REVIEW: Alan Ayckbourn’s 90th play, Show & Tell, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 5 ****

Check mate: Paul Kemp’s Ben Wilkes, left, cowers as Bill Champion’s Jack Bothridge terminates their chess match in Show & Tell. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

IN the words of Alan Ayckbourn, “Show & Tell is about something which has preoccupied me for the last 60 years and probably more – theatre.”

In those years, the Scarborough writer-director has chalked up 90 plays – and still more are on their way. His SJT play for 2026 is written already and he is part way through 2027’s premiere too.

Play number 90, Show & Tell, is a “love letter to theatre”: the joy of theatre, the pleasure of writing and directing for Ayckourn at 85; the abiding delight for his audience in his abiding wit, social and cultural observation, foresight and insight, mischief-making and rug-pulling darker undercurrents.

Show & Tell is among his most playful in its celebration of the possibilities presented by ‘the play’ as an artform, here refracted through a backward glance at its back pages and his own too. A play full of play and full of plays, and indeed a play within a play.

All this is wrapped up in dark farce that “lifts the lid on the performances we act out on a daily basis,” as Sir Alan puts it. How much do we “show and tell”; how much do we conceal?

In this case, retired West Yorkshire managing director Jack Bothridge (grizzled, irascible Ayckbourn regular Bill Champion) has invited Homelight Theatre Company actor Peter Reeder (Richard Stacey) to the Bothridge family hall to tie up arrangements for a birthday party performance for his wife.

Unfortunately, belligerent Jack has no recollection of making any arrangements, mistaking the unnerved Peter Reeder for a meter reader. What’s more, Jack is not so much forgetful as in the incipient stages of dementia, in a hinterland between assertive clarity and confusion, as Ayckbourn exposes the misogyny, gruff bluntness, delusion and self-entitlement born of running a family business often on a capricious whim.

Champion is in terrific form here as a latter-day Lear, while Ayckbourn’s study of the generation that soils and spoils a family business is spot on in a nod to Ibsen and Arthur Miller. Look at Jack’s bullying treatment of Ben Wilkes (Paul Kemp), who ran his formal clothing department and is now his carer, outwardly as loyal as Lear’s Gloucester.

Writer-director Alan Ayckbourn in the Stephen Joseph Theatre poster for his 90th play, Show & Tell

However, there is much more to the reserved Wilkes than first meets the eye, caught wonderfully by Kemp, the essence of the gradual “show and tell” in Show & Tell. His shattering revelation, told to the sympathetic ear of actress and company manager Harriet ‘Harry’ Golding (Frances Marshall) is a gem of a quietly detonating scene.

Kemp’s Wilkes becomes embroiled in the other side of the story: Ayckbourn’s depiction of the world of theatre, past and present. Through the tribulations of the ailing Homelight Theatre Company, desperately in need of Jack’s booking, Ayckbourn hones in on the dramas faced by companies post-Covid, the struggle to draw an audience, the battle between artistic ambition and exigency.

He comments too on the fad for changing a company name to meet changing times, in this instance from the pioneering Front Room Theatre to the more inclusive-sounding Homelight. He duly recalls the groundbreaking days of Centre 42, the radical project of Arnold Wesker and Charles Parker, one said to have “inflicted the most damage on theatre since Cromwell”.

Act Two recalls Ayckbourn’s 1984 play A Chorus Of Disapproval in going behind the scenes, but  crucially too it draws on Ayckbourn’s earliest days at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, directing a French farce in 1961 when artistic director Stephen Joseph told him his budget was “technically nothing…and if you push me, £5”.

In theatre tradition, by now joined by Olivia Woolhouse’s insouciant actress Steph Tate, Kemp’s Wilkes steps in when needs must, the cue for Stacey’s exasperated Reeder to act like a spoiled child in the readthrough and Kemp to scene-steal gloriously. 

What follows this character-revealing shenanigans is the play within the play: a full-scale French farce, A Friend Indeed, in Ayckbourn’s knowing pastiche of the artform, played straight but inherently over-the-top in full period costume.

Theatre laid bare, life laid bare, warts and all, yet delivered with a love of the stage that never dims.

Alan Ayckbourn’s Show & Tell, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 5. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

Poets aplenty take part in short films of readings and chat for SJT summer school

A plethora of poets for the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s online film project and summer school

NINE British poets are teaming up with Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre to present three short films showcasing their work.

Taking part are Toby Campion, Martin Daws, Hayley Green, Ray Hearne, Zara Jayne, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Otis Mensah,  Nima Taleghani and Beverley Ward.

The three films will be online for a month from 5pm on August 11, 13 and 15, each marking the end of a day of Summer School classes from the SJT. Each one will feature three poets discussing their work and reading at least one of their poems.

Curator Nadia Emam says: “These films feature some fantastic poets from all over the UK, performing a couple of their poems but also including a short interview about them and their work.

“Viewers will get to watch a poetry performance, but also hear a little more about the journey of each poet, which I hope will be an inspiration to anyone curious about writing poetry and making a living from it themselves.”

