Beverley Cross – charleshutchpress

July 23, 2026July 24, 2026

REVIEW: Rowntree Players in Boeing Boeing, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, in the air tonight until Saturday ****

Lizzie Lawton’s Robert, left, and Max Palmer’s Bernard in vexed conversation with Val Debenedetti’s Italian air hostess Gabriella in Rowntree Players’ Boeing Boeing. Picture: Jamie McKeller

LEEDS Conservatoire musical theatre masters graduate and freelance theatre-maker Hannah Shaw is directing her second Rowntree Players production of 2026.

After her LGBTQ+ exploration of gay playwright Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people” The Importance Of Being Earnest in March, she now pilots Marc Camoletti’s high-flying French farce Boeing Boeing, cleared for take-off with five cast members – Bethan Olliver, Jorja Cartwright, Lizzie Lawton, Max Palmer and Rebecca Thomson – returning from her Wilde nights.

Newly on board is Val Debenedetti, who draws on her Italian heritage to play the hot-blooded Gabriella, one of three air hostesses engaged to Palmer’s philandering American architect Bernard.

Rebecca Thomson’s house maid Bertha, fielding yet another problematic phone call in Boeing Boeing. Picture: Jamie McKeller

Shaw introduces all three fiancées, along with Bernard, his gloriously blunt, long-suffering French housemaid, Thomson’s Berthe, and his long-lost friend, Lawton’s callow, gauche Robert, from Wisconsin, in a pre-show sequence in the style of TV credits (think Friends, for example), set to Jennifer Carney’s choreography of Max Barron’s Sixties sitcom theme pastiche.

This establishes both the characters’ individual style and the location, Bernard’s Parisian apartment, with its seven doors – or eight if you count the central double doors – in Camoletti’s 1960 setting, adapted in 1962 by Beverley Cross and Francis Evans. In front is a large sofa, with a leather chair to one side, a bean bag to the other, a drinks trolley, a spinning globe, bannisters by the doors and a regularly ringing phone.

In the tradition of farce, Camelotti’s smart, stylish comedy starts in a haven of calm, where Palmer’s self-satisfied Bernard is the cat with the full-fat cream, utilising the timetables dextrously to juggle his time with his airline fiancées, first Olliver’s apple-pie American Gloria, next Debenedetti’s tempestuous Gabriella, and lastly, Cartwright’s slightly frightening, no-nonsense German, Gretchen.

Jorja Cartwright’s German air hostess Gretchen: All in yellow, right down to her painted eye lids. Picture: Jamie McKeller

Each entry is designated by their airline colour – red, blue, yellow – lighting up a door, immediately followed by a sound ‘sting’ from Barron’s compositional tool box, keeping the audience one step ahead every time those signals are repeated.

Into the farcical mix is stirred the interruptive presence of Lawton’s Robert, who has not seen Bernard for more than 18 years and is determined to make up for lost time, never leaving the apartment, always interjecting with a suggestion and then playing his own cards with Cartwright’s Gretchen.

As in The Importance Of Being Earnest, Lawton (they/them) favours a physical form of comedy acting, constantly on the move and no less frenetic in their line delivery.

Lizzie Lawton’s jaunty, livewire Robert in Boeing Boeing. Picture: Jamie McKeller

It plays well against Palmer’s more laidback performance style, his calm-in-the-face-of-a-storm Bernard contrasting with the almost volcanic flow of suggestions and reactions from busy Lizzie’s Robert.

Shaw does not update the Sixties setting, but she has cut the backside-patting tropes, the women all the stronger for being empowered to be the decision makers, including Thomson’s ever-exasperated Berthe demanding an ever-rising pay increase.

Camelotti’s men are exposed as chancers, flippant and indeed weak, despite thinking they hold the upper hand, when in fact the women call the shots.

Bethan Olliver’s American air hostess Gloria: Bust-up incoming over her discovery of the discarded bras of another of brazen Bernard’s trio of fiancees. Picture: Jamie McKeller

Consequently, Camelotti’s French frolic retains its Parisian air, Sixties chic and outrageously clichéd national stereotypes – from the jet-set age when air hostesses were the height of glamour – but the humour is liberated from its period chains and now feels more truthful.

Shaw’s cast delights in the ever-quickening chaos of comedy that is frothy and frivolous, but deftly delivered, choreographed slickly with the doors in constant use. The performances are fun, the men, flighty; the air hostesses, saucy but sassy; Berthe, the Shakespeare’s Fool of the piece.

