“I’m delighted that Park Bench Theatre is returning to Rowntree Park in its 100th birthday year,” says Matt, artistic director of Engine House Theatre. “Mike has written a beautiful script that I’m sure will capture the hearts of everyone who has ever been to and loved the park over the years, as well as anyone who might be enjoying their first visit.”

Running from July 7 to 17 with social distancing measures in place, The Park Keeper is set in York in the summer of 1945 when Rowntree Park’s first park keeper, ‘Parky’ Bell, is about to retire after 24 years in post, 24 years with a piercing whistle in mouth.

He must make a speech, but what can he say and how can he close this chapter on his life? Will he be able to lock the gates to his kingdom one last time?

“Inspired by York’s very own ‘Parky’ Bell, this is a heartfelt and poignant one-man show that celebrates 100 years of Rowntree Park while also asking the question, ‘what happens when we’re not needed anymore?’.”

Park Bench Theatre director Matt Aston on a park bench in the Friends’ Garden, Rowntree Park

‘Parky’ Bell, who lived in the Rowntree Park lodge that now houses Explore York’s Reading Café,  took on his post when Messrs Rowntree & Co gifted Rowntree Park to the City of York as a memorial to the cocoa works staff who fell and suffered during the First World War.

“The story is inspired by ‘Parky’ Bell rather than entirely biographical, but the stories about him are legion: the park keeper with his shrill whistle to bring children to attention and kick everyone out by 6pm,” says Matt.

“He was the only ever park keeper at Rowntree Park and he was in post for the years between the wars. What must he have thought when were back at war after only 21 years? We’re getting things wrong now, but they were getting things terribly wring then, not learning lessons in their lifetime, when so many young men had been killed in the Great War.”

Such questions, taking in the value of life, reflections on a life lived, mark out The Park Keeper as Aston and Kenny renew their fruitful partnership. “I’ve worked with Mike five times on new works for children and families – Red Riding Hood, Two Little Boys, Flat Stanley, Beauty And The Beast and Snow White – but this is different and it’s pretty much the best thing he’s done,” says Matt.

He is delighted too to be working with Sean McKenzie, rehearsing on Zoom for the first week and then at Southlands Methodist Church this week.

“I’ve known Sean for years though we’ve never worked together until now. We met a few people for the job and he just read beautifully,” he says.

“In ‘Parky’ Bell’s character, there’s an undercurrent of not wanting to move on, but there’s also that bustling nature that park keepers have to have, yet you have to empathise with him, and Sean really captures that. I’ve wanted to work with him for ages and I’m really pleased that we now are.”

The Park Keeper director Matt Aston, left, actor Sean McKenzie and writer Mike Kenny in Rowntree Park, York

Matt believes the rehearsal process works well too. “With the play being a monologue, it’s good to start by concentrating on text on Zoom before getting it on its feet in week two in the rehearsal room and then in the park,” he says.

The director had contemplated not doing another Park Bench Theatre production this summer, content with the audience response to Samuel Beckett’s First Love, his own lockdown work, Every Time A Bell Rings, and a new adaptation of Teddy Bears’ Picnic, co-created by Aston and actor Cassie Vallance. 

“Last summer went so well; I’ll never forget that emotional feeling when everyone clapped together again for the first time because none of us had done anything together for so long,” he says.

“But then I started thinking, ‘it’s the park’s 100th birthday this year, we really should do something. That’s when I spoke to Mike, who lives only five minutes’ walk from the park, and straightaway his eyes had that glint, saying ‘this one’s for me’.

“He wrote it so quickly, it was astonishing:  like songwriters saying the best songs are written in five minutes!  He’s turned 70 and, like ‘Parky’ Bell, he’s faced thoughts of retirement, but he’s desperate not to do that, and so everything aligned for him to do this play.”

Park Bench Theatre in The Park Keeper, The Friends’ Garden, Rowntree Park, York, July 7 to 17, except July 11; 7.30pm start, bar the July 7 preview at 6pm. Age guidance: 12 plus. Box office: 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or via parkbenhtheatre.com.

Copyright of The Press, York

More Things To Do in and around York as ‘Byrne out’ strikes tonight’s comedy gig. List No. 39, courtesy of The Press, York

Shock of the new: Milton Jones looks startled at the prospect of replacing Ed Byrne at short notice for tonight’s comedy bill at York Theatre Royal

AWAY from all that football, Charles Hutchinson finds plenty of cause for cheer beyond chasing an inflated pig’s bladder, from a late-change comedy bill to Ayckbourn on film, York artists to a park bench premiere.

Late substitution of the week: Byrne out, Jones in, for Live At The Theatre Royal comedy night, York Theatre Royal, tonight, 7.30pm

ED Byrne will not top the Live At The Theatre Royal comedy bill tonight after all. “We are sorry to announce that due to circumstances beyond our control, Ed is now unable to appear,” says the official statement.

