More Things To Do in York and beyond when feeling the earth move. Here’s Hutch’s List No. 37 for 2023, from The Press

Gracing the stage: Grace Lancaster in the role of Carole King in York Stage’s York premiere of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

FROM Carole King’s beautiful songs to Velma Celli’s pop queens, an artistic family to a poet’s biscuits, Charles Hutchinson adds to the September sunshine as cause for heading out and about.

Musical of the week: York Stage in Beautiful, The Carole King Musical, Grand Opera House, York, Friday to September 23

YORK, are you ready to feel the Earth move, asks director Nik Briggs, ahead of the York premiere of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. “This show has taken the world by storm, and for good reason, with its inspiring story of Carole King, a woman who rose to fame in the music industry during a time when female songwriters were few and far between”.

Singer, actress and pianist Grace Lancaster takes the lead role in this celebration of perseverance, passion and the power of music to unite. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Damon Gough: Marking 25 years of Badly Drawn Boy

Treasured songwriter of the week: Badly Drawn Boy, The Crescent, York, Monday, 7.30pm

DAMON Gough is undertaking his Something To Tour About: 25 Years Of Badly Drawn Boy tour, playing a sold-out standing show in York with Liam Frost in support.

Chorlton singer, songwriter, guitarist and piano player Gough, who released Banana Skin Shoes as his first studio album in ten years in May 2020, first made his mark with the Mercury Prize-winning The Hour Of Bewilderbeast in 2000. Eight albums on, he has plenty to tour about.

Rosie Jones: Unadulterated joy in Triple Threat at Leeds City Varieties and York Theatre Royal

Comedy gig of the week: Rosie Jones: Triple Threat, Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, Wednesday, 8pm; York Theatre Royal, Thursday, 8pm

COMEDIAN Rosie Jones’s show is guaranteed to be full of unapologetic cheekiness, nonsensical fun and unadulterated joy from the triple threat herself.

Theatre@41 honorary patron Rosie has hosted Channel 4’s travel series Rosie Jones’ Trip Hazard and Mission: Accessible and made numerous appearances on The Last Leg, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Hypothetical, Mock The Week, The Ranganation and Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back. Box office: Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com; York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. 

Jessica Steel: Powerhouse vocals at A Night To Remember

Fundraiser of the week: Big Ian Presents A Night To Remember, York Barbican, Thursday, 7.30pm

HUGE frontman Big Ian Donaghy hosts his annual charity fundraiser as George Hall leads a 20-piece All Star House Band with a 12-strong brass section in a night of cover versions of Kate Bush, Bill Withers, Take That, Fleetwood Mac, Tina Turner, Queen, Wham!, Elvis and more.

Taking part will be Jessica Steel, Heather Findlay, Beth McCarthy, Graham Hodge, The Y Street Band, Boss Caine, Gary Stewart, Simon Snaize, Annie Donaghy, Kieran O’Malley, Las Vegas Ken, the Huge Brass Boys, Hands & Voices, musicians from York Music Forum and Jessa Liversidge’s fully inclusive group Singing For All. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

John Hegley: Biscuits all round at Stillington Mill

Poet of the week: John Hegley: Biscuit Of Destiny, At The Mill, Stillington, near York, Friday, 7.30pm

POET John Hegley, star of radio, television and school assemblies, heads north with a clutch of new verses, a few older favourites and a cardboard camel with a moving jaw.

The biscuits in the show derive Romantic poet John Keats’s phrase: “a scarcity of buiscuit”. Not the sort of phrase nor spelling you expect from a Romantic poet, notes Hegley, who delves into the more eccentric side of Keats, alongside everyday goings-on in the Hegley homes of now and yesteryear. Expect drawings of elephants, myths, discos, daleks, optional community singing and the search for a sense of self-worth. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill/939591.

Velma Celli: Reigning over York Theatre Royal on Friday in a celebration of British pop royalty, God Save The Queens. Picture: Sophie Eleanor Photography

Brit icons of the week: Velma Celli’s God Save The Queens, York Theatre Royal, Friday, 7.30pm

YORK cabaret superstar Velma Celli, the vocal drag diva alter ego of musical theatre actor Ian Stroughair, introduces her new celebration of British pop royalty.

Accompanied by Scott Phillips’s band, Velma’s night of rapturous music, risqué comedy and fabulous entertainment features the songs of Adele, Amy Winehouse, Annie Lennox, Florence Welch, Leona Lewis, The Spice Girls, Kate Bush, Shirley Bassey, Cilla Black and Bonnie Tyler, plus a tribute to Sinead O’Connor.

Katya Apekisheva: Russian-born pianist playing at York Chamber Music Festival, sometimes solo, sometimes in the company of string players

Festival of the week: York Chamber Music Festival, September 15 to 17

FESTIVAL artistic director and cellist Tim Lowe is joined by John Mills and Jonathan Stone, violins, Hélene Clément and Simone van der Giessen, violas, Jonathan Aasgaard, cello, Billy Cole, double bass, and British-based Russian pianist Katya Apekisheva for three days of concerts.

Highlights include Mendelssohn’s String Quartet Op. 13, Dvořák’s String Sextet, Elgar’s late Piano Quintet, Strauss’s Metamorphosen, Brahms’s Cello Sonata No. 1 and Schubert’s last Piano Sonata in B flat major. For the full programme and venues, head to: ycmf.co.uk/2023-programme. Box office: 01904 658338 or ycmf.co.uk.

Ewa Salecka: Conducting Prima Vocal Ensemble in Songs From The Heart

Choral concert of the month: Prima Vocal Ensemble, Songs From The Heart, National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York, September 30, 7.30pm

ARTISTIC director and producer Ewa Salecka leads York choir Prima Vocal Ensemble in an intimate evening of contemporary classical and popular choral music with Greg Birch at the piano.

Works by Randall Thompson, René Clausen, Stephen Paulus and Elizabeth Alexander will be followed by a second half of moving and energetic arrangements of George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Freddie Mercury songs. Ahead of their 2024 New York City reunion, Prima perform a Christopher Tin number too. Box office: primavocalensemble.com.

Copyright of The Press, York

Hannah Arnup and Ben Arnup with bowls by Mick Arnup and a bronze dog by Sally Arnup at the Arnup Centenary exhibition, opening today at Pyramid Gallery

In Focus: Exhibition launch of the week

Hannah Arnup, Ben Arnup, Tobias Arnup and Vanessa Pooley, Arnup Centenary, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, 11am today to October 30

THE Arnups, two generations of artists with roots in York, work in pottery, painting, wildlife sculpture, figurative sculpture and ceramic sculpture. The late Mick and Sally Arnup set up home and studio in Holtby in the 1960s, and three of their family, Ben, Hannah and Tobias, have followed careers in the arts.

This exhibition by the three second generation artists and Tobias’s wife, Vanessa Pooley, coincides with the centenary of their father’s birth in 1923. In recognition of their parents’ influence on their own artistic journeys, a few pieces by Mick and Sally will complement the new works.

Gallery visitors can expect to see new work by ceramist Ben Arnup, who specialises in slab-made flattened boxes and vessels that play with the viewer’s sense of form and space, alongside Hananh Arnup’s wheel-thrown bowls and plates with sgraffito decoration and Vanessa Pooley’s gently curvy female forms in ceramic and bronze. On the walls, the still life paintings by Tobias Arnup will sit alongside ceramic wall pieces by Ben and Hannah.

Ben’s intriguing Trompe L’Oeil forms are well known to collectors of ceramics and visitors to Pyramid Gallery. Formerly a landscape designer, he creates shapes that explore drawn perspective using coloured clay slab-constructed stoneware, “having fun with the way we see form”.

After studying sculpture at Kingston Art School and specialising in ceramics at Goldsmith College, London, Hannah has lived and worked for much of her adult life in Ireland where she owns and runs Ballymorris Pottery. Latterly, she has set up a new studio in the family home in Holtby near York, re- purposed as a community of artists’ studios.

Vanessa works with bronze and ceramic to create sculpture of mostly female forms with an individual and distinctive style that takes inspiration from the work of Henri Laurens and his studio assistant Balthazar Lobo, as well as Marino Marinni and the sculptures of Picasso and Matisse. Her work is to be found in collections around the world.

Tobias studied at Camberwell School of Art and went on to teach at Blackheath School of Art before a change in career to be an art therapist.

