Guy Kelton Jones: Fronting The James Brown Experience in York, Harrogate and Bradford
THE James Brown Family Foundation is teaming up with The James Brown Experience for a 12-date autumn tour that will visit York Barbican on October 1, Royal Hall, Harrogate, on October 3 and St George’s Hall, Bradford, on October 9.
Promoted by Cuffe & Taylor, this immersive concert experience “goes beyond imitation” to bring to life the songs, dance grooves and back story of the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. Tickets are on sale at CuffeandTaylor.com; yorkbarbican.co.uk/whats-on/the-james-brown-experience/; harrogatetheatre.co.uk or 01423 502116 and bradford-theatres.co.uk.
Founded for charitable and educational purposes in April 2007 by Brown’s daughter, Dr Deanna Brown-Thomas, the James Brown Family Foundation seeks to build on her father’s legacy of charitable giving in many communities around the United States and to see the world as Brown did, bringing hope to those who are less fortunate.
The foundation says: “This production not only honours James Brown’s extraordinary musical legacy, but it also reflects his creativity, hard work and passion. We are thrilled to see this show bring his legacy and sound to new audiences.
“Our commission is to expand James Brown’s vision, touching those here at home and around the world to assist underprivileged children and impoverished families through our initiatives and projects.”
The James Brown Experience celebrates Brown’s impact on music, culture and civil rights, capturing his electrifying energy, soul-power voice and dynamic moves in a night of high-octane dance numbers, heart-wrenching ballads and timeless soul and funk classics.
As well as revelling in such hits as I Feel Good, It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World, Get Up Offa That Thing, Sex Machine and Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag, the show also explores the life and soul of the South Carolina-born singer, songwriter, dancer, musician and record producer in his own words.
The James Brown Experience features The New Soul Generals, a nine-piece funk orchestra whose musicians have toured with Jamiroquai, Mark Ronson, Amy Winehouse and Martha Reeves.
Out front will be Guy Kelton Jones, tasked with matching the standards of “the Hardest Working Man in showbusiness” in his rasping vocals and itchy-footed moves. Like Brown, he was raised in Georgia.
Carrie Hope Fletcher’s Calamity in Nikolai Foster’s production of Calamity Jane. Picture: Mark Senior
MUM knows best. West End leading lady Carrie Hope Fletcher has played Éponine and Fantine in Les Misérables, Veronica Sawyer in Heathers: The Musical and Wednesday in The Addams Family, as well as originating the role of Cinderella in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella, but her mother reckoned there was one role her South Harrow daughter was born to play.
Namely, the gun-slingin’, tough-talkin’, hard-ridin’ American frontierswoman Calamity Jane, the feisty tomboy role immortalised by Doris Day in the 1953 film and last played on tour on the Grand Opera House stage by Jodie Prenger in February 2015.
Mrs Fletcher’s instinct was spot on. Here was a Calamity waiting to happen, you could say. Carrying her mum’s hopes, Carrie Hope is whip-smart in The Watermill’s cracker of a touring production as York audiences experience her musical theatre chops for the first time, having seen her only in Love Letters, her exploration in song of all forms of love, from romantic to maternal, unrequited to obsessive, at York Barbican last October.
What a fabulous voice she has, even if the emotional release of the serenading Secret Love was shared with a women in the row behind your reviewer, who could not resist joining in with every line. Please, please desist.
Perhaps now is the time to introduce a singalong performance for every familiar touring musical to abate this selfish trend. If not, dear audiences, show better instinct when to join in, pretty much at the cast’s invitation here for reprises of Deadwood Stage and Black Hills Of Dakota.
Seren Sandham-Davies’s Katie Brown, the wannabe showgirl in Calamity Jane. Picture: Mark Senior
The 2025 Calamity Jane carries all the hallmarks of the 2015 version: direction by North Yorkshireman Nikolai Foster; co-direction and choreography by Nick Winston; set and costume design by Matthew Wright; musical supervision and orchestration by Catherine Jayes, topped off by the witty touch of the plush Grand Opera House being covered by a worn, faded, ropey one to transform the York theatre into the financially stricken Golden Garter theatre in Deadwood, South Dakota.
A lonesome banjo is attached, the first sign that this will be an actor-musician musical, where even Carrie Hope Fletcher joins on coconuts to mimic the sound and motion of a horse and carriage.
Complementing Wright’s nostalgic palette of colours in his evocation of the Deadwood City of Summer 1876, Tim Mitchell’s lighting compounds the sense of being amid the summer dust, dry heat, bluest skies and wild life of the Midwest, where Calamity Jane’s entrance is held back to enable maximum impact after talk aplenty about of how she “tried to behave like a man but couldn’t help lovin’ like a woman”.
Fletcher looks right at home in buckskins and britches, hands on her gun belt, quips on her lips, Dakota accent on a roll. Her Calamity whips up a storm; she sure can crack a wisecrack and she is as abrasive as coal tar soap once was, but behind the brassy front of this game gal is a vulnerability that steadily seeps through, especially when her romantic feelings are exposed.
Fletcher’s Calamity does not need to fire a gun to make an impact on each return, and crucially for the light, humorous tone of Foster’s production of Sammy Fain, Paul Francis Webster and Charles K Freeman’s musical, Fletcher’s performance is suffused with fun to go with the games being played.
Falling out: Vinny Coyle’s Wild Bill Hickok clashes with Carrie Hope Fletcher’s Calamity. Picture: Mark Senior
Caught up in those games are Vinny Coyle’s Wild Bill Hickok and Luke Wilson’s Lieutenant Danny Gilmartin, as they squabble over Seren Sandham-Davies’s young maid and wannabe singer Katie Brown.
As in 2015, Jayes’s orchestrations bring out the golden ripeness of such familiar songs as The Deadwood Stage, The Black Hills Of Dakota and A Woman’s Touch in a rip-roaring show where the actor-musician skills on all manner of acoustic instruments add so much to the joy. Winston’s choreography peaks with the hoedown euphoria of Hoedown.
You will go wild for Coyle’s old-fashioned leading man, Wild Bill Hickok, a guitar slinger as much as a gun slinger when he sings Higher Than A Hawk, while you can feel Wilson’s smitten Gilmartin turning up the room temperature on an already warm night.
Above all, just as her mum predicted, Fletcher carries all before her as Calamity, a whip-crackin’ winner of a goodtime, goofball musical hit.