The whimsical Irish comedian subsequently has tweeted his “You Need To Self-Isolate” notification, running until 23.59pm on July 7.

Well equipped to take over at short notice is the quip-witted pun-slinger Milton Jones, joining Rhys James, Maisie Adam and host Arthur Smith. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Naomi Petersen and Bill Champion in Alan Ayckbourn’s The Girl Next Door at the SJT and now on film too. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

“Film of the week”: Alan Ayckburn’s The Girl Next Door, from Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until Sunday

THE SJT’s film of Alan Ayckbourn’s latest premiere, The Girl Next Door, is available on the Scarborough theatre’s website, sjt.uk.com.

Directed by Ayckbourn, his 85th play can be seen on stage in The Round until Saturday and now in a filmed recording in front of a live audience until midnight on Sunday.

One day in 2020 lockdown, veteran actor Rob spots a stranger hanging out the washing in the adjoining garden, but his neighbours have not been around for months. Who is the mysterious girl next door? And why is she wearing 1940s’ clothing?

Ray of sunshine: Edwin Ray as Tick/Mitzi in Priscilla Queen Of The Desert at Leeds Grand Theatre. Picture: Darren Bell

Musical of the week ahead: Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, Leeds Grand Theatre, July 6 to 10

PRISCILLA Queen Of The Desert returns to Leeds for seven socially distanced performances in a new production produced by Mark Goucher and, for the first time, Jason Donovan, star of the original West End show and two UK tours.

Loaded up with glorious costumes, fabulous feathers and dance-floor classics, three friends hop aboard a battered old bus bound for Alice Springs to put on the show of a lifetime.

Miles Western plays Bernadette, Nick Hayes, Adam/Felicia and Edwin Ray, Tick/Mitzi, in this heart-warming story of self-discovery, sassiness and acceptance. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or at leedsgrandtheatre.com.

Solo show: Polymath Phil Grainger puts his songwriting in the spotlight in his Clive concert in Stillington

Gig of the week outside York: Clive, alias Phil Grainger, At The Mill, Stillington, near York, tomorrow, 7.30pm

CLIVE is the solo music project of Easingwold singer, songwriter, musician, sound engineer, magician, actor, Gobbledigook Theatre director and event promoter Phil Grainger.

As the voice and the soul behind Orpheus, Eurydice and The Gods The Gods The Gods, Clive finds the globe-trotting Grainger back home, turning his hand to a song-writing project marked by soaring vocal and soulful musicianship. Expect a magical evening wending through new work and old classics in two sets, one acoustic, the other electric. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill/512182.

Emily Hansen’s Pilgrim 14 as Mary Magdalene in a rehearsal for A Resurrection For York at Dean’s Park. Picture: John Saunders

Open-air theatre event of the weekend: A Resurrection For York, Residents Garden, Minster Library, Dean’s Park, York, Saturday and Sunday, 11am, 2pm, 4pm

THE wagons are in place for A Resurrection For York, presented by York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust, York Festival Trust and York Minster.

Philip Parr, artistic director of Parrabbola, directs a community cast in an hour-long outdoor performance, scripted by Parr and 2018 York Mystery Plays director Tom Straszewski from the York Mystery Plays cycle of the crucifixion and the events that followed. Tickets are on sale at ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/york/residents-garden-deans-park/a-resurrection-for-york/.

Autonomous, by Sharon McDonagh, from the Momentum Summer Show at Blossom Street Gallery, York

Exhibition of the week and beyond: Momentum Summer Show, Westside Artists, Blossom Street Gallery, by Micklegate Bar, York, until September 26

YORK art group Westside Artists, a coterie of artists from the city’s Holgate and West areas, are exhibiting paintings, portraits, photomontage, photography, metalwork, textiles, ceramics and mixed-media art at Blossom Street Gallery.

Taking part are Adele Karmazyn; Carolyn Coles; Donna Maria Taylor; Ealish Wilson; Fran Brammer; Jane Dignum; Jill Tattersall; Kate Akrill and Lucy McElroy. So too are Lucie Wake; Marc Godfrey-Murphy; Mark Druery; Michelle Hughes; Rich Rhodes; Robin Grover-Jaques, Sharon McDonagh and Simon Palmour.

The Park Keeper director Matt Aston, left, actor Sean McKenzie and writer Mike Kenny at Rowntree Park, York. Picture: Northedge Photography

Theatre premiere of the week ahead: Park Bench Theatre in The Park Keeper, The Friends’ Garden, Rowntree Park, York, July 7 to 17 (except July 11)

AFTER last summer’s trilogy of solo shows, Matt Aston’s Park Bench Theatre return to Rowntree Park with Olivier Award-winning York writer Mike Kenny’s new monologue to mark the park’s centenary.

Performed by Sean McKenzie, The Park Keeper is set in York in the summer of 1945, when Rowntree Park’s first, and so far only, park keeper, ‘Parky’ Bell, is about to retire. That can mean only one thing, a speech, but what can he say? How can he close this chapter on his life? Will he be able to lock the gates to his kingdom one last time? Box office: 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or via parkbenchtheatre.com.

