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More Things To Do in York and beyond as the eyes have it in museum’s new Roman display. List No. 77, courtesy of The Press

The Roman bust, key handle, plumb bob and horse and rider from the Ryedale Hoard at the Yorkshire Museum, York

FROM Roman remnants to re-discovered early Pink Floyd gems, Charles Hutchinson reveals highlights of the week ahead.

Exhibition of the week: The Ryedale Hoard, Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens, York, open daily during half-term, then Tuesday to Saturday from April 25

THE Yorkshire Museum has re-opened with the new exhibition The Ryedale Hoard: A Roman Mystery. For the first time, visitors can see some of Yorkshire’s most significant Roman objects, while exploring an intriguing archaeological mystery: who buried them 1,800 years ago?

Discovered by metal detectorists, on permanent show are a rare bust, made to adorn the top of a sceptre and thought to show Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from AD 161 to 180. An intricate figurine of a horse and rider, probably made in Britain, represents the god Mars.

A horse-shaped handle for a key, for magical purposes, may have been deliberately broken before burial. A plumb bob, large and finely created, would have been a weight for establishing a “plumb” vertical line. To book tickets: yorkshiremuseum.org.

Living for today: Bite My Thumb Theatre Company in Rent The Musical at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre

York musical of the week: Bite My Thumb Theatre Company in Rent The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Thursday to Saturday, 7.30pm

ARTISTIC director Neil Knipe directs Bite My Thumb in a spring tour of Jonathan Larson’s ground-breaking 1994 American musical about falling in love, finding your voice and living for today.

Set in the East Village of New York City, Rent follows a year in the life of a bohemian group of impoverished young artists, struggling to survive as they negotiate their dreams, loves and conflicts. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

 Forever thinking up new rules for Crunchem Hall Primary School: Joshua Lewis’s headmistress Miss Trunchbull in Ryedale Youth Theatre’s Matilda Jr The Musical

Ryedale musical of the week: Ryedale Youth Theatre in Matilda Jr The Musical, Tuesday to Saturday, 7pm; 3pm matinees, Thursday, Friday, Saturday

BORN with astonishing wit, intelligence, a vivid imagination and special powers, school pupil Matilda rebels against the mean, monstrous, rule-ridden regime of headteacher Miss Trunchbull.

Scripted by Dennis Kelly with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin, Matilda Jr is packed with multiple featured roles. Given the profusion of young Ryedale talent, director Chloe Shipley has decided on double casting to give everyone who auditioned the opportunity to perform in the principal parts. Box office: yourboxoffice.co.uk.

BalletBoyz: Deluxe dance delight at Grand Opera House, York, on Monday

Dance return of the week: BalletBoyz Deluxe, Grand Opera House, York, Monday, 7.30pm

MICHAEL Nunn and William Trevitt’s BalletBoyz return to York with what began as the boisterous, bold company’s 20th anniversary show but is now running into a 23rd year.

Eight young dancers interweave in two mesmeric dances, fused with the BalletBoyz’ trademark witty use of film and behind-the-scenes content.

Deluxe features a commission from choreographer Xie Xin and composer Jiang Shaofeng, followed by a collaboration between Punchdrunk’s Maxine Doyle with jazz musician and composer Cassie Kinoshi, from SEED Ensemble. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Dance, dance, wherever they may be, they are the Lord Of The Dance dancers, arriving for a four-night run at York Barbican

Anniversary show of the week: Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance, York Barbican, Monday to Thursday, 8pm

MICHAEL Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance show is “going to the next level” in 2022 for its 25th anniversary travels, wherein high-energy Irish dancing combines with original music, storytelling and sensuality.

Expect new staging, costumes and choreography plus cutting-edge technology, special effects and lighting, in a production featuring 40 young performers directed by Flatley, dancing to new compositions by Gerard Fahy as tradition meets the excitement of the innovative. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

News headliners: Harry Gration and Christine Talbot fronting A Grand Yorkshire Night Out at York Theatre Royal

Yorkshire event of the week: A Grand Yorkshire Night Out with Harry Gration & Christine Talbot, York Theatre Royal, Monday, 7.30pm

YORKSHIRE broadcasting legends Harry Gration and Christine Talbot, formerly of the BBC’s Look North and ITV’s rival Calendar respectively, join forces to host a journey down memory lane on a rare occasion these friends will have presented together.

The duo look back at memorable stories, plus a smattering of their crazier fundraising exploits, from tandem rides and a sofa push to Harry being tied to weather presenter Paul Hudson for days on end. 

Special guests will be production team members from the original All Creatures Great And Small series, Leeds band The Dunwells and Harry’s musical son, Harrison, singing songs from the shows. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Barry Humphries: Revealing The Man Behind The Mask in first performance for three years

Confessions of the week: Barry Humphries, The Man Behind The Mask, Grand Opera House, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm

BARRY Humphries takes to the stage for the first time in three years on Wednesday to reveal The Man Behind The Mask, playing the Grand Opera House in the only Yorkshire show of his 2022 tour

The Australian actor, comedian, satirist, artist, author and national treasure, aged 88, conducts a revelatory trip through his colourful life and theatrical career in an intimate, confessional evening, seasoned with highly personal, sometimes startling and occasionally outrageous stories of Dame Edna Everage, Sir Les Patterson, four marriages et al. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets: Re-visiting Pink Floyd’s early days

Pink Floyd show of the week: Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, York Barbican, August 16, 7.30pm

PINK Floyd drummer Nick Mason teams up with Spandau Ballet guitarist Gary Kemp, Guy Pratt, Lee Harris and Dom Beken for this re-arranged show with original tickets still valid.

The 2022 tour finds Mason and co further expanding their repertoire on a journey of Pink Floyd re-discovery, playing songs from their early catalogue up to the 1972 album Obscured By Clouds. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Oh, and another thing

THIS is the second weekend of York Open Studios, 10am to 5pm today and tomorrow. Go discover at yorkopenstudios.co.uk.