Calamity Jane, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
York Dance Works dancers join Carrie Hope Fletcher on The Deadwood Stage at Grand Opera House at Calamity Jane matinee
Pink stetson gathering:Lead actress Carrie Hope Fletcher and the York Dance Works dance team on stage at the Grand Opera House, York, before Wednesday’s matinee of Calamity Jane, the 100th performance of the 2025 tour
YORK Dance Works’ adult dance team met multi-award-winning West End actress and singer Carrie Hope Fletcher to relive their ‘Deadwood Stage’ moment at the Grand Opera House on Wednesday.
That afternoon they watched Carrie playing the title role in the matinee to celebrate their love of the whip-crackin’ American musical.
Before the 2020-2021 pandemic, the dance group learned a routine to The Deadwood Stage to be performed in a showcase event. When lockdown was imposed, the team continued to learn the routine virtually, enabling the group to keep in touch and dance their way through a challenging period. The dancers eventually performed the routine live in 2022 and have not forgotten it since.
York Dance Works principal Catherine Finta says: “When we were learning the routine online, it became a highlight – to dance, chat and have a social catch-up in what was quite a lonely time.
Cast members celebrate the 100th performance of the 2025 tour of Calamity Jane with cake and balloons on the Grand Opera House stage stage on Wednesday
“Normally, we finish routines and move on to the next one, but with the stop/start uncertainty of the lockdowns, we worked on this one for longer than usual. When we were finally able to, we wanted to perform this on stage, pink stetsons and all, and finally did in summer 2022.
“When we heard Calamity Jane was coming to York, we immediately booked a dance group outing to see the fabulous Carrie Hope Fletcher and the amazing cast.”
Wednesday’s matinee also marked the 100th performance of the Calamity Jane tour. Among the cast is Samuel Holmes, who plays Francis Fryer, having last appeared at the Cumberland Street theatre in the 2012 tour of Monty Python’s Spamalot.
“I’m very excited to be doing our 100th performance, especially in such a beautiful theatre,” he says. “It’s a very special theatre with lots of special memories for me. The audiences are so amazing, and the reactions to the performances have been brilliant. So, if you can get a ticket, come down and see us as we’d love to celebrate the hoedown and the party with you”.
Lisa George: From Coronation Street to the Grand Opera House pantomime with the wave of the Fairy Godmother’s wand
CORONATION Street soap actress Lisa George is the first star to be announced for this winter’s Grand Opera House pantomime in York.
From December 6 to January 4 2025, she will swap Weatherfield for the Fairy Godmother’s glittering wings and wand to “cast enchantment over audiences in this spellbinding tale of love, laughter and letting your sparkle shine as Christmas, dreams really do come true”.
“I’m absolutely delighted to be appearing as Fairy Godmother at the Grand Opera House, York,” says Lisa. “Panto is such a special time of year, and I can’t wait to see families and friends come together to share in the magic over the festive season.”
Known to millions as Corrie’s Beth Sutherland,Lisa is a powerhouse performer with serious theatre chops too. A graduate of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, in Cardiff, she has toured nationally in musicals, tribute shows and pantomimes, showcased her vocals on All Star Musicals and skated on Dancing On Ice, finishing fifth in 2020 when partnering Tom Naylor.
A true all-rounder, Lisa is a gifted vocalist and seasoned live performer, who has toured the UK with musical tributes and soul and swing bands, even supporting rock’n’roll legends Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
Under the moniker Lisa George And The Pedalos, she released the rockabilly album The Devil Said Shake, showcasing her powerhouse vocals and retro flair. Her deep love for live performance has seen her take on everything from musical comedy and straight drama to radio plays and pantomimes, bringing heart, humour and authenticity to every role she has played.
Lisa George: First star name to be confirmed for Cinderella at the Grand Opera House, York
From soul bands to Shakespeare, she has done it all, and now Lisa is ready to light up the Grand Opera House in a UK Productions show scripted by Jon Monie, winner of Best Script at the Great British Pantomime Awards. Here comes comedy, festive cheer, dazzling costumes and miniature ponies.
UK Productions producer Martin Dodd says:“We are thrilled to welcome Lisa George to the cast of Cinderella in York. Lisa brings a huge amount of talent, warmth and star power to the stage, and we know that the audience will fall in love with her Fairy Godmother.
“We’re also delighted to return to the Grand Opera House with another spectacular musical pantomime created by an incredible team of writers, directors, designers and performers. York truly embraces the magic of our panto, and we can’t wait to share this year’s sparkling production with everyone.”
Laura McMillan, the Grand Opera House’s theatre director, says: “We can’t wait to welcome Lisa to the Grand Opera House in what will be another spectacular, magical, musical panto. The audience are in for another treat this year as we bring York the iconic panto title Cinderella, a show that will be enjoyed by the whole family. This is the most fun you can have with one pumpkin, two ponies and a whole lot of fairy dust!”
Watch this space for news of further casting for UK Productions’ fourth pantomime at the Grand Opera House.
Cinderella, Grand Opera House, York, December 6 to January 4 2026. For tickets, go to: atgtickets.com/york
Alexander Flanagan Wright: Questions, questions and more questions about Hamlet
ALEXANDER Flanagan Wright has an idea for a show. Not Hamlet exactly, but a version that asks all the big questions in Hamlet, not only To Be Or Not To Be, at York International Shakespeare Festival tonight, tomorrow and on Wednesday.
“I’ve got an idea for a version of Hamlet,” says Alex, storyteller, playwright, dream-weaver of words, director and leading light of The Flanagan Collective, one half of Wright & Grainger and co-founder of Theatre at The Mill, Stillington, near York.
“It’s a gathering, a conversation and a collective reading. We’ll have some tea and some biscuits (I’ll provide those), we’ll read some of Shakespeare’s play together, and we’ll have a good chat.”
There’s more than that, of course, he promises. “It’s deeper than that. It’s about us being somewhere together, here and now; it’s about us grappling with our existential place in the world; it’s about us seeing how words give rise to ideas and definitions about ourselves; it’s about feeling isolated when we’re in the middle of many people. It’s about us all doing something together, whilst bits of the world are tearing us apart.
“And, like I’ve already said, it’s about having a cup of tea. It’s a new show, a new gathering, a new idea. And I’d like to invite you to come and be a part of it.”
What should this week’s audiences expect? “I’m as intrigued to find out as you are,” says Alex, who will seat everyone in a circle and hand out pieces of paper to be filled in when he asks such questions as: “What is Hamlet about?” and “What is your favourite quote?”. At several junctures participants will need to decide if they are in the To Be or Not To Be camp
“I write plays, whereas this feels more like a chat, and I hope it’s useful and of some value. It’s NOT the play and I’m not writing a play. There’s a good one already – and it’s been done a lot,” says Alex. “I read that a production of Hamlet is being performed somewhere in the world every minute of the day!