Andy Fairweather Low: Booked into Pocklington Arts Centre for next February

Gig announcement of the week outside York: Andy Fairweather Low, Pocklington Arts Centre, February 11 2022

ANDY Fairweather Low, the veteran Welsh guitarist, songwriter, vocalist and producer, will return to Pocklington next February.

Founder and cornerstone of Sixties’ hitmakers Amen Corner and later part of Eric Clapton and Roger Waters’ bands, Cardiff-born Fairweather Low, 72, will perform with The Low Riders: drummer Paul Beavis, bassist Dave Bronze and saxophonist Nick Pentelow. Box office: pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

Jane McDonald: Lighting up York Barbican in July 2022 rather than July 4 this summer

Rearranged gig announcement of the week in York: Jane McDonald, York Barbican, July 22 2022

WAKEFIELD cabaret singer and television personality Jane McDonald’s Let The Light In show is on the move to next summer.

For so long booked in as the chance to “Get The Lights Back On” at York Barbican on July 4, the Government’s postponement of “Freedom Day” from June 21 to July 19 at the earliest has enforced the date change for a show first booked in for 2020. Tickets remain valid; box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Ayckbourn’s play of the summer The Girl Next Door is now the SJT’s film of the week

Naomi Petersen and Bill Champion in The Girl Next Door at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

THE Stephen Joseph Theatre film of Alan Ayckbourn’s latest stage premiere, The Girl Next Door, is available on the Scarborough theatre’s website from 6pm this evening.

Directed by Ayckbourn, his 85th play can be seen in The Round until Saturday and now via sjt.uk.com, in a filmed recording in front of a live audience, until midnight on Sunday (4/7/2021).

In The Girl Next Door, veteran actor Rob Hathaway is stuck at home during the summer of 2020 with only his sensible older sister for company. Rob has little to do but relive his glory days when, as the star of the nation’s favourite TV period drama, National Fire Service, he ruled the roost as George ‘Tiger’ Jennings: wartime hero and living legend among firefighters.

One day, Rob spots a stranger hanging out the washing in the adjoining garden, but his neighbours have not been around for months. Who is the mysterious girl next door? And why is she wearing 1940s’ clothing?

Ayckbourn says: “I was born in 1939, so my earliest memories are of a sort of lockdown: of crowding into Anderson shelters or subway stations; of sleeping in deckchairs or on my mother’s lap. Things have come full circle for me.

“The Girl Next Door is an affirmation of love across the generations – I hope it’s positive and hopeful for those today crawling out of their metaphorical Anderson shelters blinking into the light.”

Writer-director Alan Ayckbourn in his Scarborough garden. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

The filmed production features a cast of Bill Champion, Linford Johnson, Alexandra Mathie and Naomi Petersen.

The SJT’s artistic director, Paul Robinson, says: “We were delighted that part of the funding we received from the government’s Culture Recovery Fund last year was to go towards filming our productions.

“It means that audiences who can’t get to the theatre to see the show, for whatever reason, still have chance to see a high-quality version in the comfort of their own home, and Alan couldn’t have got us off to a better start than with this hit play.”

Written and directed by Ayckbourn, assisted by the SJT’s associate director Chelsey Gillard, The Girl Next Door is designed by Kevin Jenkins with lighting design by Jason Taylor.

Tickets for the film cost £12 each, with a group ticket available at £15 and a version with bonus features, including interviews with Ayckbourn and Jenkins, priced at £20, on 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com. To check ticket availability for the last week of the stage production, visit the website.

Darker nights, ghostly tales and premieres stalk York Theatre Royal’s Haunted Season

Let’s stalk: Will York Theatre Royal’s fabled ghost, The Grey Lady, make an appearance during The Haunted Season this autumn?

ONCE nights start to draw in, York Theatre Royal will fill its stage with spirits and shadows in The Haunted Season from September 9.

In the home of the restless ghost of the Grey Lady, world premieres by Emma Rice, Matthew Bourne and Tonderai Munyevu will be complemented by scary appearances by horror favourites Dracula, The Hound Of the Baskervilles and the Headless Horseman.

As trailered in CharlesHutchPress, Emma Rice’s Wise Children will complete a hattrick of Theatre Royal visits with Rice’s new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in a Theatre Royal co-production with the National Theatre and Bristol Old Vic from November 9 to 20.

Lucy McCormick will play Cathy in this world premiere as Rice’s visual and musical style brings new life to this epic Yorkshire story of love, revenge and redemption.

“It is with an earthy spring in my step and epic twinkle in my eye that I announce our new plans for Wuthering Heights,” says Rice, who presented Angela Carter’s Wise Children at the Theare Royal in March 2019 and Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers that September.

