Tag: Cast Doncaster

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Riding Lights brings magical storytelling and plant-potting to The Selfish Giant at Friargate Theatre and on autumn tour

Matthew Rutherford, left, and Jared More in Riding Lights Theatre Company’s The Selfish Giant

RIDING Lights Theatre Company steps back into the magical world of the Giant’s garden in this season’s revival of Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant.

Premiered under the artistic direction of the late Paul Burbridge in 2019, Jon Boustead’s stage adaptation of Wilde’s story from his 1888 collection The Happy Prince And Other Tales is being revived by the York company at Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, this week ahead of this autumn’s 18-date tour, all preceded by a performance at The Big Feastival over the  August Bank Holiday weekend on Blur bassist Alex James’s farm in Kingham, Oxfordshire.

Artistic director Paul Birch directs Riding Lights returnees Jared More and Matthew Rutherford in an itinerary that will take in further Yorkshire performances at The Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds, September 13 (2pm); Skipton Town Hall, September 18 (11am & 2pm); CAST, Doncaster, September 27 (11am & 2pm); St Edmund’s Church, Roundhay, Leeds, September 28 (5pm); Gate Helmsley Village Hall, October 1 (6.30pm); Junction, Goole, October 4 (2pm), and Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, October 26 (2pm & 6pm) and October 27 (11am and 2pm).

In a 50-minute show full of music, beauty, bird song and stories, the Giant is cross when he returns to find children – children! – playing happily in his beautiful orchard. Every day after school, they laugh and play games under the blossom trees, prompting him to erect a big wall to terminate their fun. Worse still, once winter seizes the garden in its icy fingers, will summer ever come back?

Riding Lights brings a fast-moving combination of storytelling, interactive games, live music and puppetry to The Selfish Giant’s inspirational tale of love and generosity, suitable for children aged three upwards and their families.

Performances at 1.30pm and 4.30pm at Friargate Theatre will be complemented by free craft activities, available each day between 12.30pm and 6pm in the café/bar space, and a meet & greet with Jared and Matthew will follow each performance.

Jared, last seen on Riding Lights duty in Christmas Inn Trouble last winter, will play Jack, the Storyteller, as well as voicing the puppet of a little boy and joining Matthew in playing the daffodils Daffy and Dil and wintry double act Snow and Frost. Matthew will be Smog the Giant on his return to Riding Lights after appearing in Night Falls and As You Like It.

Jared More and Matthew Rutherford’s daffodil duo Daffy and Dil in Riding Lights’ The Selfish Giant

“One of my first jobs after theatre training was appearing in The Selfish Giant in Riding Lights’ Christmas tour in 2019, directed by Paul Burbridge, when we toured mainly around North Yorkshire,” recalls Jared, who bears a distinctive Isle of Man accent. “We them made a film version, filmed in 2020 when Covid restrictions were lifted before locking down again for Christmas that year.”

Paul is delighted that Riding Lights is revisiting The Selfish Giant, a story that shows another side to Oscar Wilde. “He wrote a lot of children’s stories and this one really fits in with those stories being sweet and kind and loving, when we think of Wilde having an acerbic wit in his comedies of manners. The Selfish Giant shows a side of him that people maybe don’t know as well.”

At the same time, the imposition of barriers in The Selfish Giant chimes with his own experiences.  “Wilde knew what it was like to be excluded,” says Paul. “In the story, you have to go to a sad place to then have the redemption arc,” says Jared.

“It’s also about friendship and care, with a message that when someone is feeling sad, it’s best to stick around,” says Paul. “I like how the little boy brings care back to Smog’s life,” says Jared.

“If someone thinks the story is about bereavement, that works,” says Paul. “If they think it’s about lost friendship, that works too.” “Or if they think it’s about bullying, that also works,” says Matthew.

“As it’s a story for age three upwards, we’ve talked about it being about an emotional, rather than intellectual, response,” says Paul. “I love that we can make a work that is playful and celebratory  but it’s also not frightened to tread on emotional territory – and you can really feel that emotional response being experienced together in the room.”

Matthew says: “It’s fun to perform, particularly with it being interactive, so there are these emotional moments that really hit home, but we also get the children in the audience  to plant flowers in the Giant’s garden and later water them – and there’s something magical about that.

The Selfish Giant director Paul Birch

“Those moments connect us and we can honour children being part of the creative process, engaging with them in a way that is a privilege for us, when that would be harder with older audiences.”

Jared says: “One of the things I love about it is the essential ‘liveness’ to the show, where we’re actively inviting involvement. You have to go with how they react, so you are co-creating with the children, collaborating with them, which is something I love with children’s shows.”

Matthew adds: “There are those moments where the children can be complicit in it, like when a child spotted I had the wrong sock on the wrong foot and I could then acknowledge that they’d spotted it.”

This week’s audiences should expect a show delivered at breakneck pace. “That’s not to say it doesn’t have light and shade, but it’s definitely high energy,” says Jared.  

“But we’ve also trimmed it slightly to focus on the storytelling in the slower moments, which then resonate more,” says Matthew.

“It’s not frenzied storytelling, but when the show’s fast, it really is fast,” says Paul.

Riding Lights Theatre Company  presents The Selfish Giant, Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate Theatre, York, until Saturday, 1.30pm and 4.30pm, and then on tour from September 12 to October 29. Box office: ridinglights.org/theselfishgiant.

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Gilbert O’Sullivan to mark 60 years of songwriting on autumn tour. New album On The Record to follow on November 6

Gilbert O’Sullivan: New tour, new album this autumn. Picture: Park Promotions

IN 1972 Gilbert O’Sullivan topped the American Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks with Alone Again (Naturally), a song later covered regularly by Morrissey in concert.

The Smiths frontman also has performed Nothing Rhymed and recorded I Didn’t Know What To Do, the B-side to somewhat obscure May 1971 single Susan Van Heusen, as the flipside to his 2018 single Back On The Chain Gang. “He sent me a recording with a full band – and he told me he liked my image too,” recalls Gilbert.

Dusty Springfield performed Nothing Rhymed on The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine on November 22 1971, while Alone Again (Naturally) has attracted at least 88 cover versions, from Nina Simone to Shirley Bassey, Neil Diamond to Pet Shop Boys & Elton John, Diana Krall & Michael Buble to Donny Osmond, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass to Sarah Vaughan, Johnny Mathis to Andy Williams. No wonder CMAT has called it “the greatest Irish song ever made”.

Born in Waterford, Ireland, and long resident in Jersey, triple Ivor Novello Award winner Gilbert will be turning 80 on December 1, but before then he will celebrate 60 Years Of Music on an autumn tour that will visit four Yorkshire locations: York, Bradford, Doncaster and Harrogate.

