Don’t rain on his parade: Jamie McKeller’s Captain Hook lays down his terms and conditions in Rowntree Players’ The Pantomime Adventures Of Peter Pan. Picture: Matt Hillier
DIRECTOR Howard Ella had resisted staging Peter Pan for more than 15 years. So much story to cram in, so familiar, and how do you stay true to J M Barrie while putting the Pan into pantomime and vice versa, he pondered.
Thankfully, always saying never to Neverland has turned into, well, you should never say never, as he teams up for a second time with Rowntree Players’ regular goofing panto loon Gemma McDonald to construct a script that retains all but the Darling parents among the regulation principals (until a late sub-plot).
Meanwhile, Nana the dog is turned into Nanny McFlee, Michael Cornell’s affable role in his third year on cheeky dame duty, forging a double act with sidekick McDonald, in trademark ginger bubble perm, rouge cheeks and riotously colourful clothing as Nanny’s dogged apprentice cum putative entrepreneur Barkly.
McDonald’s panto character never knowingly rejects the opportunity for a burst of bottom burps, but here takes raspberry blowing to new levels by bottling Barkly’s noxious wind for its powers of toxic termination of any opponent.
McFlee bite: Michael Cornell’s Nanny McFlee on dame duty. Picture: Matt Hillier
Effective, apparently, against all but those who suffer from anosmia: the medical term for the complete loss or lack of the sense of smell that five per cent of us experience and winner of the Unexpected Word of the Day in a York pantomime award.
Such a detail marks out the welcome unpredictability of a Rowntree Players panto, one of the assets of Ella and McDonald’s script that keeps the storytelling to the fore while promoting spectacle and slapstick too.
Jamie McKeller, spookologist Dr Dorian Deathly of Deathy Dark Tours by night when not treading the boards, has long craved the chance to play Captain Hook, a “real bad guy”, as he calls him. McKeller has beefed up his singing chops too with six months of lessons to add further impact to his latest character from the dark side, most notably in Don’t Rain On My Parade.
Irascible, arch, obsessive in his wish to put kill Peter Pan, his Hook is the master of the putdown, the waspish quip, yet fearful of the croc and the clock, here hounding him with electronic messages that Doom Is Imminent: a running gag that nods to modern technology.
She’s back! Hurrah! Claire Horsley’s Gloria on glorious piratical form performing in Pink Parade Club. Picture: Matt Hillier
Tradition plays its part in Rowntree pantomimes, and so Hannah King is a conventional, thigh-slapping, resolute principal boy as Peter Pan, working in tandem with Sara Howlett’s tinkering Tinkerbell.
Laura Castle knocks out a belting Holding Out For A Hero as the “never mess with a Yorkshire lass” Tigerlily; Sophie Bullivant’s Cornish clot of a Smee is amusingly disruptive before bringing the house down with Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat.
Claire Horsley returns to the Rowntree ranks after a long hiatus to remind us of her vocal prowess as Gloria in the triumphant Pink Parade Club, while Tom Bettany’s John, Fergus Green’s Michael and especially Eva Howe’s storytelling Wendy have their moments as the Darling children.
Among the Lost Boys – ties tied around their heads as if band members of AC/DC – are company veterans Geoff Walker as Curly and Barry Johnson as Slightly, complemented by senior chorus, principal dancers and two junior teams (Blue at Sunday’s matinee) when Ami Carter’s choreography skilfully turns solo numbers and duets into full-scale ensemble routines.
The calm before the panto storm for Rowntree Players’ comical double act, Gemma McDonald’s Barkly and Michael Cornell’s Nanny McFlee. Picture: Matt Hillier
Rather than flying to Neverland, the Darlings are transported on their bed, lifted into the night sky with Pan and Tinkerbell to either side in set designer and scenic artist Anna Jones’s most striking scene. The show even makes fun of the budget limitations of trying to conjure an underwater scene…without water (save for water pistols).
Musical director Sam Johnson regularly lifts his band to the heights in the big numbers, especially in the Will Survive/Survivor mash-up and One Day More.
Rowntree Players’ Pantomime Adventures Of Peter Pan are fun, funny, fast-moving, full of silliness, but magical storytelling and colourful characterisation too. Tickets are selling fast and rightly so for this ever-rollicking community show
Rowntree Players in The Pantomime Adventures Of Peter Pan, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Jamie McKeller (Captain Hook), second from right, in rehearsal with Gemma McDonald (Barkly), Michael Cornell (Nanny McFlea) and musical director Sam Johnson for Rowntree Players’ The Pantomime Adventures Of Peter Pan
ROWNTREE Players pantomime co-writer and director Howard Ella had always avoided Peter Pan…until now.
“I see it as a bit of a Cinderella, where the story is so familiar to everybody that it’s hard to tell that story, do it justice and make it a panto at the same time,” he reasons ahead of tomorrow’s opening performance at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York.
“It’s taken me 16/17 years to find the courage. You can’t just do the book, but I want to be loyal to the[J.M. Barrie] text while making it into a panto, and I think we’ve nailed it.”
By “we” he is referring to co-writer and regular goofing loon Gemma McDonald, cast as eager apprentice Barkly this time. “I’ve had Gemma by my side again, working from a great traditional story with great characters that give you a good foundation to then work out how to bring together the traditional while being forward facing; how you then get that balance right.
“A story like Peter Pan adds another level to that challenge, but we have an exciting cast that meets that challenge with contemporary relevance amid the melee of pantomime traditions.”
Joining Gemma in the principal cast will be Hannah King’s Peter Pan, Sophie Bullivant’s Smee, Claire Horsley, returning from a long hiatus, as Gloria, Sara Howlett’s Tinkerbell, Eva Howe’s Wendy and Neon Crypt theatre company trio Laura Castle as Tiger Lily, Michael Cornell as Nanny McFlea and Jamie McKeller as Captain Hook.
“Hook is the perfect panto villain and to have someone who’s wanted to play that role forever…that’s when serendipity kicks in with Jamie.”
McKeller is a familiar face on York’s haunted streets as ghost-walk host Dr Dorian Deathly, promoter of Deathly Dark Tours, but he has taken to the dark side in Rowntree Players pantomimes too, whether as an Ugly Sister or the Sheriff of Nottingham.
“One of the things I’m most proud of this year is that he’s a real bad guy,” says Jamie. “There’s usually redemption at the end for the villain, a great epiphany, but Hook doesn’t get one –and he shouldn’t. He just says from the get-go, quite unreasonably, that he will kill this child [Peter Pan].”
What’s more, his Hook will have the gravitas of a Shakespearean bad egg. “My first entrance is two pages of what Howard calls ‘elegant prose’,” he says.
Howard rejoins: “Pantos are frivolous and fun on the surface, but there’s no reason to not have a deeper story behind it to add depth. It would be very easy to tell a simple panto story around Peter Pan, where most of it could just be a tale with fairy dust, but then you have to insert a dame and a comic.
“We haven’t gone down that path: rather than Nana the dog, we have Nanny McFlea, with some dog-like tendencies in human form, and Gemma as her comical son Barkly.”
Jamie’s Hook will be attired in de rigueur red coat, hat, scarf, stripey trousers, big boots, hook…and “flamboyant hair”. “He’s wholly evil, but with show-stopping numbers, such as Don’t Rain On My Parade, the Barbra Streisand song from Funny Girl, One Day More and the Survivor/I Will Survive mash-up from Glee.
