Tag: Harland Miller XXX

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More Things To Do in York and beyond as XXX exits and a cosmic piano arrives. Hutch’s List No. 38, from The York Press

Oh No! Have we missed Harland Miller’s XXX exhibition of Letter Paintings at York Art Gallery? No, this weekend is the last chance

HARLAND Miller’s XXX finale and Fangfest’s 25th anniversary, a comic convention and a cosmic piano are among Charles Hutchinson’s recommendations as August makes way for September. 

Do not miss: Harland Miller, XXX, York Art Gallery, ends on Sunday, open daily 10am to 5pm

THIS weekend is the last chance to see York-raised Pop artist and writer Harland Miller’s return to York Art Gallery with XXX, showcasing paintings and works on paper from his Letter Paintings series, including several new paintings, not least ‘York’, a floral nod to Yorkshire’s white rose and York’s daffodils. 

Inspired by his upbringing in 1970s’ Yorkshire and an itinerant lifestyle in New York, New Orleans, Berlin and Paris during the 1980s and 1990s, Miller creates colourful and graphically vernacular works that convey his love of popular language and attest to his enduring engagement with its narrative, aural and typographical possibilities. Tickets: yorkartgallery.org.uk.

 Fladam’s Flo Poskitt and Adam Sowter: Premiering their shiny new musical comedy, Astro-Norma!, at York Explore today

Intergalactic musical family adventure of the week: Fladam Theatre in Astro-Norma And The Cosmic Piano, York Explore Library and Archive, Library Square, York, today, 11am and 2pm

FROM the creators of Green Fingers and the spooky HallowBean comes Astro-Norma And The Cosmic Piano, wherein Norma dreams of going into space, like her heroes Mae Jemison and Neil Armstrong, although children can’t go into space, can they? Especially children with a very  important piano recital coming up.

But what bizarre-looking contraption has just crash-landed in the garden? Is it a bird? Or a plane? No… it’s a piano?! No ordinary piano. This is a cosmic piano! Maybe Norma’s dreams can come true? Join Fladam duo Flo Poskitt and Adam Sowter for a 45-minute show full of awesome aliens, rib-tickling robots and interplanetary puns. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/exploreyorklibrariesandarchives.

You, Me And Who We’ll Be: Josie Brookes and Tom Madge’s exhibition at Nunnington Hall

Children’s exhibition of the week: Josie Brookes and Tom Madge, You, Me And Who We’ll Be, Nunnington Hall, near York, until September 7

ENTER the colourful worlds of children’s illustrators Josie Brookes and Tom Madge. Through bold, eye-catching artwork, the Newcastle-upon-Tyne duo creates stories that explore the many ways we can help and understand each other, make friends and build relationships.  

Discover your own helpful superpower in the Big Small Nature Club or join best friends Nader and Solomiya on a journey to find home. A dress-up station lets you share in the adventures of Molly the Flower. Before you go, help the story grow by adding your own artwork to the interactive gallery. Tickets: Normal admission charges at nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/yorkshire/nunnington-hall/exhibitions.

York Unleashed Comic-Con: Special guests, stage talks, cosplay masquerade, attractions and merchandise market at York Racecourse

Convention of the week: York Unleashed Comic-Con, York Racecourse, Knavesmire, York, Sunday, 11am to 5pm

UNLEASHED Events welcomes Tom Rosenthal, Tim Blaney, Peter Davison, Phil Fletcher and special guest Atticus Finch Wobbly Cat to a comic convention featuring stage talks, cosplay masquerade and plenty more.

Comic artists and authors Jim Alexander, Elinor Taylor, Blake Books, Jessica Meats, Paolo Debernardi and Ben Sawyer are appearing too. Attractions include Doctor Bell, Bumblebee Camaro, Johnny 5, Milestone 3D, Imagination Gaming, Battle Ready Academy, Mos Eisley Misfits, Tom Daws Dimple Magician, Rexys Reviews and Iconic Movie Scenes, plus a market selling merchandise and collectables from favourite franchises. Tickets: unleashedtickets.co.uk.

SmART art: One of 100 artworks for sale at the pop-up SmART Gallery at York Racecourse

Art event of the week: SmART Gallery, Racecourse Road, York, YO23 1EU, Sunday, 11am to 2.30pm

SUNDAY’S outdoor, inclusive community art gallery, SmART Gallery, will raise money for the Christmas appeal run by Crisis, the homeless charity, and voluntary work in Sierra Leone next Easter.