“I’m kind of simultaneously pulling something apart while pulling people together to have a chat about it, and in saying that, I kind of mean having a chat about us in having a chat about it.
We need to talk: Alexander Flanagan Wright, book in hand for The Hamlet Show. Picture: John Saunders
“What I found myself thinking about was that people are continually producing Shakespeare plays, but why are they doing that and why is Hamlet one of the big ones?
“I was thinking about its existential discussion of our place in the world, and about what do we do when we present it; how it transcends the technical aspects of theatre making; how there are things in Hamlet that are among the best-known things in the world.
“I don’t think there’s a more famous play or a more famous line [than “To be or not to be”] or a more famous image [than Yorick’s skull], yet when Shakespeare wrote it, he was just writing a play that he felt was useful or important or he was told to write, but something about it has persisted.”
Alex previously directed an all-female production of Romeo And Juliet in St Olave’s Church, in Marygate, suffused with the spirit of rave culture, at an earlier York International Shakespeare Festival.
He has not, however, felt the urge to add his name to the ever-lengthening list of Hamlet directors. “What I’ll be doing is going directly to the bits that ask questions and skipping the rest,” says Alex, who found his copy of the play from his Easingwold schooldays – never returned to the school library resources – to do his research.
“No-one needs me to direct Hamlet. That’s not presciently useful,” he says. “I don’t think just doing a production of Hamlet necessarily facilitates the discussion in the way we watch things today, but I do think that having a discussion about how we perceive things, how we exist as a society, is useful.
“That conversation can get more defensive, but to approach it from a ‘defence’ viewpoint doesn’t allow much room for manoeuvre, creativity or passion, because you’re just worried about whether you’re saying the right or wrong thing, but talking about 17th century Denmark doesn’t have the same fear.
“By saying we’re going to talk about Hamlet, rather than Ukraine or Trump, opens it up, but the first thing in Hamlet is a discussion about war and the useless notion of who owns what. That’s all laid out in the first six pages and then all the existential discussions take place after that.”
Taking note: Alexander Flanagan Wright collects audience suggestions at The Hamlet Show. Picture: John Saunders
Alex continues: “The play is saying that warfare is cruel and not good for the people, which sounds so familiar, and within that context a lot of people in the play are saying ‘what am I supposed to be doing in the face of all this injustice?. What should I be doing?’.
“I’m not saying that I have come up with the answers but I think it’s good to sit down with a cup of tea and have a think about it on a Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, and then we shall crack on with the day.”
This is the time for tea, a chat and “to be or not to be”, in a show with a five-act structure to mirror Hamlet: exposition; rising action; climax; falling action and resolution. “We’ll just read bits together and talk about them. There are some things I would like to lay; some things that I think we should read, and sometimes it’ll be me listening to others talking about it,” says Alex.
“Have you noticed how no-one listens in Hamlet? Everyone just talks.There are so many people dead by the end, and you think, ‘did anyone stop to ask anyone how they were feeling’ until Guildenstern asks Hamlet how he is.
“So, in a play where no-one listens, it will be good to have a discussion about us now, just as Hamlet discusses what has led them there. Our responsibility is to have a discussion about where we are going, in the 21st century here and now, and what’s next.”
Maybe, as Alex, speculates, there is a third option: to be or not to be or to let it be.
To be or not to be at Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb, York, tonight at 8.30pm, or York St John University Creative Centre Auditorium, tomorrow at 10am, or Micklegate Social, Micklegate, York, on Wednesday, 7.30pm, you decide. To book, head to yorkshakes.co.uk. Running time: up to 90 minutes
Did you know?
A scene from Hamlet Hail To The Thief. Picture copyright: Manuel Harlan
ADDING to the list of Hamlet being performed somewhere in the world every minute of the day is Hamlet Hail To The Thief, premiering at Factory International’s Aviva Studios, Manchester, from April 27 to May 18 and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, from June 4 to 28.
Shakespeare’s great tragedy and Radiohead’s seminal album collide for a feverish experience that fuses theatre, music and movement in a frenetic distillation of Shakespeare’s play, where Elsinore has become a surveillance state and “hectic runs in the blood of its citizens”.
Hamlet Hail To The Thiefcentres on Hamlet and Ophelia’s awakening to the lies and corruption revealed by ghosts and music. Paranoia reigns and no-one is spared a tragic unravelling.
Thom Yorke, left, Tom Knowles and Justin Levine in rehearsal room for Hamlet Hail To The Thief. Picture copyright: Manuel Harlan
In this adaptation, music becomes an integral part of the narrative. Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has reworked Radiohead’s 2003 album into a deconstructed score that illuminates the text and is performed by live musicians.
The production is co-created by Yorke and directors, Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones. Hoggett is a founder member of Frantic Assembly, whose credits include Sweeney Todd, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime and Black Watch. Jones is the creator and artistic director of Theater For One, and director of the immersive nightclub experience Queen Of The Night.
Their projects together as choreographer and designer include Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, American Idiot and Let The Right One In.
Bringing together the innovation of Factory International and the legacy of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Hamlet Hail to the Thiefwill move from a vast Manchester warehouse to an Elizabethan RSC stage. Please note, Radiohead do not perform in this production. Box office: rsc.org.uk/hamlet-hail-to-the-thief.
To be or not to be at Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb, York, tonight at 8.30pm, or York St John University Creative Centre Auditorium, tomorrow at 10am, or Micklegate Social, Micklegate, York, on Wednesday, 7.30pm, you decide. To book, head to yorkshakes.co.uk. Running time: up to 90 minutes
In the dock: Tigerslane Studios’ cast for the prosecution and defence in Murder Trial Tonight III – The Doorstep Case at York Barbican and Sheffield City Hall
“THIS isn’t just a theatre play; it’s a social experiment,” says Graham Watts, West End director of the courtroom drama series Murder Trial Tonight. “We aim to challenge perceptions and engage our audience in a way that goes beyond traditional theatre.”
Welcome to Tigerslane Studios’ third season of Murder Trial Tonight – The Doorstep Case, wherein storytellers, technicians and performers break down the fourth wall and bring a true-crime story to life, on tour at York Barbican tomorrow night and Sheffield City Hall on Wednesday, both at 7pm.
In case number three, a mother returns home in the early hours of the morning after a night out celebrating her birthday, only to find her daughter murdered on her doorstep. The daughter’s boyfriend has been charged with the murder. Is he guilty of murder or is the killer still at large? Book your seat on jury service now to decide – and then learn if you were right.
The show begins on screen, giving the backdrop and opening to the case, followed by a live murder trial, immersing the audience in a fast-paced courtroom experience, wherein they play a crucial role as members of the jury.