“As soon as I was told it was Peter Pan this year and that Captain Hook would require some strong singing, I went off and did six months of singing lessons at York Singing Academy in Marygate.
“I’ve always been able to maul my way through a song as the bad guy in a ‘speak-sing’ style but I’d never learned the mechanics of singing, though I knew how to manipulate my voice because of all the voiceover work I’ve done. Sam Johnson tells me I’ve done a good job!”
Howard concurs: “When you end up with the baddie singing as the campest character in the show, then that’s my idea of what a panto should be!”
He is enjoying Michael Cornell’s progression in the dame’s role too (as Nanny McFlea this year). “You grow into this role because no two dames are the same, and you have to own your dame,” he says. “By building relationships, like working around the consistency of Gemma’s character, it all gets layered over the years.”
Jamie, who performed alongside Michael in Neon Crypt and the Deathly Dark Tours’ paranormal investigations of The Wetwang Hauntings – Live in November, says of his panto co-star: “He’s just very fearless, bringing so much to the rehearsal room. He’s not long 30, and look at how still he was on stage in our Wetwang show, his tweedy suit and moustache barely moving.”
Defining why he loves pantomime in the 21st century, Howard says: “Pantomime remains something that is multi-generational. Bringing generations together in any activity is a challenge, but I’m all for multi-generational entertainment that is safe yet challenging at the same time and doesn’t just make you laugh but cry and think as well.
“It’s a unique form of entertainment with audiences that you don’t get with other forms of theatre. And I love the tradition of it all, which is important in the right place. It’s one of the things that drove me to do what I do now, and why wouldn’t you want to pass it on to the next generation? It’s a joyous privilege.”
On the subject of tradition, Howard adds: “You’re fitting pantomime into a world that’s changing all the time, but tradition doesn’t mean unchanging and old-fashioned, but comfortable and recognisable.
“I’m still fond of having a traditional principal boy [played by a female], but it doesn’t mean you can’t sprinkle new things into the pantomime mix. That’s the joy of writing it each year.”
Jamie enthuses: “From an acting/performing point of view, pantomime is so mischievous. I’m not very disciplined, and you know you can do things in panto, like knowing looks or catching each other’s eye on stage, and the audience knows that you’re doing that.
“I always say that doing panto is like a fever dream. I take the week off from everything else, just going around coffee shops.”
Audiences can’t wait. “We’ve had our third successive year of record ticket sales, which is even harder to achieve in this current climate, but we’ve had a strong team for a long time,” says a delighted Howard.
“We laugh a lot in rehearsals and that energy carries through to the performances when you have a bunch of people who love doing these shows.”
Rowntree Players in The Pantomime Adventures Of Peter Pan, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tomorrow, 2pm and 7.30pm, Sunday, 2pm and 6pm; December 9 to 12, 7.30pm; December 13, 2pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Everybody’s talking about Harvey Stevens’ Jamie: the break-out star of Pick Me Up Theatre’s production
MADE in Sheffield and exported to the musical theatre world, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie has its second York run this week after Nik Briggs’s Teen Edition for York Stage in June 2023.
Young actors are no less prominent in York company Pick Me Up Theatre’s production, led by Harvey Stevens, even younger at 15 than Ryan Addyman was when fronting Briggs’s cast of 13 to 19-year-olds at 17.
Harvey has been dancing since his first class at the Yorkshire Rose Academy of Dance aged three and will begin musical theatre studies at SLP College in Garforth in September. He is a stage natural, tall and lithe and mischievously energetic, here bringing his dream role of Jamie New to life with cheek and chutzpah.
There to watch him on the first night was his father, Antonie Williams-Browne, who had travelled up from Plymouth specially for the show. Twenty years ago, Antonie had shown off his own dance moves in Robert Readman’s UK amateur premiere of The Full Monty for Shipton Theatre Company at the JoRo, “lifting the first half to new heights” (York Press, July 27 2005) when playing the veteran, arthritic-limbed Horse.
Harvey Stevens’ Jamie New, front left, and his Mayfield School classmates in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Son Harvey is a colt by comparison, with room for expansion in both his vocal and acting range, but already he has a thrilling presence on stage: everybody will be talking about his Jamie this week.
Inspired by the Firecracker documentary Jamie: Drag Queen At 16, composer Dan Gillespie Sells (from Horsham pop practitioners The Feeling) and writer/lyricist Tom MacRae drew on an original idea by co-writer Jonathan Butterell for the 2017 Sheffield Crucible Theatre premiere of a show that completed a populist trilogy of Steel City comedy dramas.
First came the defiant spirit and sheer balls of The Full Monty; next, the classroom politics and fledgling frustrations of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, and lastly “Jamie”, the unapologetic story of the boy who sometimes to be wants to be a girl, wear a dress to the school prom and be a drag queen.
Eight years on, “Jamie” still lives up to its billing as “the hit musical for today”, replete with bold humour, withering wit, northern nous and sassy social awareness, in a barometer of our changing times and attitudes towards gender, bigotry, bullying, homophobia, absentee fathers and the right to self-expression. Jamie’s reverence for RuPaul, whose Drag Race was not aired on BBC Three until 2019, affirms how the show has kept an eye on cultural shifts.
First we meet the Year 11 pupils of Mayfield School, a typical comprehensive classroom of 16-year-olds full of hopes and aspirations, but filtered through the realities of life in a northern town that makes them cynical and unruly too, typified by Stevens’ Jamie, draped languidly over his chair, bored and inattentive.
Zander Fick’s feisty drag queen Loco Chanelle in Everbody’s Talking About Jamie Picture: Matthew Kitchen
In the wake of Billy Liar’s Billy Fisher and Kes’s Billy Casper, here is another young, restless Yorkshire dreamer in need of escape from the grey grime of a Sheffield council estate in a classic teen rebel story.
A breaker of rules and hearts alike, this lippy kid in lip gloss oozes confidence on the surface, graceful in high heels, but Jamie is naive and vulnerable too, desperate to strut before he can walk, especially when his stay-away father (Andrew Isherwood) is so disapproving and teacher Miss Hedge (Alexandra Mather) is so narrow-minded.
Stevens’ Jamie will be the teen star of the show, but gold stars also go to Fergus Green’s loathsome, self-loathing bully, Dean Paxton, and Ruby Salter’s quietly self-assured doctor-in-waiting Pritti Pasha, Jamie’s best friend, whose rendition of It Means Beautiful lives up to its title.
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is told from more than the teen perspective, giving it the grit of a kitchen-sink drama, where the adult viewpoint of father and teacher is compounded by Jamie’s world-weary, self-sacrificial, ever supportive mum Margaret (Rowntree Players’ pantomime clown Gemma McDonald revealing a deeper side, her voice cracking under the emotion of singing her second heartfelt ballad, He’s My Boy.
Meet Sheffield drag queens Loco Chanelle, Tray Sophisticay, Laika Virgin and Sandra Bollock, alias Zander Fick, Andrew Isherwood, Mark Simmonds and Ryan Richardson, in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Make-up: Renee Delait. Hair: The Birdcage, Brighton. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
She forms a defiant double act with Lottie Farmer’s Ray, her blunt but sharp friend, who is always popping round with a market stall bargain, backed up by a choice putdown for authority.
