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Amanda Whittington celebrates friendship, growing older and living for today in third Hull Truck instalment Ladies Unleashed

Amanda Whittington: Ladies Unleashed playwright

HULL Truck Theatre’s second half of their 50th anniversary season unleashes Ladies Unleashed, the third instalment of Amanda Whittington’s trilogy.

In the wake of Hull Truck hits Ladies Day – the one set at York Racecourse to coincide with Royal Ascot switching to Knavesmire in 2005 – and Ladies Down Under two years later, now the Nottingham playwright celebrates friendship, growing older and living for today.

Directed by artistic director Mark Babych, Ladies Unleashed reunites four friends, Hull fish factory workers Jan, Pearl, Linda and Shelley in 2022 on the peaceful, magical retreat of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in a story of secrets and mysteries, reunions and an imminent wedding, twists and surprises.

“Seventeen years! It’s absolutely frightening! I was checking when I started, thinking it must be ten years ago, but in fact it was 2005, and the world has changed so much since then,” says Amanda.

“I can’t believe it’s so long since we first went to Ladies Day with the fish factory foursome, and to Australia in Ladies Down Under a few years later. Creating these stories for Hull Truck was a magical time and the audience response was unforgettable. 

“Since then, the two Ladies plays have been a firm favourite on the amateur circuit across the UK. Barely a month goes by without a production somewhere in the country, keeping the play alive since its original production. It’s such a gift as a writer to know what affection your characters are held in.”

Pearl (Fenella Norman), Jan (Allison Saxton) and Linda (Sara Beharrell) have not seen Shelley (Hull-born Gemma Oaten) for years, but when she suddenly turns up, Linda’s plans for a weekend of quiet contemplation (“not a hen party,” she says) take a different turn as tensions rise with the tide.

“I’ve always set the plays in the present day, so now Pearl is in her early 70s; Jan, mid-60s; Linda and Shelley around 40,” says Amanda.

Gemma Oaten in rehearsal for her role as Shelley in Ladies Unleashed at Hull Truck Theatre

“A whole generation has gone by, and I was quite reluctant to get back on the bike, after doing Ladies Day as a one-off, but then I did another one two years later, and so the characters are still very much alive in village halls and community centres.

“I thought of all the people who’ve been in Ladies Day or seen it, and there were discussions with Nick Hern Books, the publishers, who’ve been really instrumental in keeping the Ladies alive all these years.

“Then I started talking to artistic director Mark Babych about new ideas for the 50th anniversary, and a new Ladies play was floated. I was curious to think about where they were a generation later, but presenting it as a stand-alone play, looking at getting older and the benefits and challenges of doing that, when you don’t normally do that with characters from earlier plays.”

The third instalment was commissioned pre-pandemic. “There was a first draft, then the lockdowns, and when I came back to it, there’d been more changes,” says Amanda.

“I write about where we are, where we’ve been, so it’s partly a play about time. Writing dialogue for those characters again, I found it was like they’d never been away. They were just back in the room.

“It felt instantly right, and then it was about putting it in a dramatic framework that felt contemporary.”

After a day at the York Races in Ladies Day and a trip to Australia in Ladies Down Under, Amanda now sends Pearl Jan, Linda and Shelley to Lindisfarne and lets the island work its spell on them, like in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Tim Firth’s Neville’s Island.

“That was exactly the thought behind it, to get them to a place they can’t get off, a place that had so much history and texture, and, like Hull, had a great fishing industry, giving it that connection with the past.”

Ladies Unleashed cast members in the rehearsal room: from left, Martha Godber, Nell Baker, Fenella Norman, Sara Beharrell,, Allison Saxton and Gemma Oaten

Here was the cue for two new additions to the Whittington ranks of women, young fish workers Mabel (played by Martha Godber) and Daisy (Nell Baker), whose friendship from Lindisfarne’s past stirs anew as the island itself becomes restless, the sky darkens, the air chills, and the winds of change blow skeletons from closets. Whereupon past, present and future collide.

“I thought, what happens if the past comes alive and the young women they might have been awaken, working on the island a century earlier?” says Amanda. “This was the chance to bring magic realism into the play, and that’s been a lovely thing to open up.”

Women’s stories are at the heart of Amanda’s plays. “That’s very much what I’m about as a writer. It felt very natural for me to do that, and right from the beginning of my career that’s the voice I’ve always spoken in. Even now it’s still not common but it’s a characteristic of my work,” she says.

“John Godber’s plays, Arthur Miller’s plays, are never talked about as ‘male plays’, but women’s plays stand out because there just aren’t as many. Ladies Unleashed is about a female world, and as the women of Holy Island’s past come alive, it shows how women’s lives have changed so radically and yet how some things have still not changed.

“Thankfully, there are lots of untold stories from history about women that are being told now, but they’re not stories just for women; they’re stories for everyone.”

Ladies Unleashed plays out in the age of #MeToo and a rising focus on women’s rights. “It’s released something in the last few years that’s not about men versus women, or oppressing women, particularly as there are damaged men as well,” says Amanda. “That’s the spirit of my work, with women giving their perspective on a century of change, and in 2022 it’s really welcomed by audiences.”

What are the ladies unleashing, Amanda? “What holds them together is that core of friendship, and the key to that is their work as fish factory workers, but they all have something they need to be released from, barriers to break through, and part of that comes down to how that differs in the different generations and how that’s changed,” she says.

Hull Truck Theatre in Ladies Unleashed, September 29 to October 22. Last performance, 7.30pm. Box office: 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk.