“I was helping run a course at Blackheath School of Art and I found I was more interested in the people that sat in my office at lunchtime complaining about their fellow students or about their parents or about not getting their art right or wondering what they were going to do, or who were just not really coping with life very well,” he says.

After his training, Tobias started an art therapy department at Holloway Prison, which was in existence until the women’s prison closed in 2016. 

During his 35-year career, he also worked in secure units in mental health hospitals, finding that art could engage traumatised people when other methods of therapy had not.  

In his art, Tobias has evolved an individual style that begins with a black outline of still life objects and flowers, drawn in ink with a goose quill. He then adds colour in gouache, filling the spaces between or on top of the black lines.

Depending on what he feels is necessary, he might add more black ink lines, or redo the original lines, then more colour and maybe finish with more black lines. This layering of lines and colour is done slowly and carefully in a process that he describes as meditative. The result is intriguing, distinctive and joyful, with pastel colours contrasting with the black outlines, that have a bold and purposeful feel mixed with occasional random unevenness.

Gallery owner Terry Brett has worked with Ben and Hannah for many years, as well as with Mick and Sally, and looks forward to his inaugural showing of paintings by Tobias and bronze and ceramic sculpture by Vanessa.

“‘For me, this is one of the most satisfying moments in my time as an exhibition curator,” he says. “Not only for the quality of the work and diversity of styles, but also because I am pleased to be representing Vanessa and Tobias for the first time.

“To be hosting the family with an exhibition that is paying respect to Mick and Sally in a collective show is a very special moment for both myself and the gallery.”

Tobias Arnup with his gouache and ink paintings

Tobias Arnup on his artistic practice

THE play between line and colour has always been central to Tobias’s work as a painter.
“Undoubtedly my main influence of this has been that of my father, Mick,” he says. “However, I still remember the impact of being taught by the wonderful art master at Pocklington School, Nigel Billington, who encouraged a proper attention to composition and to drawing, particularly with ink.

“It was hardly a surprise when I chose Camberwell School of Art, in London, as the place to study for my Fine Art degree and where I was lucky enough to teach drawing myself for a while.”

Only relatively recently has Tobias experimented more with different media. “For many years my favourite was egg tempera, which I learnt about at Camberwell and used to
mix up myself,” he says.

“Depending on how much it was diluted, tempera has both the ‘gloopy’ quality of gouache and the richness of a watercolour glaze. It was working on paper, though, that has allowed me to work more flexibly.

“Using water-soluble pencil, Indian ink, watercolour and gouache – although not necessarily in that order – I seem to be forever swinging between creating chaos and trying to excerpt some sort of order on the composition.”

He continues: “These days the chaos of my ink marks is being brought under some sort of control by the flat, mat gouache. When things get a bit too tidy, out comes the ink bottle again.

“There cannot have been many options for school teachers at the time. Mr Billington’s huge
set-ups suited me perfectly, however. They were there ready for me – a constant resource,
I realise now, that is currently replicated in my own studio.

“Although they stray into more abstract concerns, I regard all these works as still-lives. When I am a bit stuck, it’s the ink and the goose-feather quills that I turn to, although I have used up my store of Chinese geese quills that I collected up from the garden when I was young.”

Pyramid Gallery opening hours are: Monday to Saturday 10am to 5pm. The displays can be viewed at pyramidgallery.com too.

More Things To Do in York and beyond with the chance to go Wildish in the town and country. Hutch’s List No. 27, from The Press

Wildish curator Jo Walton with a pot by Julie O’Sullivan and one of her own metal paintings at Pyramid Gallery

MUSIC festivals and mystic femininity in art, comedy antics and bucket list stunts, a scary scientist and a madcap whodunit spark Charles Hutchinson’s interest.

Exhibition launch of the week: Wildish, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, today until August 13

CURATED by Rogues Atelier Studios artist and interior designer Jo Walton, Wildish unites six women – five artists and a poet – through a theme based loosely on deep and sensual mystic femininity.

Taking part will be Jo Walton, Julie O’Sullivan, Christine Pike, Izzy Williamson, Zoe Catherine Kendal and York poet Nicky Kippax. Meet them at today’s 11am opening for a drink, nibbles and a chat.

Niall Ransome, left, and Dave Hearn in rehearsal for The 39 Steps at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

Revival of the week: The 39 Steps, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until July 29

ARTISTIC director Paul Robinson revives his hit 2018 production of Patrick Barlow’s fast and frenetic stage adaptation of John Buchan’s juicy spy novel and Alfred Hitchcock’s film in tandem with the Theatre by the Lake, Keswick.

Barlow adds a dash of Monty Python to the winning combination of whodunit and old-fashioned romance as Mischief Theatre founder member Dave Hearn’s Richard Hannay is joined by fellow Mischief alumnus Niall Ransome, reprising his Clown role from 2018, Lucy Keirl and SJT debutante Olivia Onyehara. Cue the iconic chase on the Flying Scotsman, the first-ever theatrical biplane crash and a death-defying (well nearly) finale. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

Paul Heaton: Performing with special guest singers rather than regular partner in song Jacqui Abbott at Scarborough Open Air Theatre tonight. Picture: David Harrison

Outdoor gig of the week: Paul Heaton, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, today, gates open at 6pm

PAUL Heaton, former frontman of Hull bands The Housemartins and The Beautiful South, heads up the Yorkshire coast for a headline gig in Scarborough. Special guests supporting the self-styled “Last King Of Pop” will be Ian Broudie’s Lightning Seeds.

Busy week ahead for Scarborough OAT: Hollywood Vampires, Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, Joe Perry and Tommy Henriksen’s American rock supergroup, play a sold-out show on Wednesday, followed by The Cult on Thursday, Tom Grennan on Friday and Pulp (sold out) next Sunday. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

Chris Lynam: Topping tonight’s Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club bill at The Basment, City Screen Picturehouse

Comedy gig of the week: Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club presents Chris Lynam, Patrick Monahan, Dean Coughlin and Damion Larkin, The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York, tonight, 8pm

HEADLINER Chris Lynam has been feverishly subverting the traditions of the stand-up comic for more than 30 years with his grasp of crazy antics. Patrick Monaghan holds the world record for Longest Hug at a time of 25 hours and 25 minutes, set at the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Dean Coughlin has worked on the comedy circuit since 2017. Master of ceremonies and club organiser Damion Larkin will be improvising his set as ever. Further LOL Comedy nights are in place for August 5 and September 2. Box office: lolcomedyclubs.co.uk.

Amy Gregory in rehearsal for her role as Emma Carew in 1812 Theatre Company’s Jekyll & Hyde The Musical

Musical of the week: 1812 Theatre Company in Jekyll & Hyde The Musical, Helmsley Arts Centre, Wednesday to Sunday, 7.30pm

JULIE Lomas directs Helmsley Arts Centre’s resident troupe, the 1812 Theatre Company, in their first ever musical production, Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse’s Jekyll & Hyde, based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s story.

Marking the venue’s 30th anniversary, the show features husband and wife Joe and Amy Gregory in the lead roles of Jekyll/Hyde and Emma Carew. John Atkin is the musical director; Michaela Edens, the choreographer. Box office: 01439 771700  or helmsleyarts.co.uk.

Mezzo soprano Helen Charlston: Performing Battle Cry: She Speaks with theorbo player Toby Carr at York Early Music Festival on July 10

Festival of the week: York Early Music Festival 2023, Friday until July 14

THIS summer’s York Early Music Festival takes the theme of Smoke & Mirrors with a focus on William Byrd, a practising Catholic composer working for a constantly threatened Protestant queen.

The City Musick, Ensemble Jupiter & York countertenor Iestyn Davies, The Sixteen, violinist Rachel Podger, The Marian Consort and Rose Consort of Viols and mezzo soprano Helen Charlston are among the week’s musicians. Full festival details and tickets: ncem.co.uk; 01904 658338.

Tom Figgins: Showcasing new songs at Stillington Mill on Friday

Solo gig of the week: Tom Figgins, At The Mill, Stillington, near York, Friday, 7.30pm

SINGER and songwriter Tom Figgins, programmer for At The Mill’s summer’s season of music, comedy and theatre, plays the Stillington garden for a third time this weekend. Noted for his vocal range, distinctive guitar playing and complex lyrics, he numbers radio presenter Chris Evans among his fans, appearing on his BBC Radio 2 show. Expect songs old and new at one of his favourite spots. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill/925897.