Equally supportive too is dress-shop boss Hugo/veteran drag act Loco Chanelle (Zander Fick, continuing his year of outstanding performances), in tandem with the bantering drag-queen veterans Sandra Bollock (Ryan Richardson), Tray Sophisticay (Andrew Isherwood at the double) ) and Laika Virgin (Mark Simmonds), Sheffield’s variation on The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert.
Posted high above the stage, musical director Adam Tomlinson and his band, trumpet, trombone, tenor sax et al, are in top form throughout, for big numbers and instrumental interludes alike, while Ilana Weets’s choreography hits the mark, from And You Don’t Even Know It opening to Out Of The Darkness (A Place Where We Belong) finale.
Readman wears his director and designer hats with elan, aside from a misbehaving, overworked central door* that opens to Margaret’s kitchen, Loco Chanel’s studio, school classroom and Dad’s house alike. His triumphant production epitomises this musical’s call to “celebrate being yourself and find a place where you belong”: the stage for Jamie New and Harvey Stevens alike.
Pick Me Up Theatre, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Gemma McDonald’s Margaret, left, Harvey Stevens’ Jamie New and Lottie Farmer’s Ray in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
* Footnote from director-designer Robert Readman:
“JUST a quick note to say the misbehaving centre door is now fixed! It was originally going to swing both ways but it just decided to come out…”
Harvey Stevens’s Jamie New, front left, with his fellow Year 11 pupils at Mayfield School in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
EVERYBODY’S talking about the new Jamie New in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie in York.
From July 22 to 26, GCSE schoolboy Harvey Stevens will play the title role in York company Pick Me Up Theatre’s production of Tom MacRae and Dan Gillespie Sells’s award-winning musical at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York.
This joyous underdog story was last staged in York in its Teenage Version by York Stage in June 2023. “I was too young for that, which I was really gutted about,” says Harvey, 15, from Acomb.
He has loved the story of Jamie New ever since his first experience of the film. “My mum hadn’t heard of it, so she was mortified, not knowing what she’d taken me to, but I loved it!” he says.
“I’ve seen every tour, every cast, since then. My favourite Jamie was Layton Williams, who I went to see at Leeds Grand [Theatre], though I take a bit from every Jamie to be honest, like the riffs in their singing…”
“…But you have your own style, in your singing and in your dancing,” says Gemma McDonald, the Rowntree Players pantomime favourite, who will be playing Jamie’s world-weary, self-sacrificial, ever supportive mum, Margaret.
Harvey Stevens’s Jamie New with the high heels that will transform him from 6ft to 6ft 6ins in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Picture: Colin Wallwork
Premiered at the Sheffield Crucible Theatre in 2017, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is the unapologetic story of the boy who sometimes wants to be a girl, wear a dress to the school prom and be a drag queen. Jamie New, from a Sheffield council estate, but feeling out of place, is so restless at sweet 16 to be “something and someone fabulous”, standing out from the crowd of Year 11 pupils of Mayfield School.
You sense that Harvey has that drive too. He took his first dance steps at the age of three at the Yorkshire Rose Academy of Dance in York. “I then started studying ballet at Let’s Dance, picked up jazz, tap and contemporary there in Year 4, and then I went to Northern Ballet in Leeds for three years,” he says.
From there, he moved on to Elmhurst Ballet School in Birmingham, boarding there as he studied musical theatre, jazz and ballet dancing in Year 7 and 8, adding dancing in heels to his repertoire at SK Dance Fusion in York.
That will come in handy in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. “I’ll be 6ft 6 with my heels on as I’m 6ft,” says Harvey. “I’ll be looking over everyone on stage!
“I first wore heels on stage at the Move It dance convention in London in 2022.” As with all his dance moves, he took it in his stride. “For this role I’ve taken everything I’ve learnt from ballet and contemporary [dance], all the core techniques, taking the styles and joining them together.”
To be playing Jamie is “like a dream come true as it’s my first main role,” says Harvey. “I’ve always said I wanted to play him, and here I am. It’s such a good character to play and story to tell and I feel I can really relate to that age, and what he’s going through.”
“Playing Jamie is like a dream come true as it’s my first main role,” says Harvey Stevens. Picture: Jo Hird
Gemma, a former teacher, whose 15-year-old son, Ethan, is in the cast too, says: “There’s all those similarities, all those experiences, of what boys face. When I saw that Robert [director Robert Readman] was doing this show, I was thinking, I’m of an age where I can play this character, the mother, who’s got true Yorkshire grit to her.
“I love her songs, If I Met Myself Again and He’s My Boy, and all the words in those songs resonate with me. With having my son there as well, I know how he feels, having just done his Proms.
“I love how Margaret is so supportive of Jamie and never wants him to feel any of that negativity that he experiences from his dad. What she does is everything you would want to her to do as a mum in that situation.
“Any mum in the audience will sit there thinking, ‘I hope that’s how I am with my child’, even though Jamie’s mum does question it, worrying if he will be bullied.”
Jamie, like Billy Liar’s Billy Fisher and Kes’s Billy Casper, is a young Yorkshire dreamer, one who must overcome prejudice, beat the bullies and “step out of the darkness into the spotlight”. Harvey has experienced bullying. “It can be anything, online bullying, but I don’t care what they say online. That just gets a block from me,” he says.
From September, Harvey will study musical theatre at SLP College in Garforth, his next step after taking GCSEs in Maths, English, Art, History and Salon (hair-styling). First, however, everybody will be talking about his Jamie from July 22.
Pick Me Up Theatre in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Joseph Rowntree Theatre York, July 22 to 26, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Michael Cornell’s dame, Gertrude Gander, making her point to Gemma McDonald’s Jack in Rowntree Players’ Mother Goose. Picture: Howard Ella
IN the words of director Howard Ella, Mother Goose is “the dame’s pantomime”. Boldly, he casts Michael Cornell in the role of Gertrude Gander in his dame debut after his Ugly Sister double act as Miranda to Jamie McKeller’s Cassandra in last winter’s Cinderella.
These are big boots to fill after the years of Graham Smith and, before that Barry Benson, father of Josh, comedy turn Muddles alongside Su Pollard’s Carabosse and Lee Mead’s Prince Lee in Darlington Hippodrome’s Sleeping Beauty this winter, should you be wondering.
Cornell’s dame is taller, younger, more elegant on initial impression, than his more rumbustious predecessors, his dame style still finding its feet and tone and his voice its pitch. Whether singing or talking, he shows off a wide vocal range, spectacularly so with his singing, full of operatic drama to go with his natural stage presence. He can carry a dress with aplomb too.
Ella likes an eggy pun and a political jab, also parading a meta-theatre awareness that Mother Goose is not exactly thick with plot by mentioning it brazenly, instead building his pantomime around set-pieces, bright-coloured characterisation and songs aplenty, both familiar and less so.
For those about to rock: Jamie McKeller’s guitar-wielding Demon Blackheart and Laura McKeller’s Bob Bingalong in Mother Goose. Picture: Howard Ella
A topical thread runs through the show’s core as Gertie comes to realise the folly of pursuing fame and fortune, after swapping scratching a living from her Wolds farm’s hen pens for the bright lights of Doncaster’s club scene. Doncaster?!
Meanwhile, co-writer and comic turn Gemma McDonald loves the sound of breaking wind, letting rip at every mention of dishy farmer Kev (principal boy Sara Howlett) being the King of Kale. Her daft lad Jack, with his Billy Bremner hair, strawberry cheeks and looning clown face, is as irrepressible as ever, bonding delightfully with Cornell’s Gertie, Jack mucking about at every opportunity when the dame is seeking to assert motherly authority.
