REVIEW: Royal Shakespeare Company in Julius Caesar, on tour at York Theatre Royal, until Saturday ***

Losing grip on power: Nigel Barrett’s Julius Caesar grapples with Thalissa Teixeira’s Brutus in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Julius Caesar. Picture: Marc Brenner

FRIENDS, readers, Yorkshiremen, lend me your time; I come neither to bury Atri Banerjee’s Julius Caesar, nor to praise it.

Recruited to direct Shakespeare’s political thriller through the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Hire initiative “to improve transparency and access to freelance creative jobs in theatre”, Banerjee brings his South Asian heritage to a production of global scope, one where he plays with gender identity too, as well as playing with the artform of theatre.

A play is called a play because it is an act of play, one that gives free rein to artistic expression and interpretation refracted through present times. In our case, Covid, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Trump, the climate crisis, three Conservative Prime Ministers in a matter of months, and progression from LGBT to LGBTQIA+.

Some reactions have suggested that Banerjee is playing with his audience, from his warm-up exercise crowd-opening with all the opera-sized RSC cast running on the spot and howling, to casting Brutus (Thalissa Teixeira), Cassius (initially Kelly Gough, now the non-binary Annabel Baldwin) and Octavius Caesar (Ella Dacres) as women, to a ghostly Caesar (Nigel Barrett) waving insouciantly at Brutus.

You could argue that Banerjee is playing instead with audience expectations, in a case of when in Rome, don’t do as the Romans do, by taking on the po-faced antediluvians who think such a serious play should be taken more seriously, because politics is no laughing matter, although any number of political sketches by John Crace or Marina Hyde’s columns in the Guardian counter that view.

What’s more, Banerjee is being serious, very serious, if modish in his delivery, in asking the big question: how far would you go for your principles?

Presented as part of the RSC’s Power Shifts season, Julius Caesar reflects how political change appears to be happening ever faster, (although despotic leaders have a way of re-writing the rule books – or commandeering the ballot box – to allow themselves to stay in power).

This week alone, Italy has come to bury – and reappraise – the first of the modern wave of populist leaders, Silvio Berlusconi, while another, Boris Johnson, has had his political career buried underneath a stinking mound of lies about lying.

Julius Caesar was the populist ruler of his time, here played in casual shirt sleeves by Barrett with rather more commanding order to his delivery of the blank verse. His crime, as William Robinson’s Marc Antony ascribes four times to Brutus, is ambition. Yet Marc Antony calls Brutus “honourable”, just as Othello calls Iago “honest” and Macbeth is praised for his valour and worthiness. Vaulting ambition did for him too, of course.

Misjudgements may have proliferated in modern politics, our age of narcissistic frontmen, but this is no longer the age of lies, damn lies and statistics, or truths and half-truths, but “alternative truths” and “post-truths”.

Caesar was a “divisive ruler”: he surely would have thrived in our era of divide-and-rule leaders, nourished by an equally divisive media in print, on screen and on air. In his time, however, he was removed, despatched, without a plan of what might come next, other than a craving for a “better future”. (Don’t all politicians say that when first entering the House of Commons before the Whip-cracking and corruptive need to keep power take over?)

Death after death, as it turns out, is the result here, all gathered in what has become known flippantly as the “ghost bus” on Rosanna Vize’s revolving stage. At that point, they are restored to clean clothing, whereas those assassins still alive are still stained by Caesar’s blood, here black and sticky as newsprint rather than red.

Those death blows had been applied in smearing actions, rather than as 33 stab wounds, to be followed by a PAUSE, announced in big letters, accompanied by a two-minute countdown before Caesar’s exit, taking almost long as an opera death by aria. This would be one of those moments that has made Banerjee’s Julius Caesar as divisive as the ruler himself,

It finds its echo in the INTERVAL countdown on screen, 20 minutes ticking by to the mournful repetitive sound of a single trombone: in keeping with the sombre mood, or irritating, depending on how you reacted to the 90-minute first half. Or, maybe, a sonic tool that theatres could use in future to drive customers to the bar.

Banerjee’s “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” style of production is full of ideas: the Caesar wave; the rising multitude of ghosts, giving a sense of time running out; Joshua Dunn’s Cinna the Poet re-emerging all in ashen grey after his death; the use of a York community chorus (Hilary Conroy, Astrid Hanlon, Elaine Harvey, Stephanie Hesp, Anna Johnston and Frances Simon, under Jessa Liversidge’s musical direction), only to employ them rather less than a traditional Greek chorus role; not enough ill wind in their sails.

Better is the casting of the power seekers as young, like the Blair intake in 1997, still learning the political ropes and prone to mistakes and rash judgements. You will enjoy the nods to Dominic Cummings and Malcolm Tucker in Matthew Bulgo’s administrator, Casca.

Frustrations? Why does Teixeira’s Brutus not find her footing until deep in the mire? Why is Niamh Finlay playing the Soothsayer in red tracksuit bottoms with juddering, jagged dance movements like Happy Mondays’ Bez, as if three Macbeth witches trapped in one body? 

Why, after making much of changing the gender dynamics of Julius Caesar’s world, does Antony’s eulogy to Brutus still conclude: “This was a man”? Ask Atri! He may be making a point about women having to mirror men to fit in, to succeed.

Ultimately, in the play for power, will we ever decide that Brutus was right: “Good words are better than bad strokes”?

Royal Shakespeare Company in Julius Caesar, York Theatre Royal, 7.30pm tonight plus 2pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

REVIEW: York International Shakespeare Festival, York Shakespeare Project in Richard III, Friargate Theatre, York ***

Harry Summers’ Richard, Duke of Gloucester addressing the House of Commons benches in York Shakespeare Project’s Richard III. Pictures: John Saunders

ROUND Two of York Shakespeare Project begins with the knockout punch of “the York play”, Richard III. Here come 37 Shakespeare plays in 25 years, plus works by his contemporaries, in the sequel to “the most ambitious project ever mounted on the York amateur theatre circuit”.

Can the second cycle of the First Folio plus one surpass such ambitions, fulfilled after 20 years with The Tempest tour last autumn? Surely there would be no point starting to re-climb this artistic Everest otherwise.

Certainly, Dr Daniel Roy Connelly, former diplomat, actor, writer, academic, podcaster and director home and abroad, is in a fighting mood to match Shakespeare’s Richard in his YSP debut after moving to York.

Frank Brogan: Appearing in York Shakespeare Project’s two Richard III productions 21 years apart

“The opportunity to re-boot YSP’s cycle of the canon was very attractive to me,” he said in his CharlesHutchPress interview this week. “I’m someone who always wants to go either first or last, to set the bar high or to leave everyone with something to go home with.”

As befits the True & Fair Party (“We all deserve better”) prospective parliamentary candidate for York Outer at the next General Election, Connelly has placed Richard’s winter of discontent in our “frenetic, calculating and brutal 21st century Westminster with its endless Machiavellian bloodletting and daily treacheries”.

This is rather more the world of Malcolm Tucker’s The Thick Of It than Jim Hacker’s Yes, Prime Minister, Connelly being in mischief-making mood with his use of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg memes and a photo montage of political fashion statements (Churchill, jogger BoJo and Hague’s baseball cap faux pas) on a video screen kept in regular use from its opening shot of the House of Commons benches and cry of “Order, order”.