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Badapple Theatre defrost The Frozen Roman for autumn tour as villagers go ‘ballisticus maximus in very silly show’ 

Badapple Theatre’s new cast for The Frozen Roman autumn tour: Ellen Carnazza, Andrew Purcell and Zach Atkinson. Picture: Karl André

GREEN Hammerton’s theatre-on-your-doorstep proponents Badapple Theatre take to the straight road this autumn with a revival of The Frozen Roman.

Artistic director and writer Kate Bramley has selected three actors new to the company – Zach Atkinson, Andrew Purcell and Ellen Carnazza – to re-tell the story of how the Romans came, they saw, they built a wall, they went away again…or did they?

When hapless villagers try to prevent a housing development being built in their midst, could the discovery of a burial site under the pub throw them a lifeline? Expect twists, turns and Latin puns as the situation in the village goes “ballisticus maximus”.

Why revive The Frozen Roman, “a very silly show about Romans and immigration” that Badapple first toured in 2019? “This play is still very appropriate,” says Kate.

Will villainous Drusilla (Ellen Carnazza) succeed in knocking down the old Merry Gladiator’ pub? Andrew Purcell, left, and Zach Atkinson look on. Picture: Karl André

“I always do social politics by stealth in our plays, and the ‘frozen’ man they reveal at the end to be a Syrian refugee, and that’s because the spread of the Roman Empire spread as far as Iraq and Hadrian’s Wall, and though you think of Romans being Roman, actually they collected people and repatriated them to serve their needs as migrants.

“Our character in the play has come from one end of the empire, and the other end is northern England, so it’s the same story of migration that has gone on in the last 2,000 years. That’s the social politics side to it, the serious side. However, as an audience experience, it’s all about maintaining a feeling of pure joy.

“It’s one of the silliest shows we’ve ever done, and that’s why we’re doing it again, when everyone has been through a bleak time. If we pull out the craziest, silliest story, when there are serious undertones to it too, then we’re doing our job properly, particularly when theatre is having a hard time to get people to come back out.”

Covid confidence is a factor, so too are tightened purse strings amid the cost-of-living crisis. “But the plus point for us is that our tour venues are small and geared to ‘small-scale experiences’. If people have drummed up the confidence to go to a coffee morning, then they’ll go to a theatre show,” says Kate.

Badapple Theatre artistic director Kate Bramley

“For our last tour, the audience figures were 70-80 per cent of what they normally are, and we see that as a significant upturn, but the reason for the delay in this tour is the time it’s taken our rural touring partners to come back on board.”

Kate is enjoying working with company debutants Zach Atkinson, Andrew Purcell and Ellen Carnazza. “It’s very exciting for me to get this team together, who are pretty young, ranging in age from their 20s to 30s, relatively new to professional theatre from doing their training,” she says.

“Zach is the youngest of the team at 21 but he’s the most experienced because he did four years in Billy Elliot in the West End aged 11 to 14. It’s an interesting mix of early-career actors who are a lot of fun, completely get the nature of high comedy and are prepared to take risks. The show has an energy to it because they’re all at that stage of their career where they just enjoy getting out there and performing.”

Playing village halls and community centres has a different vibe too. “There’s a level of interacting, a level of conversation with the audience, that’s slightly different to a formal theatre,” says Kate. “People feel they can converse with them and actors have to be in full cheerful control; it’s saying everything is going to be all right, we’re in control, with that cheery confidence to tell a story.

Can Diana (Ellen Carnazza) come up with a way to save Tessery Hill in Badapple Theatre’s The Frozen Roman. Picture: Karl André

“When I was at Hull Truck, John Godber drummed into me the idea of theatre as conversation. If you don’t have an audience, you don’t have theatre. That’s what different to watching films. The audience can contribute to each show when you’ve set out the rules that we’re all in this together, whether it’s in a village hall or an air hangar.

“All of the key influences I’ve had have come from companies that have the attitude that theatre should be inclusive, a social conversation for everyone, rather than high art. I think that’s very important now when no-one should be excluded by price or by ‘elitism’.”

On tour for six weeks from October 7 to November 13, taking in North Yorkshire, the Midlands, Lincolnshire, County Durham, Cumbria and Cheshire, The Frozen Roman will visit Tunstall Village Hall, Tunstall, on October 27 at 7.30pm (box office, 01748 811288) and North Stainley Village Hall, near Ripon, on October 28, 7.30pm (box office, 01765 635236 or 07971 093907).

Looking ahead, Badapple’s Christmas show, The Marvellous, Mystical Music Box, will be on tour from December 2 to 30, with full tour details at badappletheatre.co.uk. Written by Bramley and requiring an actor with circus skills, this two-hander involves Rosa inheriting a battered old music box that never seems to work when needed to do so. 

“But this year, when she wishes for her family to be reunited at Christmas, all sorts of magical things start to happen,” says Kate. Watch this space for a full preview.

Copyright of The Press, York

Khaled, the unfrozen Roman (Zach Atkinson), in The Frozen Roman. Picture: Karl André
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Who was the Coppergate Woman? Kate Hampson prepares to put flesh on Viking bones in Theatre Royal community play

Shrouded in mystery: Shrouded in mystery: Kate Hampson prepares to tell the Coppergate Woman’s story at York Theatre Royal

REHEARSING the lead role in York Theatre Royal’s summer community production can be lonely for Kate Hampson.

“On a morning rehearsal, it’s usually just been me and the directors,” says Kate, the only professional in Juliet Forster and John R Wilkinson’s cast of 90 for Maureen Lennon’s epic storytelling drama The Coppergate Woman.