Howlett’s farmer Kev is a classic principal boy, each slapping of a thigh being met with Kev being framed in a spotlight and breaking into a toothpaste-perfect smile. There is a pleasing self-awareness to this handsome performance, coupled with chemistry with Laura Castle’s ever-enthusiastic, humorous Jill, recalling their performance in John Godber’s Teechers Leavers ’22 at the JoRo in 2023.
Partnerships abound in Ella’s production, always a good resource for engendering humour, and key to this show are two such double acts: Cornell’s Gertie with American Abbey Follansbee’s Priscilla the Goose and Jamie and Laura McKeller, from the Deathly Dark Tour ghost walks, teaming up as the villainous Demon Darkheart and his deadpan sidekick Bob Bingalong.
Whisking up egg puns: Gemma McDonald’s Jack with Laura Castle’s Jill in Mother Goose
Follansbee has graduated from the Cinderella chorus line to being the golden egg-laying goose on the loose, American accent, big bustle, orange leggings et al, and she brings a song-and-dance flourish to Priscilla in tandem with Cornell.
The McKellers spend time aplenty on the dark side in their nocturnal version of a Deathly day job, but always delivered with more than a dash of humour, and that sense of dark comedy infuses both Jamie’s thespian, shock-haired Darkheart, debt collector and purveyor of the dark arts, and Laura’s dogsbody Bob, a Yorkshire spin on Tony Robinson’s Baldrick in Blackaddder, and no less full of dim suggestions. Laura reveals rather a fine singing voice too.
The principal cast is completed by Holly Smith’s Fairy Frittata with her flow of rhyming couplets and perennially perky interjections. Throughout, choreographer Ami Carter keeps principal dancers, senior chorus and junior teams busy with ensemble routines that fill the stage with more buzz than a beehive, while the animated James Robert Ball is a highly watchable, always engaged musical director.
He extracts fantastic musicianship from his players, who include fellow keyboardist Sam Johnson, whose outstanding musical arrangements are surely worthy of a professional production.
Holly Smith’s Fairy Frittata, left, Sara Howlett’s Kev, the King of Kale, Laura Castle’s Jill, Michael Cornell’s Gertrude Gander, Gemma McDonald’s Jack, Laura McKeller’s Bob Bingalong and Jamie McKeller’s Demon Darkheart in Rowntree Players’ Mother Goose
Out of view but deserving a sustained round of applause are Katie Maloney on reeds, James Lolley on trumpet, James Stockdale on trombone, Micky Moran on guitar, Georgia Johnson on bass and Joel Fergusson on drums. Lena Ella and her costume team deliver the goods as ever.
A quick mention too for a welcome innovation: last Saturday’s matinee was the first interpreted and captioned performance of a panto at the JoRo, presented with interpreter Dave Wycherley and captioner Margaret Hansard in collaboration with York charity Lollipop, Stage Text and ToylikeMe.
Likewise, touch tours for blind and visually impaired theatregoers were provided on Sunday and will be again tomorrow night (10/12/2024). Always a community show, these new additions make it all the more so.
Rowntree Players present Mother Goose at Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly, Tuesday to Saturday, plus 2pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Michael Cornell’s Gertrude Gander and Gemma McDonald’s Jack in Rowntree Players’ Mother Goose
LET the egg puns get cracking when Rowntree Players launch their rollicking romp of a 2024 pantomime, Mother Goose, at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight.
The plot? Meet Jack (Gemma McDonald), head of hens at Chucklepatch Farm, with its newest addition to the coop, Priscilla the goose (American Abbey Follansbee). Joined by mum Gertrude Gander (alias Mother Goose, Michael Cornell) and his sister Jill (Laura Castle), they head out on their panto adventure.
Desperate for the showbiz life, Gertrude gives up the Wolds for the bright lights of Doncaster. However, ever-nasty landlord Demon Darkheart (Jamie McKeller, alias Deathly Dark Tour ghost walk host Dr Dorian Deathly) and his assistant Bob (Laura McKeller) will stop at nothing to collect rent, but dishy farmer Kev, the King of Kale (Sarah Howlett) and Fairy Frittata (Holly Smith) will not let the dark side rule.
Traditional casting, still with a female principal boy, combines with modernity in the Players’ panto. “We’ve gone down the fame and fortune route with Mother Goose; less judgemental on the look, more judgemental on the pursuit of fame and fortune, which is so much part of the modern age,” says director and co-writer Howard Ella.
“Pantomime keeps evolving as the national outlook changes and the politics change, ” says director and co-writer Howard Ella. “It’s that constant dynamic tension between tradition and relevance, and if you get it right, you have a very happy audience – but if you get it wrong, you can upset people.
“It’s not about being right-on; it’s about accessing each particular audience. You have to reach the broadest audience, and that constant challenge is what keeps our show fresh.”
After playing Ugly Sister Miranda to Jamie McKeller’s Cassandra in Cinderella last year, Michael Cornell steps into the dame’s boots vacated by long-serving Graham Smith, who chose not to audition this year.
On the dark side: Jamie McKeller’s Demon Darkheart and Laura McKeller’s Bob Bingalong in Mother Goose
“It’s a different set-up from Ugly Sister, doing it on his own as the dame,” says Howard. “The joy, the challenge, is that it’s Mother Goose; it’s the dame’s show, whereas Cinderella, for example, is essentially Buttons’ show.
“The fact that Michael is a triple threat – singer, actor, dancer, well, almost dancer! – means it’s a completely different take to Graham’s dame or Barry Benson’s dame before that. He knows it’s the dame’s show and that energy is a real buzz.
“There’s a point where the dame is out there for 30 pages, so she’s the glue, the engine behind the show.”
Abbey Follansbee graduates from the chorus line in Cinderella to play Priscilla the goose. That name? “She’s from the USA,” says Howard. “I don’t want to give too much away, other than to say she’s a tour de force as the goose.
“Mother Goose is fairly light on plot, so the challenge is how do you tell the story and how do you do the goose? “The plot takes you down a line and you just follow it; Abbey’s goose, Priscilla, just becomes livelier and livelier, and cheekier too, and yes, the goose will have an American accent!
“Leni [Ella] and Jackie [Holmes] have been working on the goose’s costume and they’ve created an amazing combo of dress and costume, with a big bustle, flying hat and goggles, so it’s impressionistic.”
Howard is joined for a third year in the writing team by the show’s regular clown-faced comic character, Gemma McDonald. “Gemma is as full of daftness and energy as ever. Where does she get all that energy from?! How she has this unbounding energy, as I get older and older by comparison, is unfathomable.
Laura Castle’s Jill, Michael Cornell’s Gertrude Gander and Gemma McDonald’s Jack in Mother Goose
“Each writing partnership is different, though I can’t let go of the steering wheel, but you need a bright mind to bounce ideas off, because there’s so much riffing in panto comedy,” he says. “Gemma’s enjoyment of the puerile absolutely counters my more sophisticated comic taste!
“I like a good pun; she likes a ripping fart gag, and you need both. The battle is keeping it fresh, and so much of that comes from the cast because our show has gradually revolved and resolved.”