It will be a chance to revisit his UK chart toppers, 1972’s Clair and 1973’s Get Down, as well as such O’Sullivan favourites as No Matter How I Try, We Will, Matrimony, Ooh-Wakka-Doo-Wakka-Day, Why, Oh Why, Oh Why  and What’s In A Kiss?, the last of his 16 Top 40 entries from August 1980. 

Gilbert O’Sullivan in his early songwriting days. Picture: Park Promotions

Then add selections from his multiple studio albums that bear witness to his enduring gift for endearing tunefulness, unabashed sentiment and existentialist musings, with his last three reaching the Top Ten, Top 20 and Top 30 respectively.

60 years, Gilbert: where has all that time gone? “I guess I don’t think about it because I always look ahead, with the imminent release of a new album on November 6,” he says. “So we’ve been working on that. All new material, and there’s a duet with the lead singer from The Corrs, Andrea. A song called Is That You?

“On the last studio album [July 2022’s Driven], we had duets with Mick Hucknall [Let Bygones Be Bygones] and K. T. Tunstall [Take Love], which were rock songs, and this time there’s no piano, just acoustic guitar, like a folk song.

“We thought, ‘who could we have singing on this?’, and it was suggested Andrea would be a good choice. So we approached her and she did it in her own way in her own studio because technology is really good for letting you do that now. That will be released as a single, hopefully before the album comes out.”

“Without ever having bothered to look it up, I’m told it will be my 21st studio album,” he says. It will be entitled On The Record (a title shared with a 1976 spoken-word album by controversial British politician Enoch Powell, according to AI Overview). “Between my daughters, my management, my wife and my record company, all my possibilities were rejected,” says Gilbert. “If there were five people arguing about it, this one had three supporting it.

Gilbert O’Sullivan with guitarist Bill Shanley, who will join him for the 60 Years Of Music tour

“We did the album artwork in Nashville, where I was playing the Grand Ole Opry after they got in touch with us and I was asked to go there to perform three songs, What’s In A Kiss, Nothing Rhymed and Alone Again (Naturally), one with a band and two with Bill [guitarist Bill Shanley], who’ll be playing on tour with me.”

After working with producer Ethan Johns on his self-titled 2018 album, Gilbert recorded Driven with Andy Wright, . “I feel that by having a different producer, you get that difference you want. He’d worked with Simply Red and Simple Minds, so this was Simply O’Sullivan!” he says.

O’Sullivan and Wright then made Songbook, a collection of key songs from Gilbert’s expansive catalogue accrued over 55 years, recorded at Lafayette, King’s Cross, London in late 2023 for release in September 2024.

For On The Record, “I decided to go with Andy again, letting him choose the musicians, with some of them having played on the last album,” says Gilbert who recorded the 13 tracks over five days in Eastcote Studios in London. “They know how I work. I play the song to them on the piano, we rehearse it a few times, and then we do a take. No rocket science involved.

“There’s an element of a Sixties feel to a couple of tracks that I really liked, re-mixed with another producer in the USA, Tony Hoffer, who’s well respected in the production field, and it’s worked out really well on the album.”

The poster for Gilbert O’Sullivan’s tour, Celebrating 60 Years Of Music. Picture: Park Promotions

One song in particular addresses the ageing process. “We have a track called Growing Old Disgracefully, which I was anxious to get done before anyone else pinched it!” says Gilbert.

“We also have a song with a choir, made up of studio singers, to sing the chorus to See Us Gone. That song deals with the end of the world, Putin, and what’s going on now. That fear that one day someone is going to press that bl**dy button and we’ll all be gone.

“That’s what I like when writing songs. My songs are like newspapers with the common denominators as headlines, so you can incorporate things that are going on in the world, like on Nothing Rhymed too.”

Heading out on his 22-date tour from September 1 to November 8, pianist Gilbert travels with his own keyboard, rather than relying on each venue to provide him with a piano. “This keyboard allows me to face the audience, and the sound I get is proper sounding, with electric piano for a couple of songs,” he says.

“I have eight versions of one keyboard instrument now, including one in Nashville, one in Ireland and one in Denmark. They’re kept by people I’m working with, who are happy to put them up.

“In the beginning, of course, I used a grand piano – like I do when writing songs – and my voice could sing in concert pitch, then one tuned one below concert pitch, and now I have buttons on my keyboard that allow me to be one tone below concert pitch and a semi-tone below concert pitch.

“Morrissey told me he liked my image,” says Gilbert O’Sullivan, pictured in his trademark Charlie Chaplin-inspired garb when first making his name. Picture: Park Promotions

“It helps me because, as you get older, your voice drops and you have to drop your singing voice. I have a good voice but limited range so I make sure I’m in the right key.”

Gilbert conducts vocal exercises before each concert. “If you don’t have a good voice, forget it,” he says. “I look after my voice. I’ve had no issues, thank goodness.”

He has lived on the island of Jersey for more than 30 years, having moved there with his wife, Aase, to raise their two daughters. “I love it here. It’s just home,” says Gilbert, who has a studio there. “I’m not a social animal. I go on my walks; home life is great.

“My daughters look after the business for me. Tara is on the internet, doing the social media, which is so important for musicians now.”

Summing up 60 years of songwriting, Gilbert concludes: “Why are we able to keep doing it? You do it because of your love of music. You love what you’re hearing. You hear the chords of Burt Bacharach? You want that. I’m a rhythm pianist, I can’t tinkle the ivories, but we have the ability to write music because we love what we hear.”

Gilbert O’Sullivan, 60 Years Of Music 2026 Autumn Tour, Grand Opera House, York, September 22, doors 7.30pm; St George’s Hall, Bradford, September 27, doors 7.30pm; CAST, Doncaster, October 1, 7.30pm (sold out); Harrogate Theatre, October 30. Box office: York, 0333 009 6690 or atgtickets.com/york; Bradford, 01274 432000 or bradford-theatres.co.uk/st-georges-hall; Doncaster, for returns only, 01302 303959 or castindoncaster.com; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk.

The artwork for Gilbert O’Sullivan’s 21st studio album, On The Record, to be released on November 6 on BMG

What is the track listing for On The Record?

1. It’s Me

2. I Suppose

3. Growing Old Disgracefully

4. Go The Way I Came

5. I Must Be Going

6. Don’t Shout

7. She Never Ceases To Amaze Me

8. Our Love Is Gonna Grow

9. Is That You? (featuring Andrea Corr)

10. Wait

11. Minus Is A Plus With You

12. No Place Like Home

13. See Us Gone

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Tommy Carmichael bounces back for second stint in York Theatre Royal panto comic role as Jangles in Sleeping Beauty

Tommy Carmichael’s Jangles with dame Robin Simpson’s Nurse Nellie in Sleeping Beauty at York Theatre Royal. Picture: S R Taylor Photography

AFTER performing in an Evolution Productions’ pantomime co-production with York Theatre Royal for the first time in Aladdin in 2024, Tommy Carmichael is reprising his daft-lad act as Jangles in Sleeping Beauty this winter.

