Frank Brogan: Returning to the Bar Convent secret gardennext week. Picture: John Saunders
YORK Shakespeare Project is rediscovering the secret garden at the Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre, in Blossom Street, York, for another season of Sonnets At The Bar from August 11 to 19.
“The invitation is as warm as ever,” says this year’s director, YSP chair Tony Froud. “On a summer’s evening, it has always proved a lovely experience. While sipping your complimentary drink in the convent’s delightful garden setting, sit back and enjoy a taste of Shakespeare that is both entertaining and accessible.”
Sarah Dixon: New sonneteer for York Shakespeare Project. Picture: John Saunders
Reprising the familiar format, the show features a host of larger-than-life modern characters, each with a secret to reveal. Each character in turn will speak a Shakespeare sonnet to expose the heart of their story, to the surprise of the audience.
On this occasion, audiences will watch the comings and goings as hotel staff and guests take a turn in its garden. “Eavesdrop on the gossip,” reads the invitation. “They may take you into their confidence – perhaps revealing more than they intend – and each will have a Shakespeare sonnet to share.”
Maurice Crichton: Co-founder of York Shakespeare Project’s Sonnet Walks, now starring in Sonnnets At The Bar. Picture: John Saunders
“It’s a simple device that always seems to work,” says Tony. “Very often the actor can be halfway through the sonnet before the audience realises that the language has become Shakespearean.”
York Shakespeare Project first brought Shakespeare’s sonnets to life in 2014 with Sonnet Walks, wherein peripatetic audience members encountered colourful characters as they walked around the streets of York.
Judith Ireland: Regular sonneteer for York Shakespeare Project. Picture: John Saunders
“Many people will remember the Sonnet Walks fondly,” says the show’s writer, Helen Wilson. “But staging the show in a single setting has great advantages, allowing characters to meet, exchange conversations and reappear.”
Helen, who created the original walks in 2014 in tandem with YSP stalwart Maurice Crichton, has shaped the 2023 script based on the cast’s improvisations. “We have been inspired by the show’s hotel setting, but our hotel is very different to the Bar Convent,” says Helen.
Who will Diana Wyatt play?Find out from August 11 to 19. Picture: John Saunders
“The combination of eccentric staff and a whole variety of residents with fascinating back stories has offered great possibilities.”
Tony’s cast features actors aplenty familiar to YSP regulars and a new face. “A big part of the fun in the show is guessing which unusual characters they will be playing,” says Helen.
Tony, Helen and Maurice will be joined in the garden by Frank Brogan, Harold Mozley, Judith Ireland, Diana Wyatt, Nigel Evans and new sonneteer Sarah Dixon.
Helen Wilson, pictured performing in the 2021 Sit-down Sonnets at Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, has written the hotel scenario for Sonnets At The Bar
“The show will be around 45 minutes long,” says Tony. “Our sonnets are aimed at those aged 14 plus but may be enjoyed by younger folk with the right support from their accompanying adult. Two under 14s per adult will be admitted for free. We very much look forward to seeing you.”
York Shakespeare Project presents Sonnets At The Bar in the Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre garden from August 11 to 19, except August 14, at 6pm and 7.30pm, plus 4.30pm Saturday performances on August 12 and 19. Box office: yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or 01904 623568. The price (£10, £5 for 14 to 17 year olds) includes a drink.
Director Tony Froud with the Sonnets At The Bar banner on the railings at the Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre in Blossom Street, York
Star Stone in the guises of Rosey Colored-Glasses, Young Star and Rebel-Punzel in #MeToo. Picture: Abby Ballin
AHEAD of her Edinburgh Fringe run, American artist Star Stone previews her groundbreaking one-woman show #MeToo at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tomorrow night.
In a true story centred on her real-life experiences with sexual assault and gender-based violence on her journey from childhood to adulthood, Star flips the script for survivor-led narratives in her hour-long “edu-tainment comedy”.
“This is not a show focused on a single perpetrator, it’s a show focused on organisations and systems that function to uphold rape culture,” says Star. “From pretend shamans and sex cults to Tinder **** boys and Burning Man, I find humour in otherwise challenging situations, investigating how we can learn from these types of experiences and explore why these events all happened in the first place.”
In witnessing Star’s journey, tomorrow’s York audience will see “how culture raises female-identified youth to have body insecurities and lack of information regarding sex”.
“It further implies that our first glimpse of sexual violations can begin as children, that our boundaries begin their tests in primary school, and how all of this only intensifies as an adult,” says Star, who also will address the need for urgency in the fight for safe access to women’s health care in the United States since the historic overturning of Roe v Wade,” she says.
“We in the United States have a tendency to exploit people’s pain and experiences. We have a term for it: it’s called ‘trauma porn’. So when you watch the news in the USA, a lot of it is about the violence that’s happened that day, especially on the local TV stations. Often that violence is at the expense of a minority group.”