Rowntree Players present Boeing Boeing, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight until Saturday, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Hannah Shaw directing a rehearsal for Boeing Boeing. From December 5 to 12, she will step the other side of the footlights to play the villainous Maleficent in Rowntree Players’ pantomime Sleeping Beauty, directed and co-written by Howard Ella. Tickets will go on general sale from August 8 on 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

July 22, 2026July 22, 2026

Hannah Shaw’s empowering staging of French farce Boeing Boeing is ready for take off at Joseph Rowntree Theatre

Bumpy landing ahead: Bethan Olliver’s Gloria, left, Val Debenedetti’s Gabriella and Jorja Cartwright’s Gretchen, the three flight attendants in Rowntree Players’ Boeing Boeing

LEEDS Conservatoire musical theatre masters graduate Hannah Shaw is directing her second production of 2026 for Rowntree Players.

After her LGBTQ+ exploration of gay playwright Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people” The Importance Of Being Earnest in March, she returns to the Joseph Rowntree Theatre to stage Marc Camoletti’s high-flying French farce Boeing Boeing, cleared for take-off on Thursday.

Presented in Beverley Cross and Francis Evans’s 1962 translation, Boeing Boeing is set in 1960 Paris, where self-styled lothario Bernard, a successful architect living abroad, reckons he can juggle his three flight attendant fiancées – American Gloria, German Gretchen and Italian Gabriella – with ease on account of their frequent “layovers”.

All it demands is a question of timing and a little help from his trusted French housekeeper, the long-suffering and sarcastic Berthe, who reluctantly plays “romantic air traffic controller” as Bernard keeps “one up, one down, and one pending”.

Jorja Cartwright’s’ Gretchen making her point to Lizzie Lawton’s Robert and Max Palmer’s Bernard in rehearsal for Rowntree Players’ production of Boeing Boeing

However, unexpected schedule changes suddenly bring all three to Paris, and to Bernard’s apartment, at the same time. Oops.

“I knew I wanted to do a farce, and Boeing Boeing was one of the first that came up, which I then read, along with our movement director, Jennifer Carney,” says Bradford-born Hannah, who now lives in South Cave, 40 minutes from York.

“It has pace, which farces have to have, it has lovely physical comedy element and it has clever wordplay.” It has doors too, plenty of them. “Seven!” says Hannah, looking up at the JoRo stage ahead of Monday’s rehearsal. “Or eight if you class the double doors as two.”

She is working with a cast that, predominantly, has undergone theatre training. “We’re very lucky that the majority of them will be playing the role they auditioned specifically for. Val [Debenedetti ], who’s playing Gabriella, has Italian heritage.

Lizzie Lawton’s Robert, Max Palmer’s Bernard and Val Debenedetti’s Gabriella rehearsing a scene from Boeing Boeing

“Jorja [Cartwright] has had sessions with family members, who live in various places, to get Gretchen’s German accent right; Rebecca [Thomson] has done a lot of her own research for Berthe, listening to French performers speaking in English.”

The cast’s performances will not be playing to the stereotypes and caricatures of 1960s’ farce, however. “It would be very easy to fall into that trap because the script leans into those stereotypes, like the moment where Robert [Bernard’s friend] pats Gloria on the backside, but we’ve cut that because it doesn’t need it. We’ve done our best for our women in the play to be empowered,” says Hannah.

“When Gretchen and Robert meet for the first time, rather than being harassed by him, we make the directorial choice that Jorja’s Gretchen is playing a game with him, teasing him, so they’re both toying with each other, and she’s playing hard to get.

“You will find that both our male characters [Bernard and Robert] show weaknesses, whereas our female characters do not.”

Director Hannah Shaw overseeing a rehearsal for Rowntree Players’ production of Boeing Boeing

Movement director Jennifer Carney’s contribution is vital to the comedic interplay. “Physically, the way they embody a character comes through in their characterisation,” says Hannah, who also draws on 1960s’ sitcoms as a style influence.

Composer Max Barron, who worked with Hannah on her end-of-year show Going Out at Leeds Conservatoire in 2025, has written an original score for Boeing Boeing, also inspired by Sixties’ sitcoms. “We’ve created a pre-show ‘credits’ sequence performed by the cast to establish the character motifs, where Max has worked on our ‘theme song’, choreographed by Jenny,” she says.

Hannah’s directorial style for Boeing Boeing will marry the visual, the aural and the characters. “For example, you will know which of the flight attendants is entering from the colour flashing on the door to represent their airline colours and then a sound ‘sting’, and then she will make herself known and the scene will continue,” she says.