This is partly because the York actor and yoga enthusiast had to play catch-up. “I’ve stepped into rehearsals when you don’t want to feel like you’re on the back foot, but Juliet and John have done a great job in integrating me after the community cast started a while before me and had already formed various scenes. My task has been to think, ‘how do I enhance those scenes?’.”

Fostering a love of theatre from the age of eight and trained in theatre, film and television at York St John University and clowning at the Utrecht School of Arts, Kate has performed for Northern Broadsides, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Oldham Coliseum and Hull Truck Theatre, playing Mother and Mrs Perks in The Railway Children last winter, but The Coppergate Woman will mark two firsts.

Kate Hampson in rehearsal for The Coppergate Woman

“I’m working with a community cast for the first time,” she says. “There’s a little bit of pressure there; it’s a challenge, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say there was a feeling of it being daunting, but everyone has been really supportive and it’s been exhilarating to work with so many people. I think it’s perfect that a play all about the community has been cast from the community.”

Despite living in York for 27 years, Huddersfield-born Kate has never performed on the Theatre Royal’s main-house stage. “I did some work on a New Playwrights project, doing play readings with Damian [former artistic director Damian Cruden], but that was in the Studio, so Saturday will be my first time,” she says.

She will be keeping it in the family, however, as her husband, fellow professional actor Julian Kay [from the  Kay family of York lawyers] has graced that stage, performing in pantomimes.

Kate took a ten-year break from the stage to focus on bringing up their two children (son Arthur, 14, who has taken his first steps as an actor in Doctor Who and Brassic, and daughter Elsie, 12).

York Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster, left, and The Coppergate Woman playright Maureen Lennon with Jorvik Viking Centre’s model of the Coppergate Woman

“I admire actors who do continue to work in theatre when they have a young family, but with both Julian and I doing theatre professionally, it just felt that wasn’t possible,” she says.

“In those ten years off stage, I did some TV and commercials, and if you’re lucky enough the corporate world will sustain you. I love theatre but with young children, they’re the priority.”

The Railway Children at Hull Truck was a joyous return. “It’s lovely to be back in theatre, playing to live audiences, working with people in the business again,” says Kate.

From Saturday, she will be experiencing that excitement again, playing the title role in The Coppergate Woman, Maureen Lennon’s story that puts the flesh on the bones of a woman whose remains were found near the River Foss and are now exhibited under glass at the Jorvik Viking Centre.

“That’s another pressure. To do her justice, this woman who had family, friends, a job, and you want to recognise that sensitively,” says Kate Hampson of playing the Coppergate Woman

“What we know from history is that she was either Norwegian or northern Scottish and you can tell from her teeth that she’d eaten a lot of herring,” says Kate.

“So, you make choices from that. Is she Scandinavian, is she northern? We’re identifying her as Yorkshire; we know she came to York in her teens. It’s curious to think about what her accent would have sounded like, and I guess we can’t really know, so you just have to decide.”

Kate was familiar with the Coppergate Woman from the many visits she undertook to Jorvik with her children. “I felt like we were almost on speaking terms as we went there so frequently. At one point, the children kept wanting to go every weekend!” she recalls.

In Lennon’s play, the Coppergate Woman vacates her Jorvik resting place to venture into “crisis-hit modern-day York”. “Maureen weaves post-Covid stories into the play, when there’s still a hangover from such challenging times,” says Kate. “She also weaves in more Norse myths and legends and stories of everyday York folk today.

“My task has been to think, ‘how do I enhance those scenes?”, says Kate Hampson, after joining rehearsals for The Coppergate Woman with the community cast’s preparations already well under way

“Ultimately, it’s all about storytelling, connecting  and communicating, and how we collaborate with each other. It’s a play about hope and how we need to come together for our future.”

At the core of that play is the Coppergate Woman, as portrayed by Kate. “It’s a privilege to be playing a real person – wondering what she looked like, what she thought and what her origins were. You want to honour her, as you would with any real person you play,” she says.

“That’s another pressure. To do her justice, this woman who had family, friends, a job, and you want to recognise that sensitively – and Maureen has done that in her writing.

“I listened to a podcast about the Coppergate Woman, where they looked at historical artefacts, and then historians created her life from that, but not just one life, but various options. Maureen listed to that podcast too and chose the play’s path from that.”

Kate Hampson looks forward to performing on York Theatre Royal’s main-house stage for the first time

Summing up The Coppergate Woman, Kate says: “For me it’s about Norse legends and myths, and though Norse gods are usually imposing figures, the Coppergate Woman is a real woman who existed, and it’s important to see her as a human that the audience can connect with.

“We know very little about her, but we’re trying to get the essence of her, and that’s why you have to ground her in a real person.”

Championing York Theatre Royal’s passion for staging community theatre productions, Kate concludes: “It’s become a tradition here, and one the management wants to continue as the Theatre Royal were leading lights in establishing such shows. It’s a real testament to the theatre’s commitment that so soon after the Covid lockdowns, they’re mounting a play on such a scale.

“It’s remarkable how so many people want to give so much time to make a drama together, telling stories of York.”

