IN the week when Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s terrifying play Ghost
Stories will be spooking out the Grand Opera House, now there is to be even
more paranormal activity at the York theatre.
On March 12 and 13 at 10.30pm each night, Paranormal Research York (PRY)
will lead The Ghost Hunt in a theatre lit only by the emergency lighting
systems.
Those attending this after-dark theatre tour will be encouraged to
participate throughout the interactive event, where PRY will employ assorted traditional
methods, such as a human pendulum and divination activities, using crystals and
divining rods.
Ghost hunters: the calling card for Paranormal Research York
A variety of technical equipment will be on hand for guests to try out, such as a “stick
man” camera and gadgets that can detect spirit energies. In a nutshell, guests
can be “as involved as they dare to be”.
Paranormal Research York’s team of experienced and professional paranormal investigators
from York have come together to investigate predominantly in “Britain’s most
haunted city”.
Their work involves accessing a range of haunted locations in and around
York and then researching their findings to go with the legends.
Parallel paranormal activities: Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s play Ghost Stories will be scaring all and sundry at the Grand Opera House in the same week as the late-night ghost hunts
Looking forward to conducting The Ghost Hunt in a building built in 1868,
PRY’s Clare Bryant says: “We’re very excited to be hosting the first ever ghost
hunt at this amazing, historical building. From our first walk around at the
Grand Opera House, we could feel the spirits already coming forward.”
Kevin Spindloe, from PRY, adds: “Wow! Friday the 13th and we have the
privilege to be investigating here. It’s so active here and the spirits seem
keen to tell their own ghost stories. As a guest you can be involved in the
activities or just watch. Either way you will experience an event like no
other.”
The Ghost Hunt on Friday, March 13th has sold out – unlucky for some! – but tickets for March 12 and the Ghost Stories run from March 10 to 14 are on sale on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
The lecturer in Ghost Stories: “The supernatural is purely a trick of the mind,” he says…but is it?
THE Grand Opera House, York, already
has its own ghost, one said to call out the first name of a new member of staff
in the quiet of the auditorium on first acquaintance.
No doubt that will intrigue Professor
Goodman, ahead of the lecturer’s visit to the Cumberland Street theatre from
March 10 to 14 as the investigative fulcrum of writer-directors Andy Nyman and
Jeremy Dyson’s “supernatural sensation”, Ghost Stories, on its first national
tour.
On the road since January 7 after
completing its latest West End run at The Ambassadors Theatre, London, the
Lyric Hammersmith Theatre production should feel at home in York, the
self-proclaimed most haunted city in Europe.
What’s more, with the Grand Opera
House’s proximity to the York Dungeon, “York’s scariest tourist attraction”,
where better for Nyman and Dyson’s global hit to be spooking?
Premiered a decade ago and turned into
a film too, Ghost Stories invites its captive audience to “enter a nightmarish
world, full of thrilling twists and turns, where all your deepest fears and
most disturbing thoughts are imagined live on stage”.
Expect a “fully sensory and
electrifying encounter in the ultimate twisted love-letter to horror, a
supernatural edge-of-your-seat theatrical experience like no other”, as
Professor Goodman strives to prove the supernatural is “purely a trick of the
mind” in the face of three stories that beg to differ.
“Ghost Stories has never really gone
away, running in various incarnations since the original production a decade
ago, going into the West End, then Canada, Moscow,” says co-writer Jeremy
Dyson, best known for his work with those twisted humourists The League Of
Gentlemen.
“It was done in Russian in Russia but we
had to maintain that it was set in Britain because apparently no Russian is
afraid of a ghost.”
Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson: co-writers and directors of Ghost Stories
The latest British incarnation opened
at the Lyric Hammersmith last March, whereupon it was picked up by commercial
producers keen to take it on the road. “We’d always wanted to do that but never
been able to do so, even though we knew just how much people wanted to see it,
but we were told it ‘wasn’t tourable’.”
Until now, until Jon Bausor came up
with a design that could play both The Ambassadors Theatre and theatres around
the country.
“He’s made it possible to squash the
set into a van!” says Jeremy, who lives in Ilkley, by the way. “Each time we’ve
staged the play, we’ve been able to solve another problem, get rid of another
niggle, and finally we have the production that is totally to our satisfaction.
“The show’s been going down really well
on tour, and it will fit perfectly into York with all its ghost stories and the
York Dungeon opposite the Grand Opera House.”
