Tag: Emilio Encinoso-Gil

Posted on

REVIEW: Jingle All The Way, Pocklington Arts Centre, today, 10.30am & 4.30pm ****

Hannah Christina’s Rosie and Emilio Encinoso-Gil’s Rex in Elizabeth Godber’s Jingle All The Way at Pocklington Arts Centre

THIS is the third Christmas collaboration between Pocklington Arts Centre, playwright-director Elizabeth Godber and co-director Jane Thornton from the John Godber Company stable.

It also marks the last act of departing PAC artistic director Angela Stone, who has produced the show before returning to her native Scotland to live in Ullapool in the Highlands in January. Thank you, Angela, for all you have done for this East Yorkshire market town’s arts scene since October 2022.

“We take great pride in producing inclusive and engaging stories, bringing magical Christmas spirit to our stage and welcoming returning and new audiences to PAC,” she said, after completing a hat trick of Godber, Thornton and Stone enterprises, following in the snow tracks of The Elves And The Shoemaker: Save Christmas and Jack Frost’s Christmas Wish. 

How right she is. Catching an evening performance, the audience of young children and their mums and dads were rapt in joyous attention as they revelled in the storytelling skills of writer Godber (yes, John ‘s daughter) and her cast of part-Spanish, wholly Hull-accented Emilio Encinoso-Gil, continuing his run of good form after such shows as John Godber’s Northern Soul song of praise, Do I Love You?, and professional debutante and Godber Theatre Foundation member Hannah Christina,  a 2025 graduate of Performers College, Birmingham.

On Emily Clay’s beautiful set design of a forest of snowy Christmas trees, festive lights and multiple boxes, Encinoso-Gil’s Rex and Christina’s reindeer sister Rosie have newly enrolled at a new school, the East Riding Reindeer Academy, in Pocklington, it just so happens, as Christmas fast approaches.

Rosie wants to fit in, to be cool at school with the in-crowd, even if it means shunning her nerdy, outsider brother, with his never-ending list of interesting Christmas and Santa Claus facts but his struggle to know where he belongs.

She will have no problem in joining the Santa’s Sleigh cheerleaders. Rex, on the other hand, is anything but sporty and so initially is highly reluctant to compete to join the supremely athletic sleigh squad.

Rosie agrees to work with the schools’ coolest deer dudes, a strutting duo permanently in shades, even to inform on her brother. Ouch. Encinoso-Gil and Christina are a delightfully villainous duo as Jingle All The Way’s answer to Heathers, with deer-patterned jackets straight off the deer catwalk.

Hannah Christina and Emilio Encinoso-Gil’s to-cool-for-school villainous double act in Jingle All The Way

Nevertheless, not to be done over or outdone, this is an underdog, or rather underdeer story, where Encinsoso-Gil’s Rex finds his chutzpah to start training for the school-wide competition to fill the last place in the sleigh squad.

Kitted in American-college attire in green and red (Christina) and a different shade of red and green with brown (Encinoso-Gil) beneath antler headsets, they look suitably seasonal, their acting playful, physical and fun, their movement constantly changing (Encinoso-Gil’s energy-sapping training regime and weight-lifting exertions are a particular joy).

Their interaction with the audience is established quickly, topped off by a sing-song of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. Children are not slow to exhort their very vocal support for Rex with words of encouragement and cheers. Hurrah!

After appearing in both The Elves And The Shoemaker: Save Christmas and Jack Frost’s Christmas Wish, Dylan Allcock  returns for a third Pock winter season, this time as musical director, contributing instantly catchy original songs and a slew of deer-orientated Christmas favourites, not least Chuck Berry’s evergreen Run Rudolph Run.

Godber’s script has room for pathos as well as plenty of humour (in Godber family tradition), complemented by ruddy-cheeked Christmas spirit and fast-moving sense of purpose and attention-sustaining momentum under the Godber-Thornton axis, keeping each half to only 30 minutes.

Godber scores high points for local references too, always a good idea in Christmas shows but sometimes neglected or underplayed by other shows.

Encinoso-Gil is thoroughly good company as the loser-turned-winner, while the multi-role-playing Christina impresses with her array of accents, from Scottish to American to Yorkshire, in her characterful, character-filled debut.