The Coppergate Woman, York Theatre Royal, July 30 to August 7 (no shows on July 31 and August 1). Performances: 7.30pm, July 30, August 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6; 2.30pm, August 6 and 7. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Copyright of The Press, York

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REVIEW: Teechers Leavers ’22, Hull Truck Theatre and John Godber Company, at Hull Truck Theatre, term ends on June 11 *****

Teenage rampage: Martha Godber’s Hobby, left, Levi Payne’s Salty and Purvi Parmar’s Gail in Teechers Leavers ’22 at Hull Truck Theatre

ON learning that Gavin Wilkinson was to receive a Boris Johnson-garlanded knighthood, Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson commented: “He left children to go hungry, created two years of complete chaos over exams and failed to get laptops out to kids struggling to learn during lockdowns.”

If reading her end-of-term report on Wilkinson’s “astonishing and disgraceful record” brings out feelings of anger all over again, then multiply that fury in John Godber’s 35th anniversary re-write of Teechers, his despairing 1987 tragi-comedy on the rotten state of state education.

To mark the 50th anniversary of his former Hull Truck stamping ground, he has revisited Teechers in the stultifying shadow of Covid, the encouragement of science and technology over the arts on the school curriculum and the never-ending systemic inequalities that divide swish private education establishments from state schools with leaking, outdated buildings.

Central character Salty, one of those pupils with no laptop, is doing his homework on his mobile phone: perhaps the most damning image in Teechers Leavers ’22.

Godber, the miner’s son from Upton, West Yorkshire, educated at Bretton Hall College and Leeds University, is a former teacher with not only Teechers to his name, but also Chalkface, the 1991 TV drama series charting the day-to-day events at a comprehensive school.

“How come people get education so wrong?” he said in an interview in 2008 when launching an earlier revival of his classroom comedy that dismissed the Labour Government’s latest proposed tinkering as nothing more than “rearranging the chairs on the Titanic”.

Lessons learned? Not since 1987, it would seem, as John Godber revisits Teechers to deliver an even more damning report

Labour Government, note. His righteous anger goes beyond party lines, even if, 14 years later, his frustration with England’s education system has reached boiling point under Tory rule. Exacerbated by the pandemic, state education equals: exam chaos, tech poverty, isolation, absenteeism, lost school hours, remote learning, the arts downgraded, children let down, he says.

Plus ca change, you might say. Teechers was rooted in Godber’s response to them-and-us education in the Thatcher years, but it does not feel a period piece at all, partly through grievances aplenty from 1987 still applying in  2022, and partly because of Godber’s extensive update.

His trademark fast-and-furious physical theatre style; his Brechtian love of breaking down theatre’s fourth wall; his deployment of a high-energy cast of only three to play multiple roles; his relish for social comment and his penchant for bloody-minded, bloody-nosed, raucous humour are all very much alive and kicking in Teechers Leavers ’22.  So too is preference for pathos over sentimentality.

Hull Truck artistic Mark Babych matches him stride for stride in his up-and-at’em direction, and 35 years since Godber himself played drama teacher Geoff Nixon, now his daughter Martha Godber is doing so, the role newly turned female.

Covid masks, Ofsted reports and a Partygate joke feature now, but funding shortages, baffling timetables, boring teachers and bored teenagers remain, as Martha Godber’s Hobby, Purvi Parmar’s Gail and Levi Payne’s Salty narrate the tale of their stultifying life at struggling comprehensive Whitewall College.

Set designer Caitlin Mawhinney splashes the set with bold colours, as a counter to the greyness that pervades the school, but if, in the words of Madness’s schoolroom anthem Baggy Trousers, there needs to be someone “trying different ways to make a difference to the days,” step forward new probationary teacher, Miss Nixon.

School uniformity? Not if Levi Payne’s Salty, Martha Godber’s Hobby and Purvi Parmar’s Gail have their way in Teechers Leavers ’22

Having seen off three previous drama teachers, scathing Salty and co are initially dismissive of the newcomer, but even if theatre has been relegated to an after-school option, Miss Nixon is not to be beaten.

The role previously had been played in more serious mode; Martha Godber makes her no-nonsense, but also more of a grouchy outsider, a lone voice, determined to help the three disillusioned teenage protagonists blossom.

Nixon remains John Godber’s voice too, calling for change, for better recognition of the importance of the arts in shaping young lives, but the ending becomes a more damning statement than ever with its abandonment of all hope.

Or maybe not. In his interview, Godber said if he were a young man today, he would still go into teaching, a profession that needs more Miss Nixons, more John Godbers.

Mark Babych and his cast, switching from role to role, sometimes even taking over each other’s roles, never letting the pace drop, dipping into rap, equally adept at troubled teenager and exasperated, exhausted teacher alike, make Godber’s school report all the more powerful. Oh, and amid the rage, it is seriously funny too.

Box office: 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk.

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‘A theatre critic knows the way but not how to drive’. Ouch! Here comes the podcast verdict on Richard Bean’s riotous new play

Joanna Holden’s caustic landlady, Mrs Snowball, and Adrian Hood as her franker than frank son, Our Seth, in Hull Truck Theatre’s premiere of Richard Bean’s 71 Coltman Street

TWO Big Egos In A Small Car podcasters Graham Chalmers & Charles Hutchinson discuss Richard Bean’s Hull of a good new play, 71 Coltman Street.

Under debate too are Russia sanctions, Tchaikovsky and the arts; Barenaked Ladies’ non-PC moniker and Benny Hill; Harry Sword’s drone music book, Monolithic Undertow, plus Harrogate’s strangely Hollywood street names.

Episode 82 awaits you at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/10259934

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Review: Hull Truck Theatre in Richard Bean’s 71 Coltman Street ****

Joanna Holden’s Mrs Snowball and Adrian Hood’s Our Seth

71 Coltman Street, Hull Truck Theatre, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm and 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: 01482 323638 or at hulltruck.co.uk.

