FASTLOVE’S globe-trotting tribute to George Michael is on the road with a new show, the Everything She Wants Tour, visiting the Grand Opera House, York, on November 3.
Direct from the West End, the celebratory night combines a full video and light show with all the hits from Wham! onwards, taking in Careless Whisper, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Faith, Father Figure, Freedom! ’90, Faith, I Knew You Were Waiting et al.
Tickets for next Wednesday’s 7.30pm performance are on sale on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
Gunpowder Guy in Horrible Histories’ Barmy Britain
CAN you beat battling Boudicca? What if a Viking moved in next door? Would you lose your heart or head to horrible Henry VIII?
Can evil Elizabeth entertain England? Will Parliament survive Gunpowder Guy? Dare you stand and deliver to dastardly Dick Turpin?
Can you escape the clutches of Burke and Hare? Why not move to the groove with Party-Queen Victoria?
Questions, questions, so many questions to answer, and here to answer them are the Horrible Histories team in their alternative history lesson, Barmy Britain, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, until Sunday.
These purveyors of the West End’s longest-running children’s show are bringing British history to life in a humorously horrible and eye-popping show trip to the past with Horrible Histories’ trademark 3D effects.
Watch out for their Bogglevision array of illusions, as skulls hover, dams burst and missiles fly into the audience – and be sure to duck. Fast!
Party Queen Victoria in Horrible Histories’ Barmy Britain
Presented by the Birmingham Stage Company over 15 years, the Horrible Histories Live on Stage shows are written by Neal Foster and Horrible Histories author Terry Deary.
Deary has written 200 books, translated into 40 languages. Since 1983, his 50 Horrible Histories titles have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide from China to Brazil.
Horrible Histories’ Barmy Britain is directed by Foster and designed by Jackie Trousdale, with lighting by Jason Taylor, sound by Nick Sagar, music by Matthew Scott and choreography by Kenn Oldfield.
“We all want to meet people from history. The trouble is, everyone is dead. It’s time to prepare yourselves for Horrible Histories,” says Foster. “Our wonderful Barmy Britain journey through the gruesome, scary and unbelievable moments in British history is perfect entertainment for anyone aged from 5 to 105!”
Performances are at 10.30am and 7pm today; 3pm and 7pm, Saturday; 11am and 3pm, Sunday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Ben Moor and Joanna Neary: Mini-season of stand-up theatre and comedy at Theatre@41
MOOR, Moor, Moor and much more, more, more besides are on Charles Hutchinson’s list for the week ahead.
Surrealist stand-up theatre of the week, Ben Moor and Joanna Neary mini-season, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, today until Saturday
BEN Moor and Joanna Neary combine to deliver five offbeat comedy shows in three days in their Theatre@41 debut.
Moor contemplates performance, friendship and regret in his lecture about lectures, Pronoun Trouble, tonight at 8pm. Tomorrow, at 7.30pm, Neary’s multi-character sketch show with songs and impersonations, Wife On Earth, is followed by Moor’s Who Here’s Lost?, his dream-like tale of a road trip of the soul taken by two outsiders.
Saturday opens at 3pm with Joanna’s debut children’s puppet show, Stinky McFish And The World’s Worst Wish, and concludes at 7pm with the two-hander BookTalkBookTalkBook, a “silly author event parody show”. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Gunpowder Guy in Horrible Histories’ Barmy Britain. Picture: Frazer Ashford
Alternative history lesson of the week: Horrible Histories’ Barmy Britain, Grand Opera House, York, today at 1.30pm, 7pm; tomorrow, 10.30am and 7pm; Saturday, 3pm, 7pm; Sunday, 11am, 3pm
WHAT if a Viking moved in next door? Would you lose your heart or head to horrible Henry VIII? Can evil Elizabeth entertain England? Will Parliament survive Gunpowder Guy? Dare you stand and deliver to dastardly Dick Turpin?
Questions, questions, so many questions to answer, and here to answer them are the Horrible Histories team in Barmy Britain, a humorously horrible and eye-popping show trip to the past with Bogglevision 3D effects. Box office: atgtickets.com/york
Hannah Victoria in Tutti Frutti’s The Princess And The Pea at York Theatre Royal Studio
Reopening of the week: York Theatre Royal Studio for Tutti Frutti’s The Princess And The Pea, today to Tuesday; no show on Sunday
YORK Theatre Royal Studio reopens today with a capacity reduced from 100 to 71 and no longer any seating to the sides.
