Posted on

Bev Jones Music Company branches out into classic rock with Steve Coates’s jukebox hits at Joseph Rowntree Theatre

The poster artwork for One Night Of Classic Rock at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York

THE BJMC [Bev Jones Music Company] is going into partnership with the newly formed Steve Coates Music Productions. First up will be January 20’s performance of One Night Of Classic Rock at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York.

“Steve is entering York’s amateur music scene with a sell-out show,” says delighted BJMC producer Lesley Jones. “The show has a waiting list for return tickets, such is its popularity. I think Steve simply came up with a brand new idea and it’s worked!”

Lesley first met Steve six years ago. “He’s not a music theatre fan, but after going to a show he said, ‘why can’t I do a rock show from my jukebox?’. After a few drinks he says I convinced him he could and the rest is history,” she says. “The next show is in the diary already and Steve is now contacting other venues in other towns.” 

Billed as a “one-of-a-kind production designed for true rock fans, featuring a passionate cast of singers and six-piece band, all paying tribute to their favourite rock heroes”, the 7.30pm show combines “an impressive sound and light show with thunderous anthems from everyone’s favourite rock bands”.

“Get ready to have your mind blown with the familiar classic riffs everyone remembers,” says Lesley. “The sound will be phenomenal with perfect harmonies, solid rock accompaniment and fabulous vocals.

For those about to rock: BJMC cast members in rehearsal

“All the songs are taken from Steve’s own jukebox – a real original – that includes AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Meat Loaf, Tina Turner, Status Quo, Queen, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, The Who, plus many more.”

The One Night Of Classic Rock band will be led by Mickey Moran, joined by fellow guitarists Eddie Oktay Stock and Liam Stevenson, keyboard player James Rodgers, saxophonist Sam Lightwing and drummer Jez Smith.

Moran will be among the lead vocalists too, alongside York Opera singer and dietician Annabel Van Griethuysen, Clare Meadley, Jack Storey-Hunter and Chris Hagyard, restored to full health after illness forced the last-minute cancellation of the BJMC’s Guy And Dolls last October.

The sixth principal vocalist will be former York Light Opera Company leading lady Ruth McNeil, who is a “massive rock performer” in her home city of Nottingham.

The backing singers will be Adele Barlow, Alison Laver, Linsey Dawn, Rosie King, James Noble and Sam Lightwing, when not on his saxophone. 

Annabel Van Griethuysen: Switching from opera to classic rock

Looking ahead, the BJMC’s partnership with Steve Coates will lead to performance programmes spanning a variety of music genres, from West End musicals to opera, jazz to cabaret, as well as this month’s newcomer: rock.

“Steve has also offered to produce our Les Miserables Youth Edition next January, which I’m looking forward to staging as a one-off youth production, open to all young singers in the North Yorkshire area, with no financial commitments required,” says Lesley.

The next BJMC classic rock night is booked for January 11 2025 at 7.30pm at the JoRo. “As this month’s show is holding a waiting list for any return tickets, maybe next January we’ll do a matinee as well or two nights,” says Lesley.

“Steve says that with the level of interest we’ve had, we must definitely consider extra dates. It’s a shame to have a list of disappointed potential audience members. However, he hopes to stage another show mid-year in another venue elsewhere in Yorkshire.” Watch this space.

As for January 20, ticketholders should “dig out those leathers and boots, grab a glass of beer or wine, and let’s rock the aisles,” says Lesley.

Posted on

REVIEW: NE Theatre York in A Christmas Carol, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York ***

Chain reaction: Steve Tearle’s Jacob Marley spooks Kit Stroud’s Ebenezer Scrooge in NE Theatre York’s A Christmas Carol

NE Theatre York – or NE Musicals York as they were back then – staged the York premiere of this all-singing version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the JoRo in November 2018.

More Christmas advert season than Advent season on that occasion, but the show’s return heralds Advent’s arrival on Sunday, and the festive mood is already alive and noisy, like the crisp and sweet packet scrunching that accompanied Tuesday’s opening night.

Scrooge moan over, some things have changed since 2018, some have not. More on the changes later, but first: the cast numbers 60 once more; Steve Tearle is directing and playing the ghost of Jacob Marley in white suit and face paint again, and the Sold Out signs will be greeting theatregoers again and again on the street scene on the JoRo forecourt. No tickets left, not one.

