Tag: Griffonage Theatre

Posted on

CharlesHutchPress’s guide to Aesthetica Fringe at Aesthetica Short Film Festival

York actress Constance Peel in Service Please at Micklegate Social on November 9

IN its 15th year, York’s Aesthetica Short Film Festival introduces its debut Aesthetica Fringe in a celebration of emerging talent across music, comedy, exhibitions, installations, and performance.

These artist-led events are part of a citywide cultural programme, transforming York into a creative playground throughout November.

“York is a UNESCO City of Media Arts, and our Fringe embodies this status by activating galleries, venues and public spaces with diverse work,” says festival director Cherie Federico. “Together, we bring art, performance and audiences into a shared, inspiring moment.”

Pilot Theatre presents A Guide To Now For Those In The Future, York Explore, Library Square, York, November 5 to 9

YORK company Pilot Theatre’s unique installation, A Guide To Now For Those In The Future, is a bold and immersive experience remixing interviews and footage into a vibrant explosion of sight and sound. Capturing the emotions, dreams and perspectives of young people, it acts as a digital time capsule, reflecting life, culture, and concerns in 2025. Supported by Portakabin Community Support Fund and York Common Good Trust. Age rating: PG.

Wonkystuff and The Sounen Project’s Change Of Phase

Change Of Phase, National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York, November 5 to 9, 6-8pm

ICE into water, liquid into solid, sound into light, noise into music, soundscapes into stories, digital into analogue: Change Of Phase is a series of sound and light installations with performances, all set around a single, illuminated table. Wonkystuff and The Sounen Project provide the experimental audio landscape guiding the audience through moods. Age rating: PG.

Celebrating Creativity in Creative Ways, York Explore, November 5 to 9

CREATIVE Ways showcases powerful artworks inspired by York’s rich stained-glass heritage. Created by participants exploring creativity for both wellbeing and belonging, the exhibition celebrates connection, confidence and community and reflects the impact of art in a testament to how art can illuminate lives, provide hope and foster inclusion. Age rating: PG.

Bard At The Bar, Cat In The Wall, The Stonebow, York, November 5, 7.30pm

HAVE you always fancied yourself taking to the stage to try out one of Shakespeare’s great soliloquies? Bard At The Bar is a raucous, no-holds-barred night of “karaoke” Shakespeare. This is your opportunity to grab a drink, take a script and climb onto the stage to perform your favourite scenes. No experience necessary, just bring passion. Age rating: 18+.

Erler and Pilot in Crossroads, York Explore, Library Lawn, York, November 5, 5pm and 6pm; November 6, 6pm and 7pm; November 7,12 noon, 1pm, 4pm and 5pm

STEP inside and take the journey to the crossroads in a spooky immersive experience for teenagers and the young-at-heart by Erler and Pilot on Library Lawn, where you will  meet your guide beside her trailer of truth. There she will drive you to the place where dreams come true. Age rating: 12+.

Griffonage Theatre’s poster for Kafka By Candlelight at The House of Trembling Madness

Griffonage Theatre presents Kafka By Candlelight, The House Of Trembling Madness, Lendal, York, November 5 to 7, 6.30pm & 8.30pm

DEEP in the cavernous belly of The House Of Trembling Madness, Griffonage Theatre, York purveyors of the madcap and the macabre, present Kafka By Candlelight, an unsettling adaptation of five of Franz Kafka’s strangest short stories, told in the dark, where each piece invites you to confront the bizarre with no guarantee of resolution or escape. Will you be able to stomach it? Audiences will be invited to wear theatrical masks (optional). Age rating: 18+.

Letterpress and Film, Thin Ice Press, York Centre for Print, A Celebration of Silence, Peasholme Green, York, November 5, 2pm to 5pm

EXPLORE the intersection of film and print in hands-on workshops that invite you to experiment with letterpress printing and create title cards inspired by the artistry of silent film. Bring your phone or camera to capture the process and discover the tactile beauty of print while celebrating the visual language of cinema. Age Rating: 12+.

Letterpress Film Night: Helvetica Screening, Thin Ice Press, York Centre for Print, Peasholme Green, York November 5, 7pm to 9pm

ENJOY a screening of Helvetica, a celebration of silent film, and the chance to try letterpress printing. Design and print title cards with the team, capture the process and explore the endangered craft of letterpress printing while embracing the timeless aesthetics of ink. This experience is a chance to explore how film and print intersect. Age rating: 13+.

Black Sheep Theatre Productions in The Inner Selves, The White Horse, Bootham, York, November 5 to 8, 10:30am, 1pm, 3pm

A VIEW into a dying marriage, wherein Henry and Nora represent the end of a marriage torn apart by the loss of their child, alcoholism and depression. They are joined by their Inner Selves (Henry’s Self and Nora’s Self) who torment them about what their lives could have been. Every interaction is heavy with the things left unsaid. Age Rating: 16+.

Dan Poppitt in Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ Inner Selves

The Bluffs present Unwritten, Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb Road, Acomb, York, November 5, 8pm

IMPROV based on your literary suggestion, wherein York group The Bluffs take classic short-form improv games and infuse them with storytelling flair. Every show is unique, shaped by audience suggestions and spontaneous creativity. “Who knows where this evening will take us but it will be entertaining, inventive, and entirely in the moment,” they promise. Age rating: 12+.

York Fire Walk, York Minster, November 5, 2pm to 3pm; November 9, 12.30pm to 1.30pm

JOIN York Fire Walk to embark on a journey through the city’s fiery history, meeting by the Roman Column in Minster Yard, and finishing at City Screen Picturehouse. In the company of expert guides, discover how York Minster popped up in the Land of Fire – and then there’s some guy called Fawkes. There’s bound to be fireworks! Age rating: 8+.

Compulsive Light Art Show, Fabrication Store, Stonegate, York, November 6 to 8, 6pm to 8pm

THE inside of the Fabrication shop front is transformed into a living light installation in an exploration of the coexistence between art and inspiration. The window becomes a canvas where the very act of making becomes a performance of dancing light. Passers-by are invited to pause, watch and reflect on the journey from idea to creation. Age rating: PG.

Alice May in Sweet Pea & The Beech Tree, Patch@Bonding Warehouse, Terry Avenue, York, November 6, 7pm to 9pm

JOIN York actress Alice May for a script-in-hand performance of a new one-woman play, then offer feedback to help develop it for stage and screen. Sweet Pea & The Beech Tree is a comic tale of a granddaughter caring for her terminally ill grandmother that asks what caring for someone facing death can teach us. This opportunity invites you to engage with the work in progress. Age rating: 14+.

The Compulsive Light Art Show asks “Why Make Art?”

City Folk & York Creatives, Patch@Bonding Warehouse, Terry Avenue, York, November 7, 6.30pm

DROP into Patch for an all-vinyl DJ set by Mat Lazenby and Jono spinning a curated mix. Meet York creatives. Grab a drink, discuss ideas, find out how to be involved with City Folk magazine, a new publication made in the heart of the city, and be in with a chance to win a print by illustrator Tony Allen. This event is the perfect way to connect. Age rating: 14+.

Kids Just Wanna Fly, Ben Porter photobook launch, Patch@Bonding Warehouse, Terry Avenue, York, November 7, 6pm to 7pm |

LEAP into the unknown, through disposable cameras, polaroids and early iPhones. This is a tale of youthful ambition and the quest to craft an identity through the tumultuous years of young adulthood, comprising an exhibition, a photobook launch and short performances. Audiences are invited to reflect on who they are amidst their youth. Age rating: 16+.

Lara McClure in Oral Tradition, Amnesty Bookshop, Micklegate, York, November 7, 7pm

IN Iron Age Ulster, stories travelled from the mouths of bards into the ears of everyone else, with nothing written down. Storyteller, hypnotherapist and medieval historian Dr Lara McClure’s Edinburgh Fringe show offers a gnarly earful of ancient Ulsterwomen who used sex as a weapon – or, at least, so said the bards. The performance unpacks these bold yet provocative tales. Age rating: 16+.

Transmute- Live, Micklegate Social, Micklegate York, November 7, 8pm to 9.30pm

A SEMI-GENERATIVE particle system moves to an evocative mix of electronica, ambient, orchestral and techno sound. Immersive visuals and rich soundscapes merge, creating a mesmerising, cinematic experience that seamlessly blurs the boundaries between sight, sound and emotion in this exploration of movement, transformation, and connectivity. Age rating: PG.

Dr Lara McClure: Presenting Oral Tradition at Amnesty Bookshop

Rock Soil Scrape, West Park Bowling Club, November 8, 1.30pm to 4pm

AN installation inspired by the earth’s sediments, bringing together interviews with York workers and video projections, as well as food and drink to connect us to our physical environment, cultural histories and deep time. Presented in what was once a bakery, then a bottle shop and bar, the installation highlights the change of the site. Age rating: 12+.

In Limbo, De Grey Rooms, York, November 8, 4pm to 6.30pm

SOPHIE is dead. Probably. She thinks. Maybe. How could the happiest time of her life turn to this? Welcome to a rehearsed reading of In Limbo, Judi Amato’s new play about the realities of early parenthood and postpartum depression. A feedback session will follow the performance to help shape and deepen the development of the show. Age rating: 12+.

Constance Peel in Service Please, Micklegate Social, Micklegate, York, November 9, 2pm & 8pm

ALL Lara wanted was an easy job as she started to write her novel, but she is confronted with the sexist, stressful and chaotic reality of the service industry. This one-woman show by York-born, University of York-educated  actress, writer, director (and waitress) Constance Peel plays the Aesthetica Fringe after a four-star debut run at this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe, and is marked by bright humour, artistic ambition and raw honesty. Age rating: 16+.

More, Spark:York, Piccadilly,York, November 9, 6.30pm to 7.30pm

MORE is a raw performance blending dance, visuals and music to explore the restless pulse of addiction – the craving for sensation, escape and wholeness. Through movement and image, it unravels cycles of desire and release in an intimate, sensory journey through the body’s aching longing to feel more and be enough.