The event features more than 100 pieces of art work produced by the York community. Blank canvases are sold for £10, then returned once the art work has been created in any medium. Browsers can submit a secret bid on the day for anything they would like to buy. Any unsold artwork will remain on the fence opposite York Racecourse’s main entrance for five months for all to enjoy.

Austentatious: Improvising new Jane Austen novel from audience suggestions at Grand Opera House, York

Improv show of the week: Show And Tell present Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen Novel, Grand Opera House, York, September 5 and 6, 7.30pm

AS seen every week in the West End since 2022 and in York in a sold-out show in January, the all-star Austentatious cast will improvise a new Jane Austen novel, inspired entirely by a title from the audience. Performed in period costume with live musical accompaniment, this riotous, quick-moving comedy comes with guaranteed swooning.

The revolving Austentatious cast includes numerous award-winning television and radio performers, such as Cariad Lloyd (QI, Inside No.9, Griefcast, The Witchfinder),Joseph Morpurgo (Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee), Rachel Parris (The Mash Report), Graham Dickson (After Life, The Witchfinder) and more. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Pottery workshop at 25th anniversary Fangest Festival of Practical Arts in Fangfoss

Silver anniversary of the week: Fangfest Festival of Practical Arts, Fangfoss, East Riding, September 6 and 7, 10am to 4pm each day

FANGFOSS is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Fangfest with the All Things Silver flower festival; veteran cars; archery; the Stamford Bridge Heritage Society; music on the village green; children’s games; the Teddy Bear Trail and artists aplenty exhibiting and demonstrating their work. 

Opportunities will be provided to try out the potter’s wheel, spoon carving and chocolate making. Some drop-in activities are free; more intensive workshops require booking in advance. Look out too for the circus skills of children’s entertainer John Cossham, alias Professor Fiddlesticks, and the Pocklington and District Heritage Trust mobile museum. Admission is free.

Suede: Returning to York Barbican next February on Antidepressants tour. Picture: Dean Chalkley

Show announcement of the week: Suede, Antidepressants UK Tour 2026, York Barbican, February 7 2026

AFTER playing York Barbican for the first time in more than 25 years in March 2023, Suede will make a rather hastier return on their 17-date January and February tour. Brett Anderson’s London band will be promoting  tenth studio album Antidepressants, out on September 5 on BMG.

“If [2022’s] Autofiction was our punk record, Antidepressants is our post-punk record,” says Anderson. “It’s about the tensions of modern life, the paranoia, the anxiety, the neurosis. We are all striving for connection in a disconnected world. This was the feel I wanted the songs to have. This is broken music for broken people.” Box office: York, yorkbarbican.co.uk/whats-on/suede26.

REVIEW: National Theatre in War Horse, Leeds Grand Theatre, until Sept 6 *****

Tom Sturgess (Albert Narracott), left, with Diany Samba-Bandza, Jordan Paris and Eloise Beaumont-Wood (Baby Joey) in War Horse, on tour at Leeds Grand Theatre. Picture: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg

ELEVEN years since first encountering the National Theatre’s remarkable War Horse at the Alhambra, Bradford, a return visit brought out all the awe, wonderment and anger anew at Leeds Grand Theatre amid the turbulence of 21st century conflicts, conflagrations and ever more warmongering.

Michael Morpurgo’s source novel was ostensibly a tale for children, as was Michelle Magorian’s Second World War story Goodnight Mister Tom, but Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris’s theatrical tour de force is a show for everyone.

The most successful play in the history of the National Theatre, collecting more than 25 awards and playing to 8.3 million people worldwide, War Horse is a complete piece of theatre, replete with technical aplomb, extraordinary puppetry, grand design and foundation-shaking sound to complement Nick Stafford’s beautiful, powerful storytelling.

For all those theatrical tools, the story is king, told with imagination and wonder beyond even the cinematic scope of Steven Spielberg’s 2011 film version.

More remarkable still, Morpurgo’s central character is a horse, whose journey is charted from Devon farm to the fields of the Somme, in the service of first the British and then the Germans in the First World War.

Directors Elliott and Morris and designer Rae Smith had the original vision, put into flesh by South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company’s Adrian Kohler. Not so much flesh as leather tack and a wooden see-through framework that exposed the three puppeteers, gloved and dressed to add to the sense of equine power in life-sized Joey, whose transformation from colt to magnificent beast is a coup de theatre that takes the breath away.