A roll of thunder announces the arrival of Tearle’s Marley on a London set familiar to audiences who saw his production of Oliver!. Temporarily, north easterner Steve turns Brummie to make the obligatory mobile phone pronouncement but with the impish humour that will mark a frenetic, fantastical, phantasmagorical production into which he will throw everything, magical books, bouncing balls and kitchen sink included (metaphorically speaking).

Perri Ann Barley’s Ghost of Christmas Past

Look out too for the misbehaving chairs and bed in Scrooge’s house, leaping into the air as if propelled by the handiwork of ghosts.

Written by Beauty And The Beast and The Little Mermaid composer Alan Menken, with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and book by Mike Ockrent and Lynn Ahrens, the musical began life as a film before being re-created for the Broadway stage, opening at Madison Square Garden.

Its driving force is the modern musical score under Scott Phillips’s enthusiastic direction,  but the dialogue fizzes along too – everything is home and hosed by 9.30pm – with Tearle’s Marley as host, ghost and timekeeper.

Changes afoot? The familiar tale of miserable, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge’s redemptive journey through Christmas Eve night still takes the form of encounters with Ghosts of the Past, Present and Yet To Be but Tearle has fortified the circus setting first evoked in 2018, while Melissa Boyd’s choreography nods to both 1856 and modern moves for ensemble numbers.

Once more the ghosts are first seen in their real-world guises as a lamplighter (Perri Ann Barley), Ring Master (Chris Hagyard, taking the circus theme further than James O’Neil’s charity show barker of 2018), and an Old Hag (John Mulholland). Note their Christmas colours of snow white, ivy green and holly berry red.

Chris Hagyard’s Ghost of Christmas Present

Tearle loves theatricality, spectacle in particular, and here he quite surpasses himself by having Marley wreathed in 100 metres of white fabric, stretched like waves across the stage as he urges Kit Stroud’s grouchy Scrooge to learn the error of his ways before it is too late. Marley’s trademark chains are more like a rapper’s bling adornments by comparison.

Graduating from his 2018 role as Young Ebenezer, Stroud’s Scrooge is mean of voice and demeanour at the outset, his lead performance being alive to both the humour and inhumanity the part demands.

Shocked by what he learns of himself, his Scrooge is pained by the recollections of his younger self, when guided by Perri Ann Barley’s Ghost Of Christmas Past with her coat of lights leading the way.

Ockrent and Ahrens’s book weaves one departure from Dickens’s novella into the plot: the story of Scrooge’s father, John William Scrooge, being sentenced to a debtors’ prison while his horrified wife’s family look on as they sing God Bless Us, Everyone.

Cowering into a ball, Stroud’s Scrooge screams “Mother” (as played by Rebecca Jackson), the stuff of a psychological thriller to counter the pantomimic comedy mayhem that subsequently permeates Mr Fezziwig’s Annual Christmas Ball.

John Mulholland’s Ghost of Christmas Yet To Be

Hagyard, out of luck in October when Bev Jones Company’s Guys And Dolls had to be called off, puts that frustration behind him in a terrific performance,  pulling strings as Ring Master cum Ghost of Christmas Present.

Greg Roberts’s clown-wigged Mr Fezziwig and Ali Butler-Hind’s Mrs Fezziwig enjoy themselves too in that first-half climax, while Kristian Barley’s Bob Cratchit and Alice Atang’s Tiny Tim maximise their moments too.

Mulholland’s Ghost of Christmas Yet To Be transforms from Old Hag to flame-maned heavy metal frontman, the shock of the new steering Stroud’s alarmed Scrooge towards the dawn of realisation and change.

Visually arresting, largely playful rather than psychological, A Christmas Carol is a typically vibrant, helter-skelter Tearle production, where the singing and musicianship is of varied quality, the dancing and acting being more assured by comparison.

NE Theatre York in A Christmas Carol, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, until Saturday; 7.30pm nightly and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. SOLD OUT. Box office for returns only: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Posted on

REVIEW: NE in Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 2.30pm and 7.30pm today ***

Steve Tearle: Director, Narrator and Mystery Man. All pictures: David Richardson

THIS is as much Stephen Tearle’s Into The Woods as Stephen Sondheim’s wickedly witty Broadway show in a fusion of York and New York imaginations.

