Billy Heathwood’s Riley, left, and Antony Jardine’s Seebohm Rowntree in His Last Report at York Theatre Royal. Picture: S R Taylor Photography
YORK Theatre Royal’s latest summer community play is in keeping with the progressive tenet of York social reformer Seebohm Rowntree’s trio of reports from 1899, 1936 and 1951. Community pulling together in enlightening enterprises. Welfare for the common man. Live well, play well, work well. He would probably have made the tickets free, but that isn’t practical.
“Made with passion, joy and enthusiasm”, in collaboration with York Christian theatre company Riding Lights, His Last Report involves 250 volunteers, from 100-strong cast and 55-larynxed York Theatre Royal Choir and new choir recruits, to wardrobe, props, stage management, hair & make up, technical, marketing, front of house and photography.
“The past is back. And it’s got something to say,” reads the tagline. It turns out it has a lot to say, arguably too much, over its two-and-three-quarter-hour span that crams in everything from politics to chocolate recipe improvements; cow parlour udder-pulling to aerial acrobatics; King Lear to Lloyd George and Winston Churchill; Caribbean chocolate trade slavery to the idyll of New Earswick; moo jokes to a salty dig at Saltaire visionary Sir Titus Salt.
Under the direction of Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster and Riding Lights artistic director Paul Birch, everything is thrown in, including the kitchen-sink style of British theatre and films of the gritty, grainy late-Fifties and Sixties, with echoes of Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera too.
Amelia Donkor, one of two professional actors leading Juliet Forster and Paul Birch’s cast, in the role of Gulie Harlockin His Last Report. Picture: S R Taylor Photography
Misha Duncan-Barry and Bridget Foreman’s script has the restless, questing energy of York-born professional actor Antony Jardine’s Seebohm Rowntree, his name taken from his mother’s surname of Swedish-German origin, we learn in one of many facts dropped in with humorous relish.
We start at the end, Seebohm despondent post-reports, before heading back to 1890s’ York with personal secretary Gulie Harlock (Amelia Donkor), where his Quaker family’s cocoa works is booming, new Rowntree factory et al, under the noble guidance of father Joseph (Mark Payton, in a performance as bubbly as Aero, with a lightness of humour to match).
But something is not hitting the sweet spot for chemist, industrialist and philanthropist Seebohm. Blue-collar life is bitter, when it needs to be better for the factory workers, housed in the city’s back streets and snickelways. In tandem with Donkor’s perspicacious Gulie, he advocates better working and living conditions, improved wages and the provision of education for all and facilities to bolster both mental and physical health.
He never invented a chocolate bar called Nirvana, but his vision of a promised land of healthier, happier, wealthier workers that in turn benefits the productivity of businesses provides the seed bed for the welfare state, attracting the support of Churchill (Colin Beveridge) and Lloyd George (Andrew Wrenn).
Maurice Crichton’s Frank Benson, centre, in King Lear guise in His Last Report, with principals and ensemble looking on in His Last Report. Picture: S R Taylor Photography
Welcome to New Earswick, the model of a village to house the workforce, with a school and a library. Welcome to Rowntree’s world of Yearsley Swimming Pool, the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, gymnastics, pageants and plays. All’s well but can it end well? Ah, there’s the rub. Finance. All the good things cost money.
Jardine’s Seebohm is haunted by the spectral figure of an impoverished child, Riley (Edmund Djimramadji/Billy Heathwood) that only he can see, and all around him the figures don’t add up. The second half turns post-modern, with modern clothing interwoven with period couture, references to writers Misha and Bridget and an in-joke impersonation of the Theatre Royal’s costume department Scottish supremo Pauline.
Rather than ending well it ends Orwellian, Jardine’s despairing Seebohm observing the Britain of today, the Britain of cuts to the arts and libraries, swimming pool and factory closures, robots replacing workers, jargon replacing plain speaking, and being number 52 on the waiting list when phoning the GP at 8am.
Maurice Crichton gives us his best King Lear in the guise of grandstanding actor Frank Benson railing against the way Shakespeare is taught at schools. You may find yourself thinking, “are we going too far off the beaten track here?”, but Crichton, not for the first time, makes every second in the spotlight count.
There is nevertheless a feeling that His Last Report is preaching to the converted, those of us who do go to the theatre, who know of its value beyond cost. Who needs to listen? Those who don’t go, those who slash and burn.
A modern-day board meeting full of blue sky/dark cloud thinking as His Last Report turns theatre of the absurd. Picture: S R Taylor Photography
You might wish the solution were as simple as waving a magic wand. Seebohm Rowntree tried to do more than that, but the truth is that in this rotten world, the good things increasingly cost too much, when even chocolate bars and tins are forever diminishing in size.
Forster and Birch’s cast and choir, as much as Duncan-Barry and Foreman, make an impassioned, worthy case for wishing that life could be as Seebohm envisaged. The theatrical scale is grand, the humour uneven, the ensemble spectacle impressive, orchestrated by David Gilbert’s movement direction. Edwin Gray’s compositions and sound design, in tandem with Madeleine Hudson’s vocal musical direction, are impactful throughout.
Returning after designing previous Theatre Royal community productions The Coppergate Woman and Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes, Sara Perks’s set design is five-star quality, whether evoking the Rowntree building, factory floor, boardroom, train carriage or cow parlour, complemented by Craig Kilmartin’s lighting and Hazel Fall’s delightful costumes.
One last thought, where is the Seebohm Rowntree of today?
York Theatre Royal and Riding Lights Theatre Company present His Last Report at York Theatre Royal until August 3, 7.30pm except Sundays and Mondays, plus 2pm matinees, July 26 and August 2 & 3. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Gymnastic skill: Christie Barnes’s Brynhild Benson in His Last Report. Picture: Natasha Sinton
Amelia Donkor and Antony Jardine arrive at York Theatre Royal for their first day of rehearsals for His Last Report. Picture: Millie Stephens
PROFESSIONAL actors Antony Jardine and Amelia Donkor are leading the cast for York Theatre Royal’s 2025 summer community production His Last Report.
They take the roles of Seebohm Rowntree and Gulie Harlock respectively, performing alongside the 100-strong community ensemble in Misha Duncan-Barry and Bridget Foreman’s play about pioneering sociologist and social reformer Seebohm Rowntree, whose groundbreaking investigation into poverty illuminated the struggles of the working class and laid the foundation for the welfare state.