From the highly physical ensemble acting of revival director Katie Henry’s cast to the deafening sounds of war (by sound designer Christopher Shutt) and the omnipresent animation and projection designs of Nicol Scott and Ben Pearcy that depict war so devastatingly, every last detail counts. Anne Marie Piazza’s singing of John Tams’s affecting folk songs is even more haunting for its female interpretation.

At the core is the bond of a boy and his horse, Tom Sturgess’s stoical farm boy Albert Narracott and noble Joey, as boy becomes man all too young in the most brutal passage of rights in the trenches. War divides but it also unites, bringing out the best and worst on all sides (as Morpurgo’s equal focus on the Germans emphasises).

Co-produced with Michael Harrison, Fiery Angel and Playing Field, this “all-new tour” for 2024-2025 is a triumph once more. The National Theatre and British theatre at their best.

National Theatre in War Horse, Leeds Grand Theatre, until September 6, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.

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XXX marks the spot for Harland Miller, man of letters of the Pop art variety on his home-city return to York Art Gallery

York Pop artist Harland Miller with his new work York from his XXX exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: Olivia Hemingway

IF brevity is the soul of wit – ironically a quote from Shakespeare’s longest play, the 40,000-word Hamlet – then that philosophy applies to Pop artist Harland Miller’s new exhibition in York.

“I wanted to use as little language as possible, to see if a short word like ‘If’ , for instance, could mean as much to someone as a long sentence,” he says, on his return to his home city the day after his 61st birthday to launch XXX at York Art Gallery: the gallery he first visited aged 16 on a lunch break from a job he had just started, setting him on his path to international acclaim as an itinerant painter in New York, New Orleans, Berlin and Paris as part of fellow Yorkshireman Jay Jopling’s stable of White Cube gallery artists.

“This show is entitled ‘XXX’ but it doesn’t flout any indecency laws so it should stay open longer than the last one [his Covid-curtailed 2020 show] , which was slated to run for six months but closed after only a few weeks (as was the whole of the city) due to lock down, so I never did find out what being given the keys to the city actually unlocked,” says Harland.

“But York is a city of perpetual mystery and history, including my own, and it always draws me back. It’s especially exciting to be sharing this with everyone – not once, but twice.”     

Harland Miller with his 2019 oil on canvas XXX at York Art Gallery. Picture: Olivia Hemingway

Coinciding with the publication of his new book of the same title by Phaidon, Harland is showcasing paintings and preparatory works on graph paper from his Letter Paintings series, topped off by the unveiling of several new oil paintings, not least York – a suitably short city name to match his project brief.  

He had built his 2020 York Art Gallery exhibition around its title work, York So Good They Named It Once, a work transformed into mugs, fridge magnets et al. “I knew I wanted to do something about York again, and I thought, ‘how can I bring York into the series I’m making?’. The answer was right in front of my face: all the works used letters that made short words and York is a short word!” says Harland.

“Then I thought, what is coming through that says ‘York’ to me. The white rose, though that was a bit obvious, and yellow from the daffodils that come out in the spring. When I was a kid, the Bar Walls were covered with them.

“My mother wasn’t the most positive person, but she equated the daffodils coming out with York regenerating each year in spring.”

Artist Harland Miller stands by his Oh No work, sporting his newly designed Oh No scarf, on sale at York Art Gallery. Picture: Olivia Hemingway

And so Harland Miller’s ‘York’ blossomed into life as his first ever flower painting:  York, so good he has now painted it twice. “Hopefully you see the rose and the daffodil in the white and the yellow, and not a fried egg,” he cautions.

York, a work created since the XXX book went to print, forms part of a hard-edged series that “melds the sacred seamlessly with the everyday”, drawing inspiration from medieval manuscripts, where monks often laboured to produce intricate illuminated letters to mark the beginning of chapters.

In these works, Miller applies bold colours and typefaces to accentuate the expressive versatility of monosyllabic words and acronyms such as ESP, If and Star, the series now expanding to take in Oh No (with an accompanying scarf among the exhibition merchandise), Kiss, Boss and Loop and his first hard-edged  diptych, Far Out.

The Letter Paintings present overlaid letter forms as their image, with a neutral band at the bottom in the form of a title alongside Miller’s own name as their author. By isolating, overlaying and reuniting individual letters, he creates a sense of depth in the image and encourages contemplation.

Far Out, Harland Miller’s first diptych from his Letter Paintings series at York Art Gallery. Picture: Olivia Hemingway

“From two letters, I moved on to three-letter words and favourite four-letter words and now a five-letter word, Eerie, though that’s cheating with three ‘E’s. I like to start with a word and then work with the feeling it evokes, like getting an eerie feeling from the word ‘eerie,” says Harland.