“Oliver Scott, who works with Evolution director [and Theatre Royal panto writer] Paul Hendy a lot, directed me in The Wind In The Willows on an outdoor theatre tour [by Ely company KD Theatre Productions], when I played seven characters, including Chief Weasel, and then recommended me to Paul, so it fell sweetly into place for me,” Tommy recalls.

Based in Livingston, near Edinburgh, where his partner works, Doncaster-born Yorkshireman Tommy felt very much at home on the York stage straight away. “It was a lovely experience. I felt so welcomed by everyone who was already part of the Theatre Royal show [writer Hendy, director Juliet Forster, regular dame Robin Simpson], but it was also nice that there was a fluidity to creating the show.

“It’s not completely set in stone, so you can play with ideas and suggest things to each other, so the show feels like it’s all of us making it, rather than one person’s ideas.”

Tommy Carmichael’s ever-cheerful Charlie in Aladdin at York Theatre Royal last winter. Picture: S R Taylor Photography

Now playing the comic’s role in a panto for the fourth time in Sleeping Beauty, Tommy loves bonding with audiences. “The audience is like an extra member of the cast, another character that you can bounce off at each show, as Paul Hawkyard [playing villain Ivan Tobebooed] said to me at Aladdin last year,” he says.

“That helped me because I’ve never been able to work out how the energy changes from rehearsing a scene four or five times in the rehearsal room, where you think ‘Am I doing this right?’, but as soon as you test it in performances, you think, ‘Ah yes, this does work’.”

A key characteristic of his role is to connect with the children in the audience, to be their idiot brother! “I teach children theatre, from the ages of six to 18, in Livingston, where I work at Proscenium Stage School, so that’s very transferable to the stage show, as all the things I wouldn’t necessarily know, they bring into class!”

Tommy is delighted to be bouncing back to York this winter. “The fact that I’ve been asked back is an honour,” he says. “I feel so grateful that the Theatre Royal trusts me with it, because, from doing an audition to starting in the rehearsal room, they don’t know what you’ll be like, but they liked what I gave them in Aladdin and I’m just so excited to be back.”

Tommy Carmichael’s poster portrait, announcing his return in Sleeping Beauty

As is the lot of a jobbing actor, Tommy has performed in myriad spaces. “I performed in the grandeur of Ely Cathedral in The Wind In The Willows; I worked with Immersion Theatre Company in Harlow, and during lockdown I did an open-air show in a tent with all the sides off!,” he says.

“I’m a very sweaty person, and you could see the condensation come off my head and hands. That was in Dick Whittington, when I played the dame.”

In his amateur theatre days, Tommy appeared as the dame “a lot”. “I got my panto training in dames, and I’ve played the villain too,” he says. “But I love playing the comic, being able to shout and have the whole audience as your friend, being silly without the pressure of telling the story. I love that thing of ‘Can we just get on with it?’, and I’ll say ‘No’!”

Tommy is back in York after touring in the interactive cabaret show Big Strong Man with  the Doncaster company The Growth House, whose motto is “Don’t Grow Up, Grow Out”, delivering “personal, passionate and experimental live events that are part protest, part party and all theatre”.

Tommy Carmichael: Spending Christmas Day back home in Doncaster

“They’ve become the resident company at CAST in Doncaster and are now being mentored by the Emma Rice Company [formerly Wise Children],” he says. “That show [Big Strong Man] is like a game show, where four different types of masculinity all fight for who should be ‘the ruler of all men from now until the end of time’.”

Combining storytelling, song, dance, improv, ladders, competition, boy band parodies, lip syncs, placards, blocks, charity-shop suits, karaoke and a bear in a celebration of northern culture and community spirit, “it’s a show where four Northern men are given the impossible task of fixing the men’s mental health crisis in one night. We did it in theatres and working men’s clubs too, taking it to spaces where men in various works of life feel more comfortable.”

Being in York for the winter season has its advantages at Christmas for Tommy. “It had been ten years since I was able to go back to the family at Christmas, but fortunately my family are in Doncaster, so I could see them last Christmas and will do so again this year, having been used to not spending Christmas with them, so that’s lovely.”

York Theatre Royal and Evolution Productions present Sleeping Beauty at York Theatre Royal  until January 4 2026. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Doing time in pantomime: Tommy Carmichael’s Jangles, centre, in the Sleeping Beauty slosh scene with dame Robin Simpson’s Nurse Nellie, left, and Harrogate actor Christian Mortimer’s Prince Michael of Moravia at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

Copyright of The York Press

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Irish comedian Ed Byrne shatters taboo of discussing death in Tragedy Plus Time in shows in York, Leeds and Doncaster

Taboo or not taboo? Ed Byrne shatters the glass ceiling of not conversing about death by doing just so in Tragedy Plus Time. Picture: Roslyn Gaunt

LOOK at these snippets from the reviews for Irish comedian Ed Byrne’s groundbreaking tour show, bound for the Grand Opera House, York, on January 11.

“Genuinely reflective and deeply emotional”. “Grief, regret”. “From rage to dark humour to poignancy”. “Dead funny”. “Cathartic storytelling”. “Tear-jerking observations”. “Poignant, touching, spiky”. “Plumbs the very depths of his soul”.  “Delicate, sensitive high-wire act of a show”.

Just checking: this is a comedy gig, right?  Yes indeed, one that takes its title from a quote from 19th century American writer, humorist, and essayist Mark Twain, who defined humour as “Tragedy Plus Time”.

Putting that metric to the test by mining the most tragic event in his life for humour, 52-year-old Byrne “manages to make dying and death very funny” (to quote the Daily Business Group review] in a show that carries the content warning “Discussions of death” with an age guidance of 14 plus.

At the time of this interview, Byrne, who grew up on the east coast of Ireland in Swords, County Dublin, had just finished a run of Irish dates where some had proved challenging, even for such an experienced act.

“The last night was a breeze, really, really good, not having to shut down drunken ****holes, but in Dunleary there was a noisy works outing and then four lads in Kilkenny on the front row that just wouldn’t shut up: one table of quite drunk people who I had to address for joining in too much,” Ed says.