His Last Report delves into the life and legacy of one of the city’s most influential figures, who not only conducted three social studies in York in 1899, 1936 and 1951, defining the poverty line, but was an industrialist and philanthropist too, making his mark on the Rowntree family’s chocolate company and the development of the model community at New Earswick.
Juliet Forster, creative director of York Theatre Royal and co-director of His Last Report, says: “We are thrilled to welcome Antony and Amelia to the cast. It is so brilliant to work on these kinds of community productions where we bring together the wonderful talents of both professional actors and an ensemble cast of local people.”
Antony grew up in York, first appearing at the Theatre Royal as a “precocious child actor” in John Doyle’s days as artistic director, playing one of the princes in the tower opposite panto villain David Leonard’s Richard III in the War Of The Roses season and in Willy Russell’s Our Day Out.
“I’ve been based in London for 20 years but I did come back to the Theatre Royal in The Secret Garden, which transferred from [co-producers] Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, in 2018,” he says.
“My children were born in London, so there’s no Yorkshire in them, apart from encouraging them to eat Yorkshire Pudding and love Yorkshire Cricket Club.”
Amelia is performing at York Theatre Royal for the first time. “I’m finishing my Yorkshire Holy Grail, after playing the Stephen Joseph Theatre [Scarborough] in The 39 Steps, Hull Truck Theatre in James Graham’s The Culture and Leeds Playhouse in The Fruit Trilogy,” she says.
Antony and Amelia joined rehearsals with the ensemble company already deep into their preparations. “It was very different for us coming in that stage, when people say, ‘so this is what this scene looks like’, but everyone has been so welcoming,” says Amelia.
Antony Jardine: Suited for the role of Seebohm Rowntree in His Last Report. Picture: Millie Stephens
“It’s such a powerful piece about community being told by the York community and such a beloved story, and we’ve been really welcomed into it,” says Antony.
Introducing the character of Gulie Harlock, Amelia says: “Originally from Northampton, she worked in the East End of London, working in public health as a member of the welfare committee.
“She came to York with Seebohm originally as his personal secretary but then he realised she had a great understanding of this [social reform] work and so she ran the New Earswick project.
“She was also involved in the framing of the last report and really spearheaded the involvement of women when it was a man’s world, when Seebohm realised how important it was to represent women’s voices.”
Amelia continues “We still don’t know that much about Gulie, but we have a wonderful historical expert, Catherine Hindson, who’s been working with us, having written a piece about her for the Rowntree Foundation.
“There’s still a lot we don’t know about her, but our writers, Misha and Bridget, have really enjoyed learning about her.”
Exploring Seebohm’s story, Antony says: “He was a chemist, which is where his initial forays lay, with that influencing the chocolate recipes, but then he undertook his reports to implement social change, but to make those changes is not as easy as coming up with a mathematical solution for solving poverty.”
Amelia rejoins: “Seebohm made three reports in total, and in the second act, we deconstruct the legacy of those reports because they had such a huge impact beyond York, as Lloyd George and Churchill both wanted to use his reports as part of restructuring programmes.
“The reports changed the way politicians saw poverty. Seebohm created the concept of the poverty line and the language we use now [in relation to social reform] came through him.”
“There’s still a lot we don’t know about Gulie Harlock, but our writers, Misha and Bridget, have really enjoyed learning about her,” says actress Amelia Donkor. Picture: Millie Stephens
Antony adds: “Seebohm felt that if certain things were lacking in social structures, such as if people didn’t have access to education, leading to skilled employment, they would struggle to lift themselves above the poverty line and so they would continue to struggle.
“This gave rise to the Rowntree family creating New Earswick to address the problem of living conditions not being adequate.”
Amelia picks up that point. “Seebohm created the idea of living well and working well, so that people didn’t just live but could thrive. He understood that if people were thriving, the business would be thriving too.”
Seebohm’s projects led to the establishment of the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, the New Earswick library and the primary school, later attended by Antony, by the way.
Misha and Bridget’s play then turns its focus to applying Seebohm’s principles to the modern world, with its cuts to access to the arts and threat of library closures. “What would Seebohm think about those cuts, when all the progression that he brought about has stalled?” says Antony. “The play contemplates how maybe we can affect changes ourselves.
“York does brilliantly with such a thriving cultural scene, and this play could not be a better example of what Seebohm was seeking to achieve.”
Amelia concludes: “We hope people come out feeling entertained, moved and inspired, and feel they could be part of a call to action as Misha and Bridget ask: what might you do?
“You think, ‘maybe I could do this at school, or the local community centre’, so maybe it could cascade. When people know they’re empowered, they can go and do that in the rest of their lives.”
York Theatre Royal and Riding Lights Theatre Company present His Last Report, York Theatre Royal, until August 3, 7.30pm, except Sundays and Mondays, plus 2pm, July 26, August 2 and 3. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
“When I met Juliet Forster and Paul Birch for my audition and told them about the Rowntree connections, they couldn’t believe it either,” says York-born-and-educated actor Antony Jardine, who plays Seebohm Rowntree in His Last Report. Picture: David Kessel
Extra, extra. York Theatre Royal’s syndicated interview with Antony Jardine
What is the story behind the community production His Last Report and your character Seebohm Rowntree?
“The show is based on Seebohm Rowntree’s life and his works. He published three reports looking at poverty in York and those reports went on to become the basis of the welfare state.
“They did remarkable things for the quality of life for people and particularly for people that worked at the Rowntree’s chocolate factory at the time and lived in the village of New Earswick. The play tells that story.
“In the second half, the timeline moves around a little bit, and you begin to see what Seebohm Rowntree would make of the modern world and how after the years that have passed his research has come into fruition. The play uses a lens to look at what’s going on in society today.”
You have some interesting personal connections to this summer’s community production. What are your family’s links to the Rowntrees?
“It was quite an interesting phone call with my agent when she said she had an audition for me in York. I thought, brilliant I’d love to be back in York and work in my home city. She sent over the script, and I saw it was about the Rowntrees. I thought, that’s great, I know the Rowntrees well, and then when I read the play, I couldn’t believe all the other connections as that never really happens.
York Theatre Royal’s poster for His Last Report
“I was born and raised a Quaker. I went to New Earswick primary school, which is the school that the Rowntrees built for the village of New Earswick. I learnt to swim in the swimming pool which gets name checked in the play.