“We make something that’s a little bit different to panto,” said Angela Stone. If the continuation of this pantomime partnership is her Pocklington legacy, then how fitting that would be.

For tickets: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

Posted on

Elizabeth Godber’s Christmas show Jingle All The Way opens at Pocklington Arts Centre as reindeers start sleigh school

Jingle All The Way cast members Emilio Encinoso-Gil and Hannah Christina in rehearsal for Pocklington Arts Centre’s Christmas show with musical director Dylan Allcock

TODAY is Angela Stone’s last day as artistic director at Pocklington Arts Centre before moving to Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands.

Her last task in post is to oversee this evening’s opening of PAC’s Christmas show in her capacity as producer of Jingle All The Way.

Scottish-born Angela, who took over as artistic director in October 2022, says of this winter’s festive production: “We’re so proud to be staging our third Christmas adventure for all the family at Pocklington Arts Centre this December! We can’t wait to introduce audiences to our fabulous cast and deliver our trademark festive cheer.

“We take great pride in producing inclusive and engaging stories, bringing magical Christmas spirit to our stage and welcoming returning and new audiences to PAC.”

Suffused with humour, Christmas tunes, original songs, local references and festive fun, Jingle All The Way is written and co-directed by Elizabeth Godber, with Jane Thornton, from the John Godber Company stable, working alongside producer Angela in the same creative team behind PAC’s previous in-house Christmas productions, The Elves And The Shoemaker Save Christmas and Jack Frost’s Christmas Wish. 

Dylan Allcock provides the musical direction for this new festive family adventure, wherein reindeer siblings Rex (Emilio Encinoso-Gil) and Rosie(Hannah Christina) are reluctant to start at a new school just before Christmas, especially when that school is the East Riding Reindeer Academy, home of supreme athletes.

The poster for Pocklington Arts Centre’s Christmas show Jingle All The Way

Although Rosie fits in quickly, Rex struggles to find where he belongs, but a school-wide competition might change all that. Santa has a position free on his sleigh squad; could this be Rex’s big chance?

“It’s our third year at Pocklington Arts Centre, and I absolutely love working at Pocklington at Christmas,” says Elizabeth. “The audiences are fabulous, and we’ve really started to establish creating new work for younger-year children: we’re solidly for ten year olds and younger. Some have even come in pyjamas!

“Also, one of the things we were really keen on was to make the shows really accessible by doing half an hour each act. It’s very theatrical with masks and multi-role playing, and we’re very much into wholesome theatre. We make something that’s a little bit different to panto.”

She talks of the responsibility to “make sure that a child’s first experience of theatre is a positive one”. “The first time I went to the cinema I got really scared, because it was dark and scary, so I didn’t go back for a long time,” says Elizabeth, now 30.  “But I did go to the theatre with my parents [John and Jane Godber]: there’s a photo of me in my mum’s arms in the auditorium when I was three weeks old!”

Summing up Jingle All The Way’s story, Elizabeth says: “Although reindeer Rex is a bit of a nerd and not very sporty, he decides to train for the competition to join Santa’s sleigh squad, so it’s an underdog story with a sibling rivalry, as twin brother and sister Rex and Rosie don’t always get on!”

Jingle All The Way runs at Pocklington  Arts Centre from December 11 to 23. Performances: December 11,  7pm; December 13, 1.30pm; December 14, 1.30pm (Relaxed Performance) and 4.30pm; December 19, 7pm; December 20 and 21, 1.30pm, December 22, 1.30pm; December 23, 10.30am and 4.30pm. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

Meet The Cast

Emilio Encinoso-Gil

Part-Spanish actor from Hull who trained at Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA North).

Theatre credits include Do I Love You? (John Godber Company), On Your Marks (Dramatic Theatre CIC), and Peter Pan (Tony Peers Ltd). Screen work: Right Here In Hull, The Memory Project (Smashing Mirrors Theatre) and Scones & Skates (Hull Truck Theatre).

Contributed  voiceover work for Storyboard Media, Stage Door Theatre and Middle Child.

Hannah Christina

2025 graduate from first Acting cohort at Performers College Birmingham, where she appeared in graduate production of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, portraying Angie and Dull Gret.

Member of the Godber Theatre Foundation, making her professional debut in Jingle All The Way.