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‘You must realise as an actor you’re naturally ridiculous,’ a director told Barry Humphries. Cue Dame Edna and Sir Les

Hat’s off to Barry Humphries for revealing the man behind the mask at the Grand Opera House next Wednesday

BARRY Humphries will reveal The Man Behind The Mask at the Grand Opera House, York, on April 13.

This one-man show comes fully eight years after his supposedly valedictory Yorkshire visit in February 2014, when the creator of Dame Edna Everage presented Eat Pray Laugh!, Barry Humphries’ Farewell Tour in a five-night run at Leeds Grand Theatre.

Now, in the only Yorkshire show of his 2022 tour, the veteran Australian actor, comedian, satirist, artist, author and national treasure will take a revelatory trip through his colourful life and theatrical career in an intimate, confessional evening, seasoned with highly personal, sometimes startling and occasionally outrageous stories of Dame Edna et al.

Peeling off his mask at the age of 88 to introduce the man behind the clown, Humphries says: “This is a show in which I am the principal character; it’s not Les [Sir Les Patterson], it’s not Edna, it’s not Sandy Stone. It is really about this character called ‘me’. I’m not in disguise.”

Superstar Melbourne housewife Dame Edna’s sequined frocks and uncouth Sydney cultural attaché Sir Les’s food-spattered ties may make cameo appearances – or “interruptions” – in film clips, but the primary focus will be on Humphries relating anecdotes and observations from life on and off stage.

“Frankly, I thought it would be a little easier. No need to dress up,” he says. “I’ve had a lot of extremely interesting, colourful, scary, joyous experiences in my life – and I’m quite good with audiences.”

Humphries premiered The Man Behind The Mask in Australia, where it was “very, very successful”. “In a way, it was my out-of-town try-out. Now I’m bringing it here,” he says. “I’ve written the whole show plus a new song called Alone At Last, which would bring a tear to a glass eye.’”

When he appears at the Grand Opera House next Wednesday, Humphries will be setting foot on stage for the first time in nearly three years. Is he scared? “Oh no, I’ll get back in the groove very quickly,” he asserts.

Reflecting on his stage renaissance at 88, Humphries says: “Yes, but it’s not as though I’m going to pass away mid-performance like poor Tommy Cooper. But is it brave? On the contrary, I’ve always thought of myself as quite cowardly. The sound of a cricket bat hitting a ball invariably causes me to duck.”

First and foremost, Humphries’ show is a comedy. “The most important thing is to get that first laugh. Then I’ll be back in my comfort zone,” he says.

Hello, possums! Barry Humphries in superstar Melbourne housewife Dame Edna Everage mode

It was ever thus. After working in the wholesale department at EMI in his native Melbourne for a year in his late teens, he was taken on by Australia’s only touring repertory theatre company and was cast as Prince Orsino in Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night. “Or should I say miscast? I had to wear tights and, when I walked on stage, I thought I heard a titter running round the audience,” recalls Humphries.

“Immediately, I tried to disguise the bottom half of my body. After three performances, the director said that my entrance was terrible. Why was I skulking behind the furniture?

“I explained that I thought my legs were ruining this serious play. He assured me his wife was of the opinion that I had very good legs, but then he added: ‘You must realise as an actor that you’re naturally ridiculous’.”

“Naturally ridiculous”, Barry? “Now, some people might regard that as a bit of an insult. I was 18 at the time and it could have shaken my confidence, but it didn’t,” says Humphries. “What it made me realise was that I was in the wrong department of theatre. Whether I liked it or not, I belonged in comedy.”

At the time, he considered himself to be a painter, mostly of landscapes, but caricatures too. Once at university, however, he began writing sketches for revues in the style of Noel Coward or Terence Rattigan.

‘Later on, I tried my hand at writing about what was in front of me,” Humphries says. “No-one at the time wrote about Australia in general and the suburbs in particular.”

Come the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956, the repertory company director decided to present a revue and asked the 22-year-old Humphries to contribute material.

“There weren’t enough hotel rooms in the city, so people were encouraged to let international athletes stay in their spare rooms, so I wrote a sketch about a housewife called Edna who invited a muscular sportsman into her home,” he recalls.

In that first incarnation, Edna was “rather shy, very suburban, a little dowdy”. “But, in time, that changed. It was as though she started to assert herself,” says Humphries. “I’d wake up one day and she’d acquired those trademark glasses. Her confidence grew. Suddenly, there was an invalid husband, Norm; a gay son; a delinquent daughter, a silent bridesmaid, Madge.

“She took on a life of her own. It was as though she’d started writing her own script. I’d be on the side, observing with some admiration, Edna’s quips.”

Barry Humphries in ‘Early Edna’ days

Nevertheless, by the early 1960s, Humphries decided that Edna had run her course. “But no, she proved indestructible, and she’s turned out to be a very useful mouthpiece,” he reappraises. “She can say things, for instance, about political correctness that I couldn’t possibly express.”

The same freedom applies to Sir Les’s coarse outbursts. “Absolutely. For example, I never swear in real life,” says Humphries. “Both characters are wonderful outlets. I’m very careful myself about what I might say. Edna and Sir Les, on the other hand, can point to the nudity of the emperor.”

Off stage, Humphries has conducted a somewhat lively private life. Married four times and father to two daughters from his second marriage and two sons from his third, he and fourth wife, Lizzie, tied the knot in 1990. Why has marriage endured this time? “Oh, because I’m a bit smarter now,” he says.

“The truth is that I’m not a very easy person to be married to. For over ten years of my life, I had a serious alcoholic illness.” So much so, his out-of-control drinking culminated in Humphries being found unconscious in an Australian gutter.

“I’d been beaten up, almost certainly by two or three policemen who I’d been cheeky to – let us say – the previous day. They didn’t like that and took their revenge,” he says.

It was to prove a turning point. ‘If you’re dependent on alcohol for your happiness or your comfort or merely to function, it’s not only degrading but you head in one direction – and that’s downwards,” Humphries says.

“I finally put the cork in the bottle when I was 38 and I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol from that day to this. But I know many alcoholics who have chastening experiences and yet carry on drinking.”