Steve-O: Working through his bucket list of stunts at York Barbican

Stunts of the week: Steve-O, York Barbican, Friday, 7.30pm

EVERY idea on American entertainer Steve-O’s bucket list was so ill advised, he never expected to go through with any of them. Until it was time to prepare for this tour. Not only are the stunts even more ridiculous than Steve-O pulled off on MTV’s Jackass, but now he has made a highly XXX-rated, multimedia comedy show out of them too. Not for children or the faint of heart, he warns. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

The Magpies: Curating and playing at their festival at Sutton Park in August

Heading to the park: The Magpies Festival, Sutton Park, Sutton-on-the-Forest, near York, August 11 and 12

TRANSATLANTIC folk trio The Magpies have confirmed the line-up for their two-day open-air festival of music, activities, stalls and food and drink. The Friday main stage acts will be Laura Cortese & The Cards, Chris Difford and Holy Moly & The Crackers, followed by the Saturday bill of Liz Stringer, Honey & The Bear, Blair Dunlop, Rachel Sermanni, The Magpies and Edward II.

Friday acts on the Brass Castle Stage will be The Dicemen, Thorpe & Morrison, The Often Herd and New York Brass Band; Saturday will welcome Jack Harris, Megan Henwood, Tom Moore & Archie Moss, Gilmore & Roberts, and Bonfire Radicals, concluding with a Ceilidh with Archie Moss. Box office: themagpiesfestival.co.uk.

Traitors winner Hannah Byczkowski to play fun and Games in At The Mill comedy gig

“I don’t want to shock in my shows, I just want to entertain people,” says Hannah Byczkowski

JOIN The Traitors winner Hannah Byczkowski as she delves into the game that changed her life in her Games gig, opening At The Mill’s theatre season in Stillington, near York, tonight (10/6/2023).

Deemed a comedy goddess by the hit BBC show’s presenter, Claudia Winkleman, Hannah shared the £100,000 prize with her fellow Faithful contestants Aaron Evans and Meryl Williams in the game of skullduggery.

Now Byczkowski (pronounced Bitch-Cough-Ski, should you be wondering) is back on the comedy beat full time, wearing her heart on her sleeve and making sure everyone has a good laugh with it as she dips into her observational and relatable material and store of unbelievable stories.

Regularly performing as an MC in and around London, in addition to performing stand-up sets nationwide, she heads to Stillington for the first time this weekend. “My agent books the other stuff; my sister books the live shows,” she says.

“I won’t be debuting the Games show fully until 2024 but I will do shows at the Free Fringe in Edinburgh this summer, and I’ll be doing live podcasts from Edinburgh with my Ghost Huns co-host Suzie Preece, telling ghost stories and trying to contact the dead at the end of each show.”

Why pick Games for a title, Hannah? “Mainly because of going on The Traitors. It’s that vibe,” she says. “It’s not explicitly about my experience on that show but it does have references to it, about how I ended up on it, how I was recruited.”

 Hannah, you may recall, was a Faithful contestant throughout this year’s debut series. “I am faithful by nature, but I really wanted to a Traitor because it looked more fun. Being a Traitor gives you permission to behave in a way you couldn’t in the real world – though people will resonate with you being a good person.”

Her television exposure has been hugely beneficial. “Definitely it’s helped me to change my career very quickly, having been a comedian before the show for two years, though it felt like I’d only been doing it for two minutes,” says Hannah, 32, originally from Lightwood, Stoke-on-Trent, and now based in London.

She revels in being a stand-up. “Who can tell sex jokes to a room full of strangers except for a comedian, where you can get away with a lot? I can be utterly and completely who I am on that stage,” she says.

“I just don’t take anything seriously, except that I did work in palliative care and that makes you realise you shouldn’t take anything else seriously. Now I won’t do anything I don’t want to do.

“I don’t want to shock in my shows, I just want to entertain people while I have them in the palm of my hands.”

Palliative care, by contrast, required a serious disposition. “I don’t think anyone would be able to carry on in a job like that if that were not the case. I quit my job before I went onto The Traitors, and I had to make the decision to give up regular income, but I don’t want to have any regrets, to not do things in my life.

“I ended up assessing in the palliative care field, getting up in the morning, doing the job and thinking, ‘is this it?’. I decided ‘, ‘this is not what I want’. I’d get up seven, work till five, and then be out till 1am because of doing a gig in the evening, working on the London circuit. Not a lot of sleep.”

The Traitors has enabled Hannah to travel further for her gigs, playing up north more often. Like tonight in Stillington. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill/913281

Bolshee launch Perform Yourself, a free eight-week creative project for women to find their voice at Friargate Theatre

Bolshee trio Lizzy Whynes, left, Megan Bailey and Paula Clark: Launching autobiographical performance project, Bolshee Women: Perform Yourself

THREE York women who set up an arts company this year to champion women and girls are to run a free project from October 20 with Make It York’s Cultural Wellbeing Grant funding.

Bolshee CIC– a female-led creative projects company – is run by artists and friends Paula Clark, creative director, Lizzy Whynes, associate director, and Megan Bailey, creative producer.

“We produce projects with the aim of helping everyone to feel heard, empowered and supported, regardless of their background, with a particular focus on women and girls,” they say.

“Collectively, as a team, we have 35 years’ experience in creating, producing and delivering creative arts projects with young people and adults, and in only six months, we’ve already made some noise in the city and beyond through collaborations with York St John University, At The Mill [at Stillington], Drawsome Festival, York Theatre Royal, ARC Stockton and York Design Week.”

Bolshee Women: Perform Yourself: New creative project funded through Make It York

Now, Bolshee CIC (community interest company) are launching an eight-week autobiographical performance project, Bolshee Women: Perform Yourself, for self-identifying women aged 25 and over to find their voice in collaboration with Make it York.

Paula explains: “It’s so important that we find our voice, take up space and share our truths. This is what Bolshee Women is all about. Coming together in solidarity to make friends, be creative and share our experiences has a hugely positive impact on our wellbeing.

“We wanted to offer a cultural provision, this time for women over the age of 25. We feel that this age group don’t have as many opportunities to get involved in performance in the city as younger people do. We also know that women will suffer disproportionately from the financial crisis we’re facing. That’s why Bolshee Women will be FREE to attend.”

Bolshee Women: Perform Yourself will be held at Friargate Theatre, Friargate, from October 20 to December 8 from 6.30pm to 8pm each week. “We will explore contemporary performance and autobiographical devising techniques, including free drawing and creative writing,” says Paula. “No experience is necessary. All materials will be provided.” To book for the workshops, go to: www.bolshee.com.

Full of drive: Lizzy Whynes, Megan Bailey and Paula Clark

Who are the Bolshee triumvirate?

Paula Clark is a creative director, theatre maker and community artist.

Lizzy Whynes is a performer, movement and theatre director and facilitator.

Megan Bailey is a designer and producer.

More Things To Do in York and beyond when questions needs answering. Such as? Find out in List No. 96, from The Press

Barrel of laughs: Al Murray, the Pub Landlord, has the answer, whatever the question

FOOD and food for thought, pub concert and Pub Landlord, outsider comedy and  family drama whet Charles Hutchinson’s appetite.

Comedy gig of the week in York: Al Murray: The Pub Landlord, Gig For Victory, Grand Opera House, York, Thursday, 7.30pm

“AS the dust settles and we emerge blinking into the dawn of a new year, the men and women of this great country will need answers,” reckons the Guvnor, Al Murray. “Answers that they know they need, answers to questions they never knew existed.”

When that moment comes, who better to show the way, to provide those answers, than the people’s man of the people, Murray, The Pub Landlord? Cue his pugnacious bar-room wisdom in the refurbished Grand Opera House. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Miles and The Chain Gang: New territory tonight

Pub gig of the week: Miles and The Chain Gang, The New Smithy Arms, Malton Road, Swinton, near Malton, tonight (27/8/2022), 9pm

YORK band Miles and The Chain Gang are heading to the New Smithy Arms gastro pub this weekend.

“It’s our first time performing in the Malton area,” says songwriter and singer Miles Salter. “We’ll be playing a selection of our own songs, plus some old classics from Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and The Rolling Stones.”