Hannah’s Boeing Boeing production will not be a 1960s’ museum piece. “I think if you viewed it through that lens, it wouldn’t age very well, but it’s flex enough that if you have a vision not to be sexist, it won’t be sexist,” she says. “We don’t abandon the text, but it’s all about changing the subtext. That’s how you create the magic.”

Rowntree Players in Boeing Boeing, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Thursday to Saturday, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Jorja Cartwright’s Gretchen and Rebecca Thomson’s Berthe clash in Boeing Boeing

February 11, 2022February 11, 2022

REVIEW: Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company in Kipps, ‘The New Half A Sixpence Musical’

*What a catch! Jennie Wogan-Wells’s Ann Pornick reaches for the bouquet in the Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company’s Kipps*. *All pictures: Mike Darley*

Kipps, Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company, at Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tomorrow, 2.30pm, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk

FLASH, bang, wallop, what a picture of joy as Jennie Wogan-Wells’s Ann Pennick leaps to catch the wedding bouquet at the finale to Kipps on opening night, fully three years after the Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company acquired the rights to this Half A Sixpence re-boot.

Under the pandemic’s shadow, the JoRo’s in-house company moved the production dates three or four times, recalls director Kayleigh Oliver in her programme notes. Kipps may advocate “singing a simple tune”, but there has been nothing simple about the “Herculean effort” of staging a show whose cast is in its 37^th incarnation. Yes, 37.

*Jamie Benson’s Arthur Kipps with the predatory James and Mrs Walsingham (Stuart Sellens, Helen Spencer) and daughter Helen (JenniferJones)*

It remains “a simple story about a simple bloke who just wants a simple life”, as first conjured in HG Wells’ subversive 1905 novel depicting a simple soul, caught between the head and the heart.

Half A Sixpence made cheeky charmer Tommy Steele’s name in David Heneker and Beverley Cross’s stage show and 1967 film musical. In 2016, it re-emerged as Kipps in a refreshing revamp co-created by impresario Cameron Mackintosh with seven new numbers by alchemical songwriting duo George Stiles and Anthony Drewe to complement Heneker’s original songs.

Significantly too, the radical, overtly political new book is the sprightly work of Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes, the upstairs-downstairs chronicler who tools Kipps with rigidity-busting, robust humour rooted in the clash of the English classes with its accent on having the ‘correct’ accent. It is still a romantic tale, but now has much more of the punk spirit of Richard Bean’s socialist comedy knees-up, One Man, Two Guvnors.

*Head over heels: Jamie Benson’s Arthur Kipps and Jennifer Jones’s Helen Walsingham*

Jamie Benson’s Arthur ‘Artie’ Kipps is a warm-hearted innocent abroad, an orphaned Folkstone apprentice draper who is suddenly bequeathed a fortune. Out goes a childhood vow to Ann; in comes the properly nice Helen Walsingham (Jennifer Jones) and a “world of upper-class soirees and strict rules of etiquette” that leaves him all at sea on the Kentish coast.

More to the point, Fellowes depicts high society as mercenary snobs, typified by Stuart Sellens’s James Walsingham and Helen Spencer’s scene-stealing Mrs Walsingham, the dragon mother desperate to bring Kipps’s new money into her crusty family via Helen’s entwining with Kipps

Just as the Walsinghams work on exploiting Kipps’s innocence, so Chris Gibson’s story-spinning artful dodger thespian Chitterlow seeks to entice him into backing his new play in his lovably rakish manner beneath his unruly wig.

*The Joy Of Theatre, as espoused by Chris Gibson’s dapper thespian, Chitterlow*

That elicited the song The Joy Of Theatre, one of the high points of this perky show that so affirmed everyone’s delight at being back in the JoRo, whether on stage or in the auditorium.

From lovable Benson to jocund Gibson, spirited Wogan-Wells to thoroughly decent Jones, self-pitying Spencer to Jane Woolgar’s Lady Punnet, Ben Huntley’s food-loving Buggins to Alastair Bush’s foppish photographer, there is so much to enjoy in the performances and singing, supported ever enthusiastically by the ensemble. Not forgetting the opening cameos of Ben Wood as Young Kipps and Kate Blenkiron as Young Ann.

Jane Woolgar’s costumes could not be more colourful; musical director James Robert Ball’s orchestra have a ball with songs older and newer alike and Lorna Newby’s choreography consistently brings a beaming smile. Never more so than in the stand-out Pick Out A Simple Tune, led by the banjo-playing Benson before the Flash, Bang, Walloping finale. Stick it in the family diary for tomorrow: Kipps is indeed “the pick-me-up we so desperately need in grey February”, as Kayleigh Oliver puts it. Book NOW for Kipps with everything.