The 2024 cast features not only Jamie McKeller, alias ghost tour host Dr Dorian Deathly, as the villainous Demon Darkheart, but also his partner in Deathly Dark Tours, Laura McKeller, as his deadpan assistant, Bob Bingalong.
“Playing the villain is Jamie’s natural space but he constantly works on freshening it up and bringing new things to it, developing it in rehearsals. Having Laura there by his side has brought another dynamic to it: a push-and-pull partnership.”
Howard draws attention to the bond of York Mix radio presenter Laura Castle’s Jill and Sara Howlett’s Kev, the King of Kale. “Laura is really good at what she does, with proper comedy bones. She and Sara really bonded in the John Godber play they did together [Teechers in March 2023], and you can feel that on stage, so we milk that chemistry of them knowing each other so well,” he says.
“Holly Smith, who plays Fairy Frittata, was in Shakers with Laura, so it’s like having all the alumni from Jamie McKeller’s Godber productions in this year’s panto. The cast are a real company with no ego, so rehearsals have been an absolute dream.”
The musical director is James Robert Ball, sparking up Sam Johnson’s arrangements to the max. “Sam’s arrangements are phenomenal,” says Howard. “When I find a song that I think will work in panto, I can say to him, ‘Can you ‘panto-fy it with cow bells or whatever?’.
Sara Howlett’s farmer Kev, the King of Kale, and Laura Castle’s Jill in Rowntree Players’ Mother Goose. “We milk the chemistry of them knowing each other so well,” says director Howard Ella
“James’s great talent is to get the ‘noise’ out of people when they perform. It’s amazing to watch. He’s one of the most gifted musicians I’ve met.”
Ami Carter provides the choreography once more. “Or ‘the long-suffering choreographer Ami Carter’, I should say, putting up with me interfering left, right and centre!” says Howard.
“Look at the strength of the team we’ve built up over the past 15 years. I might be the Pied Piper at the front, but this pantomime is the sum of all its parts.
“We also remain lucky that we have a workshop and prop store, and we’re very conscious that for a modern am-dram company to have those properties is really rare, enabling us to put on a pantomime as near to professional standards as possible, but, boy, does it rely on teamwork.”
Saturday’s opening matinee marks the launch of a new initiative by the Rowntree Players. “It will be our first-ever captioned and signed performance, spearheaded by Gemma [McDonald] and Abbey [Follansbee], with captions and signing on stage, all being done in conjunction with Lollipop [the York charity that offers opportunities for children and young people with any degree of deafness from mild to profound and their families to meet and build friendships with others].
“We will also have touch tours for blind and visually impaired theatregoers, with an audio introduction to give them a description of the sets and costumes, on Sunday and Tuesday. This is a big step for us and for the Joseph Rowntree Theatre too, and we’re delighted to be doing it.”
Rowntree Players in Mother Goose, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, December 7 to 14.Performances: today, 2pm (limited ticket availability) and 7.30pm (limited); Sunday, 2pm (last few tickets) and 6pm (limited); December 10, 7.30pm (limited); December 11, 7.30pm (limited), December 12 (last few tickets); December 13, 7.30pm (limited); December 14, 2pm (sold out) and 7.30pm (last few tickets). Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Holly Smith’s Fairy Frittata, left, Sara Howlett’s Kev, the King of Kale, Laura Castle’s Jill, Michael Cornell’s Gertrude Gander, Gemma McDonald’s Jack, Laura McKeller’s Bob Bingalong and Jamie McKeller’s Demon Darkheart in Rowntree Players’ Mother Goose
Jamie McKeller’s Cassandra, Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Fairy Carabosse and Michael Cornell’s Miranda performing I Know Him So Well in Rowntree Players’ Cinderella. Picturee: Angela Shaw, York Camera Club
UNLIKE Cinders, you will not go to the ball…unless you have acquired a ticket already. Cinderella has sold out, reward for the ever-rising pantomime pizzazz of Howard Ella’s community capers.
Cinderella may be the most popular of all pantos, but it is the most difficult to write, he contends, on account of the need to fit in so much. “The story is so loved, so full of plot points and favourite moments, it’s very hard to put your own spin on things,” Ella says in the programme notes.
Then add “the breaking of panto norms”: the dame making way for two Ugly Sisters, baddies rather than goodies to boot. Regular dame Graham Smith decided to take a year’s sabbatical, and in his stead comes the new double act of Jamie McKeller, last winter’s Sheriff of Nottingham, re-booted as Cassandra, and Michael Cornell as Miranda, both shaving off their beards but still with a hint of stubble to go with their trouble-making in matching costumes.
Gemma McDonald: Even busier as co-writer as well as show-steering Buttons in Cinderella. Picture: Angela Shaw, York Camera Club
They know each other from bygone days, and they work in step as pleasingly as Layton and Nikita’s Strictly Charleston last Saturday.
Typically spot-on casting by Ella, who has a new writing partner by his side too in Gemma McDonald, the Players’ long-serving daft lass with the auburn bubble-perm clown’s hair and rouge cheeks.
Still on delightfully dimwit duty as Buttons, she carries the heaviest comedy load as usual, leading the slapstick shenanigans in tandem with the Ugly Sisters in the hotel spa, breaking down the fourth wall to bond with the audience, ragging them when they are too slow to respond.
Ella suggests that Buttons is “really the story lead”, and McDonald’s ever-energetic, ever-cheeky performance backs that up.
Sara Howlett’s Cinderella and Laura Castle’s wave-wanding Fairy Flo in Cinderella
The writers were keen to avoid the danger of Cinderella’s traditional story feeling dated while wanting to be respectful to tradition too: hence Prince Charming and Dandini still being played by women, on the one hand, but Barry Johnson’s Baron Hardup owning the rundown Hotel Windy End (cue bottom burp gags from Buttons and corrections on the pronunciation), on the updated other.
This is very much a Yorkshire Cinderella, playing to its York setting at every opportunity. Radio presenter Laura Castle, so impressive in John Godber’s Teechers at the JoRo in March, makes for a feisty, no-nonsense Fairy Flo, while Teechers’ co-star Sophie Bullivant brings personality to the often dry role of Dandini, especially enjoying her switch with Hannah King’s thigh-slapping Prince Charming.
King’s singing is as strong as ever, not least in partnership with Sara Howlett’s resolute Cinderella in the ensemble number Omigod (a splendid lift from Legally Blonde The Musical). Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Fairy Carabosse takes the singing honours, first in It’s All About Me, then in Three Evil Dames with McKeller and Cornell.
Fill that stage! Rowntree Players in an ensemble routine from Cinderella. Note the pun-named plumber on the backdrop. Picture: Angela Shaw, York Camera Club
Johnson’s Baron, Geoff Walker’s lackey Flunkit and Jeanette Hunter’s Queen of Hearts, the Prince’s mother, bring bags of experience and panto panache to these support roles; Bernie Calpin completes a trinity of fairies, and Ami Carter’s exuberant choreography finds the principal dancers, senior chorus and young teams in boisterous form.
Highlights? Cinderella’s transformation scene with Fairy Flo, unicorn-powered carriage et al, is a picture indeed, and what better way to open Act Two than with McDonald leading the show’s best ensemble routine, Flash Bang Wallop What A Picture, followed by Cinderella, Prince Charming and the ensemble revelling in Shut Up And Dance. The hits keep coming with Fairy Carabosse, Cassandra and Miranda sending up I Know Him So Well.