Latest single Love Is Blind has been aired 400 times on radio stations around the world, YouTube views of the band have topped 50,000 and their 2022 gig diary has taken in Doncaster, Harrogate and Helmsley.

Three-day event: Malton Summer Food Lovers Festival

Festival of the week: Malton Summer Food Lovers Festival, today (27/8/2022) and tomorrow from 9am, Bank Holiday Monday, from 10am.

THIS is the second Malton Food Lovers Festival of 2022, taking over the streets of “Yorkshire’s food capital” for three days in a celebration of fine produce and cooking.

Expect artisan stalls, street food, talks, tastings, celebrity chefs, cookery and blacksmith demonstrations, a festival bar, buskers, brass bands and Be Amazing Arts in the Creativitent.

Look out for Tommy Banks, from The Black Swan, Oldstead, and Roots, York, on the festival demo stage today at 1pm. Festival entry is free.

Daniel Kitson: Wanting a word with you Outside

Comedy gigs of the week outside York: Daniel Kitson: Outside, At The Mill, Stillington Mill, near York, Monday (29/8/2022) to Wednesday, 7.30pm

DENBY Dale stand-up comedian Daniel Kitson had not been on stage for two years when he contacted At The Mill promoter Alexander Flanagan Wright to say “hello, could I come and do a show?”.

Not one show, but six work-in-progress gigs, performed in two sold-out blocks from May 23 to 25 and June 8 to 10. He enjoyed the Mill outdoor experience so much, he has added a third run for August’s dying embers.

Tickets have flown again for the latest chance to watch Kitson “find out whether he can still do his job and what, if anything, he has to say to large groups of people he doesn’t know”. For returns only, contact atthemill.org.

That’ll be Mel Day: Guest star for The Story Of Soul. Picture: Entertainers

History show of the week: The Story Of Soul, Grand Opera House, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm

FROM the producers of Lost In Music and The Magic Of Motown comes The Story Of Soul with special guest Mel Day, “The Soul Man” from Britain’s Got Talent.

This journey through the history of sweet soul music takes in the songs of Aretha Franklin, Earth Wind And Fire, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Chaka Khan, Tina Turner, The Pointer Sisters, Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston, Ben E King, Barry White and plenty more. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Foy Vance: Showing Signs Of Life at York Barbican

Blues gig of the week: Foy Vance, Signs Of Life Tour, York Barbican, Wednesday, 7.50pm

NORTHERN Irish singer-songwriter Foy Vance plays York Barbican in support of his fourth studio album, Signs Of Life, in a gig rearranged from March 25.

The redemptive record finds Bangor-born Vance – husband, father, hipster, sinner, drinker – belatedly coming to terms with his demons in his late-40s.

The storytelling bluesman, survivor, rocker and folk hero calls Signs Of Life “an album of dawn after darkness, hope after despair, engagement after isolation, uplift after lockdown”. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

One for the Family Album: Writer-director Alan Ayckbourn, left, Jude Deeno and David Lomond in rehearsal for his 87th play, premiering at the SJT. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

Play launch of the week: Alan Ayckbourn’s Family Album, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Friday to October 1

FAMILY Album, his 87th full-length play, is written, directed and sound designed by Alan Ayckbourn for its world premiere in The Round at the SJT.

Ayckbourn tenderly chronicles the trials, tribulations and temptations of three generations of one family across 70 years in the same home. 

Join RAF veteran John and housewife Peggy as they proudly move into the first home they can really call their own in 1952; daughter Sandra, frantically negotiating the challenges of a ten-year-old’s birthday party without her AWOL husband in 1992, and granddaughter Alison, finally escaping the house she has somewhat unwillingly inherited in 2022. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

The poster for In The Name Of Love, The Diana Ross Story tribute show

Tribute show of the week: In The Name Of Love, The Diana Ross Story, York Barbican, September 3, 7.30pm

IN the wake of Diana Ross headlining the Platinum Party At The Palace at 78 and playing Leeds First Direct Arena in June with a 14-piece band, here comes the tribute show.

In a chronological set list, Cheri Jade takes on The Supremes’ catalogue before Tameka Jackson handles the solo Diana years.

Here come Where Did Our Love Go, Baby Love, Stop In The Name Of Love, Reflections, You Keep Me Hanging On, You Can’t Hurry Love, Stoned Love, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Touch Me In The Morning, Upside Down, My Old Piano, I’m Coming Out and Chain Reaction. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Meet the Bolshee trio, the York company behind female-driven creative projects

Driving forces: Bolshee’s Lizzy Whynes, left, at the wheel, Megan Bailey, back seat, and Paula Clark, co-driver

BOLSHEE, the York company for creative projects set up by theatre practitioners Paula Clark, Megan Bailey and Lizzy Whynes, will be performing at Green Shoots tonight and tomorrow at York Theatre Royal.

One of 20 new commissions from York professional artists, Boss B***h will “explore the infamous statement made by influencer Molly-Mae Hague and ‘celebrity nightmare’ Kim Kardashian that we all have the same 24 hours in a day as Beyonce”.

“Let’s challenge the toxic boss bitch narrative,” proclaim the Bolshee trio, who will deliver five minutes of female voices, beats and moves.

“We set up Bolshee creative projects in lockdown after I decided to leave my job at York Theatre Royal,” says Paula, who is now a freelance creative director and artist and runs Paula Clark Co-Creative Projects.  

“There were loads of reasons why I left, but it’s important to say I’m still good friends with YTR! It’s where Megan, Lizzy and I all met and we still have a lot of love for it.

“But it was time for me to move on. Over that decade, I’d been a youth theatre practitioner, director (when cover for maternity leave), creative skills promoter, overseeing the TakeOver festival, and outreach director.

“There’s always a glass ceiling,” says Paula Clark after 20 years of working in theatre

“I found I enjoyed my job in the pandemic because I could do more than I would normally do, but there’s always a glass ceiling, and that’s not unique to York Theatre Royal. It’s across arts buildings.”

Coincidentally, Megan had left her job and so had Lizzy. “It wasn’t connected, but there were lots of similarities about our negative experiences of the arts industry,” says Paula.

“We’ve all experienced profound sexism in the arts industry and I’ve struggled, being from a working-class background, to make headway, be heard and create change in the way I wanted.

“It feels like there’s a holding on to power by people who are worried about a disruption of power, a sharing of power across the industry and all the talk of wider representation. People are frightened, so they’re holding on to the old way. It’s not a level playing field.”

Paula recalls “starting to feel like a tick box”. “I was tired of being called ‘authentic’ by patronising old men on boards. I wanted to be in charge of my own creative direction, and I want to do more for social justice,” she says.

Cue the arrival of Bolshee. “I have over 20 years’ experience in theatre and community arts and my dream is that Bolshee creates projects that promote social justice, lift people up and include everyone in a creative industry environment that still doesn’t value women enough,” says Paula.

“We have something to offer that isn’t quite like anyone else in York because we are not afraid to be Bolshie,” says Paula Clark, left, of her Bolshee partnership with Megan Bailey, centre, and Lizzy Whynes. Picture: Matthew Jopling

“It’s important that as a company we particularly support and encourage working-class women and girls. That’s why I’ve teamed up with Megan and Lizzy, both extremely talented young women. We feel like we have something to offer that isn’t quite like anyone else in York because we are not afraid to be Bolshie!”

The name Bolshee is a reclaiming of that word, ‘bolshie’ (definition: deliberately combative or uncooperative). “Assertive women have always been told they are Bolshie. We want to cast off the negative connotations. We’re ready and proud to be Bolshee women!” says Paula.

Megan is delighted that Bolshee is up and running. “It’s been a long while in the pipeline,” she says. “In those two years during lockdown, we’d sit on Zoom thinking about what we could do to be our own bosses on projects.

“There’s an elite that doesn’t want to let younger, bolshie women challenge what they’ve been doing, sitting in their leadership roles for a long time, but we want to find our space.”

Lizzy points out how the working environment in the arts world has changed. “Now you’re only employed for six months, a year at most,” she says. “All the jobs I went for were for three months; all short-term contracts.”

Paula rejoins: “People are holding on to the idea of arts buildings, but I don’t want to work in that structure. There’s all sorts of forms that can be brought together to involve people in culture. What’s brought the three of us together is that we’re more than just theatre makers.”