Star grew up loving comedy, first doing improv and sketches and now progressing into using comedy in a solo show. “But #MeToo is not a stand-up show. It’s a solo show that uses solo theatre techniques. It’s a natural progression for me,” she says.
“It’s not a monologue. It’s a show with 30 different characters, and I take those characters into scenes with each other, with a narrator character introducing it and breaking the show into character scenes. Some are real-life characters; others are personifications.”
Post Los Angeles beginnings in 2018-2019, Star had intended to take the show to New York City but Covid sent it into hibernation until now. “York will be the first performance since 2019,” she says.
Why York, not New York, Star? “I do everything for myself and I was hunting down where I could do a preview for Edinburgh, reaching out to a lot of theatres. I got in touch with Alan [Park] at Theatre@41 and luckily he had a space for it. It’ll be my first time in York.”
Tomorrow, York, then the Edinburgh Fringe, are important steps for Star as she seeks to spread her wings internationally. “The topic of gendered violence is universal, and I’m interested in sharing this work with audiences across Europe and engaging in discussions with other survivors in the audience through a talk-back at future shows,” she says.
“It’s a crucial part of this journey. To only share my show with USA audiences wouldn’t make sense. It’s a global issue, regardless of where you live, so it’s important to hear responses in the UK and hopefully in Europe as an indicator of why this subject needs discussing.”
Star Stone in #MeToo: A One-Woman Show, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, August 3, 7.30pm. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk/events. Edinburgh Fringe: Venue 21, C Arts, C Venues, C Aquila, August 14 to 20 at 3.55pm; tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/metoo-a-one-woman-show. Age suitability: 16 plus.Show directed by Jessica Lynn Johnson.
“My work aims to share the humanity in the unreasonable, the gross, the unthinkable, and the wild,” says Star Stone. Picture: Abby Ballin
Star Stone: the back story
WRITER, creator and performer of #MeToo; actress, producer, playwright and poet with background in yoga teaching for ten years.
Graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and UCB LA’s Improv School.
Graduate of Community Word Project’s Teaching Artist Project, New York City-based social justice-orientated programme. Worked within New York City school system and in Zoom classrooms as theatre educator.
Teaching artist for Marquis Studios in Coney Island and Wingspan Arts in Brooklyn.
Worked with New York City Mayor’s Office in 2022 to end gender-based violence. Hosted Voices: Survivor’s Speak, an evening of healing and transforming through the arts in collaboration with ArtTransforms.
Worked with Neo-Political Cowgirls for Girl Gaze programmme, supporting teenage girls to develop stories for film.
Former member of Oakland Slam Poetry team, creating poems as act of resistance to rape culture.
Former host of League of Professional Theatre Women’s online open-mic series, focusing on works in progress by New York City female-identified theatre creatives.
Performed #MeToo at Hollywood Fringe Festival and SoloFest, Los Angeles. Next up: York and Edinburgh.
Star Stone: “Particularly interested in the intersection of education and entertainment”. Picture: Abby Ballin
Artist statement, from starstonespeaks.com website
“I AM particularly interested in the intersection of education and entertainment, where the theatre is a classroom and an audience is left with a desire for self-inquiry and to engage in public discourse.
“My work aims to uplift survivors and normalise conversations around subjects like body image and mental health. I use comedy as a tool to tackle challenging subjects.
“I create as a reminder that we cannot shy away from vulnerability, from honesty, and from revealing our humanity. If anything, my work aims to share the humanity in the unreasonable, the gross, the unthinkable, and the wild, because my life has been each of these things. It has also been full of magic and joy.
“With each new play or poem, my approach is always to find the ‘Lila’ – the divine play of it all.”
Martin Fry fronting ABC with orchestral backing next January
A.
IN a new addition to The Lexicon Of Love Orchestral Tour, Sheffield’s ABC will play their classic 1982 album in its entirety with the Southbank Sinfonia at York Barbican on January 27.
Led as ever by Martin Fry, now 65, ABC will combine their chart-topping, million-selling debut with greatest hits cherry-picked from such later works as Beauty Stab, How To Be A Zillionaire and Alphabet City.
Fusing soul-powered dancefloor finesse with a post-punk attitude, The Lexicon Of Love spawned the gilded hit singles Tears Are Not Enough, Poison Arrow, The Look Of Love and All Of My Heart.
The Lexicon Of Love Orchestra first toured in 2009, prompted by the reaction to a one-off show at the Royal Albert Hall, where Fry donned his iconic gold lame suit once more.
Longtime collaborator Anne Dudley will conduct the Southbank Sinfonia on the newly extended January and February 2024 tour, marking the 15th anniversary of the partnership’s debut. Tickets will go on sale on Friday (4/8/2023) at 10am at ticketmaster.co.uk and yorkbarbican.co.uk.
B.