His long-held philosophy is to live in the present. “That’s a very hard thing to do but a very good spiritual exercise,” Humphries says. “I’m happier since the arrival of my grandchildren. I’m relating to them in a way I didn’t get round to doing with my own children. That’s a major regret. I’m trying to make up for the years lost to alcoholism.”

Barry Humphries, The Man Behind The Mask, Grand Opera House, York, April 13, 7.30pm, with an opportunity for audience questions. Tickets update: Still available on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/york.

By Charles Hutchinson and Richard Barber. Copyright of The Press, York

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‘I’m definitely doing it!’, says York panto star Martin Barrass. ‘See you at Opera House’

Berwick Kaler and Martin Barrass, pictured in last winter’s Dick Turpin Rides Again

YORK pantomime star Martin Barrass WILL be in this winter’s Grand Opera House show, he says.

Dame Berwick Kaler’s perennial comic sidekick has posted a reassuring message on social media after his name was missing from those confirmed for The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose’s run from December 10 2022 to January 8 2023.

The familiar team of dowager dame Kaler, dastardly villain David Leonard and “luvverly Brummie” AJ Powell have been signed up by the Ambassador Theatre Group theatre’s new pantomime producer, UK Productions, but yesterday’s press release made no reference to either Barrass or principal golden gal Suzy Cooper. “Further casting will be announced soon,” the announcement concluded.

This prompted spring-heeled Barrass to bounce back on social media: “I’m definitely doing it! Worry not! I think there was a blip in the publicity dept methinks. Either that or they’ve never heard of me lol. See you at the Opera House for the GRAND LAUNCH 13th April at 10!!”

Yesterday’s announcement stated Kaler and Leonard would be on hand at next Wednesday’s ticket sale launch.

The official confirmation on Barrass’s panto participation is awaited. Likewise, whether Suzy Cooper will or will not be returning.

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Dame Berwick is back in The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose but could his pantomime team be broken up at Grand Opera House?

Grand Opera House return for Dame Berwick Kaler, pictured in last winter’s Dick Turpin Rides Again

DAME Berwick Kaler will pull on his big bovver boots for his second Grand Opera House pantomime, but will his “Famous In York Five” reunite?

The grand dame, 75, definitely will be joined in The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose by indomitable villain David Leonard and ‘luvverly Brummie’ AJ Powell, but two fellow regulars in the Kaler panto fixtures and fittings are yet to be confirmed. Or not.

“Further casting will be announced soon” is the official line. Watch this space for news of Kaler’s perennial sidekick, Martin Barrass, and principal golden gal Suzy Cooper as the Grand Opera House pantomime moves on to a new producer, UK Productions, after only one year under the Crossroads Pantomimes umbrella.

Dame Berwick and dastardly David will be on hand to launch ticket sales at the Cumberland Street theatre from 10am on Wednesday, April 13.

“I can’t wait to welcome Me Babbies and Bairns back to the Grand Opera House,” enthused Kaler, Britain’s longest-running dame. “But be warned – I’m under the not unreasonable delusion that I’m far too young to play a granny! So, brace yourself to expect the unexpected.”

Last December, Kaler returned to the York pantomime stage for the first time since February 2019, writing, directing and starring as dame Dotty Donut in Dick Turpin Rides Again alongside Barrass, Cooper, Leonard and Powell in their debut Grand Opera House panto.

Unlike so many pantomimes, they navigated the winter Covid wave without losing any performances or principal performers until the final week when both Kaler and Barrass had to step down after testing positive (despite experiencing no symptoms). In came Scotsmen Alan McHugh and Jack Buchanan, from the His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, pantomime cast, to play dame and stooge respectively.

Kaler had exited the York Theatre Royal pantomime stage bereft after 40 years, announcing The Grand Old Dame would be his farewell, but soon regretted his retirement decision, even more so after writing and co-directing the 2019-2020 show, Sleeping Beauty.

Pantomime villain David Leonard: Launching ticket sales for The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose with Berwick Kaler at the Grand Opera House on April 13

Dame Berwick and co duly signed up for Qdos Pantomimes’ new partnership with the Grand Opera House in January 2020 in the most sensational crosstown transfer since Denis Law swapped Manchester United for Manchester City in 1973.

The pandemic put a spoke in Dick Turpin’s planned return ride in 2020, and Qdos Pantomimes had been taken over by Crossroads Pantomimes by the time the show did go ahead last winter.

Now, Berwick will be back once more, presenting his second ageing variation on a Mother Goose theme after Old Mother Goose at York Theatre Royal in December 2014. It is yet to be confirmed if it will still be a traditional Kaler triple-threat show as star, writer and director or whether UK Productions will shake up the formula, not only in the casting but in the production team too.

In the meantime, the Grand Opera House publicity machine invites you to “discover for yourself why Berwick and his team have become a true rock of family entertainment over many decades with their hilarious anarchic approach to pantomime. It’s wonderfully madcap and is truly enjoyed by all ages. You may not remember the plot, but you will remember the laughs during the winter months.”

Producers UK Production have presented Christmas pantomimes across Great Britain for nigh on 30 years. During the 2022/23 season, they will produce 11 pantomimes of their own and provide productions to around another 30 nationwide.

Producer Martin Dodd said: “It is truly a privilege to be working with the legendary Berwick Kaler and his co-stars, including the deliciously devilish David Leonard and the lovely Brummie AJ Powell with further casting to be announced.

“I really am excited to be presenting this fabulously unique and much-loved pantomime that is as much a part of the York Christmas tradition as Turkey (or Goose!) and stuffing. We can promise a cracking good show full of laughter, music, and mayhem”.

The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose will run from December 10 2022 to January 8 2023. Next Wednesday morning’s general sale launch will be preceded by Priority TheatreCard Membership tickets from Monday, April 11. Prices will start at £13 at atgtickets.com/York or on 0844 871 7615.