Why are we so drawn to ghost stories,
Jeremy? “I think there are lots of reasons,” he says. “One of them is obvious: death
and the afterlife, which is a personal concern to all of us, and ghost stories
are a way to approach such an overwhelming concern.
“That’s particularly so in our
increasingly secular society, where there’s a hunger for the mysterious, the
uncanny, the inexplicable, which once upon a time would have come under the
auspices of the church and religion.
“That’s part of it, and also when it
comes to a show like Ghost Stories, there’s the entertainment and the thrill,
the fairground element.”
Nyman, London actor, director and
writer, and Dyson, screen and stage writer and author, have been friends for a
“very long time”. “Since we were teenagers, in fact,” says Jeremy. “We met when
we were 15 and one of the things we bonded over was horror movies at the dawn
of the video age, renting those films to watch them together.
The Caretaker: one of the three Ghost Stories to be told at the Grand Opera House, York
“We’ve had our individual careers and
we’d never thought of working together, but out of the blue Andy called me with
this idea of having three men sitting telling ghost stories after he saw The
Vagina Monologues [Eve Ensler’s show with three women telling stories].
“It was a very intriguing idea that was
enough to hook me straightaway, though we then veered away from that initial
construction over a long gestation period.
“Creating Ghost Stories was very much a
case of sitting in a room together, talking about it for a year, and then
getting together, bashing out the outline, working every day for a week, when
we pretty much hammered it out, because we’d been thinking about it for so
long.”
Ghost Stories has drawn comparisons
with Stephen Mallatratt’s stage adaptation of Susan Hill’s The Woman In Black,
premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 1987 and still running
in the West End, but Jeremy was keen that Ghost Stories should stand in its own
right.
“We wanted very much to create a theatre
experience that we hadn’t had before, in terms of being a very immersive piece
of theatre, and we also like the challenge of taking things that you’re
familiar thematically from horror films and seeing if we could transfer them to
the stage.”
A further element is at play in Ghost
Stories. “Andy and I both have a love of conjuring and magic; Andy has worked
with Derren Brown for 20, so we wanted to build that into the show’s
structure,” says Jeremy. “We wanted to look at how you can create a magical effect
with a combination of storytelling and technology, and that’s what we’ve
achieved.”
Ghost Stories promises “moments of extreme shock and tension” at the Grand Opera House, York, from March 10 to 14. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york. Unsuitable for anyone under 15 years old.
In the swing of it: Crooners celebrates the golden age of song and dance
CROONERS, a rip-roaring comedy music
show with a splendiferous injection of big band swing, charms its way into the
Grand Opera House, York, on March 6, at 7.30pm.
On a mission to bring old-school
variety back to the theatre with a “quintessentially British twist to the genre
symbolised by the crooner”, this new collaboration bonds comedy writer and
performer Roman Marek with the outrageous ten-piece swing combo The Mini Big
Band.
“I’m asong-and-dance man,” says Marek. “I was brought up on the music of the super-cool crooners, but also on the quintessentially English stage humour of Morecambe and Wise, Bruce Forsyth and Max Bygraves.”
Crooners revels in the songs of the Rat Pack’s Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr, together with Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin and Britain’s very own crooner, Matt Monro.
“We have a set listofmaterial never before heard in a theatre production,” says Marek. Tickets for this “truly British swingin’ affair” are on sale on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
Deluxe dancers: Ballet Boyz on tour with a new show in the spring
BALLETBOYZ are celebrating their 20th
anniversary with a spring tour of Deluxe, visiting the Grand Opera House, York,
on April 28.
This new show fuses beautiful dance
with original music, including collaborations from “some of the world’s most
inventive and thought-provoking choreographers and composers”, in a
co-production with Sadler’s Wells.
Shanghai
dancer and choreographer Xie Xin, artistic director of Xiexin Dance
Theatre, will make her British debut choreographing a new piece set to an
original electronic score by Jiang Shaofeng.
Punchdrunk
associate director Maxine Doyle will present work to live jazz music by
composer Cassie Kinoshi, of the Mercury Prize-nominated SEED Ensemble.
BalletBoyz artistic directors Michael
Nunn and William Trevitt say: “Deluxe is going to be a night of entertaining
and thought-provoking theatre that’s been 20 years in the making. The beauty of
our job has always been about finding and pursuing extraordinary talent and
sharing that with as many people as we can. It’s that simple.”