“I painted ‘Numb’ just a couple of years ago after my mother passed away. Yellow and purple felt natural colours for it, and I wanted that sense of walking through that numbness in the painting, which had come from that feeling.”

Yellow and purple might strike you as an unusual colour combination, but Miller had studied colour psychology back in the day when working in graphic design with Peter Turpin at Turpin Graphics.

“Yellow can make people feel violent, but what’s interesting is if you introduce purple, which can make people feel introspective, then by putting it with yellow, you can become violently introspective, which isn’t good for you, but part of my punk philosophy is to challenge that.”

Harland Miller, XXX, oil on canvas, 2019. Copyright: Harland Miller. Photo copyright: White Cube, Theo Christelis

The exhibition is defined by the letter X, so good he used it thrice. “Unlike any other letter in the alphabet, it’s also its own word without being a word. ‘X’ is more exciting than ‘I’. It sounds more exciting!  I don’t know if it’s exciting because it features in words we like, like ‘exciting’ or ‘sex’, but if was ‘secks’, you wouldn’t get a band called The Sex Pistols! Secks Pistols just wouldn’t look good. ‘X’ is a letter that makes a word look good and sound good.”

The exhibition’s themes will extend beyond the indoor gallery spaces into the gallery gardens, through a creative interpretation of Miller’s Far Out diptych, using a selection of flowering plants. Visible from the ground and the gallery’s balcony, the plantings will be sown on two wired raised planting beds on the sloping grass verge behind the gallery, leads up to the wildflower meadow. 

This floral installation will be planned so flowers appear from the end of June, peaking during the summer season, all adding to a show with the XXX factor.

Harland Miller: XXX, York Art Gallery, on show until  August 31. Opening times: Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm. Tickets: yorkartgallery.org.uk.

Beatrice Bertram

Dr Beatrice Bertram, senior curator at York Art Gallery, on Harland Miller’s XXXhibition:

“WE are delighted to welcome Harland back to York Art Gallery and his home city to show this extraordinary exhibition entitled XXX. The displays here in York explore his celebrated series of Letter Paintings, brought together for the first time alongside new work created exclusively for our exhibition.

“Harland’s distinctive, impactful paintings are instantly recognisable and repay close looking. His clever use of language and colour encourages us to encounter everyday words afresh, as he lays letters over one another in an intriguing process of deconstruction and reconnection.

“Don’t miss this unique opportunity to experience Miller’s bright, bold, brilliant body of work produced during an exciting new phase in his career.”

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What’s On in Ryedale, York and beyond. Hutch’s List No. 11, from Gazette & Herald

York Pop artist Harland Miller with his new work York from his XXX exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: Olivia Hemingway

FROM Harland Miller’s Pop Art to Emma Rice’s theatrical world premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, these are exciting times for artistic expression, Charles Hutchinson reports.

XXXhibition of the week: Harland Miller: XXX, York Art Gallery, until August 31, open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm

YORK-RAISED artist and writer Harland Miller has returned to York Art Gallery to launch XXX, showcasing paintings and works on paper from his Letter Paintings series, including the unveiling of several new paintings, not least ‘York’, a floral nod to Yorkshire’s white rose and York’s daffodils.   

Inspired by his upbringing in 1970s’ Yorkshire and an itinerant lifestyle in New York, New Orleans, Berlin and Paris during the 1980s and 1990s, Miller creates colourful and graphically vernacular works that convey his love of popular language and attest to his enduring engagement with its narrative, aural and typographical possibilities. Tickets: yorkartgallery.org.uk.

Simon Oskarsson’s Valerian, left, Ewan Wardrop’s Roger Thornhill, Katy Owen’s Professor and Mirabelle Gremaud’s Anna rehearsing a scene for Emma Rice’s production of Alfred Hitchcock’s North By North West. Picture: Steve Tanner

World premiere of the week in York: Wise Children in Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, York Theatre Royal, until April 5, 7.30pm plus 2pm, March 26 and April 3; 2.30pm, March 29 and April 5

IT would be strange if, in a city of seven million people, one man were never mistaken for another…and that is exactly what happens to Roger Thornhill, reluctant hero of North By Northwest, when a mistimed phone call to his mother lands him smack bang in the middle of a Cold War conspiracy. Now he is on the run, dodging spies, airplanes and a femme fatale who might not be all she seems.