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More Things To Do in and around York, where studios are opening up for spring inspection. List No. 76, from The Press

Kimbal Bumstead: one of 30 new participants in York Open Studios

NOW is the chance to go around the houses, the studios and workshops too, as recommended by Charles Hutchinson on his art beat.

Art event of the week and next week too: York Open Studios, today and tomorrow; April 9 and 10, 10am to 5pm

AFTER 2021’s temporary move to July, York Open Studios returns to its regular spring slot, promising its biggest event ever with more than 150 artists and makers in 100-plus workshops, home and garden studios and other creative premises.

Thirty new participants have been selected by the event organisers. As ever, York Open Studios offers the chance to talk to artists, look around where they work and buy works.

Artists’ work encompasses painting and print, illustration, drawing and mixed media, ceramics, glass and sculpture, jewellery, textiles, photography and installation art. Check out the artists’ directory listings and the locations map at yorkopenstudios.co.uk or pick up a booklet around York.

Caius Lee: Pianist for York Musical Society’s Rossini concert

Classical concert of the week: York Musical Society, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, St Peter’s School Memorial Hall, York, tonight, 7.30pm

DAVID Pipe conducts York Musical Society in a performance of Gioachino Rossini’s last major work, Petite Messe Solennelle, composed when his friend Countess Louise Pillet-Will commissioned a solemn mass for the consecration of a private chapel in March 1864.

After Rossini deemed it to be a ‘poor little mass’, the word ‘little’ (petite) has become attached to the title, even though the work is neither little nor particularly solemn. Instead, the music ranges from hushed intensity to boisterous high spirits.

Caius Lee, piano, Valerie Barr, accordion, Katie Wood, soprano, Emily Hodkinson, mezzo-soprano, Ed Lambert, tenor, and Stuart O’Hara, bass, perform it tonight. Box office: eventbrite.co.uk/e/rossini-petite-messe-solennelle.

Bingham String Quartet: Programme of Beethoven, Schnittke, LeFanu and Tippett works

Late news: York Late Music, Stuart O’Hara and Ionna Koullepou, 1pm today; Bingham String Quartet, 7.30pm tonight, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York

BASS Stuart O’Hara and pianist Ionna Koullepou play a lunchtime programme of no fewer than eight new settings of York and regional poets’ works by York composers.

In the evening, the Bingham String Quartet perform Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat major, Schnittke’s String Quartet No 3, York composer Nicola LeFanu’s String Quartet No 2 and Tippett’s String Quartet No 2. Box office: latemusic.org or on the door.

The poster for York Blues Festival 2022

A dose of the blues: York Blues Festival 2022, The Crescent, York, today, bands from 1pm to 11pm

YORK Blues Festival returns for a third celebration at The Crescent community venue after two previous sell-outs. On the bill will be Tim Green Band; Dust Radio; Jed Potts & The Hillman Hunters; TheJujubes; Blue Milk; DC Blues; Five Points Gang and Redfish.

For full details, go to: yorkbluesfest.co.uk. Box office: thecrescentyork.seetickets.com.

The Howl & The Hum: Sunday headliners at YorkLife in Parliament Street

Free community event of the weekend: YorkLife, Parliament Street, York, today and tomorrow, 11am to 9pm

YORK’S new spring festival weekend showcases the city’s musicians, performers, comedians and more besides today and tomorrow. Organised by Make It York, YorkLife sees more than 30 performers and organisations head to Parliament Street for this free event with no tickets required in advance.

York’s Music Venue Network presents Saturday headliners Huge, Sunday bill-toppers The Howl & The Hum, plus Bull; Kitty VR; Flatcap Carnival; Hyde Family Jam;  Floral Pattern; Bargestra and Wounded Bear.

Workshops will be given by: Mud Pie Arts: Cloud Tales, interactive storytelling; Thunk It Theatre, Build Our City theatre; Gemma Wood, York Skyline art; Fantastic Faces, face painting;  Henry Raby, from Say Owt, spoken poetry; Matt Barfoot, drumming; Christian Topman, ukulele; Polly Bennet, Little Vikings PQA York, performing arts, and Innovation Entertainment, circus workshops.  Look out too for the York Mix Radio quiz; York Dance Space’s dance performance and Burning Duck Comedy Club’s comedy night. 

Oi Frog & Friends!: Laying down the rules at York Theatre Royal

Children’s show of the week: Oi Frog & Friends!, York Theatre Royal, Monday, 1.30pm and 4.30pm; Tuesday, 10.30am and 1.30pm

ON a new day at Sittingbottom School, Frog is looking for a place to sit, but Cat has other ideas and Dog is happy to play along. Cue multiple rhyming rules and chaos when Frog is placed in in charge. 

Suitable for age three upwards, Oi Frog & Friends! is a 55-minute, action-packed play with original songs, puppets, laughs and “more rhyme than you can shake a chime at”.

This fun-filled musical has been transferred to the stage by Emma Earle, Zoe Squire, Luke Bateman and Richy Hughes from Kes Gray and Jim Field’s picture books. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Mother and son: Niki Evans as Mrs Johnstone and Sean Jones as Mickey in Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, returning to the Grand Opera House, York

Musical of the week: Blood Brothers, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday to Saturday

AFTER a three-year hiatus, Sean Jones has returned to playing scally Mickey in Willy Russell’s fateful musical account of Liverpool twins divided at both, stretching his involvement to a 23rd year at impresario Bill Kenwright’s invitation in what is billed as his “last ever tour” of Blood Brothers.

Back too, after a decade-long gap, is Niki Evans in the role of Mickey and Eddie’s mother, Mrs Johnstone.

Blood Brothers keeps on returning to the Grand Opera House, invariably with Jones to the fore. If this year really is his Blood Brothers valedictory at 51, playing a Scouse lad from the age of seven once more, thanks, Sean, for all the years of cheers and tears. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

May in April: Imelda May plays York Barbican for a third time on April 6

York gig of the week: Imelda May, Made To Love Tour, York Barbican, Wednesday, 7.30pm

IRISH singer-songwriter and poet Imelda May returns to York Barbican for her third gig there in the only Yorkshire show of her first major UK tour in more than five years.