“I went to the library, which is also mentioned in the play. I went to Bootham School, which is the same school that Seebohm went to, and my dad worked for the Joseph Rowntree Housing trust for 44 years. When I met Juliet [Forster] and Paul [Birch] for my audition and told them about the connections, they couldn’t believe it either.”
Does your approach to character differ when playing a real person?
“It raises questions about what source material you have and how you use it. It’s very hard to do an accurate imitation and it’s fair to say that a lot of our audience might not have met Seebohm, so that gives us a bit more freedom to take what we do know and develop that further.
“We don’t want to turn him into James Bond or anything like that, but we want our audience to invest in every character on the stage and more importantly, the work they are doing. He’s a very beloved son of York and I really want to get it right!
“We are condensing his life down into two hours, so the journey is much more compact, so much more like a rollercoaster ride. Ultimately the source material is so solid and so factual and that underpins as a foundation for the whole piece.”
“He’s a very beloved son of York and I really want to get it right,” says Antony Jardine of his role as Seebohm Rowntree
You last performed at York Theatre Royal in The Secret Garden in 2018. What keeps you coming back to York?
“Well, it’s a pretty nice city to live and work in! The theatre itself has a beautiful auditorium; as a performer it’s a joy to be on that stage. The vibrancy in the building is incredible; there are so many people working and being creative, which I think Seebohm would have approved of enormously.
“There’s just such a lot going on, but everyone is so friendly and welcoming. It’s an absolute treat and a joy to be able to come back here.”
Why book a ticket to His Last Report?
“Trust us, you’ll be in for a great night of theatre. When I first read the script, I was absolutely bowled over by how much is incorporated into it. It’s Shakespearian in its scope; it ticks every box.
“There’s so much joy. There’s going to be a trapeze, Morris dancing, music, it’s such a great story and so specific to York, but on a national and international scale as well.
“The story is about bringing people together and realising that an issue needs to be addressed, but also the production itself is bringing together a large community of people that can express themselves artistically in the theatre. I think all of that coming together is a rare and special thing.
“I would say if you are going to go and see a play, make it this one because you will learn so much, you will think about yourself in a good, positive way and you’ll laugh and have fun and maybe even an ice cream at the interval.”
Laura Fraser’s DI Bea Metcalf on the York waterfront in Channel 4’s crime drama Patience. Picture: Channel 4
FROM a neurodiverse TV crime drama to an Oscar winner’s stage return, Charles Hutchinson picks highlights of the year ahead.
Seeing York through a different lens: Patience, Channel 4 from January 8, 9pm
CHANNEL 4’s six-part police procedural drama Patience, set in York, opens with the two-part Paper Mountain Girl, on January 8 and 9, wherein autistic Police Records Office civilian worker Patience Evans (Ella Maisy Purvis) brings her unique investigative insight to helping DI Bea Metcalf (Laura Fraser) and her team.
Written for Eagle Eye Drama by Matt Baker, from Pocklington, Patience is as much a celebration of neurodiversity as a crime puzzle-solver. “The centre of York itself is a little bit like a puzzle,” he says.
Lara McClure: Atmospheric storytelling at A Feast Of Fools II at the Black Swan Inn
Out with the old, in with the new: Navigators Art presents A Feast Of Fools II, Black Swan Inn, Peasholme Green, York, Sunday, 7pm to 10.30pm; doors, 6pm
YORK collective Navigators Art presents a last gasp of mischief in an alternative end-of-season celebration of Twelfth Night and Old Christmas, packed with live folk music, spoken word and a nod to the pagan and the impish.
Dr Lara McClure sets the scene with atmospheric storytelling, joined by York musicians Oli Collier, singer, guitarist and rising star Henry Parker, York alt-folk legends White Sail and poet and experimental musician Thomas Pearson. Book tickets at bit.ly/nav-feast2.
Seeing eye to eye: Rob Auton in his new touring comedy vehicle The Eyes Open And Shut Show
The eyes have it: Rob Auton: The Eyes Open And Shut Show, Burning Duck Comedy Club at The Crescent, York, March 5, 7.30pm; Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, May 3, 7.30pm
“THE Eyes Open And Shut Show is a show about eyes when they are open and eyes when they are shut,” says surrealist York/Barmby Moor comedian, writer, artist, podcaster and actor Rob Auton. “With this show I wanted to explore what I could do to myself and others with language when eyes are open and shut…thinking about what makes me open my eyes and what makes me shut them.”
On the back of last summer’s Edinburgh Fringe trial run, Auton goes on the road from January 27 to May 4 with his eyes very much open. Box office: York, thecrescentyork.com; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.
York-raised artist Harland Miller with his title work for the XXX exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: courtesy of White Cube (Ollie Hammick), 2019
No stopping him this time, please: Harland Miller: XXX, York Art Gallery, March 14 to August 31, Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm
AFTER the first Covid lockdown curtailed his York, So Good They Named It Once show only a month into its 2020 run, international artist and writer Harland Miller returns to the city where he was raised to present XXX, a new exhibition that showcases paintings and works on paper from his Letter Paintings series.
Stirred by his upbringing in 1970s’ Yorkshire and an itinerant lifestyle in New York, New Orleans, Berlin and Paris during the 1980s and 1990s, Miller creates colourful and graphically vernacular works that convey his love of popular language and attest to his enduring engagement with its narrative, aural and typographical possibilities.
Harland Miller, XXX, oil on canvas, 2019. Copyright: Harland Miller. Photo copyright: White Cube, Theo Christelis
Coinciding with the release of a book of the same title by Phaidon, XXX features several new Miller works, including one that celebrates his home city, in a hard-edged series that melds the sacred seamlessly with the everyday, drawing inspiration from medieval manuscripts, where monks often laboured to produce intricate illuminated letters to mark the beginning of chapters.
In these works, the Yorkshire Pop artist – who is represented by White Cube – uses bold colours and typefaces to accentuate the expressive versatility of monosyllabic words and acronyms such as ESP, IF and Star.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a Q&A with the artist plus community activities to “inspire, inform and involve all”. Tickets: yorkartgallery.org.uk/tickets.
