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What happens when you nick a car and stick it through a hedge? Here comes Wright & Grainger’s Helios at Castle Howard

Alexander Flanagan-Wright in a scene from Helios

WHERE better for Wright & Grainger to stage their modern take on the Ancient Greek myth of Helios than underneath the dome of Castle Howard’s Great Hall.

The dome mural, painted by Venetian painter Antonio Pelligrini between 1709 and 1712, depicts the Four Elements, the Twelve Figures of the Zodiac and Apollo and the Muses.

This ethereal work climaxes with the tale of Phaeton falling from his father’s chariot. Encouraged to look higher and higher, the viewer finally meets the dizzying spectacle of Apollo’s son plunging to Earth, the chariot crashing into the river.

The Fall of Phaeton happens to be the thematic inspiration behind Easingwold storytellers Alexander Flanagan-Wright and Phil Grainger’s opus too, premiered at the Stilly Fringe at Stillington Mill, near York, in July 2023, and later that summer in the former Women’s Locker Room at Summerhall at the Edinburgh Fringe.

What happens, Alex? “A lad lives halfway up a historic hill,” he elucidates. “A teenager is on a road trip to the city in a stolen car. A boy is driving a chariot, pulling the sun across the sky.

“In a story about the son of the god of the sun, Helios transplants the Ancient Greek tale into a modern-day myth wound round the winding roads of rural England – and into the everyday living of a towering city. It’s a story about life, the invisible monuments we build to it, and the little things that leave big marks.”

In the wake of their oft-performed, internationally acclaimed myth hits Orpheus, Eurydice and The Gods The Gods The Gods – joined for the first time by Half Man Hall Bull at this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe – Alex and Phil invite audiences to “join them in a grand room with a tape player-and a delicate tale to tell” in performances of Helios at 5pm and 7.30pm.

Alex and Phil have a history of staging performances at Castle Howard, ranging from Gobbledigook Theatre’s The Tales Of Beatrix Potter in the Walled Garden to The Guild Of Misrule’s peripatetic The Great Gatsby and Gobbledigook Theatre/The Flanagan Collective’s Orpheus that turned the Grecian Hall into a disco.

Now comes Helios, performed by Alex to a cinematic score by Phil. “To be honest, it was Abbi [Alex’s sister Abbigail Ollive, director of marketing and visitors at Castle Howard] who suggested it this time. When she first saw Helios at Edinburgh, she said, ‘oh, you know there’s a painting of the Fall of Phaeton in the Great Hall?, and I had to say ‘No’, but very quickly I thought, ‘we should definitely find time to do a show under such a piece of art’. Hopefully it’ll be an historically significant night.”

What drew Alex to re-telling the fateful tale of Phaeton in modern-day rural England? “There was something about this kind of need to prove yourself. These two young lads are kind of doing that ‘My dad’s better than your dad’ thing, where there’s a need to prove ‘I’m worth what I said I’m worth’ by doing something stupid,” he says.

“It’s that thing of wanting to be greater than you are and trying to do something that’s beyond your capacity,” says Alex

“I guess, in part, it’s the way you grow up in school, claiming ‘I am this or I am that’, and then someone says, ‘Yeah? Prove it’. It’s validating that space you take up in the world.

“It felt like it was a story that had a real tenacity to it, and then, like in loads of Ancient Greek myths, it speaks about how our landscape is laid out. Reflecting on how we grow up in our landscape, and how these stories define our day-to-day existence, it was a story well worth thinking about.”

Ancient becomes modern as Phaeton trying to ride his father’s chariot through the sky becomes “Phaeton having his mate Michael nick a car and then sticking it through the hedge”. “It’s that thing of wanting to be greater than you are and trying to do something that’s beyond your capacity,” says Alex. “That thrust of going too far to try to get the respect you’re pushing to achieve.

“You think, ‘what is that need in us now in a contemporary telling’ and you find the answer in something you remember in a story your mate told you.

“This is the interesting thing: why are you’re trying to go beyond these limits or trying to respond to someone else or a lack of something, rather than celebrating the beautiful things you have achieved.”

Alex continues: “Bragging is a want of broader satisfaction. It’s a loss of something, a lack of something, in everyone when growing up; you’re trying to compensate for something that otherwise means you don’t feel like you’re living life to the fullest.