Clive Lyons, drink in hand, and a dismissive-looking Nell Frampton in the Westminster wars of York Shakespeare Project’s Richard III

Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping pop up on there too, as do PlantageNews headlines and social-media posts from media manipulators Richard, Duke Of Gloucester (Harry Summers) and the Duke of Buckingham (Rosy Rowley), updating on Richard’s progress to the throne and beyond.

Paranoia is everywhere, laptops constantly being tapped behind twitching drapes to each side of Richard Hampton, Jeremey Muldowney and Sarah Strong’s set design but always in view of the audience, in a merry-go-round of briefing and counter-briefing from the chairs’ ever-changing occupants.

Summers’ Richard, with his rock’n’roll quiff, oversized Harry Hill shirt collars and flamboyant cane, has a vaudevillian air, even a hint of Blockhead Ian Dury. For Shakespeare’s character assassination too, he has a stump of a left arm, a leg calliper and a facial scar, and like Ian McKellen’s film portrayal, he is pretty nifty with his only hand.

Grim prospects: Miranda Mufema’s Lady Anne and Frankie Hayes’s Duchess of York

Summers’ Richard is less the wintry malcontent, more the ever-quotable narcissist who relishes the rough and tumble of politics with a Johnsonsian thick skin and lack of moral compass. He is darkness with the shrug-of-the-shoulders nonchalance of Cabaret’s Emcee and a love of breaking down theatre’s fourth wall for choice asides, almost too likeable in the manner of a camp panto villain. 

Around him, amid the pinstripe suited superficial civility, spin furtive turns by Rowley’s Buckingham and Clive Lyons’s Lord Hastings and Frank Brogan’s fevered performance as a Yorkshire-voiced King Edward IV in a considerable casting upgrade from his Second Murderer/Messenger spear-carrying in John White’s Richard III in YSP’s 2002 debut!

Frankie Hayes (Sir William Catesby/Duchess of York), Jack Downey (an amusingly heartless Sir Richard Ratcliffe), Miranda Mufema (Lady Anne) and YSP’s new Nick Jones (a commanding Earl of Richmond) make their mark too. For stage presence, look no further than Thomas Jennings’s crop-haired hitman, relishing every cull with a glint in his eye and the click of his mobile phone camera.

Eli Cunniff’s costume designs, red and white buttonhole roses et al, together with Connelly’s spot-on soundbite selection of blues, jazz and more, underscore the noir vib, as the cultural references keep a’coming.

If looks could kill: Thomas Jennings’s brazen hitman

Cue a drunken chamber the morning after Richard’s coronation (a la lockdown “parties” at Number 10); Richard calling out to Alexa for answers as much as his kingdom for a horse in his hour of need, and Richard and Richmond sporting stab vests in white and red in the style of Banksy’s Union Flag design for Stormzy at Glastonbury.

Connelly conducts parliamentary business briskly, no prevaricating here, before the first-night pace and focus slips at the battlefield finale until Jones’s Richmond steers the reins in the home straight in more classical Bard style.

Throughout, Friargate Theatre’s compact, close-up stage feels crammed to the gills, especially with the shadowy figures in the wings, adding a noose of claustrophobia to Richard’s tyranny in Connelly’s state-of-the-nation’s rotten politics report. As promised, he does indeed “leave everyone with something to go home with”.

York Shakespeare Project in Richard III, Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm and 7.30pm tomorrowBox office: ticketsource.co.uk/ridinglights.

REVIEW: Dame Berwick Kaler in The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose, Grand Opera House, York, until January 8 2023 ***

Flagging, but not flagging: York pantomime dowager dame Berwick Kaler in regal attire for The Lambton Worm song sheet, from County Durham, at the Grand Opera House. All pictures: David Harrison

THIS is as much The Misadventures Of Old Granny Goose as The Adventures of the aforesaid ageing old bird.

Berwick Kaler and his ex-York Theatre Royal gang are back together, re-grouping like The Rolling Stones or the Friends cronies to recall the old hits – Berwick and a dummy, Berwick flying (twice), Berwick and a pool with powers that take years off his dame and, above all, Berwick going off-piste, off script – for the faithful.

Those moments, at liberty to ad-lib, are the ‘misadventures’, the ones that most delight, Berwick wandering off to the stage apron to take in the audience with mischief in his eyes, Berwick apologetically and rough-handedly correcting his misplaced stage spot, Berwick making a political jibe, Berwick winding up his fellow regulars and teasing his ensemble newbies.

What’s fresh this year? The Grand Opera House, the comeback dame’s adopted panto home for a second year, has undergone a refurbishment, new seating et al; the panto has new producers, UK Productions, overseeing costumes (an upgrade on last year), set design (standard panto scenery, smart, proficient, no York detailing) and lighting (hi-tech with a dash of pop-concert glitz).

Unspeakable dummy: Berwick Kaler’s Mrs Plum Duff and Martin Barrass’s Jessie try to work a truculent Boris Johnson in the ventriloquism scene in The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose

What else? Lovely fairy lights adorning the proscenium arch; a welcome revamp of the stock ghost scene with beds disappearing and reappearing and a host of ghosts; puppy-keen Jake Lindsay’s upgrade to a more prominent role as Jakey Lad, still the butt of Berwick’s putdowns after a decade in the ranks.

And what’s more? The three lads in the dance ensemble (Spencer Hardy, Elliot OJ Hutchinson and dance captain Samuel Lithco) aping Matthew Bourne’s all-male chorus in a brief burst of Swan Lake,  plus ensemble debuts for Leeds-trained Lucy Churchill and Niamh Hendron, and a new intake of children from York Stage School for babbies’ sweetness in ensemble scenes.

What’s old this year? The Grand Dame, of course, sending himself/herself up at 76, aware that unlike his character, Mrs Plum Duff, the Granny Goose of the title, he cannot turn back panto-time by taking a magical pool dip. 

Instead, the drama-queen dame mock-collapses at the end of big number Barmy Girl in mock-exhaustion, play acting as he demands to be helped up. He adamantly says he can’t deliver his lines any faster when urged to do so and deliberately turns his balletic flight landing into an inelegant tumble.

Old Mother Goose steps: David Leonard’s Lucifer Nauseus, centre, AJ Powell’s Brum Stoker, left, and Suzy Cooper’s Cissy, second from right, in a song-and-dance routine with ensemble Villagers

What’s the (lack of!) plot this year? Well, no, Berwick hasn’t lost the plot, but it’s brief. Or, correction, devilish David Leonard’s dandy villain, the goose-fearing Lucifer Nauseus, says it is. He has to find a fairy. That’s it. The plot.

Well, like on an allotment, there’s plot aplenty, or at least by writer-director Berwick’s infamous plot-resistant standards, there is. But yes, in essence, the villain must find a fairy to do his evil bidding for him. Oh, and the dame has to be under the misconception that the Goose is a dog.

What ticks over this year? Kirsty Sparks’s choreography; Rob Thorne’s band, and especially Berwick’s double act with comic fall guy Martin Barrass (dippy son Jessie Plum Duff), partner in the ghost scene, The Lambton Worm song sheet, and rocking-chair ventriloquism routine with Boris Johnson as the dummy.