The Gilmour Project
THE Gilmour Project, an all-star band tasked with exploring the music of Pink Floyd and David Gilmour, will play York Barbican on February 3 on their debut tour.
In the line-up will be Jeff Pavar (lead guitar with Crosby, Stills & Nash, David Crosby/CPR, Phil Lesh); Kasim Sulton (bass and vocals with Todd Rundgren, Utopia, Meat Loaf); Prairie Prince (co-founder of The Tubes, original drummer with Journey, drummer for Todd Rundgren); Mark Karan (guitar and vocals with Bob Weir, RatDog, The Other Ones) and Scott Guberman (keyboards and vocals with Phil Lesh & Friends).
The Gilmour Project will combine songs from the Gilmour years of the Pink Floyd catalogue in all their complexity with highlights from Gilmour’s solo career.
C.
Whitney – Queen Of The Night: Returning to York Barbican next April
AFTER a sold-out gig in March 2023, tribute show Whitney – Queen Of The Night will return to York Barbican on April 13 next spring.
Elesha Paul Moses, from What’s Love Got To Do With It?, The Voice and The X Factor, will hit the vocal heights as she celebrates Whitney Houston with a live band, revelling in I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me), One Moment In Time, I’m Every Woman, I Will Always Love You and so many more.
The Gilmour Project and Whitney – Queen Of The Night tickets are available at ticketmaster.co.uk and yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Mishka Rushdie Momen: “Is there no end to this young lady’s versatility?“
ON her first visit to Ryedale two years ago, Mishka Rushdie Momen delivered a knockout piano recital.
No-one present will have dared miss this return – part of her contribution as an artist in residence at this year’s festival – which included an early Beethoven sonata and a late Schubert one, not to mention some important Mendelssohn with a little Byrd and Prokofiev thrown in. Pretty good value for an afternoon recital without an interval.
The way her career is soaring, we can safely dispense with her surnames and simply call her Mishka. Everyone will know exactly who is meant. She announced herself – especially her wit and intelligence – with Beethoven’s Op 10 No 2 in F major, the “sunny” key of his Pastoral symphony.
After a bold opening, strongly accented, she brought humour into her left-hand figures in the scherzo’s trio, before a crisp, staccato finale with virtually no use of the pedal in its pseudo-fugue.
Thirty years after the Beethoven, Schubert wrote his miraculous last three sonatas, two months before his death in 1828. The first of these, D.958 in C minor, is the least played of the three, so it was especially satisfying to hear it here.
There were no pastel shades in Mishka’s opening, as she established the whole work’s sombre atmosphere. But she was alive to the rapidly shifting moods of the development section and once her again her left hand figured prominently, this time as a trombone.
She brought an intimate, pianissimo opening to the slow movement, so heightening the contrast with the agitated mystery of remote minor keys further down the line. The minuet flowed gently and its Ländler-style trio was particularly mellow, both a nice contrast with the drama elsewhere.
The key-changes, especially major versus minor, in the finale were magical and after the various caesuras – complete breaks in the action – she resumed with the utmost delicacy. It was utterly spellbinding, as if she were sharing secrets. Mishka has a profound knack for Schubert, as we heard last time.
Mendelssohn’s Variations Sérieuses in D minor, one of the fruits of his love-affair with Bach’s music, revealed her contrapuntal dexterity, not least in the virtuoso later variations which move away from Baroque influence. There were moments that suggested a slightly steadier tempo would have lent clarity. But the solemn tone of the work led naturally – with no applause between – into a moving account of Byrd’s pavane on Flow My Tears, Dowland’s famous tune.
Earlier we had heard Byrd’s The Bells, one of his over 150 keyboard works, which deserve wider currency. Its nine variations over a two-note, tolling bass easily conjured the sound-world of the bell tower. She left us in no doubt that this is one work that sounds much better on the piano than the harpsichord. There had even been fleeting glimpses of five of Prokofiev’s Vision Fugitives.
Is there no end to this young lady’s versatility? Mishka is already a star, and on this showing destined to remain so for a long time. May she return to us soon and often.
Dudok Quartet, from Amsterdam to Hovingham. Picture: Yuri Andries
IN the first of four concerts, which were to include all three of Tchaikovsky’s string quartets, the Dudok Quartet of Amsterdam gave the first of them alongside other Russian works by Glinka and Shostakovich.
Tchaikovsky wrote all his quartets in his thirties. He had produced a successful Allegro for string quartet as a graduation exercise, based on a Ukrainian folk tune, so he knew his onions by the time he embarked on No 1 in D, Op 11. It was the making of him outside Russia, largely because of its fetching Andante. But the Dudoks proved it has much more to offer.
They opened dead-pan, non-vibrato, reflecting the second half of the composer’s Moderato e semplice instruction. The movement remained restrained, traces of warmth only really detectable in the first violin.
The slow movement’s famous melody was equally intimate, almost bleak, the ensemble resisting the temptation to make too much of it. One admired that: the music was allowed to speak for itself. When Tolstoy heard it, he was moved to tears; we could understand why.