What happens? Both the prosecution and defence will present their cases and cross-examine witnesses, whereupon the audience will deliberate and deliver their verdict: Guilty or Not Guilt? At the end of the trial, footage of the murder will be revealed. Did the jury deliver the right verdict? All will be revealed on the night.
Please note, each season’s trial is based on a true story, with a disclaimer that names, events and dates have been altered for dramatisation purposes.
Court is in session tomorrow in York, where the Tigerslane Studios cast will include Joshua Welch, who studied writing, directing and performance in the University of York’s department of theatre, film and television from 2013 to 2016 and later gained a Masters in acting from the Drama Centre, London.
“I was in the University of York Drama Society’s project at Clifford’s Tower , where we performed a play by lecturer Lisa Peschel, based on research of theatrical performance in the Second World War Jewish ghetto at Theresienstadt,” he recalls.
Courtroom drama: True crime case plays out at York Barbican and Sheffield City Hall with the audience on jury service
“Recently I came back to the university to attend Michael Cordner’s farewell lecture and did a few performances on the campus but that’s the only time I’ve been back to York since leaving university.”
How did Joshua, 30, land a role in Murder Trial Tonight III? “One of my best friends, Lauren Moakes, who studied at York at the same time as me, was in last year’s cast for Murder Trial Tonight II and told me about the show,” he says. “I auditioned around Christmas and started rehearsals in January.”
Originally from Sheffield, Joshua lives in London, where he is an associate artist and performer for Kelly Hunter’s Flute Theatre, a company that makes Shakespeare shows adapted for performance to people with autism, with a focus on feeling and emotion. “We play to an audience of 12, who sit in a circle with the actors, who have met them that day,” he says.
“The whole play is acted out in a sensory drama game with each audience member getting a chance to play a part, and they age from seven to 70s.
“The performance is more about the atmosphere in each scene, which can be lacking in some plays, but in Shakespeare, the feeling is so different between each scene.”
Now Joshua is entering the world of crime for Murder Trial Tonight III. “I’ve always loved Agatha Christie, but this is different because it’s based on true events, without the big Christie revelation at the end,” says Josh.
“The audience has the power to change the whole thing , which will vary from night to night because it’s a fully live court case, where you hear from the prosecution in the first half and the defence case in the second, followed by the closing case from the prosecution and the defence.
The poster for Tigerslane Studios’ Murder Trial Tonight III – The Doorstep Case
“Then it’s completely up to the audience to decide if the defendant is guilty or not guilty, and it makes you realise how difficult it is to decide when there’s a ten-minute deliberation after the case and you hear people discussing what they think has or hasn’t happened.
“At the end [after they each give their verdict with the aid of a QR code and app] the percentage of the vote is revealed – and we find out how many people got it right or wrong.”
Joshua, who takes the part of witness for the prosecution Eddie Harper, has never served on a jury. “Doing Murder Trial Tonight makes you aware what a big responsibility it is to be on a jury, and each case highlights how important it is for both the prosecution and defence to deliver the case so that a verdict can be reached beyond reasonable doubt.”
You will not that tomorrow’s performance is not in a traditional theatre – or court house, for that matter – but at York Barbican, a venue more associated with concerts and comedy. “It’s been a great acting experience, the ‘gig’ nature of it, where the venues are so different and you have to adjust to the space,” says Joshua.
“It’s fun to do, presenting the case, where my character has a way he wants the case to go where everyone will say ‘he’s telling the truth’, trying to convince people of that. Interestingly, some nights you find you’ll play it differently: sometimes you have to focus on what you’re saying, not on what the audience are thinking, how they’re reacting.
“I like playing the halls because the spaces are vast, so it feels intimidating, which matches how nervous people can be when they take the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in court.”
Joshua is delighted to be back on home Yorkshire soil at York Barbican tomorrow and Sheffield City Hall on Wednesday. “It will be a lovely walk down memory lane for me,” he says.
Tigerslane Studios presents Murder Trial Tonight III – The Doorstep Case, York Barbican, April 29, 7pm. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk. Also: Sheffield City Hall Oval Hall, April 30, 7pm. Box office: ticketmaster.co.uk/murder-trial-tonight-3-the-doorstep-sheffield-30-04-2025/.
Carrie Hope Fletcher’s Calamity Jane in Nikolai Foster’s touring production of Sammy Fain’s musical at the Grand Opera House, York
WEST End leading lady, author and vlogger Carrie Hope Fletcher returns to York from tomorrow to Saturday in the title role in Calamity Jane at the Grand Opera House – much to her mum’s delight.
Something about the gun-slingin’, tough-talkin’, hard-ridin’ frontierswoman immortalised by Doris Day in the 1953 film made her reckon it was a role that Carrie was born to play.
How could she say No when the offer came through to the 32-year-old South Harrow actress, whose credits include Éponine and Fantine in Les Misérables; Veronica Sawyer in the original West End production of Heathers: The Musical; Wednesday in The Addams Family; Beth in the arena tour of The War Of The Worlds and originating the role of Cinderella in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella.
“My mum had always said I would be a good Calamity Jane, and through the entirety of my adult career she has always said she would love to see my playing the part,” says Carrie. “It’s her dream role for me. So I looked into it and listened to the songs and watched the movie starring Doris Day and fell in love with it. Doris is such an icon. Though I did have to prepare my mum not to get her hopes up as things do fall through and you never know what might happen.”
“It’s so wonderful Calamity is not just an ingenue or the soppy romantic or just a comedy character, she is all of it,” says Carrie Hope Fletcher
Mum knows best, however! Since January, Carrie has been leading North Yorkshireman Nikolai Foster’s cast in the good-hearted Western musical comedy, following the likes of Carol Burnett, Barbara Windsor, novelist Lynda La Plante, Toyah Willcox and Jodie Prenger, who played Calamity on its last Grand Opera House visit in February 2015.
Carrie loves how the fearless, feisty Calamity pushes her as a performer. “I am relatively new to the whole world of Calamity Jane, but it’s a dream role in terms of her as a character,” she says of a whip-crackin’ woman “prone to making a few blunders and mistakes”. “She is the romantic lead, gets a great love story, has an amazing female friendship with Katie Brown and gets all the cracking, belty numbers.
“She ticks all of those boxes and it’s so wonderful she’s not just an ingenue or the soppy romantic or just a comedy character, she is all of it. Parts like that are really rare and she has been great fun to get to know.”
The subject of femininity plays out in Calamity’s relationship with Wild Bill Hickok, the Howard Keel-originated role now played by Vinny Coyle. “There are conversations between her and Wild Bill where he says ‘Why can’t you be more feminine?’,” says Carrie. “She goes through a Cinderella story finding it, but ultimately ends up going back to who she is comfortable as, and being loved and accepted for it. And it’s all hidden within this funny, farcical story.”