Sondheim rooted his 1987 Broadway musical in a grown-up twist on the Brothers Grimm stories that casts a new light on such familiar fairy-tale frequenters as Cinderella (University of York student Rebecca Jackson); Beanstalk-climbing Jack (Jack Hambleton); a skipping Little Red Riding Hood (CAPA College and PQA York student Missy Barnes/Rowntree Players panto regular Mollie Surgenor); Rapunzel (Juliette Brenot); Snow White (Elizabeth Farrell) and The Wolf (Ryan Richardson, looking not unlike Sam Smith in their Gloria tour get-up).

James Lapine’s book for Sondheim’s songs centres on the plight of the Baker (Chris Hagyard) and the Baker’s Wife (Perri Ann Barley), a childless couple seeking to lift the curse placed on them by a once-beautiful Witch (a towering performance from Pascha Turnbull).

Flour power: Perri Ann Barley’s barren Baker’s Wife and Chris Hagyard’s Baker in NE’s Into The Woods

Venturing into the woods, they must search for the ingredients that will reverse the spell:  a milk-white cow (Erin Greenley, in white jeans and boots), hair as yellow as corn (from Rapunzel); a blood red cape (from Little Red Riding Hood) and a slipper of gold (from Cinderella).

Here they will encounter the fairy-tale folk, each on a quest to fulfil a wish, and into the story come the likes of Cinderella’s Prince (Sam Richardson), Rapunzel’s Prince (Kristian Barley), Cinderella’s Mother (Rebecca Warboys) and the Ugly Sisters, Florinda (Ali Butler-Hind) and Lucinda (Morag Kinnes).

Sondheim steers a path away from pantomime into terrain altogether darker, behaviour worsening, human foibles bursting through, enchantment turning to disenchantment, living unhappily ever after until the denouement. Steve Tearle nudges the playing style back towards panto, without changing the fruitier post-9pm-curfew content.

Missy Barnes’s Little Red Riding Hood: “Something of the Wednesday Addams about her”

He also introduces a young ensemble to swell the company ranks to 50, playing woodland birds and forest dwellers in pointy ears, who gather at Tearle’s feet in his role as string-pulling Narrator and Mystery Man too. He plays free and loose with the script, interjecting adlibs in his north-eastern accent in the manner of a Dame Berwick Kaler pantomime.

Sondheim’s style is deadpan, even noir, as well as being witheringly witty, as paraded in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street too. Tearle’s style is broader, tongue pushed into the cheek in pursuit of “highly camp fun”, typically expressed in the performances of Richardson and Barley’s Princes and Melissa Boyd as Jack’s Mother, although Missy Barnes’s Little Red Riding Hood on Thursday night had something of the Wednesday Addams about her.

In a “big” joke, Helen Greenley’s diminutive Giant’s Wife arrives in massive platforms and a startlingly deep, echoing, discordant voice – compared by one audience member to Mr Blobby – that brings to mind the Wizard Of Oz at the moment he is exposed as a fraud.

Hagyard and Perri Ann Barley play it closest to Sondheim’s tone, while Pascha Turnbull, regularly cast as “larger than life, formidable women”, takes on the bewitching role she has “yearned to play for many years”, combining the show’s most powerful singing with her suitably domineering presence. Not for the first time, Jack Hambleton stands out as one of York’s rising talents.

Bean there, done that: Jack Hambleton’s Jack of Beanstalk-climbing notoriety

Scott Phillips conducts his musical forces with glee and oomph aplenty; Adam Kirkwood’s rainbow palette of lighting complements Tearle and Faye Richarson’s woodland setting with its camouflage gauze and three rotating scaffolding towers, forever on the move, whether occupied by Jack or Rapunzel or whoever.

The fabulous costumes, designed by award-winning Ashington fashion designer Paul Shriek, go with the many shrieks that pierce the sylvan night air.

Experimental, experiential and wildly ambitious, amber-gambler Tearle’s Into The Woods heads deliriously into the weird. It certainly brings a smile, but would the late Sondheim take Tearle’s tribute as a compliment? We shall never know.

Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Posted on

Steve Tearle leads NE’s cast of 50 into the woods for Sondheim musical adventure

Can they lift the curse? Perri Ann Barley and Chris Hagyard as the barren Baker’s Wife and Baker in NE’s Into The Woods. All pictures: David Richardson

INTO The Woods go York musical theatre company NE as they present Stephen Sondheim’s wickedly witty musical at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, from April 25 to 29.

The New York composer and lyricist rooted his 1987 Broadway show in the Brothers Grimm stories, in a grown-up twist that cast a new light on such familiar fairy-tale frequenters as Cinderella, Jack of Beanstalk fame, Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood, but this is no time for pantomime.

Instead, with a book by James Lapine, the story is centred on the Baker and the Baker’s Wife, a childless couple seeking to lift the curse placed on them by a once-beautiful witch.

Rebecca Jackson’s Cinderella

Venturing into the woods three days before the rise of a blue moon, they must search for the ingredients that will reverse the spell: a milk-white cow, hair as yellow as corn, a blood red cape and a slipper of gold. Here they will encounter the fairy-tale folk, each on a quest to fulfil a wish.

The tale will be narrated by NE director Steve Tearle, who also takes on a second role as “the Mysterious Man”. “We chose to do Into The Woods as a tribute to the late Stephen Sondheim. It’s a very different show, which I was lucky enough to see on Broadway in the 1990s, though I missed the star turn, Bernadette Peters, as she was on her day off!” he says.

“I loved it! It was so, so funny. High camp comedy really! I put it on the backburner to do, but a couple of years ago we applied for it – before Sondheim died in November 2021 – and we were meant to be doing it last year.

Ali Butler Hind and Morag Kinnes as the Ugly Sisters, Florinda and Lucinda

“We’re so happy we now are as it’s a fantastic musical comedy for all ages with its wonderfully inventive re-telling of some of the Brothers Grimm stories, where Sondheim was thinking, ‘let’s bring out the child in the adult’. Being a family-driven company, it fits in perfectly with our actors from six years old.”

Steve’s New York trip has influenced his production. “When thinking about the set design, I took inspiration from the original Broadway version,” he says. “I wanted the audience to feel like they were also inside the woods, so we’re using rainbow colours and various styles to bring the woods to life.

“Befitting such an epic musical, we have an amazing set design and fabulous costumes, designed by award-winning Ashington fashion designer Paul Shriek, which we’ve managed to buy second-hand for our show. The finesse to Adam Kirkwood’s lighting is phenomenal too.”

Ready to climb the beanstalk: Jack Hambleton’s Jack

The cast plays its part in setting the scene. “We have more than 50 people in the show, and the ensemble really are the set, becoming the woods, so the woods are interactive. It’s a movable set that changes as the show moves through the three simultaneous stories that blend together,” says Steve.

“We’re making the set a lot more personable to the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, making it ‘fit’ the theatre and more experiential, so that everyone there will feel part of the woods.”

Steve’s show will be knocking down theatre’s ‘fourth wall’, the imaginary barrier between cast and audience, several times. “The Narrator has his own posse of children in the ensemble, and they work with him in these fabulous break-out moments, like when we stop the show when he loses the book or he freezes everybody because he’s in control of everything.

Steve Tearle: Director, Narrator and Mystery Man

“That’s like pantomime, but it’s all done with more serious overtones as – spoiler alert! – the show does feature deaths, as well as blood pouring out of a slipper, a toe being cut off and a heel shaved off. We’ll use a sausage for the toe and ham for the heel!”.

Chris Hagyard and Perri Ann Barley lead the NE cast as the Baker and Baker’s Wife, while Pascha Turnbull casts a spell on the audience as the Witch whose curse is the cause of the culinary couple’s woes. Rebecca Jackson plays Cinderella with Sam Richardson as her Prince; Molly Surgenor and Missy Barnes share the role of Little Red Riding Hood; Juliette Brenot is Rapunzel, with Kristian Barley as her Prince.

Further principal roles go to Ryan Richardson as the Wolf; Jack Hambleton, aptly, as Jack; Melissa Boyd as Jack’s Mother; Effie Warboys as Sleeping Beauty and Elizabeth Farrell as Snow White Farrell. “Helen Greenley may be the smallest member of our NE team but she’s playing what you might say is the biggest role,” says Steve. “She’s the Giant’s wife, wearing these massive platforms.”