HULL Truck was not formed in a van – that came a little later – but a squat in Coltman Street in 1971, founded by actor-musician Mike Bradwell when unable to find work.

“I wanted to be nuisance,” said Bradwell, a firebrand iconoclast who sought to make theatre about, by and for real people. Even the left-leaning, arts-championing Guardian met his scorn.

To kick start Hull Truck’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2022, artistic director Mark Babych asked Hull playwright and film writer Richard Bean to tell the story of those Coltman Street revolutionary beginnings.

The result is a “riotous new comedy” from the ever-irreverent Bean, a former stand-up and psychologist with a love of people showing two fingers to – or at least challenging – authority and the status quo, be it Francis Henshall in One Man, Two Guvnors or Kempton Bunton in the newly released film The Duke.

Bean did extensive research for 71 Coltman Street, interviewing Bradwell and fellow hippy-haired revolutionaries, and what appears on stage is a fusion of the truth and the not-so-true but you wish it were, matched by the songs of Richard Thomas (of Jerry Springer: The Opera notoriety).

Sara Perks’s set design is an open-plan lay-out of the freezing-cold 71 Coltman Street, where Bradwell (Kieran Knowles) and his fellow unemployed actors burn furniture to keep warm. Guitars, drums and a piano, sofas, cushions and theatre posters fill the room, where they improvise a play with no name, no plot, no budget and no bookings. Their phone is the nearest Hull white phone box.  

There are two forms of funding theatre, says Bradwell: Arts Council support or, in their case, social security, and Hull is the perfect place to be “looking for work” and setting up a theatre company because there are no jobs. Whereas, don’t sign on in Stratford-upon-Avon, he advises.

Played by Babych’s actor-musicians, in the pioneering company are Linda (Lauryn Redding), Bradwell’s girlfriend; up-for-anything Manchester lad Stew (Laurie Jamieson) and knows-everything-but-rather-charming, public school-educated Julian (Jordan Metcalfe). Enter Bea (Hanna Khogali), newly up from Oxford.

Bradwell encourages, nay, demands, that they take on the guise of potential characters for plays, when on the streets, for research purposes, be it Stew’s comedic Italian Dave, Julian’s vicar, Bea’s thief with a troubled past or Linda’s former hippie.

As if 71 Coltman Street were not already ripe with characters, Bean serves up two caricatures of chaotic comic delight: no-nonsense, leather-tongued landlady Mrs Snowball (Joanne Holden), who holds no truck with theatre luvvieness, and her equally blunt, not-all-there son, Our Seth (Adrian Hood), first encountered bringing a huge dead dog into the flat. Can two people scene-steal the same scenes? Oh, yes they can.

Another Hull Truck favourite, Matthew Booth, is more low key in his cameos, but you will particularly enjoy his Hell’s Angel, Daz, delivering frozen fish and a nonsensical story.

Bean’s celebrates the character of Hull itself, just as it drew Philip Larkin and John Godber to the coastal city, and he captures the world of making performances brilliantly too, not least in a scene that draws on Lee Strasberg’s workshop techniques.

71 Coltman Street is long and yet it flies by, constantly on the move, adding more characters, building momentum, passing social comment and showing all sides of Bradwell.

Bean spears all things 1971, from flares to a raucous, coarse Hull Truck cabaret night at the Hull & East Riding Institute for the Blind, audience bingo et al, before a climactic performance of debut play Naked turns into a sideshow for Mrs Snowball and Our Seth.

Thomas’s rough and ready songs add to the comic mayhem, and whatever is thrown at them by Bean, from agit-prop drama to cabaret, satirical comedy to Ortonesque farce, Babych’s cast are terrific, especially Knowles’s grouchy but resolute Bradwell and Metcalfe’s Julian, winding him up so unintentionally.

The Covid curse put paid to last week’s performances, but undaunted, in an echo of Bradwell’s pioneers, the bloody-minded Hull Truck spirit has prevailed.

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Richard Bean’s irreverent comedy 71 Coltman Street is back up and running for Hull Truck Theatre’s 50th anniversary

Playwright Richard Bean

AT last, tonight IS the press night for Hull Truck Theatre’s 50th anniversary “headline production”, Richard Bean’s 71 Coltman Street.

First, a Covid outbreak among the company in rehearsals delayed the opening from February 17 to February 22, when “the complexity and ensemble nature of the show meant it could not be ready any earlier”.

Press night was duly moved from February 23 to March 1, only for a second, wider-spread Covid outbreak in the company to enforce the cancellation of more performances from March 1 to 5.

Third time lucky for the fourth estate, artistic director Mark Babych’s production of Hull playwright Bean’s riotous comedy reopens tonight for its final week.

Commissioned to mark Hull Truck’s 50th birthday, with songs by musician, writer and comedy actor Richard Thomas, of Jerry Springer The Opera notoriety, 71 Coltman Street begins a suite of work in 2022 to mark the pioneering Hull theatre’s past, present and future.

It takes the form of an origin story that embraces the spirit of Hull Truck’s founders and the ideals and ideas that drove them, told with Bean’s trademark humour, grit and passion, familiar from One Man, Two Guvnors and his 2017 Hull City of Culture premiere, The Hypocrite.

In a combination of irreverent comedy, cabaret, farce, and drama, Bean heads back to the 1970s to recount Mike Bradwell’s mission to revolutionise British theatre. Sick of fancy plays by dead blokes, he wants to tell stories about real people, living real lives, and it doesn’t get more real than Hull.