Over the past 20 years. BalletBoyz have
made 38 pieces of new work for the stage, won 13 international awards and
collaborated with 25 choreographers, Christopher Wheeldon, Akram Khan, Kristen
McNally, Matthew Bourne and Liv Lorent among them.
In the BalletBoyz line-up will be Joseph
Barton, Benjamin Knapper, Harry Price, Liam Riddick, Matthew Sandiford, Will
Thompson and apprentice Dan
Baines.
Looking ahead, in the autumn BalletBoyz
will undertake a new digital project in the wake of their award-winning dance
films Young Men and Romeo And Juliet.
Tickets for April 28’s 7.30pm show are on sale at £13 upwards on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
New home: AJ Powell, Berwick Kaler, Suzy Cooper, David Leonard and Martin Barrass settle into the Grand Opera House auditorium. PIcture: David Harrison
THIS morning was the official launch for Berwick Kaler’s comeback pantomime, Dick Turpin Rides Again, as the resurrected York dame handed over the first tickets to queueing fans at his new home, the Grand Opera House.
Joining him were villain David Leonard, stalwart stooge Martin Barrass, ageless principal girl Suzy Cooper and luverly Brummie A J Powell after their controversial exit and crosstown switch from the York Theatre Royal, signing on the dotted line for pantomime powerhouse producers Qdos Entertainment and the Cumberland Street theatre’s owners, the Ambassador Theatre Group.
Not joining them, however, was CharlesHutchPress, barred from the launch and the morning’s media interviews at the request of the Panto Five in a move from the Dominic Cummings rule book for Number 10 press briefings .
This has to stop.
It is time to re-build bridges, and Valentine’s Day would have been a good start, rather than continuing this Charles Hutchinson Derides Again contretemps .
JOKER Jimmy Carr is Terribly Funny.
Or at least that’s the title the dry-witted British-Irish comedian, presenter
and writer has behest on this year’s York-bound travels.
Isleworth-born Carr, 47, has just
added a York Barbican date on October 25, in doing so making a crosstown switch
for the first time from his regular York stamping ground, the Grand Opera
House.
Not that the urbane stand-up putdown
specialist is not booked into the Opera House too on his 2020 tour. He is. Carr
will be Terribly Funny there first, on June 21.
Arch cynic Carr first played York in
2003 at the inaugural York Comedy Festival and The Other Side Comedy Club at The
Basement, City Screen, making his Grand Opera House debut with Public Displays Of
Affection in November 2004.
He returned in October 2006 and April
2007 with Gag Reflex; a one-off Repeat Offender in March 2008; two nights of Joke
Technician in September 2008, one in April 2009, and a brace of Rapier Wit dates
in September 2009, another in March 2010 and yet another two months later.
Jimmy Carr will be Terribly Funny twice over in York
Laughter Therapy brought Carr back for
two shows in October 2010 and one the next April; next came four performances
of Gagging Order, one in June 2012, two that December, one more in September 2013,
and two Funny Business gigs in October 2014. The Best Of, Ultimate, Greatest
Hits Tour sent him north in September 2016, October 2016 and June 2017.
His last public appearance in York
was as a guest at the York Minster wedding ceremony of pop star Ellie Goulding
and North Yorkshire-born art dealer Casper Jopling last August.
Terribly Funny contains jokes about all
kinds of terrible things, says Carr: “Terrible things that might have affected
you or people you know and love. But they’re just jokes – they are not
the terrible things. Having political correctness at a comedy show is like
having health and safety at a rodeo. Now you’ve been warned, buy a ticket.”
York Barbican tickets for Carr, the Channel 4 host of The Friday Night Project, 8 Out Of 10 Cats and The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year, are on sale on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the box office. Grand Opera House tickets, 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
Robert Daws’ committee chairman Ray, left, and Mark Curry’s pedantic Councillor Donald Evans in Ten Times Table. Pictures: Pamela Raith
REVIEW: Alan Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table, The Classic Comedy Theatre Company, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york
IMPRESARIO and
prolific producer Bill Kenwright has his name on multiple shows that frequent
the Grand Opera House, from musicals to the Agatha Christie, Classic Thriller
and Classic Screen To Stage companies.
Now add The
Classic Comedy Theatre Company to that list, making their debut tour either
side of Christmas with Ten Times Table, Alan Ayckbourn’s “calamitous comedy by
committee” from 1977, the year when committees popped up everywhere to mark HM
The Queen’s Silver Jubilee.