Gary Oldman in the dressing room when visiting York Theatre Royal last March to plan this spring’s production of Krapp’s Last Tape
Theatre event of the year: Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape, York Theatre Royal, April 14 to May 17
ONCE the pantomime Cat that fainted thrice in Dick Whittington in his 1979 cub days on the professional circuit, Oscar winner Gary Oldman returns to the Theatre Royal to perform Samuel Beckett’s melancholic, tragicomic slice of theatre of the absurd Krapp’s Last Tape in his first stage appearance since the late-1980s.
“York, for me, is the completion of a cycle,” says the Slow Horses leading man. “It is the place ‘where it all began’. York, in a very real sense, for me, is coming home. The combination of York and Krapp’s Last Tape is all the more poignant because it is ‘a play about a man returning to his past of 30 years earlier’.” Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Suzy Cooper and Mark Holgate: Teaming up as Titania and Oberon – and Hippolyta and Theseus too – in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Look who’s back too: Suzy Cooper in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Grand Opera House, York, May 6 to 11
GARY Oldman will not be the only former Berwick Kaler co-star returning to a York stage in 2025. Suzy Cooper, for more than 20 years the ditzy, posh-voiced, jolly super principal gal in the grand dame’s pantomimes, will lead Nik Briggs’s cast alongside York actor Mark Holgate as the quarrelling Queen and King of the Fairies, Titania and Oberon.
Briggs relocates his debut Shakespeare production from the court of Athens to Athens Court, a northern council estate, where magic is fuelled with mayhem and true love’s path still does not run smooth. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Beach hut five, Shed Seven: York band to make Scarborough Open Air Theatre debut in June
“Biggest ever headline show in their home county”: Shed Seven, TK Maxx Presents Scarborough Open Air Theatre, June 14
IN the aftermath of their 30th anniversary celebrations and two number one albums in 2024, refulgent York band Shed Seven will focus on the great outdoors in the summer ahead, fulfilling a dream by making a long-overdue Scarborough OAT debut, when Jake Bugg and Cast will be their special guests. “It’s a stunning and historic venue…Yorkshire’s very own Hollywood Bowl!” enthuses lead singer Rick Witter.
The Sheds also return to Leeds Millennium Square on July 11, supported by Lightning Seeds and The Sherlocks. Box office: Scarborough, scarboroughopenairtheatre.co.uk or ticketmaster.co.uk; Leeds,gigsandtours.com and ticketmaster.co.uk.
Bridget Foreman: Co-writer of York Theatre Royal and Riding Lights’ community play His Last Report
Community play of the year: York Theatre Royal and Riding Lights Theatre Company in His Last Report, York Theatre Royal, July 22 to August 3
YORK Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster and York company Riding Lights artistic director Paul Birch will co-direct a large-scale community project that focuses on pioneering York social reformer Seebohm Rowntree and his groundbreaking 1900s’ investigation into the harsh realities of poverty.
Told through the voices of York’s residents, both past and present, Misha Duncan-Barry and Bridget Foreman’s play will ask “What is Seebohm’s real legacy as the Ministry begins to dismantle the very structures he championed?” Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
RIDING Lights Theatre Company is launching The Word Bank, a new writing fund in memory of co-founder and artistic director Paul Burbridge.
The fund was announced by Paul’s widow, Bernadette, at the conclusion to his two-hour service of service and thanksgiving, held on June 10 at St Michael-le-Belfrey, the church they attended regularly.
Further details can be found in Riding Lights’ June newsletter. “Paul believed that Riding Lights is called to make kingdom-centred theatre that is responsive, urgent, visionary, insightful and prophetic, and that in order to do that we need new plays,” Bernadette says.
“Paul was genuinely excited when a first draft dropped into his inbox. A skilful wordsmith himself, he became an excellent commissioner and dramaturg: a midwife of new work and encourager of writers.”
The Word Bank will support the commission and production of new writing, ensuring that it remains at the heart of Riding Lights’ work.
“When Paul died, he was – as ever – full of plans for Riding Lights. But underpinning plans, Paul always had a vision of theatre that was abundant and generous, because it was a response to the abundance and generosity of God,” says Bernadette.
“He was very amused, in the early days of the company, when a stern critic accused him of employing ‘unnecessary humour’. Years later, he described the work that Riding Lights makes as a precious outpouring, like Mary’s jar of perfume poured over Jesus’s feet: an apparently unnecessary, costly offering; an act of witness, and an expression of the abundance of the kingdom.”
The Word Bank will remain open for donations until the end of July 2024. For full details of how to make a regular or one-off donation, along with information on increasing the gift’s value through Gift Aid, go to: ridinglights.org/TheWordBank.
“As we invite you to give to The Word Bank in Paul’s memory, we hope that you will do so with that spirit of abundance, no matter how much or how little you can give…to nurture the creation and presentation of new work as Riding Lights moves into the future,” says Bernadette.
Introduced by the Reverend Iain Lothian, Paul’s memorial service was packed to the rafters for tributes by Riding Lights luminary Murray Watts and regular designer Sean Kavanagh, a reflection by Geoffrey Stevenson and contributions by daughters Erin Burbridge and Caitlin Harland and son Patrick Burbridge, plus playwright and co-writer Bridget Foreman.
Amaka Okafor, from the Royal Court premiere, will join the Riding Lights company for staged readings of Lucy Kirkwood’s Maryland in York
YORK’S Riding Lights Theatre Company will present two staged readings of Lucy Kirkwood’s Maryland, a 30-minute “howl” of a protest play, written in response to sexual violence against women.
Amaka Okafor, from the original Royal Court Theatre cast, will be joined in associate director Bridget Foreman’s cast by Laura Pyper, Mark Holgate, Cassie Vallance, Kesiah Joseph, Patricia Jones and Meg Blowey at Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, rehearsing for two days for script-in-hand performances at 6.30pm and 8.30pm on November 26.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 17 murder of Sabine Nessa and the sentencing of policeman Wayne Couzens for Sarah Everard’s kidnap, rape and murder, Kirkwood decided that a “provocative” play “had to happen now”, as she told the Guardian.
The Skins screenwriter and Chimerica and The Children playwright duly wrote the agit-prop Maryland “very quickly” as a “passionate and furious act of resistance to draw attention to the shocking numbers of women who repeatedly suffer violent abuse throughout Britain. The play is not specific; it addresses issues of police behaviour and a culture of violence against women and girls”.
Director Bridget Foreman
“I hesitate to even call it a play when it is simply a howl, a way of expressing what I feel about a culture of violence against women,” Kirkwood said in a quote she gave to the Royal Court. “But I am sharing it because I wonder if it might express a little of what other people feel about it too.”