“I cannot wait to see you all again, to dance and sing together, to connect and feel the sparkle in a room where music makes us feel alive and elevated for a while,” says Imelda. “A magical feeling we can only get from live music. Let’s go!”

Her sixth studio album, last April’s 11 Past The Hour, will be showcased and she promises poetry too. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Corruption and sloth: English Touring Opera in Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel

At the treble: English Touring Opera at York Theatre Royal, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 7.30pm

ENGLISH Touring Opera present three performances in four nights, starting with Bach’s intense vision of hope, St John Passion, on Wednesday, when professional soloists and baroque specialists the Old Street Band combine with singers from York choirs.

La Boheme, Puccini’s operatic story of a poet falling in love with a consumptive seamstress, follows on Friday; the residency concludes with Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel, a send-up of corruption and sloth in government that holds up a mirror to the last days of the Romanovs. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Eleanor Sutton in the title role in Jane Eyre, opening at the Stephen Joseph Theatre on Friday

Play of the week outside York: Jane Eyre, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Friday to April 30

CHRIS Bush’s witty and fleet-footed adaptation seeks to present Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre to a fresh audience while staying true to the original’s revolutionary spirit.

Using actor-musicians, playful multi-role playing and 19th century pop hits, Zoe Waterman directs this SJT and New Vic Theatre co-production starring Eleanor Sutton as Jane Eyre, who has no respect for authority, but lives by her own strict moral code, no matter what the consequences. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

Beth McCarthy: Homecoming gig at The Crescent in May

Welcome home: Beth McCarthy, The Crescent, York, May 2, doors, 7.30pm

BETH McCarthy will play a home-city gig for the first time since March 2019 at The Crescent community venue.

Beth, singer, songwriter and BBC Radio York evening show presenter, has moved from York to London, since when she has drawn 4.8 million likes and 300,000 followers on TikTok and attracted 465,000 monthly listeners and nine million plays of her She Gets The Flowers on Spotify. Box office: myticket.co.uk/artists/beth-mccarthy.

Oh, and one other thing

MODFATHER Paul Weller’s gig on Tuesday at York Barbican has sold out.

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REVIEW: Charles Hutchinson’s verdict on Footloose The Musical, York Theatre Royal ****

Hot pants! Jake Quickenden’s hunky cowboy Willard Hewitt strikes a pose in Footloose The Musical

THERE was a time when Racky Plews’s touring production of Footloose The Muscal would have played the Grand Opera House, not York Theatre Royal, as indeed it did in May 2017 with Bradford’s Gareth Gates’s cowboy Willard as the star attraction.

Just as the Mischief’s brand of comic mayhem with a team of accident-prone Charlie Chaplins has moved from Cumberland Street (The Play That Goes Wrong, September 2021) to St Leonard’s Place (Magic Goes Wrong, April 26 to May 1), Footloose’s transfer is a sign of chief executive Tom Bird balancing the Theatre Royal’s obligations as a producing house with the need for commercial prudence after the triplet of Covid lockdowns.

Sure enough, Plews’s new production – “reworked with a new set, new costumes, the lot,” as Darren Day, one of two new star names, put it – was playing to a full stalls and dress circle at Wednesday’s performance. Box-office business has been brisk, driven by the industry’s time-honoured key ticket purchaser: women, especially for musical theatre.

Bereft: Darren Day’s burdened Reverend Shaw Moore

Men, outnumbered as ever on Wednesday, nevertheless would have a fun time at this feelgood, then feelevenbetter show, delivered by Plews’s cast of actor-musicians with the pizzazz befitting Holding Out For A Hero, Let’s Hear It For The Boy and the title number.

Faithful to the 1984 teen movie, Footloose is the teen-rebel story of Ren McCormack (Joshua Hawkins), the high-school newcomer who has blown into Bible Belt Bomont from Chicago with mum Ethel (Geri Allen) after his father deserted them without explanation.

An innocent abroad, Ren is out of step with a stymied town that buckles the Bible belt on the tightest notch, the town council having banned dancing in the wake of four Bomont High pupils perishing in a drink-and-drug fuelled car accident.

Lucy Munden’s Ariel, right, with Oonagh Cox’s Rusty, Samantha Richards’s Urleen and Jess Barker’s Wendy-Jo

In contrast with that tragedy’s fun-negating shadow, Dean Pitchford, Walter Bobbie and Tom Snow’s musical does indeed cut loose, demanding an exuberant, high-energy performance from start to finish.

Footloose is light, insubstantial, even a little daft, being a dance-filled musical about not being allowed to dance, but let’s not split hairs. Last time it felt dated too, but deliberately and knowingly Eighties in style, and that look is still there in Sara Perks’s designs and costumes, but so are tattoos galore and ripped jeans, along with a state-of the-art lighting design by Chris Davey.

What’s more, there is just enough of a sting in the tale of stultifying life in the WASP smalltown of Bomont, where the music died five years ago in this quiet Deep American South backwater.

Giant leap: Joshua Hawkins’s Ren McCormack swaps Chicago for backwoods Bomont

Sunday’s earnest sermons by the anguished Reverend Shaw Moore (Darren Day) set the tone, having administered the dance ban after losing his son. Day, hair newly grey and goatee bearded, grey suit as buttoned up as Moore’s emotions, is the old hand among predominantly young players, and he brings gravitas to the heavyweight role.

He has one of the hit-filled show’s non-hits to navigate in Heaven Help Me, but does so, not once, but twice, with beautifully controlled singing, where less is Moore. Look out for his Elvis impersonation in Reverend Moore’s transitional moment: a lovely light touch.   

Moore’s counterpoint is Hawkins’s appealing Ren, the clean-living, accidental rebel who breaks every Bomont taboo, complicating matters further by falling for Ariel (Lucy Munden), the preacher man’s equally rebellious poetess daughter, setting him on a collision course with college bad-lad Chuck (Tom Mussell).