Posted on

REVIEW: John Godber Company in Do I Love You?, York Theatre Royal ****

Blackpool Tower Ballroom here they come: Chloe McDonald’s Nat, left, Martha Godber’s Sally and Emilio Encinoso-Gil’s Kyle keep the faith in John Godber’s hymn to Northern Soul, Do I Love You?

JOHN Godber has a new play on its way this autumn: Black Tie Ball, a tale of hotel upstairs and downstairs, bow ties and fake tans, jealousies and avarice, divorces and affairs, told by staff at breakneck speed from arrival at seven to carriages at midnight. Harrogate Theatre, from September 10 to 13, and Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, from November 12 to 15, await.

There is a Godber house style, billed as his “signature visceral style”, one that applies as much to his hymn to Northern  Soul, Do I Love You?, as it will to Black Tie Ball. Ever since Bouncers and Teechers, less has been more in Godber plays: compact casts, concise scenes, minimal props and space aplenty for combative or compatible movement.

No-nonsense Yorkshireman Godber has been writing plays since 1977, the year of punk at its scratchy apex, and likewise he tore up the rule book to write working-class dramas, economical but full of home truths, albeit with a nod to Bertolt Brecht in breaking down theatre’s fourth wall to favour direct address.

Do I Love You? is up there with his best works, visiting York Theatre Royal in the concluding week of its third tour since its 2023 debut, still with the same fresh-faced cast of Martha Godber, Chloe McDonald and Emilio Encinoso-Gil, who are in the groove not only of the sublime underground Sixties and Seventies music, but also of working together regularly, like the comic interplay of a well-oiled TV comedy series.

Frank exchange: Martha Godber’s Sally makes her point to Chloe McDonald’s Nat as Emilio Encinoso-Gil’s Kyle seeks to intervene in Do I Love You?

Godber is always at his best when his fractious comedies are fired by both love and anger, ideally backed by a pulsating soundtrack too. The love here is for Northern Soul from his own days of going to all-nighters and weekenders across the north, and he writes with passion, Record Collector levels of knowledge, not so much nostalgia, but more a lament for what we have lost.

Qualities of authenticity, truth, pride: all values he attributes to Northern Soul, music of pain and sorrow and ecstatic release; music of and for the working  classes.  

He places his drama in the hands of what he calls the lost generation, the twenty-something post-Covid generation stuck in the sludge of working at drive-through fried chicken counters.

Meet Martha Godber’s Sally, who looks after her ailing Irish-born grandma (played with a scarf, a fag and a hacking cough by McDonald), neglected by her drunkard mother. Meet Encinoso-Gil’s Kyle, her best mate, from Spanish stock, but the timing has never been right for it to be anything more than that. Meet McDonald’s Nat (or ‘Natalie’, she insists), their friend since schooldays, who has a crush on Kyle too and likes a spliff or two.

The anger lies in Godber surveying how little has changed between Britain in 1973 and 2023, the year in which the play is still set with Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister, “looking 11 years old” as he puts it.

Do I Love You? writer-director John Godber: Keeping the faith in Northern Soul when losing the faith in everything else

Godber writes of rising costs and prices, unemployment and small-town blues; of pubs closing, hospitality venues going; strikes on-going.  Plus ca change.

He writes too of the everyday difficulties of young lives, as they fall out with each other, while facing mounting problems at home. What is left but to find a love, something to believe in, to keep the faith?

Godber interweaves the trio’s trials and tribulations with their initiation into Northern Soul, brilliantly described in Sally’s account of their first visit to a Cleethorpes all-nighter: £3 for eight hours. Soul devotees on the dancefloor, sliding, gliding, kicking, making her cry, although she doesn’t know why, but the way Godber writes, we do.

He takes us there with a sense of poetic wonder, just as he captures the tedium of taking fried chicken orders by reducing the experience to the fewest words possible for the maximum comical impact.

Emilio Encinoso-Gil’s Kyle tentatively shows off his dancefloor moves in Do I Love You?, to the scornful amusement of Chloe McDonald’s Nat and Martha Godber’s Sally

The songs can be played only in snippets that have to stop all too quickly, but Godber evokes Northern Soul by mentioning all the landmark songs and locations and by the power of his pen.