That Tory old boy scene defines the dip in madcap mayhem since peak Kaler years, being laboured (not Laboured, unlike this pun), where it needs to make more of Johnson’s blustering vocal schtick and boot him with sharper barbs about his mendacious character.

Old Granny ghost: Jake Lindsay and a friendly ghost at play

What works best this year? No surprises. Leonard’s fab-u-lous vainglorious villainy, with his devil’s swishing tail that turns into a phone, his stage-vamping swagger, that Shakespearean lead thespian voice and his comic timing. Everything done with aplomb amid the Plum Duffs. 

His rendition of Lou Reed’s Perfect Day with first Suzy Cooper, then AJ Powell, is the show’s comic high point, anything but a perfect day, but witty and physically funny too.

What about Cooper and Powell this year? On good form, principal gal Suzy doubling up as both a classic Fairy and plummy Cissy Plum Duff, who is all doe-eyed over Powell’s would-be novelist, Brum Stoker (the pick of Kaler’s cast names for 2022).  

What’s missing this year? The film; the water splosh scene; old-school physical slapstick; topical references (save for yesterday’s men, Johnson and Matt Hancock), and an animal costume for Barrass.

Helping hands: A play-acting Berwick Kaler’s no longer super-annuated Mrs Plum Duff needs a lift from Elliot OJ Hutchinson’s Villager, left, and Jake Lindsay’s Jakey Lad after the dame’s big musical number

What replaces them? The jousting banter between the familiar players; the greater emphasis on song and dance (Leonard going from one song immediately into another); the comforting constant sense of nostalgia for Dame Berwick devotees.

The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose does not lay a golden egg of cracking comedy but is more of a curate’s egg, sunny side up at times, flat as a pancake on occasion. There is more than enough for the loyal legions, not enough for new converts.

“We’ve never, ever taken you for granted,” said Dame Berwick at the finale, both grateful and hopeful of a return. After all, this Kaler – and his goose – on the loose is not the oldest dame in town this Christmas.

A certain Sir Ian McKellen’s Caroline Goose, aged 83, is in residence in Mother Goose at the Duke of York’s, London, from tonight (15/12/2022) until January 29, then on tour until April 1.

“Hope you will return,” they sing: The walkdown finale in golden costumes with Berwick Kaler’s Mrs Plum Duff orchestrating the closing song

‘It’s about us finding some peace in the eye of the storm,’ says Steve Mason ahead of The Crescent gig and positive new album

Steve Mason: Showcasing new songs off Brothers And Sisters at The Crescent tomorrow

SCOTSMAN Steve Mason has had enough.

Witness his new single, No More, now receiving buckets of airplay on BBC6 Music and providing the punchy title for his tour that stops off at The Crescent, York, tomorrow night (15/12/2022).

“The song’s about a country that has had its Band Aid ripped off to expose a pustule of Government hatred,” says the former Beta Band frontman. “But I feel immigration has brought a massive amount of joy to my life and my country, the whole country, Britain.”

No More, a plea to end to division and find common ground, is the first taster for Brothers And Sisters, Steve’s first album since 2019’s About The Light, recorded and ready for release in March 2023.

Why give the album that title? “Well, number one it’s the last song on the album. All the songs were written in lockdown, but with this one, I was thinking about Ghost Town by The Specials, with that line, ‘All the clubs have been closed down’, and I remember feeling it’s all finished,” says Steve.

“But now, if you were to accelerate forwards 40-odd years to 2022, you’d kill to go back to 1981, which is pretty crazy, in terms of personal freedoms, thinking about how many clubs there were, how you could still have a social life relatively cheaply, even if you were on the dole.

“Now, we just keep taking it and taking it, whatever’s thrown at us, but what I don’t get about this country is: at what point do we say ‘Enough is enough. No more’.”

A decade ago, on his album Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time, Steve had made the point that “we don’t do anything until the problem knocks on the door”. “Well, now it’s knocking on everyone’s door. It used to exclude the middle classes but not anymore,” he says.

“The time is right for change, probably an alternative to democracy and capitalism, when I don’t think we can say we live in a democracy anymore. Now that Boris Johnson can just lie in parliament, that’s not democracy. It’s fake, not real, when politicians are not accountable.”

That said, Steve does not consider Brothers And Sisters to be a political album. “The thing is, I did my political concept album a few years ago. I set out my stall then, and I don’t feel I have to hit people over the head with my songs when I need to remember that music is entertainment,” he says.

“I want people to put my album on after they’ve had a s**t day, so I’ve toned it [the politics] right back down. What the listener brings to the lyrics, how they fit into their life, that matters, because it has to be at least 50 per cent what the listener thinks.

“I want it to be a beautiful record, a positive record. It’s not negative at all. It’s about us finding some peace in the eye of the storm and hopefully finding some clarity when everything’s been deliberately clouded. You have to take a few steps to turn everything off.”

The last time Steve ventured into North Yorkshire, on December 14 last year, he could be found seated alone by a lamp, amid twinkling fairy lights and a Christmas tree, performing at Stockton on the Forest Village Hall.

“This time last year I was playing a lot of village halls, just me on my own,” he recalls, ahead of rolling out Beta Band and solo material with keyboardist Darren Morris by his side at The Crescent tomorrow. “I’ve really gone all out this time!

Steve Mason performing at Stockton on the Forest Village Hall, near York, on December 14 2021. Picture: Paul Rhodes

“Darren’s been playing with me for about seven years and he was on the About The Light album. This is a very stripped-out version of what I usually take out on the road, but for this album that I’ve just finished, I’m gonna change from a traditional band format.

“You can now reliably run backing tracks with drums and bass on there and then have people like gospel singers with you. But it’s been really difficult because of two years of no gigs and then a lead-in time of a year for vinyl pressings, so you potentially run into the problem of not touring for another year, but touring this way, with Darren, allows me financially to get to the point of releasing the album.”

Steve wrote Brothers And Sisters at the height of the lockdowns, looking for “some form of spirituality, as we were all were in the pandemic, but not tied to any one religion because people prefer freedom in their spirituality”.

“We must find things that we have in common when we have a government that wants to divide us – and that’s why I want them to fail miserably,” he says. “It’s important to love your fellow man and fellow woman and be aware that the information we’re fed is not always correct.”

Steve talks of striving to be an artist again, having become “somewhat reactionary” on About The Light. “I was just lucky that I realised that at some point I was going to make a record that I didn’t like, my fans didn’t like, or the radio didn’t like,” he says.

“There are elements of that record that I liked, but certainly I was dipping my toe into waters that I wouldn’t want to get any wetter.

“I’d just got married, had a three-month-old daughter, and I was feeling those adult thoughts for the first time, thinking about having to support my family through my art.

“What I’ve now managed to do is decompartmentalise my home life from my working life. I owe it to myself, to anyone who ever bought a record, to everyone who calls themselves an artist, when it’s such a precious position to be in, to be strong and take risks.”

To do so, he must swim against the authoiritarian tide. “For some reason, artists in this country are made to feel like second-class citizens who have to struggle to achieve anything, but opposition to the arts is the sign of a weak government up to no good,” he says.