“I don’t know if it [raucous behaviour] is on the increase, but with this show, it’s full of jokes but there are a couple of moments where it’s more serious, so you need some quiet, though it’s punctuated with a couple of laughs, but the last thing you want is someone who’s drunk to use that moment to butt in.”

Byrne’s material refracts the concept of Tragedy Plus Time through the prism of two ‘tragedies’. “One was my car being broken into, which I was raging about by the following night’s show. It was an enormous ball ache but I ended up with eight minutes of stand-up,” Ed says.

“The rest of the show is about how my brother Paul died [of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer, in February 2022, aged 44, after being diagnosed initially in 2013].” He had suffered a short illness in lockdown. “Then the Covid finished him off,” adds Ed.

“There is now comedy for everybody: whatever your demographic, race, creed, sexual orientation,” says observational Irish comedian Ed Byrne

“In the show I’m arguing with those who locked us down but at the same time didn’t take it seriously enough, and the reaction will depend on people’s political sensibilities.”

On stage, Byrne talks of how he argued with comedy director Paul, who he had called “my pain in the a*** little brother” in his 2022 tribute, but also of how he reconnected with him. “I will miss him so much,” his tribute had ended.

He is playing York as part of an extended tour that began in 2023, will visit Leeds City Varieties for the third time on January 25 and end in April 2025, almost two years after the first date. “My tours have been getting longer,” he says. “I always say that the hard part of the show is writing it and then getting out and doing it is the reward – and now there are just more and more places to play.

“When I was starting out, even playing a comedy night outside London in the Nineties, you were worried about how it would go because people had this idea of comedy as end of the pier and pub jokes, so observational comedy was something of an unknown quantity.

“I remember playing in Southend, where it was always one observational comedian and one end-of-the-pier comedian on the bill. Now, if people go and see a comedy club night, they know there’ll be some one-liners but a lot more storytelling, so you don’t feel like a visionary any more – and outside pantomime, comedy now draws the biggest audiences to theatres.”

Comedy has its broadest scope ever too, Byrne suggests. “I think people previously were perhaps slightly put off when they thought it was all going to be too political or too ‘ladsy’, but I think it’s a fact there is now comedy for everybody: whatever your demographic, race, creed, sexual orientation, there is humour designed just for you, comedy for all stripes,” Ed says.

He does add a note of caution, however: “The worrying thing is that it is becoming a bit polarised, and if a comedian is not tailored exactly to someone’s taste, they’ll say, ‘well, I’m not going to laugh at that’. I feel it’s post-Brexit where it’s become more divisive.”

As for Ed Byrne, he is breaking the unspoken barrier of death still being considered a taboo subject for conversation in Tragedy Plus Time, a show that has done anything but divide opinion. Oh, and for the record: “As with any subject I do, there are always digressions into asides,” he says.

Ed Byrne: Tragedy Plus Time, Grand Opera House, York, January 11, 7.30pm; Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, January 25, 7.30pm, and Cast, Doncaster, January 28, 7.30pm. Box office: York, atgtickets.com/york; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com; Doncaster, 01302 303952 or castindoncaster.com.

Copyright of The Press, York

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‘I’ve got no interest in the big topics,’ says Josh Widdicombe as he announces Not My Cup Of Tea tour. Tickets on sale on Friday

Josh Widdicombe: “Taking stock of the little things that niggle me” in Not My Cup Of Tea. Picture: Jiksaw

PARENTING Hell podcaster, game show panellist and comedian Josh Widdicombe will play York Barbican on February 28 2026, the opening night of the second leg of his Not My Cup Of Tea stand-up tour.

London-born Widdicombe’s 58-date itinerary in 2025-2026 will take in further Yorkshire gigs at Hull City Hall on October 2, CAST, Doncaster, on October 4, and Victoria Theatre, Halifax, on November 1 2025. Tickets go on general sale at 11am on Friday at www.joshwiddicombe.com.

In the words of his tour announcement: “Josh Widdicombe is back on tour, not again! By now he has almost certainly mastered the art of stand-up. Either that or he has wasted the last 15 years of his life. Come along and decide for yourself. Expect it to be shorter and with lower production values than Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, but funnier and with more references to tea.”

Widdicombe, 41, co-hosts the Parenting Hell podcast with fellow comedian Rob Beckett, spawning an arena tour and a Sunday Times Bestseller Chart-topping book, Parenting Hell, How To Cope (Or Not) With Being A Parent, in 2023.

Widdicombe has co-hosted more than 30 series of multi-award-winning Channel 4 series The Last Leg, is a team captain on Sky Max’s Rob Beckett’s Smart TV and co-hosts Sky’s Hold The Front Page. The Plymouth Argyle supporter and former sports journalist has an almost complete collection of Panini football sticker books.

As well as three seasons of his Josh sitcom from 2014 to 2017, Widdicombe has chalked up multiple TV appearances on Hypothetical, QI, Live At The Apollo, A League Of Their Own, Insert Name Here, Have I Got News For You and Taskmaster, and he has performed at the Royal Albert Hall in a Royal Variety Performance.

He hosted the cult 1990s’ podcast Quickly Kevin: Will He Score?, playing multiple live shows, culminating in a final event at the London Palladium in May 2024.

In 2021, he released his first book, Watching Neighbours Twice a Day…How ’90’s TV (Almost) Prepared Me For Life,  a childhood memoir of growing up on a diet of consuming  far too much television in the 1990s.

This perennially frustrated observer of life’s foibles last visited York Barbican on October 3 2019 on his Bit Much stand-up tour: a night of grumbles and jokes in which Widdicombe “finally tackled the hot comedy topics of Advent calendars, pesto and the closing time of his local park”.  Bit Much is now available on Sky and NowTV.

Here Josh Widdicombe discusses bringing his keen eye for the absurd side of the mundane to his new show, Not My Cup Of Tea, wherein he will take stock of the little things that niggle him, from motorway hotels to children’s parties, and explain why he has finally decided to embrace middle age, hot drinks and doing the school run.

How is the preparation for the tour going?

“It’s going way better than I thought. To the point where I could probably get away with doing it in the spring, but I didn’t want to put any pressure on myself. I want to enjoy it because in the past I was so busy with Mock The Week and Live At The Apollo and stuff, I was chasing my tail and desperately trying to have enough material for each tour. This time I’m able to enjoy the process of creating the stand-up.”

How have you found the experience of returning to tiny clubs to road-test material after doing Parenting Hell arena gigs in 2023?

“I’ve been doing 20-minute sets and it’s almost divorced from the fact that I’m going on tour, which I think is the best way to write a tour; like you’re just doing it for the sake of it, in the same way I suppose it must be nicest for a musician to just write songs for the sake of writing songs.