Those stellar
names of British theatre, Kenwright and Ayckbourn, are complemented by a third:
Robin Herford, perennial director of The Woman In Black and much else, not
least past productions of Ayckbourn’s Just Between Ourselves at the Stephen
Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and Relatively Speaking, Confusions, Bedroom Farce and Season’s
Greetings elsewhere.
What’s
more, Ayckbourn cast him as pedantic, punctilious, punctuation and procedure-obsessed
Councillor Donald Evans in his SJT premiere of Ten Times Table in January 1977.
Everything
sounded so promising for Herford’s touring production, not least a cast
starring Robert Daws, Robert Duncan, Mark Curry and Deborah Grant. Certainly,
more promising than the gloomy forecast that the River Ouse floodwaters could
be seeping beneath the Grand Opera House doors by 6am, prompting senior
management to stay on watchful guard through the night.
Thankfully, such concerns turned out to be a false dawn. Alas, Ten Times Table proved to be a damp squib too: that rare occasion when an Ayckbourn play just isn’t very funny any more.
Maybe we are spoilt by Sir Alan’s revivals of his classics at the Stephen Joseph Theatre each summer season; maybe they better suit the bear-pit setting of the SJT’s theatre in the round: more intimate, more inclusive, more apt for the combative nature of his vintage comedies. Maybe it is significant that Ten Times Table has never been among those revivals.
Misfiring: Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy Ten Times Table fires blanks in Robin Herford’s touring production
Here in
York, on a proscenium-arch stage, as with the body of a giraffe, Ten Times
Table feels like the work of a committee. Or the work of a committee like the
one we are watching as they assemble maybe ten times around the table (although
your reviewer lost count).
Welcome to the “miscellaneous assemblage” of the Pendon Folk Festival committee, gathering beneath the erratic lights of the faded grand ballroom of the Swan Hotel, as Seventies as hotel grey gravy and over-boiled veg and as tired as the comedy in Michael Holt’s design.
The
pathway to the Pendon Pageant will be a bumpy one, all the more so for the
irascible, over-excitable disposition of chairman Ray (Robert Daws), who bores
everyone, audience included unfortunately, as he recounts Pendon’s most dramatic
news story of the past.
Now the 18th
century army massacre of the radical Pendon Twelve agricultural agitators is to
be re-enacted on pageant day. Ayckbourn duly sets up matching class warfare:
middle-class conservatism on one side, represented by smug Ray; his constantly
peeved, overbearing wife Helen (Deborah Grant); a mad, revolver-toting military
dog-breeder, Tim (Harry Gostelow), and ineffectual dullard Councillor Evans
(Mark Curry).
Always accompanying
Evans is his octogenarian mum Audrey (Elizabeth Power), the minute-taking but
pretty much deaf committee secretary who never delivers the minutes, dithering dottily
except when a drink or the chance to play the piano comes her way.
On the
other side, representing the agitators, is the truculent Marxist martyr, comprehensive
schoolteacher Eric (Craig Gazey), and his acolytes, the ever-underwhelming
Sophie (Gemma Oaten), even a disappointment to herself, and the almost impossibly
quietly spoken costume maker Philippa (Rhiannon Handy).
No idea
where he is, the sozzled Laurence (Robert Duncan) stumbles from marital crisis
to the next marital crisis.
Ayckbourn
depicts the minutiae of committee conduct with trademark mischief making but
somehow this Ten Times Table does not add up amid the personality and
ideological clashes. The power-driven Ray is as irritating as the banging on
the floor above; plenty of others follow suit, and, especially in the long
first half, the comedy feels too slow, too forced, the timing……..off.
Mark Curry’s pedantic Donald, right, with Robert Daws’ hapless committee chairman, Ray, in Alan Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table, presented by Bill Kenwright’s Classic Comedy Theatre Company. All pictures: Pamela Raith
ALAN Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table is the one with “the committee from hell and a fete worse than death”.
Premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 1977, when inspired by the myriad committees that formed for The Queen’s Silver Jubilee that year, Ayckbourn’s calamitous comedy by committee now forms the inaugural production by the Classic Comedy Theatre Company, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, from Monday.
This is the latest theatrical enterprise from impresario Bill Kenwright, whose Agatha Christie, Classic Thriller and Classic Screen to Stage companies are familiar to York audiences over the past 15 years in shows replete with star names.
Among the company, alongside the likes of Robert Daws, Robert Duncan and Deborah Grant, is Mark Curry, the former Blue Peter presenter, now 57.