Wise Children writer-director Emma Rice turns film legend Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller on its head in her riotously humorous reworking. Replete with six shape-shifting performers, a fabulous 1950s’ soundtrack and a heap of hats, this dazzling co-production with York Theatre Royal, HOME Manchester and Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse plays with heart, mind and soul in a topsy-turvy drama full of glamour, romance, jeopardy and a liberal sprinkling of tender truths. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Nina Wadia’s Gemma and Sam Bailey’s April in NOW That’s What I Call A Musical, on tour at Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Pamela Raith

Musical of the week: NOW That’s What I Call A Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm matinees, today and Saturday

DIRECTED by Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood, comedian Pippa Evans’s hit-laden musical is set in Birmingham in 1989 and 2009. Back in the day, school friends Gemma Warner and April Devonshire are planning their lives based on Number One magazine quizzes and dreaming of snogging Rick Astley. Twenty years later, Gemma (Nina Wadia) and April (The X Factor winner Sam Bailey) face the most dreaded event of their adult lives: the school reunion.

Drama, old flames and receding hairlines come together as friends reunite and everything from the past starts to slot into place. Sinitta, Eighties’s pop star of So Macho and Toy Boy fame, will be the guest star all week in a show featuring Gold, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Tainted Love, Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves et al. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Nearly here: Nearly here: Paddy McGuinness brings his Nearly There tour to York Barbican tomorrow

Comedy gig of the week: Paddy McGuinness, Nearly There, York Barbican, tomorrow, 7.45pm

FARNWORTH comedian, television and radio presenter and game show host Paddy McGuinness plays York on his first stand-up itinerary since 2016. Launching the 40 dates last year, he said: “It’s been eight years since my last tour and there’s lots of things to laugh about! I’m looking forward to getting back in front of a live audience, along with running the gauntlet of cancel culture, click bait and fake news.” Tickets update: only a handful of single seats still available at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Contemporary jazz gig of the week: Jamie Taylor & Jamil Sheriff, Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb, York, tomorrow, doors 7.30pm

THE musical association and friendship between guitarist Jamie Taylor, principal lecturer in jazz guitar at Leeds Conservatoire, and Leeds jazz pianist, composer and educator Jamil Sheriff goes back over 20 years of performing together in settings ranging from intimate small groups to large ensembles, such as Sheriff’s own big band.

Playing as a duo at Rise, they will channel this shared history and musical empathy, taking inspiration from jazz piano and guitar collaborations such as Bill Evans with Jim Hall and Fred Hersch with Bill Frisell. Box office: bluebirdbakery.co.uk/rise.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Health and happiness hacks at York Barbican

Meet “the architect of health and happiness”: Dr Rangan Chatterjee, The Thrive Tour 2025, York Barbican, Friday, 7.30pm

JOIN Dr Rangan Chatterjee, inspirational host of Europe’s biggest health podcast, Feel Better, Live More, author and star of BBC One’s Doctor In The House, for two transformative hours of learning the skill of happiness, discovering the secrets to optimal health, breaking free from habits that hold you back and discovering how to make changes that last. “Be empowered, be inspired and learn how to thrive,” he says. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

James Jay Lewis: Raw garage blues at Milton Rooms, Malton

Ryedale blues gig of the week: James Jay Lewis, Milton Rooms, Malton, Friday, 8pm

SELFT-TAUGHT multi-instrumentalist James Jay Lewis has performed with The La’s and played bass for fellow Liverpool band Cast and now lead guitar in The Zutons, having earlier formed the band Cractilla.

He has written, recorded and produced two solo albums, the acoustic odyssey Back To The Fountain and the lo-fi, rough and ready garage blues of Waiting For The World, on which he plays all the instruments. He has worked with Nile Rodgers at Abbey Road Studios, is involved in the new Zutons album and is venturing into recording, producing and composing for television and film. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.

Alligator Gumbo: Re-creating New Orleans 1920s’ jazz in 2025 Helmsley on Saturday

New Orleans jazz jive of the week: Alligator Gumbo 2025, Helmsley Arts Centre, Saturday, 7.30pm

LEEDS seven-piece band Alligator Gumbo evoke the Roaring Twenties’ heyday of the New Orleans swing/jazz era, when music was raw, fast paced and largely improvised with melodies and solos happening simultaneously over foot-stomping rhythms. Their repertoire is built around songs made famous by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Jelly Roll Morton, and Billie Holiday, played in the traditional style. Box office:  01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.  