Best of all is the fulminating speech by Encinoso-Gil’s hunched-up Keith, a soul veteran with a criminal past and fingers in every pie, who is Do I Love You’s version of Lucky Eric in Bouncers, except that he squeezes all he has to say into one impassioned yet beautiful rant-cum-lament, whereas Eric has four bites at the sour cherry.

All three performances are terrific, Martha Godber especially so, and if no moment that follows Keith’s speech quite matches it, Do I Love You? packs an emotional punch, full of northern wit, grit and soul power hits.

John Godber Company in Do I Love You?, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm matinee  tomorrow (12/6/2025) and 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Posted on

REVIEW: John Godber Company in The Highwayman, York Theatre Royal Studio, today at 2pm and 7.45pm ***

Penny for your thoughts: Jo Patmore’s prison troubadour offers to sing a song – for a price – to Emilio Encinoso-Gil’s highwayman John Swift as he awaits his hanging in John Godber’s The Highwayman

JOHN Godber is making history in more than one way in his new theatrical adventure. After more than 70 plays framed around modern culture and mores, he has gone back in time for his first historical romp.

Here is the background: “The year is 1769, when Yorkshire’s population has exploded, the races at York are packed, the new theatre in Hull thriving, and the spa towns full,” says writer-director Godber, now 68.

“Yorkshire was the place to be; a region drunk on making money, social climbing, gambling and gin, but with wealth in abundance, the temptation was great.”

Godber, who once lived in the East Riding village where Dick Turpin was arrested, evokes that era with references to Turpin, fellow highwayman John Levison, and Tate Wilkinson (who managed York Theatre Royal for 36 years and opened the Hull Old Theatre, mentioned above).

He also talks of the history of the assizes and public hangings on the Tyburn gallows in York, a spectator sport of its day that could draw crowds of 100,000 [like the old Wembley Stadium].

Caught in the footlights: Dylan Allcock, left, Jo Patmore, Emilio Encinoso-Gil and Matheea Ellerby in The Highwayman

The Highwayman of the title is, however, a fictitious 18th century character, one John Swift (Emilio Encinoso-Gil), whose opening words find him in the ultimate predicament. “I know what you’re thinking. Not a great start.” Here are the noose headlines: Swift is up to his neck in trouble, the hangman’s rope ready to deliver his exit stage left.

Freeze that moment, Godber keeping both you and Swift in suspense as the highwayman goes into flashback mode to tell you his back story, struggling to make ends meet with his forthright wife Molly May (Matthea Ellerby).

This may be a history play but Godber is drawing parallels with the privations of today, the disparity between the wealthy and those in need of a northern levelling up: the York race-goers and the pilfering pickpockets at work in the crowds.

Swift by name, he is swift of hand too, but while he believes he has luck on his side, his proverbial dropped sandwich would land jam side down. Even when he works at Tate Wilkinson’s theatre, he is peed on from the dress circle above, metaphorically as well as physically.

He is torn between doing the right thing, serving in the war against the French, tilling the land, taking that theatre job, but he cannot resist temptation. Just as Turpin was arrested for shooting the Green Dragon landlord’s cockerel, Swift is nabbed for stealing a duck.

John Godber: On the highway to Hull and back

In the play’s best scenes, Encinoso-Gil’s Swift and Ellerby’s Molly are often at loggerheads, exacerbated by time spent apart and their contrasting expectations. Swift would not call himself misogynistic, but his professed deep love does not extend to believing Molly should be working, especially now they have two children.

Her constant concern is to bring more money into the home, and unlike Swift, she does so by showing spunky entrepreneurial flair, first in selling pressed flowers, then in adding scent to candles: an invention greeted by Swift with derision to rival Peter Kay’s bewildered “Garlic bread”.

Godber has described The Highwayman as “very, very different from what I’ve done before”. Indeed it is, and not only on account of its period setting. Humour is in short supply in Act One, Godber in serious mode, even heavy-handed, the pace surely too slow for a highwayman romp despite the rambunctious friction of Swift and Molly.

You might be tempted to call it “ropey” at this stage, if you like a pun, but CharlesHutchPress prefers to share the undaunted positivity of Swift.

Give Godber enough rope and Act Two is anything but a downfall, by comparison. Instead it stands and delivers an upturn, aided by Dylan Allcock and Jo Patmore’s multiple role-playing, especially Patmore’s Irish pirate queen as Swift takes to the seas.