“In our story of Helios we talk a lot about how it’s a show about facts in our world, how you live in relation to them, if you define them or they define you. There’s a bit in the show where they’re discussing their relationship with the sun. The sun being there means we can exist, but we like to define the sun: we are what defines us; that thing of saying ‘without us, the sun would be nothing’.

“We measure everything by the sun, but when you grow up there are so many other factors you are measured by and you understood what you’re in control of, rather than being controlled by. You brag less because you understand more.”

Why are we drawn to reckless speed in our youth? “I wonder why that is. I don’t know the answer, I don’t have an answer to posit. It starts with that joy of the bike, or roller skates, that joy of going really fast. I don’t know if it ever changes, though maybe we temper it.” says Alex.

Wright & Grainger present Helios in the Great Hall, Castle Howard, near York, October 17, 5pm and 7.30pm. Box office: castlehoward.co.uk.

The Great Hall and the Fall of Phaeton: the back story

THE Great Hall is the crowning masterpiece of dramatist-turned-architect John Vanbrugh’s design for Castle Howard, commissioned by the 3rd Earl of Carlisle.

From outside, the dome presents Castle Howard with a unique silhouette; on the inside, rising 70 feet into the air, it is a triumph of theatre and space. Massive columns, filled with carved decoration, rise in the four corners of the hallway; two large arches open to reveal the walls and staircases beyond; a balcony traverses the upper level, and above is the lantern and gallery with light flooding in from the eight windows.

The painted decoration, executed by the Venetian artist Antonio Pellegrini between 1709 and 1712, depicts the Four Elements, the Twelve Figures of the Zodiac and Apollo and the Muses.

This ethereal work climaxes with the tale of Phaeton falling from his father’s chariot. Encouraged to look higher and higher, the viewer finally meets the dizzying spectacle of Apollo’s son plunging to earth.

The 3rd Earl and Vanbrugh revelled in the playful ironies of this dramatic tale of ambition and fall, which gently mocked their own aspirations.

The dome was destroyed by a fire in 1940, and Pelligrini’s Fall of Phaeton was lost too. Following the reconstruction of the dome in 1960-61, a Canadian artist, Scott Medd, was commissioned to re-create the scene.

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REVIEW: Grainger & Wright in The Gods The Gods The Gods, Stilly Fringe, At The Mill, Stillington, tonight at 8.45pm ****

Alexander Flanagan Wright, left, Phil Grainger and Megan Drury in The Gods The Gods The Gods

WHY call this Wright & Grainger show The Gods The Gods The Gods, rather than plain old The Gods?

“A lot of things come in threes and a lot of things in this show fall naturally into threes,” reasons Alexander Flangan Wright, the Wright to Phil Grainger’s Grainger in this enduring Easingwold partnership.

“It’s one of those powerful numbers: a triad, with the three of us telling the story.” Make that Grainger & Wright & Drury, the trio being completed by Megan Drury, Australian actor, blues singer, writer, creative artists and dramaturg – oh, and newly married to Alex too.

The Gods The Gods Gods is the third in the trilogy of myth, music and spoken word shows by Grainger & Wright, premiered in a Covid-curtailed Australian visit in 2020 and now following Orpheus and Eurydice into open-air performances under the sails at Stillington Mill, near York.

The Gods X 3 will be heading indoors at the Edinburgh Fringe, with lighting pyrotechnics re-booted in the Assembly Rooms’ Bijou tent from August 3 to 29, when this dancier variation on gig theatre will carry the warnings: “Audience participation, Involves walking, Strobe lighting, Strong language/swearing”.

Saturday night was rather more informal, Alex, Phil and Megan testing out their hi-tech electronic requirements, spread out in a triangle of stations of equipment, as the audience gathered on the banks of seating. “Still not the show,” Alex would say, as another adjustment was made.

Such is the nature of a Fringe warm-up and of a first performance in this al-fresco iteration minus the probing strobe lighting. It was all very much in keeping with the spirit of At The Mill, where theatrical magic is made on the hoof, aided by Abbigail Ollive’s pizzas adding culinary pizzazz to the occasion and cocktails playing on the tongue.

Still doing the Maths, The Gods The Gods The Gods is in fact four, not three, stories, spread over 11 original musical tracks arranged by Grainger and Tom Figgins. They are stories of faith and loss of faith; love and loss of love; faith in anything but religious faith; false gods and new gods; a search for holy ground or finding heaven on earth. All set against a final council of the old Gods, Zeus and co, gathering at the end of days.