“I’m doing stand-up for the sake of doing stand-up at the moment. I love the experience of coming up with ideas and just being able to go and do them.”

Why have you called your new show Not My Cup Of Tea?

 “Because I like the phrase. And since I gave up alcohol in 2023, I drink a lot of tea. As you get older, you realise who you are a bit more and I’ve realised that the things I love are like parochially British things, like Martin Parr’s photography or Blur or Alan Bennett.”

 Is there a theme?

 “If there is a theme, it’s probably about accepting that I prefer being at home and not having to deal with any other human beings. Which is a weird way to approach a tour show where you have to travel around the country talking to thousands of people!”

 Are you more of an introvert comedian than a show-off comedian?

 “When I stopped drinking, I realised how much the reason I drank was really for social situations because I didn’t feel comfortable in them. I grew up in Devon [in the tiny Dartmoor village of Haytor Vale], I was an only child in a small school and watched TV for hours a day, so I was quite introverted.

“Here’s a good example. I’m currently doing The Last Leg every day in Paris and everyone’s like, ‘do you want to meet up in the morning?’, and I’m like, ‘no, I’m spending ten hours a day working with you, I want the morning to myself so I can read a book in bed’.

“And there’s something about observational comedy; it’s about watching from the outside, so I wonder whether that is part of why I do comedy.”

As your comedic style is not topical, you don’t have to worry about writing political jokes now, and then the Prime Minister changing by the time the tour starts…

“That’s right. My last tour straddled Covid and when I came back to do the rescheduled dates, all of the stuff was still relevant. For me, it’s always where I just say something and I think ‘that would be fun for stand-up’. I’ll note that in my phone and work that up at a gig.

“Like I thought about talking about giving up drinking but realised that was never going to be as funny as talking about Inside The Factory with Gregg Wallace.”

You joke about everyday frustrations. Do you still have the same frustrations, now that you have had so much success with The Last Leg and Parenting Hell?

“I live a very mundane life and I really like that. I like leaning into the fact that I like doing the school run or the big shop. I suppose I’ve finally become comfortable with that. After years of not knowing who I was, I’m quite happy being middle-aged. I’ve made my peace with the fact that I like putting my kids to bed and watching a Netflix documentary about basketball even though I don’t like basketball.”

Do you expect you will draw a Parenting Hell audience on this tour?

 “That’s interesting. Obviously, there’s people that won’t be there for Parenting Hell, so I’m not going to do loads of parenting stuff. There’s a bit about my family but not a huge amount. Sometimes an anecdote that works on the podcast doesn’t work as stand-up.

“There was a saga on the podcast about my number plate being cloned that I have turned into a routine, but stand-up isn’t just telling an anecdote like you would on the podcast. There have to be observations and jokes around the story.”

 Are there any other new routines you think will make the finished show?

 “There is a bit about children’s parties and party bags, so, as you can see, I’m dealing with the big issues! I take a huge pride in the banality of the topics I talk about. I think that’s my favourite type of stand-up: really niche observations about silly little things that you wouldn’t think about. I’ve got no interest in the big topics.”

Has Parenting Hell’s massive success changed your stand-up style?

 “I think the podcast has had a huge impact on how I understand myself as a comedian. I spent years terrified of letting the audience know who I was, and then we did Parenting Hell and I suddenly saw that the more I showed myself, the funnier I am. So I think it will almost certainly be the case that I’ve changed, but I wouldn’t ever do it consciously.

“I saw Ed Gamble at the Hackney Empire recently and – I’d hate him to know this – I found it incredibly inspiring because he was funny every 20 seconds for an hour and 10 minutes, and that is everything I want to be. Just be as funny as possible.”

 Did you find it easy to give up drinking?

 “I gave up in April 2023 and I found gigs to be quite easy because you just enjoy the bands. Or going to a football match, I find that easy, but I wouldn’t find going to a party or a stag do easy because if I drink, I really drink. When I drank, it was a laugh until it was not a laugh.”

You have been so busy with TV, such as The Last Leg, have you missed stand-up?

 “It took a while for me to think I wanted to do stand-up again after the pandemic. I think I got really used to being at home. I hadn’t had evenings off for 12 years, and for the first time I got my evenings back and I was like, ‘oh this is what it’s like and it’s really nice’. But now I’m really loving it again.”

Do you ever worry about how long success will last?

“It’s the curse of the freelance. You can go up and down in terms of venue size; I don’t know where I am on that graph. I’d rather work really hard and take the opportunities while they’re here now. One day they might not be here.

“People ask ‘why did you do that show?’ and you’re like, ‘because it’s fun, because I love it and I get paid really well to do what I love, so why wouldn’t I do it?’ I can’t believe that I got paid to go to the Paralympics. This is my hobby that got out of hand!”

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Ross Noble ready to improvise on Jibber Jabber Jamboree jovial jaunt in York

In his natural habitat: Ross Noble looks forward to a Jibber Jabber Jamboree night of improvised comedy at the Grand Opera House, York, on Wednesday

FREEWHEELING Geordie comic Ross Noble will spin his web of nonsensical improvised comedy on his return to the Grand Opera House, York, on Wednesday (15/11/2023).

“It will be a playful experience for young and old,” he says. “Imagine watching someone create a magic carpet on an enchanted loom. Oh, hang on… magic carpets fly, that would smash the loom as it took flight. I haven’t thought that through…That’s what people can expect. Razor-sharp observations on things I haven’t thought through.”

Ross, who cut his teenage comedy teeth in York compering Comedy Shack gigs at the Bonding Warehouse, is settling into his 21st stand-up tour, talking genial Geordie gibberish on his Jibber Jabber Jamboree itinerary from October 25 to March 17 2024.

“I’ve got significantly better hotel accommodation,” says the Newcastle surrealist, reflecting on the contrast with his first tour. “That’s the main thing. Also, there are people coming to see me now who came with their parents when they were kids. That messes with your head a little bit.

“I still think of myself as being like 22 or 23 years old, and now I’ve got grown men going, ‘I saw you when I was 15. And now I’m a professional comedian’. Not even people going, ‘I want to be a comedian’ – like actual, established performers.” 

Does that make Ross an elder statesman of comedy at 47? “I wouldn’t go that far! The people that get described as ‘elder statesman’…some of them are a little bit too confident in their opinions, you know? They start going: ‘Well, the thing about comedy…’. No! Shut up!”

Just as Bob Dylan sang “All I’ve got is a red guitar, three chords and the truth” in All Along The Watchtower, so Ross Noble once said his plans for a show ran to “about four words on a scrap of paper”. “That was actually taken slightly out of context,” he clarifies. “What I would do is go on and improvise, and then afterwards, I would write down things I could do again.