On his high horse: Emilio Encinoso-Gil’s highwayman, John Swift, makes a point in The Highwayman

Her lugubrious troubadour, offering to sing a song – for a fee – before Swift’s hanging adds to Godber hitting his comic stride too, while Allcock especially enjoys playing the grand thespian Tate Wilkinson back in his Theatre Royal home.

The dialogue, by the way, is modern, recalling Blackadder in giving it a more contemporary clout and political resonance. The staging is in economical Godber tradition: four regularly reassembled wooden boxes, a hangman’s noose and woodland screens behind.

In keeping with past Godber shows, snatches of pertinent pop songs set scenes, while the cast savours Allcock’s high-spirited folk songs, sung lustily in the manner of Brecht & Weil’s operas.

The Highwayman will not go down in history as one of Godber’s era-defining  plays, more as a dandy, if acerbic dalliance, a Yorkshire past brought into the present, as ever with hope for a changed, better future.  

John Godber Company presents The Highwayman, York Theatre Royal Studio, today at 2pm and 7.45pm, SOLD OUT. Box office for returns only: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Posted on

Dancefloor disciple John Godber keeps the faith in Northern Soul in days of drudgery and nights of joy in Do I Love You?

Emilio Encinoso-Gil, Martha Godber, centre, and Chloe McDonald in John Godber’s Do I Love You?, returning Northern Soul to Scarborough this week. Picture: Ian Hodgson

“I’M not afraid to admit I was a rather good dancer,” says playwright, director, actor and erstwhile terpsichorean tornado John Godber. “Not so good now, mind. My knees.”

His ‘tap’ these days would be on the laptop, leading to his latest play, a hymn to Northern Soul that keeps the faith with the Wigan Casino days but addresses today’s believers in Do I Love You?, on tourthis week at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, in Scarborough, where John once cut a rug at all-nighters.

“This is Northern Soul for a new generation, but with rising costs, unemployment and small-town blues, has anything really changed?” asks John, now 67. “Is this England 1973 or 2023? The pubs are closing, hospitality has gone, and strikes are everywhere…but when you’re out on the floor…”

…There you will find Godber’s twentysomethings, Sally, Nat and Kyle, as they develop a love for Northern Soul and the people absorbed in its culture across the industrial north. What started as a college project has grown into a passion, but the dance steps are exhausting.

Far beyond their home city of Hull, they find excitement, purpose and the tribe they have been seeking. Cue talcum powder, loafers and weekenders, from Brid Spa to Stoke, from Oxford to the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, as these young soulies vow to keep the faith, even as Britain crumbles, school buildings and all.

Do I Love You? Indeed he did, back in the day. “I went to all-nighters in Scarborough, Doncaster, Wakefield, Whitby, Hornsea, and even then that single [Frank Wilson’s title song] was worth £45,000,” says John.

“It’s the one that lots of people know, but lots of soulists despise it because it’s too well known! Only 200 copies were printed, and one copy recently sold for £150,000.

“There’s this really interesting thing that soulies want to keep it underground, which is difficult, particularly when the BBC Proms did a Northern Soul Prom last summer [July 15 2023, curated by broadcaster and writer Stuart Maconie], gentrifying it with symphonic arrangements, of course!”

Playwright and Northern Soul devotee John Godber

John recalls his dancing nights and early single acquisitions. “Dobie Gray’s Out On The Floor was my first one, then The Flasher, the instrumental by Mistura, and then you’re on to Al Wilson’s The Snake,” he says.

“Every church hall had a Northern Soul night, every youth club had a Northern Soul Night back then. For every song, they danced throughout and clapped in time together because the music realy meant something to them.

“Before we opened the tour last September , the cast went to a soul night at an ex-servicemen’s club, where they played Frank Wilson’s Do I Love You?, and they came away saying, ‘oh my God, it’s all true’.

After a run of state-of-the-nation plays (Shafted, 2015; Scary Bikers, 2018, Sunny Side Up, 2020; Living On Fresh Air, 2023), Godber’s latest comedy is more of a celebration, albeit with politics still at its rotten core.

“I’m interested in enclosed environments: nightclubs [Bouncers], schools [Teechers], gymnasiums [Gym And Tonic], now the Northern Soul scene,” says John.