As Wright elucidated at the close, they are stories grown freshly from the seeds of Kae Tempest, Walt Whitman and David Whyte (Finisterre), and the messages on 28 signs posted on London’s Millennium Bridge, read by Alex and Megan as they crossed over between  St Paul’s Cathedral and Tate Modern, the towers of God and gallery, religion and art, that now do battle in The Gods The Gods The Gods.

Phil plays guitar and sings mightily yet tenderly, a Yorkshireman as soulful as Joe Cocker and John Newman; Megan throws shapes and switches between heartfelt spoken word and blues singing that brings out the bruises; Alex plays bass and percussion and spins words of dazzling rhythm, breath-taking in their imagery and rapper’s speed. All three tap away at technology too, evoking Kraftwerk.

Grainger & Wright promised a big, loud, bopping night in the garden – and delivered exactly that. In every way it is the biggest show of the trilogy; the spoken word now complemented by a broader musical palette that combines classic songwriting tropes and lyricism with dancefloor pulses and electronic flash to induce a state of euphoria.  

Alas, more Gods than advertised played their hand as the night darkened: the Weather Gods raining on the parade – and all that technology – with one story yet to be completed. Suddenly, the night “involved walking” as we were ushered to the café bar, where Wright gave a resumé of the closing chapters, finishing with that inspirational walk across the London bridge. Trouble at The Mill? Not when they can improvise like that.

An album is in the offing too, and that won’t be in the lap – or laptop- of the Gods, the Gods, the Gods.

Holly Beasley-Garrigan in Opal Fruits, tonight at 7pm

THE Stilly Fringe presents Opal Fruits, Holly Beasley-Garrigan’s solo show about class, nostalgia and five generations of women from a London council estate in South London, tonight at 7pm; Casey Jay Andrews’ The Wild Unfeeling World, a tender, furious and fragile re-imagining of Moby Dick, and A Place That belongs To Monsters, a re-imagining of The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, tomorrow at 7pm and 8.45pm respectively.

Lucy Bird, originally from Ampleforth, heads back north with her Birmingham company Paperback Theatre for an “utterly Brummie” re-telling of The Wind In The Willows on July 30 at 2.30pm and 7.30pm.

Yoshika Colwell returns to The Mill for the Stilly Fringe finale, Invisible Mending, her exploration of the power in small acts of creativity through original music, metaphysics and verbatim material, in collaboration with Second Body’s Max Barton, on July 31 at 7pm.

For tickets, head to atthemill.org.

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Why Serena is playing only men in farcical overhaul of The Hound Of The Baskervilles

Niall Ransome as Dr Watson, Jake Ferretti as Sherlock Holmes and Serena Manteghi as Henry Baskerville in The Hound Of The Baskervilles, on tour at York Theatre Royal from Tuesday

THE Hound Of The Baskervilles is at loose this Haunted Season at York Theatre Royal, returning Serena Manteghi to the city where she cut her acting teeth.

“I studied [at the University of York] and lived in York for many years and still work there often,” she says, ahead of the October 19 to 23 run. “It’s my spiritual home and I’ve been assured I can now call myself an honorary Yorkshire lass, so I’m very much looking forward to heading back there.”

Although based in London, Serena has spent plenty of time up north this summer, performing in early August in Alexander Wright and Phil Grainger’s Eurydice at Theatre At The Mill, Stillington, and later that month in the Harrogate Theatre community play Our Gate in and around the Wesley Centre, Harrogate.

Now she is part of a fast-moving cast of three in Lotte Wakeham’s production of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most celebrated detective tale as it receives a farcical overhaul, with Serena playing only men in Steven Canny and John Nicholson’s adaptation, first staged by Peepolykus in 2007 with West End success.

The story is as familiar as ever: world-renowned detective Sherlock Holmes and his colleague Dr Watson are asked to unravel the mystery surrounding the untimely death of Sir Charles Baskerville. Amid rumours of a cursed giant hound loose on the moors, they must act fast in order to save the Baskerville family’s last remaining heir.