Taking on the role of pedantic Donald brings back memories of his own encounter with Ayckbourn, artistic director of the SJT at the time, when Mark was pretty much straight out of drama school.
“Apart from auditioning for Alan back in the day, I’ve never met him since then, but I’d love to do as he’s such a brilliant man, and I’d love to sit him down and ask him about the characters in Ten Times Table,” he says.
What did Ayckbourn say when he did audition you, Mark? “He said, ‘you’re not quite ready yet, but you have such energy’.” As perceptive as ever in his people-watching, Ayckbourn highlighted a characteristic that Curry has since brought to his career, whether on Blue Peter, in theatre roles or as a radio presenter.
As chance would have it, Ayckbourn still did play his part in Mark’s milk-teeth days as a professional actor. “I was in rep [repertory theatre] for about three years at Harrogate Theatre, when Mark Piper was the artistic director, and one of the parts I did was a non-speaking role in, ironically, Ten Times Table,” he recalls.
You’re fired! The Pendon Folk Festival committee meeting reaches crisis point in Alan Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table
“I played Max Kirkov, a really strange character who walks on and carries off the leading lady, played in that production by Jean Fergusson, who went on to be Marina in Last Of The Summer Wine for so many years.”
In fact, Mark knows Ayckbourn’s comedy very well, for this latest tour is his third encounter with Ten Times Table, a “predominantly sedentary farce” – the Scarborough playwright’s own description – set in the long-since grand ballroom of the Swan Hotel.
Here, a most miscellaneous assemblage has gathered to conduct the business of the Pendon Folk Festival, led by excitable chairman Ray. Unfortunately for Ray, his committee quickly divides as his wife Helen has a bone to pick.
Then add a nitpicking councillor, a Marxist schoolteacher, a military dog-breeder and an octogenarian secretary, and turbulence is on its way.
Second time around, Mark played Ray, the fulcrum of all the chaos, on a six-week tour. Now, director Robin Herford has cast him as Councillor Donald Evans, a character whose pen portrait for auditionees describes him as “a professional committee man who likes nothing better than a good agenda. A glasses-wearing pedant who is precise to the point of obsession; always accompanied by his mother, Audrey.”
“What made me do it this time was that Robin was directing. He was the first person to play Donald for Alan Ayckbourn in 1977, by the way, and I’d done Woman In Black at the Fortune Theatre in London, with Robin directing, as he always does with that play, in 1994.
“I remember saying to him, ‘I want to play the older guy [in Woman In Black]; I’m really ready for it’.”
Instead, Mark played The Actor, the younger role in Stephen Mallatratt’s play, but perhaps he could work on Herford during the Ten Times Table run to suggest he is even more ready now, 26 years on, to be cast as Arthur Kipps.
That’s all, folk. Another moment of despair at the Pendon Folk Festival committee meeting in the Classic Comedy Theatre Company production of Ten Times Table
Mark is no stranger to Ayckbourn plays, having appeared in Bedroom Farce, How The Other Half Loves, Season’s Greetings and Joking Apart too, and after resuming the Ten Times Table tour in late-January that began with six weeks of shows before Christmas, he is greatly enjoying the role of Donald.
“He’s described as ‘grey man’. Well, I’m grey now! He’s this pedantic, boring little man and it really bothers him when there’s a spelling mistake or grammatical error! Apparently, Alan had encountered someone like that in a committee meeting!
“Anyway, Donald, who still lives with his mum, is really obsessed with details. It’s a role as real as you could make it, and there’s so much more to this part than just being a boring little man.”
Mark is rather less enamoured by committee meetings. “I remember being on a tennis club committee at a lovely club in Horsforth. I volunteered and was very enthusiastic, but what I soon realised was that while we all had one thing in common – we all loved tennis – we were all different characters who’d end up arguing, even though we all wanted the club to thrive,” he recalls.
“You think, if this is what happens with a small-scale committee, imagine what it must be like when it matters on a world scale!”
What next might come Mark’s way? Would he, for example, fancy playing dame in pantomime, now that such a vacancy exists at a theatre not far from the Grand Opera House? “The dame is the only role I could do in pantomime now,” he says. “It would be lovely to do it.” Watch this space!
The Classic Comedy Theatre Company in Alan Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table, Grand Opera House, York, Monday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
Putting his big boots back on: York pantomime dame Berwick Kaler, pictured here in his last Theatre Royal show, The Grand Old Dame Of York, before retiring. Now the Grand Opera House beckons. Picture: Anthony Robling
BERWICK Kaler is back, as the Grand Old Dame of York transforms into the Grand’s new dame.