The sprightly scherzo bordered on the skittish, its strong accents spilling over into its trio. But it was in the finale that the Dudoks showed their true mettle. Their ensemble remained remarkably taut right through to the vivacious coda. We might have heard more from the viola and later the cello in their presentation of the second theme, but teamwork remained the name of the game. We could not complain.
We encountered Tchaikovsky briefly again after the interval, in two months of The Seasons arranged from the piano original: March (The lark’s song) and July (The reaper’s song), tastefully done.
They were but a prelude to Shostakovich’s Quartet No 5 in B flat minor, which was premiered in late 1953 only after the post-Stalin “thaw” had set in (although written the previous year): the composer had considered its searing personal diary too incendiary before then.
The Dudoks treated it as a Russian novel, piling incident upon incident over a marvellous motor- rhythm generated by the cellist. Its climax – the three upper voices in unison – was approached with gradually increasing tension, after some brief rays of sunshine from the leader.
The jaunty little dance that followed changed imperceptibly into something much more vicious, ending in recitatives from all the players, an angry cello last. The group’s focus was intense throughout. This was Shostakovich with his heart on his sleeve – and all the more telling for that.
The evening had opened with an arrangement of Glinka’s overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila, frothy enough but hardly a substitute for the orchestral version. But keep an eye out for the quartet’s forthcoming recording of Tchaikovsky’s quartets. On this evidence it could be something special.
Rachel Podger: “Her violin and Baroque music are made for each other”. Picture: Theresa Pewal
York Early Music Festival: Rachel Podger and Daniele Caminiti, National Centre for Early Music, York, July 13
RACHEL Podger’s violin and Baroque music are made for each other. The two halves of her outgoing personality, both personal and musical, are closely intertwined and enhance one another most intimately in her approach to the Baroque. In this wide-ranging tour of the period, her accomplice was the deft Sicilian theorbist Daniele Caminiti.
Although she naturally included several of the great names – Bach, Vivaldi, Biber – her surprises lay with lesser lights and with an unusual transcription. She opened with a rhapsodic sonata (Seconda) from the early Baroque by Giovanni Battista Fontana, whose simple melodies she embellished with delightful decorations, especially at cadences.
She immediately followed that with the last of 12 instrumental sonatas – believed to be the first by a woman ever to be published – by Isabella Leonarda, an Ursuline nun who composed prolifically right into her eighties.
It opened with a soulful Adagio, and continued as if telling a story, including a lyrical Aria and a brisk Veloce in jig time with a throwaway ending; its use of harmony was astounding. Podger gave its twists and turns typically stylish enthusiasm.
Bach’s Third Cello Suite, BWV1009 in C, is not what you expect in a violin recital, but it transcribes well for the higher instrument. Its Prélude was at once a tour de force, threatening to overshadow what followed.
Yet the jagged Allemande was equally engaging and Podger kept Bach’s different voices clearly apparent. The multiple-stopping of the stately Sarabande was followed by Bourrées, in which she played with the time, but tastefully, before delivering considerable fireworks in the volatile Gigue.
Biber’s Fourth Mystery Sonata, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, which calls for scordatura (re-tuning of the strings), emerged as a brilliant set of variations, coolly navigated. Predictably, Podger offered some dazzling virtuosity along the way, notably in the outer movements of a Vivaldi sonata and in the concluding race for the tape of a Schmelzer sonata.
Caminiti shadowed her, if often understatedly, throughout but provided a good rhythmic foundation wherever possible. He also contributed several solos, especially a Piccininni toccata that made bold use of his bass strings and an intricate and delicate Toccata Arpeggiata by Kapsberger. He and Podger make a useful duo but not yet a great one.
Carolyn Sampson: “Finding fighting form as both the heroine and her nemesis”. Picture: Marco Borggeve
York Early Music Festival: Dunedin Consort in Out Of Her Mouth, National Centre for Early Music, York, July 12
RARELY has York Early Music Festival dipped its toes into operatic waters, but it conjured some real drama from this unexpected plunge. In a co-production by Dunedin Consort, Hera and Mahogany Opera, directed by Mathilde Lopez, three biblical cantatas by Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre were brought together to make what amounted to a one-act opera involving three excellent sopranos, singing an English paraphrase by Toria Banks.
Jacquet was born into a family of musicians and instrument makers in Paris in 1665 and became its most illustrious member, renowned as a composer and harpsichordist. She married the organist Marin de la Guerre in 1684 and ten years later became the first woman in France to write an opera, Céphale et Procris.
Her 12 sacred cantatas of 1708, to texts by the poet and playwright Antoine Houdar de la Motte (1672-1731), deal with characters from the Bible, although she uses only a soprano and continuo plus a violin ad lib.