The Storytelling Ensemble, Patch@Bonding Warehouse, Terry Avenue, York, November 9, 7.30pm

JOIN The Storytelling Ensemble for tales brought vividly to life with improvised music and original composition. Led by storyteller and composer Joe Allen, the ensemble breathes new life into fascinating fables and yearnful yarns, contributing to the magic of stories told aloud, inviting listeners to lose themselves in worlds ancient and new. Age rating: 12+.

For tickets, go to: asff.co.uk/fringe.

Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2025: Filmmaking In Schools

 

AESTHETICA Short Film Festival is putting young people at the heart of the festival run from November 5 to 9.

More than 150 students from seven York high schools – Huntington, Joseph Rowntree, Milthorpe, York High, All Saints, Fulford and Archbishop Holgate – will take part in the Filmmaking in Schools initiative, now in its second year.

The programme gives students the chance to develop practical filmmaking skills across storytelling, directing, writing, cinematography, editing and technical production, while also nurturing teamwork, creative collaboration and problem- solving. These skills are highly transferable, helping young people build confidence and abilities that extend far beyond the classroom.

York’s status as a UNESCO City of Media Arts provides a unique backdrop for creativity and innovation. In a city celebrated for its thriving digital media and creative industries, it is vital that students are offered hands-on, practical opportunities to bring their ideas to life.

Councillor Pete Kilbane, deputy leader of City of York Council and executive member for Economy and Culture, says: “It’s fantastic to see so many York youngsters getting hands-on experience in filmmaking. Through initiatives like this, students discover their creativity, learn new skills and get to see the wide range of exciting job opportunities that the film industry has to offer.

 The Filmmaking in Schools programme puts this philosophy into practice, enabling students to write, direct and produce their own short films, while applying problem-solving and technical skills in a real-world environment.

Festival director Cherie Federico adds: “Our aim is to give young people a real chance to explore their creativity and find their voice. Filmmaking is a powerful tool for learning, teamwork, and self-expression – and by putting it in the hands of students, we are investing in the next generation of storytellers and innovators.”

Through mentorship, collaboration and the festival environment, students gain practical skills and inspiration that link directly to potential careers in media arts.

Stuart Campbell, head of communications at LNER, highlights the impact of industry partnerships: “The Railway 200 programme is all about supporting and fostering new talent,” he says. “It starts with young people, and here in York, we have the chance to do something truly different, giving students real-world opportunities to explore creativity and storytelling through film.”

The Filmmaking in Schools initiative sits within the context of the BAFTA-Qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival, giving students exposure to the professional world of film and insight into the wider creative industries. By combining mentorship, hands-on experience and festival immersion, the programme nurtures the next generation of screen innovators.

While young people are at the centre of this initiative, Aesthetica 2025 also provides opportunities for families to engage with creativity. From specially curated U and PG film screenings to VR and games workshops, interactive art, live music and city-wide Fringe events, the festival offers experiences that encourage children and adults to explore, learn and play together.

By blending professional insight, imaginative activities, and cultural exploration, Aesthetica ensures that creativity is accessible to all ages, inspiring the next generation while bringing the wider York community together.

Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2025: Launching Beyond the Frame programme at York Theatre Royal, November 5 to 8

Comedian Sophie Duker

Sophie Duker & Friends, Wednesday, 7.30m

TASKMASTER champion Sophie Duker, from Mock The Week and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, tops the bill featuring Eleanor Tiernan and Bella Hull.

Silent Cinema & Live Score with The Dodge Brothers, Thursday, 7.30pm

IN a dazzling collision of classic cinema and live music, The Dodge Brothers bring their live score to Beggars Of Life, the 1928 landmark American silent film starring Louise Brooks.

The Dodge Brothers

Film critic and BBC presenter Mark Kermode, on double bass and harmonica, is joined Neil Brand, celebrated silent film accompanist and star of BBC Four’s Sound Of Cinema, on piano, as this electrifying ensemble transforms a black-and-white masterpiece into a full-blooded cinematic event.

Mark Kermode: In Conversation with Jenny Nelson, Friday, 7pm

HEAR from the co-authors of Mark Kermode’s Surround Sound about the magic of film music. Join film critic Mark Kermode and award-winning radio producer Jenny Nelson for an evening of cinematic insight, sharp wit and passionate debate.

Together, they explore the power of film music, inspired by their new book. From cult classics to blockbuster scores, expect passionate discussion, revealing stories and plenty of chances to ask questions and join the debate.  Expect honest, humorous and informed film talk.

Mark Kermode: Discussing his new book, Mark Kermode’s Surround Sound, with co-author Jenny Nelson at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Julie Edwards Visuals

Aesthetica New Music Stage, Saturday, 2pm to 11pm

IN the UK’s first national New Music Stage, BLANID, Jemma Johnson, Crazy Mark, Kengo, Ewan Sim, Daisy Gill, Dilettante, Tarian, Isabel Maria and North Yorkshire band Pleasure Centre will compete in a showcase supported by Universal Music A&R, Imagesound and Caffe Nero. Anglo-Italian singer-songwriter Jack Savoretti will be on the judging panel.

Tickets (and New Stage Passes for the New Music Stage) are available from the York Theatre Royal box office, 01904 623568, or online at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

York Theatre Royal is a venue for the ASFF 2025 line-up of film screenings and masterclasses too. More details on booking festival passes can be found at asff.co.uk/tickets/.

Daisy Gill: Taking part in the Aesthetica New Music Stage event

Posted on

Griffonage Theatre takes over the House of Trembling Madness cellar in Lendal for three nights of Kafka By Candlelight

Be ready to be spooked: Griffonage Theatre cast members in masks for Kafka By Candlelight in the House Of Trembling Madness cellar, in Lendal, York

GRIFFONAGE Theatre, York’s theatrical confluence of the madcap and the madcap, proudly presents Kafka By Candelight as part of the Aesthetica Fringe 2025 from tonight to Friday.

“This collection of Franz Kafka’s strangest short stories will be disturbingly told in the darkness, in the bowels of The House of Trembling Madness, Lendal. Dare to join us down below?” teases director Katie Leckey.

In Poseidon, the God of The Sea is overwhelmed with the bureaucracy of managing the oceans; in The Penal Colony, an elaborate torture/execution device carves the crimes of criminals onto their skin as they slowly perish.

What next? In The Bucket, a woman is freezing to death, prompting her to seek out a coal dealer as she pleads for help. However, she is not understood.

In The Burrow, a badger-like creature holes himself up in his home, afraid of enemies outside…but soon strange noises begin to threaten his existence from within.

And lastly? In The Vulture, a vulture pecks mercilessly at the soles of a young person’s feet. A stranger tries to help, inadvertently making things wholly worse.

“This production is a work-in-progress piece, with sections that are script-in-hand,” says Katie. “We’re  also experimenting with audience members adding to the atmosphere by optionally wearing [theatrical] masks…

“Griffonage are hoping to develop some of the selected stories into a longer show in the future. To this end, we would value any and all audience feedback after the performances. Please email katieleckey@griffonage.uk with feedback or questions!”

Pay What You Can tickets are available to reserve for each fright night’s 6.30pm and 8.30pm performances at eventbrite.com/e/kafka-by-candlelight-tickets-1815618316259.

Posted on

What’s On in Ryedale, York and beyond. Hutch’s List No. 48, from Gazette & Herald

Mark Kermode Taking part in Aesthetica Short Film Festival’s Beyond the Frame strand at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Julie Edwards Visuals

THE 15th Aesthetica Short Film Festival tops the bill in a week when hauntings and musical buns rise to the occasion, as Charles Hutchinson highlights.

Festival of the week: Aesthetica Short Film Festival, all over York, today to Sunday

NOT so much a film festival as a “screen and media event”, in its 15th year, York’s Aesthetica Short Film Festival is bigger and broader than ever. Not only more than 300 shorts, features, documentaries, animations and experimental films, but also the VR & Games Lab; masterclasses and panels; workshops and roundtables; networking and pitching; Listening Pitch premieres; the inaugural New Music Stage and Aesthetica Fringe shows; Beyond the Frame events at York Theatre Royal; the UNESCO City of Media Arts EXPO and the Podcasting strand. For the full programme and tickets, go to: asff.co.uk.

Mary Gauthier: Playing Pocklington Arts Centre tonight

Troubadour of the week: Mary Gauthier, Pocklington Arts Centre, tonight, 7pm

MARY Gauthier hung up her chef’s coat to move to Nashville at 40 to start a troubadour career, going from open-mic gigs to playing Newport Folk Festival a year later. Twenty-five years ago, this courageous lesbian songwriter’s groundbreaking debut album Drag Queens In Limousines announced: “Drag queens in limousines, nuns in blue jeans, dreamers with big dreams, they all took me in.”

The song has become an anthem for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider: as it turns out, all of us. It is typical of her deeply personal, yet paradoxically universal work, written in reaction to what matters most to her, as Gauthier expresses boldly what is often too hard for us to say. Box office:  01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

Bugsy at the double: Zachary Stoney, from Team Malone, left, and Dan Tomlin, from Team Bugsy, in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Bugsy Malone

Young performers of the week: Pick Me Up Theatre in Bugsy Malone, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

LESLEY Hill directs and choreographs York company Pick Me Up Theatre’s cast of more than 40 young performers in Alan Parker and Paul Williams’s musical, replete with the film songs You Give A Little Love,  My Name Is Tallulah, So You Wanna Be A Boxer?, Fat Sam’s Grand Slam and Bugsy Malone.