First up, Leeds children’s theatre company Tutti Frutti revive York playwright Mike Kenny’s adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s story, set in a place where what you see is not what it seems: the Museum of Forgotten Things.
Three musical curators delve into the mystery of how a little green pea ended up there in an hour of humour, songs and a romp through every type of princess you could imagine. Box office and show times: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Artist Anita Bowerman and Yorkshire Shepherdess Amanda Owen at Dove Tree Art Gallery and Studio
Open Studios of the week: Anita Bowerman, Dove Tree Art Gallery and Studio, Back Granville Road, Harrogate, Saturday and Sunday, 10am to 5pm
HARROGATE paper-cut, watercolour and stainless steel artist Anita Bowerman opens her doors for refreshments and a browse around her new paintings of Yorkshire and Yorkshire Shepherdess Amanda Owen, prints and mugs.
“It’s a perfect chance for inspiration before the Christmas present-buying rush starts,” says Anita, who has been busy illustrating a new charity Christmas card for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance featuring the Yorkshire Shepherdess.
Rachel Croft: York singer-songwriter performing at Drawsome! day of activities at Spark:York as part of York Design Week on Saturday
York Design Week gig of the week: Drawsome!, Mollie Coddled Talk More Pavilion, Spark:York, Saturday, from 3pm
AS part of Drawsome’s day of workshops and an Indy Makers Market to complement MarkoLooks’ print swap exhibition of illustrators and printmakers, York’s Young Thugs Records are curating a free line-up of live music.
Taking part will be The Hazy Janes, Kell Chambers and Rachel Croft, singer, songwriter and illustrator to boot.
Breabach: First touring band to play Selby Town Hall in “far too long”. Picture: Paul Jennings
Welcome back of the week: Breabach, Selby Town Hall, Saturday, 8pm
GLASGOW folk luminaries Breabach will be the first touring band to play Selby Town Hall for almost 20 months this weekend.
“Leading lights of the Scottish roots music scene and five-time Scots Trad Music Award winners, they’re a really phenomenally talented band,” says Chris Jones, Selby Town Council’s arts officer. “It’s an absolute thrill to have professional music back in the venue. It’s been far too long!” Box office: 01757 708449, at selbytownhall.co.uk or on the door from 7.30pm.
Levelling up in York: Jazz funksters Level 42 in the groove at York Barbican on Sunday night
Eighties’ celebration of the week: Level 42, York Barbican, Sunday, doors 7pm
ISLE of Wight jazz funksters Level 42 revive those rubbery bass favourites Lessons In Love, The Sun Goes Down (Living It Up), Something About You, Running In The Family et al at York Barbican.
Here are the facts: Mark King’s band released 14 studio, seven live and six compilation albums, sold out Wembley Arena for 21 nights and chalked up 30 million album sales worldwide.
This From Eternity To Here tour gig has been rearranged from October 2020; original tickets remain valid. Box office for “limited availability”: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Writes of passage: Musician and now author Richard Thompson
Guitarist of the week: Richard Thompson, York Barbican, Monday, doors 7pm
RICHARD Thompson plays York Barbican on the back of releasing Beeswing, his April autobiography subtitled Losing My Way And Finding My Voice 1967-1975.
An intimate memoir of musical exploration, personal history and social revelation, it charts his co-founding of folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention, survival of a car crash, formation of a duo with wife Linda and discovery of Sufism.
Move on from the back pages, here comes Richard Thompson OBE, aged 72, songwriter, singer and one of Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 20 Guitarists of All Time. Katherine Priddy supports. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
That clinches it: Emma Scott’s Macbeth leaps into the arms of Nell Frampton’s The Lady in rehearsals for York Shakespeare Project’s Macbeth. Picture: John Saunders
Something wicked this way comes…at last: York Shakespeare Project in Macbeth, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, October 26 to 30, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee
THE curse of Macbeth combined with Lockdown 1’s imposition to put a stop to York Shakespeare Project’s Scottish Play one week before its March 2020 opening.
Rising like the ghost of Banquo, but sure to be better received, Leo Doulton’s resurrected production will run as the 37th play in the York charity’s mission to perform all Shakespeare’s known plays over 20 years.
Doulton casts Emma Scott’s Macbeth into a dystopian future, using a cyberpunk staging to bring to life this dark tale of ambition, murder and supernatural forces. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Ballet Black dancers Marie Astrid Mence, left, Isabela Coracy, Cira Robinson, Sayaka Ichikawa, Jose Alves, Ebony Thomas and Alexander Fadyiro in Mthuthuzeli’s The Waiting Game
Dance show of the week: Cassa Pancho’s Ballet Black, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday, 7.30pm
ARTISTIC director Cassa Pancho’s Ballet Black return to York with a double bill full of lyrical contrasts and beautiful movement.