“This time there’s a lot of music, a lot of dancing, in the show, and we’ve had the world champion Northern Soul dancer, Sally Molloy, in for a couple of sessions. Just extraordinary!

“She came to the read-through to authenticate the piece and said, ‘I bless this show’, which was great because we want it to be authentic.

“Dancing was important to the casting, so we looked far and wide and even looked at auditioning some Northern Soul dancers but they just didn’t cut the mustard with the acting.”

John settled instead on a typically compact cast of Yorkshire actors Emilio Encinoso-Gil and Martha Godber and Belfast-born, Liverpool-trained newcomer Chloe McDonald.

Dancefloor discussion: Emilio Encinoso-Gil, Chloe McDonald, centre, and Martha Godber in Do I Love You?. Picture: Ian Hodgson

“Martha went to Northern Contemporary dance in Leeds when she was 16 and got into Trinity Laban [Conservatoire of Music and Dance], but then decided to go to LIPA (Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts) to train as an actor,” he says.

“They worked with Sally a couple of months before rehearsals started, then did a full day with her, after the read-through day, when they almost couldn’t walk for a week!”

John’s own research brought him into contact with Dr Sarah Raine, from the cultural industries department at Leeds University.

“What she’s identified is a real growth in Northern Soul, when working men’s clubs have gone, youth clubs have gone, Sunday League football has gone, funding has gone, but Northern Soul club nights go on,” says John.

“It’s an echo back to when there was pride in your work, what you do, where you fit into your community, doing something that requires a skill through the ability to dance, and conssequently you gain status in your community.

“The music is put first; it’s not about leaving with someone on your arm, unlike in Bouncers, though the drug scene is pretty clear, but after 12 hours of stomping, you’re going to need something stronger than coffee and Red Bull!

Godber’s twentysomethings in Do I Love You? work in a “chicken drive-through portal” as he euphemistically puts it. “It’s not a great place to work. Two of them have degrees, one in psychology, one in musical theatre; the other has stayed at home to look after her grandmother,” he says.

High kicks: Martha Godber in rehearsal at Hull Truck Theatre for Do I Love You?

“After Covid, they’ve picked up these low-grade jobs, but the music underlines where they are in their rites of passage. They find this creed they have some sympathy with, a kind of religion, a kind of tribe, to counter domestic difficulties, loss of love and dreary jobs.”

“In 2024, with the drudgery of daily life, now it’s about finding meaning and young people feeling they’re in a safe place.”

As for keeping the faith by seeing Do I Love You?, “What’s interesting is that if you’re my age, you’ll be re-living your youth; if your’re young, in your 20s, you’ll think, ‘yes, I can see why it means so much to them’.

“Why coin that adage ‘Keep the faith’? I guess soul music is not a million miles away from religion, so it’s not far away from faith.”

Northern Soul disciple John has a confession to make: “The full disclosure is, I was really into Northern Soul, but I was also into prog-rock,” he says. “That was my intellectual side. Northern Soul was my spiritual side.”

John Godber Company in Do I Love You?, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly; 1.30pm tomorrow; 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

Leap of faith: Emilio Encinoso-Gil during rehearsals for Do I Love You?

Did you know?

NORTHERN Soul dancers, in their flat, slippy shoes, would dust the dancefloor with talcum powder to make their moves glide more easily, countering the stickiness of spilt beer. “But talc is frowned on these days because it’s carciogenic,” says John.

Did you know too?

RARE American soul songs, expressing pain and suffering, were favoured over slick Motown chartbusters by the working-class, predominantly male dance crowds that gathered at burgeoning Northern Soul nights across the north in the late-1960s and early 1970s. Football fans on away days would bring back records from London record shops.

What is John Godber’s favourite Northern Soul record?

TOBI Legend’s Time Will Pass You By. “It’s a song about dying, which makes it utterly existential,” says John.

REVIEW: Do I Love You?, from when John Godber’s premiere opened at Wakefield Theatre Royal in September 2023

TWO Big Egos In A Small Car podcasters Charles Hutchinson and Graham Chalmers discuss John Godber’s Do I Love You? and last autumn’s premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s Constant Companions, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in Episode 152.

Head to 12 minutes 45 seconds into:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/13689546