Lucy McCormick’s Cathy in the poster for Wise Children’s world premiere of Emma Rice’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Picture: Hugo Glendinning

“So many projects have fallen by the wayside during lockdown that there were times when I lost hope but there was no need. Wise Children are back; stronger, wiser and grateful for the chance to sing and dance again. The exceptional cast, crew, administrative and creative teams are ready to go and we are fizzing with ideas, dreams and anticipation.”

Earlier in the Haunted Season, from September 30 to October 2, will be the world premiere of celebrated choreographer Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell, a dance exploration of “intoxicated tales from darkest Soho”, inspired by English novelist and Gaslight playwright Patrick Hamilton.

Delving into the underbelly of 1930s’ London life, this New Adventures show invites audiences to step inside The Midnight Bell, a tavern where one particular lonely hearts club gathers to play out lovelorn affairs of the heart: bitter comedies of longing, frustration, betrayal and redemption.

The Theatre Royal had to wait for 30 years for Londoner Sir Matthew Bourne, doyen of dandy dance, to bring a show to York for the first time on his Early Adventures tour in March 2017 after he introduced mid-scale touring. The Theatre Royal promptly booked his next tour, Matthew Bourne’s Deadly Serious, but that visit never materialised. Now, however, Bourne is back with his Soho tales.

Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell: Delving into the underbelly of 1930s’ London life in the New Adventures production from September 30 to October 2

The season will open with another world premiere, Zimbabwean writer-performer Tonderai Munyevu’s Mugabe, My Dad & Me from September 9 to 18. His high-voltage one-man show charts the rise and fall of one of the most controversial politicians of the 20th century, Robert Mugabe, through the personal story of Tonderai’s family and his relationship with his father as he considers familial love, identity and what it means to be “home”.

Playwright (and pantomime dame to boot) Philip Meeks has history at York Theatre Royal in the form of Twinkle, Little Star, starring Nottingham Playhouse panto legend Kenneth Alan Taylor in the Studio in 2008  and the 2017 world premiere of Murder, Margaret and Me, his comedy-thriller of imagined meetings between crime novelist and playwright Agatha Christie and actress Margaret Rutherford.

Now Meeks will return with his stage adaptation of The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving’s 1820 tale of the Headless Horseman, from October 5 to 9, when Wendi Peters, from Coronation Street, and Bill Ward, from Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Before We Die, will lead the cast and Filipe J Carvalho will provide the stage illusions.

Director Jake Smith says: “Sleepy Hollow is undoubtedly one of the greatest horror stories ever written and a tour de force to stage. The production has at its heart the power of nomadic storytelling and gathering round the campfire for a good ghost story. It is an important story for now as we look at conversations around the identity of nations, communities and humankind throughout the world.”

Coronation Street alumni Wendi Peters and Bill Ward will star in Philip Meeks’s stage adaptation of The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

Two familiar figures from the world of horror will put in appearances at the Haunted Season, albeit maybe not in the expected manner. Kings of comedy Le Navet Bete will sink their teeth into Dracula: The Bloody Truth on September 24 and 25, mixing slapstick with carefully crafted comedy and a healthy dose of things going wrong as the action moves from dark and sinister Transylvania to the “awkwardly charming seaside town of Whitby”.

From October 19 to 23, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective story The Hound Of The Baskervilles will be given a humorous overhaul in a Lotte Wakeham production where farce collides with theatrical invention and comic performances.

Pride And Prejudice’s most roguish gentleman, George Wickham, will seek to set the record straight when Adrian Lukis performs in Being Mr Wickham from October 14 to 16. Lukis, who played Mr Wickham in the BBC TV adaptation, will reveal what really happened with Darcy, how he felt about Lizzie and, of course, what happened at Waterloo.

Two dance companies will return to the Theatre Royal stage: Ballet Black on October 26 and Phoenix Dance Theatre on November 23 and 24.

The poster for the world premiere of Tonderai Munyevu’s Mugabe, My Dad & Me

Cassa Pancho’s Ballet Black Double Bill will feature Then And Now, wherein Will Tuckett blends classical ballet, poetry and music to explore ideas of home and belonging, and fellow Olivier Award-winning choreographer Mthuthuzeli November’s contemplation of the purpose of life in The Waiting Game.

Leeds company Phoenix Dance Theatre will be celebrating 40 Years Of Phoenix with a birthday programme of work by international and award-winning choreographers, including former artistic directors and collaborators.

Lorne Campbell’s new theatrical version of The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff will be performed by BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-winning trio The Young’uns – Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes – from October 28 to 30.

This protest-song celebration of northern working-class activism features songs from the original album, alongside new material and animation, in the true story of a young anti-fascist’s journey from poverty and unemployment in Stockton-on-Tees through the hunger marches of the 1930s, the mass trespass movement and the Battle of Cable Street, to fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

Protest-song celebration of northern working-class activism The Young’uns in The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. Picture: Pamela Raith

On October 11 and 12, English Touring Opera will return to the Theatre Royal with Handel’s Amadigi, based on a chivalric romance about three young people imprisoned by a sorceress.