In Prohibition-era New York, rival gangsters Fat Sam and Dandy Dan are at loggerheads. As custard pies fly and Dan’s splurge guns wreak havoc, penniless ex-boxer and all-round nice guy Bugsy Malone falls for aspiring singer Blousey Brown. Can Bugsy resist seductive songstress Tallulah, Fat Sam’s moll and Bugsy’s old flame, and stay out of trouble while helping Fat Sam to defend his business? Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

David Sturzaker’s Gareth Southgate giving a team talk in James Graham’s Dear England, on tour at Leeds Grand Theatre

Sporting drama of the week: National Theatre in Dear England, Leeds Grand Theatre, until Saturday, kick-off at 7.30pm plus 2pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees

JAMES Graham’s Olivier Award-winning play (and forthcoming television drama) takes its name from revolutionary England football  manager Gareth Southgate’s open letter during the Covid-19 pandemic.

David Sturzaker plays Southgate, Samantha Womack, team psychologist Pippa Grange, in this “inspiring, at times heart-breaking and ultimately uplifting story” of England, penalties, lost finals and a new-found national identity. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.

Ben Rosenfield and Laura McKeller in Neon Crypt and The Deathly Dark Tours’ The Wetwang Hauntings – Live!

Halloween horrors and jump scares of the week: Neon Crypt and The Deathly Dark Tours in The Wetwang Hauntings – Live!, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Monkgate, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

BETWEEN 1986 and 1993, a series of often violent hauntings rocked the small Yorkshire town of Wetwang. The cases went cold and all the records were lost…until now! Join York ghost walk guide Dr Dorian Deathly and his team as they dig into the history and horrors of these cases. “This show is not for the faint of heart,” he forewarns. Suitable for age 13 upwards. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Jessica Shaw’s Forms Of Water, on show at Pocklington Arts Centre

Ryedale exhibition of the week: Jessica Shaw, Forms Of Water, Helmsley Arts Centre, until February 27 2026

BASED on the edge of the North York Moors, printmaker Jessica Shaw explores the impact of water and ice on landscape, inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s assertion that “in time and with water, everything changes”. 

Combining screenprint, woodcut, monoprint and etching with diverse media such as gouache and acrylic ink, her work draws from organic patterns and shapes made by water and ice, detailing their effect on the North York Moors National Park’s topography by highlighting the shapes of its high ground and the curls of its rivers, to the ephemeral ice patterns found in puddles and windows in winter.  

Katie Leckey: Directing Griffonage Theatre in Kafka By Candlelight

Deliciously disturbing stories of the week: Griffonage Theatre, Kafka By Candlelight, The House Of Trembling Madness, Lendal, York, tonight to Friday, 6.30pm and 8.30pm  

“NO rest for the week,” say Griffonage Theatre, York’s purveyors of the madcap and the macabre, who are performing Kafka By Candlelight in the cavernous belly of the House Of Trembling Madness cellar as part of Aesthetica Short Film Festival’s debut  Aesthetica Fringe, featuring 25 shows across the city.

This one showcases five of Franz Kafka’s strangest short stories, told disturbingly in the darkness with the audience in masks (optional). “Dare to join us?” they tease. Box office: eventbrite.com/e/kafka-by-candlelight-tickets-1815618316259.

Entwined: Nik Briggs’s cooking copper, Ben, and Harriet Yorke’s carer, Gemma, in York Stage’s York premiere of The Great British Bake Off Musical

York musical premiere of the week: York Stage in The Great British Bake Off Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

BAKING battles, singing sponges and a sprinkling of hilarity is the recipe for York Stage’s York premiere of The Great British Bake Off Musical, rising to the occasion under the direction of Nik Briggs, who also makes a rare stage appearance as one of the Bake Off contestants.

Expect a sweet and savoury symphony of British wit and oven mitts, propelled by a menu of  jazz hands and jubilant original songs that capture the essence of the Bake Off tent, from nerve-wracking technical challenges to triumphant showstoppers. Be prepared for an emotional rollercoaster ride, where cakes crumble, friendships form and dreams become fruitful reality. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Understaffed and overworked: The hotel workforce on clean-up duty in John Godber Company’s Black Tie Ball. Picture: John Godber Company

One helluva party of the week: John Godber’s Black Tie Ball, Pocklington Arts Centre, Thursday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

ON the glitziest East Yorkshire fundraising night of the year, everyone wants to be there. The Bentleys are parked, the jazz band has arrived, the magician will be magic, but behind the bow ties, fake tans and equally fake booming laughter lie jealousies and avarice, divorces and affairs, as overdressed upstairs meets understaffed downstairs through a drunken gaze. 

The raffle is ridiculously competitive, the coffee, cold, the service, awful, the guest speaker, drunk, and the hard -pressed caterers just want to go home. Welcome to the Brechtian hotel hell of John Godber’s satirical, visceral comedy drama, as told by the exasperated hotel staff, recounting the night’s mishaps at breakneck speed in the manner of Godber’s fellow wearers of tuxedos, Bouncers. Box office:  01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

Offcut Theatre’s poster for Libby Pearson’s Four By Three

Uplifting mini-dramas of the week: Offcut Theatre in Libby Pearson’s Four by Three, Milton Rooms, Malton, Thursday, 7.30pm

PAULINE, Bill and Martin invite you into parts of their lives through three separate monologues before coming together in a short play in Libby Pearson’s hopeful, uplifting, light-hearted look at the need for human contact.

In The Woman Next Door, is Pauline a lonely, nosey neighbour or a woman full of unfulfilled longing? In Silk FM, Bill runs a very local radio station; catch it on Thursdays, 1pm to 3pm, term-time only. In The Picker, Martin is desperate to be acknowledged for his innovative litter-picking ideas. In Shelved, Pauline, Bill and Martin run a volunteer-led library, where the council may have plans for it, but so do they. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.

Posted on

More Things To Do in York and beyond the Halloween spooks and ghost train rides. Hutch’s List No. 48, from The York Press

Film critic Mark Kermode: Book talk and gig with his band Dodge Brothers at York Theatre Royal in the Beyond the Frame strand of Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2025. Picture: Julie Edwards Visuals

THE 15th Aesthetica Short Film Festival tops the bill in a week when Sir Gareth Southgate and David Walliams are keen to talk too,  as Charles Hutchinson highlights.

Festival of the week: Aesthetica Short Film Festival, all over York, November 5 to 9

NOT so much a film festival as a “screen and media event”, in its 15th year, York’s Aesthetica Short Film Festival is bigger and broader than ever. Not only more than 300 shorts, features, documentaries, animations and experimental films, but also the VR & Games Lab; masterclasses and panels; workshops and roundtables; networking and pitching; Listening Pitch premieres; the inaugural New Music Stage and Aesthetica Fringe shows; Beyond the Frame events at York Theatre Royal; the UNESCO City of Media Arts EXPO and the Podcasting strand. For the full programme and tickets, go to: asff.co.uk.

Joseph Egan’s club boss Fat Sam from the Team Bugsy cast for Pick Me Up Theatre’s Bugsy Malone

Young swells of the week: Pick Me Up Theatre in Bugsy Malone, Grand Opera House, York, until November 8, 7.30pm, except Sunday and Monday; 2.30pm, both Saturdays and Sunday

LESLEY Hill directs and choreographs York company Pick Me Up Theatre’s cast of more than 40 young performers in Alan Parker and Paul Williams’s Jazz Age musical, replete with the film songs You Give A Little Love,  My Name Is Tallulah, So You Wanna Be A Boxer?, Fat Sam’s Grand Slam and Bugsy Malone.

In Prohibition-era New York, rival gangsters Fat Sam and Dandy Dan are at loggerheads. As custard pies fly and Dan’s splurge guns wreak havoc, penniless ex-boxer and all-round nice guy Bugsy Malone falls for aspiring singer Blousey Brown. Can Bugsy resist seductive songstress Tallulah, Fat Sam’s moll and Bugsy’s old flame, and stay out of trouble while helping Fat Sam to defend his business? Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Mark Steel: Addressing the leopard in his house at York Theatre Royal tonight

“Leftie, working-class, BBC Radio 4 favourite” comedy gig of the week: Mark Steel: The Leopard In My House, York Theatre Royal, tonight, 7.30pm

COMEDIAN, nation-travelling radio presenter and writer Mark Steel has not so much an elephant in the room as The Leopard In My House. Under discussion is his battle with throat cancer, one that he is winning (thankfully) and that has spawned his new comedy tour show. Cancer, by the way, has done nothing to dull the edge of Steel’s trademark acute political and cultural observations.

“This show is the story of my year, of wonderful characters and often tricky but bafflingly positive experiences,” says Steel. “Doing the show doesn’t quite make me glad that it happened, but it definitely makes up for it quite a bit”. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

The Magpies: Launching new EP at the NCEM

Folk gig of the week: The Magpies, National Centre for Early Music, York, tonight, 7.30pm

THE Magpies, the folk trio that hosts The Magpies Festival at Sutton House, near York, every summer, combine rich harmonies with fiddle-led fire and lyrical storytelling, wherein Bella Gaffney (banjo, vocals), Holly Brandon (fiddle, vocals) and Ellie Gowers (guitar, vocals) meld Anglo and American traditions.

Tonight’s intimate gig marks the launch of this autumn’s EP, The One Thing That I Know. Lead single Painted Pony is a stirring tribute to the St John and St Lawrence rivers of Canada: a song that flows with memory, movement and the quiet majesty of nature’s imprint. Box office for returns only: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.

George Stagnell in the short film Bomb Happy, part of an Everwitch Theatre double bill

Theatre and film memorial of the week: Everwitch Theatre in Bomb Happy VE Day double bill, Milton Rooms, Malton, Sunday, 3pm

PRESENTED in the lead-up to Remembrance Sunday, whose focus this year falls on 80th anniversary of VE Day, Bomb Happy has been created by writer-performer Helena Fox and actor-vocalist Natasha Jones, of Everwitch Theatre.

From D-Day to VE Day, this powerful one-hour double bill of live performance (30 minutes) and short film (30 minutes) brings to life the verbatim accounts of two working-class Yorkshire Normandy veterans, highlighting the lifelong impact of post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep trauma, not only on war veterans but on their families too. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.