Now that the Grand Opera House will
be the home of his latest dame after 41 years at York Theatre Royal, both Dame
Berwick and Dick Turpin will ride again from December 12 to January 10 2021.
Kaler pulled on his big boots at the
Theatre Royal for the last time on February 2 2019 after announcing his
retirement from Britain’s longest-running panto damehood.
Giving that retirement its P45, in
favour of a re-boot, he will write and direct as well as star in Dick Turpin
Rides Again, as he takes back control [to borrow a Dominic Cummings mantra].
What’s more, he will be re-uniting on stage with sidekick stooge Martin
Barrass, villain David Leonard, ageless principal girl Suzy Cooper and luverly
Brummie AJ Powell.
This time, the re-formed Panto Five
will be on new terrain as the Grand Opera House owners, Ambassador Theatre
Group, team up with Qdos Entertainment, the most powerful pantomime brand in
the land.
Here Charles Hutchinson puts the questions to prolific theatre producer, director and Qdos Entertainment (Pantomimes) managing director Michael Harrison, Kaler’s fellow north easterner, who stands at number eight in The Stage’s Top 100 most influential people in theatre, no less.
Michael Harrison: managing director of Qdos Entertainment (Pantomimes), the panto powerhouse bringing Berwick Kaler’s dame out of retirement. Picture: Simon Hadley
Why bring back Berwick, Michael?
“The best things fall out of the sky and I wasn’t expecting this
opportunity.
“I’m from Newcastle and I travelled all over the place to see
pantomimes; first Newcastle and Sunderland, then Darlington, and then I started
venturing to York and further, and I loved York Theatre
Royal’s show.
“If you see all the pantos everywhere, they can become like wallpaper,
but stumbling across Berwick in York was like a breath of fresh air. I’d never
seen anything like it. Stepping out of the script, as he does, I just loved it.
“I never really thought there was a place for it in what I did but was
more than happy to see it in Berwick’s pantos, and I did try to put some of
that madness in my shows, like I have for 16 years at Newcastle Theatre Royal.”
What struck you most about Berwick’s pantos?
“I like the way he has catchphrases that you don’t have to spend three
minutes introducing to the audience because they already know them.
“I like how he returns to things from previous shows, how he uses wild
titles and how he has cast members returning every year.
“It’s no secret that our most successful pantos are where the stars keep
returning: Allan Stewart, 20-plus years at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh; Billy
Pearce, more than 20 years at the Bradford Alhambra; Danny Adams and Clive Webb, 16
years at Newcastle Theatre Royal; Matt Slack at Birmingham Hippodrome.
“It’s true that pantomime is a celebration of local culture and that’s
why Berwick had that long run at the Theatre Royal.”
The final curtain for Berwick Kaler’s dame in The Grand Old Dame Of York on February 2 2019 at York Theatre Royal has turned out to be au revoir, not adieu. Picture: Anthony Robling
How did you feel when Berwick retired?
“The day after The Grand Old Dame Of York finished, and I was very tired
after directing three pantomimes and producing 30 shows that winter, I got very
emotional, thinking ‘this is the end of an era’. But I was also thinking ‘why
does Berwick want to retire in his early seventies, when he doesn’t have to
travel to do the show, he can go home every night?’”
How did Berwick’s dame resurrection at the Grand Opera House come to fruition?
“Mark Walters, the designer who Qdos have signed up for the London
Palladium and Newcastle Theatre Royal pantomimes and who used to design
Berwick’s pantos in York, got in touch on January 11 to say ‘Have you heard
what’s happening to the Theatre Royal panto?’ [with the news of a new creative
team being put in place].
“I woke up the next morning thinking, ‘I don’t know if this is over’.
‘Why is Berwick not coming back? One year off, now he should come back
refreshed.
“I wrote to Berwick and said ‘you don’t know who I am, but I put on
pantomimes and lots of other shows and I’m a massive fan of your pantos. If I
can get the Grand Opera House, would you do it? Would you talk?’.”
What happened next?
“Berwick’s agent contacted me the following day and it developed very
quickly from there.
“I just felt that Berwick’s panto was a little bit of pantomime history
that should continue.
“Qdos produce all the other Ambassador Theatre Group pantomimes, and I was
aware that Three Bears Productions’ contract was not being renewed. Normally
it’s about ‘big’ casting, but this was different. There was Berwick and all his
regulars.