Ella gained Tommy Cannon’s permission to reprise a Cannon & Ball slapstick classic, as Cinderella, Cassandra and Miranda push, pull and drag each other off a wall while striving to sing a romantic ballad. Howlett, McKeller and Cornell look exhausted from all their exertions, the audience cheers rising with each tussle.
Spot the difference: Jamie McKeller’s Cassandra and Michael Cornell’s Miranda in matching costumes as things turn Ugly for the shopaholic sisters in Rowntree Players’ Cinderella. Picture: Angela Shaw, York Camera Club
The costume team of coordinator Leni Ella, Andrea Dillon, Jackie Holmes and Claire Newbald adds fun and flair to the finery, while set designers Howard Ella, Anna Jones, Paul Mantle and Lee Smith turn their hands to all manner of scenes with aplomb.
Musical director James Robert Ball’s band fires up pop hits and musical favourites alike with dynamic delivery, aided by fellow keyboard player Jessica Viner providing the musical orchestrations with her customary zest.
Difficult to write? Maybe, but Ella and McDonald’s setpiece-driven Cinderella is a joyous, riotous start to the York pantomime season.
Performances: 7.30pm plus 2pm Saturday matinee, all sold out. Box office for returns only: 01904 501935.
Travelling by unicorn: Sara Howlett’s Cinderella, aboard her carriage, heads for Prince Charming’s ball
Laura Castle’s Fairy Flo, left, Gemma McDonald’s Buttons, Hannah King’s Prince Charming, Sara Howlett’s Cinderella, Jamie McKeller’s Cassandra, Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Wicked Queen and Michael Cornell’s Miranda in Rowntree Players’ Cinderella
ROWNTREE Players are heading for a sold-out pantomime run of Cinderella with only ‘limited availability’ or ‘last few tickets’ notices for each performance.
Co-written by regular writer-director Howard Ella and delightfully daft comedy dipstick Gemma McDonald in a new creative partnership, this rollicking panto romp will run from Saturday to December 16 at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, Haxby Road, York.
“When we launched our panto tickets in August, we had record-breaking sales on the first day,” says Gemma, who will be playing Buttons. “We sold the equivalent of a whole show within the first two days and they’ve just kept on selling.”
“I’ve been learning from the best,” she says of her experience of teaming up with Howard on script duties. “It’s hard work to get a script right, and you don’t realise the processes you have to go through to achieve that until you face them.”
Howard says: “For me, that awareness comes from doing repertory panto all those years ago in Harrogate when it was a traditional family show,” he says. “Writing a panto now, I want to keep the innocence for children but with those cheeky double entendres for parents and adults in the audience.
“How do you do that in 2023, keeping it relevant and challenging without it being too challenging, because you do have to get the balance right between being challenging and getting bums on seats? That’s not an easy line to tread, but we’ve managed to do it.
Picture this: Rowntree Players’ pantomime cast members face the camera in the rehearsal room
“Not forgetting that by making our panto profitable, we support Rowntree Players’ ability to put on plays each year that are challenging, rather than just doing the same old plays, and we’re proud to follow that fading principle in theatre.
“We’ve pretty much doubled our audiences over the past 12 years, and hopefully that’s down to the quality and wide appeal of our pantos, but you can never rest on your laurels, and we all know that the York panto landscape has changed over the past few years [with veteran dame Berwick Kaler’s transfer to the Grand Opera House and Evolution Productions teaming up with York Theatre Royal].”
Howard notes how York theatregoers are very supportive of community and amateur productions. “People go to all see all sorts of groups putting on all sorts of shows, which feels like a really healthy eco-system,” he says.
“For Rowntree Players, we’re lucky to have a theatre like the Rowntree Theatre with a decent capacity and good stage facilities, so we have a professional structure for staging shows, building a relationship with the theatre where we can push ourselves to the limit with the support of the theatre and all those volunteers who make it so special.”
Gemma adds: “Over the years, we’ve built a diverse team with diverse skills to run our panto, who work so hard together, such as our engineer Lee Smith, who has welding skills to help us to design things like a magic carpet rig, which everyone else would hire in. We couldn’t do that, but with Lee, we can make things, and so our imagination grows as to what we can do.”
Cinderella has proved “the most difficult” of Howard’s pantomimes for him to write. “Coming from York and having watched Berwick Kaler’s pantos, we all like to mess with the plot, but Cinderella has so many plot points you have to cover, and culturally accepted norms you have to cover, that when you try to have fun with it, there’s not much room to do that when you have to get all that in.
Howard Ella: Rowntree Players’ pantomime director and co-writer
“In pantomime, the easiest comedy flows between the dame and the comic, but in Cinderella it’s harder to work out where the humour flows when the dame is replaced by two baddies, the Ugly Sisters. It’s the most demanding of all pantomime writing experiences but when you get there, it’s the most rewarding.”
Regular dame Graham Smith is taking a year out, and instead Ugly Sisters Cassandra and Miranda will be a partnership of last year’s villain, Jamie McKellar, alias York ghost-walk guide and spookologist Dr Dorian Deathly, and Michael Cornell. “They know each other of old,” says Howard. “That’s not why they’ve been cast together, but it clearly helped in the auditions.
“When we learned that Jamie, who’s a very experienced actor, was properly up for playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in Babes In The Wood last year, we were delighted. Panto is fun to do but it’s hard work too, where you can break the fourth wall as the villain, but you can’t be too funny, and he was clearly right for the role.
“This year it will be different again, as Graham wanted a year out, and we’ll see Jamie in a new guise as Ugly Sister.”
Sara Howlett’s Cinderella, Hannah King’s Prince Charming, Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Wicked Queen and Jeanette Hunter’s Queen of Hearts need no introduction to Rowntree Players panto regulars.
Graham Smith’s Dame Harmony Humperdinck and Gemma McDonald’s Kurt Jester in 2022’s Babes In The Wood. Graham is taking a year’s break from panto; Gemma is adding co-writing duties to her familiar role as comic in Cinderella
Look out too for Sophie Bullivant and radio presenter Laura Castle, such a hit together in Rowntree Players’ March production of John Godber’s Teechers, now playing Dandini and Fairy Flo respectively.
“What’s interesting is that everyone read the script in a way I hadn’t thought of at the first readthrough, which really shook the script up and made me look at it in a different way,” says Howard of a show also featuring 12 numbers under James Robert Ball’s musical direction and a dozen dance routines choreographed by Ami Carter.
“We’re conscious that we have a regular gang in the panto but that we always have to make sure to give others an opportunity, both in the ensemble and with two Ugly Sisters giving us an ‘extra dame’ this year, it’s been the perfect opportunity to open it up,” says Howard.
“If you just work with familiar relationships within the cast, it can make you lazy, so having new faces makes you up your game, particularly when directing.”
Gemma concludes: “We have a mixture of old and new faces in the cast this year, which is really nice,” says Gemma. “It’s a really strong ensemble and that’s exactly what Cinderella needs.”
Rowntree Players present Cinderella, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, December 9 to 16, except December 11. Performances: December 9, 2pm and 7.30pm; December 10, 2pm and 6pm; December 12 to 15, 7.30pm; December 16, 2pm (sold out) and 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 501395 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Rowntree Players pantomime players in rehearsal for Cinderella
Who is in Rowntree Players’ principal cast for Cinderella?