Cutting loose: Joshua Hawkins’ Ren and Lucy Munden’s Ariel

Those of a certain age were excited that Day – who was called theatre royalty on television the other day – would be in the cast. Gen Z were far more excited at the presence of 2018 Dancing On Ice winner Jake Quickenden in the comedy role of hunky cowboy Willard Hewitt, the lovably hapless town hick.

Boy, he delivers, being delightfully dim in failing to read the endless advances of Oonagh Cox’s spunky Rusty and revelling in stripping off to his toned, tattooed torso in Holding Out For A Hero (recalling his time in The Dreamboys revue).

As for his singing, Quickenden nails the comedy number, Mama Says (You Can’t Back Down), one of the high points of Matt Cole’s exuberant choreography.

Jack Quickenden’s cowboy Willard strips down in Footloose The Musical

Hawkins’s Ren, Munden’s Ariel, Mussell’s Chuck, Cox’s Rusty, Samantha Richards’s Urleen, Jess Barker’s Wendy-Jo and the multi role-playing Geri Allen bring plenty to the party (or non-party, as the Reverend would prefer it).

Indeed, let’s hear it for all the boys and girls, as they sing, dance, play instruments and skilfully walk the tightrope between the serious and the tongue in cheek in their performances. Let’s hear it for the drummer too, Bob Carr, ever-present up top at the back, making everything stick and click.

Footloose and fancy free this weekend? This show is just the ticket for you.

Footloose, York Theatre Royal, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm, 7.30pm, tomorrow. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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Sean Jones heads back to York as scally Mickey in his ‘last ever’ Blood Brothers tour

Brothers in arms: Sean Jones as scally Mickey, left, and Joel Benedict as scholarly Eddie in Blood Brothers, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, next week

AT 51, Sean Jones is still “running around in a baggy green jumper and short trousers” playing Liverpool lad Mickey in Willy Russell’s heartbreaking musical Blood Brothers into a 23rd year.

“It would definitely be me, Yul Brynner and Topol in the top three,” says the Welsh actor, in recognition of their long service to Blood Brothers, The King And I and Fiddler On The Roof respectively, although Sean has not kept a record of the exact number of performances he has chalked up.

Next week, on his return to impresario Bill Kenwright and Bob Tomson’s touring production for a run from January to late-October, Sean will be taking his Mickey back to the Grand Opera House in York.

Musicals were not his first love, but maybe this was destiny. “I’d had had a string of auditions for musicals off my agent but was getting very disconcerted as I’d trained to be an actor, not a singer and dancer, and then he said again, ‘I’ve got you an audition…for a musical.”

However, this time it was different. “It was the chance to be cover for Mickey in Blood Brothers, which has always been my dream role.

“It’s the most prepared I’ve ever been for an audition! Thankfully I got the gig as understudy on tour, and I remember we came to York on that first tour in 1999.”

He had trodden the boards in York previously. “On my first time there, I did [Agatha Christie’s] A Murder Is Announced with Richard Todd in 1993 in my first job after drama college, with Bill Kenwright as producer, and I remember thinking, ‘that might give me an inroad to Blood Brothers’!”

Sean would subsequently become embedded in Russell’s musical, even meeting his wife, actress Tracy Spencer, though the show. “Tracy played Mrs Lyons. We got married in 2004 on a two-show day when we were at the Cardiff New Theatre,” he says.

Sean Jones in his 2022 return to Blood Brothers as Mickey, with Niki Evans as Mrs Johnstone

“We got married in the morning, did the matinee, took the cast out for a drink, then did the evening performance.

“Blood Brothers is absolutely ingrained in me. When Tracy fell pregnant with Eleanor, after three months, we decided we would go out on tour for four years in the show!”

In Russell’s fateful musical, when young mother Mrs Johnstone is deserted by her husband, she is left to her own devices to provide for seven hungry children, taking a job as a housekeeper to make ends meet.

Whereupon her brittle world crashes around her when she discovers herself to be pregnant yet again, this time with twins. In a moment of desperation, she enters a secret pact with her employer, leading to Mickey and Eddie being separated at birth, growing up on the opposite sides of the tracks, only to meet again with tragic consequences.

“It’s such a journey that Mickey goes on and such a great role for an actor to get his teeth into, with all the high comedy that Willy Russell has written that requires plenty of skill, and then the final hour that takes the audience to some really dark places, with the last few scenes being so harrowing.”

Sean’s career has taken in stage roles in pantomime, Macbeth and Jacqueline’s Wilson’s world premiere of Wave Me Goodbye and television appearances in Emmerdale, The Royal Today and Hollyoaks, but he keeps returning to Blood Brothers, never tiring of playing Mickey from the age of seven, through his teens and into his troubled adult life.

Out of the past 22 years, only eight have not been spent stretching that trademark baggy jumper over his knees. “It’s one of those things, whatever job anyone has, there’s a certain amount of repetition, whether working in a bank or a shop. Same job, different ****! With Blood Brothers, same job, same lines, but the audience keeps you fresh,” he says.

“Each audience comes with a different challenge each show, and you find yourself becoming a bit of a scientist, thinking, ‘who we’ve got in today; what do they want; what do they need?’. You pay attention to that, and that’s why it will always be fresh.

Sean Jones, as Mickey, and Marti Webb, as Mrs Johnstone at the Grand Opera House, York in 2008

“On top of that, Mickey is such a phenomenal role that I’m still finding new things in it after all these years.”

Playing Mickey for more than two decades, Sean has found his performance evolving over that time. “When you’re using techniques in order to get yourself into the zone for those last 30 minutes, the more you can draw on your own emotional memories, because all you are as an older person is a young person with more despair.”

Sean left the show for three years after his parents became poorly. “I needed to be there, with them,” he says. “But I always felt there might be a chance to come back.”

When Bill Kenwright asked him to reprise his Mickey once more, he said yes. “It’s like, go find me a better musical theatre role than Mickey,” says Sean. “There’s a plethora of great roles in musical theatre but none that goes on the journey that Mickey does. It’s brilliant storytelling theatre with so much comedy and then absolute heartbreak.”