“It happened quickly with Berwick and then we approached the other four
[Barrass, Leonard, Cooper and Powell], and there just seemed to be a passion to
make it happen.”
Re-uniting: villain David Leonard and perennial principal girl Suzy Cooper, pictured here in Sleeping Beauty at York Theatre Royal, will be back on stage with Berwick Kaler from December 12
Will you want more of “the same old rubbish” as Berwick calls it, or will you be seeking fresh elements to appeal to the regular Grand Opera House panto audience, who like plot, plenty for children to enjoy and popular songs?
“We want to make it a York pantomime. We have to grasp all the best bits
that have really worked for Berwick, and we also have to work out what’s the
best recipe for this opportunity to move forward in a different way.
“I remember the advice of a member of the audience in Newcastle, who
said: ‘Don’t ever change it, but keep surprising me’, and that’s what we have
to discover each time; how to do that.
“But Berwick’s panto format is very unique, and I feel that while he
wants to do it, and they all want to do it, and there’s an audience that wants
him to do it, then let’s continue doing it.
“What I do know is that more people still saw David, Martin, Suzy and AJ
in Sleeping Beauty than went to Snow White at the Opera House, by a considerable
margin, and by adding Berwick to the mix again, it will be interesting to be in
York next winter.”
Does the feisty side of Berwick, such as his “I’m b****y furious” outburst at the finale to the last night of Sleeping Beauty, worry you?
“Anybody that is passionate about what they do can have a reputation for
being demanding, but that goes with the territory.
“You expect anyone with a mind like that is going to challenge, always
wanting things to be better. I’m sure he only does it with the audience in
mind. It’s just about doing the best job for them.”
The new pantomime team at York Theatre Royal: associate director Juliet Forster, who will direct Cinderella, executive director Tom Bird and Evolution Productions producer Paul Hendy
Will there be a rivalry with the York Theatre Royal panto, now to be co-produced with Evolution Productions’ Paul Hendy and Emily Wood, presenting Cinderella for 2020-2021?
“I know Paul and Emily well. They’ve sat in my house. We might all be
panto producers but there’s no rivalry there, though I’d love to know why a
repertory theatre is teaming up with a pantomime company.
“Picking the Theatre Royal cast now, it will have to be star-driven,
otherwise who will go? But Paul is a very clever panto man, so he won’t be going
into it to get it wrong.
“Besides, there are more important things going on in the world than a panto ‘rivalry. It’s really not worth falling out when it’s only four of five weeks a year.”
Could the two theatres potentially be swapping their pantomime audiences?
“If there were 31,000 who saw Sleeping Beauty without Berwick – and there’s
no surprise that ticket sales fell when someone who’s an institution isn’t
there on stage anymore – then there’ll be those 31,000 here. I think there’s no
reason why we won’t have 40,000 people coming.
“It would be great to keep some of the regular Grand Opera House panto
audience too, if they’ve never experienced a Berwick Kaler pantomime. But I
also understand those who want something more traditional, though I think the
York audience is still stronger for a Berwick Kaler pantomime than a normal storyline-driven,
fairy-tale panto.
“In year one, people might go and see both.”
Will you be looking to inject young talent into the Grand Opera House pantomime, alongside the established team?
“I’m always mindful of who are the pantomime stars of tomorrow because
we’re not breeding them as we once were, like when they used to do a Blackpool
summer season or a sitcom.
“Today’s comedy stars do Radio 2 and Radio 4 shows and bypass panto, so
we have to find the new stars through other ways.”
Valentine’s Day engagement: Berwick Kaler will meet the box-office queues at the Grand Opera House panto ticket launch on February 14
Is there a chance that Mark Walters might design the Grand Opera House show, now that the ex-York Theatre Royal panto designer has signed to the Qdos stable?
“I’m talking to Mark about it now. If it wasn’t for Mark, I wouldn’t have
put that request in to Berwick to play dame again.
“We’ve met already about Humpty Dumpty for Newcastle Theatre Royal…and we’ll
discuss Dick Turpin Rides Again too.”
As a hugely successful pantomime producer and director yourself, with the London Palladium and Newcastle Theatre Royal to your name, what makes a good panto?
“Two things, I would say: comedy and magic. Not magic tricks, but that
sense of wonderment that you can’t put your finger on.
