Tag: Emily Carhart

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REVIEW: York Shakespeare Project in The Comedy Of Errors, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, making waves until Saturday ***

Laura Broughton-Janes’ Antipholus  of  Ephesus, second from right, and her servant, Liz Duggan’s Dromio, in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead

KATIE Leckey and Emily Carhart buckle up to steer Shakespeasre’s “shortest and possibly funniest play” into piratical waters, replete with lusty sea shanties and the sound of crashing waves.

“The morally questionable, yet still comedic, nature of many (if not all) of the characters put us in mind of some of our favourite piratical antiheroes,” they said in their mission statement.

“We felt like the framing device of piracy gave us the chance to include slapstick violence between ‘masters and servants’ in a way that wouldn’t seem too brutal or alien to a modern audience.”

Two masts from a shipwreck hang over the stage to evoke seafaring in the black box theatre, where the staging is otherwise minimalist, largely left bare for physical comedy and fast-fizzing farce. 

Ben Reeves-Rowley’s Solinus, the Duke of Ephesus, in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead

A plinth is moved into place to denote the higher status of Solinus, the Duke of Ephesus (played by Ben Reeves-Rowley with the clipped vowels and tightened jaw of King Charles III). Later, two sets of doors – the time-honoured harbingers of imminent  farce – make appearances, one as the entrance to the abbey, the other with skeleton door knockers in keeping with the piratical reboot.

Andrew Wrenn’s vexed Egeon has to wade his way through a chunk of exposition before the play settles into its rhythm of mistaken identities,  spun around two sets of identical twins. Helen Clarke’s  flamboyant Antipholus of Syracuse and her servant, Kat Lazarus’s flirtatious  Dromio arrive on the corrupt pirate isle of Ephesus , where Laura Broughton-Janes’ Antipholus  of  Ephesus and her servant, Liz Duggan’s Dromio, are already caught up in the debauched shenanigans.

Add a tavern and booty, and let the misunderstandings and misbehaviour multiply, involving the likes of Ro Trimble’s haughty Adriana, wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, Leckey’s Luciano, always quick with a jest, and Harry Summers’ oft-baffled Angelo .

You will note that Antipholus times two are now female, all part of the gender fluidity brought to The Comedy  Of Errors by Leckey and Carhart, prompted by being “intrigued by the lack of traditional gender and romantic dynamics in the play”.

“In Elizabethan culture, there was a more flexible understanding of physical and romantic intimacy between same sex partners, as well as a fluid approach to the representation of gender on stage,” they say. “We feel our production is a celebration of relationships of many kinds, platonic, familial and romantic.”

Kat Lazarus’s Dromio of Syracuse, front, and Helen Clarke’s Antipholus of Syracuse in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead

Laura Broughton-Janes’ Antipholus  of  Ephesus and her servant, Liz Duggan’s Dromio, in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead

Luciana becomes Luciano, played by Leckey with a droll air and a cigarette in hand, in a late change of casting that affirms their relish for comic friction and interplay.

The slapstick even features slaps to the face; the likes of Trimble and Reeves-Rowley make the words sing; Andrea Mitchell’s Emilia, the Abbess, gives the peachiest cameo; the musicians on the mezzanine level (Rebecca Jackson, Izzie Burger de Fremol, Vicky Hatt and Emily Rowan) convey matters of the heart and sea, and the sets of twins are so identical that the audience may well have to keep looking twice.

The gender transitions add to the physical comedy, but this is not a play of memorable verbal wit or intellectual insight.

Carhart even called it “silly”, as light as a bubble, and certainly she and Leckey have fun with it, giving it fresh zest, although their claim of its status as “possibly Shakespeare’s funniest play” is debatable.