Leading light Mad Alice: Welcoming passengers to her Ghost Train on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway

Train ride of the week: Mad Alice’s Ghost Train, North Yorkshire Moors Railway, Pickering Station, Sunday, 6.15pm and 8pm

JOIN York ghost walk hostess Mad Alice as she takes a spine-tingling ghost-train ride through the haunted heart of the North York Moors from Pickering to Levisham and back again in an hour-long eerie adventure. “I’ll be joined by Jonny Holbek, from York Light Opera Company, and professional actor Joe Standerline to help me tell stories in the carriage,” says Mad Alice. “Plus a few extra ‘ghosts’, who are actually either NYMR volunteers or York Light members – and even my own niece!”

All on board to learn of the mysterious ghosts that still haunt the carriages and stations; hear of supernatural tales and folklore of the land, and enjoy a special retelling of Charles Dickens’s ghost story, The Signal Man, all while sipping Mini Mad Alice’s Bloody Orange Gin & Tonic from York Gin (age 18 upwards). Box office for waiting list only: nymr.co.uk/Event/ghosttrain.

Sir Gareth Southgate: Discussing his new book Dear England at York Barbican…and the subject of James Graham’s play of that title at Leeds Grand Theatre

Ex-England manager at the double: In Conversation with Gareth Southgate, Lessons In Leadership, York Barbican, November 3, 7.30pm;  National Theatre in Dear England, Leeds Grand Theatre, November 4 to 8, kick-off at 7.30pm plus 2pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees

SIR Gareth Southgate, of Swinsty Hall, Fewston, Harrogate, makes the comparatively short trip to York Barbican to discuss his eight years of leading England’s footballers on the world stage with a revolutionary management style that combined calm empathy with mental resilience, courageous integrity with strong accountability.

David Sturzaker’s Gareth Southgate, in trademark waistcoat, in James Graham’s play Dear England, on tour at Leeds Grand Theatre. Picture: Mark Brenner

He will discuss his new book Dear England: Lessons In Leadership, a title shared with James Graham’s Olivier Award-winning play (and forthcoming television drama) that takes its name from Southgate’s open letter during the Covid-19 pandemic.

David Sturzaker plays Southgate, Samantha Womack, team psychologist Pippa Grange, in this “inspiring, at times heart-breaking and ultimately uplifting story” of England, penalties, lost finals and a new-found national identity. Box office: York, yorkbarbican.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.

David Walliams: An evening of frank chat and outrageous anecdotes at York Barbican. Picture: Charlie Clift

Candid comedic conversation of the week: An Evening With David Walliams, York Barbican, November 4, 7.30pm

SKETCH comedian, prolific author, talent show judge and English Channel swimmer David Walliams presents an evening of laughter, storytelling and surprises, discussing his Little Britain breakthrough,  Come Fly With Me and his days on Britain’s Got Talent.

Expect the stories behind legendary TV sketches and reflections on his myriad books and the highs and lows of a career. Prepare for candid conversation and outrageous anecdotes, topped off with the chance to put questions to Walliams in the Q&A. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Ben Rosenfield and Laura McKeller in The Wetwang Hauntings – Live. Picture: Emma Warley

Halloween horrors and jump scares of the week: Neon Crypt & The Deathly Dark Tours present The Wetwang Hauntings – Live!, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, November 4 to 8, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

BETWEEN 1986 and 1993, a series of often violent hauntings rocked the small Yorkshire town of Wetwang. The cases went cold and all the records were lost…until now! Join York ghost walk guide Dr Dorian Deathly as the Neon Crypt and The Deathly Dark Tours team digs into the history and horrors of these cases. “This show is not for the faint of heart,” he forewarns. Suitable for age 13 upwards. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Nik Briggs: York Stage director back on stage to play a contestant in The Great British Bake Off Musical

York musical premiere of the week: York Stage in The Great British Bake Off Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, November 5 to 8, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

BAKING battles, singing sponges and a sprinkling of hilarity is the recipe for York Stage’s York premiere of The Great British Bake Off Musical, rising to the occasion under the direction of Nik Briggs, who also makes a rare stage appearance as one of the Bake Off contestants.

Expect a sweet and savoury symphony of British wit and oven mitts, propelled by a menu of  jazz hands and jubilant original songs that capture the essence of the Bake Off tent, from nerve-wracking technical challenges to triumphant showstoppers. Be prepared for an emotional rollercoaster ride, where cakes crumble, friendships form and dreams become fruitful reality. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Katie Leckey: Directing Griffonage Theatre’s three nights of Kafka’ strangest short stories in the House of Trembling Madness cellar in Lendal

Deliciously disturbing stories of the week: Griffonage Theatre, Kafka By Candlelight, The House Of Trembling Madness, Lendal, York, November 5 to 7. 6.30pm and 8.30pm  

“NO rest for the week,” say Griffonage Theatre, York’s purveyors of the madcap and the macabre, who are performing Kafka By Candlelight in the cavernous belly of the House Of Trembling Madness cellar as part of Aesthetica Short Film Festival’s debut  Aesthetica Fringe, featuring 25 shows across the city.

This one showcases five of Franz Kafka’s strangest short stories, told disturbingly in the darkness with the audience in masks (optional). “Dare to join us?” they tease. Box office: eventbrite.com/e/kafka-by-candlelight-tickets-1815618316259.

York actor, writer and director Constance Peel: Presenting Service Please at Aesthetica Fringe 2025

In Focus: Introducing Constance Peel, Service Please, Aesthetica Fringe, Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb Road, Acomb, York, November 4 and 7, 8.30pm; Micklegate Social, Micklegate, York, November 9, 2pm and 8pm

CONSTANCE (Connie) Peel, York-born director, producer, writer and performer, will present her debut one-woman show Service Please as part of the inaugural Aesthetica Fringe.

“I’ve been working as an assistant director and performer in theatre professionally for the past two years, since graduating from the University of York,” says Connie, 24. “This show explores the reality of working in hospitality, including the harassment and sexism you can face as a young woman.”

Service Please is billed as “a relatable and comedic monologue that follows Lara, a creative writing graduate, who hopes to write the next best-selling fantasy romance novel. There’s only one thing standing in her way, her casual waitressing job that keeps the money coming in.”

“We’ve all been there, but Lara wasn’t ready for the stressful and chaotic reality of working in the service industry,” says Connie, introducing her monodrama. “Can Lara keep her sanity and get her big writing break or will she crumble under the pressure of understaffed shifts, creepy comments and customers who say their only food allergies are ‘women’?”

Hospitality is the fastest-growing economic sector, worth £93 billion to the UK economy. “But it’s under severe pressure with more than 100,000 job losses predicted by the time of this month’s Budget, due to National Insurance rises (according to UK Hospitality),” says Connie.

“It’s evident working in the sector that to continue profits and keep up with the cost of living, food prices and discounts both need to increase while labour hours decrease. Being a server has never been more stressful and unpredictable and this experience (as other working-class experiences) is so often overlooked by theatre.” 

Sexual harassment is an epidemic in the hospitality industry too, says Connie. “As many as 47 per cent of workers having experienced it – and 69 per cent witnessed it in 2021 (Culture Shift).

“These statistics, though informative, mask the personal cost to the individuals harassed and abused. My play presents interpretations of my own personal experiences, including those with harassment, and they’re an unfortunate part of the job when working as a waitress.

“They shouldn’t be, and awareness of this experience even in Fringe-scale theatre is always beneficial to the cause.” 

Lastly, says Connie, Service Please tells the story of an artist with no clear way into her industry. “This is the most personally accurate part of my script. I wrote and performed the 50-minute monologue while producing and marketing it alone for its six-day debut run at the world-famous Edinburgh Fringe, where it won plaudits from critics and top reviews.

“Though this is hopeful for creatives, both in the execution of the play and my own story behind it, I wanted to show the emotional toll of struggling as an artist, especially as in the past five years there has been one third fewer art jobs (directly impacting my career).

“It was important that I brought this show back to where my career started, in York where I graduated from the University of York and where I’ve been working for the past three years between York and Leeds. I hope this production and my story makes people see the importance of a small-scale play like this in today’s society.” 

For tickets, go to: ticketsource.co.uk.

Posted on

REVIEW: Griffonage Theatre in FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Sat ***

Making a splash: Katie Leckey’s Darby and Ben Koch’s Taig in The Bogie Men in Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold showcase of Lady Augusta Gregory plays. Picture: John Stead

THIS is a landmark production by Griffonage Theatre, the York company that likes to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.

Certainly Lady Augusta Gregory’s plays would qualify as unfamiliar, but maybe it is not so strange that they are strangers to the British stage. They were, they are, Irish plays about Irish people for Irish actors and Irish audiences, presented predominantly at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre and in America too but rarely crossing the Irish Sea.

Now, Katie Leckey, Northern Irish actor-director, University of York MA graduate and co-founder of Griffonage Theatre, is presenting her adaptation of four of the late-blooming County Galway playwright’s largely forgotten one-act plays, penned from 1903 to 1914 and never previously staged together over here.

This is a passion project for Leckey, a Lady Augusta enthusiast with plans to study the “criminally under-performed” plays of the Roxborough rural estate dramatist, folklorist and Abbey Theatre co-founder for a PhD. Theatre@41, sure to become increasingly experimental under Tom Bellerby’s directorship, is just the place to dust off her ladyship’s light comedies for reappraisal.

Grace Palma’s Mrs Tarpey and Ben Koch’s James Ryan in Lady Augusta Gregory’s one-act comedy drama Spreading The News. Picture: John Stead

The black-box theatre takes on a traverse configuration, the audience seated to either side of the combustible capers that unfold in Baile Aighneas, or “The Town of Dispute”, as Leckey terms it to reflect how each play is so disputatious.

As presented in the Fay Brothers’ house style at the Abbey Theatre, performances would focus on the storytelling, the voice, the lyrical Irish dialect. Leckey emphasises that too, but rather than “park and bark” theatre, she has favoured the injection of physicality, both in the presentation of that language and in the characterisation, now rooted as much in movement as meter.