Cinderella: Sara Howlett
Buttons:Gemma McDonald
Baron Hardup: Barry Johnson
Wicked Queen: Marie-Louise Surgenor
Cassandra:Jamie McKeller
Miranda:Michael Cornell
Fairy Flo: Laura Castle
Queen of Hearts: Jeanette Hunter
Prince Charming: Hannah King
Dandini: Sophie Bullivant
Flunkit: Geoff Walker
Head Fairy – Bernie Calpin
Production team
Director: Howard Ella
Choreographer: Ami Carter
Musical director: James Robert Ball
Writers: Howard Ella and Gemma McDonald
Shoe-in for success: Rowntree Players’ poster for Cinderella, heading for full houses
Double the fun: Graham Smith’s Dame Harmony Humperdinck and Gemma McDonald’s Kurt Jester in Babes In The Wood
Babes In The Wood, Rowntree Players, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight until Friday, 7.30pm (last few tickets for first three, limited availability for Friday); Saturday, 2pm (last few) and 7.30pm (limited). Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
HOWARD Ella reckons this is the best of the 13 Rowntree Players pantomimes under his writer-directorship. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he, but he does have a point. This is a case of 13th time, luckier still, for family audiences at the York community theatre.
For a start, Babes In The Wood is two shows for the price of one: weaving Robin Hood and his merry band, Sherwood Forest and the Sheriff into the fairy tale of those two poor orphans abandoned in woodland by their wicked uncle.
Don’t be hood-winked by the show title. It is rather more Robin’s story and characters that dominate,including distaff variations on a theme, while accommodating the misfortunes of Hansel (Henry Cullen/Fergus Green) and Gretel (Maddie Chalk/Ayda Mooney) in their Gingerbread House, cooked sweeter and cuter than in the dark fable of yore.
Now, Robin (Hannah King) takes on not only a rescue mission to free Maid Marion (Marie-Louise Surgenor) from the tower and the clutches of the Sheriff of Nottingham (Jamie McKeller) and sidekick Will Snatchell (Joe Marucci), but also vows to find Hansel and Gretel.
Double the trouble: Joe Marucci’s Will Snatchell and Jamie McKeller’s Sheriff of Nottingham
For Friar Tuck, read Freya Tuck (Meg Badrick), and so on through the Merry Band of Alana Dale (Keelie Newbold) Georgie Green (Erin Willis), Jill Scarlett (Mollie Surgenor/Eva Howe) and Little Joan (Libby Roe/Charla Banks).
Put them together with King’s traditional, thigh-slapping yet somehow girl-power principal boy Robin Hood and suddenly they are aping SIX The Musical in Six, a musical number that makes great play of the sisterhood buzz musical of the decade (already booked in for June 27 to July 2 return to the Grand Opera House next summer, by the way).
Musicals are a running theme to the song-and-dance numbers in Ella and musical director Jessica Viner fast-moving show, from the opening Hairspray ensemble routine (Good Morning Sherwood Town) to Dirty Rotten’s echo of Something Rotten.
Best of all is Musical, all singing, all dancing and all seven minutes of it, led by Gemma McDonald’s cheeky, chipper, cartoonesque Kurt Jester, who lost her voice at Friday’s dress rehearsal but thankfully called on Doctor Theatre to see her through two shows on Saturday.
Howard Ella: Rowntree Players’ pantomime writer-director
The comic (bubble-haired McDonald) and the dame (Graham Smith’s slightly grumpy but lovable ‘Humpy’, alias Dame Harmony Humperdinck) are no longer chained to working in the Sheriff’s castle, but freelance travelling actors instead.
One is the greatest Shakespearean actor of her age, with an ego to match; the other is a comic extraordinaire in the daft jester tradition. Both have a licence to be loose cannons and pretty much run the show in their unruly way.
King’s Robin and Surgenor’s Maid Marion deliver a knockout Without Love in the tower by the No Exit sign, after Marion knocks back Robin’s demand to do a Rapunzel with her hair, whereupon Robin recourses to a ladder entry through the open window. Physical comedy in the classic English tradition.
Ella loves a pun, a political dig (for example, “Party?”. Correction: “Work gathering”) and partnerships too: not only the regular double act of Smith & McDonald and principal boy and girl King and Surgenor, but also a new combination of McKeller and Marucci, actors with previous form for Rowntree Players, but now venturing into the dark side, albeit to self-delusional comic effect as the topically tax-hiking Sheriff and the dimwitted, snatch-all Snatchell.
Hannah King’s Robin Hood and Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Maid Marion
McKeller is particularly inspired casting. Now making his name on the streets of York as ghostwalk host Doctor Dorian Deathly, he returns to his former stamping ground to make a big imprint with his gleefully dastardly Sheriff, eyebrows arched, voice arch, stage walk swaggering. “There’s still a touch of showbiz lurking behind the venom,” as Ella puts it and he’s spot on.
The comic and the dame nail the slapstick sludge scene; Viner’s musical band are as merry as Robin’s band; the senior chorus and young Blue/Red Team (Red on Saturday night) lap up every ensemble scene, and Ami Carter’s choreography is all dash, nothing slapdash.
Ella and his fellow set designers Paul Mantle and scenic artist Anna Jones have excelled too for the tower and forest alike. Andrea Dillon and Claire Newbold have fun with the costumes, for the pink-fixated dame as ever, but doubly so for the Merry Band in the Six pastiche.
You will love the all-action songsheet number too in a production that comes with genuine icing on the cake: a snow-topped roof from a past panto now repurposed to the dame’s mocking as the Gingerbread House.
Knocked for Six: The Merry Band mirroring SIX The Musical in Babes In The Wood
Hannah King’s Robin Hood in Rowntree Players’ Babes In The Wood
ROWNTREE Players’ rollicking romp of a pantomime, Babes In The Wood, will roll two shows into one at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, from December 3 to 10.
Let writer-director Howard Ella explain: “We’re combining the stories of Robin Hood and Babes In The Wood. Two tales in one means there’s a lot for me to play with.
“Our beautifully hand-crafted panto promises fun from start to finish with traditional characters intertwined with a modern twist. There’ll be lots of fun for the whole family with the traditional slapstick routines, audience participation and of course, a love story: everything you would expect and want from a pantomime.”
Hannah King’s Robin Hood and Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Maid Marion
Facing the challenge of writing a new panto script for each winter, Howard says: “It takes a lot of head scratching to keep an element of freshness and originality around the traditional stories and the old – but lovingly recycled – jokes.
“The constant drive and annual re-invigoration come from bringing a talented and enthusiastic team together on and off stage.”
As always, Rowntree Players promise adventurous showstopper dance numbers to “have you dancing until Christmas”, having produced dazzling routines over the years showcasing York’s dancing talent.
Cast members in rehearsal for a dance routine in Babes In The Wood
Choreographer Ami Carter says: “It’s hard to pick just one number to be my favourite routine, because there are always moments from all the routines over the years that stick out in my mind – usually because it was a crazy idea that ended up working out really well – such as making a ship from people in Sinbad or having a troupe of dancers emerge from a fireplace in Cinderella.
“So far this year, I think my favourite is ‘Musical’, simply because I love the effect of all those musical references happening one after the other. The audience are in for a real treat with this seven-minute number.”
Howard has chosen very ambitious numbers for this year’s cast to sing, but that comes naturally for newly married musical director Jessica Viner (nee Douglas), who is a regular MD on York’s musical theatre circuit and also teaches and inspires the city’s next generation of musicians.