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More Things To Do in York and beyond when the XXX factor hits the gallery walls. Hutch’s List No. 11 from The York Press

York Pop artist Harland Miller with his new work York from his XXX exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: Olivia Hemingway

FROM Harland Miller’s Pop Art to Emma Rice’s theatrical world premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, these are exciting times for arts exploits, Charles Hutchinson reports.

XXXhibition launch of the week: Harland Miller: XXX, York Art Gallery, until August 31, open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm

YORK-RAISED artist and writer Harland Miller has returned to York Art Gallery to launch XXX, showcasing paintings and works on paper from his Letter Paintings series, including the unveiling of several new paintings, not least ‘York’, a floral nod to Yorkshire’s white rose and York’s daffodils.   

Inspired by his upbringing in 1970s’ Yorkshire and an itinerant lifestyle in New York, New Orleans, Berlin and Paris during the 1980s and 1990s, Miller creates colourful and graphically vernacular works that convey his love of popular language and attest to his enduring engagement with its narrative, aural and typographical possibilities. Tickets: yorkartgallery.org.uk.

David John Pike: Baritone soloist at York Musical Society’s concert

Classical concert of the week: York Musical Society, Bach Mass in B minor, York Minster, tonight, 7.30pm

DAVID Pipe conducts York Musical Society’s singers and orchestra in Bach’s epic choral work, replete with magnificent choruses, resplendent fugues, moving arias and soloists Zoe Brookshaw and Philippa Boyle (both soprano), Tom Lilburn (countertenor), Nicholas Watts (tenor) and Canadian/British/Luxembourger David John Pike (baritone), who returned to music after initially training and working as a chartered accountant. Tickets: available from York Minster or on the door.

Tayla Kenyon: Exploring memories and the choices we make in Fluff at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York

Fringe play of the week: Teepee Productions and Joe Brown present Fluff, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Sunday, 7.30pm

NOW is the time for Fluff to do the ultimate puzzle: her life. As she navigates her way through her most treasured and darkest memories, she desperately needs to piece together her life, story by story, person by person.

Tayla Kenyon performs solo in her darkly comedic 75-minutre play, co written with James Piercy, as she explores memories and the choices we make, using a non-linear plot line to enable the audience to feel, first hand, the devastating effects of dementia. Box office:  tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Ewan Wardrop in rehearsal for his role as reluctant hero Roger Thornhill in Wise Children’s production of Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, premiering at York Theatre Royal from March 18

World premiere of the week in York: Wise Children in Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, York Theatre Royal, March 18 to April 5, 7.30pm plus 2pm, March 26 and April 3; 2.30pm, March 29 and April 5

IT would be strange if, in a city of seven million people, one man were never mistaken for another…and that is exactly what happens to Roger Thornhill, reluctant hero of North By Northwest, when a mistimed phone call to his mother lands him smack bang in the middle of a Cold War conspiracy. Now he is on the run, dodging spies, airplanes and a femme fatale who might not be all she seems.

Wise Children writer-director Emma Rice turns film legend Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller on its head in her riotously humorous reworking. Replete with six shape-shifting performers, a fabulous 1950s’ soundtrack and a heap of hats, this dazzling co-production with York Theatre Royal, HOME Manchester and Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse plays with heart, mind and soul in a topsy-turvy drama full of glamour, romance, jeopardy and a liberal sprinkling of tender truths. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Nina Wadia’s Gemma and Sam Bailey’s April in NOW That’s What I Call A Musical, on tour at Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Pamela Raith

Musical of the week: NOW That’s What I Call A Musical, Grand Opera House, York, March 18 to 22, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm matinees, Wednesday and Saturday

DIRECTED by Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood, comedian Pippa Evans’s hit-laden musical is set in Birmingham in 1989 and 2009. Back in the day, school friends Gemma Warner and April Devonshire are planning their lives based on Number One magazine quizzes and dreaming of snogging Rick Astley. Twenty years later, Gemma (Nina Wadia) and April (The X Factor winner Sam Bailey) face  the most dreaded event of their adult lives: the school reunion.

Drama, old flames and receding hairlines come together as friends reunite and everything from the past starts to slot into place. Sinitta, Eighties’s pop star of So Macho and Toy Boy fame, will be the guest star all week in a show featuring Gold, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Tainted Love, Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves et al. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

In the Strummer time: Stiff Little Fingers’ Ali McMordie, left, Steve Grantley, Jake Burns and Ian McCallum pay tribute to The Clash punk hero at York Barbican. Picture: Will Byington

Punk gig of the week: Stiff Little Fingers, Flame In Our Hearts Tour, York Barbican, March 18, doors 7pm

NORTHERN Irish punk legends Stiff Little Fingers’ tour title is a nod their 2003 track Summerville, recorded to mark the untimely passing of Joe Strummer of The Clash.