You might see parallels with Dylan Thomas’s Welsh village Llareggub in Under Milk Wood; Leckey sees the plays as a “snapshot of a very strange rural Irish town: like Royston Vasey, home of The League Of Gentlemen, meeting Father Ted”.

The League Of Gentlemen is closest to the exaggerated comedic style here, where the comedy may be billed as light but is invariably darker and more heavy handed in performance. The audience laughter comes more from the physicality than Gregory’s often truculent dialogue, penned in Irish dialect but now performed in myriad accents.

Clash of coats: James Lee’s Mr Mineog and Katie Leckey’s Mr Hazel, newspaper editors writing each other off in Lady Augusta Gregory’s Coats. Picture: John Stead

What’s more, being convoluted and percussive in sentence structure, its loquacity can make it hard to follow. The tendency is for the playing to be so boisterous in pushing for the laughs that combative voices become cacophonous, but pumping up the volume is no guarantee to tickle the funny bone.

Blarney and bluster are the heartbeat of the four plays, first up the bustling market place of Spreading The News, where town gossip wreaks havoc, rumours spiral beyond control, apples and maybe blood is spilled, tongues wag and Leckey’s tricycle-riding magistrate is a law unto himself, imagination running roughshod over the truth.

Ben Koch’s James Ryan, spiralling around his walking stick, and Grace Palma’s bow-legged, bent-double Mrs Tarpey bring clowning personality to their roles.

Coats has the classic comedic structure of a mix-up: two coats being taken off, then the wrong one being put back on, with a piece of paper in the pocket of each coat now being in the possession of the wrong person.

Cheered to the rafters: Ben Koch’s Hyacinth Halvey in Lady Augusta Gregory’s Hyacinth Halvey at Theatre@41, Monkgate. Picture: John Stead

Caught in a war of words are two highly competitive newspaper editors, James Lee’s Mr Mineog and Leckey’s Mr Hazel, who have brought each other’s obituary notice to their club restaurant, where polite etiquette comes under ever greater threat as the heat and volume rises in the serpentine scheming.

Next stop, the post office, where Hyacinth Halvey (Ben Koch) has sent word he is coming to town. The young dandy’s reputation precedes him, sending the townsfolk into a frenzy, hanging on his every word on arrival, no matter what he says. Wilf Tomlinson’s preening James Quirke comes to the fore too as Koch’s Hyacinth takes everything in his stride.

Leckey and executive producer Jack Mackay’s company like their shows to stand at the intersection of the madcap and the macabre. Gregory tends more towards the madcap, although the macabre, or maybe the grotesque, nudges into Spreading The News and Hyacinth Halvey.   

The climactic two-hander The Bogie Men could be a forerunner of fellow Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s 1952 tragicomedy Waiting For Godot, with its chimney-sweep protagonists, Leckey’s Darby and Koch’s Taig, forging a double act in Vladimir and Estragon mode, in matching brace, shirts, trousers, boots and even battered hats at one point.

Helen Clarke-Neale’s Mrs Delane and James Lee’s Miss Joyce in Griffonage Theatre’s Hyacinth Halvey. Picture: John Stead

Rather than passing the time waiting for Godot, they find themselves at a coach stop, “almost indistinguishably similar” but soon finding mutual reasons to argue and fall out. Again, the volume is turned up as high as Spinal Tap’s “11”, but Koch and Leckey elicit the show’s most successful comic friction.

Helen Clarke-Neale, Emily Carhart and Peter Hopwood add to the ensemble’s colourful characterisation, while James Lee cos-plays mischievously as Mrs Tully and Miss Joyce. 

Joined by Leckey’s lusty vocals for Irish pub songs in the interval, Ayse Kaban-Bowers delights with her fiery fiddle when playing between plays.

Truth be told, FourTold is unlikely to spark a nationwide rush to rediscover Lady Augusta Gregory’s obscure curiosities, but Leckey’s enthusiasm is matched by a cast determined to re-light their fire in explosive fashion.

Griffonage Theatre presents FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Griffonage Theatre’s poster for this week’s quadruple bill of Lady Augusta Gregory comedies at Theatre@41, Monkgate

Posted on

More Things To Do in York & beyond when the air turns blue and the skies glower. Hutch’s List No. 44, from The York Press

Roy Chubby Brown: No offence, but it’s simply comedy, reckons Britain’s stalwart potty-mouthed joker at York Barbican

FROM sacre bleu comedy to a French silent  film,  Graham Nash and Al Stewart  on vintage form to Grayson Perry on good and evil,  love’s vicissitudes to the Hunchback musical, October is brewing up a storm of culture, reports Charles Hutchinson. 

Blue humour of the week: Roy Chubby Brown, It’s Simply Comedy, York Barbican, tonight, 7.30pm

GRANGETOWN gag veteran Roy Chubby Brown, now 80, forewarns: “Not meant to offend, it’s simply a comedy tour”. After more than 50 years of spicy one-liners and putdowns, he continues to tackle the subjects of sex, celebrities, politics and British culture with a high profanity count and contempt for political correctness. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Gemma Curry in Hoglets Theatre’s The Tale Of The Loneliest Whale at York Theatre Royal Studio

Children’s show of the week: Hoglets Theatre in The Tale Of The Loneliest Whale, York Theatre Royal Studio, today, 11am and 2pm

FRESH from an award-winning Edinburgh Fringe run, York company Hoglets Theatre invite primary-age children and families to an exciting adventure packed with beautiful handmade puppets, sea creatures, original songs and audience interaction aplenty.

Performed, crafted and directed by Gemma Curry, The Tale Of The Loneliest Whale celebrates friendship, difference and the beauty of being yourself in Andy Curry’s tale of Whale singing his heart out into the deep blue sea, but nobody singing back until…a mysterious voice echoes through the waves, whereupon Whale embarks on an unforgettable adventure. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Graham Nash: Sixty years of song at York Barbican. Picture: Ralf Louis

Vintage gigs of the week: Graham Nash, An Evening Of Songs And Stories, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm; Al Stewart, The Farewell Tour, York Barbican, October 7, 7.45pm

GRAHAM Nash, 83-year-old two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Grammy award winner, performs songs spanning his 60-year career fromThe Hollies to Crosby, Stills andNash, CSNY (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) to his solo career, joined by Todd Caldwell (keyboards and vocals), Adam Minkoff(bass, drums, guitars and vocals) and Zach Djanikian (guitars, mandolin, drums and vocals). Long-time friend Peter Asher supports.

The poster for Al Stewart’s farewell tour, visiting York Barbican on Tuesday

Glasgow-born folk-rock singer-songwriter Al Stewart marks his 80th birthday (born 5/9/1945) with his UK farewell tour. After relocating to Chandler Arizona from Los Angeles, his home for the past 45 years, he is winding down his touring schedule with his long-running time band The Empty Pockets. Time for the last Year Of The Cat. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Jonny Best: Leading Frame Ensemble’s improvised score for The Divine Voyager at the NCEM. Picture: Chris Payne

Film event of the week: Northern Silents presents The Divine Voyager with Frame Ensemble, National Centre for Early Music, York, Monday, 7.30pm

FRAME Ensemble’s spontaneous musicians Jonny Best (piano), Susannah Simmons (violin), Liz Hanks (cello) and Trevor Bartlett (percussion) accompany Julien Duvivier’s lushly photographed, beautifully poetic 1929 French silent film The Divine Voyage with an improvised live score.

In a tale of faith and hope, rapacious businessman Claude Ferjac sends his ship, La Cordillere, on a long trading journey, knowing it is likely to sink after poor repairs. An entire village of sailors, desperate to support their families, has no choice but to set sail. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.

James Lee, left, Helen Clarke, front, Wilf Tomlinson, back, and Katie Leckey rehearsing for Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold. Picture: John Stead

Time to discover: Griffonage Theatre in FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, October 6 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

YORK devotees of the madcap, the macabre and making the familiar strange and the strange familiar, Griffonage Theatre transport audiences to the quirky rural town of Baile Aighneas – The Town of Dispute – for FourTold, a quartet of comedies by early 20th century Irish playwright Lady Augusta Gregory, never presented together in the UK until now under Northern Irish director Katie Leckey.

Encounter the bustling market and all its gossip in Spreading The News; the restaurant where newspaper editors wine, dine and mix up their Coats; the post office, where the splendid Hyacinth Halvey has sent word he is coming to town, and the bus stop where strangers such as The Bogie Men can quickly become friends! Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Hannah Sinclair Robinson’s Jess and Joe Layton’s Robbie in Frantic Assembly’s Lost Atoms, on tour at York Theatre Royal next week. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Relationship drama of the week: Frantic Assembly in Lost Atoms, York Theatre Royal, October 7 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees

FRANTIC Assembly follow up York Theatre Royal visits of Othello and Metamorphosis with their 30th anniversary production, a two-hander memory play by Anna Jordan, directed by physical theatre specialist Scott Graham.

Joe Layton and Hannah Sinclair Robinson play Robbie and Jess, whose chance meeting, disastrous dates and extraordinary transformative love is the stuff of fairy tales. Or is it? Lost Atoms is a wild ride through a life-changing relationship, or Robbie and Jess’s clashing recollections as they relive the beats of connection, the moments of loss, but  are their stories the same and can their memories be trusted? Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Grayson Perry: “Finding out if you really are thoroughly good or maybe quite evil, but in a fun way” at the Grand Opera House

Question of the week: Grayson Perry: Are You Good?, Grand Opera House, October 7, 7.30pm

AFTER A Show For Normal People And A Show All About You, artist, iconoclast, television presenter and Knight Bachelor Grayson Perry asks Are You Good? A question that he thinks is “fundamental to our humanity”.