“We want to find our space,” says Megan Bailey

Megan, for example, has a background in set design from her theatre degree days at the University of York and has worked on websites too. “I also did an MA at Leeds University in culture, creativity and entrepreneurship because you need to have business acumen to run theatre and arts organisations.

“I definitely feel that can be lacking, particularly in human resources structures, where these things can get forgotten but it’s important to make your workforce happy, and important to learn how to make the arts sustainable financially.

“Because I worked for so long in buildings, doing funding applications and strategies, I’m very aware of what’s needed.”

Paula, 40, feels lucky to be working in tandem with Lizzy, 29, and Megan, 25. “The landscape has changed, and younger people have their finger on the pulse, understanding how things work,” she says. “It’s harder for older people in theatre to understand that, but we have the right mixture: Lizzy and Megan with their finger on the pulse and me with 20 years of experience.

“We don’t need a building, but we have a good understanding of theatre in York and we know that partnerships are a good way to work.”

Lizzy adds: “We want to be collaborative, rather than competitive, bringing some fun, bringing some culture, through the art we make.” Just as she did when she was artistic director of York Theatre Royal’s TakeOver Festival at the National Railway Museum in October 2015, picking up two awards to boot.

“We want to be collaborative, rather than competitive, bringing some fun, bringing some culture, through the art we make,” says Bolshee’s Lizzy Whynes, left

Bolshee may have taken root when all three left their jobs at the time, “but I think it’s important to say, we all love the jobs we’re now doing,” says Paula. “I’ve worked on the York St John University Prison Partnership Project and also work with Stockton ARC as a freelance, as well as with the Listening Project for Pilot Theatre.”

Theatre maker, dance artist, director, movement director and facilitator Lizzy works for CAST’s youth theatre in Doncaster and as a freelance for York Dance Space and Phoenix Dance Theatre’s youth academy in Leeds.

Megan is a creative producer at Kaizen Arts Agency in York, working on York Design Week, the Drawsome Festival and the ArtBank at Spark:York. At the time of this interview, she had just been offered the job of community and participatory knowledge exchange co-ordinator at Leeds Arts University.

“One of the reasons why we think this makes us a little different is that we celebrate all the work we do in different areas,” says Paula. “That keeps us relevant and keeps us connected with different organisations, but Bolshee is what connects us all.”

Megan adds: “Bolshee empowers us in what we want to do and what we want to make, and I’m very much a believer that anyone can be an artist, from a child to someone who has retired and wants a new hobby. We want people to find their voices.

“It’s about wanting to celebrate who we are, what we do, in the city we love, with all the people we get to work with.”

“Because we have a diverse skill set, we can be varied in what we do,” says Lizzy Whynes

A feeling of wellbeing should be encouraged too, says Megan: “We believe in being kind to ourselves. That’s important at a time when we need to respect ourselves, when we all do jobs where contracts are short.”

Paula adds: “Our thing about championing women and girls is that it’s our time. I’m 40, and after all that grafting, I want to have some of the joy with people I like, sharing our imaginations.

“I was a young mum at 19, experienced childhood hardships on more than one occasion, things that make this artistic path a difficult one to choose, and because of that, I will work the hardest, stay the longest, always trying to prove to myself that if I work the hardest, I could be the next manager, working in that hierarchy…

“…but now I believe success is being comfortable with yourself, owning who you are and helping other people in similar circumstances see their opportunities come to fruition.”

Bolshee have already held a free workshop at Young Thugs Studios at the Drawsome Festival in York in May and have funding applications in place with universities, rather than Arts Council England, for future projects.

“Our work will be diverse,” says Lizzy. “It could be a Bolshee open-mic night; a participatory workshop in a school hall or a neighbourhood pop-up installation. You might find us working in a school with at-risk girls. Because we have a diverse skill set, we can be varied in what we do.”

Tuned in: Bolshee trio Paula Clark, left, Lizzy Whynes and Megan Bailey at Dance Dance Dance, A Damn Big Dance Party at At The Mill, Stillington Mill, near York

Paula adds: “We want everyone to feel they belong because everyone is invited. It’s not about stepping into a cultural place; it’s about joining in.”

Megan concurs: “It’s about that connection with people; making work in that space, not putting work on in conventional arts spaces, which won’t be our ambition.”

Paula rejoins: “We want people to feel safe. We want to talk about what matters to women; urgent things that need addressing.”

Lizzy loves taking projects out of theatres, whether in her TakeOver days at the National Railway Museum, or doing community work with young people in informal settings for Harrogate Theatre, or now for a CAST youth theatre production at Danum Gallery, Library and Museum and a York Dance Space project at York Art Gallery. “I have loads of experience of site-specific work and I’m all about getting people together to do amazing things,” she says.

Exit “Bolshie” women; here comes Bolshee. “Being called ‘bolshie’ implies women don’t have a right to be assertive,” says Megan. “But it’s our prerogative to be how we want to be, and we want to be Bolshee,” says Paula.

Bolshee perform Boss B***h at Green Shoots, York Theatre, Royal, tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

The logo for York creative projects trio Bolshee

More Things To Do in York and beyond as Pinter’s pause and effect comes home to roost. List No 82, courtesy of The Press

Keith Allen: Homing in on The Homecoming arriving at York Theatre Royal on Monday

AVOIDING the “devastation of stag and hen parties” (copyright Rachael Maskell, York Central MP), Charles Hutchinson finds reasons aplenty to venture out.

Play of the week: Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, York Theatre Royal, Monday to Saturday, 7.30pm; Thursday, 2pm; Saturday, 2.30pm

GAVIN & Stacey star Mathew Horne and Keith Allen star in Jamie Glover’s new production of The Homecoming, Harold Pinter’s bleakly funny 1965 exploration of family and relationships.

University professor Teddy returns to his North London childhood home from America, accompanied by his wife Ruth, to find his father, uncle and brothers still living there. As life becomes a barely camouflaged battle for power and sexual supremacy, who will emerge victorious: poised and elegant Ruth or her husband’s dysfunctional family? Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Tom Figgins: Introducing new material tonight at Stillington Mill. Picture: Daniel Harris

Outdoor gig of the week: Tom Figgins, Music At The Mill, Stillington Mill, near York, tonight, 7.30pm

SINGER-SONGWRITER Tom Figgins returns to At The Mill’s garden stage after last summer’s sold-out performance, with the promise of new material.

Figgins’ vocal range, guitar playing and compelling lyrics caught the ear of presenter Chris Evans, who hosted him on his BBC Radio 2 show and invited him to play the main stage at CarFest North & South.

His instrumental works have been heard on Countryfile and Panorama and he is the composer for the Benlunar podcast, now on its fourth series. Box office:  tickettailor.com/events/atthemill.

Martin Roscoe: Guest piano soloist for York Guildhall Orchestra

Classical concert of the week: York Guildhall Orchestra, York Barbican, tonight, 7.30pm

YORK Guildhall Orchestra’s final concert of their 2021-2022 season welcomes the long-awaited return of pianist Martin Roscoe, originally booked to perform in May 2020.

Retained from that Covid-cancelled programme are Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite, with its combination of cheeky jazz tunes and the Russian’s mastery of orchestration, and Dohnanyi’s mock-serious take on a children’s nursery rhyme. Leeds Festival Chorus join in for Elgar’s Music Makers. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Go West and Paul Young: Eighties’ revival at York Barbican

Eighties’ nostalgia of the week: Go West & Paul Young, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm

PETER Cox and Richard Drummer’s slick duo, Go West, and Luton soul singer Paul Young go north this weekend for a double bill of Eighties’ pop.

Expect We Close Our Eyes, Call Me, Don’t Look Down and King Of Wishful Thinking, from the Pretty Woman soundtrack, in Go West’s set. The chart-topping Wherever I Lay My Hat, Love Of The Common People, Everytime You Go Away and Everything Must Change will be on Young’s To Do list. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Paul Merton’s Impro Chums: Wanting a word with you at the Grand Opera House

Fun and word games of the week: Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, Grand Opera House, York, Monday, 8pm

HAVE I Got News For You regular and Comedy Store Players co-founder Paul Merton teams up with fellow seasoned improvisers Richard Vranch, Suki Webster and Mike McShane and accompanist Kirsty Newton to flex their off-the-cuff comedy muscles on their first antics roadshow travels since August 2019.

