Tag: An Tobar and Mull Theatre

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REVIEW: The Last Picture, York Theatre Royal Studio, until February 14 ****

Robin Simpson’s Sam, the emotional support dog, in Catherine Dyson’s The Last Picture. Picture: S R Taylor Photography

“I CAN’T think of anyone better to play a dog than Robin,” said York Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster at Saturday night’s post-show discussion.

She is referring to West Yorkshire actor and storyteller Robin Simpson, best known in York for his six seasons as the Theatre Royal’s pantomime dame – and already confirmed for next winter’s Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs too.

Simpson’s ability to connect with audiences is “extraordinary”, said director and associate artist John R Wilkinson, an ability needed for both his panto role and now York Theatre Royal, English Touring Theatre and An Tobar and Mull Theatre’s world premiere co-production of Catherine Dyson’s one-act solo play.

In a nutshell, what links the two parts is the requirement for “direct address” to the audience. Here Simpson is playing Sam, an emotional support dog on a Year 9 school trip to a museum (unspecified but the Imperial War Museum in all but name).

Robin Simpson: Storytelling prowess in The Last Picture. Picture: S R Taylor Photography

Simpson is not dressed as a canine, nor does he walk on all fours, but his tabard bears the message “Don’t Pet Me I’m Working” and his roll-neck jumper and trousers evoke the colours of a Golden Retriever or Labrador.

This dog talks, taking the narrator’s role, while evoking the school head of history and a particularly sensitive schoolboy, and taking the audience by the hand as he invites us to imagine being in a theatre in 2026,then the group of school children, on the bus trip and in the museum, and most hauntingly, the victims of the Nazi Holocaust  in each Second World War picture.

Writer Dyson decreed only a few stage instructions, the most significant being that the pictures being described by Sam should never be shown. Instead, the images should be formed in our imagination – one of theatre’s most powerful tools – but such is the impact of Kristallnacht  (the Night of Broken Glass), the children’s exodus from Poland, the Jewish ghettos and the concentration camps that, when combined with Dyson’s descriptions and Simpson’s storytelling prowess, we readily draw on imagery from history books, films and documentaries.

Dyson’s structure is methodical, building momentum all the while. A head count is taken as regularly as Simpson’s Sam asks us how we are feeling after each picture. Simpson’s narrator explains how Sam can sense our emotions, our distress, without having the capacity to understand the play’s greater question: Why?

Director John R Wilkinson in rehearsal with actor Robin Simpson for the world premiere of The Last Picture

Gradually, we see teacher, breakaway 13-year-old pupil and dog all break down in reaction to what they are encountering, all  conveyed so expressively by Simpson. 

We learn too of other children’s reactions: wanting to know when lunch will be; wondering why something that happened so long ago in a different country should matter to them as they head from room to room, one marked Escalation, Deportation, Final Solution. They reach for the mobile phones at the earliest opportunity to flick through the latest posts.

Interestingly, contrary to myth, dogs do see in colour, but not in the same way we see colour, and here Wilkinson and set designer Natasha Jenkins complement Dyson’s descriptions of colour used by Sam to sum up the mood of each scene.

The back wall is covered with a plain cloth (an aid for us to build up a picture); the flooring has a metallic black sheen, framed by Isle of Skye lighting designer Benny Goodman’s strip lighting that changes from white to yellow. When the cloth drops suddenly, the stage is bathed in fiery orange.

Natasha Jenkins’s set design for York Theatre Royal’s production of The Last Picture. Picture: S R Taylor Photography

The minimalism stretches to the props: one table to the side, with a water bottle marked Sam (for Simpson’s vocal lubrication) and five lecture hall/school room chairs that Simpson uses in differing ways, most disturbingly to portray dead children when lain on their side.

Every detail has been thought through to the max, honed in four weeks of rehearsals, a research visit to Holocaust Centre North in Huddersfield, and in Wilkinson’s bond with Dyson over the power of abstract, non-literal  theatre and European drama, as well as in Simpson’s remarkably adroit performance.

The Last Picture had begun life as one of 37 new plays picked from 2,000 entries to mark the500th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio in 2023 with a national playwriting initiative, when Wilkinson directed a rehearsed reading at York Theatre Royal and saw its potential for a full-scale production.

Robin Simpson’s Sam in a rueful moment in The Last Picture. Picture: S R Taylor Photography

This is that production, the full picture of The Last Picture, and what a fitting, moving first show for the Theatre Royal to make for the Studio space since the accursed Covid pandemic.

Add Max Pappenheim’s sound design, a devastating use of Mendelssohn’s music – deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis – and movement direction full of circular rhythm by Alexia Kalogiannidis, and Dyson’s play is unique, wholly original, thoroughly theatrical.

The Last Picture is unmissable, unforgettable, urgently needed theatre at its best.