In a freezing cold house on Coltman Street, a motley crew of unemployed actors gather to improvise a play with no name, no plot, no budget, and no bookings. So begins Hull Truck Theatre under Bradwell’s artistic directorship.

Thrilled to open the 50th anniversary season with 71 Coltman Street, director Babych says: “From our radical roots to who we are now, Hull Truck Theatre remains a company inspired by the people and place of Hull and East Yorkshire, working with a diverse range of artists and communities to create work with a unique northern voice that celebrates the stories of our city-centre stage.

“We’re incredibly excited to be working with Richard again after the amazing success of The Hypocrite [co-produced with the Royal Shakespeare Company] in 2017. After such a long association with the company, with an incredible track record of work, including Toast, Under The Whaleback and Up On The Roof,Richard’s commitment to the company and the city is something of which we are very proud.”

In preparation for writing the play, Bean conducted extensive research with original company members and founding artistic director Bradwell. 71 Coltman Street is his creative response to the early days of the company, some parts true, others not, but to appropriate the late great Eric Morecambe’s quote, his play is “playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”!”

“The house at 71 Coltman Street is still rather grand,” says Richard. “It’s a big house, like an old merchant’s house, that was turned into bedsits in the 1960s and became a house for passers-through.

“Basically, the family who owned it in back then still own it, but we’ve changed their names in the play to protect their identity!”

Bean drove down the street but could not access 71 Coltman Street itself. “Mike Bradwell and Alan Williams told me all about it instead. It was where they lived and worked on shows, with a really massive three-panelled window at the front,” he says.

“Running between Anlaby Road and Hessle Road, in west Hull, Coltman Street has a reputation as a bit of a rough street, a transitory place to live. My dad was a policeman in Hull, and if you said, ‘there’s a new theatre company setting up in Coltman Street’, he’d say, ‘oh, Coltman Street’!”

Hull Truck Theatre in 71 Coltman Street, Hull Truck Theatre, Hull, until March 12. Box office: 01482 323638 or at hulltruck.co.uk.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond as Dickens tales, dames and Damon drop in. List No. 59, courtesy of The Press, York

What the Dickens? Yes, James Swanton is reviving his Ghost Stories For Christmas at York Medical Society

FROM boyish Boris to Dame Edna, Christmas concerts to panto dames, Dickensian ghost stories to solo Damon, Charles Hutchinson has highlights aplenty to recommend.   

Dickensian Christmas in York: James Swanton’s Ghost Stories For Christmas, York Medical Society, on various dates between December 2 and 13, 7pm

AFTER the silent nights of last December, York gothic actor supreme James Swanton is gleefully reviving his Ghost Stories For Christmas performances of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, The Haunted Man and The Chimes.

“I’ve scheduled extra performances of A Christmas Carol: the perfect cheering antidote, I feel, to the misery we’ve all been through,” says Swanton. “But the two lesser-known stories are also very relevant to our times.”

A reduced capacity is operating for Covid safety, meaning that tickets are at a premium on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Political debate of the week: Boris: World King, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight, 7.30pm

THE year is 1985 and Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has plenty going for him, being young, posh and really rather blond. However, his efforts to become President of the Oxford Union debating society have been thwarted.

Never fear. Boris always has a cunning plan up his sleeve. Cue time travel, classical allusions and good clean banter in Boris: World King, Tom Crawshaw’s comedic exploration of a young man’s ambition and humanity explored as a half-hour one-man show, performed by Benedict Turvill. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Richard Kay: Co-directing York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir’s Christmas concerts

Harmony at Christmas: York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir and the Citadel Singers, Christmas Traditions 2021, The Citadel, Gillygate, York, Tuesday to Friday, doors 7pm

AFTER delivering an online Christmas concert via Zoom to an international audience in 2020, York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir return to live concerts for Christmas Traditions 2021.

The Citadel allows room for cabaret seating downstairs and balcony seating that can ensure safe distancing is maintained, while the show retains its format of carols old and new, Christmas songs, festive readings and sketches. Box office: arkevent.co.uk/christmastraditions2021.

The poster for Damon Albarn’s night at the double at York Minster

York gig(s) of the week: Damon Albarn, York Minster, Thursday, 6.30pm and 8.30pm

DAMON Albarn quickly added a second special intimate album-launch show at York Minster after the first was fully booked in a flash.

The Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad & The Queen leader now plays two sold-out concerts in one night in his first ever York performances, marking the November 12 release of his solo studio recording The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows.

Albarn, 53, has been on a “dark journey” making this album in lockdown, exploring themes of fragility, loss, emergence and rebirth.

Martyn Joseph: Lockdown reflections on landmark birthday on new album, showcased in concert at Pocklington Arts Centre concert

Gig of the week outside York: Martyn Joseph, Pocklington Arts Centre, Thursday, 8pm

“THE Welsh Springsteen”, singer-songwriter Martyn Joseph, will be showcasing his 23rd studio album, 1960, a “coming of age” record with a difference, in Pocklington.

Last year, amid the isolation of the pandemic, Penarth-born Joseph turned 60 on July 15, a landmark birthday, a time of self-reflection, that shaped his songs of despair and sadness, gratitude and wonder, and gave the album its title. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

Alistair Griffin: Series of Big Christmas Concerts in York

Alistair Griffin’s Big Christmas Concert, St Michael-le-Belfrey, York, December 3 (sold out) and December 10, 8pm; Alistair Griffin’s Candlelit Christmas, Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York, December 11, 8pm

ON December 3 and 10, a brass band greets revellers, then York singer-songwriter Alistair Griffin’s Big Christmas Concert takes a musical journey from acoustic traditional carols to Wizzard, Slade and The Pogues. “Sing along and sip mulled wine while enjoying the fairytale of old York,” says Griffin’s invitation.