“Yes, they’re all male characters that I’m playing, but I’ve not really thought about their gender; you just play the character – and I have played men before,” says Serena Manteghi, as she shares a laugh with Niall Ransome. left, and Jake Ferretti

What ensues, however, is an exhilarating collision of farce, ingenious theatrical invention and comic performances to “offer a brand-new twist on the greatest detective story of all time”, in the hands of the multi role-playing Serena, Jake Ferretti’s Sherlock Holmes and Niall Ransome’s Dr Watson.

“I play a whole host of colourful characters, including Sir Charles Baskerville, Dr Mortimer, a helpful London cabbie, three ‘yokels’ (one wise, two less so) and last but not least, the romantic lead (after Dr Watson, of course) and newest Squire of Baskerville Hall, Sir Henry Baskerville,” says Serena, who heads to York after breaking in the Bolton Octagon Theatre and Original Theatre Company production on the road under tour director Tim Jackson following rehearsals in London.

“Yes, they’re all male characters that I’m playing, but I’ve not really thought about their gender; you just play the character – and I have played men before.

“There were male characters in Build A Rocket, Christopher York’s one-woman play I did for the Stephen Joseph Theatre [Scarborough], and I played Rene Magritte in Belt Up Theatre’s Lorca Is Dead [York Theatre Royal, May 2010].

“And there are female characters in this show, played by Jake Ferretti, just as they were played by men when it was created by three wonderful performers [Javier Marzan, John Nicholson and Jason Thorpe]. I predominantly play Sir Henry, in the spirit of that original production.”

Serena Manteghi as LV in The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 2017. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

One consequence has come from the four weeks of shows so far, demanding more than “Olympian dexterity” from Serena, Jack and Niall. “It’s been quite hard on my voice because I’m having to use a much lower register all the time, so I have to work hard on my warm-ups,” says Serena, who is no stranger to challenging her vocal cords, having played LV, with all her singing voices, in The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice at the SJT in 2017.

Likewise, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, and indeed myriad Sherlock Holmes stories have been stretched in multiple ways. “I think the books are woven so deeply and lovingly into our cultural vocabulary that, growing up in the UK, you feel the infamous Holmes and Watson are just a part of the literary furniture, as it were. Like Father Christmas,” says Serena.

“That said, I absolutely loved the recent BBC adaptations [starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman] and would tune in as soon as they were aired for fear of someone spoiling the mystery.

“I think the diverse versions work because the Holmes and Watson partnership is so iconic; the performers and the audience begin from such a familiar starting point and that means you can take them on a slightly unexpected journey.”

Holmes and Watson are embedded in our cultural psyche as much as Morecambe & Wise, suggests Serena. “They’re loved just as much, and that dynamic is beautifully honoured by Jack and Niall; that joy Holmes and Watson have in each other’s company, which is so apparent in Conan Doyle’s writing,” she says.

“It’s an utter pleasure to perform ,” says Serena Manteghi of Peepolykus duo Steven Canny and John Nicholson’s stage adaptation of The Hound Of The Baskervilles, as she teams up with Jake Ferretti and Niall Ransome

“Any literary die-hard fanatics of Conan Doyle will be pleasantly surprised by our show: it’s a comedy retelling,  written by a well-established comedy partnership in Steven Canny and John Nicholson – we met John when he came to see it in Exeter – and it’s an utter pleasure to perform. You’d be very hard-pressed not to enjoy yourself watching this play.”

Ah, but  is it still scary, Serena? “There are some scares, but it leans heavily on the humour, less so on scariness,” she says. “Every spooky note is buttoned with a gag, but it’s not a send-up. It never mocks the story; it’s more an affectionate take on it.

“Very often, when you have farcical versions of the classics, you have to leave behind the story, but here you do get the whole story, just laden with joy and fun.”

Look out for David Woodhead’s set and costume designs too. “They’re beautiful. That’s another reason to see the show,” says Serena. “The set is just gorgeous to behold, elevated and malleable for multiple uses, and everything we wear is beautifully made.” In other words, no tat, Sherlock!

Original Theatre Company and Octagon Theatre Bolton present The Hound Of The Baskervilles, York Theatre Royal, October 19 to 23, 7.30pm; 2pm, Thursday; 2.30pm, Saturday. Age guidance: eight upwards. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

By Charles Hutchinson

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REVIEW: Eurydice, Serena Manteghi & Phil Grainger, Theatre At The Mill, 7/8/2021

WRITER Alexander Wright and composer Phil Grainger presented Eurydice last summer, first as part of At The Mill’s six nights of six works, then at York Theatre Royal’s Pop-Up On The Patio festival.