“I didn’t sit down to plan, think of four things and write them down. It’s the same today, really. Except I just don’t write them down – I feel like I should be able to remember four things!” 

As ever, Ross will have no support (no, not even a chair) as he tucks into two hour-long sets on Wednesday. “The thing that gets me is comics who sit down,” he says. “Whenever I see a comic with a chair on stage, I just think ‘If you need that chair, do a shorter show! Get up and put some effort in’.”

How does Ross on stage contrast with Ross off stage? “The difference is that when I’m on stage I show my working out. As I’m talking, my brain is constantly interrupting itself, so I’ll be saying something and then that’ll spark another thing, and then something else will come in – and I explain all that as it happens,” he says.

What can people expect in Jibber Jabber Jamboree, Ross? “Razor-sharp observations on things I haven’t thought through,” he forewarns

“Those thoughts still happen when I’m off stage, but I don’t say them all out loud, so if you meet me in the street, I can seem kind of distracted. I’ll often get halfway through a sentence and just stop. It drives my wife up the wall.” 

Come the interval on Wednesday, as is customary at a Noble gig, audience members will leave items on stage for Ross to weave into his wild imaginings in the second half.

“Somebody once left a pin from a ten-pin bowling alley and then a few nights later, somebody left another one. So, I tweeted about it, and over the course of the tour, I got all ten and we set up a bowling alley in the dressing room,” he recalls.

“Somebody did an oil painting of me as a centaur: full horse body, long flowing hair, rippling muscles like Fabio. Then above my head, there’s a Mr Kipling French Fancy with a rainbow coming out of it, and wings like a snitch from Harry Potter. That blew my mind.” 

Before Wednesday, check out Ross’s YouTube channel, where he presents a spoof nature documentary series, The Unnatural History Show With Ross Noble, as a rather riskier retort to the Beeb’s Winterwatch.

“I love Winterwatch and Countryfile, but there’s a very British, very cosy way that people like Michaela Strachan and John Craven present,” he says. “It’s all people in jumpers and Berghaus jackets sitting around being very ‘Well, isn’t this marvellous seeing these mating chaffinches?’! I just thought: ‘This would be a lot better if some of these animals could kill you’.”

Back on stage, you may have seen Ross’s Igor in Mel Brooks’s musical Young Frankenstein on tour at Leeds Grand Theatre. What did he learn from his musical theatre experience that he could apply to stand-up? “Previously I thought the best thing about stand-up was that you didn’t have to deal with other people messing up what you want to do,” he says.

“But then you do something like Young Frankenstein, with the greatest comedy legend of all time, and the best Broadway director that’s working and you go: ‘Oh, no, it’s not that I don’t like working with other people. I just want to work with the absolute best people’.” 

Now, solo once more, Ross will turn his stream-of-consciousnonsense tap on in York at 8pm on Wednesday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Further Yorkshire dates on Ross Noble’s Jibber Jabber Jamboree tour in 2024: Sheffield City Hall, February 28, CAST, Doncaster, March 3; Leeds Grand Theatre, March 17. Box office: Sheffield, sheffieldcityhall.co.uk; Doncaster, 01302 303959 or castindoncaster.com; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritage theatres.com.

Ross Noble on the road in Yorkshire on his 21st solo stand-up tour: Already played Harrogate Royal Hall on October 26, now heading for York next week and Leeds, Doncaster and Sheffield next year
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Seven Drunken Nights confirmed for York matinee and evening gig among six Yorkshire dates on biggest tour in 2024

Seven Drunken Nights – The Story Of The Dubliners: Matinee and evening performances at Grand Opera House, York next March

SEVEN Drunken Nights – The Story Of The Dubliners will return to Grand Opera House, York for two performances on March 10 2024.

In its sixth year, after a Scandinavian tour, the celebration of the Irish music of Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly, Barney McKenna, John Sheahan, Ciaran Bourke and Jim McCann will be on the road for 79 British and Irish dates.

Further Yorkshire performances on the biggest ever Seven Drunken Nights tour will be at Sheffield City Hall on March 20, Cast, Doncaster, March 21 and 22, Bridlington Spa, April 6, St George’s Hall, Bradford, April 12, and Hull City Hall, May 15.

Much more than a jukebox musical celebration of The Dubliners, the show is steered by its writer and director Ged Graham, whose narration charts the band’s path from their first gig at legendary Dublin pub O’Donoghue’s in 1962.  The Irish Rover, The Leaving Of Liverpool, Belle Of Belfast City, Dirty Old Town, The Banks Of The Rose, Star Of The County Down and The Town I Love So Well and many more Irish favourites will be performed by Graham’s cast of musicians and singers, who last filled the Grand Opera House on April 23 this spring.

Graham is delighted to have received the backing of the families of The Dubliners. “It was very nerve-racking meeting their relatives, as I didn’t know how they would react,” he says. “But meeting Luke Kelly’s brother, Paddy, early on during the first tour was just brilliant.

“He and his family have been so supportive of the show. Likewise, Barney McKenna’s sister came to see the show when we toured Ireland and was very complimentary of how we told the story. Their support means so much to everyone involved with the show.”

In addition to glowing reviews, Seven Drunken Nights has also received praise from the families of The Dubliners. Ged Graham said, “It was very nerve-racking meeting relatives of The Dubliners, as I didn’t know how they would react. But meeting Luke Kelly’s brother, Paddy, early on during the first tour was just brilliant. He and his family have been so supportive of the show.

Likewise, Barney McKenna’s sister came to see the show when we toured Ireland and was very complimentary of how we told the story. Their support means so much to everyone involved with the show.”

Looking ahead, Seven Drunken Nights is set for its record year internationally, performing nearly 300 shows during 42 weeks on the road.

The show’s popularity has been a life-changing experience for Graham, who says: “I can’t quite believe it. Seven Drunken Nights seems to have touched so many people who have become real fans of the show, reigniting their love of The Dubliners.

“It’s had a massive impact on my life, giving me the confidence to write more and be involved in many other productions, including the runaway success Fairytale Of New York. It truly is a great privilege to bring the music of The Dubliners to the stage every night and keep their legacy alive.”

York tickets for the March 10 matinee and evening shows are on sale at atgtickets.com/york. Tickets for all venues on the 2024 tour can be booked at sevendrunkennights.com.

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Macbeth meets Blade Runner as Imitating The Dog’s witches fuse theatre and video

Benjamin Westerby’s Macbeth and Maia Tamrakar’s Lady Macbeth in Imitating The Dog’s Macbeth. Picture: Ed Waring

THREE mysterious figures enter the stage, talking of the hurly-burly, thunder and lightning and a young couple hell bent on overthrowing the old regime.