Now 47, Steve’s career since 1996 has taken in folktronica experimentalists The Beta Band, King Biscuit Time, Black Affair with Jimmy Edgar and four solo albums since 2010 with the fifth upcoming. Along the way, debts led him to work on a building site and he has had struggles with depression too, but marriage and fatherhood, song-writing and performing are his life force now.

“What I would say is that, at the moment, I’m thinking a lot more about the live experience for people and how that will translate into something that’s exciting, energetic and uplifting,” he says.

“I’ve always been a very slow learner, so it takes me a long time to work things out, but on this record, I’ve tried to stretch myself vocally, much more than I’ve ever done before, singing a song in a way that’s more difficult, that requires more effort, when in the past my vocals were quiet.

“Doing something you’ve not done before, going somewhere new in a song, I just feel that the new tracks, when performed live, are head and shoulders above anything I’ve done before – and the audience reaction has been beautiful to see.”

Steve Mason, No More Tour, at The Crescent, York, tomorrow (15/12/2022), supported by Cobain Jones, at 7.30pm . Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

York musical comedy duo Fladam head to Edinburgh Festival Fringe for first time

“It’s been a long time coming,” say Fladam, as York musical comedy act make their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut this summer

FLADAM, the York musical comedy duo of Florence Poskitt and Adam Sowter, are making their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut all this month.

At 4pm each day until August 29 – except August 16 – they will be performing A Musical Comedy Hootenanny! at The Pleasance at The EICC [Edinburgh International Conference Centre].

Followers of York’s musical theatre and theatre scene will be familiar with Florence, wide-eyed northern character actress, comic performer, singer, dancer and multi-instrumentalist, and Adam, face-pulling character actor, comic performer, pianist, harmonica and ukulele player, singer, composer, comedy songwriter and cartoonist.

A couple both on and off stage, they have branched out into presenting their own heartfelt, humorous songs and sketches, tackling the topical with witty wordplay, uplifting melodies, a dash of the Carry On! comic spirit, admiration for the craft of Morecambe & Wise, Bernard Cribbins and Victoria Wood, and an old-school sense of charity-shop comedic fashion.

You may have heard them in their regular slot on Harry Whittaker’s Saturday show on BBC Radio York; or seen an early taster of A Musical Comedy Hootenanny! in Fladam & Friends at Theatre@41, Monkgate, last November, or spotted them among the five-minute showcases at York Theatre Royal’s Love Bites in May 2021 and Green Shoots in June this year.

Topical yet nostalgic: York musical comedy duo Florence Poskitt and Adam Sowter. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

Now comes the giant leap: heading to the Scottish capital to be among more than 3,000 shows at the 75th anniversary Fringe on its return from Covid hibernation.

“It’s been a long time coming,” says Adam. “We’d planned to perform there in 2020, before Covid struck. We were going to do a small-scale show at a venue we knew, Greenside, but now we’ve ended up at one of the Pleasance venues this year: a cabaret spot they’ve opened at the EICC called the Lammermuir Theatre.”

The two-year delay has worked out well. “Our plan was to go back to Greenside, but then we saw that a bursary scheme was available through York Theatre Royal in association with the Pleasance,” says Adam.

“We had an interview with Juliet [Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster], and though we weren’t selected, they said, ‘we really like you’, and the Pleasance offered us a slot.”

Better still, York Theatre Royal paid for Fladam’s Fringe registration and the Pleasance waivered a deposit. “We’ve been extremely lucky because from the first ticket onwards that we sell, we take 50 per cent,” says Florence.

Fladam’s official poster for the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Artwork design: Steph Pyne

“We’ve also had support from friends in York and we’ve received £400 from the Pleasance Debut Fund scheme to support debutant performers playing for more than a week in venues with fewer than 150 seats.”

Fladam’s Edinburgh bow is an introductory show that captures the spirit of their topical yet somehow nostalgic songs. “Our humour isn’t racy, but there’s a little hint of Carry On to it,” says Adam. “Well, there’s a dabbling of ‘racy’ in there,” interjects Florence.

“It’s sort of ‘Greatest Hits of Fladam’,” continues Adam. “We’re exploring different styles of performance, making sure it’s a varied hour, where we play lots of different characters, present familiar things in a new way and add new things.

“Like how we’ve re-written a country song that didn’t work as a country song. It now has new lyrics, which we’ll have to remember for a new version for the finale!

“I’m sure that the show we finish with on August 29 will be completely different from the first one as we’re still an evolving act and we’ll continue to evolve.”

Expect puppetry: Fladam add another dimension to their musical comedy act. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

Fladam have progressed from bedroom beginnings to the stage. “We’ve gone from recording videos of songs on phones from the corner of our bedroom in lockdown to doing it live, first with one number at Love Bites and then last November’s show with friends, when we had to rehearse in the kitchen,” says Adam. “Now we’re developing again.

“Having a long run at the Fringe, we can try things out, playing to totally different audiences over so many performances – and with our shows being topical we may well have to update and re-write things. We’ve already adjusted our Boris Johnson song after what’s happened to him.”

Florence is relishing the Fringe experience. “What’s great is that so many people want to see musical comedy shows,” she says. “One of the joys of being here is that you never know who you might meet for future collaborations, which was one of the lovely things about doing Love Bites and Green Shoots at the Theatre Royal.”

Fladam will benefit from spreading their wings from York. “This is our first time playing to a ‘cold audience’ after playing mainly to our friends in York,” says Florence. “The advice from [York theatre director and actor] Maggie Smales was to talk to the audience to establish a connection with them, and I’ll be handing out biscuits and Adam will be playing the piano before we start.”

Spending a month in Edinburgh will be a learning curve for Adam and Florence. “We’re not producers, so we have to do our own publicity, organise the posters, build our props, do everything ourselves, and that’s where the Theatre Royal and the Pleasance have been really supportive when we’ve dropped them an email asking for their advice,” says Adam.

Whisking up gentle comedy: the comic craft of Florence Poskitt and Adam Sowter

“That’s all helped us to mount an Edinburgh show for the first time, when you know you’re going to make mistakes and it’s not just an easy home run.”

What definitely has worked is their Fringe poster with its combination of photography by Charlie Kirkpatrick and a design by Steph Pyne. “It’s a bit retro, a bit Morecambe & Wise,” says Adam. “The first design played too much on being like a Seventies’ tribute, so we’ve dialled that down to still be a little nostalgic but above all quirky and colourful.”

Florence is chuffed. “We’ve had do many people tell us, ‘that really captures you and what you’re all about’,” she says. “Our style of humour is gentle, like Morecambe & Wise’s humour was so warm and lovely. We like to do songs that are clever and make you smile at the same time.”

Fladam: A Musical Comedy Hootenanny, Lammermuir Theatre, The Pleasance at Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EIFF),Venue 150, 4pm daily, until August 29, except August 16. Box office: 0113 556 6550 or pleasanceco.uk.

Fladam also will do six 20-minute street-busking spots at St Andrew’s Square and Cathedral Square from August 19.

Fladam: Making their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with backing from York Theatre Royal and the Pleasance

Diane Page directs Julius Caesar for divisive age of Putin and Johnson as Shakespeare’s Globe heads indoors at York Theatre Royal

Diane Page directing a rehearsal for Shakespeare’s Globe’s touring production of Julius Caesar. Picture: Helen Murray

IN her school days, Diane Page decided Shakespeare was not for her.