Carrie Hope Fletcher: West End leading lady, musical theatre singer, author, vlogger and sister of McFly’s Tom Fletcher
She is not daunted by singing songs such as The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away) and Secret Love forever associated with Doris Day. “I have a good mindset about the pressure that comes with that,” she says. “You can’t please everyone as everyone has different versions of what they want the character to be. If you tried to please people, you would come up with this warped version that isn’t anyone’s dream version.
“I feel like I have been entrusted with the role and I need to be the one to decide who this version of Calamity Jane is. And if people don’t like it, they don’t like it. But if they do, it means all the more.”
Alongside her theatre work, Carrie has published a series of books for young people and accrued more than 500,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers. She last appeared in York last October in Love Letters, her exploration in song of all forms of love, from romantic to maternal, unrequited to obsessive, at York Barbican.
As always, she found joy in singing, joy that transferred to the audience too. “That’s what people latch on to. Maybe the joy I get from it separates me from others. That’s what people connect to,” she says. “I do think that musical theatre is based in expressing emotion, and if you’re not feeling it one night, then it won’t transmit to the audience.”
The tour poster for Calamity Jane starring Carrie Hope Fletcher
Now her focus is on being on the road in Calamity Jane for the best part of a year, necessitating being away from her husband, fellow performer Joel Montague, and their daughter, Mabel, who will join her for some of the dates, however.
If juggling motherhood and appearing in a major tour were not enough, Carrie has mastered a new skill while working on Calamity Jane. Her cast cohorts are actor-musicians, and not one to be left out, she can be spotted picking up an instrument – a somewhat unusual one.
“I got the coconuts to play,” she says. “I am the horse! So while everyone else is incredibly talented with the saxophone and the trumpet and cello, I’ll be focusing on the coconuts.”
Calamity Jane, Grand Opera House, York, April 29 to May 3, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york
Josienne Clarke: “Did a wonderful job bringing Sandy Denny’s much-loved songs back to an audience” at Pocklington Arts Centre. All pictures: Paul Rhodes
Across The Evening Sky: Josienne Clarke Sings the Songs of Sandy Denny, Pocklington Arts Centre, April 25
A NIGHT of Sandy Denny is not one to be missed. In the week of the 47th anniversary of Denny’s early death at 31, singer-songwriter Josienne Clarke did a wonderful job bringing these much-loved songs back to an audience.
Clarke has an affinity for Denny, whom she discovered when someone said she sounded like her. She has a voice capable of doing justice to the poetic melancholy that ran so deep. She doesn’t copy as such, but reinterprets the material faithfully in her own style. Clarke’s voice is more trained than Denny’s, adding an almost classical precision.
The voice and the lyrics took centre stage, accentuated by Clarke’s warm presence and her striking way of tilting her head to her left as she sings. Her top-notch four-piece band (Alec Bowman-Clarke on low-slung bass, Dave Hamblett on drums, Matt Robinson on keyboards, and the distinctive Lukas Drinkwater on lead guitar) provided sympathetic accompaniment, and they grew in confidence as the set progressed.
Josienne Clarke performing at Pocklington Arts Centre with band members Dave Hamblett, Alec Bowman-Clarke and Lukas Drinkwater
Running to 15 songs over 80 minutes, in a combination of “hard or very hard” material to sing and play, the setlist was skilfully chosen. There was barely a misstep, perhaps only Blackwaterside was a bridge too far. This reviewer can’t have been the only one who would happily have stayed for another set, or two, hopefully next time around.
Sandy Denny’s legacy is an unusual one. The audience were mostly of the same generation as Denny, as her flame still burns largely in darkness for younger listeners. Award winning but low selling in her lifetime, her legend now sits at the very apex of the folk pyramid.
Unlike her contemporary Nick Drake, her music has never really reached the mainstream. The exception is the standard Who Knows Where The Time Goes – our encore. Like many so-called standards (Song To The Siren, A Song For You), this is musically simple, but the lyrics somehow harness something universal. The evocative opening line provides the title of the evening’s performance.
Maybe much of Denny’s work is too private and melancholy to ever gain mass appeal. She liked to mask her feelings in complex metaphors. The other factor is, far more than Drake, her records were all flawed and marred by overproduction (“the string fur coats” as Denny called it) or poor song selection.
Josienne Clarke: “Spot on sticking to the slow ballads” in her April 25 concert
After Fairport, Denny’s up-tempo songs were always the weakest on any of her records (you would be wise not to Jump The Broomstick with Richard Thompson), and Clarke was spot on sticking to the slow ballads. Autopsy, Late November, The Pond And The Stream and the deathless Fotheringay were all present and beautifully, lovingly restored.
In the words of Old-Fashioned Waltz, one of her very finest (and the title track of her finest LP), Denny’s music will always be held dear. Clarke is aware of the weight of expectation that comes with the songs and this humility provided one of the most memorable moments. Towards the end of Matty Groves, she forgot the words momentarily, and her smiles and laughter were a joy to see – an echo of Denny’s own vibrant fragility.
It was always asking too much for Clarke to freeze time, but she and her band did a wonderful job of transporting Pocklington to Sandy’s musical mansion on the other side of the moon. Clarke is planning to release a new record of her own recordings, heavily influenced by Denny, and on this showing, that should be quite something.
Got it taped: Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape on his return to the York Theatre Royal stage after 45 years. Picture: Gisele Schmidt
HE last entered the York Theatre Royal stage on all fours in a hot, furry cat suit, mittens and nylon whiskers in Dick Whittington And His Wonderful Cat, the pantomime apogee to his debut repertory season of nine shows after graduating from Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama.
Forty-five years later, Gary Oldman re-enters with a cough from a stairway into a loft thick with dust, papers, boxes and tapes, woozy head stuffed with memories, locker full of bananas.
Happy 69th birthday, Krapp, lothario, writer and recorder of fading memories and failing powers. Time to record that last tape, to consign life to the dustbin, like the discarded banana skins. A life that has turned to, well, krapp.
Gary Oldman’s Cat in York Theatre Royal’s 1979-1980 pantomime, Dick Whittington And His Wonderful Cat, appearing alongside Berwick Kaler, centre, in his early damehood. Picture: York Theatre Royal Archives
Oldman, now playing an old man, is full of memories too at 67 as he takes to the stage for the first time since 1989. “York, for me, is the completion of a cycle,” he said on announcing his Theatre Royal return in Samuel Beckett’s one-act monodrama of existential despair last October.