Will Tuckett blends classical ballet, poetry and music to explore ideas of home and belonging in Then Or Now; fellow Olivier Award-winning choreographer Mthuthuzeli November contemplates the purpose of life in The Waiting Game. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
From Limpsey Gate Lane, August, by Sue Slack
Exhibition of the week: Fylingdales Group of Artists, Blossom Street Gallery, Blossom Street, York, until November 30
TWELVE Fylingdales Group members are contributing 31 works to this exhibition of Yorkshire works, mainly of paintings in oils, acrylics, gouache and limonite.
Two pieces by Paul Blackwell are in pastel; Angie McCall has incorporated collage in her mixed-media work and printmaker Michael Atkin features too.
Also participating are David Allen, fellow Royal Society of Marine Artist member and past president David Howell, Kane Cunningham, John Freeman, Linda Lupton, Don Micklethwaite, Bruce Mulcahy, Sue Slack and Ann Thornhill.
Podcasters on the road: the No Such Thing As A Fish team of “QI Elves”
THE No Such Thing As A Fish podcast is back on the road with its first tour since 2019, bringing Nerd Immunity to the Grand Opera House, York, on November 8.
Suitable for “anyone with a thirst for knowledge, a taste for puns and a need for belly-laughs”, the weekly British podcast series is produced and presented by the researchers behind the BBC Two panel game QI: James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptaszynski and Dan Schreiber.
In the podcast, each researcher, collectively known as “The QI Elves”, presents a favourite fact they have come across that week.
Since being launched, the podcast has attracted 700,000 subscribers. In 2014, it was named by Apple as that year’s Best New Podcast; in 2015 and 2016, it won the Internet Award in the Chortle Awards; in 2018, the Heinz Oberhummer Award for Science Communication.
The No Such Thing As A Fish team says: “We’re so glad to be not only getting out of the house but going all over the country, spreading the word of unbelievable facts wherever we go. Subject to Government guidelines, there’s no stopping us.”
Tickets for the 8pm show are on sale at atgtickets.com/york.
Masks of the non-Covid kind will be worn in the theatre when Nina Conti hosts The Dating Show at the Grand Opera House, York, next month
NO sooner has removing masks become the norm than Nina Conti wants you to put them back on, all in the cause of her pioneering new dating game.
After a four-year hiatus since her In Your Face travels, the London ventriloquist-comedian will be embarking on The Dating Show tour on October 31, visiting the Grand Opera House, York, on November 12 with 14 robust masks made by a fellow ventriloquist in the Philippines.
“She’ll be like Cilla Black with masks. Derailed. Not so much a Blind Date as a re-voiced one,” promises the show spiel.
“Before this Armageddon hit, I was developing a dating show where I would connive for audience members to fall in love wearing masks,” says Nina. “Post-Covid, I can’t think of anything more fitting. I think we all need to get in a room together and laugh our heads off, and if the subject can be love, so much the better.”
There you have it: a comedy show for 2021 with elaborate latex masks, Nina’s cheeky monkey sidekick Monkey, a return to human connection and the possibility of romance in the air.
As it happens, the matchmaking format of The Dating Show has emerged through happenstance from In Your Face’s earlier use of masks. “When I did masks before with an audience, I often ended up with love matches,” Nina recalls.
“The audience members often took it there with their body language. They could be a bit friendly and a bit flirty, and I remember thinking, ‘I have to stop things going like this or people will think I’m a sex maniac! What’s the matter with me!?’
Ventriloquist-comedian Nina Conti andmasks for The Dating Show. Picture: Matt Crockett
“But then I thought that maybe it’s not me forcing it because it’s simply happening every time, so why resist? And why not do something called The Dating Show?”
After Nina experimented with the new show in trial runs pre-pandemic at London’s Soho Theatre, lockdown has allowed her to settle on the best way forward. “To avoid it becoming this hetero-normative thing, you want to get everyone involved,” she has decided.
“In the Soho shows, I opened with Monkey interviewing a bunch of people in the audience, and whoever elicited the most warmth was the person I went with. I’m not after eccentrics, just likeability. Hopefully those we get up could be any kind of person and not just the Cilla Black demographic.”