And yet, look who is directing the Shakespeare’s Globe touring production of Julius Caesar as it plays York Theatre Royal from tomorrow (10/6/2022).

“Maybe because of the environment I was in – I was at quite an academic school, a comprehensive in New Cross – and I just thought, ‘Shakespeare isn’t for me’,” recalls the Londoner, who studied Shakespeare for her English Literature GCSE. “Being dyslexic made it even more difficult.

“But after I left school, one of the plays I read in my breaks when I worked as an usher in the West End was Julius Caesar and I really loved it. Then I read it again in lockdown and thought, ‘Gosh, this is a really amazing play that I want to direct’, seeing it through a contemporary lens, with some interventions to reflect now, but without changing the text.”

A year’s planning has gone into the production since Diane first took the idea to Shakespeare’s Globe artistic director Michelle Terry.

As attributed to Prime Minister Harold Wilson in a lobby briefing to journalists in 1964, “a week is a long time in politics”, and so the machinations of Shakespeare’s epic tragedy are being played out against a backdrop of the paranoid Vladimir Putin’s Russian invasion of neighbouring Ukraine and the populist but increasingly unpopular Boris Johnson’s night of the half-drawn knives with his splintering Conservative MPs on Monday.

“The links with today resonate through the play, but what really stands out is how characters are constantly reacting out of fear, which feels really interesting when related to our times, when you look at how power works and reflect on contemporary politics,” says Diane, who notes how “the play has these amazing speeches but they haven’t been thought of in that way”.

Page confronts today’s rising tide of regime change through the prism of Shakespeare’s brutal tale of ambition, incursion and revolution in Ancient Rome, where the conspiracy to kill, the public broadcast of cunning rhetoric and a divisive fight for greatness echo down today’s corridors of power.

Cassius and Brutus’s belief that Rome’s leader, Julius Caesar, poses a political threat to their beloved country could be matched by the rhetoric of Tory rebel MPs seeking to justify their motion of No Confidence in leader Boris Johnson (although more likely it is rooted in fearing the loss of their seats and a General Election defeat when seeking an unprecedented fifth successive term in power for the Conservatives).

“That’s something I’ve drawn on, both historically and from now: how society responds to a leader and what people want in a leader,” says Diane. “Particularly what we’ve drawn on is the contrast between the public persona of Julius Caesar and this frightened, paranoid leader in private.

“Tragically, throughout history, we’ve seen this idea of populism [in political leaders] and how long it lasts, and it’s fascinating that it happens again and again and again.

“One of the things we’re asking people as they watch the play now is, ‘what is it that we need to do differently when we’re voting for our leaders. We’re not drawing on any particular era or political figure in regard to Caesar, but when Trump was first happening, you think, ‘this will never happen’, then you think, ‘this might happen’, and then, ‘oh, it’s happened’. For me, part of Brutus’s flaw is to think that everyone will think the same, but history tells you a different story.”

Charlotte Bate as Cassius in a Shakespeare’s Globe performance of Julius Caesar at Morden Hall Park in April. “As I read Julius Caesar in the first lockdown, I thought, ‘I think Cassius and Brutus are women’,” says director Diane Page

Does Diane see parallels between Caesar and Putin? “It’s important to say that though it’s not explicitly written in the play, we do feel that Caesar does rule by imposing fear on others, but at the same time he’s fearful,” she says. “There’s also the paranoia that’s transmitted into the community around him.

“So it did feel like we had an extra responsibility to handle these subjects with sensitivity once Russia invaded Ukraine.”

Diane has cast two women, Charlotte Bate and Anna Crichlow, as Cassius and Brutus respectively. “As I read Julius Caesar in the first lockdown, I thought, ‘I think they’re women’. It was instinctual, in my exploration of power and women in power, so it was a very conscious choice, and casting Brutus as a black woman adds another dimension,” she says.

“In thinking about the theme of power, we’re asking what it means now, how it has transcended through the years, and what it means for women to be in power. If we’re still shocked by that, then we think, ‘well, just how many women are in power?’.”

“We know the play is based on historical events, but it’s been fictionalised by Shakespeare, so I felt we had artistic licence to look at what power means now, and those speeches transfer well to women speaking them.

“Looking at friendship between women brings another dynamic to it, and because Julius Caesar is such a masculine play, it’s interesting to flip it or re-angle it.”

Diane is asking questions, rather than providing answers, in her interpretation of Julius Caesar.  “That’s how I feel about Shakespeare: his plays are so universal, whatever challenges someone may face, but for me, the production has to be about what the play means now, though the words remain exactly the same,” she says.

“It did feel important, with such a masculine play and with what’s happening now, to ask questions about women in power. If a play is about us, then it is for us to think about these questions and to discuss them.”

Roll on tomorrow and Saturday’s performances at York Theatre Royal as Diane’s production moves indoors for the first time after open-air shows at the Globe and on tour. “I’ve written a comprehensive plan for my assistant because I’m now working on another show,” she says.

“It’s going to take some adapting because outdoors we use the yard or where the audience are seated, and indoors there’ll be different logistical needs, but not so many that it’ll become distinct from the outdoor performances.”

Shakespeare’s Globe On Tour presents Julius Caesar, York Theatre Royal, tomorrow, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Copyright of The Press, York

Diane Page: Director of Julius Caesar

Who is Diane Page, award-winning theatre director?

Training: MFA in theatre directing, Birkbeck, University of London; BA in theatre and drama studies, first class honours, Birkbeck, University of London.

Award winner: 2021 JMK Award for her production of Statements After An Arrest Under The Immorality Act.

Shakespeare’s Globe work: Assistant director for Bartholomew Fair, 2019; director for Julius Caesar, Globe On Tour, from April 2022.

Theatre as director: Lost And Found, Royal Opera House, London; Statements After An Arrest Under The Immorality Act, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond; Out West, co-director, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London; In Love And Loyalty, also writer, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre.

Theatre as associate director: Ghost Stories, West End and UK tour, playing Grand Opera House, York, in March 2020.

Ghost Stories, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, in March 2020

What would you do if you found Bram Stoker’s original version of Dracula? James Gaddas wrote an obsessive one-man show

James Gaddas: Getting his teeth stuck into Dracula’s story

THIS is the story of Bad Girls, Coronation Street and Hollyoaks actor James Gaddas happening upon Bram Stoker’s original handwritten manuscript of Dracula.

He duly reads of strange encounters in the Count’s castle in Transylvania, his ghostly arrival on a ship of death off the coast of Whitby, his midnight seductions, and a heroic pursuit across Europe in a race against the setting of the sun.

So far, so familiar, but this document contains pages never published, leading Gaddas to a terrifying discovery, one that he shares with the Grand Opera House audience in York on Monday (21/2/2022) in his solo show Dracula – One Man’s Search For The Truth.

“What if everything we thought we knew was just the beginning? What if it’s not a work of fiction but a warning? What if the legend is real?” ponders James, who will bring the original version to life before sharing his discovery in a performance with one actor, 15 characters and one monumental decision. “Are some things better left unburied,” he must discern.

Are you telling the “truth” in this adaptation, James? “It’s more like Boris Johnson’s ‘truth’,” he says. “It’s conjecture. It’s a way of being able to do a one-man version of Dracula without just concentrating on the end.”