“What audiences like about what we do is that we haven’t lost our sense of play, our sense of fun, the sort of thing that gets knocked out of you because you have to get married or get a mortgage or find a job,” says Merton. Let the fun and games sparked by audience suggestions begin. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Hayley Ria Christian: All aboard her Midnight Train To Georgia for a night of Gladys Knight hits

Homage, not tribute show, of the week: Hayley Ria Christian in Midnight Train To Georgia, A Celebration Of Gladys Knight, Grand Opera House, York, Friday, 7.30pm

HAYLEY Ria Christian’s show is “definitely not a tribute, but a faithful portrayal that truly pays homage to the voice of a generation, the one and only Empress of Soul, Ms Gladys Knight”.

In the late Sixties and Seventies, Gladys Knight & The Pips enjoyed such hits as Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me, Help Me Make It Through The Night, Try To Remember/The Way We Were, Baby, Don’t Change Your Mind and her signature song Midnight Train To Georgia. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Milton Jones: International spy turned comedian in Milton: Impossible

Comedy gig of the week: Milton Jones in Milton: Impossible, Harrogate Theatre, May 21, 7.30pm

ONE man. One Mission. Is it possible? “No, not really,” says Kew comedian Milton Jones, the shock-haired matador of the piercing one-liner, as he reveals the truth behind having once been an international spy, but then being given a somewhat disappointing new identity that forced him to appear on Mock The Week.

“But this is also a love story with a twist, or at least a really bad sprain,” says Jones. “Is it all just gloriously daft nonsense, or is there a deeper meaning?”  Find out next weekend. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk.

Grace Petrie: Carrying on the fight for a better tomorrow when every day you are told you have lost already

Protest gig of the week: Grace Petrie, The Crescent, York, May 23, 7.30pm

DIY protest singer Grace Petrie emerged from lockdown with Connectivity, her 2021 polemical folk album that reflects on what humanity means in a world struggling against division and destruction.

Petrie’s honest songs seek a way to carry on the fight for a better tomorrow when every day you are told you have lost already. Bad news: her York gig has sold out. Good news: she will be playing Social, Hull, too on May 18 at 8pm (box office, seetickets.com). On both nights, she will be accompanied by long-time collaborator, singer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Moss.

Taking trouble at At The Mill to build a community for the arts and the people

Daniel Kitson: Testing out new material in six Outside performances at Stillington Mill

SUMMER At The Mill is returning for a second season of creative, culinary and community events in the gardens of Stillington Mill, Stillington, near York.

“After the spectacular, gorgeous, fun, exciting, beautiful and heart-warming time we had throughout our inaugural summer last year – what a ride! – we’re over the moon to present the mixed bag of goodies that is Summer At The Mill 2.0,” says programmer, theatre director, writer and performer Alexander Flanagan-Wright.

“Until September 4, we’ll be hosting a load of wonderful events all about community, art, food and flipping good times. We’ll have a pop-up café and bar, community gatherings, theatre, music, comedy, supper clubs and special events.”

The “Wright stuff” is the work of outdoor theatre co-builder Alex, sister Abbigail Ollive (Saturday café cuisine queen and supper club supremo) and their retired headteacher parents Maggi and Paul Wright, together with partners Megan Drury and Paul Smith. That “stuff” also takes in weddings, events and shepherd’s hut accommodation: truly a village cottage industry, you could say, albeit somewhat larger than a cottage.

A Supper Club gathering at At The Mill

“We just had a blast summer,” says Alex. “It was kind of by accident. It felt very serendipitous or of its moment, saying, ‘here is a way we can gather safely, our local community and the arts community, post-lockdown’.

“So this summer is a chance to see if people still care, and so far the evidence is that they do, with the return of the busy Saturday café, the Crafty Tales show [The Case Of The Missing Bunny] that sold out, our Pizza & Cocktail Night and the Dance Dance Dance Big Bank Holiday Silent Disco.

“Last year felt like a huge rush of adrenaline, and then you think, ‘OK, where do we go forward this year for beautiful experiences together?’. Already this year, we’re meeting new people coming to the events and the café.”

Summing up the essence of At The Mill, Alex says: “We believe a feeling of community is so important when people want to have an evening out. Whereas commercial theatre can feel merely transactional, with us, the means is the art, but the end result is a sense of community, and that feels the right way round.

Alexander Flanagan-Wright: At the heart of At The Mill

“On top of that, eating outside together, drinking outside together, is a lovely thing to do, and we have the space and setting to do that.”

Where once Stillington Mill’s 18th century mill would produce flour, now the At The Mill combines food with food for thought, new recipes at the Supper Club, new works on stage. “We’re very clear with the artists about that. Everyone we’ve asked, we’ve said, ‘we think you’re cool, we like your work, do you want to come and play with us?’,” says Alex.

“What we have in abundance is space and time, imagination and a community. What we don’t have in abundance is cash, but we find most performers end up walking away with cash in their pocket.

“We don’t say to them, bring a particular show. What you get instead is artists testing out new material, so it becomes a genuine relationship with the audience built around nurturing new work. We’re seeking an equal balance between the two communities, where they care about each other, and if we do our part well in bringing them together, then they will meet in a beautiful way, and hopefully that process is more valuable, than, say, a Q&A session in a theatre.”

The Saturday cafe at At The Mill, baked by Abbigail Ollive

Alex continues: “Hopefully too, we’re going to be able to sustain that culture of being able to welcome artists for whatever they want to try out, and of audiences being continually excited about seeing new work at such an early stage, performed by people they wouldn’t expect to be passing through their village.”

A case in point is Edinburgh Fringe favourite Daniel Kitson, the Denby Dale stand-up comedian, who asked to take part in the Theatre At The Mill programme after he was tipped off by storytelling performer Sam Freeman.

“Daniel got in touch to say hello, could he come and do a show? I don’t know what the show is about; I don’t know if Daniel does yet, but that feels a pretty exciting thing to be going on, and testament to our aim for brilliant performers to test out their work to our community,” says Alex.

“I’m also aware that there will be those who don’t know who Daniel Kitson is and would just see him as someone standing up in a garden! But it feels beautiful to know that his shows in May will be his first in two years and it’s great to be part of that work-in-progress experience.”

Chris Stokes: Storytelling comedy in Lockdown Detective at At The Mill on May 26

Clearly, plenty of people know exactly who Daniel Kitson is: his 8pm performances of Outside on May 23 to 25 have sold out already and his June 8 to 10 run looks close to following suit.

What’s in store from Kitson? Here’s the show blurb: “Daniel hasn’t been on stage for over two years. And, to be entirely honest, he’s not really missed it. It is, however, his actual job and everyone’s gone back to work now. So, he’s picked out a comfy pen, bought a new notebook and booked himself a summer’s worth of outdoor shows to find out whether he can still do his job and what, if anything, he has to say to large groups of people he doesn’t know.”

Given his performing hiatus and lack of practice, Kitson predicts the shows are “likely to be relatively rickety affairs”. “But Daniel’s already written the question ‘Do worms feel fear?’ in his new notebook, so we should be okay,” the blurb adds. “Also, if it gets boring – you can just use the time to look at the sky and feel small.”

At The Mill’s role in nurturing new work ties in with Alex’s own creativity as a writer and director, whether directing The Flanagan Collective, heading off to Australia with songwriter/musician/performer/magician Phil Grainger or spending last September to December in New York, making the immersive piece Tammany Hall for the Soho Playhouse.

Gary Stewart: Hosting regular Folk Club nights at At The Mill

“We meet loads of brilliant people when touring our work, and it’s great that they want to come here to test new pieces,” he says. “We’re delighted that people will hone shows here just before the Edinburgh Fringe kicks off, or will do shows here that aren’t going to Edinburgh but fit that vibe.”

Picking out upcoming highlights, singer-songwriterTom Figgins follows up last summer’s gig – his first in four years – with a return tomorrow; Chris Stokes’s storytelling comedy show, Lockdown Detective, is booked in for May 26, and Scottish musician Gary Stewart, now resident in nearby Easingwold, will host his regular Folk Club night on May 27, June 24 and July 8.

“For his first night, it’ll be just Gary and his guitar, performing Paul Simon songs solo rather than with his Graceland band. It’s lovely for us that a local musician, who’s internationally renowned, came here and said, ‘I want to play here every month and bring acts here regularly’,” says Alex.