Double act at the ready: Graham Smith’s Dame Harmony Humperdinck and Gemma McDonald’s Kurt Jester
“I’m super-fortunate that my hobby and job are all rolled up into one as a freelance MD and pit musician,” she says. “As part of that, I teach at York Stage School and I’m also a peripatetic instrumental teacher at a school in Harrogate.”
For Babes In The Wood, Rowntree Players will be utilising a nine-piece band. “They are all so talented, so audiences are in for a real treat,” says Jessica.
Hannah King’s Robin Hood will be joined by a Merry Band of Meg Badrick, Keelie Newbold, Erin Willis, Charla Banks, Libby Roe, Mollie Surgenor and Eva Howe as they take on Jamie McKeller’s Sheriff of Nottingham and his all-too-regular tax hikes with his sidekick, Joe Marucci’s Will Snatchall.
Piling on the pain: Jamie McKeller’s Sheriff of Nottingham, right, and his sidekick in tax-hiking evil, Joe Marucci’s Will Snatchall
Adding to the merriment will be the familiar sight of Graham Smith’s Dame Harmony Humperdinck and Gemma McDonald’s Kurt Jester, entertainers extraordinaire who tour the land with their cabaret double act to help to save Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Maid Marion and the Babes in the Wood (Fergus Green, Ayda Mooney, Henry Cullen and Maddie Chalk).
The prospect of silly jokes, big musical numbers, slapstick and good old-fashioned family fun has led to tickets selling well already, prompting the advice to not delay in booking.
“It’s the perfect way to kick off Christmas,” says Howard. “Watch a show then go home and put up your tree. It’s what we all do.”
Rowntree Players in Babes In The Wood, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, December 3 to 10. Performances: December 3, 2pm (last few tickets) and 7.30pm; December 4, 2pm (limited availability) and 6pm; December 6 (limited), December 7 (limited), December 8 (last few); December 9, 7.30pm; December 10, 2pm (last few) and 7.30pm (limited). Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Babes In The Wood writer-director Howard Ella in the rehearsal room
CharlesHutchPress puts Rowntree Players writer-director Howard Ella in the pantomime spotlight ahead of Babes In The Wood’s first night
What makes Robin Hood and Babes In The Wood better for interweaving the two storylines, Howard?
“Robin Hood is a great, and ultimately, very traditional story. It’s very basic in its journey, and so being able to add some elements in the form of the Babes in the Wood helps broaden the story telling.
“It gives Robin heroic motivation that is broader than wooing Marion and, because it involves a younger cast, it opens up opportunities to take on larger roles. Of course, the original Hansel and Gretel story is incredibly dark, so I take a huge sidestep and some significant creative liberties!”
What will be the “new twists” you mentioned?
“There’s some twists this year in terms of casting choices and of course the plot goes off on tangents that aren’t wholly (or sometimes remotely) loyal to the initial storytelling. It’s not irreverence that drives that, but a push to keep things fresh and fun.
“Details on the twists? Well, no spoilers – you need to come and see the show – but as a taster, the Dame and comic this year no longer work in the Sheriff’s castle, but are travelling actors: Dame Harmony Humperdinck, the greatest Shakespearean actor of her age (and what an age!) and Kurt Jester, comic extraordinaire.”
What will be the fresh features of this pantomime?
“It’s not just originality in the set that lets us renew every season but also our approach to set design. We’re so lucky to be one of the few amateur companies in the country to have a full set-building store with engineers, carpenters and the most amazing scenic painter – all volunteers working year-round on our productions.
“This year, for the first time, all of our scenery, every single glittered gem of a piece, has been designed and made for us by that team. Add to that the amazing costumes our team pull together and we have a show that really is a dazzler.”
Jamie McKeller: Change of gear for actor and ghost tour host, swapping from Doctor Dorian Deathly’s haunted streets of York to spreading evil on the JoRo boards
How important is the elixir of panto right now, given the doom, gloom and financial strictures of the winter ahead and beyond?
“It’s hard to keep positive given the doom and gloom of the wider world and financial forecasts. Escapism, now and then, is an important rejuvenator in trying times. The magic of going to the theatre, specifically the elixir of panto, is such a good way to reboot together with friends and family, to laugh and tap your feet and be reminded of the positives there are in community, opportunity and good old fart gags!
“A night at the panto lasts far longer than two and a half hours. The kids will be talking about the characters for weeks, the adults will leave humming the tunes, and the dads will be recycling my handcrafted, yet ultimately silly jokes for years to come!”
What will be the big musical numbers in Babes In The Wood?
“There’s a phrase… ’Self indulgence is better than no indulgence at all’. Well, that’s certainly true about the choice of music in panto. Musical theatre is a great passion of mine and so panto is an opportunity to play with all my favourite show tunes and perform some fun pastiches of various shows.
“This year we tackle a seven minute-long beast of a number and the dame [Graham Smith] hits some dizzy heights in Act 2. We’ve got hints of Hairspray, Something Rotten, Gypsy, Wicked. It’s a real tour of showstoppers!”
How did you sign up Jamie McKeller, alias York ghost tour host Dorian Deathly, to play the villian?
“This year, as well as giving a lot of our younger company a chance to step into new roles, we have some exciting first-timers. The amazing Jamie McKeller and Joe Marucci have landed the roles of the Sheriff and his henchman respectively.
“Both are Rowntree Players alumni, having been in several plays over the years, but it’s a first foray into the ludicrous for both. It’s especially pleasing for us to have Jamie, aka Dorian Deathly, the award-winning York spookologist, playing it evil in panto. Although there’s still a touch of showbiz lurking behind the venom.”
Forest tomfoolery: Gemma McDonald’s Kurt Jester
Plenty of familiar faces are brought back together in the cast: Hannah King’s principal boy Robin Hood opposite Marie-Louise Surgenor’s Maid Marion; Graham Smith’s dame and Gemma McDonald’s daft lass. Audiences enjoy such partnerships….Discuss!
“Of course, along with new faces are some older ones. Some older than others! There’s a balance between keeping it fresh and building a winning team. Pantomime is one of those genres where audiences return and enjoy familiar faces and some annual in-jokes.
“Added to that is the relationships the cast members build. None is as important as that between ‘Dame’ and ‘Comic’. For us that is Graham and Gemma who, despite the rigorous audition process, have managed to be cast together for several years. That shorthand, trust, comic timing, audience understanding and ability to let a script ebb and flow is a vital backbone to a strong pantomime.”
What do you most enjoy about directing the Rowntree Players in pantomimes?
“Pantomime for everyone is a huge commitment and pretty all-consuming in the run-up to Christmas. For me, it’s become a year-long process of writing, casting, then going into pre-production, directing the show and overseeing the visual and technical elements.
“It’s a stretch to balance off against work in London and actually being at home sometimes, but it feeds the creative control freak in me.
“The process is so incredibly rewarding but there are two hugely satisfying elements. Firstly, I can invent whatever silly, nonsensical story, characters and scenarios I fancy and the team of talented, dedicated and, ultimately, incredibly patient volunteers bring it to life. We’re back to the self-indulgence thing.
“Secondly, and most importantly, we introduce a bunch of young people to the stage. Often from the age of nine or ten until they drift off into adulthood, we all get to share in their growth in confidence, talent and height and, I hope, skills they can use later on in life on or off the stage. Watching those performers get stronger every year is the ultimate reward.”