The sister piece to Wright and Grainger’s Orpheus had, however, been shaped on overseas duty by Serena Manteghi and Casey Jay Andrews to award-winning success at the Adelaide Fringe in 2019, and it was actor-singer Serena who headed to Stillington last week to reacquaint herself with Eurydice…and a live audience.

For her first stage appearance in a year, she was joined by pantalooned Phil, on electric guitar, occasional humorous interjections and vocals, under the shelter of At The Mill’s bar after the forecast of a deluge forced a late switch of location from the Mill’s open-air theatre.

The rain subsequently did play its part, but only for second-half cameo that complemented rather than ruined the top billing.

“It feels weird calling it a performance. It’s just us chatting,” said Serena, but she was underselling the performance’s combination of formality and informality, and the skills required to deliver its graceful ebb and flow, both in word and song in heightened moments.

In Serena’s hand throughout was a book, Alex’s book, containing both his Orpheus and Eurydice stories. Alex had performed that way too, not because he couldn’t be bothered with learning the lines, but because he loves the feel of the book in which he wrote those lines.

Serena broke off to explain the roots of her following the same performative practice – “a tradition,” she called it – and the book then became more of a comfort blanket, there for her to check a line in case she dried.

Eurydice is a spoken-word show, but one that is theatrical too, given how Serena moved around the café bar and interacted with Phil and his sympathetic, symbiotic guitar, especially when duetting instinctively on songs, whether Phil’s own compositions to Alex’s lyrics or interpretations of apposite Kate Bush and Cyndi Lauper numbers.

Wright’s story is billed as a “tale about being a daily superhero and the need to let go of the stories we think define us”, prompted by his realisation that while Orpheus’s underworld story is familiar, we never hear Eurydice’s account, not even one word from her. History, even in myths, puts the ‘his’ into history, rather than telling her story.

Wright rights that wrong, creating Eurydice as her “untold story imagined and reimagined for the modern-day and told from her perspective”. All the more so last Saturday and Sunday, now that Serena was saying those words, while Alex restricted himself to electronica and sound duties to the side of the bar.

At the outset, Eurydice becomes Leni, five years old on the first day of the rest of her life in a one-parent household, when she wants to wear her superhero costume to school. Attentive listening is then required to follow the story’s path because Wright eschews reportage in favour of storytelling language more poetic, more affecting, more rhythmic, more heart-felt, in part torn from his own torrid back-story.

The story may be ancient, but Wright’s interpretation feeds into the modern world in its detail, although it also remains timeless, such is the universality of its themes of love, cheating, flash-flood romance and finally breaking free. “Hold me in a moment made of everything,” is an image we all want to hold, because we know it can only be impermanent.

In Manteghi’s performance, with Grainger a responsive musical radar to her side, Eurydice’s tale of love and loss, a bee tattoo and a bee sting became even more moving, still cathartic for Wright, but now truly Eurydice’s story, told her way.

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More Things To Do in and around York as deathly silence is broken at libraries. List No. 43, courtesy of The Press, York

James Lewis Knight, left, as Jimmy and Matt Stradling as James in Next Door But One’s library tour of Operation Hummingbird in York

GO forth and multiply the chance to see the summer spurt of theatre, musicals and outdoor shows, urges Charles Hutchinson, who also highlights big gig news for autumn and March 2022.

Breaking the library hush: Next Door But One in Operation Hummingbird, in York, today and August 12

YORK community arts collective Next Door But One are teaming up with Explore York for a library tour of Matt Harper-Harcastle’s 45-minute play Operation Hummingbird.

James Lewis Knight plays Jimmy and Matt Stradling, James, in a one-act two-hander that takes the form of a conversation across the decades about a sudden family death, realising an opportunity that we all wish we could do at some point in our life: to go back and talk to our younger self.

Today’s Covid-safe performances are at 3.30pm at New Earswick Folk Hall and 7pm, Dringhouses Library; August 12, York Explore, 2pm, and Hungate Reading Café, 7pm. Box office: nextdoorbutone.co.uk.