On December 11, he switches from St Michael-le-Belfrey to a candle-lit Holy Trinity Church. “Take a seat, or in this case, a medieval pew and soak in the festive atmosphere,” he says. Cue mulled wine, Christmas tunes, acoustic festive numbers and a Christmas carol singalong. Box office: alistairgriffin.com.

York playwright Mike Kenny: New production of The Railway Children with his award-winning script at Hull Truck

On the right track show of the week outside York: The Railway Children, Hull Truck Theatre, running until January 2

YORK playwright Mike Kenny has revisited his award-winning adaptation of E Nesbit’s The Railway Children – first staged so memorably by York Theatre Royal at the National Railway Museum – for Hull Truck’s Christmas musical.

Directed by artistic director Mark Babych in the manner of his Oliver Twist and Peter Pan shows of Christmases past, original music and dance routines complement Kenny’s storytelling in this warm-hearted, uplifting tale of hope, friendship and family, set in Yorkshire. Box office: 01482 323638 or at hulltruck.co.uk.

Faye Campbell: Brushing up on playing Cinderella in York Theatre Royal’s pantomime, opening on Friday

Evolution, not revolution, in pantoland: Cinderella, York Theatre Royal, December 3 to January 2

YORK Theatre Royal’s post-Berwick era began last year with the Travelling Pantomime, establishing the partnership of Evolution Pantomimes’ man with the Midas touch, Paul Hendy, as writer and Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster as director.

After the 2020 road show, here comes the full-scale return to the main house for Cinderella, starring CBeebies’ Andy Day (Dandini), last winter’s stars Faye Campbell (Cinderella) and Robin Simpson (Sister), Paul Hawkyard (the other Sister), ventriloquist comedian Max Fulham (Buttons), Benjamin Lafayette (Prince Charming) and Sarah Leatherbarrow (Fairy Godmother). Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Unmasked: Barry Humphries tells all at the Grand Opera House, York next April

Hottest ticket launch of the week: Barry Humphries, The Man Behind The Mask, Grand Opera House, York, April 13 2022

AUSTRALIAN actor, comedian, satirist, artist, author and national treasure Barry Humphries will play only one Yorkshire show on his 2022 tour, here in York.

Set to turn 88 on February 17, he will take a revelatory trip through his colourful life and theatrical career in an intimate, confessional evening, seasoned with highly personal, sometimes startling and occasionally outrageous stories of alter egos Dame Edna Everage, Sir Les Patterson and Sandy Stone. Hurry, hurry, for tickets on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/york.

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REVIEW: John Godber’s seaside last resort comedy, Sunny Side Up! ****

John Godber as taciturn B&B owner Barney in Godber’s coastal comedy Sunny Side Up!. Picture: Martha Godber

John Godber Company in Sunny Side Up!, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tonight, 7.30pm; Hull Truck Theatre, November 1 to 6; 7.30pm; 2pm, Wednesday and Saturday. Box office: Scarborough, 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com; Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk

WHEN the Godber family presented last October’s premiere of Sunny Side Up! in their isolated North Sea bubble at Scarborough, the first sighting of the SJT audience in face masks prompted John Godber to say he thought he was in an operating theatre, not a theatre.

Unlike at many theatres, socially distanced seating prevails at the SJT, where wearing a mask is still the expectation, rather than the exception.

The Godbers, writer-director-actor John, wife Jane Thornton and daughter Martha Godber, remains the cast; her elder sister, Elizabeth, now studying at Hull University for a PhD in the poetry of Emily Dickinson, still finds time to be the company stage manager. Both sisters took the production pictures too.

What has changed? Sunny Side Up! is even better than it was a year ago – and longer too, with an interval inserted, more political grit, more comic interplay to go with the self-analysis and class wars, but still fast moving.

Godber has always been at his best when he is riled, questioning the status quo with Yorkshire frankness, shaking his head but finding humour as he observes British characteristics with befuddlement but a dart’s player’s accuracy, driven by a desire both for mischief making and for change.

Above all, an even stronger sense emerges of Godber commenting, not on the deathly march of Covid, nor the Government’s handling of the pandemic, but on its impact on our behaviour, our appreciation of people and nature around us, our re-evaluation of our neglected, suffering towns and forgotten, left-behind villages amid the expedient rise of the staycation.

Sunny Side Up! is billed as a “hilarious and moving account of a struggling Yorkshire coast B&B and the people who run it: down-to-earth proprietors Barney, Tina and daughter Cath and Tina as they share their stories of awkward clients, snooty relatives and eggs over easy” in Godber’s familiar conversational, pull-up-a-chair story-telling style.

Martha Godber’s affronted holiday-maker confronts John Godber’s retired academic in Sunny Side Up!. Picture: Elizabeth Godber

The focus, however, falls more on one of those “snooty relatives”, the fish-out-of-water Graham, Tina’s brother, who has taken up her invitation to bring his wife for a short break back at his roots, now that a foreign trip has been ruled out.

It is not so much that Graham was a big fish in a small pool, so much as that his academic prowess led him to other pools, culminating in his becoming a professor and university pro-vice chancellor, who wanted his own success to be a template for other working-class children to follow suit on a social-mobility conveyor belt. He has not been “back home” to this East Coast last resort for ages.