“It is the place ‘where it all began’. York, in a very real sense, for me, is coming home. The combination of York and Krapp’s Last Tape is all the more poignant because it is ‘a play about a man returning to his past of 30 years earlier’.”
His appearance here comes with all the trappings and razzmatazz accorded to an Academy Award, BAFTA, SAG, BIFA and Golden Globe winner. Security on duty; the New York Times among the critics for the week of press shows; Sting and Trudie Styler making a last-minute entry to Tuesday’s audience; Slow Horses writer Mick Herron present too.
The request: “We kindly ask if you can refrain from applauding upon Gary’s entrance”
Oh, and that much publicised request, proclaimed on signs in gold, white and yellow – to match the Krapp’s Last Tape T-shirts for sale and worn by multiple staff – to “refrain from applauding upon Gary’s entrance. Please hold all applause until the end of the performance.”
An entirely reasonable request, observed impeccably by Wednesday’s full house, not drawn to Broadway ways, even in our age of celebrity adulation. Silence is golden here, just as it was as Ralph Fiennes began T S Eliot’s Four Quartets on this very stage in July 2021.
Let the actor choose the moment to break that silence, to cast the spell, to establish the rhythm, the mien. Or in Oldman’s case, to cough and splutter, to exhale exasperated air.
Handiwork: Gary Oldman’s Krapp working his reel-to-reel tape recorder, the one used previously by John Hurt and Michael Gambon. Picture: Gisele Schmidt
Rather than applause, ironically, it was audience coughs that threatened to disrupt the ambience. The silence, the feeling of waiting, the inaction, is a disconcerting feeling for an audience, coming to terms in the low light with screen icon Oldman being back on stage, staring blankly, downbeat rather than charismatic, as slouchy, unkempt and sour as Slow Horses’ Jackson Lamb.
All the while, we are unsure whether to laugh or be baffled by Krapp working his way through three bananas, or two and a half, to be precise, as the birthday tape from 30 years ago reminds him that is not so much an errant skin on the floor as an excess of the potassium-heavy fruit that puts his health at risk.
That moment feels like permission has been granted to laugh with confidence, amid that Beckett thing of playing, even toying, with his audience while making serious points, as he does in Waiting For Godot, as the tone turns ever more depressed.
Gary Oldman’s set design for Krapp’s Last Tape thrusts the desk to the front to maximise the impact of facial expression. Picture: Gisele Schmidt
Krapp’s Last Tape is a canny choice for a stage renaissance: a short solo play, played previously by such luminaries as Patrick Magee, Albert Finney, Harold Pinter, John Hurt, Michael Gambon, Stephen Rea and Kenneth Allan Taylor, the long-running Nottingham Playhouse pantomime dame, writer and director, in the play’s last performance at York Theatre Royal in the Studio in 2009.
It’s on an actor’s To Do list, like Hamlet and Lear, but more compact and certainly more divisive in audience reactions, and there is a sense of a baton being passed on in Oldman using the same reel-to-reel tape recorder that Gambon and Hurt did before him.
He directs himself, having been directed by Stephen Frears, Oliver Stone, Frances Ford Coppola, Luc Besson, Alfonso Curon, Chris Nolan, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, Paulo Sorrentino and…dame Berwick Kaler in that 1979 panto. The result is a performance of precise weight and balance, the dimming of Krapp’s light matched by the gradual fading of Douglas Urbanski’s lighting.
We spend time aplenty watching Oldman’s Krapp stopping and starting the tape machine as he listens back to the Krapp of 30 years ago, and one of the joys here is hearing how Oldman contrasts the resonant, confident, even arrogant voice of yore (newly recorded for this production) with Krapp’s weaker strains of today, where his only joy is in how he says the word spool as the bananas make way for sips from a bottle and melancholy suffuses his valedictory audio diary.
The poster artwork for Gary Oldman’s return to York Theatre Royal after 45 years in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape
Is a 55-minute exercise in brutal navel gazing, self-loathing and self-deception, more than half of it spent watching an exhausted husk of a lonely man listening to the ghost of his former self, worth all the buzz and the fuss?
Judge it as a play, not as event theatre – just as Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reuniting for Beckett’s Waiting For Godot on Broadway in September will want it to be more than Bill & Ted’s Existential Adventure – and Oldman ekes out all the corners of a study of failed ambitions and foiled hopes that is ultimately far more tragedy than comedy.
There will be those who wish for a Studio staging, for a closer encounter with Krapp, rather than the bigger canvas of the Theatre Royal’s main house, but its expanse enhances Krapp’s loneliness and Oldman maximises facial expression, the grimaces, the physical tics, the pained bemusement, and his design fills the stage with life’s clutter behind the desk thrust to the front.
Krapp’s Last Tape remains a Marmite play; Oldman can’t change that, but more than anything it will provoke debate that goes deeper than whether he peels a banana the right way. Box office for returns: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
First staged at the Royal Court, London, as an aperitif to Beckett’s End Game, “Krapp’s Last Tape is a canny choice for Gary Oldman’s stage renaissance: a short solo play played previously by Patrick Magee, Albert Finney, Harold Pinter, John Hurt and Michael Gambon”
Celebrity watch: who has attended Krapp’s Last Tape?
Policeman Sting and Trudie Styler, flying in from New York for the April 22 performance
Clothes designer Paul Smith
Slow Horses co-star Freddie Fox
Did you know?
GARY Oldman’s production of Krapp’s Last Tape is not the only high-profile one running at present. Belfast-born Stephen Rea, 78, is starring in Beckett’s play at the Barbican, London, until May 3 and Pavilion Theatre, Dublin, July 22 to 25.
Did you know too?
GARY Oldman’s production is introduced by the song We Three (My Echo, My Shadow And Me), first recorded in 1940 by The Ink Spots and later by Frank Sinatra with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Brenda Lee, Ella Fitzgerald and Paul McCartney.
To quote the opening verse: “We three, we’re all alone/Living in a memory/My echo, my shadow, and me”.
Pip Cook’s Edie/Tommy, left, Josie Morley’s Nellie/Sydney and Keeley Lane’s Victoria/Mr Proudin Kate Bramley’s The Thankful Village
THIS revival of Kate Bramley’s feminist wartime comedy-drama on the home front marks the 11th anniversary of its commission on the centenary of The Great War.
The Thankful Village has been toured nationally four times by Bramley’s “theatre on your doorstep” company from Green Hammerton, near York, and premiered in France, rather further from your doorstep, in 2018, when an original Badapple cast member joined an all-French cast and crew.