Born in Teesside, James recalls Dracula being the first horror film he saw when he was only 11. “I was staying with my grandparents,” he recalls. “I went to bed, but being typically adventurous, I tiptoed downstairs, turned on the telly, and there it was: Dracula, starring Peter Cushing.”

Gaddas, now 61, initially had the chance to appear in Dracula with a small-scale theatre company in Bath 40 years ago when training at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. “I was going to do it, but then I got offered work for my Equity Card, and there was nothing for me in doing Dracula as it was a non-Equity production,” he says.

The idea of doing his own Dracula show first came after watching programmes about searching for lost Second World War treasure. “You watch, knowing from the start they won’t find anything, and they still haven’t after an hour, with all those looks to the camera, but it made me think, ‘wouldn’t it be fascinating to find Stoker’s original version of Dracula?’.

Gaddas was duly asked to voice one of those “lost treasures” investigations into the roots of Stoker’s manuscript, taking him to Romania, where he travelled around Dracula country with a film crew and director in jeeps. “But then something goes wrong with the filming and we have to come back to England,” he says.

Whereupon he took up the role of abusive care-home worker Cormac Ranger in Hollyoaks, shooting episodes sporadically in 2020 and 2021. “I was doing Hollyoaks when lockdown started, so I was left kicking my heels and started looking further into the Stoker story, deciding to write my adaptation in lockdown in London,” says James.

“The idea is that Stoker had been asked by Van Helsing to put this genuine document in book form and I then take it upon myself to take up that story – and by trying to tell it like an investigative journalist, it allows you to play with how Stoker had everything flying around all over the place – the timelines, the newspaper cuttings, the journals – when he was writing the book.

The poster, blood-red writing and all, for James Gaddas’s Dracula – One Man’s Search For The Truth

“In my show, the search for the truth becomes an obsession, and that psychological side of a story is such a strong part of a solo show.”

Gaddas previously wrote a solo play in Australia in 1989 called Shadow Boxing. “It was about a gay boxer,” he says. “It came about when this actor, David Field, said, ‘write me a one-man show’, and his dad had been a boxer. That play was revived on an Arts Council tour over here two years ago.”

Gaddas knew what form his Dracula show should take. “Doing such a classic piece, I wanted to get away from just standing there enunciating the book,” he says. “We’ve come to the point where we expect Dracula to be a comedy, whereas really it isn’t. It’s much more like Nosferatu, rooted in Eastern European ideology, while playing with what happens to someone when sense ends and obsession begins. It’s that archetypal thing where an obsession can take over.”

He may be performing on his own, but he has an impressive production team that has created the show with him, led by director Pip Minnithorpe, UK associate director of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child.

Illusion design is by John Bulleid, who provided the Olivier Award-winning illusions for The Worst Witch, and Deborah Radin has provided the movement direction.

The show’s original music is by composer and Downton Abbey and Ted Lasso actor Jeremy Swift. “I’ve known Jez since he was 11, when we were at school together,” says James.

“He’s always had a love of music, and we’d write songs together; he’d write the tunes, I’d write the lyrics. Anyway, we were on this walk on Hampstead Heath, when he said, ‘what are you doing in lockdown?’, and I told him I was writing a one-man play. ‘Would you like me to write the music?’ he said.”

Tomorrow, Gaddas will be playing no fewer than 15 characters. “It’s slightly easier than when I did Billy Bishop Goes To War, a [John MacLachlan Gray ] musical about a Canadian First World War flying ace, where I had to play 23 characters – and I didn’t get to choose those characters, but here, for Dracula, I could.”

As the interview draws to a close, Gaddas offers a final thought on Stoker’s sense of drama in his writing. “Today, he would probably have been writing episodes for Coronation Street,” he says. Imagine that.

James Gaddas in Dracula – One Man’s Search For The Truth, Grand Opera House, York, February 21, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.

More Things To Do in York and beyond as Dickens tales, dames and Damon drop in. List No. 59, courtesy of The Press, York

What the Dickens? Yes, James Swanton is reviving his Ghost Stories For Christmas at York Medical Society

FROM boyish Boris to Dame Edna, Christmas concerts to panto dames, Dickensian ghost stories to solo Damon, Charles Hutchinson has highlights aplenty to recommend.   

Dickensian Christmas in York: James Swanton’s Ghost Stories For Christmas, York Medical Society, on various dates between December 2 and 13, 7pm

AFTER the silent nights of last December, York gothic actor supreme James Swanton is gleefully reviving his Ghost Stories For Christmas performances of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, The Haunted Man and The Chimes.

“I’ve scheduled extra performances of A Christmas Carol: the perfect cheering antidote, I feel, to the misery we’ve all been through,” says Swanton. “But the two lesser-known stories are also very relevant to our times.”

A reduced capacity is operating for Covid safety, meaning that tickets are at a premium on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Political debate of the week: Boris: World King, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight, 7.30pm

THE year is 1985 and Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has plenty going for him, being young, posh and really rather blond. However, his efforts to become President of the Oxford Union debating society have been thwarted.

Never fear. Boris always has a cunning plan up his sleeve. Cue time travel, classical allusions and good clean banter in Boris: World King, Tom Crawshaw’s comedic exploration of a young man’s ambition and humanity explored as a half-hour one-man show, performed by Benedict Turvill. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Richard Kay: Co-directing York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir’s Christmas concerts

Harmony at Christmas: York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir and the Citadel Singers, Christmas Traditions 2021, The Citadel, Gillygate, York, Tuesday to Friday, doors 7pm

AFTER delivering an online Christmas concert via Zoom to an international audience in 2020, York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir return to live concerts for Christmas Traditions 2021.

The Citadel allows room for cabaret seating downstairs and balcony seating that can ensure safe distancing is maintained, while the show retains its format of carols old and new, Christmas songs, festive readings and sketches. Box office: arkevent.co.uk/christmastraditions2021.

The poster for Damon Albarn’s night at the double at York Minster

York gig(s) of the week: Damon Albarn, York Minster, Thursday, 6.30pm and 8.30pm

DAMON Albarn quickly added a second special intimate album-launch show at York Minster after the first was fully booked in a flash.

The Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad & The Queen leader now plays two sold-out concerts in one night in his first ever York performances, marking the November 12 release of his solo studio recording The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows.

Albarn, 53, has been on a “dark journey” making this album in lockdown, exploring themes of fragility, loss, emergence and rebirth.

Martyn Joseph: Lockdown reflections on landmark birthday on new album, showcased in concert at Pocklington Arts Centre concert

Gig of the week outside York: Martyn Joseph, Pocklington Arts Centre, Thursday, 8pm

“THE Welsh Springsteen”, singer-songwriter Martyn Joseph, will be showcasing his 23rd studio album, 1960, a “coming of age” record with a difference, in Pocklington.

Last year, amid the isolation of the pandemic, Penarth-born Joseph turned 60 on July 15, a landmark birthday, a time of self-reflection, that shaped his songs of despair and sadness, gratitude and wonder, and gave the album its title. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

Alistair Griffin: Series of Big Christmas Concerts in York

Alistair Griffin’s Big Christmas Concert, St Michael-le-Belfrey, York, December 3 (sold out) and December 10, 8pm; Alistair Griffin’s Candlelit Christmas, Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York, December 11, 8pm

ON December 3 and 10, a brass band greets revellers, then York singer-songwriter Alistair Griffin’s Big Christmas Concert takes a musical journey from acoustic traditional carols to Wizzard, Slade and The Pogues. “Sing along and sip mulled wine while enjoying the fairytale of old York,” says Griffin’s invitation.