This means, for example, that in Susanne, the soprano must handle both the title role and that of the two elderly gentlemen ogling her swim, in addition to being narrator. It was a tall order but Anna Dennis rose to the challenge, sporting jeans and T-shirt inscribed “Keep your laws off my body”.
Wrongly accused by the disappointed gents, Susanne is acquitted in court. Hardly what you might expect from Baroque opera, but Jacquet’s concept was undoubtedly vivid. Not for the first time, Lucia Capellaro delivered a searing cello line to accompany Dennis’s well-wrought tension.
Alys Roberts, in full white wedding finery, sparkly top and shiny boots, represented Rachel in the second cantata, which was originally entitled Rachel and Jacob. She was called upon to play her fiancé Jacob as well as her father Laban, who effectively demolished their wedding plans by substituting his elder daughter Leah for Rachel at the altar.
Although her declamation was not always clear, there was no doubting Roberts’s commitment, forthright in her own bitter disappointment, indignantly menacing as Jacob and smugly philosophical as Laban delivering the moral that we cannot always have what we want.
Toria Banks confessed that her version moved the focus away from Jacob towards Rachel’s own feelings, in keeping with the thrust of the evening.
The third cantata Judith was much the most ferocious, with Carolyn Sampson in a silk shift finding fighting form as both the heroine and her nemesis Holofernes, fortunately playing the latter before drunkenness took hold of him. In the interlude while he fell asleep, harpsichord and theorbo were silent, allowing violin and cello gently to the fore. Otherwise, all was rhythmic fire.
The “beheading” was achieved with two large watermelons that were beaten to a pulp, their pieces collected and held up triumphantly in a bag before being kicked like a football. It was gruesome enough. But Sampson kept her head, veering between trepidation and the excitement of revenge with a determined focus.
The specially constructed stage, built higher and wider over the permanent one with the four players at the back, made for easy sightlines. The non-singing sopranos in each cantata acted as accomplices to the protagonist, giving an over-arching unity to the three scenes.
Without access to the original French, it is hard to know how close Toria Banks’s paraphrase – she calls it a “version” – steers to Jacquet’s intentions, but the production emerged as feminist polemic. What it certainly achieved, regardless, was to underline the imaginative power of Jacquet’s scores, both rhythmic and harmonic, giving them an extra impetus they thoroughly deserved.
Mishka Rushdie Momen: “Clearly one of the most thoughtful, gifted and sensitive British pianists”
Ryedale Festival: Mishka Rushdie Momen and Friends, National Centre for Early Music, York, July 25
IT’S an odd thing about the NCEM acoustic at St Margaret’s Church: the spoken voice is difficult to hear clearly, unless of course you use a microphone, as in the preconcert introduction.
This was true of both spoken contributions from violinist Tim Crawford and Ms Momen, and yet I could hear the pizzicato playing by cellist Tim Posner resonating beautifully throughout the performance. Mind you, he is a very fine player.
Anyhow, to the concert itself. Mishka Rushdie Momen and Friends suggested an intimate gathering of people who are on close terms with each other, and this is exactly what we got. The performers were at ease with each other.
They happily shared the dialogue, listening carefully to each instrumental utterance before replying. They even (musically) flirted with each other; the second canonic study by Schumann was a veritable love duet between violin and cello.
So, let’s start with the Schumann Six Etudes in Canonic Form Op. 56. Evidently, he wrote these pieces in 1845 as an attempt to overcome his “writer’s block”. They were originally written for organ or pedal piano, but it was Schumann’s friend, Theodor Kirchner, who later arranged these for piano trio. The canonic form is one of discipline, of formal conversation; we don’t usually tend to hear it sing, but it does here.
Following the tender second study touched on earlier, any whiff of the academic template is dispelled by the lovely Schumanesque melodic sound world. The music is joyous and so was the playing.
The fourth was conveyed as the charming romantic song it is, with lovely shaping of the musical phrases and rippling decoration. The performers clearly had fun with the very rhythmic, dance-like fifth and in the sixth they delivered a heartfelt, yearning finale. Moving too.
This brings us to the opening work, Smetana’s Trio in G minor, Op. 15. The Trio was written in response to the death of the composer’s four-year-old daughter, Bedriska, of scarlet fever in 1855. The players really captured the quite violent contrasts of the opening allegro moderato. Tender cello and violin solos crescendoed into full-throttle drive. These melted into both delicate and impassioned outpourings of nostalgic memory and grief.
There were echoes of Brahms in the work, but the overall impression conveyed was distinctly Czech; particularly in the thrilling second movement with its musical windows of reflection and the nervous energy of the brilliantly performed allegro finale.
Ms Momen’s performance of the wonderfully descriptive Smetana work, Memories Of Bohemia in the form of Polkas, was a real treat. Lovely touch, phrasing, expressive rubato and executed with real panache.
Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D minor Op.49 is a terrific work, and the trio delivered a terrific performance. Tim Posner’s opening cello theme was delivered with purpose and nobility. Ms Momen’s agitated accompaniment, at first chordal, then transformed into flights of bristling arpeggios as the theme is repeated.
The contrapuntal reworkings of the second, song-like melody were beautifully judged, as was the opening cello’s melody, now joined by a haunting descending line in the violin. The assai animato signing-off seemed to set the instruments on fire.
There was a quite intimate call and response about the Songs Without Words second movement. For example, in the opening musical piano invitation to the violin and cello to join the dance. The piano writing in the exuberant Scherzo is a virtuosic tour de force. And yet, captured in this performance, there is also magic in the air.
I loved the way the passages were thrown to each of the performers in turn, as in some musical game. The way the music effortlessly dissolved into the ether was delightful.
Apart from Tim Posner’s rather unexpected sweeping Mendelssohnian cello melody, this finale was very much hang-on-to-your-hats time. The driver is very much the piano, the writing is seriously demanding, and Ms Momen’s technique and musicality delivered. The final climax integrates the virtuosic and the song, with a crowd-pleasing signing off.
Mishka Rushdie Momen is clearly one of the most thoughtful, gifted and sensitive British pianists and consequently well equipped to embrace both solo and chamber music performance. Mishka Rushdie Momen and Friends – here the excellent Tim Crawford (violin) and Tim Posner (cello) – gave us a concert of equality of engagement, insight and enrichment.
On the ropes: Kate Whittaker’s Polly Stokes feels the force of Zee Williams’s Matilda Blackwellon the attack in The Sweet Science Of Bruising
York College & University Centre BA (Hons) Acting for Stage and Screen Graduating Students in The Sweet Science Of Bruising, York Theatre Royal Studio, July 20 and 21
TWO years of intense training have gone into this climactic graduating production by York College & University Centre’s first cohort of Acting for Stage and Screen BA students.
They deliver a knockout punch with Joy Wilkinson’s torrid 2018 drama The Sweet Science Of Bruising, an epic tale of passion, politics and pugilism set in the underground world of 19th-century women’s boxing.
Mirroring the rounds of a boxing bout in its dramatic rhythm, each scene is short and sharp, some dominated by jabs, others by body blows, some completed with a count to ten. Every step of the way, director James Harvey duly has his cast floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee.
Philippa Hickson’s Violet Hunter, left, with Shell Murphy’s Aunt George
Already, the students had staged a spring showcase for agents at the Theatre Royal, one of two industry partners in the course alongside Screen Yorkshire. An auditorium buzzing with energy greets them – CharlesHutchPress was ringside for the Friday performance – and ever louder cheers meet each scene’s denouement in the compact Studio, where the actors are within punching range.
These exultations peak in response to the retaliatory barrage of punches unleashed by Molly Shackshaft’s Anna Lamb on her vile creep of a gaslighting husband, Andrew Joseph-Hilyer’s anything-but-angelic Gabriel Lamb.
Liam Wilks’s Victorian-moustachioed “Professor” Charlie Sharp doubles as silver-tongued master of ceremonies at Islington’s Angel Amphitheatre – egging on the audience’s responses from round one – and twinkle-eyed, if thin-skinned, subversive boxing promoter with his roster of fledgling female talent.
Jim Carnall’s title-chasing boxer Paul Stokes with Liam Wilks’s boxing promoter “Professor” Charlie Sharp
Each protagonist has a reason for turning to boxing: Shackshaft’s young mother and charity crusader Anna Lamb has been pushed too far by her cheating, controlling, belittling, physically abusive husband; Philippa Hickson’s trainee doctor Violet Hunter has found her path to progression in the medical profession blocked by Jordan Benson’s insufferable Dr James Bell.
Zee Williams’s resourceful, Descartes-quoting Irish lady of the night and typesetter for The Times newspaper, Matilda Blackwell, craves a puncher’s chance of a fresh opportunity to make money; Kate Whitttaker’s hardy north easterner Polly Stokes is steeped in boxing from the bouts of her “brother” Paul (Jim Carnall), with preternatural punching power of her own. Her performance matches it in its impact.
Wilkinson’s script is combative and comedic, fiery and feminist, startling and exhilarating, a hit to the head, a punch to the gut. This is gloves-off theatre, fuelled by Wilkinson being drawn to “powerful women whose bodies contrast with ‘feminine ideals’ and force us to rethink what we’re capable of”: women such as Fay Weldon’s She-Devil, Alien’s Ellen Ripley and Terminator’s Sarah Connor.
Zee Williams’s prostitute Matilda Blackwell and Andrew Joseph-Hilyer’s callous client Gabriel Lamb
Reactions in the audience are all the stronger for Wilkinson’s play being refracted through our age of #MeToo, high-profile boxing champs such as Nicola Adams and Katie Taylor, Roe v Wade and a rising repression of women’s rights, whether in Afghanistan or the United States.