Exit-kitchen-sink drama: Ashley Hope Allan as bored Liverpool housewife Shirley, planning a holiday to Greece in Esk Valley Theatre’s production of Shirley Valentine. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

Play launch of the week outside York: Esk Valley Theatre in Shirley Valentine, Robinson Institute, Glaisdale, near Whitby, tonight until August 28

ESK Valley Theatre complete a hattrick of Willy Russell plays with Shirley Valentine from tonight, under the direction of artistic director Mark Stratton as usual.

In Russell’s one-woman show, Coronation Street star Ashley Hope Allan plays middle-aged, bored Liverpool housewife Shirley in a story of self-discovery as she takes a holiday to Greece with a friend, who promptly abandons her for a holiday romance. Left alone, Shirley meets charming taverna owner Costas. Box office: 01947 897587 or at eskvalleytheatre.co.uk.

It’s here at last! Heathers The Musical opens its delayed tour at Leeds Grand Theatre tonight. Picture: Pamela Raith

Musical of the week outside Leeds, Heathers The Musical, Leeds Grand Theatre, tonight until August 14

HEATHERS The Musical launches its touring production in Leeds from tonight with choreography by Gary Lloyd, who choreographed the debut York Stage pantomime last Christmas.

Produced by Bill Kenwright and Paul Taylor-Mills and directed by American screen and stage director Andy Fickman, this high-octane, dark-humoured rock musical is based on the Winona Ryder and Christian Slater cult teen movie.

The premise: Westerberg High pupil Veronica Sawyer (Rebecca Wickes) is just another nobody dreaming of a better day, until she joins the impossibly cruel Heathers, whereupon mysterious teen rebel JD (Simon Gordon) teaches her that it might kill to be a nobody, but it is murder being a somebody. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or at leedsheritagetheatres.co.uk.

Round To Low Horcum, by Sue Slack, one of the 33 artists and makers taking part in Ryedale Open Studios

Art event of the week: Ryedale Open Studios, Saturday and Sunday and next weekend, 10am to 5pm each day

THE newly formed Vault Arts Centre community interest company, in Kirkbymoorside, is coordinating this inaugural Ryedale Open Studios event, celebrating the creativity and artistic talent of Ryedale and the North York Moors.

Artists, makers and creators will be offering both an exclusive glimpse into their workplaces and the opportunity to buy art works directly. Full details of all 33 artists can be found at ryedaleopenstudios.com; a downloadable map at ryedaleopenstudios.com/map.

Serena Manteghi: Performing in Eurydice at Theatre At The Mill this weekend

Hit and myth show of the week: Eurydice, Theatre At The Mill, Stillington Mill, near York, Saturday and Sunday, 7.30pm

THIS weekend, Serena Manteghi returns to the play she helped to create with writer Alexander Wright, composer Phil Grainger and fellow performer Casey Jane Andrews with Fringe award-winning success in Australia in 2019.

Manteghi, a tour de force in the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s Build A Rocket, will be joined by Grainger for the tale about being a daily superhero and not giving in to the stories we tell ourselves.

Woven from spoken word and soaring live music, Eurydice is the stand-alone sister show to Orpheus; her untold story imagined and reimagined for the modern-day and told from her perspective. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill/.

Kaiser Chiefs: Yorkshire anthems galore at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on Sunday

Yorkshire gig of the week outside York: Kaiser Chiefs, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, Sunday, gates open at 6pm

LEEDS lads Kaiser Chiefs promise a “no-holds-barred rock’n’roll celebration” on their much-requested return to Scarborough OAT after their May 27 2017 debut.

“We cannot wait to get back to playing live shows again and it will be great to return to this stunning Yorkshire venue,” says frontman Ricky Wilson. “We had a cracking night there in 2017, so roll on August 8!”

Expect a Sunday night of such Yorkshire anthems as Oh My God, I Predict A Riot, Everyday I Love You Less And Less, Ruby, Never Miss A Beat and Hole In My Soul. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

Simon Amstell’s hippy-chic poster for his autumn tour show, Spirit Hole, visiting York, Sheffield and Leeds in the autumn

Comedy gig announcement of the week: Simon Amstell, Spirit Hole, Grand Opera House, York, September 25, 8pm

INTROSPECTIVE, abjectly honest comedian Simon Amstell will play the Grand Opera House, York, for the first time since 2012 on his 38-date Spirit Hole autumn tour.