From November 2 to 6, York Opera will present The Magic Flute, Mozart’s magical and last great opera, sung in English with an orchestra.

For younger audiences, Rod Campbell’s lift-the-flap book will leap off the page in Dear Zoo Live!, a show packed full of puppetry, songs and all the animals from the zoo, on September 28 and 29.

After The Love Season and upcoming Summer Of Love, The Haunted Season will be the third of York Theatre Royal’s mini-seasons since reopening on May 17. Tickets are on sale on 01904 623568 and at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

REVIEW: Mikron Theatre Company in Atalanta Forever **** and A Dog’s Tale ***

Come on, Atalanta Forever: Elizabeth Robin, left, Thomas Cotran, Rachel Benson and James McLean, on commentary duty, in Amanda Whittington’s women’s football drama, at the Piece Hall, Halifax. Picture: Elizabeth Baker

Mikron Theatre Company in Atalanta Forever and A Dog’s Tale, on tour on boat, road and holding on to a lead until September 19

AFTER a Covid-cancelled year of no shows but resolute fund-raising to secure their future, Marsden’s Mikron Theatre Company are on their travels once more, giving plays the canal route treatment where possible aboard narrowboat Tyseley.

This should have been their 50th year of “theatre anywhere for everyone”, but those celebrations must wait until 2022. Nevertheless, the refreshing sight of company stalwart James McLean back on stage, in the company of fellow actor-musicians Rachel Benson, Elizabeth Cotran and luxuriant-haired Thomas Cotran, was cause enough to bring out the cheers at the Piece Hall press night for Amanda Whittington’s “fight for women’s football” drama, Atalanta Forever, in the Halifax open air.

Two nights later, and the same cast parked up at Scarcroft Allotments, in York, just as bushy tailed and bright eyed for the musical canine comedy caper A Dog’s Tale, Poppy Hollman’s debut professional commission after taking part in Mikron’s Writers’ Scheme in 2018.

Halifax, first. Noises off could be heard, nothing too distracting, not only from the bars around the Piece Hall but the peregrines that have taken over the Square Chapel gothic tower as their aerie. Then again, the players of Huddersfield’s Atalanta AFC women’s football team would have been used to crowds at fund-raising games for wounded soldiers, especially when playing the mighty Preston factory team Dick, Kerr’s Ladies FC, legendary gay star winger Lily Parr et al.

Thomas Cotran, left, Rachel Benson, Elizabeth Robin and James McLean in a scene from Atalanta Forever. PIcture: Elizabeth Baker

Parr was the first woman to be inducted into the National Football Museum Hall of Fame, her pioneering story being told on stage in both Benjamin Peel’s Not A Game For Girls and Sabrina Mahfouz and Hollie McNish’s Offside, a play football, feminism and female empowerment.

Little is known of Atalanta AFC, however, who played for only a couple of seasons from 1920 before folding in 1924. “All that remains is a fixture list, a few newspaper reports and precious team photos,” writes Whittington in her programme notes.

“Who are those pioneering women and girls,” she asks. “The silence around them gave us space to imagine who played for Atalanta and why? It also allowed me to draw on my experience in the long shadow of the FA ban [on woman’s football that ran from 1921 to 1971].”

Aged 11, Whittington was the only girl who played in a 1980s’ Nottinghamshire boys’ village tournament and was promptly advised to stop because it “wasn’t appropriate”. She still feels the injustice, the sense of shame of wanting to do something she was “not meant to”.

Playwright Amanda Whittington: “Atalanta Forever is my revenge play,” she says, after being told it “wasn’t appropriate” for her to be playing in a boys’ football tournament at the age of 11

Atalanta Forever is her revenge play, she says. Amanda has written 30-plus plays, from Be My Baby to Ladies Day, Bollywood Jane to Mighty Atoms, and this time it’s personal. But not too personal, and not too, too serious either.

Although written with a campaigning zeal for the female empowerment of these ground-breaking players of the Twenties, Atalanta Forever is irreverent too about the beautiful game that is often anything but that, typified by the opening Rules Of The Game song. Ruby Of The Rovers and Girl’s Own adventures meet Match Of The Day and John Godber’s Rugby League physical comedy Up’n’Under.

Atalanta AFC blue-and-white scarves knitted by Mikron supporters decorate the fencing – and were tempting to purloin as the second half turned chillier – as we learn of the back stories of Annie (Benson) and Ethel (Robin), one a fireworks factory worker, the other a tram driver, when they join the new team.

Into the story come the multi-role playing Cotran (as team captain Constance, radical coach Ms Waller, Huddersfield Town legend Billy Smith and more besides) and McLean (as scoffing groundsman Arthur, a disapproving mother and John Motson send-up, Motty Johnson).