For this all-too-brief return that will conclude with sold-out performances in Whitechapel, Preston on May 2 and Wath on May 3, writer and artistic director Bramley takes to the stage herself in tails to play a live score for the first time in a Badapple show after 27 years, calling on her skills as an international touring musician from the age of 17 to perform Jez Lowe’s score of original songs and music.
Receiving news from the war front: Keeley Lane’s Victoria in Badapple Theatre Company’s The Thankful Village. Picture: Louise Grazia
Her presence, whether on instrumental underscoring duty or accompanying the cast of Keeley Lane, Josie Morley and Pip Cook in song, adds even more poignancy to her story of hope, humour and humanity inspired by her trip to Ypres and the Flanders battlefield and written in honour of three remarkable figures: Staff Nurse Nellie Spindler, Sister Edith Appleton, whose diaries were invaluable for Bramley’s research, and Chaplain Tubby Clayton, whose legacy lives on at Talbot House, Poperinge.
“Amid tragedy, I was struck by the glimpses of joy, beauty and humour found in the darkest moments,” says Kate in The Thankful Times theatrical notes. “We invite you to share in a few laughs and a few tall stories as we pay our respects, in our own way, to those who have gone before.”
In harmony in song in The Thankful Village: Pip Cook, left, Keeley Lane and Josie Morley. Picture: Louise Grazia
The Thankful Villages were those that lost no men in The Great War. Six such villages were in the north of Yorkshire, although Bramley chose to create the fictitious Thankful-in-the-Vale as her setting for a story seen through the eyes of three Yorkshire women from the same rural household, below and above stairs, from August 1914 to the war’s end.
She presents a recognisably Edwardian Yorkshire rural community, where superior, starchy, cold Victoria (Keeley Lane) is in charge of chatterbox house maid Nellie (Josie Morley) and daydreaming, wide-eyed scullery maid Edie (Pip Cook) in the White Horse coaching inn.
The village men – Victoria’s officer-class husband, Arthur, and the fresh-faced girls’ boyfriends, Sydney and Tommy – have signed up for the war effort, and to emphasise their absence, Bramley places her play in the gentlemen’s smoking room of the inn, designed in compact, fold-away travel-friendly Badapple tradition by Catherine Dawn.
Founder, director and writer – and international musician – Kate Bramley playing live in a Badapple show for the first time in the Green Hammerton company’s 27-year history
As in Bramley’s two Land Girl plays from the Second World War, The Great War unfolds predominantly through the women’s eyes, with news sent home in letters and postcards from loved ones. This is complemented by interludes where the trio plays the men on the front, when Lowe’s songs reveal his customary ear for a folk tune and his witty, poignant way with a line.
They mirror the songs of the time with such elan that you would swear they must have originated from wartime. They add to the storytelling, provide commentary and context, and plenty have the defiant humour so necessary to survive in the field of battle or in the loneliness and fear of separation, all the better for Bramley’s live, undemonstrative accompaniment.
Each woman progresses and changes through the heightened experience of war, Edie losing her naive wonderment, if not her innocence; Nellie becoming a field nurse (in a storyline inspired by Nellie Spindler and Sister Edith Appleton); and Victoria finally breaking her cold front.
Josie Morley’s Nellie, left, and Pip Cook’s Edie on scrubbing duty at the White Horse in The Thankful Village. Picture: Louise Grazia
Bramley’s feminist undercurrent to these individual stories is the rising swell of the suffrage movement, as women took on roles previously the preserve of men, and so the play is a hymn of praise to suffragette activist Emmeline Pankhurst too.
Cook, who will spend the summer touring Twelfth Night as Viola and Maria with Miracle Theatre, draws on her talent for comedy, peppered with pathos too, as the ever-willing Edie.
Lane captures Victoria’s implacable, impervious, sometimes imperious nature, her frugality and winter-chill harshness, before a redemptive conversion at the close that would make Scrooge leap for joy. Her Victoria even says “We are not amused” at one point.
“A passion for living life in a fury”: Josie Morley’s Nellie in Badapple Theatre Company’s The The Thankful Village. Picture: Louise Grazia
The best-drawn character is Nellie, with her diarist turn of phrase in her journal despatches, performed so movingly by Morley, and it is her journey – and her passion for living life with a fury – that gives The Thankful Village its emotional clout and poignant final twist.
As in its 2014 premiere, and now amid the warmongering and rutting stags of today’s worsening male domination, it makes you thankful for the under-appreciated Great War service of women, whose story too often has been drowned out by the fusillade of men’s deeds fired off by history books. Bramley’s poetic work is more of a distaff companion piece to the War Poets.
Badapple Theatre Company in The Thankful Village, York Theatre Royal Studio, today at 2.30m and 7pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Gary Oldman in the York Theatre Royal auditorium, where his production of Krapp’s Last Tape is in its second week. Picture: Gisele Schmidt
FANCY serving on a jury in a true crime thriller? Find out how in Charles Hutchinson’s guide to going out.
York theatre event of the year: Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape, York Theatre Royal, until May 17
OSCAR winner Gary Oldman returns to York Theatre Royal, where he made his professional debut in 1979, to perform Samuel Beckett’s melancholic, tragicomic slice of theatre of the absurd Krapp’s Last Tape in his first stage appearance since 1989.
“York, for me, is the completion of a cycle,” says the Slow Horses leading man. “It is the place ‘where it all began’. York, in a very real sense, for me, is coming home. The combination of York and Krapp’s Last Tape is all the more poignant because it is ‘a play about a man returning to his past of 30 years earlier’.” Tickets update: check availability of returns on 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
James Bond Concert Spectacular: Celebrating the music of the long-running film series. Picture: Bryan Marshall
Film music event of the week James Bond Concert Spectacular, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday, 7.30pm
CAROLINE Bliss, who played Moneypenny in The Living Daylightsand Licence To Kill, will be the compere for Q The Music’s James Bond Concert Spectacular, sharing anecdotes from her film appearances.
Focusing not only on Bond theme songs, such as Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die and Nobody Does It Better, the show also pays homage to the complete canon, covering chase music, incidental cues and suites from across the series. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
You are the jury: Murder Trial Tonight III, in court at York Barbican on Tuesday
Courtroom drama of the week: Tigerslane Studios presents Murder Trial Tonight III – The Doorstep Case, York Barbican, April 29, 7pm
“THIS isn’t just a theatre play; it’s a social experiment,” says Murder Trial Tonight’s West End director, Graham Watts. “We aim to challenge perceptions and engage our audience in a way that goes beyond traditional theatre.”
