Tag: Caroline Jay Ranger

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Trainspotting The Musical tour cancelled after poor box office. Grand Opera House ticket holders refunded for Nov no-show

Lewis Kidd’s Mark Renton in the London run of Trainspotting The Musical at Theatre Royal Haymarket. Picture: Matt Crockett, supplied by Neil Redding PR

TRAINSPOTTING The Musical has been derailed before setting off on a tour that would have disembarked at the Grand Opera House, York, in November.

“Closed” reads the notice on the GOH website after poor reviews of the London premiere and equally poor ticket sales nationwide, not least in Edinburgh, the setting for Irvine Welsh’s story, where the tour’s opening week at the Edinburgh Playhouse from October 19 to 24 had attracted only 19 per cent ticket sales, according to a Facebook post by performer and resident director Keiran Brown.

Tickets for the York run from November 10 to 14 will be refunded. Ticket holders are being contacted by their point of purchase.

The world premiere will continue its London debut at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until September 5, as planned. All tour details have been removed from the official website.

A statement from the production company says: “The forthcoming UK tour of Trainspotting The Musical, which was due to begin on 19 October, has been cancelled.

“We are very grateful to our cast, crew and creative team for their dedication to the production, but the current economic climate has resulted in lower than expected ticket sales. Ticketholders will be contacted by their point of purchase with full refund details. We apologise for any inconvenience and disappointment this may cause.”

The poster for the now-cancelled tour of Trainspotting The Musical

Presented by Phil McIntyre Live, the musical is written by Welsh, based on his 1993 debut novel that was turned into an iconoclastic film by Danny Boyle in 1996 with a script by Welsh, centred on rapscallion heroin addict Mark Renton and his dysfunctional circle of friends navigating the chaotic highs and brutal lows of addiction, poverty and aimlessness in Leith as they struggle to break free from smackhead self-destruction.

Directed and developed by Caroline Jay Ranger – who was at the helm of John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers The Play, whose tour played the Grand Opera House in May – the musical features music and lyrics by Stephen McGuinness and Welsh. Their score includes tracks associated with the original film alongside new material written for the stage.

Boyle’s Trainspotting was the highest-grossing UK film release of 1996, won the BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay and was later ranked in the British Film Institute list of the 100 greatest British films of the 20th century.

The 2026 musical carried the billing: “Thirty years on from the film that changed everything…this show is expected to transport you back to the Nineties”, declaring that  that “Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud, Tommy and Kelly, the industrial drug-crazed working-class heroes, are back”.

The Grand Opera House site website’s show details stated: “In 1996, CHOOSE LIFE sounded like a challenge. Thirty years on, the landscape has shifted, but the hunger hasn’t. Addiction hasn’t disappeared – it’s shifted. It’s quieter now, more embedded. Less needle, more screen. Less escape, more repetition. The same restless search for something to fill the space.

“The musical highlights the world we see changing around us, the obscene concentration of wealth, economic and political power in the hands of so few people. It addresses the modern culture of powerlessness. Art the singing-and-dancing Trojan horse that delivers direction and relevance.

Robbie Scott: Cast as Mark Renton for UK tour of Trainspotting: The Musical. Robbie, from Aberdeen, missed out on the West End opening after breaking his back in rehearsals and will miss out on the show altogether. Picture: Matt Crockett, supplied by Neil Redding PR

“This isn’t nostalgia, it’s closer than that. The past isn’t revisited – it lingers. The musical doesn’t tidy it. It sits with it. Listens to it. And lets it sing. New songs, classic songs, a musical like never before. Not for the easily confronted. It’s funny, loud, dynamic, and brings a dark dangerous energy never experienced before on the West End stage.”

In April, Welsh proclaimed: “I believe the musical has a bigger, loudly beating human heart than either the book or the film. People need to think about the world we’re living in, and we offer that inspection, but they also really need to sing their hearts out and laugh their heads off – it’s what being human is all about.”

On Monday morning, before the tour cancellation notice served later in the day, he revealed to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme listeners: “We are in difficult times and we’ve been looking at the numbers and sums. We knew it would be difficult to take a production of that scale on the road. We’ve got 30 cast members. Basically people just don’t have the money. It’s not a great time to be putting a new show on the road.”

Reflecting on the shellacking from West End critics, encapsulated in a one-star Guardian review, Welsh told Today presenter Amol Rajan: “I’m not the kind of writer that is loved by the critics. I tend to be a polarising force. I think it’s the way I go about these things and the way I write.”

Arifa Akbar’s verdict in the Guardian had lamented: “Sadly, the drug-addled escapades and illegal highs here look about as dangerous as a double-dose of Gaviscon.”  She deemed McGuinness and Welsh’s songs to be “forgettable at best, or best forgotten in the case of one with a country and western twang”, concluding that “it all seems so tame and commercial for this bunch of anti-capitalists. A bad trip indeed.”