What a superb choice of play by programme leader Harvey, his decision made in part in response to the preponderance of woman in the 2021 intake. His cast responds with a champion performance.
In boxing parlance, did this Bruising encounter leave you reviewer seeing stars (in the making), courtesy of Kaitlin Howard’s fight direction? It would be unfair to pick out any performer over another, given the high quality all round. Instead, let’s hope to see them again as they join the professional ranks.
Alex Cardall’s Eeyore, left, Robbie Noonan’s Tigger, Benjamin Durham’s Winnie the Pooh and Lottie Gregan’s Tigger in Disney’s musical adventure Winnie The Pooh. Picture: Pamela Raith
GEORGIAN glories, Forties’ swing bombshells, the joy of SIX, storytelling with pizza and Pooh and Tigger adventures bring a bounce to Charles Hutchinson’s step.
Children’s show of the week: Disney’s Winnie The Pooh, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday, 5pm; Wednesday, 11am and 2pm
DEEP in the Hundred Acre Wood, a new musical adventure unfolds for A A Milne’s beloved characters Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin and their best friends Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, Rabbit, Owl and Tigger.
Accompanying the modern narrative and life-size puppetry in Jonathan Rockefeller’s show will be Nate Edmondson’s score, featuring Grammy Award-winning songs by the Sherman Brothers, such as The Blustery Day, The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers and Whoop-De-Dooper Bounce, plus Milne’s The More It Snows (with music by Carly Simon) and Sing Ho in a new arrangement. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
7 Days at the races: Craig David at York Racecourse Music Showcase weekend, today
SOUTHAMPTON soul singer Craig David, of 7 Days romancing fame, performs hits galore after today’s racing on Knavesmire. Fill Me In, Walkaway, Rise & Fall, All The Way and I Know You are likely to feature in his early evening set with a finishing time of 7.30pm.
Gates open at 11.15am for the 2.05pm start to the seven-race card. Best bet for a ticket, as the County Stand and Grandstand & Paddock are full already, will be the more informal Clocktower Enclosure. Buy on the gate.
Alexander Flanagan Wright, left, and Phil Grainger: Premiering Helios at the Stilly Fringe tomorrow night
Stilly Fringe storytelling: James Rowland in Piece Of Work, tomorrow, 7.15pm; Wright & Grainger in Helios, tomorrow, 8.45pm, At The Mill, Stillington, near York
AHEAD of his Edinburgh Fringe run, James Rowland opens the Stilly Fringe 2023 storytelling double bill with Piece Of Work, his follow-up to Learning To Fly. Combining story, comedy and music, Piece Of Work takes the form of a road trip searching for the writer of a letter that exploded Rowland’s life. Will he find a sense of home and maybe save a life too?
Edinburgh-bound Alexander Flanagan Wright and Phil Grainger introduce Helios, their latest instalment of stories and songs rooted in Greek myths, in the wake of Orpheus, Eurydice and The Gods The Gods The Gods. Any Stilly Fringe benefits? 1. Pizzas are on the menu from 6.30pm. 2. One ticket covers both shows at tickettailor.com/events/atthemill/957195.
The poster for Spark Comedy Fringe
Funday Sunday: Burning Duck Comedy Club presents Spark Comedy Fringe, Events Space @ Spark:York, York, tomorrow, 4pm
FOUR acts in one day are on the Burning Duck bill of Edinburgh Fringe previews, kicking off at 4pm with comedian, animator and computer programmer Neil Harris’s Codebreaker show about the Enigma machine, Alan Turing and Bletchley Park, followed by Stanley Brooks’s I Can Make Me Rich, an inspirational, interactive seminar to change your life and bring you cash at 5.30pm.
In Eryn Tett Finds Her Audience at 7pm, this absurdist stand-up misfit combines surreal storytelling with odd observations and wordplay; Tom Lawrinson concludes the cornucopia of comedy with weird, wonderful and completely unexpected punchlines in Hubba Hubba at 8.30pm. Each show costs £5 in advance for guaranteed entry or you can Pay What You Want post-show. A £15 ticket gives entry to all four performances. Box office: wegottickets.com/spark-comedy-fringe.
SIX of the best: Henry VIII’s Queens hit back in song at Leeds Grand Theatre. Picture: Pamela Raith
Musical of the week: SIX The Musical, Leeds Grand Theatre, Tuesday to Sunday
TOBY Marlow and Lucy Moss’s Spouse Girls musical/pop concert wowed York in late-June. Now Leeds awaits the dancing queens with attitude who tell their story in song to decide who suffered most at Henry VIII’s hands once he put a ring on that wedding finger.
Look out for Knaresborough actress Lou Henry in the role of the apparently not-so-squeaky-clean Catherine Howard, short-lived wife number five. Box office (probably for frustration only): 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.