Welcome to Tigerslane Studios’third season of Murder Trial Tonight – The Doorstep Case, wherein storytellers, technicians and performers break down the fourth wall and bring true-crime stories to life. The show begins on screen, giving the backdrop to the case, followed by a live murder trial, with the audience as the jury. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Carrie Hope Fletcher: Shooting from the hip and lip in Calamity Jane at the Grand Opera House, York
Whip-cracking musical of the week: Calamity Jane, Grand Opera House, York, April 29 to May 3, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees
WEST End leading lady Carrie Hope Fletcher takes the title role of fearless, gun-slinging Calamity Jane, the biggest mouth in Dakota territory and always up for a fight, in North Yorkshireman Nikolai Foster’s touring production, based on the cherished 1953 Doris Day movie.
When the men of Deadwood fall hard for Chicago stage star Adelaid Adams, Calamity struggles to keep her jealousy holstered. Here come The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away), The Black Hills Of Dakota, Just Blew In From The Windy City and Secret Love in this Watermill Theatre production, choreographed by Nick Winston with musical supervision by Olivier, Grammy and Tony Award winner Catherine Jayes. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Karine Polwart’s poster artwork for her Feather & Ether Tour show at Pocklington Arts Centre
Folk gig of the week: Karine Polwart, Feather & Ether Tour, Pocklington Arts Centre, April 30, 8pm
THIS year marks 25 years since Karine Polwart embraced a full-time career as a Scottish folk singer and 20 years since she scooped three BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards with her debut solo album Faultlines.
Her Feather & Ether Tour is a rare chance to enjoy her in intimate, conversational solo performance. Expect a clutch of new songs and wonder tales and an night of curiosity and compassion from Polwart, songwriter, theatre-maker, broadcaster and storyteller, whose work evokes a richness of place, hidden histories, scientific enquiry and folklore. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Learlike: King Lear re-told from the distaff side in the UK premiere at the York International Shakespeare Festival
Festival of the week: York International Shakespeare Festival presents Greensleeved in Learlike, York St John University Creative Centre Auditorium, May 3, 2pm
GREENSLEEVED, a female-led pan-European ensemble, premiere their show Learlike in York, presenting Shakespeare’s tragedy of King Lear but this time told by his daughters. These tyrant-children are newly in power but old in their ability for manipulation and deceit. Or are they? Even in the most corrupt homes the roots of resistance grow deep.
Greensleeved comprises performers who met at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland: Amber Frances (Belgium), Ariela Nazar-Rosen (Poland/USA), Lucy Doig (Scotland), Julia Vredenberg (Norway) and Cecilia Thoden van Velzen (Netherlands). For the full programme to May 4 and tickets, head to: yorkshakes.co.uk.
Rob Auton: Any eyeful tower of ocular comedy at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall
The eyes have it: Rob Auton: The Eyes Open And Shut Show, Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, May 3, 7.30pm
“THE Eyes Open And Shut Show is a show about eyes when they are open and eyes when they are shut,” says surrealist York/Barmby Moor comedian, writer, artist, podcaster and actor Rob Auton. “With this show I wanted to explore what I could do to myself and others with language when eyes are open and shut…thinking about what makes me open my eyes and what makes me shut them.” Box office: 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.
Scouting For Girls: Heading for York and Leeds in 2026
Gig announcement of the week: Scouting For Girls, York Barbican, March 17 and Leeds O2 Academy, March 24 2026
LONDON trio Scouting For Girls will accompany the 2026 release of a new studio album with a 22-date tour that takes in York Barbican and Leeds O2 Academy next March. Fans who pre-order the Wolfcub Edition at scoutingforgirls.os.fan will receive access to a ticket pre-sale that opens at 10am on April 30. General sales follow from 10am on May 2 at yorkbarbican.co.uk and academymusicgroup.com.
Roy Stride, vocals, piano and guitar, Greg Churchouse, bass guitar, and James Rowlands, drums, last payed York Barbican in October 2021. Next year’s shows will mark the 15th anniversary of their Everybody Wants To Be On TV album too.
In Focus: NE Theatre York in The Sound Of Music, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, April 29 to May 3, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday
NE Theatre York’s cast for The Sound Of Music at the JoRo
TWO Marias, two Captain Von Trapps, three groups of Von Trapp children and multiple members of Strensall Women’s Institute, plus a dog, add up to NE Theatre York’s production of The Sound Of Music.
In its centenary year, Strensall Women’s Institute has accepted creative director Steve Tearle’s invitation to play the abbey nuns – and sing several big numbers – in the heartwarming Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.
The show brings back special memories for Tearle, who played Kurt Von Trapp at the age of 11 in a professional tour in his first stage role.
NE Theatre York creative director Steve Tearle with his dog Millie Bell
“I’ve always loved this show, and remembering my experience of it always fills me with joy. Fast forward to 2025 and I get to produce this famous musical and play my personal favourite part in the show, Max Detweiler,” says Steve, whose dog, Millie Bell, will make an appearance in the canine role of Max’s dog.
Tearle’s cast features newcomers aplenty to the stage. “NE Theatre prides itself on giving people of all ages the confidence to perform on stage, and this is the perfect opportunity with more than 20 people who have never performed before,” he says.
NE Theatre York in rehearsal for The Sound Of Music
“We’re producing the show with all the elements that everyone loves but keeping with the West End trend of scaled-back sets and using lighting effects to highlight the action. The focus, as always, will be on the talent of the actors on stage and giving everyone a moment to shine.”
Maia Beatrice and Rebecca Jackson will alternate the role of Maria while Matthew Clarke and Chris Hagyard will do likewise as Captain Von Trapp. NE Theatre stalwart Perri Anne Barley will play Mother Abbess; Ali Butler and Aileen Hall will take turns as Baroness Elsa. Tearle is joined in the production team by musical director Joe Allan.
NE Theatre’s production coincides with a brace of landmarks: the 60th anniversary of Robert Wise’s film starring Julie Andrews as the singing nun and the 90th anniversary of the Joseph Rowntree Theatre.
Rebecca Jackson in the role of Maria in Steve Tearle’s production of The Sound Of Music for NE Theatre York
Quick refresher course: The Sound Of Music is based on the real-life story of the Von Trapp family of singers, one of the world’s best known concert groups in the era immediately preceding the Second World War.
When Maria, a tomboyish postulant at an Austrian abbey, becomes governess to a widowed naval captain’s seven children, she brings a new love of life and music into the home. Among the much-loved songs are My Favourite Things, Climb Every Mountain, Do Re Mi, Sixteen Going On Seventeen, Edelweiss and The Sound of Music.
A number of tickets are being given to charities. Hurry, hurry to secure a seat as April 29, May 1 and May 2 are down to “last few tickets”, availability is limited for April 30 and both May 3 performances have sold out. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