What happens next? “I just get a feel for it from the banter, to put two people together up there on stage, put masks on them, then have a low-key chat about their past relationships and what they’re looking for next.
“Let’s see who bonds and where it goes. It might even be two straight men trying to work it out. As long as it’s funny, great. I just want it to be funny.”
CharlesHutchPress spoke to Nina on September 27, two weeks ahead of her starting her test run for the autumn tour. “All my shows are unscripted, so really what I’m searching for is to put the scaffolding and structure in place.
“What I’ll definitely do is return to the audience with Monkey after each stage encounter and one person might stay on stage for the next encounter,” she says.
The poster for Nina Conti’s 2021 tour, The Dating Show
“It’s just a comedy show! It’s kind of nonsense, getting people on stage and asking them to ‘sing a musical number to each other’, or they might ‘go skiing’ or ‘go up in a hot air balloon’! Each vignette will be something crazy.
“They won’t have a grand script or anything. I put masks on them, covering them from below their eyes to their jaw line, then I speak for them, turning them into puppets, where I respond to their body language in the moment.”
Nina, 47, loves interacting with audience members on stage. “I find people very loveable when they’re up there. It’s a mixture of celebration and their own bafflement. They feel safe because I don’t ask awkward questions and it’s liberating for them with the mask on because they don’t feel like themselves,” she says.
“Maybe someone’s shyness is the real self but sometimes the mask frees them up. Most people wear a mask of some kind anyway: I know I do, being different in different contexts, but Monkey is great for me because he says things where I don’t need to antagonise!”
There’s the rub! Monkey is free to be the quick-thinking agent provocateur in the partnership between ventriloquist and dummy: the one with the smart mouth. “Yes, absolutely! The dummy is the ‘bright one’ in the ventriloquist act!” says Nina, who was approached originally by her old mentor, Ken Campbell, to try out the ventriloquist’s art, one that pretty much had been consigned to the suitcase in comedy’s attic.
“I’m lucky to have found it, because I never thought that ventriloquism was a skill worth having,” she admits. “I would never have gone to a ventriloquism show, and when it was suggested to me by Ken I was so uninterested in it. I thought he was mad!
“I don’t know if I’ve enhanced it for nostalgia, but there was a definite lightbulb moment. I had been practising with those awful mannequins, and it was so end-of-the-pier and saucy: I didn’t like it. But then I remembered this monkey puppet that I stole off a mate, but I didn’t know if his mouth could operate. He was more like Sooty; your hand isn’t meant to go in his head.
“The dummy is the ‘bright one’ in the ventriloquist act!” says Nina Conti. Picture: Matt Crockett
“But like all things that end up fitting and going well, most creativity doesn’t work like you expect Once I had taken the squeak and some stuffing out, I found that his mouth could work!
“I’d done a bit of ventriloquism already, but thought it was bit spooky, but when I put my hand into his face, as soon as he started to talk, I thought, ‘Woah! Everything you’re saying is coming from a wider place than my own head’.
“He has such gravitas.” Monkey, gravitas, Nina? Really?! “He wouldn’t agree! He’d say, ‘Get over it, you’re delusional’, but then he’d say, ‘Who’s to say who’s being delusional here?’. I say things that surprise me through him, and I try to keep myself out of it when I’m speaking as him, thinking, ‘I’ll have to get out of this situation later, but for now we’ll just let Monkey say what he says’.”
Where does Nina keep Monkey when not performing? “He’s sort of kept about the house. I travel lightly with him in my handbag, and I just toss him to one side when I need to put something in there. Like something you’re familiar with, you stop treating him with reverence, but I would never do that on stage,” she says.
In fact, Nina has more than one Monkey. “It’s like The Matrix, growing those embryos! I’ve got loads, and I tend to use them for a period of time. Maybe six Monkeys in 20 years. Each new one, I have to scrub his face because I need him to look a bit worn. I’ve just started a new Monkey in the last few months, using hair putty to dampen him to age him!” she reveals.
For the record, Nina is not seeking to be the new Cilla with The Dating Show . “I’m not really match-making,” she says. “Anything that then happens off-stage afterwards is beyond my control!”
Nina Conti, The Dating Show, Grand Opera House, York, November 12, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/york
“We all need to get in a room together and laugh our heads off, and if the subject can be love, so much the better,” says Nina. Picture: Idil Sukan
FEISTY, flame-haired Royal Family favourite La Voix is on tour, taking on the big divas and making them her own in The UK’s Funniest Redhead show in York on November 13.