After sold-out performances in London, the Royal Court offered Maryland copyright-free for theatre companies to perform in solidarity and protest until November 27. York company Riding Lights was quick to take up that opportunity.
“It is not our intention to make a particular link with any of the women in York whose stories have achieved a terrible notoriety,” stresses Riding Lights’ acting general manager, Bernadette Burbridge.
“We don’t wish in any way to add to the pain of families and friends whose suffering will never resolve.
Riding Lights cast member Cassie Vallance
“Violence against women is a persistent canker in society and this is a moment in which Riding Lights can seize the offer from the Royal Court to speak loudly through art.
“To amplify this cry of protest as loudly as possible, we hope these performances will be sold out and that audiences will include as many men as women.”
Welcoming Riding Lights mounting Maryland at short notice, administrative co-producer Professor Gweno Williams says: “It’s an issue that I’m passionate about and I’m delighted that Lucy’s play is being put on in York after the writer and Royal Court decided it should be released to theatres for a month. My goal in co-producing these readings is not just do some good by publicising what’s happening but also to bring about change.
“How extraordinary it is that this brand-new script by an outstanding contemporary playwright has been made available UK-wide for copyright-free performance by any professional theatre company for a limited number of weeks after the Royal Court run ended on October 23.
Laura Pyper: Maryland cast memberfor the November 26 staged readings
“Maryland expresses passionate outrage about current repeated patterns of random violence against women, including women of colour.”
Describing Maryland as “an overview rather than a specific case”, Gweno says: “It was written by Lucy in two days and it’s incredibly strong piece that’s been called a howl of rage.
“The cast comprises six women and one man, and the play is structured partly as a Greek drama with six Furies, with the drama alternating between the ancient Furies and a contemporary scene in the aftermath of a rape.”
Tickets cost £5 on 01904 613000. The two audiences will be invited to make a recommended donation of £7 or more to Survive, a York charity that supports survivors of sexual abuse. Donations also can be made via survive-northyorks.org.uk.
Send in the clown : James Lewis-Knight in his Love Bite, Staying Connected. Picture: Tom Arber
YORK Theatre Royal has reopened after 427 days. The longest, darkest hiatus since the Second World War at England’s longest-running theatre has ended with a declaration of love.
More precisely, 22 love letters to the power of theatre, a craving for freedom of movement, expression and identity and the need for human connection: a collective, anything-but-cautious hug that was as much a sigh of relief as a breath of fresh York air in the form of a fiesta of five-minute vignettes commissioned from 220 applicants.
Let’s repeat that. 22O applicants for £1,000 commissions from York’s diverse arts community that refuses to accept Rich Boy Risha Sunak’s slight that such talents are non-viable. A community that will laugh off the Beano comic’s laughable Hilarity Report finding that the average York resident laughs only 14 times a day, the second lowest in the country. Are you joking? Laugher aplenty could be heard on Monday night, alongside the joy, the sadness, the uncertainty but hope.
Indeed, The 22 would surely challenge York Mix e-letter writer John Wolfe’s scalding, agent-provocateur assertion that York is a city of “no real festivals or decent venues. No sports centres or entertainment for locals. No chance of change either. Why do you think all of the young people move away? Outside of its history it’s drab and bl**dy awful.”
Crying Wolfe? Well, John, in the city of the York Community Stadium, four state-of-the-art cinemas, myriad theatres, ever more restaurants, café bars, coffee houses, independent galleries and a rising tide of street art, perhaps you should go York Theatre Royal, one of the country’s great theatres, tonight (Tuesday) to see the spread of talent, both young and older.
Some were born in the city and are determined to stay here, when the arts are becoming less London-centric; others have been drawn to the city from, for example, Canada and Zimbabwe, and here they gathered under one rainbow umbrella to express their love for York and their place in it.
Trouble is, John, you can’t buy a seat because, as with the first night, tonight’s Love Bites have sold out at the outset of a Love Season pulsing with life, vigour and, yes, love, topped off by Ralph Fiennes performing T S Eliot’s Four Quartets in late-July.
In the words of chief executive Tom Bird, Love Bites and The Love Season are a chance to “experience again the electric excitement that only live performance can bring. This spring and summer, we’re putting on a season of brave, bold love stories to celebrate the return of human connection. We’re doing it with passion, fervour and heart, as you’d expect.”
Monday night began with the much-loved veteran BBC broadcaster Harry Gration in host mode, toasting his 50-year love affair with the Theatre Royal before making way for the flurry of short pieces.
The screen backdrop could and probably should have been used for announcing each show title, writer and performer, especially as flicking through the e-programme on your phone in the dark would have been distracting for others, even in the socially distanced seating with the capacity reduced from 750 to 340.
Actor Toby Gordon’s hair has grown to Dave Grohl length in locks-down lockdown, but the golden tongue that delivered both Satan and later Jesus’s lines in the York Minster Mystery Plays now glistened anew in the questing, vexed poetry of W H Auden’s O Tell Me The Truth About Love.
Film would feature on several occasions through the night, first in a cinematic riparian soundscape by Ben Pugh to accompany the poetic ebb and flow of Robert Powell and Kitty Greenbrown’s The Angels Of Lendal Bridge, imagining those painted “angels” conversing above the Ouse, recalling so much water that has passed under their iron bridge amid a rising tide of love.
Luella Rebbeck, Jamie Marshall-White and Isla Bowles in The Art Of Losing. Picture: Tom Arber
CAPA College student trio Luella Rebbeck, Jamie Marshall-White and Isla Bowles, in glowing green and pink socks to suit the occasion, were nevertheless in contemplative mood in The Art Of Losing, tempo slow, bodies graceful, in what they emphasised were three “non-love stories”, but instead felt more like a lament; a year’s absence making the heart grow fonder for “what it means to have contact with one another”.
Playwright, poet and slam champ Hannah Davies’s tweets at @davieswords have charted her enervating health frustrations, but no York shaper of words captures a sense, meaning and memory of place so movingly, so evocatively, and what a joy it was to see back on a stage for Love Song To Spring.
Accompanied by Jack “Pascallion” Woods’s exploratory guitar paths, her lockdown love story journeyed through the freshly discovered joys of city walking and spring renewal in York’s myriad green spaces. Listen to Hannah, and you will step into spring with added spring in your step.