Whereupon they conjure the Macbeths, placing them in a dangerous new world ruled by paranoia, betrayal, and brutality.

Something wicked – but not wholly familiar – this way comes in ground-breaking Leeds company Imitating The Dog’s typically audacious retelling of Shakespeare’s “Scottish Play”, on tour at Harrogate Theatre on February 24 and 25.

Retold and directed by Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks, with set and video design by Simon Wainwright and original music by James Hamilton, Macbeth’s tale of ambition, betrayal and downfall is re-booted as a neon noir thriller wherein Shakespeare’s language collides with “startling new scenes, stunning visuals and a powder-keg intensity”.

“Macbeth is an extraordinary play,” says Imitating The Dog artistic director Andrew Quick. “Shakespeare’s exploration of power, ambition, violence and love seems so relevant to today. 

In the flesh and on screen: Maia Tamrakar’s Lady Macbeth and Benjamin Westerby’s in Macbeth. Picture: Ed Waring

“We’re excited to be bringing Macbeth to Harrogate Theatre in a unique take on the original play, a Macbeth as you have never seen before, but still with Shakespeare’s story at its heart.”

Fusing live performance with digital technology for 23 years, latterly in Night Of The Living Dead ™ –  Remix and Dracula: The Untold Story, Imitating The Dog turn to Shakespeare after staging Cinema Inferno for the Parisian haute couture house Maison Margiela, based on an original concept by creative director John Galliano, for Maison Margiela’s Artisanal 2022 collection.

“We started off with Romeo & Juliet, working on a version for two actors in their 60s or 70s,” says Andrew. “We did some research, but it felt like a one-idea show that we couldn’t commit to.

“But Macbeth was a play we really liked, and there’ve been a lot of film versions, with two recent ones [Joel Coen’s The Tragedy Of Macbeth, from 2021, and Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth, from 2015] still fresh in the mind. So, we thought, ‘if we can’t do Romeo & Juliet, let’s do Macbeth’.”

As a contrast with Denzel Washington and Michael Fassbender’s older Macbeths in those two films, Imitating The Dog settled on two young leads (played by Benjamin Westerby, from the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Maia Tamrakar, from Sheffield Crucible’s Rock, Scissors, Paper).

“Out, damned spot; out, I say”: Maia Tamrakar’s Lady Macbeth, filmed by Laura Atherton, who plays one of the witches in Imitating The Dog’s Macbeth. Picture: Ed Waring

“In our adaptation, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are 18-19 years old; they’re kids really, street kids,” says Andrew.

“We’ve set it in a kind of parallel world, a version of London that’s a cross between Tokyo, Shanghai, Los Angeles and London, with a Blade Runner feel to it. Duncan [the king in the original] is a crime lord; Macbeth seizes the moment, suddenly being thrown into the spotlight when he becomes second in line to Duncan, who starts thinking, ‘ooh, this kid is a bit much’.

“When Macbeth murders him, it’s not just about ambition but self-protection, because though he feels he’s really good at his job, he also feels that if he doesn’t kill him now, he could get done in.”

As played by Stefan Chanyaem, Matt Prendergast (from Dracula:The Untold Story) and Laura Atherton (from Night Of The Living Dead™ – Remix), the witches/shape shifters set up the story in Imitating The Dog’s version, playing everyone bar the Macbeths, who have “fallen into this world that is testing them”.

“The witches are like clowns in suits, these grotesques, who do all the live filming on stage, with Macbeth always being filmed close-up, giving almost a forensic quality to the piece, adding to the psychological drama,” says Andrew.

That world is constructed with 70 to 30 per cent division between original text and new text with hints of the Russian, Italian and Japanese language: “little traces of those argots”, as Andrew puts it. “It’s a cosmopolitan city that is multi-racial, international, like lots of big cities nowadays. “It’s a city that the witches set up and the Macbeths descend into,” he says.

Imitating The Dog’s cast of five in a scene from Macbeth. Picture: Ed Waring

“In the back story, they were orphaned when growing up, and Macbeth is looking after her, more like a brother and sister rather than lovers.

“The challenge was: could we make the Macbeths lovable or at least understandable; make them human, whereas Shakespeare’s Richard III is more of a monster under all that Tudor propaganda of the time.”

Exploring the “challenge” further, Andrew says: “Whether you can really like them or not, I don’t know, but I think you can understand their motives in a very brutal world. The Macbeths do things that are terrible, they use extreme violence, like killing Lady MacDuff and the MacDuff children, but we’re not only interested in a story of power and ambition but the context in which that arises too. Right now, looking at monarchy and power feels very relevant.

“In this very violent world, the Macbeths’ love for each other is very important, with everything that Macbeth does being rooted in his need to protect Lady Macbeth. He’s always questioning, always doubting, always reassessing what he should do next, and what’s great about the play is that Shakespeare gives him humanity despite what he’s doing.”

A further reference point is Arthur Penn’s 1967 film Bonnie & Clyde. “Even though they do these terrible things, there’s something very attractive about them – and once they start, they have to keep going,” says Andrew.

Imitating The Dog in Macbeth, Harrogate Theatre, February 24 at 7.30pm; February 25, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk. Further Yorkshire dates: CAST, Doncaster, February 21 and 22, 01302 303959 or castindoncaster.com; Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, 01484 430528 or thelbt.org.

Benjamin Westerby’s Macbeth in rehearsal for Macbeth

Copyright of The Press, York

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REVIEW: Around The World In 80 Days, Tilted Wig/York Theatre Royal, at York Theatre Royal, today, 2.30pm, 7.30pm ****

Ride on time: Alex Phelps’s Phileas Fogg in Around The World In 80 Days. Picture: Anthony Robling

THE circus will leave town after a three-day home run concludes with today’s two performances, ahead of a nationwide tour until July 22 in Tilted Wig’s collaboration with York Theatre Royal.

Creative director Juliet Forster’s adaptation of Jules Verne’s 1873 novel was first staged on the school playing fields of York in the socially distanced summer of 2021, big-topped off by a finale back indoors at the Theatre Royal.

After rehearsals on Sara Perks’s fabulous travelling set in the Studio, the striped flags and organ music of Vernes Circus have taken up temporary residence in the main house with a multi-disciplined cast of five tasked with playing circus performers in turn playing a minimum of two of Verne’s characters each.

In prickly English Victorian gent Phileas Fogg’s wager with his stuffy Reform Club cronies that he can traverse the globe in 80 days, Forster wastes no time in pricking the balloon that Fogg travelled in such a form of transportation. In screen versions, yes; in the Frenchman’s novel, no. Besides, budget constraints rule it out, decrees Alex Phelps’s punctilious Ringmaster.