MIkron Theatre Company performing Atalanta Forever to a socially distanced full house at the PIece Hall, Halifax

In Mikron tradition, Whittington’s play is as educative as it is entertaining, balanced between righteous ire and humour, football match highlights and life off the pitch. She weaves in accounts of being stopped from writing left handed, the fate of a conscientious objector, massive post-war unemployment and strikes and a mother’s scorn for suffrage and socialism, but at the same she revels in an impromptu match with beret-wearing French tourists and even a Boris Johnson cameo.

How else could the play end but with a tribute to Lily Parr, a cheer for women’s football now thriving and a “nod to the brave girls who carried on”. Atalanta Forever is a resilient triumph, from Whittington’s stirring writing to Marianne McNamara’s pacy direction, Kieran Buckeridge’s playful songs to a chameleon cast of multiple talents. Back of the net!

Two evenings later, it was sunnier by far as dog owners took their pooches along the lane beside the Mikron van at Scarcroft Allotments. Again, they had brought only the simplest of set designs with a rail for hanging myriad costumes, instruments and props to the side, a raised stage and no lighting.

One of the joys of a long Mikron summer is the chance to see the same cast tackling two plays (although, alas, the 2021 tour being restricted to outdoor performances means no Clements Hall show this year in York, so you will have to travel farther afield).

Actor-musicians Elizabeth Robin, left, Thomas Cotran, James McLean and Rachel Benson in Mikron Theatre Company’s A Dog’s Tale

After football in Atalanta Forever, McLean, Benson, Robin and Cotran head into another competitive environment, the Cruft’s dog show, in A Dog’s Tale: cat-loving Poppy Hollman’s look at canines past and present, Cruft’s now and Cruft’s when started by cat-owning Charles Cruft, a suitably dogged late-19th century showman of Barnum instincts, puppy-keen to take on the stuffy Kennel Club.

The bond between people and their ‘best friends’ is ever present, ever enduring, even if shenanigans and skullduggery blight the competition in Hollman’s tale, one informed by her visit to Cruft’s in the name of an intrigued novice’s research.

History combines with a little mystery, a sense of mischief with an outsider’s initiation, in the world of “heroic hounds, pampered pooches and naughty nobblers”, as Benson’s Linda and her wayward rescue mutt, Gary, find themselves pursued by security through the halls of Crufts, accused of a “terrible crime”.

Robin and McLean have much fun as Margo and Carl, unbearably precious, ever-panicking, regular Cruft’s competitors; Cotran reels off all manner of accents in a multitude of roles; McLean twinkles as Cruft and has the best cameo in a spoof on Barbara Woodhouse.

Don’t be misled by the dog! A Dog’s Tale playwright Poppy Hollman is really a cat lover

Hollman challenges her cast with 20 characters between them, and in her first full-scale play, the characters and caricatures are her strongest suit, along with her sense of fun, both sharper than the dialogue and the slightly clunky storyline involving Gary’s crime and the naughty nobbler.

By comparison with McNamara’s Atalanta Forever, Rachel Gee’s direction has to work harder to maintain momentum and maximise the humour, but the performances are typically energetic, inventive, engaging and diverse, and the one scene with interloping cats is a gem of physical comedy and knowing contrast with the otherwise omnipresent dogs, topped off by a Dogs V. Cats rap battle.

Musical director Rebekah Hughes’s compositions for Hollman’s smart lyrics are a blast and Celia Perkins delivers fabulous costume designs that accentuate character superbly. The stiff dog’s leads with simply a collar where the head would be (rather than puppets) are particular favourite among the props.

Ultimately a little overstretched, the eager-to-please A Dog’s Tale nevertheless has much to enjoy, announcing a new talent in Hollman with the tools to take her comedy writing to the next level.  

For the full tour itineraries and booking details, go to: mikron.org.uk. P.S. Dogs are welcome at most performances of A Dog’s Tale.

Catty comment: Thomas Cotran, Elizabeth Robin and Rachel Benson’s moggies revel in their show-stealing cameo in A Dog’s Tale

Wagons wheeled in for A Resurrection For York setting of Mystery Plays at Dean’s Park

Preparations are gaining momentum for A Resurrection For York at Dean’s Park on July 3 and 4. Picture: John Saunders

A WEEK to go for A Resurrection For York and everything is dropping into place, the cross and all, at the Residents Garden, Minster Library, Dean’s Park, York.

Initial plans for the open-air play had to be put on hold under pandemic restrictions, but partners York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust, York Festival Trust and York Minster then settled on new performance dates of July 3 and 4.

Directed by Philip Parr, artistic director of Parrabbola, the show’s format will be retained: one hour long, performed outdoors, on two static wagons, and the staging will be compliant with Covid safety requirements for audience social distancing for each day’s 11am, 2pm and 4pm performances.

Since his appointment in March, Parr has worked on the new script with Tom Straszewski, director of the York Mystery Plays’ wagon production in 2018, and auditioned a community cast, subsequently conducting rehearsals on Zoom.