The nine poetry videos and interviews have been shot individually under lockdown conditions and then edited and tied together into three films by Sheffield filmmaker Brett Chapman. 

Curator Nadia Emam also will lead an hour-long performance poetry workshop at 3pm each day at the Summer School. She was a member of the SJT’s Youth Theatre and is now an actor, poet and director in Sheffield, where she is a Crucible Theatre supported artist.

In addition to Nadia’s poetry workshop and the films, the SJT Summer School includes:

Tuesday, August 11:  Movement and street dance with Marcquelle Ward and puppetry with Andrew Kim, for nine to 13 year olds;

Thursday, August 13: Musical theatre with Alex Weatherhill and HowTo Do Accents with Alix Dunmore, for 14 to 18 year olds;

Saturday, August 15:  Conducting an orchestra (a beginner’s guide) with Shaun Matthew and public speaking with York-born SJT actress Frances Marshall.

Frances Marshall, pictured in Alan Ayckbourn’s Seasons Greetings at the SJT, will host a Summer School session on public speaking

Access to the poetry films is free. To watch, visit the SJT’s YouTube channel from  August 11 at: youtube.com/channel/UCUChChdq-MZrUIqOAhEIB7w.

The SJT’s online Summer School costs £18 per day for all three sessions. Individual sessions can be booked at £7 each. To book, go to: sjt.uk.com/event/1050/online_summer_school_

The poets in profile:

Toby Campion: Poet, playwright, former UK Poetry Slam Champion and World Poetry Slam finalist. His debut collection, Through Your Blood, was longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize.

Recipient of the 2019 Aurora Prize for Poetry, he has performed around the world, at  Glastonbury Festival and on The Arts Show with Jonathan Ross. He will   read Oyster and Nits.

Martin Daws: Active as a spoken-word poet for more than 20 years, performing in the UK, USA and Eire, delivering commissions and residencies and publishing two collections. He was Young People’s Laureate for Wales, 2013 to 2016, and will read Under The Slates, Weekend: Saturday Afternoon and Together.

Hayley Green:  Originally from Nottingham, now based in Scarborough, she performs across the UK and Europe. She teaches poetry and creative writing in schools, colleges and communities, using poetry and creative writing to explore self-harm, mental health, sexuality, gender and identity, often the focus of her own poetry and performance. She will read Changing Rooms and Playtime

Ray Hearne: His poem A Sing Song For Stainless Steel was cut into 14 benches in Sheffield city centre. Now he is working with a stonecutter in Barnsley to devise words for a Grimethorpe Trail.

His songs have been performed and recorded by the late Roy Bailey, Kate Rusby and Coope Boyes and Simpson. The Ballad Of Wentworth and Elsecar awaits publication in autumn 2020. He will read Werewolves Of Rotherham and Living On Broad Yorkshire Street.

Zara Jayne: Started writing at the age of ten when she had her first poem published in Cosmic. Her poems have appeared in the charity magazine Sense and in the book A Blind Bit Of Difference; a short play was put on at a London theatre.

She performed in Martha, Josie And The Chinese Elvis at the SJT in 2019 and will read Ghostlight and A Dirty World.

Zara Jayne, left, as Brenda-Marie, with Emma Churchill, as Josie, in Martha, Josie And The Chinese Elvis at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 2019.

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan: Educator, writer and poet from West Yorkshire. Her work disrupts narratives of history, race, knowledge and power, interrogating the political purpose of conversations about Muslims, migrants, gender and violence.

She works to provide herself and others with “the tools to resist systemic oppression by unlearning what society and the education system have instilled in us”. She will read British Values.

Otis Mensah: Self-proclaimed mum’s house philosopher and rap psalmist, offering an alternative take on contemporary hip hop and spoken word.

Shedding light on “existential commonalities through vulnerable expression”, he uses  aesthetic language to paint worlds of thought. Appointed the first poet laureate of Sheffield by former Lord Mayor and MEP Magid Magid, he will read Ode To Black Thought and Shifting Sands.

Nima Taleghani: Actor, writer and workshop facilitator. Theatre and screen credits include Romeo And Juliet and The Merry Wives Of Windsor(RSC), Hatton Garden (ITV) and Casualty (BBC).

A selector and London Ambassador for the National Student Drama Festival, Nima will read King Arthur and This City.

Beverley Ward: Writer, facilitator and coach who writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction and is passionately in love with the creative process of writing.

She has run writing workshops for adults and children for more than 20 years and has her own writers’ workshop in Sheffield and a retreat in Bridlington.

She has published poems, stories and two books: Archie Nolan: Family Detective, for children, and the memoir Dear Blacksmith. She will read What If, The Swing In An Empty Playground and Poem For Kids Leaving Primary School.

The curator: Nadia Emam was awarded a placement last year with the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme at the SJT, where she curated the poetry evening Still I Rise, celebrating female poets. Her debut poetry film won the WEX Short Film Competition and was part of BFI’s Northern