“The best pantomimes are the funniest ones. We can get terribly criticised
for not having as much plot as we could, but the best received shows have
always been more focused on comedy, set pieces and routines.
“The plot has to be there but the show must be funny and it has to have
a wow factor about it.”
Qdos Entertainment present Berwick Kaler in Dick Turpin Rides Again at the Grand Opera House, York, from December 12 to January 10 2021. Dame Berwick and his co-stars will launch ticket sales on February 14 from 10am at the box office. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
Feel the chemistry Emma Lucia’s Girl and Daniel Healy’s Guy in Once , The Musical
Once, The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/York
THREE weeks
into rehearsals at Toynbee Hall in London’s East End, the media were invited to
a press day where director Peter Rowe and musical supervisor Ben Goddard put
their 16-strong cast through their paces in exhilarating fashion.
Sometimes you can feel the magic in the air as early as that, sensing the chemistry between leads Daniel Healy and Emma Lucia and the bonding of the company of actor-musicians as they turned a rehearsal room into an Irish pub full of lusty singing and joyful playing.
You just knew the show was going to be good, but, glory be, it is even better than that. Having cherished John Carney’s micro-budgeted cult romantic Irish film starring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova since 2007, yet aware that many still don’t know that charming movie, save maybe for its multi-award-winning song Falling Slowly, your reviewer urges you to fall immediately for this touring musical version. No time for slowness here.
Broadway, the West End and Dublin have all had a go at doing Once The Musical. Rowe and regular musical partner Goddard first united Scotsman Healy and Durham-born Lucia as Guy and Girl, jilted Dublin busker/vacuum cleaner repairman and immigrant Czech odd-jobs worker and musician, for shows in Ipswich and Hornchurch in 2018, and now they have found the perfect format for a touring version.
What a Guy: Daniel Healy in Once, The Musical
Designed by Libby Watson, the setting is an Irish pub, crammed with pictures and chattering life, where the cast rally the audience with songs familiar from The Pogues, Chieftains and Dubliners to set the Dublin craic.
Scenes are
played out against this backdrop, the musicians fading in and out of scenes,
sometimes acting like a Greek chorus as they lean in, in response to what is
unfolding between Healy’s Guy and Lucia’s Girl.
They are
first encountered as she watches him busking in the chill streets, singing to
his ex, now moved to New York, but still the subject of each pained song,
although he is on the cusp of giving up on those songs too.
Girl is open,
frank, funny for being so serious; Guy is taciturn, guarded, but the shared
love of music speaks volumes and she needs her vacuum cleaner mending. It duly arrives
as if out of thin air, shooting across the stage in one of the show’s many
humorous moments.
Big-hitting Falling Slowly is not held back. Instead, it forms their first song together in Billy’s unruly music shop, tentative at first as she picks out the piano lines, to accompany his singing, then joining in, their voices entwining and overlapping beautifully. Gradually, one by one, the musicians join in too: fiddle, guitars, mandolin, cello, squeezebox and more, in union, in sympathy.
Emma Lucia’s Girl saying hello to the piano – which musicians should always do, she says
Here, in a
nutshell, is why Once works wonders as a musical, being as much a celebration
of the power of music in Dublin’s fair city as a love story of ebb and flow,
rise and fall, surprise and revelation, over five all too short days.
The path of
love is never smooth, as we all know, but for those who have never seen Once,
it would be wrong to issue spoiler alerts of what ensues. Except to say, on the
way home you will want to discuss how the open-ended story might progress, if you
have any romantic bones in your body!
Healy and
Lucia are terrific leads: who would not fall for either of them?! His Guy is
generous, kind, a blue-eyed soul man of song and acoustic guitar playing; her Girl,
his new Czech mate, is feisty, fearless in the face of adversity in her adopted
city, and plays the piano exquisitely too.
Dan Bottomley’s
hapless, bandy-legged, hopelessly romantic, fiery Billy pickpockets plenty of
scenes and Ellen Chivers, last seen in York last summer in the Theatre Royal’s Swallows
& Amazons, is even better as wild-spirited Czech Reza.
From Enda Walsh’s witty, whimsical, love-struck script to Hansard and Irglova’s impassioned songs, you must see Once, a wonderful show that blows away weeks of panto wars and politics, to herald a new year of theatre in York. In fact, it is so enjoyable, you could go not once, but twice…and make sure to arrive early to see York buskers Rachel Makena, Florence Taylor, Owen Gibson and Peter Wookie taking turns pre-show and in the interval in the foyer bar.