On December 11, he switches from St Michael-le-Belfrey to a candle-lit Holy Trinity Church. “Take a seat, or in this case, a medieval pew and soak in the festive atmosphere,” he says. Cue mulled wine, Christmas tunes, acoustic festive numbers and a Christmas carol singalong. Box office: alistairgriffin.com.

York playwright Mike Kenny: New production of The Railway Children with his award-winning script at Hull Truck

On the right track show of the week outside York: The Railway Children, Hull Truck Theatre, running until January 2

YORK playwright Mike Kenny has revisited his award-winning adaptation of E Nesbit’s The Railway Children – first staged so memorably by York Theatre Royal at the National Railway Museum – for Hull Truck’s Christmas musical.

Directed by artistic director Mark Babych in the manner of his Oliver Twist and Peter Pan shows of Christmases past, original music and dance routines complement Kenny’s storytelling in this warm-hearted, uplifting tale of hope, friendship and family, set in Yorkshire. Box office: 01482 323638 or at hulltruck.co.uk.

Faye Campbell: Brushing up on playing Cinderella in York Theatre Royal’s pantomime, opening on Friday

Evolution, not revolution, in pantoland: Cinderella, York Theatre Royal, December 3 to January 2

YORK Theatre Royal’s post-Berwick era began last year with the Travelling Pantomime, establishing the partnership of Evolution Pantomimes’ man with the Midas touch, Paul Hendy, as writer and Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster as director.

After the 2020 road show, here comes the full-scale return to the main house for Cinderella, starring CBeebies’ Andy Day (Dandini), last winter’s stars Faye Campbell (Cinderella) and Robin Simpson (Sister), Paul Hawkyard (the other Sister), ventriloquist comedian Max Fulham (Buttons), Benjamin Lafayette (Prince Charming) and Sarah Leatherbarrow (Fairy Godmother). Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Unmasked: Barry Humphries tells all at the Grand Opera House, York next April

Hottest ticket launch of the week: Barry Humphries, The Man Behind The Mask, Grand Opera House, York, April 13 2022

AUSTRALIAN actor, comedian, satirist, artist, author and national treasure Barry Humphries will play only one Yorkshire show on his 2022 tour, here in York.

Set to turn 88 on February 17, he will take a revelatory trip through his colourful life and theatrical career in an intimate, confessional evening, seasoned with highly personal, sometimes startling and occasionally outrageous stories of alter egos Dame Edna Everage, Sir Les Patterson and Sandy Stone. Hurry, hurry, for tickets on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/york.

Hal Cruttenden and Rosie Jones double up for Your Place Comedy online on Sunday. Oh, and when will Selby Town Hall re-open? UPDATED 23/02/2021

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Doubling up: Hal Cruttenden and Rosie Jones link up online from their living rooms for Your Place Comedy on February 28

YORKSHIRE and Humber virtual comedy club Your Place Comedy will play host to its eighth online double bill on Sunday, presenting the remote coupling of Hal Cruttenden and Rosie Jones.

Co-ordinator Chris Jones, manager of Selby Town Hall, says: “After a triumphant return to phones, tablets, laptops and smart TVs on January 24 with Josie Long and Ahir Shah, this collaborative live-stream project, organised by a collective of 12 small, independent northern venues, will once again transport two of the UK’s best stand-ups from their living rooms to yours…and all for free.”

Television comedy mainstay Hal has guested on Have I Got News For You on four occasions, hosted Live At The Apollo, starred in The Royal Variety Performance and appeared as a regular panellist on Mock The Week, popping up on Celebrity Mastermind and Would I Lie To You? too.

Bridlington-born Rosie, a patron of Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, since last May, is one of the fastest-rising stars on the comedy circuit, making her impact on Live At The Apollo, Mock The Week, The Jonathan Ross Show and 8 Out Of 10 Cats and as a panellist on BBC1’s Question Time.

Placed second at the Leicester Mercury New Comedian of the Year Award in 2018, she also has appeared on The Last Leg, Hypothetical and Comedy Central’s Roast Battle, as well as writing for the second series of Netflix hit Sex Education.

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Rosie Jones: Fast-rising voice of comedy, scriptwriter and actor

Once again, the streamed show will be compered by Tim FitzHigham, writer and star of BBC Radio 4’s The Gambler and presenter of CBBC’s Super Human Challenge.

Your Place Comedy will be free to watch on YouTube and Twitch at 8pm, with an option for viewers to donate if they have enjoyed the broadcast. “The money raised will be used to support the performers and the 12 venues involved, all of whom face continued uncertainty as lockdown regulations have once again prevent theatres from opening,” says Chris, manager of Selby Town Hall and arts officer for Selby Town Council.

“We were really thrilled with the response to Your Place Comedy’s return last month. As venues rooted in communities, we’ve all missed those direct connections with our brilliant and loyal audiences while the pandemic has kept theatre doors shut.

“Being able to share laughter and light-hearted moments from some of the acts who would normally appear on our stages, in what always feels like such a warm and intimate way, has been an incredible tonic over the past year and I’m delighted that acts of Hal and Rosie’s calibre have signed up to take part in this latest edition.

“Hal has been among the most prolific comedy performers of recent years, appearing on every panel show and at every comedy festival going, while Rosie looks set to become a superstar of the near future with burgeoning careers as an actor and children’s author now developing alongside her rapidly increasing comedy profile.”

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Hal Cruttenden: Television comedy mainstay, appearing on screen via You Tube and Twitch streaming on Sunday

Joining together to mount Your Place Comedy Season 3 are 2021 additions The Civic, Barnsley, Seven Arts, Chapel Allerton, Leeds, and Rural Arts, at The Courthouse, Thirsk, alongside Selby Town Hall; Otley Courthouse; Ropewalk, Barton upon Humber; East Riding Theatre, Beverley; Junction, Goole; Helmsley Arts Centre; The Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds; Pocklington Arts Centre and Rotherham Theatres.

Delighted at the response to the third wave of Your Place Comedy in lockdown, Chris says: “We had a brilliant return last month with Ahir Shah and Josie Long. Over 600 devices logged on to watch with nearly £1,000 raised in donations to help pay the performers and support the venues involved.

“The acts were brilliant, and it’s been fascinating to watch how quickly and ingeniously comedians have all adapted to the format of online shows over recent months. For many, it works remarkably well, and I do wonder if some version of online gigging in the comedy world will remain even when all of this is over.”

“I know that times are tough for many people, and so we’re committed to keeping these shows completely free, so please do come and join Hal, Rosie and Tim for some top entertainment at an unbeatable price, as for now streaming is the only show in town.”

Ahead of Boris Johnson’s Monday pronouncement, Chris had said: “Sadly, I don’t hold out much hope. I’ve got autumn tours now moving to 2022 as they anticipate social distancing for the rest of the year. We won’t have anything in Selby Town Hall until autumn at the earliest.”