“In this show I will be helping you, the audience, find out if you really are thoroughly good or maybe quite evil, but in a fun way,” says Sir Grayson. “I always start out with the assumption that people are born good and then life happens. So, let’s pull back the curtain and see where your morals truly lie.” Add audience participation and silly songs, and expect to come out with core values completely in tatters. “Is it more important to be good or to be right? It’s time to update what is a virtue and what is a sin. No biggie.” Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie: Pure entertainment at York Barbican on Thursday

Oh, lucky you gig of the week: Lightning Seeds, Tomorrow’s Here Today, 35 Years Greatest Hits Tour, York Barbican, October 9, 8pm

NOW in his 36th year of leading Liverpool’s Lightning Seeds, Ian Broudie heads to York on his extended Tomorrow’s Here Today tour. Cue Pure, The Life Of Riley, Change, Lucky You, Sense, All I Want, Sugar Coated Iceberg, You Showed Me, Emily Smiles, Three Lions et al. Casino support. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Jack Fry’s Quasimodo and Ayana Beatrice Poblete at Black Sheep Theatre Productions’s Selby Abbey photoshoot for The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, opening next week at the JoRo

Musical of the week: Black Sheep Theatre Productions in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, October 10, 11 and 14 to 18, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinees

BLACK Sheep Theatre Productions bring a cast of five leads, seven ensemble actors and a 23-strong choir to the York company’s larger-than-life staging of Alan Menken & Stephen Schwartz’s musical rooted in Disney’s 1996 musical film and Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel.

Combining powerful themes of love, acceptance and the nature of good and evil with a sweeping score, Matthew Peter Clare’s show will be “like nothing you’ve seen before”. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Posted on

Never heard of Lady Augusta Gregory? Discover her Irish plays in Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold at Theatre@41. UPDATED 9/10/2025

Griffonage Theatre director Katie Leckey in rehearsal for FourTold, next week’s focus on Irish playwright Lady Augusta Gregory at Theatre@41, Monkgate. Picture: John Stead

CHANCES are high that you will never have heard of Lady Augusta Gregory, but why not?

“Because she fell out of favour in her native Ireland,” says Griffonage Theatre co-founder and director Katie Leckey, introducing the neglected playwright from rural Roxborough, County Galway, whose work will be reactivated in FourTold, the York company’s quadruple bill of one-act comedies at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York from October 6 to 10.

Here are the facts: Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory was an Anglo-Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager, who co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, with William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn.

“She was very popular in the early 20th century, in America too, and she was especially popular in own lifetime [Augusta died on May 22 1932, aged 80]. She was still being performed regularly until the mid-1950s,” says Katie. “But her plays died out mainly because they were mostly performed at Abbey Theatre, which she’d helped to create.

“What these plays were at the time was commercial theatre, light comedies. Irish plays written for Irish people, performed by Irish actors.

James Lee in the rehearsal room for Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold. Picture: John Stead

“Only one of the plays we’re doing has been toured anywhere near recently, and even that was 25 years ago, when two productions were done in England, but Coats has never been performed in the UK.”

Until now…when Griffonage Theatre, the York company with University of York roots and a flair for the madcap and macabre, will feature Coats in FourTold, an “evening of captivating storytelling, complete with a live band, performed in an intimate setting that makes you feel right at home, wherever that may be”.

FourTold will transport next week’s audiences to the quirky rural town of Baile Aighneas, or  “The Town of Dispute,” as Katie calls it. “The town boasts many splendid features, as presented in the four plays: the bustling market – and all its gossip – in Spreading The News!; the restaurant where two well-to-do newspaper editors wine, dine and mix up theirCoats; the post office, where the splendid Hyacinth Halvey has sent word he’s coming to town, and the…er, coach stop…where strangers like The Bogie Men can quickly become friends!” she says.

Lady Augusta is a passion project for Northern Irish actor, director and sound designer Katie, forming part of her now completed MA theatre studies at the University of York. “I did The Bogie Men for a closed, invitation-only exam piece, when it had never been performed in England before,” she says.

“Even in Ireland its performance record is tenuous! Only one performance in 1903. Hyacinth Halvey wasn’t done over here either, so our production marks the first time these four plays will be performed together in Great Britain.

Script in hand: Katie Leckey in rehearsal for FourTold. Picture: John Stead

“She didn’t start writing until her 40s and then wrote more than 60 plays, in the decades preceding the Irish Civil War – and novels too, translating Irish myths into English. She was a crazy lady! The best!

“Because she wrote so prolifically, I’ve taken an eclectic mix from 1903 to 1914, picking plays I liked – though I could have chosen any four because they’re so good.

“They’re tiny, tiny pieces, almost like sketches: Spreading The News! is 20-25 minutes; Coats, a rip-roaring 15 minutes; Hyacinth Halvey, 35 minutes, The Bogie Men, 25. Though she did also write Graina, a tragedy, a big epic tale, nothing like these plays, that the Abbey Theatre revived a year ago. She could do the whole scope.”

Katie has decided not to ‘Anglicise’ the plays “because they were written in the Irish dialect, where she listened to people on her estate in the tiny village of Gort,” she says. “I’ve been there. It’s a lovely part of the world.

“She would listen to the labourers, servants and villagers because she was very philanthropic. The dialect would die out in her lifetime. It was born out of English having to be learned because of colonisation and was spoken by villagers who didn’t speak English well and were uneducated. It’s known as Hiberno English, but more specifically it was specifically KIltartanese because Gort is in and around Kiltartan.

James Lee, left, Helen Clarke=Neale , front, Wilf Tomlinson, back, and Katie Leckey rehearsing for Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold. Picture: John Stead

“The fascinating thing is that I’ve found it very similar to the Northern Irish dialect, born out of the English and the Scots coming over, so it’s similar to my own upbringing. It feels familiar to me, and rather than having Irish accents in the show, I want to do an homage to this Irish dialect, like the villagers would have had to learn.”

Katie continues: “The language is beautiful! They say things that you would never say; it’s still in English but the words are in a really fascinating order. It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn – and I had to learn both roles in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter last year!”

Katie’s cast of eight will be mirroring the performance manner of the Fay Brothers at the Abbey Theatre, while expanding on its confines. “They trained actors in a very specific style that was expressly for Irish actors, mostly based on the voice,” she says. “They focused on line delivery and rhythm, so there wasn’t much movement in the pieces – and that’s another reason her plays died out outside southern Ireland. They never even broke out into Northern Ireland.

“The other reason she died out? She’s a woman, whereas WB Yeats’s work has always been done. But we all know everyone loves an Irish accent, and just as the Fay Brothers focused on the lyrical and the voice, so I’m doing that too because it should be preserved, but I’m also focusing on the physicality of the language and the individual characters, because the characters are nuts – such as the butcher who sells unwholesome meat!

“The plays are a snapshot of a very strange rural Irish town: like Royston Vasey, home of The League Of Gentlemen, meeting Father Ted.”

Katie hopes to do a PhD on Lady Augusta. “I’m applying for it here because you can do a PhD through practice at the University of York,” she says. “I’d love to take her work out of being performed in the Fay Brothers style.

Making an entrance: Katie Leckey’s Magistrate rides on to the Theatre@41, Monkgate stage in the opening Lady Augusta Gregory play, Spreading The News, as James Lee’s Mrs Tully looks on. Picture: John Stead

“Her life was quite politically scandalous as she married a Unionist Anglo-Irish landowner, and had an affair with an Irish Republican. At some point she ran for the Irish Senate [the Seanad Éireann] but didn’t win.

“There’s no theatrical scholarship of her work, though there are biographies of her life story and you can read her letters and some studies of the myths around her work, but no studies of her theatrical work, which I think is criminal.”

Does Lady Augusta have a statue, Katie? “One, at Trinity College in Dublin. W B Yeats has more!” she says. To mark St Brigid’s Day, in February 2023, Trinity College installed four new sculptures in its Old Library to honour the scholarship of four trailblazing women: scientist Rosalind Franklin, mathematician Ada Lovelace, women’s right advocate Mary Wollstonecraft and folklorist, dramatist and theatre-founder Augusta Gregory.

Katie’s cast plays 22 characters between them in her multi-role-playing production. “We have a double task: to make plays that are not familiar feel more familiar, and when her plays are already strange, how do we present them in a familiar style? That’s a big challenge, especially when they’re all wee pieces, almost like sketches,” she says.

“What we’ve done is call on what we’ve done before [productions of Poe In Pitch Black, Patrick Hamilton’s Rope and Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Winter] and call on everyone’s suggestions in rehearsals.

Ben Koch’s Taig and Katie Leckey’s Darby, the chimney sweeps, in The Bogie Men. Picture: John Stead

“Her plays have a very melodramatic, very specific style, one that I’ve never seen on stage, which is why I’m so fascinated by her writing. They’re very stylised, almost like being in a courtroom at points; very joyful in tone and full of very much larger-than-life characters.

“When the plays were put on at The Abbey Theatre, the performances were bare with no theatrical spectacle, just people talking, which hopefully I’ve retained but there now needs to be physicality to supplement the dialogue, which is why I’ve put in slapstick. That’s what I learned from doing The Bogie Men for my Masters, so I’ve tried to extrapolate that to the extreme!”

Describing Lady Augusta’s theatrical tropes, Katie says: “Each of the plays has a dispute or misunderstanding at its centre: the classic comedy sketch set-up with either a minor misunderstanding or a massive argument – and she’s very good at writing massive fall-outs. A lot of the comedy comes from schadenfreude, especially in Coats.”

To capture that abundant friction, Katie has settled on a “thrust-plus” set, created by production designer Wilf Tomlinson. “It’s a traverse stage [with the audience placed either side] but it also goes half way round the balcony as well, so it’s almost in the round too but not quite! I’ve not really set it in any specific time or place, in the Town of Dispute but with modern references such as Rubik’s Cubes, yo-yos and a tricycle. All very playful, for comic effect.”

One final thought from Katie: “I have a sneaky feeling Samuel Beckett must have read The Bogie Men because there are very strange Beckettian tones to it,” she says, in a nod to sparring chimney sweeps Darby and Taig being forerunners of Waiting For Godot’s clownish Vladimir and Estragon

Griffonage Theatre presents FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, October 6 to 10, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Did you know?