The Last Picture, York Theatre Royal Studio, until February 14, 7.45pm plus 2pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees, then on tour. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. The tour will visit HOME Manchester, February 18 to 21; Bristol Old Vic, February 24 to 28; Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, March 5 to 7;  Mull Theatre, March 11 and 12; Bunessan Village Hall, March 13; Iona Village Hall, March 14.  

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How Robin Simpson is switching from pantomime dame to dog for The Last Picture at York Theatre Royal Studio

Director John R Wilkinson and actor Robin Simpson in the rehearsal room for York Theatre Royal’s premiere of Catherine Dyson’s The Last Picture: James Drury

IN the first York Theatre Royal production to be made for the Studio since 2019, associate director John R Wilkinson directs Robin Simpson in The Last Picture from February 5 to 14.

After his sixth season as the Theatre Royal pantomime dame in Sleeping Beauty – and confirmed already for a seventh winter in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs – Robin will swap the dame’s frocks and puns for the role of a dog in YTR, ETT and An Tobar & Mull Theatre’s world premiere co-production.

Robin will play an emotional support dog in Catherine Dyson’s 75-minute solo play, first performed in a reading at the Theatre Royal as one of 37 winning scripts selected from more than 2,000 entries by the Royal Shakespeare Company for its 37 Plays competition in 2023.

“We were given three of the plays to do in book-in-hand readings,” recalls John. “Juliet [creative director Juliet Forster] did  one about MeToo ; Mingyu [resident artist Mingyu Lin] Lin directed one about immigration and diaspora. Then, by default, I was given this one – and I lucked out because The Last Picture was the best play.

“Part of the deal is that the writer comes up to see the reading. Catherine is an actress from Swansea – one of her main roles was playing the ‘woman in black’ in The Woman In Black, the role that’s never credited in the programme! – and she’s branched out into writing plays.

“She and I really connected over my love of European theatre – bare-bones abstract  work – that leans into a storytelling in collaboration with the audience, where there’s very little in terms of set and design elements and instead the audience is encouraged to conjure the play for themselves.”

Dyson’s monodrama invites you to imagine yourself in a theatre in 2026. Now picture yourself as a Year 9 student on a school trip, and then as a citizen of Europe in 1939 as history takes its darkest turn. While you imagine, emotional support dog Sam will be by your side to look after you and keep everyone safe in a play built around empathy, its power and limits and what it asks of us.  In a nutshell, The Last Picture explores our shared past, our present,  and the choices we face today.

“For context, Catherine has Jewish heritage,” says John. “Her grandfather escaped persecution just before everything happened in Poland, escaping over the Tatra Mountains, so there’s a personal connection with this story.”

In a novel theatrical conceit, “Catherine was interested in telling the story through the eyes of a dog”, says John, in a device where Robin does not come on dressed as a dog but gives voice to what the dog is seeing and experiencing.

Robin says: “Pretty much straightaway it’s made clear that it’s being told by a dog, where we’re asking the audience to go on a journey of the imagination, when the story is told through a series of pictures created in language.”

John rejoins: “There are only one or two, very clear, stage directions by Catherine, but one was that there should be no actual pictures: they should all be created in the audience’s imagination.”

The production will lean into folklore and ritual. “The play is really fascinating in that we’re operating on several different levels. Firstly, I’m telling a story where I’m asking the audience to accept that I’m a dog, who’s part of a group of Year 19 pupils – aged 13, 14 – as their emotional support on a museum visit,” says Robin.

“Then I ask the audience to be the pupils, so they’re very much part of the story, sometimes in the story with me, and at other points we’re asking them to empathise with the people  in the pictures created through language, because it’s a play about empathy and humanity.”

Robin continues: “I think the reason Catherine chose the dog’s point of view is that the dog can say dispassionately what’s going on in the pictures without having that human connection to the story, so the audience can make up their own mind.

“In finding the voice for the dog, it has to be about a balance between telling the story and colouring the story with emotion without performing it.”

John adds: “It’s such a clever form of storytelling that Catherine has leant into. One thing we said is that it’s not an animal study, but the dog gives the storytelling comfort and warmth.”

At the beginning, there is a description of how dogs have the ability to absorb human emotions without understanding them. “The dog picks up on the children’s emotions of being affected by what they’re seeing without the dog understanding why,” says Robin.

“What Catherine has done really cleverly is that there a lot of sticky political situations going on in the world that she doesn’t directly refer to,” says John. “But in terms of what she’s asking the audience to do, she doesn’t give a political viewpoint but she lets you sit and reflect on how it relates to what’s happening now.”

The Last Picture, York Theatre Royal Studio, February  5 to 14, except February 8, 7.45pm plus 2pm, February 7, 11 and 14. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.