The tour publicity states this will be Sean’s “final ever tour of the show”, but will it? “I’m happy to carry on doing it as long as Bill Kenwright is happy for me to get away with doing it!” he says.

“I appear to still have the same energy, hitting all the right notes in the right order, and as long as that keeps happening, I’m happy to keep going, but all I want to do is to keep on being a jobbing actor. That term shouldn’t be a slur. It’s about doing a job I love, whether in Blood Brothers, or in a small play at Theatre Clwyd, though I’d also love to do more screen work.”

Blood Brothers runs at Grand Opera House, York, from April 5 to 9, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.

Sean Jones’s Mickey and Maureen Nolan’s Mrs Johnstone at the Grand Opera House, York in 2013
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After ten years Niki Evans says yes to returning as Mrs Johnstone, the Blood Brothers role she turned down four times

Niki Evans’s Mrs Johnstone and Sean Jones’s Mickey in the 2022 tour of Blood Brothers, running at the Grand Opera House, York, from April 5 to 9. Picture: Jack Merriman

NIKI Evans will be returning to the Grand Opera House as Mrs Johnstone in Blood Brothers from Tuesday, but there is one place nearby in York that she will be avoiding.

“One time I was in York, they took me to the York Dungeon on my own and I’ve never screamed so loud,” she recalls. “I don’t know how I managed to do the show that night, I screamed so much. I won’t be going back to the Dungeon but York is a beautiful city.”

2007 X Factor semi-finalist Niki last played Mrs Johnstone in Willy Russell’s Liverpudlian musical in 2012, having first done so in 2008, visiting York in May 2011. “Returning to it was scary at first,” she says. “The first time I did it, I’d never done a musical or been a part of the theatre world so when [producer] Bill Kenwright called me I think I turned it down four times.

“I was like ‘No, you’re OK!’ but he persuaded me to audition, and my audition was terrible. But he saw something in me and within a week I was on stage in the Phoenix Theatre [in London]. It was such a whirlwind. Since then, I’ve done lots of other roles, mainly funny ones, so to come back to such a dramatic role is very scary but it’s like a dream come true. They’d asked me to come back before but I had to be ready, and now I am.”

Blood Brothers revolves around Mickey and Edward, twins separated at birth by their mother Mrs Johnstone, who then grow up on the opposite sides of the tracks, only to meet again with tragic consequences.

What makes Mrs J such an iconic musical theatre role, Niki? “It’s because of her strength and the emotions you have to go through when you’re on stage,” she says. “She starts as a young girl in her 20s, then within 20 minutes she’s got seven kids and has to give one away. It’s a big part and it’s a big part for a woman, which is rare at my age [Niki is 49].

“My window is tiny to get a part where you’re on for more than ten minutes. She’s a strong female lead and she’s so real. Every mother in this country can relate to her on some level because of how real she is.

“Every mother must see something in Mrs Johnstone that they’ve also gone through. I know I can. I’ve got two sons, so her Mickey and Eddie are my Morgan and Jonah. My kids have had troubles, I’ve had troubles, and the way I look at it is: I don’t have to play her, I just have to be her.”

Niki is still discovering new things about Mrs Johnstone in her latest interpretation of the role, ten years on. “She’s not such a feisty tiger as I thought when I first did the show. They used to call me ‘the Feisty Tiger Mrs Johnstone’. I come from a family of four; we grew up on a council estate; we had no money; I used to go to school in jelly shoes, even in November, and my mum was a tough cookie,” she says.

“You didn’t mess with her and that’s how I thought Mrs J was, or at least that she was how I was, like, ‘Don’t mess with my kids or I’ll come at you with a baseball bat’. But now I’m older, I’ve mellowed. I’ll be 50 this year and I’m not so bouncy as I was ten years ago, so my take on her is much more grounded. She’s stronger without being quite so feisty.”

Blood Brothers is such an emotional rollercoaster for Niki and audience alike. “There are a couple of parts in the show, without giving spoilers, where it rips me to shreds,” she reveals. “I do it as though someone is about to take one of my children and I can’t hold back. I have to feel it every time I do it.”

Aside from Blood Brothers, Niki has appeared in musicals in the West End and on tour, such as Kinky Boots and Shout. “There’s been loads and I’ve loved every character I’ve played, but if I had to pick one it would be Paulette in Legally Blonde,” she says.

Niki Evans in a past production of Blood Brothers

“To go from playing Mrs Johnstone to Paulette in just two weeks was brilliant because it was such a contrast. I’ve never laughed and smiled so much as I have when doing the bend and snap. It was the first time I realised I could make people laugh as well as cry.” 

Busy, busy, busy, but when Covid lockdowns left theatres closed, Niki took a job outside that familiar world. “I worked in a factory packing boxes for Amazon because I didn’t want to lose my house. I’m a working mum and I have to pay bills,” she says.

Post-lockdown, she appeared in Girls Just Wanna Have Funon tour and played Mimi the Magical Mermaid in Peter Pan, the Wycombe Swan Theatre’s pantomime, before going straight into Blood Brothers after only two days off.

“The first time I got back on stage, I was petrified because I hadn’t done it for two years and had to open myself up again to people watching me. All your insecurities come back and you’re like, ‘Am I good enough? Can I still do this?’, but the feedback from the audience, the love and the warmth – I can’t tell you what it means and how it feels.”

The return of live theatre felt “just amazing” to Niki. “People told me, ‘This is just what we needed’ and recently I was talking with a bunch of students in a theatre cafe who saw Blood Brothers and loved it. That enthusiasm is something you can’t buy.

“To have young people go, ‘You were so real, we were so engrossed’ is priceless. To know that you’re not just reaching older people, but young kids as well makes me so emotional. “What’s also interesting to me is how men in the audience react to Blood Brothers.

“When I look out into the auditorium, it’s the men who have their heads down because they can’t watch. It’s always the men who say, ‘I don’t like musicals, she’s dragged me along, but oh my God, I’m coming back to see this again’.”