LADY Augusta Gregory acted on stage only once. “She said she would never do it again as she didn’t like the feel of the greasepaint, but she would often be there at performances of her plays, floating around the theatre,” says Katie.

Griffonage Theatre’s poster for FourTold, starring Katie Leckey as The Magistrate, Mr Hazel and Darby; Ben Koch as James Ryan, Hyacinth Halvey and Taig; Wilf Tomlinson as Shawn Early and James Quirke;  Emily Carhart as Mrs Fallon and Jo Muldoon; Helen Clarke as Bartley Fallon and Mrs Delane; Grace Palma as Mrs Tarpey and Phoebe Farrell; James Lee as Mrs Tully, Mr Mineog and Miss Joyce and Peter Hopwood as Jack Smith 

Griffonage Theatre: the back story

YORK theatre company with University of York origins, devoted to the madcap and the macabre, eliciting humour from the darkness. “We aim to make the strange familiar, and the familiar strange,” vows the company motto.

Founded in 2022, Fourtold is Griffonage Theatre’s fourth production, after the devised Poe In Pitch Black, Patrick Hamilton’s Rope, and Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter. “We can be found, lurking in shadows, smiling deviously, at https://www.griffonage.uk/,” says Katie.

The crew for FourTold comprises: director and sound designer, Katie Leckey; assistant director, Miles John; lighting designer and technical stage manager, Leo McCall; set designer, Wilf Tomlinson; stage manager, Zoe Deacy-Clarke; marketing manager, Jamie Williams;  executive producer, Jack Mackay. 

York company Griffonage Theatre in debut production Poe In Pitch Black

Posted on

REVIEW: York Settlement Community Players in Joe Orton’s Loot, York Theatre Royal Studio, until February 27 ****

Who’s conning who? Emily Carhart’s Fay, Jack Mackay’s Hal, centre, and Stuart Green’s Truscott in a scene from York Settlement Community Players’ Loot. Picture: John Saunders

THE monochrome cover to York Settlement Community Players’ programme for Joe Orton’s dark farce Loot takes the form of a death notice. Rest in Peace Mary McLeavy. Born 1916, called home 1966. Remembrance services will be held: 18th – 27th February 2025.

For “Remembrance Services”, read performances that raise Orton’s scandalous, scabrous first farce from the grave, directed by the “young (and probably) angsty” Katie Leckey with brio and brains, fresh from completing her MA in Theatre-making at the University of York.

Already she and lead actor Jack Mackay have made their mark on the York theatre scene with their company Griffonage Theatre, latterly swapping the roles of hitmen Ben and Gus for each performance of Harold Pinter’s menacing  1957 two-hander The Dumb Waiter at Theatre@41, Monkgate, last July.

Jack Mackay’s Hal, trying not to look alarmed in Loot. Picture: John Saunders

Now Mackay forms part of another “double act” on the wrong side of the law:  bungling thieves Hal (Mackay) and Dennis (Miles John), in essence representing Orton’s lover Kenneth Halliwell and Orton, in Loot.

Sixty years on from its Cambridge Arts Theatre premiere, when Orton deemed the play to be “a disaster” and the Cambridge News review called it “very bad”, it remains a shocking play. Not shockingly bad, but a shock to the system, still carrying a content warning.

It reads: “The show contains adult themes and offensive language (including sexism and xenophobia). There are also sexual references and references to sexual assault (including rape and necrophilia) and references to smoking on stage.” Sure enough, Stuart Green’s inspector, Truscott, hiding behind his smokescreen of being “from the Water Board”, smokes without fire, never lighting his pipe.

Emily Carhart’s nurse, Fay, and Miles John’s arch thief, Dennis, in Loot. Picture: John Saunders

Loot remains an iconoclastic play, even angrier than those Angry Young Men that preceded him, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, John Wain, et al. You might call it ‘odd’, or ‘strange’, but its audacious humour tugs persuasively at your arm, its attacks on convention beneath its conventional farce format landing blows on those cornerstones of the state, the (Catholic) church and the police force, as well as undermining the nuclear family. 

It makes you ask what has changed since the 1965 premiere, as Leckey highlights in her programme note, drawing attention to the continuing prevalence of violence, racism, homophobia and misogyny.

She quotes Orton, who wrote “I’m too amused by the way people carry on to give in to despair”. There, in a nutshell, is the role of comedy, to home in on the warts and all and laugh at our failings and foibles. The bigger shock here is that we have not moved on, but on second thoughts, in the week when every new Trump utterance trumps the last one, maybe not. 

Loot director Katie Leckey

Orton was once castigated for his play’s immoral tone, but it is the behaviour that is immoral, not Orton. Don’t shoot the messenger. Laugh, instead, at our failure to clean up our act, especially those in authority.

Leckey has not edited Orton’s text, letting it stand or fall in all its bold affronts, not least on life’s ultimate taboo: death. Preceded by Ortonian fun and games by a six-pack of support players, from a drunken priest (James Wood) to an excitable nun (Xandra Logan), Loot begins with an open coffin. Inside rests the aforementioned Mary McLeavy (a dead body played by a live actor [Caroline Greenwood] with Orton irreverence). Today is her funeral.

In the room, designed with kitsch Sixties’ detail by Wilf Tomlinson and Richard Hampton, matched by Leckey’s soundtrack, are widower Mr McLeavy (played with suitable befuddlement by Paul French) and Mrs McLeavy’s nurse, Fay, (Emily Carhart in her impressive Settlement debut). She may wear a cross, but Fay has an unfortunate of seeing off her husbands, seven in seven years, and now she has her eye on Mr McLeavy.

Eyeball to eyeball: Stuart Green’s Truscott carries out a close inspection in Loot. Picture: John Saunders

Enter Mackay’s Hal, who protests he is too upset to attend the funeral, and John’s Dennis, whose heart is lost to Fay. Rarely for a farce, there is only one door into the sitting room, but a second door is all important: the cupboard door, behind which they have hidden their stash from a bank job.

A glass eye, a set of teeth and the constant movement of Mrs McLeavy’s body will follow, involving the cupboard, the coffin and the stash, in classic farce tradition, with rising irreverence and desperation as the investigations of Green’s Truscott mirror the impact of  Inspector Goole in JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, written 20 years earlier, but this time with humorous results.

Green, in his Settlement debut after returning to the stage in 2023 from an hiatus, has spot-on comic timing, a twinkle in his eye and the over-confidence of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Paul French’s Mr McLeavy, left, Stuart Green’s Truscott, Jack Mackay’s Hal, Emily Carhart’s Fay (seated) and Emily Hansen’s Meadows in Loot. Picture: John Saunders

Mackay and John evoke the Sixties in looks, acting style and attire, playing to the Orton manner born as the hapless thieves, somehow negotiating their way through a farce with a farce with aplomb and insouciance.

York Settlement Community Players in Loot, York Theatre Royal Studio, until February 27, 7.45pm nightly except February 23, plus 2pm matinee, February 22. Age guidance: 16 plus. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Post-show discussion tomorrow (21/2/2025).

TAKING part in pre-show and interval Orton-style vignettes, devised by James Lee, are: Xandra Logan (Sister Barbara); Chris Meadley (Sergeant Timothy Carruthers); Victoria Delaney (Mrs Edna Welthorpe); Helen Clarke (Edith, the church organist); James Wood (Priest) and Serafina Coupe (Keith Kevin O’Keefe).

Xandra Logan’s Sister Barbara and James Wood’s inebriated Priest in an interval vignette in York Settlement Community Players’ Loot at York Theatre Royal Studio. Picture: John Saunders

Posted on

Why Joe Orton’s Sixties’ farce still carries a content warning as Katie Leckey directs Settlement’s Loot at Theatre Royal Studio

York Settlement Community Players’ Stuart Green’s inspector, Truscott, left, and Miles John’s thief, Dennis, rehearsing a scene from Joe Orton’s Loot

LOOT, Joe Orton’s scandalous first farce, opened at the Cambridge Arts Theatre on February 1 1965 with Kenneth Williams and Geraldine McEwan in the cast.

“The play is a disaster,” the iconoclastic Leicester playwright wrote in a letter to his lover, Kenneth Halliwell. “A very bad play,” sniffed the Cambridge News review. Ouch!

Loot would close after 56 performances and three re-writes, the cast declining the chance to transfer to London, but…Orton’s provocatively controversial, free-wheeling and ferocious dark farce about life’s ultimate taboo – death – is very much alive and kicking up a storm 2025, still suited and booted to shock, amuse and entertain in Orton’s signature scabrous style.

…And still carrying a Content Warning, to be found when booking tickets for Katie Leckey’s production for York Settlement Community Players, running at York Theatre Royal Studio from February 18 to 27.

It reads: “The show contains adult themes and offensive language (including sexism and xenophobia). There are also sexual references and references to sexual assault (including rape and necrophilia) and references to smoking on stage.”

Jack Mackay’s Hal, left, Emily Carhart’s Fay and Miles John’s Dennis in the rehearsal room for York Settlement Community Players’ production of Loot

All this, 60 years since Orton premiered his two-act satire on the Roman Catholic Church, social attitudes to death and the integrity of the police force, wrapped in the story of the fortunes of two thieves, Hal and Dennis, as they navigate the ridiculous farce they find themselves in. Cue such props as rolling eyeballs, flying false teeth and a live actor playing a dead body. 

“We made the choice to set the production in the time it was produced, so that audiences can see what has changed about ideas of ‘Britishness’, religion and institutional tyranny since then (if anything) and what still shocks and outrages us today,” says Katie, a Northern Irish actor and director, who completed her Masters degree last year at the University of York, where she set up Griffonage Theatre with co-artistic director Jack Mackay, now cast as Hal in Loot.

“Are we still homophobic, are we less Catholic? The fact that we have to warn people that it’s still a shocking and scandalous play speaks volumes. The thing is this: we do need to give some sort of warning because some of the content is so abhorrent, mostly what Hal says.