In the swing of things: Alice McKenna, left, and Gleanne Purcell-Brown in Alan Plater’s Blonde Bombshells Of 1943 at the SJT. Picture: Pamela Raith
Forties’ flavour of the week: Blonde Bombshells Of 1943, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Wednesday to August 26
ZOE Waterman directs a cast of eight actor-musicians in the SJT, Bolton Octagon and Keswick Theatre by the Lake’s lavish, lively co-production of Hull playwright Alan Plater’s warm and witty musical play.
Meet The Blonde Bombshells, the most glamorous all-girl swing band in the north, whose membership goes down every time they play a GI camp. Now an important BBC job is in the offing and Betty needs to find new musicians fast. Expect Glenn Miller, George Formby, Fats Waller and Andrews Sisters classics aplenty. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Castle Howard, egg tempera on gesso on canvas, by Amy Dennis, on show in the Northern Prospects exhibition at Janette Ray Rare Books
Exhibition of the week: Northern Prospects, Janette Ray Rare Books, Bootham, York, Wednesday to Friday, 10am to 5pm, until August 19
LOTTE Inch Gallery’s pop-up show of York and northern paintings, prints and ceramics at Janette Ray’s bookshop is being expanded with ceramics by York artists Ben Arnup, Mark Hearld and Ruth King among the new additions.
As Lotte turns her hand once more to creating artistic showcases in non-traditional exhibition spaces, after her hiatus from curating, she presents works by Tom Wood, Marie Walker Last, David Lloyd Jones, Amy Dennis, Nicky Hirst, Kelly Jayne, Robert H Lee, Isabella Maclure, Geoff Morten and Malcolm Whittaker in “unusual corners” amid the shop’s treasure trove of books on the visual arts.
Who will be in Mad Alice’s Georgian Rogues Gallery? Find out each day at the York Georgian Festival
Festival of the week: York Georgian Festival, Thursday to Sunday
DUST off your petticoat and powder your best wig for a plethora of engagements at York Mansion House, Fairfax House, Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre and elsewhere at the inaugural York Georgian Festival.
Learn to dance the minuet; discover Georgian family life with Horrible Histories writer Terry Deary; revel in Mad Alice’s Georgian Rogues Gallery; solve the mystery of tricky Dick Turpin’s missing corpse in an immersive murder mystery night and take a peep behind-the-scenes with York’s curators. For full festival details and tickets, head to: mansionhouseyork.com/yorkgeorgianfestival.
Katie Melia: From starring in Sweet Charity to hosting the Life Is A Cabaret fundraiser at Theatre@41, Monkgate
Fundraiser of the week: Life Is A Cabaret, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Friday, 7.30pm
KATIE Melia returns to Theatre@41 after her February lead role in York Stage’s Sweet Charity to present a concert in aid of Reflect: Pregnancy Loss Support, looking to surpass the £3,000 raised at her first fundraiser for this North Yorkshire charity.
Alexa Chaplin, Jack Hooper and Dale Vaughan sing stage and screen hits from Wicked, Spamalot, Dreamgirls and Grease; West End star and director Damien Poole goes Eurovision with Rise Like A Phoenix; Emily Ramsden and Elf The Musical leading lady Sophie Hammond perform too. Tickets update: sold out. For returns only, tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Chesney Hawkes: Meadowfest headliner. Picture: Axel Muench
In Focus: Meadowfest, Malton’s Boutique Midsummer Music Festival, today, 10am to 10pm
MALTON’S boutique music festival takes place within the riverside meadows and gardens of the Talbot Hotel, Yorkersgate.
Anticipate a relaxed, joyful, family festival of uplifting sunshine bands, all-day feasting and dancing like no one’s watching.
Grab a hay bale, street food and something to sip and enjoy a mix of live music over two stages with Yorkshire bands to the fore.
Be Amazing Arts hosts the pop-up venue The Creativitent, a hive of activity with creative arts workshops, performances and storytelling, arts and craft zones and facepainting!
The Creativitent gives the opportunity for children, young people and their families to “discover their inner creativity, take to the stage, get crafty”.
This House We Built: Playing the Hay Bale Stage at 5pm. Picture: Ben Audsley
Music line-up
10am, Malton School Soul Band, Meadow Stage; 10.30am, Graeme Hargreaves, Hay Bale Stage; 11am, Gary Stewart, Hay Bale Stage; 12 noon, The Caleb Murray Band, Meadow Stage; 1pm, Alchemy Live, tribute to Dire Straits, Hay Bale Stage; 2pm, The Alex Hamilton Band, Meadow Stage; 3pm, Arrival, The Hits of Abba, Hay Bale Stage; 4pm, Alistair Griffin & Band, Meadow Stage; 5pm, This House We Built, Hay Bale Stage; 6pm, Huge, York party band, Meadow Stage; 7.15pm, The Y Street Band, Hay Bale Stage; Chesney Hawkes, Meadow Stage headliner, 8.45pm.