Missy Barnes’s Little Red Riding Hood

Steve is as proud of his cast as ever. “There are no professionals in the show; we do it for the love of theatre, and we just embrace people and what their capabilities are. We have cast members in the ensemble who have hearing difficulties and are partially sighted,” he says.

“I like to think we give opportunities that other companies wouldn’t give, and we love encouraging confidence among our young performers. We very much wanted to have them in the cast; some had never heard of Sondheim, but they definitely love him now!”

NE [once short for New Earswick, the company’s origins, but now denoting New & Exciting] present  Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, April 25 to 29, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk

Posted on

REVIEW: NE in Oliver!, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, lots more until 26/11/22 ****

Zachary Pickersgill as orphan Oliver: “Could not give more to his role”

NE in Oliver!, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 7.30pm tonight (last few tickets), then next Tuesday to Saturday; 2.30pm matinees, tonight and next Saturday, both sold out. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk

CREATIVE director and producer Steve Tearle is playing Fagin for the fourth time in Lionel Bart’s beloved musical account of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

He knows both part and musical inside out – he has appeared in six productions since the late-1970s – but he was determined to freshen it up anew, not so much new twists as more Twist.

NE Musicals York may have stripped back its name temporarily to NE but Tearle has embellished Oliver! with short extra scenes, a “fruitier” frisson to Chris Hagyard’s Mr Bumble and a cast of thousands (well, almost), divided into two teams, Dawkins and Twist, for alternate performances.

Steve Tearle’s Fagin: Arch, devious, but humorous too

Tearle reckons this  production is the darkest of NE’s three versions in the past decade – 2015, 2018 and 2022 – signified by the thunder and dark Victorian attire of the opening and wholly encapsulated in the menacing performance of Eric Jensen’s jemmy-wielding Bill Sikes.

Last spotted on stage pushing Priscilla the bus and being a bigoted bar-room rowdy in the Aussie outback in Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical, Jensen graduates to a principal role – after the original Sikes had to withdraw for health reasons – with aplomb.

If your reviewer says he even murdered My Name – his big, brutal song in the spotlight – it is meant in the most positive way. By his side, unlike Bill, Bonnie behaves impeccably in the canine spotlight as his English bull terrier, Bullseye.

Anyway, we digress. The opening number sets out Tearle’s stall as 45 children explode from everywhere in a burst of stamping feet to fill the stage for the workhouse number Food, Glorious Food. Tearle has adapted Robert Readman’s My Fair Lady set, utilising its framework for a walkway and to present scenes on a mezzanine level, and he is not averse to his cast frequenting the aisles too in a blur of mischief-making.

Maia Beatrice’s Nancy, right, with Erin Greenley

His Fagin and Zachary Pickersgill’s Oliver even make use of the orchestra pit, when seeking cover from being found. (You will note too the decking out of the pit apron in dockside wood in a striking designer’s flourish.)

Space aplenty is necessary for the ensemble scenes, whether in the pub, the streets, the workhouse, or Fagin’s den of young pickpockets. Tearle’s passion for community theatre is emblazoned across these scenes, so full of life, filling the stage at every opportunity, whether with Fagin’s Gang, Tearle’s young charges relishing taking their early steps on the boards, or with the ever-enthusiastic adult chorus.

Ellie Roberts’s choreography revels in having to accommodate so many limbs, typified by the outstanding Oom-Pah-Pah, while bringing personality to the oh-so-familiar set-piece numbers. Who Will Buy? is a particular delight.

Tearle’s scheming yet lily-livered crook Fagin, Jensen’s bruiser Sikes and Hagyard’s amusingly slimy, meddlesome beadle Mr Bumble will be appearing in all the performances, as will Kelvin Grant’s upstanding Mr Brownlow and Tom Henshaw’s antagonistic undertaker Mr Sowerberry. 

What a scream! Chris Hagyard’s Mr Bumble and Fiona Cameron’s Widow Corney make a comically crotchety couple

CharlesHutchPress saw Thursday’s company, so please forgive no mention of the alternate cast when praising Maia Beatrice’s heartbreaking Nancy (As Long As He Needs Me); Fiona Cameron’s heartless, on-the-make Widow Corney (I Shall Scream); Melissa Boyd’s gothic Mrs Sowerberry (That’s Your Funeral) and Scott Kendrew’s smug bully, Noah Claypole.