The tour publicity ended: “There are no clean answers here. Only incredible music and flashes of clarity, humour, and the uneasy sense of recognition. CHOOSE LIFE.”

Alas, the tour producers have had to choose premature death instead.  

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REVIEW: John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers The Play, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday *****

The full cast in the finale to John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers The Play. Picture: Hugo Glendinning

WHEN Monty Python alumnus John Cleese opened Fawlty Towers The Play at London’s Apollo Theatre in May 2024, he was “more confident about it than almost anything I’ve ever done”.

After two sold-out West End seasons, a ten-month 39-venue UK tour was launched in September 2025, visiting Leeds Grand Theatre in early January and now the Grand Opera House in York this week.

“I know all the lines,” said the lady in the stalls row behind  your reviewer at Wednesday’s well-attended matinee. Such has been the permeation of the coastal hotel shenanigans of Cleese and Connie Booth’s beloved BBC sitcom, whose 50th anniversary was the trigger for Cleese to mount the stage show, directed with comedic elan by Caroline Jay Ranger.

Just as Eric Idle adapted the 1975 film Monty Python And The Holy Grail for the hit stage musical Monty Python’s Spamalot, so Cleese, now 86, is on to a winner with Fawlty Towers The Play. Hapless Spanish waiter Manuel may say “I know nothing”, but Cleese knows everything about how to transfer Basil and Sybil’s trials and tribulations from small screen to stage.

Whereas Idle affectionately subtitled Spamalot “A New Musical (Lovingly) Ripped Off From The Motion Picture”, Cleese has adapted three of the most cherished episodes – The Hotel Inspectors, Communication Problems and The Germans – to form two Acts, concluding the madcap proceedings with a new finale.

“The English do love a farce,” observed Cleese, whose play has the classic structure, physical silliness and comic verve of the works of Ben Travers, Brian Rix and Ray Cooney. He named Michael Frayn’s Noises Off and Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors too, and you will be laughing equally as frequently at Basil’s antics in Fawlty Towers live on stage.

There is an added factor here: familiarity, a feeling as comforting as a well worn pair of slippers or a favourite sofa or the sound of Dennis Wilson’s TV theme tune. That familiarity begins the moment you settle in your seat and take in Liz Ascroft’s open-plan set design of the hotel reception desk, the stairs to Mrs Richards’ first-floor bedroom, the dining room and the doors to the kitchen.

Above, to one side, stands a model of the frontage of Fawlty Towers, in the English Riviera town of Torquay. In the middle is a cut-out of the roof; to the other side is the  Fawlty Towers  sign – and yes, the order of the letters will be changed for Act Two in the tradition of the  TV series. The first word becomes ‘Flowery’; over to you to work out the second!

Ascroft’s design sticks faithfully to the British mid-Seventies, with its ghastly colour palette, and her costume design does likewise, from ill-fitting shiny suits for assorted men to Sybil’s trademark pink two-piece  The Malcolm Macdonald-style massive sideburns of Adam Elliott’s Mr Walt are a particular retro joy.

Elliott is part of a 17-strong cast – so rare to have such a large troupe for a tour these days – that is led by Danny Bayne as the deluded, crane-legged hotel proprietor Basil Fawlty and Mia Austen as his acerbic, haughty, exasperated but exasperating wife Sybil.

Cleese once described bolshy Basil as “rude but inefficient”, and Bayne’s characterisation captures that essence, relishing Fawlty’s irascibility, his propensity to ingratiate guests one moment, then treat them as a verbal punch bag the next.

Throughout, Bayne’s Basil finds Austen’s always right Sybil to be the bane of his frustrated life, and the more you watch his pratfalls, the more it strikes you how he is the opposite of many comedy favourites. 

We love Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin because they ultimately win, like Shakespeare’s clowning fools. Fawlty, by contrast, only worsens his situation, tripping himself up with every utterance and foiled plan, and he is all the funnier for that, sharing the loser status of Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder, albeit but without the intelligence and cunning to keep escaping.

Caroline Jay Ranger chalked up an earlier West End touring hit with the musical version of Only Fools And Horses that shared Fawlty Towers The Play’s sense of  celebration of a  British classic, while drawing performances from her cast that mirror the television versions but still bring new life to them too.

Especially so here from the veteran Paul Nicholas, still twinkling in marvellously mischievous comic form as the bumbling Major and Hemi Yerohem’s Barcelona waiter Manuel, the butt of so much Basil intemperance. Seeing such characters in the flesh adds still more to the comedic joy.

Joanne Clifton, swapping the song and dance of musical theatre for the straightest role here, is a delight as unflappable chamber maid Polly Sherman, echoing Connie Booth’s distinctive voice too. Jemma Churchill’s Mrs Richards, even grouchier than Basil, is the nightmare hotel guest personified, barking and snapping while refusing to turn up her hearing aid.

Look out too for the double-act cameos of Emily Winter and Dawn Buckland’s old ladies, Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby, and Greg Haiste’s Mr Hutchinson, Mrs Richards’ rival as Basil’s most irritating hotel guest.