York Shakespeare Project presents The Comedy Of Errors, Theatre@41, Monkgate, 7.30pm nightly until Saturday, plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

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Katie Leckey & Emily Carhart double up to steer York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors into piratical waters

Cassi Roberts’s Messenger and Andrew Wrenn’s Egeon in rehearsal for York Shakespeare Project’s piratical The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead

IN Katie Leckey and Emily Carhart’s piratical twist on The Comedy Of Errors for York Shakespeare Project, the original text of Shakespeare’s “shortest and possibly funniest” play will be merged with slapstick, farce and physical comedy.

Opening tomorrow (21/10/2026) at Theatre@41, Monkgate,  the production combines the directorial talents of Leckey, director of York company Griffonage Theatre, and Carhart, who worked with Katie on York Settlement Community Players’ staging of Joe Orton’s Loot and Griffonage’s showcase of Lady Augusta Gregory works, Fourtold.  

In their opening statement, explaining the pirate overhaul, they say:  “The morally questionable, yet still comedic, nature of many, if not all, of the characters put us in mind of some of our favourite piratical antiheroes.

“We felt like the framing device of piracy gave us the chance to include slapstick violence between ‘masters and servants’ in a way that wouldn’t seem too brutal or alien to a modern audience.”

Emily says: “We realised that we both wanted to pitch to direct this production, having become friends through working together, and so we chatted about it…

…“Two heads are better than one,” says Katie. “We wanted to use our individual strengths to look at different aspects to make a coherent whole, a well-rounded piece.”

The Comedy Of Errors co-director Emily Carhart

“Katie is more experienced in physical theatre and clowning, whereas I focus on the voice, text, relationships between character,” says Emily.

“It’s all in there anyway, where it begs for the comedy to be made physical,” says Katie. “Sometimes the physical just has to happen because otherwise a joke won’t land.”

Both co-directors were devotees already of Shakespeare’s “most farcical play”, the 1592 one with the two sets of identical twins.  Why? “It’s just a really silly play,” says Emily. “In fairness, I think he intended it to be silly! It’s fast and zippy and a lot shorter than most of his plays, and when you unpick the language, it’s loaded with punchlines.

“It gives you a plot to play with because the characters are in a ridiculous situation and so you don’t have to take it seriously, but it’s written in a sophisticated way that uses metaphorical language.  That said, it may be a controversial thing to say but it’s quite a surface-level play.”

Katie adds: “The reason I like it is because it’s a farce, and obviously I’m no stranger to farces [such as Orton’s Loot]. What drew me to it is that it’s such a succinct farce, whereas Twelfth Night and As You Like It are much longer and get muddled by having too many plotlines.

Ben Reeves-Rowley’s Solinus and Harry Summers’s Angelo in the rehearsal room for York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead

“This play is cohesive, cut and dry, and that makes it easier to play with. There’s none of the weirdness of the ending of Love’s Labour’s Lost; nothing that doesn’t gel or make sense – and so I can just put slapstick in it!”

The pirate twist emerged in response to the “insinuation of domestic violence and adultery in the play”. “Characters are immoral or amoral – devoid of morals – which tonally didn’t meld with the play, so we thought, ‘how can we keep it as a light comedy?’, which led to pirates,” says Emily.

“Everyone has an idea of pirates, from Treasure Island, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Muppet Treasure Island, with all that swashbuckling flamboyancy of piracy,” says Katie, who will play Luciano, by the way. “It lightens the whole thing,  with everyone knowing that pirates are into pirating and plundering, but everyone  still likes them!”

“That’s why you buy into the convention that it’s fun and silly,” says Emily. “I think it also makes it more accessible to modern audiences because of the dynamics of ‘masters and servants’, so we’ve set it in the golden age of piracy,” adds Katie.

When? The end of the Stuart era/beginning of the Georgian era… “but we’ve added Victorian costumes too because of how people think of pirates in that time,” says Katie. “It’s very much a vibe, rather than historical accuracy,” says Emily, who will bring her puppetry skills to the show.

The Comedy Of Errors co-director Katie Leckey

The co-directors were keen to apply gender swapping to “make some things less unpalatable while still drawing attention to how sexist the text is”.