At The Mill’s ERII Platinum Jubilee celebrations will take in Jubilee Jubilee, A Very Jubilant Cabaret, on June 3 and A Right Royal Knees Up, with live music and pizza, on June 5.

Maddie Morris: 2019 BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award winner, playing a Music At The Mill gig for the first time

Leeds folk duo Maddie Morris & Lilian Grace will make their At The Mill debut on June 12, performing together as Death And The Daughter and playing solo works too. Their 2022 project, The Sticky Monsters, is influenced by the artwork of Swedish artist John Kenn and their compositions deal with childhood, poverty and more general reflections on culture and the idea of fear.

“I saw Maddie, the 2019 BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award winner, at The Courthouse, Rural Arts’ home in Thirsk, and she’s an absolute folk musician, studying folk music at Leeds University and looking at contemporary politics through the lens of the folk tradition,” says Alex.

Gemma Curry’s York company Hoglets Theatre will perform the children’s show The Sleep Pirates on June 19 (10am to 1pm); York spoken-word collective Say Owt will host a poetry-writing workshop on June 25 (5pm), followed by an evening showcase (7.30pm); Heady Conduct Theatre will combine physical storytelling with live music to tell the Greek myth of Tiresias on July 10, and Paperback Theatre will stage their charming account of roguish Toad’s misadventures, The Wind In The Willows, on July 30 at 2.30pm and 7pm.

Alex himself has a couple of contributions to the season: Monster, a work-in-progress new story, on June 16 and 17, and The Gods The Gods The Gods, the Wright and Grainger show whose Australian premiere tour was curtailed by the pandemic, now making its British debut on July 23, 24, 27 and 28 at 8.45pm.

Gemma Curry in Hoglets Theatre’s The Sleep Pirates

“In its full iteration, it’s a big, heavy show, but this will be a lighter version before we take it to the Edinburgh Fringe,” says Alex of the final work in Wright & Grainger’s trilogy of myths, after Orpheus and Eurydice, both sell-outs at last summer’s At The Mill season.

The Gods The Gods The Gods, with its four stories and 14 compositions, corals big beats, soaring melodies and heart-stopping spoken words as it “calls us to the crossroads where mythology meets real life”.

“The Gods are gathering and you’re invited,” says Alex. “We’re excited about testing it out here, to wrangle up the story, to see that all the text and music works, and then add lights for Edinburgh, where we’ll be doing it in the Assembly’s 200-seat spiegeltent.”

The Mill’s summer programme will continue to add new events, with full details, including tickets, at athemill.org. Shows start at 7.30pm unless stated otherwise.

The Flanagan Collective’s Alexander Flanagan-Wright and Gobbledigook Theatre’s Phil Grainger staging Orpheus and Eurydice at At The Mill’s socially-distanced summer season in 2021. Picture: Charlotte Graham

Heady Conduct view the world differently to rejuvenate Greek myths of blind prophet Tiresias in At The Mill show at Stillington

Simon Rodda in Heady Conduct Theatre’s Tiresias

HEADY Conduct Theatre conclude the short tour of Tiresias, their storytelling show of rejuvenated Greek myths and legends, in July 10’s At The Mill performance at Stillington, near York.

“Tiresias is the 600-year-old blind prophet who pops up in a lot of Greek myths but hasn’t a story of their own,” says co-artistic director Beck Rogers. “We were fascinated by them; a blind prophet, who walks with royalty and rejects, contends with some of the heavyweights of the ancient Greek world and lives as both a man and woman.

“At the heart of our play we ask the audience, ‘if you could choose to know your future, would you want to?’.” 

Last performed pre-pandemic on the other side of the world in New Zealand, the show is told by one actor, co-artistic director Simon Rodda, and one musician, Rachel Barnes, who have played Brighton, Penzance, Suffolk and St Albans before their tour finale in North Yorkshire.

Rodda plays Tiresias, the blind prophet given the gift to predict Zeus’s future. In 600 years of life, Tiresias has incredible encounters with royalty, rejects, heroes, murderers and a snake-wrangling baby, as well as becoming the first person to be transformed from a man into a woman.

Barnes accompanies his performance with singing and a live score played on guitar and cello in Heady Conduct’s intoxicating theatre piece about the extraordinary ability of humans to face adversity, often with mischief, humour and acts of rebellion.

Rodda says: “I can’t wait to perform these ancient stories in this beautiful, hand-crafted hidden gem of a theatre venue. The stories surrounding Tiresias’s life offer a unique and unrivalled perspective.

“Beck and I are neurodiverse and are advocates for those who view the world differently. To enhance the storytelling experience for the audience, we use language, live music, physical movement and sensory atmospheres to tell Tiresias’s tale.”

Tickets are on sale at: atthemill.org/summer-at-the-mill-calendar/tiresias/10-07-22

REVIEW: Clive, alias Phil Grainger, Music At The Mill, Stillington Mill, near York, July 2

“The second cut is always the deepest when Phil Grainger sings”. Picture: Fair Dinkum Film

BEST buddies since Easingwold schooldays, Alexander Flanagan Wright and Phil Grainger reeled off a series of At The Mill double bills back home in North Yorkshire in the first summer of Covid after their Australian tour was aborted.

New York and Edinburgh Fringe plans were scuppered too, after old York called them home, and more than a year later, they are still here, making magical theatre, song and spoken word.

Oh, and building an outdoor theatre too on Stillington Mill’s disused tennis court, with Alex’s father, Paul, and mother, Maggi, playing a prominent role too in establishing the new and impressively diverse At The Mill enterprise (more of which in a CharlesHutchPress interview with Alex later this week).

Last August’s set finished with Phil announcing that wood had arrived for Alex and Phil to start work on converting that summer’s marquee into an outdoor theatre. “If they build it, we will come,” vowed CharlesHutchPress, and sure enough, this summer finds that theatre in full sail for concerts and theatre shows.

For one night, Phil and Alex teamed up with two friends in Foraged & Forged, a showcase of new material written specially for the occasion. Friday night put polymath Phil in the solo spotlight, in the guise of Clive, and while the pre-show rain enforced a late decision to abandon the plan to do one set from one stage, and a second from another, the format of an acoustic first half and electric second set was retained.

“It’s been a bit of an hour,” he said, putting on his bandana in readiness for adopting Clive mode. “It’s ‘look at how good this would have been. Now is what you’re getting’!”

What we were getting was the solo music project of singer, songwriter, musician, sound engineer, magician, actor, Gobbledigook Theatre director and event promoter Phil Grainger. Why Clive, you ask? Phil is not a name for a singer, he reasons. Er, Phil Collins? “Exactly,” said Easingwold Phil in a typical shard of attractively blunt Yorkshire wit that peppered his performance. “Clive is the name for the thing that’s me doing this.”

Phil Grainger, in Clive mode, performing Under The Sea from the Disney songbook. Picture: Fair Dinkum Film

Clive is his middle name, and his father’s name too, so Clive it is, and tonight the Stillington Mill’s a-Clive with the sound of music. Beautiful, poignant, happy, sad, funny, heart-felt music, sung in one of those surging soul voices where the second cut is always the deepest when Phil, sorry, Clive, lets rip. One of these voices where you ache waiting for those transcendent moments.

Clive would divide his sets, he said, between songs he had been writing for a long time, others that were new, and some so new they were only half written. He would stop them at the point they were half-finished, with no pretence of finesse.

You cannot help but warm to such candour, or indeed to his off-the-cuff sporadic dips into a newly acquired Disney songbook. Or his seemingly rudimentary, yet deeply affecting guitar, that recalls Billy Bragg’s less-is-more playing.

Clive, his dad, was there, and so was his mum. “I didn’t know they were coming,” said Phil, promptly deciding to change his “emotional set-ender” to his “emotional opening number”. “This song is about my mum. It’s called My Mother,” he said, whereupon mum raised a knowing eyebrow.

Soon we learned she does better Sunday roasts than a Toby Carvery, she effing hates swearing and is no fan of tattoos either. Under Alex’s encouragement, Phil’s lyrics are coming on apace, matching his gift for melody, and built around a winning line in couplets and a desire to take the advice of The Streets’ Mike Skinner to always end with a memorable pay-off.

His hymn of praise to the lure of York’s welcoming arms, whenever he is away, is awaiting both completion and confirmation of its title – “it might be Angel Of The North,” he speculated – but already it is completely moving.