Singing was Niki’s passion as soon as she could open her mouth, going on to finish in the top four in the 2007 series of The X Factor and to perform at Her Majesty The Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations at Windsor Castle.

“Singing is like breathing to me, it’s so natural for me to do, but the actual performing scares the pants off me,” she says. “I was always happy as a backing singer or in the studio where nobody is looking at me. I know that sounds really weird, but when I’m out there I have to forget there’s people watching because it’s terrifying.”

The X Factor changed Niki’s life “completely. “It’s given me a career I didn’t think I was capable of, although it did eventually break up my marriage because I was never there,” she says.

“My life since X Factor couldn’t be more different. My kids didn’t even know I sang because I’d given it up. So much has happened in the past 15 years career-wise and I’ve got a partner and I’m getting married soon, which is very exciting!”

Blood Brothers returns to Grand Opera House, York, from April 5 to 9, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.

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REVIEW: Peter James’s Looking Good Dead, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday ***

And your point is? Adam Woodyatt and Laurie Brett’s Tom and Kellie Bryce beg to differ in Looking Good Dead

TWO selling points mark out Looking Good Dead.

Firstly, it is the latest in the production line of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace cases to be transferred from page to stage, adapted from Peter James’s stack of best-selling crime thrillers by Shaun McKenna.

Secondly, Adam Woodyatt and Laurie Brett reprise their brand of marital bickering patented in the guise of Ian and Jane Beale in the aerated London soap wars of EastEnders.

Brett has joined Jonathan O’Boyle’s company for the tour’s second leg, taking over from Gaynor Faye, and her partnership with Woodyatt is marked by a fractious telepathy that only comes with years of performing together.

Brett is not the only new ingredient. After the press night, in a brief chat before he headed off to Mad Alice’s Bloody Tour of York, cast member Leon Stewart revealed the ending had been changed to make it less easy for amateur Roy Graces to detect.

Brett’s Kellie Bryce is hiding her supposedly dormant drink habit from her pre-occupied husband (Woodyatt’s Tom), sipping vodka from her water bottle when he is not around. She is forever cleaning the smartly decorated house, when not buying dresses and expensive foodstuffs.

Woodyatt’s Tom is a businessman, but a weary and brassic, greying and grizzled one after over-stretching himself, mortgaged to the hilt, and now he is in need of a fast financial fix.

Tom had arrived home with a USB memory stick left on a train, saying he wanted to contact whoever had left it behind. Smartass student son Max (Luke Ward Wilkinson) is a tech wiz, but when he helps  his dad to download the contents, they inadvertently witness a murder (Natalie Boakye’s Janie), enacted on a mezzanine level on Michael Holt’s slick set.

Don’t contact the police or tell your mum, says Tom, but that would rule out Roy Grace, wouldn’t it, and no Grace, no crime thriller. Ah, here he comes, on the design’s third piece in its jigsaw that slides in from the side to denote a slither of a police station. Harry Long’s matter-of-fact Grace is working in tandem with Leon Stewart’s Glenn Branson, his junior who loves a pun-laden joke.

Looking Good Dead moves at a cracking pace, with plenty of humour, some of it deeply cheesy, some of it rooted in the ebb and flow of family squabbles, but all the while James’s story is piling up twists and turns, intrigues and surprising revelations, weaving in new characters, such as Ian Houghton’s wealthy, smooth-talking American, Jonas Kent.

Didn’t-see-that-coming surprises prevail over suspense in script and direction alike, each conducted with a gleeful flourish that contrasts with the steady-eddie investigations of Long’s Grace in a story that takes in snuff movies, dung beetles, Wagyu steaks, even a modicum of social comment.

Looking Good Dead is fun, corny and self-aware, and if Woodyatt and Brett’s sparring in EastEnders left you cold, here comes their comic relief, unexpected but surprisingly enjoyable.

Looking Good Dead, Grand Opera House, York, 7.30pm tonight, Thursday and Friday; 2.30pm, 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York

Review by Charles Hutchinson

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BalletBoyz to grace Grand Opera House with boisterous, beautiful Deluxe on April 11

BalletBoyz Deluxe: 20th anniversary tour visits the Grand Opera House…in the company’s 22nd year

MICHAEL Nunn and William Trevitt are marking the 20th anniversary of their BalletBoyz dance company with the bold, beautiful and boisterous BalletBoyz Deluxe, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, on April 11.

Six extraordinary young dancers feature in this explosion of mesmeric dance, fused with the witty, distinctive BalletBoyz use of film and behind-the-scenes content.

Cheekily original and innovative, BalletBoyz have blended music and film with achingly beautiful dance, both exhilarating and graceful in its style, since forming in 2000.

Deluxe features work by Shanghai dancer-choreographer Xie Xin, of TAO Dance Theatre, in her UK debut with composer Jiang Shaofeng, and Punchdrunk’s Maxine Doyle in collaboration with jazz musician and composer Cassie Kinoshi, from the Mercury Prize-nominated SEED Ensemble.

Nunn, 52, and Trevitt, 50, say: “It’s such a thrill to be challenged in the studio, to find new ways of expressing an idea and to learn new techniques. For Deluxe, we wanted to find new voices to develop and work with the BalletBoyz dancers.

“Maxine Doyle and Xie Xin are taking the work of the company in new directions, more physical, more thought provoking, and an opportunity to reach new audiences.

“We have always thrived on the thrill of new collaborations and that urge still shapes our creative decisions. The point of being a repertoire company, and not choreographer-led, is precisely to be able to change direction, take risks on fresh ideas, discover new voices and reveal unexpected outcomes. Despite doing this for more than 20 years, we never want to settle for more of the same.”

Reflecting on their creative longevity, Nunn says: “We made a pact about 25 years ago that we would only work with each other. It’s a strength to work as a partnership. You give something away that somebody else holds for you. I think if that wasn’t there it would collapse somehow.

“I think we’re braver, because there are two of us. It’s much easier to take a huge risk, both financially and artistically, if you are doing it with someone else.”

Tickets for the 7.30pm show are on sale on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.