Agent provocateur Amstell, 41, will deliver a “blissful, spiritual, sensational exploration of love, sex, shame mushrooms and more” on a tour with further Yorkshire gigs at The Leadmill, Sheffield, on September 12 and Leeds Town Hall on October 1.

York tickets are on sale at atgtickets.com/venues/grand-opera-house-york/; York, Sheffield and Leeds at ticketmaster.com.

Look sharp! Tickets are on sale for Joe Jackson’s second-ever York concert…next March

York gig announcement of the week: Joe Jackson, York Barbican, March 17 2022

JOE Jackson will play York for only the second time in his 43-year career on his Sing, You Sinners! tour next year.

Jackson, who turns 67 on August 11, will perform both solo and with a band at York Barbican in the only Yorkshire show of his 29-date British and European tour, promising hits and new material.

“We’ve been dealing with two viruses over the past two years, and the worst – the one we really need to put behind us – is Fear,” he says. “Love is the opposite of fear, so if you love live music, come out and support it!” Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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REVIEW: The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre, At The Mill ****

Trouble at the Mill: Musician Phil Grainger and writer/storyteller Alexander Flanagan-Wright presenting Orpheus and Eurydice at Stillington Mill. Picture: Charlotte Graham

REVIEW: The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre, in At The Mill, Stillington Mill, and beyond

ALEXANDER Flanagan-Wright and Phil Grainger should have been in Edinburgh right now. Instead they will be popping up at the Pop-Up On The Patio festival at York Theatre Royal tomorrow.

On The Fringe up further north, they were all set to perform the North Yorkshire double act’s British premiere of The Gods The Gods The Gods, episode three of their spoken-word and soulful-song 21st century twist on ancient Greek tragedies in the year 2020BC…Before Covid.

The duo had been touring The Gods x 3 and its “brother and sister” predecessors, Orpheus and Eurydice, in Australia, with New Zealand next, when Covid-19 dropped in its unwelcome calling card, sending Alex back to Stillington Mill, his family’s converted 17th century corn mill, and Phil to Easingwold.

Eighteen months of UK and international tour plans have gone into the pending file, but Alex and Phil are not of the “so far, so furlough” lockdown mentality. Alex took to ‘writing’ while walking the dog, recording his rhythmic thoughts; Phil penned new songs on his unruly guitar, as well as shaping up on shifts in his father’s picture-framing business.

“You have to try to find round pegs to fit round holes,” said Alex, as he and Phil and their respective companies, The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre, set about launching their five-pronged art attack, I’ll Try And See You Sometimes, seeking new horizons in the year 2020BC. Beyond Covid and its killjoy claw in this new age of “Use your hand sanitiser but try not to lose your sanity”.

Definitely not Yorkshire! Alexander Flanagan-Wright and Phil Grainger on their global travels

Among this summer’s outward-thinking projects has been the Hyper Local Tour of Orpheus, taking the two-hander to people’s socially distanced back gardens at their invitation.

A small step, for small audience numbers, maybe, but nevertheless adding back gardens to Orpheus’s list of 325 shows in Oz, NZ, New York, Bali, let alone a boat on the River Ouse and a shoes-off night in the magnificence of Castle Howard.

Alex and Phil then decided to go even more Hyper Local for “six days of work” in Alex’s own back garden at Stillington Mill, 11 miles north of York.

This is no ordinary back garden with its mill pond, fairy-lit woodland, shepherd’s hut for holidays lets and open-air marquee for weddings and performances on what appears to have been a disused tennis court. Game on, nevertheless, for the artship enterprise.

Entering this magical arts hub is like leaving behind the Athenian court for Titania and Oberon’s woods in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Alex perhaps in the sprightly sprite role of Puck and big Phil as a keen-to-do-everything Nick Bottom but never quite making an ass of himself!

At The Mill ran for six shows in six nights with Covid-secure, social distancing measures in place, picnics optional, as the globe-trotting, back-home gents played to a maximum audience of 30 per 7pm gig from August 2 to 7. Total attendance: 175 out of a possible 180, making the low-key run a palpable hit, like the shows, whether old, nearly new or hot off the book and songbook presses.

Oh…you are Orpheus. The poster for The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre two-hander

“We’re doing some Orpheus, some Eurydice, and one night of New Stuff We Haven’t Done Before,” the duo had announced online, with the aid of an Instagram poll to decide whether Orpheus or Eurydice would win out on the Tuesday.