Frontman Jake Burns says: “The opening line to the song is ‘You lit a flame in my heart’ and still stands strong today as it did when I wrote it. Joe was a legend and a huge influence on myself and the band. Calling the tour Flame In The Heart keeps Joe in everyone’s memory.” Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk. Meanwhile, Monday’s double bill of The Darkness and special guests Ash has sold out.

Nearly here: Paddy McGuinness brings his Nearly There tour to York Barbican next Thursday

Comedy gig of the week: Paddy McGuinness, Nearly There, York Barbican, March 20, 7.45pm

FARNWORTH comedian, television and radio presenter and game show host Paddy McGuinness plays York on his first stand-up itinerary since 2016. Launching the 40 dates last year, he said: “It’s been eight years since my last tour and there’s lots of things to laugh about! I’m looking forward to getting back in front of a live audience, along with running the gauntlet of cancel culture, click bait and fake news.” Tickets update: only a handful of single seats still available at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Health and happiness tips at York Barbican

Meet “the architect of health and happiness”: Dr Rangan Chatterjee, The Thrive Tour 2025, York Barbican, March 21, 7.30pm

JOIN Dr Rangan Chatterjee, inspirational host of Europe’s biggest health podcast, Feel Better, Live More, author and star of BBC One’s Doctor In The House, for two transformative hours of learning the skill of happiness, discovering the secrets to optimal health, breaking free from habits that hold you back and discovering how to make changes that last. “Be empowered, be inspired and learn how to thrive,” he says. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond in 2025, whether new or Oldman. Here’s Hutch’s List No. 1, from The Press, York

Laura Fraser’s DI Bea Metcalf on the York waterfront in Channel 4’s crime drama Patience. Picture: Channel 4

FROM a neurodiverse TV crime drama to an Oscar winner’s stage return, Charles Hutchinson picks highlights of the year ahead.

Seeing York through a different lens: Patience, Channel 4 from January 8, 9pm

CHANNEL 4’s six-part police procedural drama Patience, set in York, opens with the two-part Paper Mountain Girl, on January 8 and 9, wherein autistic Police Records Office civilian worker Patience Evans (Ella Maisy Purvis) brings her unique investigative insight to helping DI Bea Metcalf (Laura Fraser) and her team.

Written for Eagle Eye Drama by Matt Baker, from Pocklington, Patience is as much a celebration of neurodiversity as a crime puzzle-solver. “The centre of York itself is a little bit like a puzzle,” he says.   

Lara McClure: Atmospheric storytelling at A Feast Of Fools II at the Black Swan Inn

Out with the old, in with the new: Navigators Art presents A Feast Of Fools II, Black Swan Inn, Peasholme Green, York, Sunday, 7pm to 10.30pm; doors, 6pm

YORK collective Navigators Art presents a last gasp of mischief in an alternative end-of-season celebration of Twelfth Night and Old Christmas, packed with live folk music, spoken word and a nod to the pagan and the impish.

Dr Lara McClure sets the scene with atmospheric storytelling, joined by York musicians Oli Collier, singer, guitarist and rising star Henry Parker, York alt-folk legends White Sail and poet and experimental musician Thomas Pearson. Book tickets at  bit.ly/nav-feast2.

Seeing eye to eye: Rob Auton in his new touring comedy vehicle The Eyes Open And Shut Show

The eyes have it:  Rob Auton: The Eyes Open And Shut Show, Burning Duck Comedy Club at The Crescent, York, March 5, 7.30pm; Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, May 3, 7.30pm

“THE Eyes Open And Shut Show is a show about eyes when they are open and eyes when they are shut,” says surrealist York/Barmby Moor comedian, writer, artist, podcaster and actor Rob Auton. “With this show I wanted to explore what I could do to myself and others with language when eyes are open and shut…thinking about what makes me open my eyes and what makes me shut them.”

On the back of last summer’s Edinburgh Fringe trial run, Auton goes on the road from January 27 to May 4 with his eyes very much open. Box office: York, thecrescentyork.com; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.