Fawlty Towers The Play is fawltless: British comedy at its best, farcical and furious, utterly Seventies yet timeless too. Make a reservation, now.

John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers The Play, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

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REVIEW: Only Fools And Horses The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday ****

Sam Lupton’s Del Boy and Tom Major’s Rodney on the Trotters’ market stall in Peckham in Only Fools And Horses The Musical. Picture: Johan Persson

IF you have acquired a ticket, you’re cushty. If not, ouch, bad luck, like a visit from the Driscolls, except you might be the one hitting yourself for missing out.

Only Fools And Horses The Musical’s first visit north to York after four years in the West End has all but sold out. Lovely jubbly news for the Grand Opera House at the start of a run of four musicals in four weeks: next up Jason Donovan in The Rocky Horror Show, followed by Hairspray and 101 Dalmatians, starring Hear’Say singer and Coronation Street soap star Kym March as Cruella De Vil.

North-South divide? What North-South divide, on the evidence of the York audience’s affection for the Trotters, from Peckham, south-east London. Or Britain’s best-loved TV comedy, as Only Fools And Horses is commonly known.

Based on John Sullivan’s long-running, oft-repeated BBC One series, this musical spin-off is co-written by John’s son Jim and comedy treasure Paul Whitehouse (who will play Grandad when the tour visits Leeds Grand Theatre from February 24 to March 1 and Sheffield City Hall and Memorial Hall from May 26 to 31 next year).

All your favourite characters, and I do mean all, from 64 episodes in 22 years will make an appearance, just like when Whitehouse appeared in An Evening With The Fast Show at the Grand Opera House in March, incidentally.

However, Only Fools And Horses The Musical is not merely a greatest hits nostalgia trip, even if such roles as Uncle Albert (uncredited) and the Scouser, Denzil (Bradley John), are reduced to butterfly-brief cameos over the two hours.

What’s the story? “Join Del Boy, Rodney, Grandad, Cassandra, Raquel, Boycie, Marlene, Trigger and more as we take a trip back in time to 1989, where it’s all kicking off in Peckham,” reads the tour publicity invitation (although the year mentioned on stage was 1988).

“While the yuppie invasion of London is in full swing, love is in the air as Del Boy sets out on the rocky road to find his soul mate, Rodney and Cassandra prepare to say ‘I do’, and even Trigger is gearing up for a date (with a person!).

“Meanwhile, Boycie and Marlene give parenthood one final shot and Grandad takes stock of his life and decides the time has finally arrived to get his piles sorted.”

It all flows with the greatest of ease on a tide of slick direction and knees-up-Mother-Brown choreography by Caroline Jay Ranger on Alice Power’s comfy, familiar set of pub and Trotter household, complemented by Leo Flint’s animations and video designs of the Nags Head frontage and Rodney and Cassandra’s honeymoon.

Liz Ascroft’s costume designs evoke all the stylings, from Del Boy’s love of yellow and red, braces and car coats, to smug Boycie’s snug camel coat.  

What about the music in the musical? Imagine rockney duo Chas & Dave, Ian Dury, Madness and the cast of Oliver! hosting a party, with Rachel Murphy’s band in as-lively-as-New-Year’s Eve form.

John Sullivan’s Only Fools And Horses/Hooky Street theme tune makes more than one appearance; Chas & Dave contribute the typically chirpy pub singalong numbers That’s What I Like, Margate and This Time Next Year; Whitehouse and Jim Sullivan have penned Cockney tunes aplenty, sometimes together, sometimes on their own, but all working a treat, thanks in part to the singing being in character. 

Whitehouse and Chas Hodges’s Where Have All Cockneys Gone? is particularly affecting, while Bill Withers’ Lovely Day is seen in a new light and Gloria Acquaah-Harrison’s Mrs Obooko brings such poignancy to Simply Red’s Holding Back The Years, it  may well have you not holding back the tears.

Such pathos is as key to a sitcom as the lighter laughs, especially in the company of such fallible characters in this “feel-good family celebration of traditional working-class London life and the aspirations we all share”. Trying to make a living, in whatever way – and maybe that is where there is no North-South divide in Only Fools And Horses’ appeal.

Ranger’s cast capture their characters like tickling a fish: uncannily like the TV originals but not just doppelganger tribute acts. Sam Lupton’s wheeler-dealer Del Boy brings down the house, not least in his closing pratfall; Craig Berry’s Boycie has the laugh, the upwardly mobile manner, and Tom Major’s Rodney bonds delightfully with Nicola Munns’s Cassandra;

Lee VG’s Trigger, with the inevitable treasured broom and deadpan delivery, is a scene stealer; Georgina Hagen’s Raquel is all heart, while Philip Childs’s Grandad harks back to the old days, the good old days, just like this show in fact.

Only Fools And Horses The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until October 19, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york. Age guidance: Six upwards.