“It’s about setting expectations fairly, but I still think the play should be shocking and done as written, so there are insidious lines that I have kept in that I don’t like, but it shows how people were thinking at that time – and still do today, especially men.

Loot director Katie Leckey

“Interestingly, we had 45-50 people auditioning, mostly men wanting to play the inspector, Truscott, although there’s pretty much an equal split of male-female characters in our production.”

 The strongest voice of all in Loot belongs to Orton, suggests Katie. “That’s what fascinates me: the more I do the play, the stronger his voice becomes. He’s the most authorial writer. There’s something vicious in everything that is said, but it punches up,” she says.

“Orton was so angry about so many things and that’s why the viciousness is so poignant. Like how he was treated by the police, especially as a gay man who had to adapt. So the play is performative to an extent, but it is situated in lived experience.

“I can’t not speak to my actors about him, I can’t not contextualise, Hal is essentially Halliwell and Dennis is Joe. The more you read about his life, the more you can’t separate it from what he’s written.

“I try to get some distance as a director, but I don’t think you can with this, because of how Orton’s life ended [he was murdered, aged 34, by Halliwell in 1967] and how he wrote.

Paul French’s Mr McLeavy, left, and Stuart Green’s Truscott in rehearsal for Loot

“If you had interviewed Orton in 1965, he would have said Loot is a serious play, why is everyone finding it funny? But it absolutely is a farce, rigid in its form as a farce, going through the motions of a farce, which is funny in itself.”

Katie continues: “But what makes it one of the funniest plays is the language. If he had written it as a ‘normal farce’, it would instead have been a tragedy, but he has this flamboyant way of writing, partly upper class, partly colloquial. Using obtuse language deliberately too, where the rhythms sound so ridiculous.”

Translating Orton’s assertion of Loot’s seriousness to her actors, “everything has to be done with conviction in my direction,” she says. “It has to be done that way, with believability. I’m not into breaking ‘the fourth wall’. The characters have to come across as desperate.

“The only difference between tragedy and farce, Orton, said was the treatment of themes. If you made a play about police brutality and homophobia, you could do that as a tragedy, but what makes it funny here is how Orton has singed those subjects with his fire.”

Katie is delighted to be directing a Settlement show for the first time, having first performed with the company in Government Inspector in October 2023. “I went to the group audition and I was shocked and excited by how talented everyone was! I wheedled my way in and I’ve stayed because there’s something rewarding about working with a long-established company,” says Katie. “I felt I wanted to work with these guys as much as possible.”

On finishing her Masters degree, Katie “needed to do something or I will go bananas”. “I saw that Settlement had put out a call for directors and I thought, ‘it’s my time to do something similarly wacky and wild as Griffonage do, and luckily they said ‘yes’.”

 York Settlement Community Players in Loot, York Theatre Royal Studio, 7.45pm nightly, February 18 to 27, except February 23; 2pm matinee, February 22. Age guidance: 16 plus. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Who’s in York Settlement Community Players’ cast for Loot?

JACK Mackay, as Hal; Miles John, Dennis; Paul French, Mr McLeavy; Caroline Greenwood, Mrs McLeavy; Stuart Green, Truscott; Emily Hansen, Meadows, and Emily Carhart, Fay.

Helen Clarke, Xandra Logan, James Wood, Chris Meadley, Victoria Delaney and Serefina Coupe will feature too in Orton-inspired vignettes before the show and in the interval, penned by James Lee.

Posted on

What’s On in Ryedale, York and beyond as the Sheds go outdoors. Here’s Hutch’s List No. 25, from Gazette & Herald

Shed Seven: Playing sold-out concerts in York Museum Gardens on Friday and Saturday

SHED Seven’s 30th anniversary open-air concerts are the headline act on Charles Hutchinson’s arts and culture bill for the week ahead. Look out for global travels, Gershwin celebrations and a Hitchcockian comic caper too.

York festival of the week: Futuresound presents Live At York Museum Gardens, Jack Savoretti, tomorrow; Shed Seven, Friday and Saturday

ANGLO-ITALIAN singer-songwriter Jack Savoretti opens the inaugural Live At York Museum Gardens festival at the 4,000-capacity gardens tomorrow, when the support acts will be Northern Irish folk-blues troubadour Foy Vance, York singer-songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich and fast-rising Halifax act Ellur.

Both of Shed Seven’s home-city 30th anniversary gigs have sold out. Expect a different set list each night, special guests and a school choir, plus support slots for The Libertines’ Peter Doherty, The Lottery Winners and York band Serotones on Friday and Doherty, Brooke Combe and Apollo Junction on Saturday. Sugababes’ festival-closing concert on July 21 was cancelled in April. Box office: seetickets.com/event/jack-savoretti/york-museum-gardens/2929799.

Claire Martin: Celebrating Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue at Ryedale Festival. Picture: Kenny McCracken

Jazz gig of the week: Ryedale Festival, Claire Martin and Friends, Rhapsody In Blue – A Gershwin Celebration, Milton Rooms, Malton, Friday, 8pm

LONDON jazz singer Claire Martin leads her all-star line-up in a celebration of George Gershwin’s uplifting music and the 100th anniversary of Rhapsody In Blue, a piece that changed musical history.

In the band line-up will be pianist Rob Barron, double bassist Jeremy Brown, drummer Mark Taylor, trumpet player Quentin Collins and saxophonist Karen Sharp. Box office: themiltonrooms.com or ryedalefestival.com.

Maria Gray in the role of The Acrobat in Around The World In 80 Days-ish at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

Theatrical return of the week: Around The World In 80 Days-ish, York Theatre Royal, tomorrow to August 3

PREMIERED on York playing fields in 2021, revived in a touring co-production with Tilted Wig that opened at the Theatre Royal in February 2023, creative director Juliet Forster’s circus-themed adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel returns under a new title with a new cast.

Join a raggle-taggle band of circus performers as they embark on their most daring feat yet: to perform the fictitious story of Phileas Fogg and his thrilling race across the globe. But wait? Who is this intrepid American travel writer, Nellie Bly, biting at his heels? Will an actual, real-life woman win this race? Cue a carnival of delights with tricks, flicks and brand-new bits. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Katie Leckey and Jack Mackay: Co-artistic directors of Griffonage Theatre, alternating roles in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter

Fringe show of the week: Griffonage Theatre in The Dumb Waiter, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tomorrow to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

YORK company Griffonage Theatre follow up February’s debut production of Patrick Hamilton’s Rope with Harold Pinter’s 1957 one-act play The Dumb Waiter, directed and designed by Wilf Tomlinson.

Two hitmen, Ben and Gus, are waiting in a basement room for their assignment, but why is a dumbwaiter in there, when the basement does not appear to be in a restaurant? To make matters worse, the loo won’t flush, the kettle won’t boil, and the two men are increasingly at odds with each other. Unique to this production, actors Jack Mackay and Katie Leckey will alternate the roles of Ben and Gus at each performance. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

One of Anna Matyus’s artworks on show at Helmsley Arts Centre

Exhibition of the week: Anna Matyus, Helmsley Arts Centre, until August 9

ANNA Matyus’s work explores the powerful spiritual resonance of historical sacred buildings and their setting in the landscape. Using etching and collagraph printmaking techniques and a colourful palette, she seeks to bring to life the powerful geometry of the often-faded motifs and time- worn patterns and symbols of historic artefacts found in the masonry and ancient tiles of these sacred sites.

“My final prints explore and record the dynamic rhythms of three-dimensional architectural form, layered with their decorative and symbolic adornment in a graphic expression of awe and wonder,” she says.

Gary Louris: The Jayhawks’ singer, guitarist and songwriter plays solo at The Crescent on Saturday, York. Picture: Steve Cohen

American solo act of the week: Gary Louris, of The Jayhawks, supported by Dave Fiddler, The Crescent, York, Saturday, 7.30pm

OVER three decades, vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Gary Louris has co-led Minneapolis country rock supremos The Jayhawks with Mark Olson, as well as being a member of alt.rock supergroup Golden Smog, forming Au Pair with North Carolina artist Django Haskins in 2015 and releasing two solo albums, 2008’s Vagabonds and 2021’s Jump For Joy.

He has recorded with acts as diverse as The Black Crowes, Counting Crows, Uncle Tupelo, Lucinda Williams, Roger McGuinn, Maria McKee, Tift Merritt and The Wallflowers too. As an alternative to the sold-out Sheds on Saturday, look no further than this American rock luminary. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

Cutting a dash but in a hurry: Tom Byrne’s Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps. Picture: Mark Senior

Comedy play of the week: The 39 Steps, Grand Opera House, York, July 23 to July 27, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees

PATRICK Barlow’s award-garlanded stage adaptation of The 39 Steps has four actors playing 139 roles between them in 100 dashing minutes as they seek to re-create Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 spy thriller while staying true to John Buchan’s 1915 book.

Tom Byrne – Falklands War-era Prince Andrew in The Crown – plays on-the-run handsome hero Richard Hannay, complete with stiff upper-lip, British gung-ho and pencil moustache as he encounters dastardly murders, double-crossing secret agents and devastatingly beautiful women. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

James: Playing Scarborough Open Air Theatre for the fourth time on July 26. Picture: Paul Dixon

Coastal gig of the week: James, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, July 26, gates 6pm

JAMES follow up Scarborough appearances in 2015, 2018 and 2021 by continuing that three-year cycle in 2024, on the heels of releasing the chart-topping Yummy, their 18th studio album, in April.

“I’m very pleased that we will be playing Scarborough Open Air Theatre this summer – our fourth time in fact,” says bassist and founder member Jim Glennie. “If you haven’t been there before, then make sure you come. It’s a cracking venue and you can even have a paddle in the sea before the show!” Support acts will be Reverend And The Makers, from Sheffield, and Nottingham indie rock trio Girlband!. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com/james.