Previously, Parr directed York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust’s production of A Nativity For York at the Spurriergate Centre, York, in December 2019.

Tickets are selling well – some performances have sold out already – and a civic party will attend the opening Saturday performance, followed by the Dean of York, the Right Reverend Dr Jonathan Frost, at a Sunday show.

The arrival of the wagons, loaned by the Guilds of Butchers and Merchant Taylors, was an uplifting moment, as the team of Dave Clapham, Mark Morton and Adam Robinson manoeuvred the trailer and wagons through the Dean’s Park gates, despite the tight squeeze.

Dave Clapham, Mark Morton and Adam Robinson delivering the wagons, or waggons as the York Mystery Plays historians are wont to call them. Picture: John Saunders

On those wagons, the cast will be performing a script by Straszewski and Parr, created from the York Mystery Plays cycle of the crucifixion and the events that followed.

Michael Maybridge, who will play Pilgrim 2, says: “What this script brings to mind is the experience of the very earliest Christians. We might think of our play in terms of the medieval citizens of York, reminding themselves of the narrative of their faith by telling each other stories.

“Many of those Christians found themselves travelling, just like the pilgrims in our play. They carried on telling their stories, and it seems uncontroversial to say that, in doing so, they changed the world.”

Jodie Fletcher, taking the role of Mary Cleophas, says: “The Mystery Plays are a unique part of history, and for me the magic comes from the beautiful and poetic language. It has been wonderful to be creating theatre once more and I hope audiences will find the experience revitalising.”

On July 3, the 2pm performance will be livestreamed on YouTube at youtube.com/watch?v=UXChGFomf5M and on Facebook at facebook.com/events/584796139152052/.


In addition, the Saturday performances will be filmed as a “record to view later”. “Watch this space. We’ll let you know when it’s available. What’s more, it’s free,” says the latest York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust newsletter.

“Attending a Saturday performance? There may be incidental filming of audience members, so if you do not wish to feature, please let one of the front-of-house stewards know. You can tell them by their face mask and name badge,” it adds.

Wagon wheelers: Dave Clapham, Mark Morton and Adam Robinson

Please note, as seating will not be provided for audiences, make sure to bring a rug or folding chair. Gates will be open to the garden from 10.30am.

Tickets for A Resurrection For York are on sale at ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/york/residents-garden-deans-park/a-resurrection-for-york/

Who will be in the cast for A Resurrection For York?

Pilgrim 1, Wilma Edwards; Pilgrim 2, Michael Maybridge; Pilgrim 3, Victoria Rooke; Pilgrim 4, Mary Callan; Pilgrim 5, Nick Jones (Narrator); Pilgrim 6, Sally Maybridge (Narrator, Peter); Pilgrim 7, Chris Pomfrett (John); no Pilgrim 8.

Pilgrim 9, Julie Speedie; Pilgrim 10, Judith Ireland (Mary, Mother of Christ); Pilgrim 11, Jodie Fletcher (Mary Cleophas); Pilgrim 12, Tony Froud (Joseph of Arimathea); Pilgrim 13, Sonia di Lorenzo (Nicodemus); Pilgrim 14, Emily Hansen (Mary Magdalene).

Pilgrim 15, Raqhael Harte (Thomas); Pilgrim 16, Samuel Valentine (Centurion); Pilgrim 17, Joy Warner (Soldier 1); Pilgrim 18, Harold Mozley (Soldier 2); Pilgrim 19 Janice Barnes Newton (Soldier 3), and Pilgrim 20, Colin Lea (Soldier 4). Plus David Denbigh.  

Production team credits:

Director, Philip Parr; associate director, Terry Ram; producer, Simon Tompsett. 

REVIEW: Finding solution to “problem play” Miss Julie at York Theatre Royal…or not?

Leo Wan as ambitious John and Sophie Robinson as restless Julie in Amy Ng’s re-setting of Strindberg’s Miss Julie in British colonial post-war Hong Kong for New Earth Theatre and Storyhouse

Miss Julie, New Earth Theatre and Storyhouse, Chester, York Theatre Royal, The Love Season, 8pm tonight; 3pm, 8pm, tomorrow, then on tour. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

NEW Earth Theatre director Dadiow Lin is “not a fan of the original version” of Miss Julie, Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s once-banned, naturalistic tragedy of gender and class warfare.

Damned for misogynism, it remains a “problem play”, and yet fresh adaptations of this revolutionary work, full of psychological manipulation, lust and lies, keep emerging, no problem.

In 1995, Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie re-located its psycho-sexual pas de deux to an English country house in July 1945, on the night of the Labour Party’s post-war landslide General Election triumph. In 2012, in South African director and playwright Jael Farber’s Afrikaans’ version, Mies Julie, it became an apartheid story in a remote, bleak farm in modern-day South Africa’s Karoo semi-desert.