Zachary Pickersgill is fearless in the title role, as mobile as a dancer in moving around the stage, and not fazed by that most difficult of songs for a young voice, Where Is Love?. Whether cheeky, defiant, angry, or searching for love amid constant change and adversity, he could not give more to his orphan Oliver.

Toby Jensen hits his groove as a suitably artful Dodger, leading Consider Yourself with swagger, but one tip: keep the head up to look the audience in the eye, projection being so vital to giving off the all-important air of self-confidence that will carry through to the finale with its foretelling of the post-Fagin era.

Rather than cor-blimey, apples-and-pears Cockernee accents, Tearle and his cast are not so specific about placing Oliver! in London’s East End. That ensures clarity throughout, save for the occasional line that needs more volume or those moments when the band overpowers the singing in the sound balance.

Menacing: Eric Jensen’s Bill Sikes

Tearle’s Fagin is arch, devious, but he finds the humour in the old rogue too, whether in improvised asides (such as when struggling to put on his coat), or in his signature song, Reviewing The Situation, where he reviews the song in progress and banters with violinist Olivia Virgo.

He excels in his costume designs too, while Scott Phillips’s orchestra is a joy, flowing between strings and brass, equally adept at the uptempo and the contemplative grand ballad.

All in all, this is an Oliver! with more: more detail, more cast members, more humour, more drama, more shows, spread over two weeks. What more encouragement do you need to join Fagin’s gang and co? If you don’t go, well, that’s your funeral.

Review by Charles Hutchinsion

Oliver, Oliver: Zachary Pickersgill, left, and Fin Walker are alternating performances in the lead role in NE’s Oliver!
Posted on

Bev Jones Music Company reopen Joseph Rowntree Theatre with Strictly Cabaret

Strictly Cabaret performers Chris Hagyard, Terry Ford, Larry Gibson and Claire Pulpher

THE Joseph Rowntree Theatre, in York, reopens its doors tonight with Covid-secure measures, socially distanced seating plan and the first of three performances of Strictly Cabaret.

Bev Jones Music Company principals Claire Pulpher, Chris Hagyard, Terry Ford and Larry Gibson will don their finest to entertain with a glittering cabaret set of their favourites at 7.30pm, to be followed by 2.30pm and 7.30pm performances tomorrow.

“Rat Pack, swing style, top musicals, film favourites, you name it, they will sing it,” says producer Lesley Jones. “Just sit back, reflect upon the year, clear your minds and be thoroughly entertained in the manner befitting the Bev Jones Music Company.

“All the cast will be principal performers in our June production of Jesus Christ Superstar at Rowntree Park, directed by Claire, who will play Mary, alongside Chris as Judas, Terry as Caiaphas and Larry as Pilate.”

Under the present JoRo regulations for Step 3 reopening, the Bev Jones Music Company (BJMC) were permitted a company of only four. “That proved to be a headache,” admits Lesley. “How can you entice an audience to a BJMC show with so few cast members? But by offering diversification in content, I think we’ve pulled it off by aiming at all age groups.”

Claire Pulpher: Performing songs from Hamilton and Wicked, Alto’s Lament and a Whitney dancefloor filler

Introducing the Strictly Cabaret programme, Lesley says: “In a forward-thinking move, Claire sings songs from Hamilton and Wicked and the hilarious Alto’s Lament, then changes style with a superb dance-based Whitney Houston number, I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

“Chris sings the powerful Pity The Child from Chess, the ever popular I Believe, plus a great swing performance of Mack The Knife and Cry Me A River; Terry performs Stars from Les Miserables, How Wonderful You Are and Tomorrow Never Comes, and Larry has chosen Luck Be A Lady, his favourite rock number from Chess, The Arbiter, plus the swing number The Lady Is A Tramp.”

Anything else, Lesley? “They’ll also all sing duets, trios and big group numbers, such as There Is Nothin’ Like A Dame and songs from Cabaret, Joseph and Abba,” she says.

“You can expect lots of humour and fun, plus power and pathos, but it was important to offer a chink of light after these dark days and hopefully remind people of a positive future.”

For tickets, go to: josephrowntree.co.uk. Jesus Christ Superstar will be staged at the Rowntree Park Amphitheatre, York, on June 12, 3pm, and June 13, 2pm and 5pm; same box office.