Alex and Phil had vowed never to return to the pieces they wrote in a day to perform to an audience that night, but promises are made to be broken, and so out came Home, the one with 14 houseplants acquired by Phil’s girlfriend Angie for their cottage nest and Alex’s poetic “tatty clattering” as a home is found inside a house. “With you I’m two-up; I was one down on my own,” finished Phil. Mike Skinner would surely approve.

Phil Grainger and Alexander Flanagan Wright last August, when they mounted a week of The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre shows at At The Mill, by the 18th century corn mill. Picture: Charlotte Graham

After a pleasingly erratic stroll through Disney’s Can You Feel The Love Tonight, the acoustic set concluded with two of Phil’s finest, Little Red and Colour Me In: one pulling at the frayed edges of a disintegrating relationship; the other, from Phil and Alex’s show Orpheus, a ballad that would fit perfectly on Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour on BBC 6Music. “I’m drunk on colour and I’m drunk on soul,” Phil sang, and how we drunk it in.

Electricity was thankfully restricted to Phil’s switch of guitar and not lightning for the second half, introduced by storyteller Phil with his recollection of trying to pay the £600 required for the instrument in £2 coins gathered over time ten years ago. Bank the coins, he was told, but eventually the guitar was his.

A decade later, he finally chanced his arm at a guitar solo in Safe Travels, Hurry Back, words by Alex, title and soar-away tune by Phil. The solo? Grainger’s transition into Jimi Hendrix is on hold.

Best title of the night award went to Hallelujah For The Hell Of It, best couplet to: “I’m hard to read like a broadsheet; you’re hard to keep like the off-beat”.

That made it back from Australia in February 2020, as did another Alex and Phil composition, If Destroyed Still True, written late into the night after their last supper before the urgent flight home, this one composed with Aussie friend Jamie on laptop.

“Just to be clear, we’ve never done this one live, since we wrote it in an hour that night,” said Alex, duly doing his Kae Tempest-style spoken words live, interwoven with Phil’s yearning vocal part and Jamie’s infectious recorded instrumental refrain.

One-man band and his bandana: Phil Grainger performing his Clive show. Picture: Fair Dinkum Film

It could have gone wrong at any moment, instead it went beautifully right, and it is in such unpredictable, knife-edge moments that Summer At The Mill is creating its distinctive alchemy.

Do check out the Aussie video at: facebook.com/orpheuseurydicethegods/videos/2254587891515753; the chorus will be your new earworm within minutes.

The Little Mermaid’s Under The Sea survived its Big Phil DIY – Does It Yorkshire – reinvention, and then it was time for Phil to revisit the “wise and gorgeous” recording of Easingwold Players’ stalwart Bronwyn Jennison, who passed away last year.

It had been a highlight of last summer’s Clive show and now, reactivated for the first time since then, Bronwyn’s rendition of Alex’s words had even greater weight after the year we’ve all had. “You carry on, wild child, and I’ll carry on,” said Bronwen through the ether, and Phil and Alex will indeed carry that flame.

Phil’s finale was a humdinger: an audience hum-along to the anything but humdrum Hum, “another song we said we’d never do again, but it’s too special not to!”.

Last August’s review ended with a call to Phil to record an album, and indeed the Half Man Half Bull download has since emerged, but that is a team creation, not the full Phil, and so, Phil, even more than last year, please head into the recording studio. Your mother, for one, would be chuffed.

“I’m so glad I could be here to sing to the benches I made,” he signed off. So we were, so we were.

Review by Charles Hutchinson

Alex Wright, Phil Grainger and Oliver Tilney combine on Half Man//Half Bull ancient myth songs to be experienced at home

Phil Grainger in the studio, recording Half Man//Half Bull

THE Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre had to cut short their 18-month international tour last March, the pandemic forcing Alexander Flanagan Wright and Phil Grainger to fly back to North Yorkshire from Australasia.

A year later, however, a brand-new work, created in tandem with fellow theatre-maker Oliver Tilney, will drop today in the global digital form of Half Man//Half Bull, a narrative-led double album of two ancient myths and 20 original songs to be “experienced at home”.

Fusing spoken word, electronica and soul, Half Man//Half Bull retells the interlinking myths of Theseus & The Minotaur and Daedalus & Icarus, presented in a listening pack designed by Lydia Denno that will be sent out in the post.

Over the past few years, Alex and Phil, friends since Easingwold schooldays, have taken their international award-winning shows Orpheus, Eurydice and The Gods The Gods The Gods to packed rooms across Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Bali and New York, performing an enthralling, electrifying brand of spoken word and live music.

Artwork for Half Man//Half Bull

Once back home, they teamed up with long-time collaborator Oliver Tilney – he played Jay Gatsby in Wright’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby for the Guild Of Misrule at 41 Monkgate, York, in 2016 – to create Half Man//Half Bull.

“From the get-go, we wanted to make a new piece of work that wasn’t contingent on being performed live,” says Oliver, who first brought the idea to Alex and Phil last June. “We didn’t want a watered-down version of something to give to audiences; we wanted to create a new piece of work in its correct form. For us, that form is a double narrative-led album.”

The trio have partnered up with 15 organisations to bring the idea to life, among them the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Theatr Clwyd, Leeds company Slung Low, Rural Arts, Thirsk, and The Barn Theatre, their involvement affirming the appetite for this type of work. 

Alex says: “We started talking with our brilliant pals at Streatham Space Project, where we managed to bring a socially distanced version of Eurydice in September. It quickly became clear there would be an appetite for a theatre, or an organisation, to be able to deliver content to their audience while people couldn’t gather in a more traditional setting.”

Alex Wright at a recording session for Half Man//Half Bull

An Arts Council Project Grant allowed the team to grow: the trio have collaborated with producers, designers and host of musicians to realise this project, alongside the family of theatres, venues and partner organisations.

After years of touring, lockdown has provided an opportunity to create and develop, says Phil. “Alex and I have been writing and touring shows for a while, with an ambition to grow our sound. This felt like a great opportunity to work with more people, collaborate with more artists and, crucially, create some work for as many freelancers as we could afford,” he explains.

That team includes Aminita Francis, from BAC BeatBox Collective; Zimbabwean-born musician Tendaii Sitima; designer Lydia Denno and project producer Charlotte Bath. “We were also able to spend a lot of time at Crooked Room studios working with Isaac McInnis, which really helped grow the sound,” says Phil. “It’s crucial that as this is an audio project, that it sounds flipping great.”

Billed as “an epic storytelling adventure for our time”, Half Man//Half Bull is designed expressly as an At-Home experience. “If you buy, you’ll get a physical pack through your door with artwork, listening instructions and an invitation to step back out into the real world,” says Alex.

For further information and to buy the albums, go to: HalfManHalfBull.com.

Half Man//Half Bull: A double narrative-led album to be experienced at home

The credits:

Created by Phil Grainger, Oliver Tilney and Alexander Wright.

Guest artists: Aminita Francis as Theseus; Tendaii Sitima as Daedalus.
Project producer: Charlie Bath; music producer, Isaac McInnis; designer, Lydia Denno. 


Recorded and mixed by Isaac McInnis at Crooked Room Studios; mastering by David Lawrie.

Additional music: Frances Bolley, Tom Figgins, Isaac McInnis, Emil Ryjoch and Gavin Whitworth.


Additional voices:  Angie Alle, Hille Auvenin, Joanna Bongowska, David Calvitto, Laura Darling, Megan Drury, Inês Sampaio Figueiredo, Peter Groom, Lucas Jones, James Lawrence, MJ Lee, Serena Manteghi, Iona McInnis, Marnie Silver and Jess Zilleson.

With thanks to: Angie Alle, Anikdote, Darren Lee Cole, James Dale, Megan Drury, Luke Langley, Helen Simpson, Michael Slater, Simon Victor and Paul & Maggi Wright.

Made with: At The Mill, Stillington; Birmingham Hippodrome; NEAT; November Club; Rural Arts, Slung Low; SoHo Playhouse; Stephen Joseph Theatre; Storyhouse; Streatham Space Project; The Barn Theatre; Theatr Clwyd; Theatre Deli; The Place and The Roses Theatre.

Oliver Tilney: First brought the idea for Half Man//Half Bull to Alex Wright and Phil Grainger last June