“We were intrigued by the lack of traditional gender and romantic dynamics in the play,” they say. “In Elizabethan culture, as depicted in many of Shakespeare’s plays, there was a more flexible understanding of physical and romantic intimacy between same sex partners, as well as a fluid approach to the representation of gender on stage. We feel our production is a celebration of relationships of many kinds, platonic, familial and romantic.”

Katie says: “We’ve made it a matriarchy, rather than a patriarchy. We also have a same sex couple now, which I was keen to do as it feels the perfect time to do it, without shoehorning it into the plot.”

Emily adds: “It’s interesting to see a woman play such an unpleasant character [Antipholus], when we’re used to seeing men playing the role, which makes it all the more jarring.”

Katie concludes: “People will hopefully accept what we’ve done with the play. It feels right, rather than forced, so I can’t see it being done any other way now!”

York Shakespeare Project in The Comedy Of Errors, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, October 21 to 24, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

High laughs on the high seas: York Shakespeare Project’s piratical poster for this week’s production of The Comedy Of Errors

Plot summary for York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors

“AVAST ye landlubbers! Set sail for York Shakespeare Project’s piratical production of The Comedy of Errors!,” reads the invitation from directors Katie Leckey and Emily Carhart.

“The flamboyant captain Antipholus and flirtatious first mate Dromio arrive at the corrupt pirate isle of Ephesus to find that it has everything a salty sea dog requires: a tavern, a shipwreck, sea shanties, talking parrots, general debauchery and (of course) a whole lot of booty!

“However, things start to get very confusing very quickly, when both the captain and first mate don’t seem to be acting like themselves.

“In a plot laden with mistaken identity, colourful characters, swashbuckling action and a fair bit of slapstick, this be Shakespeare but not as ye know it.”

Who is in the cast for The Comedy Of Errors?

Antipholus of Syracuse: Helen Clarke
Dromio of Syracuse: Kat Lazarus
Antipholus of Ephesus: Laura Broughton-Janes
Dromio of Ephesus: Liz Duggan
Adriana: Ro Trimble
Luciano: Katie Leckey
Solinus, The Duke of Ephesus: Ben Reeves-Rowley
Egeon: Andrew Wrenn
Emilia, The Abbess: Andrea Mitchell
Angelo: Harry Summers
Balthazar: Grace Scott
Officer/Messenger: Cassi Roberts
Courtesan: Jacob Bassford
Dr Pinch/Nell: Jess Netherway
First Merchant/Nell: Stuart Green
Second Merchant: Thomas Jennings

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Katie Leckey & Emily Carhart to co-direct York Shakespeare Project in Comedy Of Errors in October at Theatre@41

Katie Leckey

KATIE Leckey and Emily Carhart will co-direct York Shakespeare Project’s autumn production of The Comedy Of Errors from October 21 to 24 at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York.

Katie and Emily worked together previously on York Settlement Community Players’ February 2025 production of Joe Orton’s Loot and Griffonage Theatre’s showcase of Lady Augusta Gregory plays, FourTold,  last October.

“We promise an exciting take on Shakespeare’s shortest and possibly funniest play, re-imagining his  early farce with a piratical twist, setting sail to the corrupt island of Ephesus, a land rife with crime, debauchery, swashbuckling action and a fair bit of slapstick,” they say.

Now all they need is a cast. Auditions will take place at Southlands Methodist Church, Bishopthorpe Road, York, from 2pm to 5pm on May 16 and 17, then 6.30pm to 9.30pm on May 18 and 19.

If you are interested in auditioning, please email [email protected] for more information.

Emily Carhart

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REVIEW: Griffonage Theatre in FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Sat ***

Making a splash: Katie Leckey’s Darby and Ben Koch’s Taig in The Bogie Men in Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold showcase of Lady Augusta Gregory plays. Picture: John Stead

THIS is a landmark production by Griffonage Theatre, the York company that likes to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.