Billed as her “most glamorous show yet”, the 2014 Britain’s Got Talent semi-finalist will be combining stellar songs and saucy gags, high energy and diva impersonations, glamour and gowns – eight of them – in her Grand Opera House debut.
Expect her to switch between the vocal trademarks of Tina Turner, Shirley Bassey, Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland and Cher at the click of a finger.
La Voix, the drag artiste creation of Chris Dennis, played Leeds City Varieties Music Hall two nights ago. She hosts a talk show on BBC Radio Three Counties, appeared in Absolutely Fabulous The Movie, has twice entertained Prince William and Prince Harry at New Year’s Eve parties and has worked with Mickey Rooney, Cilla Black, Pamela Anderson, Brigitte Nielsen and Ruby Wax.
When she topped the bill at Sir Ian McKellan’s 80th birthday bash, she was commended lavishly by the venerable actor, who said: “La Voix’s impersonations are surpassed only by her own cheekily entertaining personality.”
Tickets for La Voix and her band’s 7.30pm show are on sale at atgtickets.com/york.
Setting the record straight: Adrian Lukis’s roguish George Wickham in Being Mr Wickham at York Theatre Royal
AUTUMN’S fruits are ripe and ready for Charles Hutchinson to pick with no worries about shortages.
Scandal of the week: Being Mr Wickham, Original Theatre Company, York Theatre Royal, tonight until Saturday, 7.30pm; 2.30pm, Saturday
ADRIAN Lukis played the vilified George Wickham in the BBC’s television adaptation of Pride And Prejudice 26 years ago this very month.
Time, he says, to set the record straight about Jane Austen’s most charmingly roguish character in his one-man play Being Mr Wickham, co-written with Catherine Curzon.
This is the chance to discover Wickham’s version of famous literary events. What really happened with Mr Darcy? What did he feel about Lizzie? What went on at Waterloo? Not to mention Byron. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Cate Hamer in rehearsal for the SJT and Live Theatre, Newcastle co-production of The Offing. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
Play of the week outside York: The Offing, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 30
IN a Britain still reeling from the Second World War, Robert Appleyard sets out on an adventure at 16: to walk from his home in Durham to Scarborough, where he hopes to find work, but he never arrives there.
Instead, up the coast at Robin Hood’s Bay, a chance encounter with the bohemian, eccentric Dulcie Piper leads to a lifelong, defining friendship. She introduces him to the joys of good food and wine, art and literature; he helps her lay to rest a ghost in Janice Okoh’s adaptation of Benjamin Myers’s novel for the SJT and Live Theatre, Newcastle. Box office: 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com.
Simon Wright: Conducting York Guildhall Orchestra at York Barbican
Classic comeback: York Guildhall Orchestra, York Barbican, Saturday, 7.30pm
YORK Guildhall Orchestra return to the concert stage this weekend after the pandemic hiatus with a programme of operatic favourites, conducted by Simon Wright.
The York musicians will be joined by Leeds Festival Chorus and two soloists, soprano Jenny Stafford, and tenor Oliver Johnston, to perform overtures, arias and choruses by Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Rossini, Mozart, Puccini and Verdi. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Adam Kay: Medic, author and comedian, on visiting hours at Grand Opera House, York, on Sunday
Medical drama of the week: Adam Kay, This Is Going To Hurt, Secret Diaries Of A Junior Doctor, Grand Opera House, Sunday, 8pm
ADAM Kay, medic turned comic, shares entries from his diaries as a junior doctor in his evening of horror stories from the NHS frontline, savvy stand-up, witty wordplay and spoof songs.
His award-winning show, This Going To Hurt, has drawn 200,000 people to sell-out tours, the Edinburgh Fringe and West End runs, and the book of the same name topped the best sellers list for more than a year and is soon to be a BBC drama. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/york.
Boyzlife: Keith Duffy and Brian McFadden unite in Boyzone and Westlife songs at York Barbican
Irish night of the week: Boyzlife, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm; doors, 6.30pm
PUT Irish boy band graduates Brian McFadden, from Westlife, and Keith Duffy, from Boyzone, together and they become Boyzlife, as heard on the July 2020 album Strings Attached, recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
On tour with a full band, but not the ‘Phil’, they choose songs from a joint back catalogue of 18 number one singles and nine chart-topping albums.