Now, with a road map for reopening at least in pencil form after the Prime Minister announced a four-step plan for lockdown easement, Chris says: “It certainly provides a chink of light.

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Josie Long and Ahir Shah: the double bill for Your Place Comedy on January 24

“The headline is that – if all goes according to plan – venues will be able to open in a socially distanced manner from May 17, but no level of social distancing is viable for us, and I still think audience confidence will be low at that point, so it’s unlikely we will re-open ahead of June.”

Chris is only “cautiously optimistic” about that possibility at the 150-capacity Selby Town Hall. “It certainly seems as though, at current trajectory, the vaccination programme will be all but complete by the end of that month, but most tour shows before autumn have already rescheduled,” he says.

Chris believes “we need a longer lead-in time for ticket sales and for audience confidence to return”. “I also await the small print on this – what conditions will be attached to a non-socially distanced reopening?” he ponders. “Will we have to implement rapid testing on site, or ask people to come with either proof of a recent negative PCR test or vaccination ‘passport’…or both?”

Looking ahead, Chris says: “My focus remains on delivering a full autumn programme, and Monday’s announcements give me more confidence that this will be possible.

“If, with a favourable wind, we are to open safely, in a practically and financially viable manner, at full capacity, before September, I will be thrilled. For the moment though, I remain cautious about the chances of any activity taking place in the summer.”

For full details on Your Place Comedy, and to find out how to watch the February 28 show, go to: yourplacecomedy.co.uk.

Selby Town Hall: When will it re-open?

Hal Cruttenden and Rosie Jones double up for Your Place Comedy online on Sunday UPDATED 23/02/2021

Doubling up: Hal Cruttenden and Rosie Jones link up online from their living rooms for Your Place Comedy on February 28

YORKSHIRE and Humber virtual comedy club Your Place Comedy will play host to its eighth online double bill on Sunday, presenting the remote coupling of Hal Cruttenden and Rosie Jones.

Co-ordinator Chris Jones, manager of Selby Town Hall, says: “After a triumphant return to phones, tablets, laptops and smart TVs on January 24 with Josie Long and Ahir Shah, this collaborative live-stream project, organised by a collective of 12 small, independent northern venues, will once again transport two of the UK’s best stand-ups from their living rooms to yours…and all for free.”

Television comedy mainstay Hal has guested on Have I Got News For You on four occasions, hosted Live At The Apollo, starred in The Royal Variety Performance and appeared as a regular panellist on Mock The Week, popping up on Celebrity Mastermind and Would I Lie To You? too.

Bridlington-born Rosie, a patron of Theatre @41 Monkgate, York, since last May, is one of the fastest-rising stars on the comedy circuit, making her impact on Live At The Apollo, Mock The Week, The Jonathan Ross Show and 8 Out Of 10 Cats and as a panellist on BBC1’s Question Time.

Placed second at the Leicester Mercury New Comedian of the Year Award in 2018, she also has appeared on The Last Leg, Hypothetical and Comedy Central’s Roast Battle, as well as writing for the second series of Netflix hit Sex Education.

Rosie Jones: Fast-rising voice of comedy, scriptwriter and actor

Once again, the streamed show will be compered by Tim FitzHigham, writer and star of BBC Radio 4’s The Gambler and presenter of CBBC’s Super Human Challenge.

Your Place Comedy will be free to watch on YouTube and Twitch, with an option for viewers to donate if they have enjoyed the broadcast. “The money raised will be used to support the performers and the 12 venues involved, all of whom face continued uncertainty as lockdown regulations have once again prevent theatres from opening,” says Chris, manager of Selby Town Hall and arts officer for Selby Town Council.

“We were really thrilled with the response to Your Place Comedy’s return last month. As venues rooted in communities, we’ve all missed those direct connections with our brilliant and loyal audiences while the pandemic has kept theatre doors shut.

“Being able to share laughter and light-hearted moments from some of the acts who would normally appear on our stages, in what always feels like such a warm and intimate way, has been an incredible tonic over the past year and I’m delighted that acts of Hal and Rosie’s calibre have signed up to take part in this latest edition.

“Hal has been among the most prolific comedy performers of recent years, appearing on every panel show and at every comedy festival going, while Rosie looks set to become a superstar of the near future with burgeoning careers as an actor and children’s author now developing alongside her rapidly increasing comedy profile.”

Hal Cruttenden: Television comedy mainstay, appearing on screen via You Tube and Twitch streaming on Sunday

Joining together to mount Your Place Comedy Season 3 are 2021 additions The Civic, Barnsley, Seven Arts, Chapel Allerton, Leeds, and Rural Arts, at The Courthouse, Thirsk, alongside Selby Town Hall; Otley Courthouse; Ropewalk, Barton upon Humber; East Riding Theatre, Beverley; Junction, Goole; Helmsley Arts Centre; The Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds; Pocklington Arts Centre and Rotherham Theatres.

Delighted at the response to the third wave of Your Place Comedy in lockdown, Chris says: “We had a brilliant return last month with Ahir Shah and Josie Long. Over 600 devices logged on to watch with nearly £1,000 raised in donations to help pay the performers and support the venues involved.

“The acts were brilliant, and it’s been fascinating to watch how quickly and ingeniously comedians have all adapted to the format of online shows over recent months. For many, it works remarkably well, and I do wonder if some version of online gigging in the comedy world will remain even when all of this is over.”

“I know that times are tough for many people, and so we’re committed to keeping these shows completely free, so please do come and join Hal, Rosie and Tim for some top entertainment at an unbeatable price, as for now streaming is the only show in town.”

Ahead of Boris Johnson’s Monday pronouncement, Chris had said: “Sadly, I don’t hold out much hope. I’ve got autumn tours now moving to 2022 as they anticipate social distancing for the rest of the year. We won’t have anything in Selby Town Hall until autumn at the earliest.”

Now, with a road map for reopening at least in pencil form after the Prime Minister announced a four-step plan for lockdown easement, Chris says: “It certainly provides a chink of light.

Josie Long and Ahir Shah: the double bill for Your Place Comedy on January 24

“The headline is that – if all goes according to plan – venues will be able to open in a socially distanced manner from May 17, but no level of social distancing is viable for us, and I still think audience confidence will be low at that point, so it’s unlikely we will re-open ahead of June.”

Chris is only “cautiously optimistic” about that possibility at the 150-capacity Selby Town Hall. “It certainly seems as though, at current trajectory, the vaccination programme will be all but complete by the end of that month, but most tour shows before autumn have already rescheduled.”

Chris believes “we need a longer lead-in time for ticket sales and for audience confidence to return”. “I also await the small print on this – what conditions will be attached to a non-socially distanced reopening?” he ponders. “Will we have to implement rapid testing on site, or ask people to come with either proof of a recent negative PCR test or vaccination ‘passport’…or both?”

Looking ahead, Chris says: “My focus remains on delivering a full autumn programme, and Monday’s announcements give me more confidence that this will be possible.

“If, with a favourable wind, we are to open safely, in a practically and financially viable manner, at full capacity, before September, I will be thrilled. For the moment though, I remain cautious about the chances of any activity taking place in the summer.”

For full details on Your Place Comedy, and to find out how to watch the February 28 show, go to: yourplacecomedy.co.uk.

Selby Town Hall: When will it re-open?