New discovery of the night was much-travelled Zimbabwean playwright Butshilo Nleya, who “wondered if my pockets are big enough to carry home with me” as he moved to York.
Explosive bursts of drumming and film imagery by Sunnie Hsia of Butshilo on York streets, stairways and in the dank Leeman Road tunnel formed a triptych with his soliloquy, Ekhaya, Love Them Both?, as he mulled over place, love and self, with humour rooted in observation of York’s idiosyncrasies, but a deeper wish to find his place, wherever he plays his drum, whatever life throws at him. One to watch, definitely.
For aeons, a Nightingale’s nocturnal song has had writers reaching for metaphors for love and beauty. Musician, performance writer and actor Tom Nightingale’s song, Elaine, is to “show everyone my gratitude to the only lady who has ever helped me”, his wife.
In its cautious yet unguarded way it was a song of love and beauty suffused with unshaven, wry, deadpan frankness, delivered in the spirit of John Otway and Jonathan Richman beneath Martin Stephenson’s cocked hat. Nightingale writes as a “therapeutic outlet”, to make sense of life; on Monday, it worked for your reviewer; hopefully it does for Elaine too.
The name in the Love Bites e-programme and in her Q&A answers to CharlesHutchPress is Erika Noda, but the Japanese-English actor and East 15 graduate born in York introduced herself on Monday as Aiaka, the name that a teacher found so difficult, she called her ‘Ai’ and banished her from the classroom for insubordination in challenging her.
So began the journey to Ai, Erika/Aiaka’s semi-autobiographical debut solo-writing work, examining her dual heritage and encounters with racist “microaggression”, growing up in York, (a city once so white it was dubbed “Persil Town”). On the evidence of Ai, this quest for identity remains unresolved, a bumpy ride with such familiar stones in the road as “no, but where are you really from?”.
Even the inventor of Zoom apparently has had enough of all those enervating Zoom-and-gloom meetings, but loveable York musical-comedy double act Fladam (pianist-singer Adam Sowter and funny face-puller and singer Florence Poskitt) found the funny side of this digital bridge to connecting in lockdown-separation in the tartly topical Love Bytes. Aptly, the cheeky, witty, melodious encounter was long-distance, Adam on stage, Flo online, filling the screen with a squelchy face as ripe for comedy as Thora Hird or Victoria Wood.
Surprise of the night? Seeing Paul Birch on stage and then wondering why he does not frequent this space more often. Maybe he is just too busy writing and directing, and running Out Of Character, the York company for artists with experiences of mental illness.
His twisting-and-turning five-minute gem, Lost For Words, was a mind-game in motion as the quicksilver Birch fought to save his most precious relationship in a race against time where a killjoy voice from beyond kept stripping him of the right to use letters from the alphabet, letter by letter. You found yourself joining him in his mental exercise, smugly spotting him still using a ‘V’ when barred from doing so, but cheering him on as he tried to keep his head above water as the wds rn t. Could this be a game show in the making?
All around is frown time, but clown time is never over for the red-nosed James Lewis-Knight, actor and artistic director of Clown Space, purveyor of comical pandemonium amid a pandemic. After a year as the Clown in Lockdown, wandering the busking streets of York turned silent, James unlocked his dusty case to make his mimed plea for Staying Connected. He kept saying “Picnic”, but where Birch was lost for words, James was a little lost for meaning, one punchline short of his Picnic having more bite.
If you heard Dora Rubinstein’s perkily assertive rendition of Gus Gowland’s The Streets Of York blind, you would swear it was from a musical. Sure enough, Gowland, latterly moved to York, is a musical theatre writer/composer with the award-winning Pieces Of String to his name. Gowland’s celebration of Gentleman Jack Anne Lister’s wedding vows in a York church will surely grow from a love letter to a full-blown show, a progression the Theatre Royal should encourage and activate.
Janet-Emily Bruce and Cassie Vallance in Story Craft Theatre’s She Can Go Anywhere. Picture: Tom Arber
In a night of storytelling, butter-rich with words, the shadow puppetry of children’s theatre company Story Craft Theatre silently spoke volumes to the accompaniment of Jonathan Glew’s beautiful score in She Can Go Anywhere. Who knew you could say so much with a sheet, folded and unfolded by Cassie Vallance and Janet-Emily Bruce as if a cotton version of origami, freeing imaginations when the pandemic has shrunk the world to the home, transforming life’s caterpillars into butterflies.
Hannah Wintie-Hawkins was a dancer at the double in her terpsichorean love letter In The Beginning, at once on stage and in digital artist Aaron Howell’s accompanying film, dancing with baby Mabel in her arms. It was as though Hannah, like us, was watching in wonder at the joy of a new arrival: a beacon of hope amid the pandemic turbulence, only in her case it was moving her to break out into a dance. The dual focus, however, was not wholly satisfying, as she danced with herself, the one distracting from the other, rather than intertwining like mother and daughter on screen.
Richard Kay, actor, singer, pantomime writer and Zoom choir leader, asked his choir members two questions: how and why do you like singing? Whereupon he compiled the answers into the composition For The Love Of Singing, a song as nimble on its feet as Fred Astaire and wittily delivered in the crisply enunciated manner of a Richard Stilgoe, with digital choir backing and the projection of words dancing in and out of formation in David Todd’s playful animation. Clever, humorous, warm and briskly energetic, and tuneful to boot, it would sit well in a cabaret revue.
How did it feel to be back in the theatre after 427 days? Actor Maurice Crichton caught those feelings as he cast his net of observations in Where Are We Now, You And I?, and he looked in such a hurry to deliver his thoughts, it was as if he had come straight from a rehearsal room in tracksuit trousers and The Show Must Go On T-shirt, hair unkempt.
Not that he rushed through his sage counsel, instead understanding feelings of anger, advising a policy of gentleness with each other and not expecting too much too soon, while breathing in the wonder of theatre once more. How right he was; how emotional too.
Canadian-born papercut artist Elena Skoreyko Wagner, countertenor and composer James Cave and libretto editor Bethan Ellis promised Magic and delivered it too in a four-minute mini-musical, set in a constantly evolving paper theatre that grew ever prettier under Elena’s delicate guidance.
Elena seeks to discover “magic and meaning in everyday, mundane experiences”, the transcendent magic rising through her imagery and the beauty of James’s singing, and in the stasis of the pandemic, a walk, birdsong, gardening, baking banana bread, have indeed taken on a heightened magical air.