Eurydice had her day and her say that evening beneath the trees as Alex and Phil took on roles that had been shaped by Serena Manteghi and Casey Jay Andrews on overseas duty. Alex had a book in his hand, not because he couldn’t be bothered with learning the lines, but because he loves the feel of the book in which he wrote those lines.

It as if by touching the book, he connects directly to his heart, because his heart bleeds in these words. Without dwelling too much here on his own circumstances, it hurts…and this time it’s personal, cathartic, but beyond the dates he mentions, it is universal too.

Add Phil’s songwriting, guitar and electronica to Alex’s lyrics, and Eurydice’s torrid yet beautifully nuanced tale of love and loss, a bee tattoo and a bee sting, hits you with the force of a Bill Withers or Otis Redding song.

If Eurydice pulls off the trick of being both formal in structure yet informal, then Wednesday night’s New Stuff We Haven’t Done Before in the marquee was very much the latter.

Alex once more in jaunty trilby, jeans and T-shirt, Phil in baggy clown’s pantaloons, they introduced crossfire works from The Gods The Gods The Gods before Alex premiered his new piece penned in lockdown, This Story Is For You.

One guitar + one book + two hats + six shows = Phil Grainger and Alexander Wright’s At The Mill festival of two-handers at Stillington Mill. Picture: Charlotte Graham

Already available in assorted print forms decorated by guest illustrators for I’ll Try And See You Sometimes, now it tripped off the lucid tongue, as poetic, as timely, as insistent and surprising as a Kae Tempest (formerly Kate Tempest) album, as Alex recounted a female love story gone so right, then so wrong. Throughout, Phil accompanied on gentle waves of guitar, the tide coming in on the key of E.

The second half was given over to Phil, a storyteller without a script or book, as much as a soul-mining singer and songwriter, encouraged by Alex to grow more confident in his own candid, humorous, touching lyric-writing to match his ever-affecting way with a tune.

He even covered a teenage lament by a former Easingwold school colleague called Josh, who has long deserted his list-making song. Wrong, Josh, it’s a curio beauty, worthy of The Undertones’ first album.

Phil calls himself Clive, his middle name, his father’s name too, when performing solo (with occasional vocals and drum patterns from Alex), but this is Phil talking, this is the Phil sound, and it really is time he made an album.

And so, Orpheus and Eurydice, Alex and Phil, move on to the Theatre Royal patio for tomorrow’s double bill: another day, another garden.  

What comes next for the ever-busy double act? Wood has arrived at Stillington Mill for Alex and Phil to start work on converting the marquee into an outdoor theatre. If they build it, we will come.

In the swing of it: Phil Grainger and Alexander Flanagan-Wright at the outset of their six-pack of At The Mill shows at Stillington Mill. Now they switch to the more compact Pop-Up On The Patio garden at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Charlotte Graham

Orpheus, The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre in Orpheus, Pop-Up On The Patio, York Theatre Royal, tomorrow, August 21, 6pm

WRITTEN by Alexander Flanagan-Wright, with incidental music and songs by Phil Grainger, Orpheus is a thoroughly modern, beautifully poetic re-telling of an ancient Greek myth.

Dave is single, stood at the bar; Eurydice is a tree nymph…and Bruce Springsteen is on the juke box in this tale of impossible, death-defying love told through hair-raising spoken word and soaring soul music, where Alex and Phil weave a world of dive bars, side streets and ancient gods.

Eurydice, The Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook Theatre, Pop-Up On The Patio, August 21, 8pm

LENI is five years old, holding a Superman costume for her first day at school. Eurydice is five years into the rest of her life, sporting a bee tattoo on her wrist, in Alexander Flanagan-Wright’s story of someone defined by someone else’s myth.

This tale of making changes, taking leaps and being a daily superhero is billed as “a story about a woman told by women”. That was the case when performed by Alex and Phil Grainger’s co-creators, Serena Manteghi and Casey Jane Andrews, to 2019 Adelaide Fringe Best Theatre award-winning success.

Now, Alex and Phil take over to weave a world of day-to-day power and beauty and goddesses, relayed through heart-stopping spoken word and live electronica. Watch out for the sting in the tale.

Tickets are on sale at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk and MUST be bought in advance.