The imagination, however, needs no budget, and so, just as in Patrick Barlow’s parody re-creation of John Buchan’s novel and Alfred Hitchcock’s film of The 39 Steps, Forster’s cast must apply physical theatre panache, dextrous elasticity, props and even costume to convey anything from an elephant to a train and a trading vessel in often unexpected ways.

Calling on the stone-faced grace of Buster Keaton, Phelps’s immaculate, unflustered, tea-drinking, not-always-scrupulous Fogg/immaculate/flustered Ringmaster seeks to control proceedings with the help/hindrance of Wilson Benedito’s Clown/servant Passepartout.

Weaving their way into the fast-moving, helter-skelter story are Genevieve Sabherwal’s Trick Rider/Indian princess Aouda, Katriona Brown’s whip-cracking Acrobat/Nellie Bly and returning 2021 cast member Eddie Mann’s Knife Thrower/spiv Detective Fox. From assorted accents to assorted circus skills, they reveal a restless, constantly changing repertoire of theatrical alacrity with relish.

As the revolving signage announces each new destination, so everything could be in too much of a rush. Except that Forster runs the parallel story of ground-breaking American journalist Nellie Bly’s real-life race around the world, related by Brown’s Bly in elegant travelogue prose that benefits the production with its change of pace, all the while amusingly winding up Phelps’s Fogg.

Favourite scenes? The slow-motion bridge collapse denoted by ladders and the heavy-drinking tussle between Mann’s Fix and Benedito’s Passepartout on a see-saw, where everything is in the balance.

As you would want, Forster’s second act surpasses the first, the company’s teamwork becoming ever funnier, their flamboyant, fun circus acrobatics stacking up, with high praise for Asha Jennings-Grant’s movement direction and Edwin Gray’s sound design too. Perks’s designs and costumes delight throughout.

Just as York Theatre Royal’s The Railway Children took off for London and Toronto success, Tilted Wig must be thanked for giving new air to Forster’s Around The World In 80 Days, now travelling around the country for 171 days. Fans of Mischief’s mischief-making, calamitous comedies will love it.

York box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. The tour visits Cast, Doncaster, from July 5 to 8; castdoncaster.com. Age guidance: five plus.

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York Theatre Royal teams up with Tilted Wig for second Around The World In 80 Days travels, this time going nationwide

The cast for Tilted Wig and York Theatre Royal’s Around The World In 80 Days

TILTED Wig are teaming up with York Theatre Royal for a nationwide tour of Around The World In 80 Days from February 2 to July 22 2023. Rehearsals will begin in York next Monday.

Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster’s adaptation of Jules Verne’s story first toured all four corners of York in August 23 days in 2021, not in a hot-air balloon, but on a trailer, whose sides could be dropped down for the set to be built around, in the tradition of travelling players going from town to town.

Forster’s circus-themed production played four York playing fields – Carr Junior School, Copmanthorpe Primary School, Archbishop Holgate’s School and Joseph Rowntree School – followed by a last stop, back indoors, at the Theatre Royal, where Tilted Wig’s new tour of England, Scotland and Wales will open from February 2 to 4.

In Forster’s version, Verne’s original characters are transformed, embracing different modes of transport in the frantic race to travel around the world in 80 Days. Original cast member Eddie Mann will be joined by Alex Phelps, Katriona Brown, Wilson Benedito and Genevieve Sabherwal, who each multi-role as the rag-tag band of travelling circus performers embarks on a daring mission to recreate Phileas Fogg’s journey.

Eddie Mann: Returning to the roles of the Knife Thrower and Detective Fix

Phelps will play the determined Ringmaster and Fogg, having appeared in As You Like It for Shakespeare’s Globe/CBeebies, When Darkness Falls for Park Theatre and Hamlet for Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre.

Actor and puppeteer Brown will be the Acrobat and Nellie Bly; Sabherwal, the Trick Rider and Aouda; Wilson Benedito, the Clown and Passepartout, and New Zealander Mann, the sharp-witted Knife Thrower and Detective Fix.

Writer-director Forster said in 2021: ““There was a risk that a show would have a stuffy gentlemen’s club, outdated feel to it because it’s a male-dominated story, so I thought, ‘how do we make it a play for today?’. That’s when I decided to put Nellie Bly’s story in there too.”

For the uninitiated, Nellie Bly was the pen name of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, an American journalist, industrialist, inventor and charity worker, who made her own record-breaking trip around the world – and did so with more alacrity than the fictional Fogg.

The original York Theatre Royal cast for Around The World In 80 Days in August 2021, including Eddie Mann, centre. Picture: Charlotte Graham

“I read her book about going around the world: a beautiful piece of travel journalism with such lovely detail, and I thought, ‘maybe we should just do her story’, but then I decided, ‘no, let’s look at finding a form for a play that fits bit both stories in’,” Juliet said.

Move forward to 2023’s revival, and the director says: “I was amazed that we generally know more about Jules Verne’s fictional characters than we do about Nellie Bly. I knew I had to tell her story. I found that this approach allowed interesting themes to emerge around whose stories get told, whose stories dominate and who should stand aside to give space to the untold ones.”

Tour producer Tilted Wig Productions was formed in 2017 by Katherine Senior and Matthew Parish, who have more than 15 years of experience producing and touring plays throughout the UK, taking 20-plus productions on the road, such as Philip Meeks’s Murder, Margaret, and Me, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Picture Of Dorian Gray.

York Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster: Writer-director of Around The World In 80 Days

“Our shows now tour around some of the biggest theatres in the UK, yet our original ethos has always remained the same: whether Titled Wig are producing a classic play or a vibrant new adaptation, we always aim to inspire a bright and innovative creative team to take our stories UK-wide,” they say.

Juliet is joined in the production team by set designer Sara Perks; lighting designer Alexandra Stafford; composer and sound designer Ed Gray; movement director Asha Jennings-Grant and fight director Jonathan Holby.

Tilted Wig and York Theatre Royal present Around The World In 80 Days at York Theatre Royal on February 2, 2pm and 7.30pm, February 3, 7.30pm, and February 4, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Also: Cast, Doncaster, July 5 to 8; castdoncaster.com. Age guidance: seven plus.

The tour poster for Tilted Wig and York Theatre Royal’s Around The World In 80 Days

UPDATE 9/1/2023

REHEARSALS have begun today for Tilted Wig and York Theatre Royal’s six-month tour of Around The World In 80 Days.

Gathering for the first time were Wilson Benedito, left, Katrina Brown, Genevieve Sabherwal and Alex Phelps. Missing was fifth cast member Eddie Mann, who will join rehearsals later. Picture by Anthony Robling.

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