On their Twitter account, non-binary, unapologetically autistic creator Ashleigh J Mills (they/them) calls themselves Angry Black Changeling. Identity and accessibility into theatre lay at the heart of In Progress, their spoken-word exploration of the “interplay between race, self-understanding and the shifting boundaries of gender over the span of a solitary year” when experiencing life on the margins.
Ashleigh has kept a Good Words List for four years, and on the screen behind them, the constant, measured flicking through a book revealed word after word standing proud from the text, each building a picture of Ashleigh’s questing, creative fascination with words.
Those words were knitted together to form their soliloquy, a still-evolving expression of Ashleigh as a work in progress in changing times, and only good words can be said of their poetic candour.
Of all the five minutes, nothing brought a broader smile than the sheer joy in dancing together of Alice Boddy and Leanne Hope, friends since Northern Ballet School days, who burst out of a restricted year of living-room creativity to revel in a Love Letter To Female Friendship on the dancefloor in the face of such trying times. They were so in their moment, they were in their own world, but one we all could recognise and wish to join in.
The title, Mise En Aby-Me, may have been baffling, but life model, milliner and costumier Claire Spooner made a fascinating body of work in her physical theatre piece that testified to her desire to tell a story through the human form, rather than words, in this case aided by Richard Stephenson’s artwork and LEMNIS’s music.
Claire turned herself into a Russian doll, peeling off layers, adding masks, revealing how she presented herself in relationships, love in different guises, until nothing could hide the constant persona within, beauty beyond the eye of the beholder.
Deaf director and “self-proclaimed proactive busy-body” Harri Marshall composed a semi-autobiographical love letter to oneself via cards and correspondence collected over the past year…and then handed over the task of interpreting them aloud to Sarah Huggett, accompanied by the exact wording on the screen behind.
I say “exact” because text and voice did not always say the same lines and you found yourself checking for differences as much as concentrating on Harri’s flow of meaning. What’s more, the rhythm of the language was broken too, screen and voice going in and out of synch. Hopefully, I Often Think Of You had a better second night.
Before Reverie came a nightmare, thankfully only briefly, as a flick of a switch belatedly awoke the somnambulant keyboard for composer, pianist and piano teacher Vanessa Simmons’s retelling of a dream in musical form. Ah, what peace, after the fizzing fireworks, as an unperturbed Vanessa rejoiced in “the beauty, sorrow and power of real love”.
Last, but anything but least and rightly chosen as the finale was 5 Minute Call, penned by esteemed York playwright Bridget Foreman, writer of 30 plays, both large and solo, with another, My Place, on the way.
Chief exec Tom Bird’s Irish-accented actor wife, Laura Pyper, took on the guise of a theatre “techie” five minutes before curtain-up, taking instruction on checking lighting for stage positions while capturing how the theatre itself felt about the return of life on its boards, warming up to the reunion with its lifeblood, both performers and audiences. The feeling of love was mutual, as the Pied Pyper led us back to our spiritual home.
These Love Bites left their mark, so much so, let’s hope York Theatre Royal can look to open further seasons with showcases for the city’s talents, £1,000 commissions et al.
Suffragette city: Women on the protest march in Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes on the York Minster Plaza in June 2017. Picture: Anthony Robling
YORK Theatre Royal will stream the 2017 community play Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes for free on YouTube from May 6.
Co-produced with Theatre Royal company-in-residence Pilot Theatre, this large-scale production was performed by a community cast of 150 and a choir of 80 from June 20 to July 1 that summer.
Set in early 20th century York, Juliet Forster and Katie Posner’s production began with Suffragette protest scenes and rallying calls on the plaza outside York Minster before moving indoors to the Theatre Royal’s main stage.
Leading professional actress Barbara Marten, who lives in York, played the lead role of Annie Seymour Pearson, a Heworth housewife who risked her life in 1913 to fight for women’s right to vote as women across the country, outraged by inequality and prejudice, began to rise up and demand change.
Barbara Marten as York Suffragette campaigner Annie Seymour Pearson at York Theatre Royal in June 2017. Picture: Anthony Robling
Annie began her involvement in the Suffragette movement as an ordinary, middle-class housewife in a church-going family with a middle-management husband and three children.
She also was part of the Primrose League, who went out canvassing among women like themselves to influence them into urging their husbands to vote for certain candidates for election.
Yet you would struggle to find outward acknowledgment in York of Annie Seymour Pearson’s place in the city’s social history. “The house in Heworth Green, where she ran a safe house, no longer stands and there’s no blue plaque,” said Barbara at the start of rehearsals in late-May 2017. “Even her obituary made no mention of her having been a Suffragette.
“It’s interesting to choose Annie as a central character because she was such a genteel, respectable woman who didn’t start out as a militant, but various events propelled her forward.”
Barbara Marten, the one professional in the community cast of 150, in rehearsal for Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes
Not least, Annie was arrested in January 1913 when a union deputation of York Suffragettes headed to London as thousands of women converged on the capital to protest at the poverty that many women were living through.
“Annie was arrested for obstruction, just for walking on the pavement, and the charge was ‘obstruction’ simply because there were so many women there,” said Barbara.
“She was charged 40 shillings for her offence or three weeks in prison and she wrote to her husband to say that she would not pay her fine, but she would serve her sentence and was prepared to be imprisoned again.
“She’s there in prison for two days, when her husband comes down to London and pays the fine – and you can imagine the scene when she got home.”
Barbara Marten as Annie Seymour Pearson: wife, mother, Suffragette. Picture: Anthony Robling
Everything Is Possible highlighted how the Suffragette movement was not solely a London movement. “Instead, it was made up of women from all over the country, like in Manchester and Leeds, where lots of women worked in factories, and in York as well,” said Barbara. “Scarborough was very militant too.”
The 2017 “protest play” recalled how women in York ran safe houses, organised meetings, smashed windows and fire-bombed pillar boxes, the production telling the story of their dangerous, exhilarating and ground-breaking actions for the first time.
York playwright Bridget Foreman, who wrote Everything Is Possible, says of the timing of next month’s streaming: “It’s really poignant, in the midst of isolation and social distancing, to think about the making of Everything Is Possible; the extraordinary coming together of hundreds of local people, and the staging of huge crowd scenes both on the York Theatre Royal stage and outside York Minster.