Certainly Lady Augusta Gregory’s plays would qualify as unfamiliar, but maybe it is not so strange that they are strangers to the British stage. They were, they are, Irish plays about Irish people for Irish actors and Irish audiences, presented predominantly at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre and in America too but rarely crossing the Irish Sea.

Now, Katie Leckey, Northern Irish actor-director, University of York MA graduate and co-founder of Griffonage Theatre, is presenting her adaptation of four of the late-blooming County Galway playwright’s largely forgotten one-act plays, penned from 1903 to 1914 and never previously staged together over here.

This is a passion project for Leckey, a Lady Augusta enthusiast with plans to study the “criminally under-performed” plays of the Roxborough rural estate dramatist, folklorist and Abbey Theatre co-founder for a PhD. Theatre@41, sure to become increasingly experimental under Tom Bellerby’s directorship, is just the place to dust off her ladyship’s light comedies for reappraisal.

Grace Palma’s Mrs Tarpey and Ben Koch’s James Ryan in Lady Augusta Gregory’s one-act comedy drama Spreading The News. Picture: John Stead

The black-box theatre takes on a traverse configuration, the audience seated to either side of the combustible capers that unfold in Baile Aighneas, or “The Town of Dispute”, as Leckey terms it to reflect how each play is so disputatious.

As presented in the Fay Brothers’ house style at the Abbey Theatre, performances would focus on the storytelling, the voice, the lyrical Irish dialect. Leckey emphasises that too, but rather than “park and bark” theatre, she has favoured the injection of physicality, both in the presentation of that language and in the characterisation, now rooted as much in movement as meter.

You might see parallels with Dylan Thomas’s Welsh village Llareggub in Under Milk Wood; Leckey sees the plays as a “snapshot of a very strange rural Irish town: like Royston Vasey, home of The League Of Gentlemen, meeting Father Ted”.

The League Of Gentlemen is closest to the exaggerated comedic style here, where the comedy may be billed as light but is invariably darker and more heavy handed in performance. The audience laughter comes more from the physicality than Gregory’s often truculent dialogue, penned in Irish dialect but now performed in myriad accents.

Clash of coats: James Lee’s Mr Mineog and Katie Leckey’s Mr Hazel, newspaper editors writing each other off in Lady Augusta Gregory’s Coats. Picture: John Stead

What’s more, being convoluted and percussive in sentence structure, its loquacity can make it hard to follow. The tendency is for the playing to be so boisterous in pushing for the laughs that combative voices become cacophonous, but pumping up the volume is no guarantee to tickle the funny bone.

Blarney and bluster are the heartbeat of the four plays, first up the bustling market place of Spreading The News, where town gossip wreaks havoc, rumours spiral beyond control, apples and maybe blood is spilled, tongues wag and Leckey’s tricycle-riding magistrate is a law unto himself, imagination running roughshod over the truth.

Ben Koch’s James Ryan, spiralling around his walking stick, and Grace Palma’s bow-legged, bent-double Mrs Tarpey bring clowning personality to their roles.

Coats has the classic comedic structure of a mix-up: two coats being taken off, then the wrong one being put back on, with a piece of paper in the pocket of each coat now being in the possession of the wrong person.

Cheered to the rafters: Ben Koch’s Hyacinth Halvey in Lady Augusta Gregory’s Hyacinth Halvey at Theatre@41, Monkgate. Picture: John Stead

Caught in a war of words are two highly competitive newspaper editors, James Lee’s Mr Mineog and Leckey’s Mr Hazel, who have brought each other’s obituary notice to their club restaurant, where polite etiquette comes under ever greater threat as the heat and volume rises in the serpentine scheming.

Next stop, the post office, where Hyacinth Halvey (Ben Koch) has sent word he is coming to town. The young dandy’s reputation precedes him, sending the townsfolk into a frenzy, hanging on his every word on arrival, no matter what he says. Wilf Tomlinson’s preening James Quirke comes to the fore too as Koch’s Hyacinth takes everything in his stride.