So many to squeeze in…or not: No Matter What, Flying Without Wings, World Of Our Own, Queen Of My Heart, Picture Of You, Uptown Girl, You Raise Me Up, Going Gets Tough, Swear It Again, Father And Son, Love Me For A Reason and My Love. Find out on Sunday. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk
Thumper: Dublin band play Ad Nauseam and much more at Fulford Arms, York, on Tuesday
Loudest gig of the week: Thumper, Fulford Arms, York, Tuesday, 8pm
THUMPER, the cult Dublin band with two thumping drummers, are back on the road after you know what, promoting a 2021 mix of their single Ad Nauseam: a cautionary tale of repetition, vanity and becoming too close to what you know will eat you.
From the Irish city of the equally visceral Fontaines DC and The Murder Capital, Thumper have emerged with their ragged guitars and “bratty, frenetic punk rock” (Q magazine).
Now their debut album is taking shape after the band were holed up in their home studio for months on end. The Adelphi, Hull, awaits on Wednesday.
At the fourth time of planning: Mary Coughlan, Pocklington Arts Centre, Tuesday, 8pm
Mary Coughlan: Life Stories in song at Pocklington Arts Centre
GALWAY jazz and blues chanteuse Mary Coughlan had to move her Pocklington show three times in response to the stultifying pandemic.
“Ireland’s Billie Holliday” twice rearranged the gig during 2020, and did so again this year in a switch from April 23 to October 19.
At the heart of Mary’s concert, fourth time lucky, will still be Life Stories, her 15th album, released on the wonderfully named Hail Mary Records last September. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Spiers & Boden: Resurrected folk duo head to Pocklington on Wednesday
Double act of the week ahead: Spiers & Boden, Pocklington Arts Centre, Wednesday, 7.30pm
AFTER years of speculation, much-loved English folk duo Spiers & Boden are back together, releasing the album Fallow Ground and bringing a live show to Pocklington this autumn with special guests.
First forming a duo in 2001, John Spiers, now 46, and Jon Boden, 44, became leading lights in big folk band Bellowhead, resting the duo in 2014, before Bellowhead headed into the sunset in 2016. Solo endeavours ensued but now Spiers & Boden return. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Matilda takes on Miss Trunchbull in Matilda The Musical Jr
Musical of the week: Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical Jr, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, October 20 to 24, 7.30pm; 2pm, 4.30pm, Saturday; 2pm, Sunday.
ONLY the last few tickets are still available for York Stage Musicals’ York premiere of the Broadway Junior version of Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin’s stage adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story.
Matilda has astonishing wit, intelligence, imagination…and special powers! Unloved by her cruel parents, she nevertheless impresses teacher Miss Honey, but mean headmistress Miss Trunchbull hates children and just loves thinking up new punishments for those who fail to abide by her rules. Hurry, hurry to the box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntheatre.co.uk.
KMA Creative Collective artist Kit Monkman studies KMA’s commission for York Mediale, People We Love. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
Worth noting too:
PEOPLE We Love, the York Mediale installation, reopening at York Minster from Saturday. York Design Week, full of ideas, October 20 to 26, at yorkdesign week.com; Light Night Leeds 2021, with a Back To Nature theme for this art and lights festival tonight and tomorrow, at whatson.leeds.gov.uk; Live At Leeds gigs across 20 venues with Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, Sports Team, The Night Café, The Big Moon, Dream Wife, Poppy Adjuda, The Orielles and Thumper, at liveatleeds.com.
Clinging on to the wreckage of a performance: Leonard Cook, left, Gabriel Paul, Laura Kirman, Sean Carey and April Hughes in Mischief’s The Play That Goes Wrong
Mischief present The Play That Goes Wrong, as Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society mishandles Murder At Haversham Manor, at Grand Opera House, York, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm and 7.30pm tomorrow
THE Play That Goes Wrong will be going wronger for a little longer at the Grand Opera House this week, and you must do anything to secure a ticket for this Mischievous misadventure. Well, short of committing murder at Haversham Manor, the scene of this hoot of a criminally good massacre of a detective thriller.
Amateur dramatics and thespian excess previously were the good-humoured subject of Michael Frayn’s gloriously chaotic Noises Off and the merry mayhem and sexual shenanigans of Alan Ayckbourn’s A Chorus Of Disapproval in 1982 and 1984 respectively. Great plays, timeless too, but distant days.
Then, more than three decades later, along came Mischief Theatre, or Mischief as these mischief makers now market their ever-expanding factory of affectionate spoofs, with Magic Goes Wrong and schools comedy Groan Ups as the latest additions.