“And now the stage is dark and the streets are empty. But looking back to the way in which that show brought people together, inspiring them in so many ways, is a wonderful reminder of the power of theatre and community.”
Playwright Bridget Foreman at the read-through for Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes. Picture: John Saunders
Bridget continues: “We saw participants and audience members getting involved with theatre, politics, activism, local history, family research. Now, I really hope that people watching the production digitally will find their own inspiration, their own vision and energy for engaging with and changing the world when we come through this crisis.”
Directed by Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster and Pilot Theatre associate director Posner, now co-artistic director of Paines Plough in London, Everything Is Possiblewaspart of the Theatre Royal’s 2017 season Of Women Born, curated by a team of women to focus on work made and led by female artists, built around women’s stories.
Everything Is Possible can be streamed online on the Theatre Royal’s YouTube channel from 7pm on Wednesday, May 6 to Sunday, May 31. In the run-up to the streaming, the Theatre Royal will be sharing messages on social media from the volunteers who helped bring this production to the stage.
“These responses from the theatre’s community, promoted by the question ‘What does ‘everything is possible’ mean to you right now?’, aims to spread messages of hope and courage to the wider York community during the Coronavirus pandemic,” says marketing officer Olivia Potter.
The full cast and choir for Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes on the York Theatre Royal stage in June 2017. Picture: Anthony Robling
The Theatre Royal is asking viewers to support the stream by making an online or text donation, “so that York Theatre Royal can continue to engage and entertain the York community in the future”.
The Everything Is Possible online stream is part of the theatre’s Collective Acts programme of creative community engagement, taking place while the building is closed under the Coronavirus pandemic strictures.
Further details on the Everything Is Possible online stream and Collective Acts can be found at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Deeds not words: Suffragette protesters leave the York Minster Plaza to make their way to York Theatre Royal in the 2017 community play Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes. Picture: Anthony Robling
REVIEW: Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes, York Theatre Royal/Pilot Theatre, at York Theatre Royal and York Minster Plaza, from The Press, York, June 23 2017.
DAMIAN Cruden has no hesitation in naming his greatest achievement in his 20 years as artistic director at York Theatre Royal: the rise and rise of the community play.
The city already had the York Mystery Plys, the street plays staged in myriad forms through the centuries, and when Cruden and Riding Lights’ Paul Burbridge directed the 2012 plays on their return to the Museum Gardens, a template was established for the series of community productions that has ensued.
Each has told a chapter of York’s history: the chocolate industry in the dark shadow of the First World War in Blood + Chocolate on the city streets; the rise and fall of the Railway King, George Hudson, in In Fog And Falling Snow at the National Railway Museum, and now the York Suffragettes in Everything Is Possible, outside the Minster and in the Theatre Royal’s main house.
Street protest: One of the modern-day protesters in the opening scenes from Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes. Picture: Anthony Robling
A rabble noise swells from the Minster Plaza, a canny way to make the city aware that a major production of political dimensions involving more than 300 people is taking place in their midst at a time when the political landscape is more divisive and more inflammatory than for years. The scene, a throng of rebel songs and impassioned speeches, replicates demonstrations of yore, suddenly suffused by placard-waving Suffragettes in 1913 attire, followed by policemen forcibly breaking up the crowd.
The likes of Sophie Walmsley on her acoustic guitar need to placed higher above the crowd, but where Barbara Marten’s Annie Seymour Pearson takes her place on the Plaza steps is a better sight line.
“Deeds Not Words” say the placards: a mantra that wholly applies to how these community plays are mounted, volunteers to the fore on and off stage, this time under the guidance of a professional production team led by the Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster and Pilot Theatre associate director Katie Posner
Juliet Forster: York Theatre Royal associate director, co-director of Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes
Once we are ushered by the coppers to the theatre, there is a little lull for chatter and drinks refuelling before Bridget Foreman’s account of the previously untold story of York’s involvement in the Suffragette movement circa 1913 has its day and has its say.
Marten and Suffragettes historian Professor Krista Cowman have played significant parts in bringing the story to the stage, so too have Foreman and a research team, and now at last the role of Annie Seymour Pearson and her Suffragette safe house at 14, Heworth Green, next to the home of anti-Suffragette campaigner Edith Milner, has its rightful place in the city’s history.
Barbara Marten might strike some in the audience as being a little old for her role as a mother of four young children, but Foreman places her as much in the role of a narrator looking back on the events of a century ago as that of protagonist in the drama, and all of Marten’s passion for the story, as well as her celebrated acting skills come to the fore.
A scene from Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes. Picture: Anthony Robling
York, it must be said, played rather less of a central role in the Suffragette drive for votes for women than it did in this year’s General Election with its visits by Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.
Yes, it played not even second fiddle to London and Leeds, but Emmeline Pankhurst (Liz Elsworth), leader of the British suffragette movement, made a speech here that forms the climax of the first half; leading Leeds campaigner Leonora Cohen (Loretta Smith) visited too, as did Lilian Lenton, the wild-card London arsonist, played by the breakthrough new talent of this show, University of York student Annabel Lee. A firecracker indeed, a professional career surely awaits.
Annie’s arrest in London for obstructing a policeman – when he had been the one to inflict a bloody nose – and the militant activities of the Women’s Social and Political Union in York, led by Jo Smith’s Violet Key Jones, are prominent in the play, A silent movie-style film sequence linked to live action shows the full horror of the prison practice of force-feeding hunger-strikers, showing off Sara Perks’s set to best effect too.
Rallying call: Two protesters on the York Minster Plaza at the outset of Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes. Picture: Anthony Robling
Men have their place in the piece in the form of Mark France’s Arthur Seymour Pearson (rather reminiscent of the husband figure in Brief Encounter) and Rory Mulvihill’s stentorian Home Secretary.
A choir of 100 is tucked away out of sight in the gods, assembled by Madeleine Hudson to perform Ivan Stott’s folk-rooted campaigning compositions, but rightly they have their moment in the spotlight on stage at the finale.
Forster and Posner’s very lively, highly committed, educational and resolute production, peppered with anarchic humour as much as political zeal, forms the pinnacle of York Theatre Royal’s Of Woman Born season of women’s words and deeds. In straitened times for funding for the arts, Everything Is Possible affirms that anything is possible when a community comes together and turns York into Suffragette City.
Review by Charles Hutchinson. Copyright of The Press, York.