Leckey and executive producer Jack Mackay’s company like their shows to stand at the intersection of the madcap and the macabre. Gregory tends more towards the madcap, although the macabre, or maybe the grotesque, nudges into Spreading The News and Hyacinth Halvey.   

The climactic two-hander The Bogie Men could be a forerunner of fellow Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s 1952 tragicomedy Waiting For Godot, with its chimney-sweep protagonists, Leckey’s Darby and Koch’s Taig, forging a double act in Vladimir and Estragon mode, in matching brace, shirts, trousers, boots and even battered hats at one point.

Helen Clarke-Neale’s Mrs Delane and James Lee’s Miss Joyce in Griffonage Theatre’s Hyacinth Halvey. Picture: John Stead

Rather than passing the time waiting for Godot, they find themselves at a coach stop, “almost indistinguishably similar” but soon finding mutual reasons to argue and fall out. Again, the volume is turned up as high as Spinal Tap’s “11”, but Koch and Leckey elicit the show’s most successful comic friction.

Helen Clarke-Neale, Emily Carhart and Peter Hopwood add to the ensemble’s colourful characterisation, while James Lee cos-plays mischievously as Mrs Tully and Miss Joyce. 

Joined by Leckey’s lusty vocals for Irish pub songs in the interval, Ayse Kaban-Bowers delights with her fiery fiddle when playing between plays.

Truth be told, FourTold is unlikely to spark a nationwide rush to rediscover Lady Augusta Gregory’s obscure curiosities, but Leckey’s enthusiasm is matched by a cast determined to re-light their fire in explosive fashion.

Griffonage Theatre presents FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Griffonage Theatre’s poster for this week’s quadruple bill of Lady Augusta Gregory comedies at Theatre@41, Monkgate

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REVIEW: York Settlement Community Players in Joe Orton’s Loot, York Theatre Royal Studio, until February 27 ****

Who’s conning who? Emily Carhart’s Fay, Jack Mackay’s Hal, centre, and Stuart Green’s Truscott in a scene from York Settlement Community Players’ Loot. Picture: John Saunders

THE monochrome cover to York Settlement Community Players’ programme for Joe Orton’s dark farce Loot takes the form of a death notice. Rest in Peace Mary McLeavy. Born 1916, called home 1966. Remembrance services will be held: 18th – 27th February 2025.

For “Remembrance Services”, read performances that raise Orton’s scandalous, scabrous first farce from the grave, directed by the “young (and probably) angsty” Katie Leckey with brio and brains, fresh from completing her MA in Theatre-making at the University of York.

Already she and lead actor Jack Mackay have made their mark on the York theatre scene with their company Griffonage Theatre, latterly swapping the roles of hitmen Ben and Gus for each performance of Harold Pinter’s menacing  1957 two-hander The Dumb Waiter at Theatre@41, Monkgate, last July.

Jack Mackay’s Hal, trying not to look alarmed in Loot. Picture: John Saunders

Now Mackay forms part of another “double act” on the wrong side of the law:  bungling thieves Hal (Mackay) and Dennis (Miles John), in essence representing Orton’s lover Kenneth Halliwell and Orton, in Loot.

Sixty years on from its Cambridge Arts Theatre premiere, when Orton deemed the play to be “a disaster” and the Cambridge News review called it “very bad”, it remains a shocking play. Not shockingly bad, but a shock to the system, still carrying a content warning.

It reads: “The show contains adult themes and offensive language (including sexism and xenophobia). There are also sexual references and references to sexual assault (including rape and necrophilia) and references to smoking on stage.” Sure enough, Stuart Green’s inspector, Truscott, hiding behind his smokescreen of being “from the Water Board”, smokes without fire, never lighting his pipe.