The Play That Goes Wrong was the tumbling, crumbling template for the rest, conceived in 2008 by London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts graduates Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, with their dual fondness for improvised comedy and Michael Green’s lampooning guide to The Art Of Coarse Acting guide, rendered in perfectly timed physical farce and choreographed catastrophes with the double bluff of appearing to be off the cuff.
In a nutshell, the structure is in the play-within-a-play tradition: the under-funded, hapless Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society players and short-staffed production team are at full stretch and beyond as they strive to present Susie H.K. Brideswell’s whodunit Murder At Haversham Manor. The creative team is full of Beans, or rather, one Bean, director, designer, costume designer, prop maker etc, Chris Bean, lead actor to boot.
What could possibly go wrong? Everything, so much so that the director must wonder not so much whodunit but whydoit? For the players’ gamely persistence, much gratitude in the face of crisis after calamity, still more chaos after catastrophe.
When your reviewer says “everything goes wrong”, it could not go more right in going wrong because the consequences are comedy gold in the traditions of Fawlty Towers, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Morecambe & Wise’s little plays and the best of Berwick Kaler’s “ad-libbed” York pantomimes, as opposed to disastrous amateur theatre experiences of yore.
In fact, the more it goes wrong, the better, the funnier, the kamikaze comic chemistry becomes, and the more times you see the show, the better, the funnier, it becomes too. Remarkable!
Introduced by outwardly implacable “first-time director” Chris Bean (Tom Bulpett), the murder mystery finds Bean re-emerging as moustachioed, far-from-implacable Inspector Carter. Everyone is playing someone playing someone, or they are by the end when sound engineer Trevor (Yorkshireman Gabriel Paul) and crew member Annie (Laura Kirman) are pressed into emergency roles on stage.
In response to the need for expediency in Covid times, Mischief have picked a cast of The Play That Goes Wrong old hands, their past experience adding wonderfully to the ensemble interplay as somehow the show must go on, no matter how many mishaps befall actors and Nigel Hook’s set alike. Indeed, his Haversham Manor is a character in itself.
Revel in the delightfully observed send-ups of actor types too, especially Leonard Cook’s Robert, roaring his Stanislavky method-acting way through the uproarious role of Thomas Collymore.
April Hughes’s parody of a hammy actress with an out-of-control ego and an inappropriate range of B-movie mannerisms is gleeful; Edward Howells’ Dennis keeps all around him on edge with his unexpected mispronunciations of butler Perkins’ words.
Everyone is so spot on that scene stealing is impossible, but Tom Babbage is a scream as Max, a novice over-actor, with ridiculously exaggerated arm movements, playing more and more to the audience, rather than the script, and leaping, let alone stepping, out of character.
Sean Carey’s Jonathan has a momentum-building habit of turning up at the wrong moment amid the calamitous clatter of pratfalls, prop mishaps, misbehaving scenery and gravely serious yet dead funny acting as Mark Bell’s cast negotiates this minefield of an obstacle course so adroitly.
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What could possibly go wrong? Cue the chaos, calamities, crises and catastrophes of Mischief’s The Play That Goes Wrong, returning to the Grand Opera House, York, from September 28. Picture: Robert Day
THE Play That Goes Wrong keeps getting it right, an Olivier Award winner from the Mischief makers that has chalked up productions across every continent, aside from being given the cold shoulder by Antarctica.
The West End’s longest-running comedy is spreading chaos and calamity across the Duchess Theatre for a seventh year and the fourth major British tour brings the show back to the Grand Opera House, York, from Tuesday after an earlier run there on tour number three in May 2018.
For those yet to encounter the thrills, spills and comedy mayhem of The Play That Goes Wrong, how would co-writer Jonathan Sayer sum it up? “It’s a comedy all about a drama university group who are putting on a play and everything that could possibly go wrong…goes wrong,” he says. “There’s a big cast, there’s lots of jokes and it pretty much does what it says on the tin.
“The three writers [artistic director Henry Lewis, company director Sayer and Henry Shields] have all worked in theatre and have experiences of things going awry in shows we’ve been in.
“Some of my favourite moments watching theatre have been where things have gone dreadfully wrong and the actors are forced to deal with the mistake and try to keep the show on track.
“On top of that, a huge influence for us is Michael Green, who wrote The Art Of Coarse Acting and actually taught Henry Lewis at youth theatre. Then there’s a huge amount of physical comedy, which is definitely a nod to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.”
Mischief began in 2008 as a group that specialised in improvised comedy in London and Edinburgh but now creates new comedy for theatre, such as Magic That Goes Wrong, on tour at Leeds Grand Theatre earlier this month, and for television, with the new six-part series of The Goes Wrong Show beginning on BBC One on September 27.