York-raised artist Harland Miller with his title work for the XXX exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: courtesy of White Cube (Ollie Hammick), 2019

No stopping him this time, please: Harland Miller: XXX, York Art Gallery, March 14 to August 31, Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm

AFTER the first Covid lockdown curtailed his York, So Good They Named It Once show only a month into its 2020 run, international artist and writer Harland Miller returns to the city where he was raised to present XXX, a new exhibition that showcases paintings and works on paper from his Letter Paintings series.

Stirred by his upbringing in 1970s’ Yorkshire and an itinerant lifestyle in New York, New Orleans, Berlin and Paris during the 1980s and 1990s, Miller creates colourful and graphically vernacular works that convey his love of popular language and attest to his enduring engagement with its narrative, aural and typographical possibilities.

Harland Miller, XXX, oil on canvas, 2019. Copyright: Harland Miller. Photo copyright: White Cube, Theo Christelis

Coinciding with the release of a book of the same title by Phaidon, XXX features several new Miller works, including one that celebrates his home city, in a hard-edged series that melds the sacred seamlessly with the everyday, drawing inspiration from medieval manuscripts, where monks often laboured to produce intricate illuminated letters to mark the beginning of chapters.

In these works, the Yorkshire Pop artist – who is represented by White Cube – uses bold colours and typefaces to accentuate the expressive versatility of monosyllabic words and acronyms such as ESP, IF and Star.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a Q&A with the artist plus community activities to “inspire, inform and involve all”. Tickets: yorkartgallery.org.uk/tickets.

Gary Oldman in the dressing room when visiting York Theatre Royal last March to plan this spring’s production of Krapp’s Last Tape

Theatre event of the year: Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape, York Theatre Royal, April 14 to May 17

ONCE the pantomime Cat that fainted thrice in Dick Whittington in his 1979 cub days on the professional circuit, Oscar winner Gary Oldman returns to the Theatre Royal to perform Samuel Beckett’s melancholic, tragicomic slice of theatre of the absurd Krapp’s Last Tape in his first stage appearance since the late-1980s.

“York, for me, is the completion of a cycle,” says the Slow Horses leading man. “It is the place ‘where it all began’. York, in a very real sense, for me, is coming home. The combination of York and Krapp’s Last Tape is all the more poignant because it is ‘a play about a man returning to his past of 30 years earlier’.” Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Suzy Cooper and Mark Holgate: Teaming up as Titania and Oberon – and Hippolyta and Theseus too – in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Look who’s back too: Suzy Cooper in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Grand Opera House, York, May 6 to 11

GARY Oldman will not be the only former Berwick Kaler co-star returning to a York stage in 2025. Suzy Cooper, for more than 20 years the ditzy, posh-voiced, jolly super principal gal in the grand dame’s pantomimes, will lead Nik Briggs’s cast alongside York actor Mark Holgate as the quarrelling Queen and King of the Fairies, Titania and Oberon.

Briggs relocates his debut Shakespeare production from the court of Athens to Athens Court, a northern council estate, where magic is fuelled with mayhem and true love’s path still does not run smooth. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Beach hut five, Shed Seven: York band to make Scarborough Open Air Theatre debut in June

“Biggest ever headline show in their home county”: Shed Seven, TK Maxx Presents Scarborough Open Air Theatre, June 14

IN the aftermath of their 30th anniversary celebrations and two number one albums in 2024, refulgent York band Shed Seven will focus on the great outdoors in the summer ahead, fulfilling a dream by making a long-overdue Scarborough OAT debut, when Jake Bugg and Cast will be their special guests. “It’s a stunning and historic venue…Yorkshire’s very own Hollywood Bowl!” enthuses lead singer Rick Witter.

The Sheds also return to Leeds Millennium Square on July 11, supported by Lightning Seeds and The Sherlocks. Box office: Scarborough, scarboroughopenairtheatre.co.uk or ticketmaster.co.uk; Leeds,  gigsandtours.com and ticketmaster.co.uk.

Bridget Foreman: Co-writer of York Theatre Royal and Riding Lights’ community play His Last Report

Community play of the year: York Theatre Royal and Riding Lights Theatre Company in His Last Report, York Theatre Royal, July 22 to August 3

YORK Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster and York company Riding Lights artistic director Paul Birch will co-direct a large-scale community project that focuses on pioneering York social reformer Seebohm Rowntree and his groundbreaking 1900s’ investigation into the harsh realities of poverty.

Told through the voices of York’s residents, both past and present, Misha Duncan-Barry and Bridget Foreman’s play will ask “What is Seebohm’s real legacy as the Ministry begins to dismantle the very structures he championed?” Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.