Emily Carhart’s nurse, Fay, and Miles John’s arch thief, Dennis, in Loot. Picture: John Saunders

Loot remains an iconoclastic play, even angrier than those Angry Young Men that preceded him, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, John Wain, et al. You might call it ‘odd’, or ‘strange’, but its audacious humour tugs persuasively at your arm, its attacks on convention beneath its conventional farce format landing blows on those cornerstones of the state, the (Catholic) church and the police force, as well as undermining the nuclear family. 

It makes you ask what has changed since the 1965 premiere, as Leckey highlights in her programme note, drawing attention to the continuing prevalence of violence, racism, homophobia and misogyny.

She quotes Orton, who wrote “I’m too amused by the way people carry on to give in to despair”. There, in a nutshell, is the role of comedy, to home in on the warts and all and laugh at our failings and foibles. The bigger shock here is that we have not moved on, but on second thoughts, in the week when every new Trump utterance trumps the last one, maybe not. 

Loot director Katie Leckey

Orton was once castigated for his play’s immoral tone, but it is the behaviour that is immoral, not Orton. Don’t shoot the messenger. Laugh, instead, at our failure to clean up our act, especially those in authority.

Leckey has not edited Orton’s text, letting it stand or fall in all its bold affronts, not least on life’s ultimate taboo: death. Preceded by Ortonian fun and games by a six-pack of support players, from a drunken priest (James Wood) to an excitable nun (Xandra Logan), Loot begins with an open coffin. Inside rests the aforementioned Mary McLeavy (a dead body played by a live actor [Caroline Greenwood] with Orton irreverence). Today is her funeral.

In the room, designed with kitsch Sixties’ detail by Wilf Tomlinson and Richard Hampton, matched by Leckey’s soundtrack, are widower Mr McLeavy (played with suitable befuddlement by Paul French) and Mrs McLeavy’s nurse, Fay, (Emily Carhart in her impressive Settlement debut). She may wear a cross, but Fay has an unfortunate of seeing off her husbands, seven in seven years, and now she has her eye on Mr McLeavy.

Eyeball to eyeball: Stuart Green’s Truscott carries out a close inspection in Loot. Picture: John Saunders

Enter Mackay’s Hal, who protests he is too upset to attend the funeral, and John’s Dennis, whose heart is lost to Fay. Rarely for a farce, there is only one door into the sitting room, but a second door is all important: the cupboard door, behind which they have hidden their stash from a bank job.

A glass eye, a set of teeth and the constant movement of Mrs McLeavy’s body will follow, involving the cupboard, the coffin and the stash, in classic farce tradition, with rising irreverence and desperation as the investigations of Green’s Truscott mirror the impact of  Inspector Goole in JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, written 20 years earlier, but this time with humorous results.

Green, in his Settlement debut after returning to the stage in 2023 from an hiatus, has spot-on comic timing, a twinkle in his eye and the over-confidence of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Paul French’s Mr McLeavy, left, Stuart Green’s Truscott, Jack Mackay’s Hal, Emily Carhart’s Fay (seated) and Emily Hansen’s Meadows in Loot. Picture: John Saunders

Mackay and John evoke the Sixties in looks, acting style and attire, playing to the Orton manner born as the hapless thieves, somehow negotiating their way through a farce with a farce with aplomb and insouciance.

York Settlement Community Players in Loot, York Theatre Royal Studio, until February 27, 7.45pm nightly except February 23, plus 2pm matinee, February 22. Age guidance: 16 plus. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Post-show discussion tomorrow (21/2/2025).

TAKING part in pre-show and interval Orton-style vignettes, devised by James Lee, are: Xandra Logan (Sister Barbara); Chris Meadley (Sergeant Timothy Carruthers); Victoria Delaney (Mrs Edna Welthorpe); Helen Clarke (Edith, the church organist); James Wood (Priest) and Serafina Coupe (Keith Kevin O’Keefe).

Xandra Logan’s Sister Barbara and James Wood’s inebriated Priest in an interval vignette in York Settlement Community Players’ Loot at York Theatre Royal Studio. Picture: John Saunders

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