A year later, for York company Hedgepig Theatre, Gemma Sharp moved the turbulent triangle of lust, power and betrayal from Midsummer Night’s perma-light Scandinavia to the bright lights, decadence and debauchery of the Jazz Age England.

Andy Curry’s John and Gemma Sharp’s Julie in York company Hedgepig Theatre’s 1920s’ Jazz Age version of Miss Julie in January 2013

The 1920s, Sharp reasoned, were a time when sex before marriage was still frowned on, the class structure was rigid, and there was inequality for women, a status being challenged by the rise of the Suffragettes, the quest for female empowerment and the wearing-away of high society’s certainties.

Now, the ever-restless Miss Julie is on the move again, to the Orient, to post-war 1940s’ Hong Kong, back in British colonial hands after the surrender to the Japanese in wartime.

In British-Hong Kong playwright Amy Ng’s poetic, potent hands, it becomes politically as well as sexually charged, the chemical compound newly in danger of exploding with the extra measure of racial tension.

What had changed since the British 1920s for women and servants? Not much. The class structure was still rigid; inequality was still prevalent; high society was still high and mighty, titled and ever entitled; women and servants alike were expected to know their place.

Playwright Amy Ng

This applied as much to the British abroad, maybe even more so, and yet even though Hong Kong had been handed back to the Brits for reasons of “racial superiority”, the tentacles of Chinese Communism were reaching out in the shadows.

The British Governor General’s chauffeur, John (Leo Wan), now sees the British in a new light, weakened in their control, and he despises them for it.

Ng has retained the essence of the Strindberg storyline and three-hander structure, changing its setting, bolstering its topicality for the new Hong Kong, in its 21st century Chinese straitjacket, turning up the slow-burning heat in the cauldron of the servants’ hall amid the Chinese New Year celebrations.

Into the quietude of the party preparations of cook Christine (Jennifer Leong) and her preening fiancé John gate-crashes the Governor’s unguarded yet repressed daughter, Julie (Sophie Robinson), nursing a damaged ankle (or so she says), having hit her party straps outside already, with the Governor elsewhere.

Sophie Robinson’s Julie: “Spoilt, immature, blinkered, grand but needy, solipsistic, false, annoying, capricious, complaining. The question is why?”

She brings in her caged canary (ah, symbolism, evoking Ibsen and Chekhov’s trapped lives); then notes the dead flowers in the decorations (ah, more symbolism) and proceeds to flirt, dance and plot brazenly with John, as a sexual game of chess is played under Christine’s scowling gaze from behind the bamboo canes of a kitchen lit with Chinese lanterns.

It takes three acts in 1879’s A Doll’s House for all hope of escape to be expunged; Strindberg’s candle burns out in one act, gone in 75 minutes. All that symbolism peaks with a Lion Dance, to signify their sexual fires, a conflagration that can lead only one way when the tide turns, as hierarchal contempt, rather than misogyny, plays its hand in the shift of power and female empowerment withers on a bitter vine.

In our era of Brexit and the open dislike of the UK (not only in that pointless Eurovision vote), Robinson’s Julie is the not-so-bright young Brit thing writ large in an earlier age but still familiar: spoilt, immature, blinkered, grand but needy, solipsistic, false, annoying, capricious, complaining. The question is why?

She is born to privilege, gifted with opportunities, but lacking judgement and parental guidance, she has no sense of purpose or direction; her world is precarious, doomed. Maybe that is the difference between entitlement and empowerment; here she lacks the tools within for the latter. Today, she would be on Made In Chelsea.

For all Robinson’s enticing performance, for all Ng’s soulful poetry and contemplative intelligence, this damaged-goods, volatile Julie is not the stuff of tragedy or shock. More a one-night stand with too much baggage.

The cat and mouse games of the Lion Dance in New Earth Theatre and Storyhouse’s Miss Julie at York Theatre Royal

Wan’s John encapsulates the new vision of Ng’s version. He walks with a swagger, emboldened and ambitious, his contempt on the rise, while still polishing the British Governor General’s shoes and wanting to use the British to facilitate his Western wishes, tantalised by the prospect of becoming a hotelier.

Neglectful of Christine, ultimately dismissive of Julie, his ambivalent actions are embedded both in an abiding sense of presumed male supremacy and now a need to challenge the sense of racial “inferiority” that eats away at his subservience.

Like her pragmatic, deceptively calculating character, Leong’s Christine is less demonstrative amid the melodrama, the crash and burn around her, in the Freudian battle of the sexes.

Who should be given the final moment in Lin’s beautifully composed production but Christine, preparing herself for the new day’s work; nothing to see here, carry on. Some lives will always occupy that lane, picking up the pieces, but they are not the lives of self-destructive destiny that make the story, that draw us to the theatre, whether in Strindberg or Ng’s account.

Remains of the day: Jennifer Leong’s house cook Christine at the close of Miss Julie

Review by Charles Hutchinson