“We created the script for The Play That Goes Wrong when the three of us were living together in a pretty run-down flat in Gunnersbury,” says Jonathan. “We were all working in bars and call centres and restaurants, and in the evenings we’d come home and we’d write until the early hours.
“There’s a huge amount of physical comedy, which is definitely a nod to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton,” says The Play That Goes Wrong co-writer Jonathan Sayer. Picture: Robert Day
“The initial script took about a month to put together and we then workshopped the script with the rest of the Mischief team. Everyone’s done a lot of improv, so we try and take those principles into the writing room and into rehearsal where, if someone has an idea, you accept it and you build on it.”
From playing to 60 people in pub theatres, Mischief have gone on to take productions to 35 countries, none more successfully than The Play That Goes Wrong.
Back for a second tour of bumps and bruises is Huddersfield actor Gabriel Paul, last seen in York in 2018 playing Trevor, the sound engineer pressed into an emergency role on stage.
“There’s just me from the 2018 tour among the 2021 principals, but all eight of us have been in the principal cast on a previous tour, so we’re like the Avengers being reassembled as they needed people to do it who were already familiar with the challenges involved, all up to speed, because of the Covid situation,” he says.
“It was my agent who first put me up for an audition in November 2017 – when I was really embarrassed because I didn’t know anything about the show at all! – and that process involved a lot of improvisation because the director and writers had devised the show around a lot of improvising.
“Initially I auditioned on my own but I ended up doing five auditions, going down to London from Huddersfield each time. They don’t mess about! They really put you through your paces as they want to see how you work with other actors.”
Teamwork is vital, as Gabriel has found on tour in 2018 and 2021 and in the West End in 2019. “One hundred per cent that’s the case. There’s a certain skill in trying to make things look bad or that they’re going wrong, and you have to really be in tune with your fellow actors because otherwise you could get hurt if things go even more wrong than the title would suggest!” he says.
“Being a physical show, it’s not just the stunts we do, but there are strains you can get, so we do group physiotherapy sessions with Carl Heaton, a sports physiotherapist from Manchester, once a month.”
The fourth tour should have run from December 2020 to April 2021 but after the opening day’s two shows, Lockdown 3 put paid to those dates. Instead, Gabriel and co have been on the road since July 13, relishing a return to playing to audiences.
Gabriel Paul reprising his role as sound engineer Trevor in The Play That Goes Wrong, now “going wronger for a little bit longer”. Picture: Robert Day
“We have a saying, because there are 12 characters, we always say the 13th character is Nigel Hook’s award-winning set, but the 14th character is the audience because we do encourage them to participate and even to call out sometimes,” he says.
“It’s the audience’s reaction that I most enjoy about this show; being in a room where you hear people crying with laughter. Hearing that joy all around the country is wonderful.
“I’ve done plays with heavy subject matters and they’re important to do, but it’s great to hear laughter again after the 18 months we’ve had.”
Comedy or tragedy, serious or light, Gabriel has enjoyed myriad stage roles, whether in Northern Broadsides’ Quality Street, The Queen Of Chapeltown at Leeds Playhouse, Bouncers for Esk Valley Theatre or Othello for Demi-paradise Productions.
“I wish I was in that position of being able to choose roles, but that’s not the reality, but I’ve had the chance to work with fantastic people in fantastic shows,” he says. “I like to do something funny or something conversational, like Everything I Own, the Daniel Ward play I did when Hull Truck Theatre reopened in June with a trio of monologues.
“It was about Errol, a man of Jamaican descent, who grew up in Hull and has just lost his father to Covid. He’s organising his father’s house, and it’s a play with universal themes about loss and grief, fathers and sons, family stories and a love of music.”
Now, “having hoped he had done enough never be asked back, Gabriel is contractually obliged to say he’s extremely honoured to be reprising the role of Trevor and getting the chance to go wronger for a little bit longer”, or so his The Play That Goes Wrong biog jokingly says.
The truth is, half way through a tour that runs until the end of November, Gabriel is loving every minute of being in the Wrong place at the right time again.
Mischief present The Play That Goes Wrong, Grand Opera House, York, September 28 to October 3, 7.30pm and 2.30pm, Saturday and Sunday matinees. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
Copyright of The Press, York
Gabriel Paul playing Errol in Daniel Ward’s monologue Everything I Own at Hull Truck Theatre this summer