Graham (John Godber) has the big black car with tinted windows, the expensive shoes and the expensive food tastes; his wife (Thornton) has an MBE for her work in the public cause. She is invariably happy, wanting to stop for a sandwich break on a lay-by after only four miles; Graham is perennially unhappy; he would not be going at all, if it came down to choice rather than a sense of family duty.

Brexiteer Barney, who largely takes a back seat, out on errands, is no fan of Graham, while daughter Cath (Martha’s main role) has the bloody-minded, mischievous streak that Godber himself loves.

Consequently, she, more so than Tina and Barney, breaks down theatre’s fourth wall to engage directly with the audience, putting them on her side as she makes sure Graham’s visit is anything but easy over and comments on his wife always calling her “Catherine”, a name she has grown to dislike for its unnecessary floweriness.

There are echoes of September In The Rain and Happy Jack as Graham revisits his past, going fishing in one beautiful, tender scene, but there is no whiff of nostalgia here. Initially, he had laughed scornfully at the cramped, antiquated top-floor bedroom Tina had provided, but the more he sees, the more it sets off his frustration at such places being forgotten, under-funded, under-appreciated, in need of watering.

Yet he himself had left Sunny Side, forgotten it, and so Godber does not let that pathos go unchallenged, nor Graham’s despair at a pair of holidaying old miners spouting Yorkshire cliches (in a cameo by John and Jane not far removed from the old Four Yorkshiremen sketch from The At Last The 1948 Show and Monty Python).

Jane Thornton’s Tina and Martha Godber’s Cath in Sunny Side Up! Picture: Elizabeth Godber

In the defining scene, Martha Godber’s second principal character, a blunt, no-nonsense holiday-maker no longer able to afford Zante, confronts Graham as to why he did not come home to try to make a difference – to do his own version of levelling up – rather than preach from his academic high tower, out of touch and out of reach.

Godber and Graham are both over 65; both have aching knees, both are bright working-class lads with teaching in their locker; both always vote Labour; both want better for what is already there or once was there until the oxygen was switched off.

Graham has retired, Godber is anything but retired, and Sunny Side Up! is up there with his radical environmental satire Crown Prince and his post-mining drama Shafted! as the best of his 21st century writing. Godber at his most humane and touching but b****y funny too.

There is even magic realism in an encounter between Graham and his late mother (Martha again), her memory eroded by dementia, and moments of physical comedy in the Bouncers tradition as Graham, his wife and Cath climb the endless stairs without a stairwell in sight.

Four chairs and a suitcase, a miniature lighthouse, some rocks and a plastic seagull make up Graham Kirk’s set with familiar Godber economy. In that open space, with room to breathe in that sea air, the performances are terrific. Godber doing a Godber play, with innate comic timing, is always a joy; likewise, his stage partnership with wife Jane makes for a wonderfully forthright double act but one grounded in truthfulness as much as playfulness.

Martha, meanwhile, continues a run of stand-out performances this year in Godber’s Moby Dick at Stage@The Dock, Hull; as Olivia in Luke Adamson’s Twelfth Night at Selby RUFC and now her multi-roles in Sunny Side Up!, full of humour but poignant too. Never better than when the grounded Cath, unlike Graham in younger days, says she will not move on but will look to make Sunny Side a better B&B.

Godber is on such good form here, he even weaves his and Jane’s conversion to “sort-of veganism” into the play with a running in-joke where Cath offers up eggs sunny side up as the vegan breakfast option. Think about it!

Review by Charles Hutchinson

John Godber and Jane Thornton: “A wonderfully forthright double act but grounded in truthfulness as much as playfulness”. Picture: Martha Godber
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REVIEW: Hull Truck Theatre in Romeo & Juliet, Stage@The Dock, Hull

Kissing by the dock: Laura Elsworthy’s Juliet and Jordan Metcalfe’s Romeo in Hull Truck Theatre’s Romeo & Juliet at Stage@The Dock, Hull

Hull Truck Theatre in Romeo & Juliet, Stage@The Dock, Hull, until August 7. Box office: hulltruck.co.uk.

CHATTING with an actor the other day, the question arose: how did you decide to play your Romeo?

“I’ve seen so many bad productions of Romeo & Juliet where I can’t wait for them to die, because they’re not very likeable!” he said. “I still truly believe that!

“I knew the approach I had to take was, I didn’t need the audience to fall in love with me, I just needed Juliet to fall in love with me. As soon as you worry about what the audience thinks of you, then Romeo is guaranteed to be unlikeable.”

Interesting, then, that Hull Truck Theatre’s Romeo and Juliet really do love each other. So much so, Hull-born duo Jordan Metcalfe and Laura Elsworthy are real-life husband and wife, marrying in the summer of 2018 after bonding when working on The Hypocrite in Hull’s year as UK City of Culture in 2017.

Thankfully, they have survived rather longer than Shakespeare’s tragic star-cross’d young lovers to tell the tale. Thankfully too, this is not an R&J where you “can’t wait for them to die, because they’re not very likeable”.

Strangely, however, the coupling does not have the same chemistry on stage as off. Chemistry should lead to biology, but Metcalfe’s wet-behind-the-ears Romeo comes over more as the fifth member of a boy band, one for the shadows, not a natural lead. Crucially, kissing by the dock, the sparks do not fly with Elsworthy’s Juliet and nor do the sudden flare-ups of fury that lead to murder carry conviction.

Elsworthy is better by far: more assured in her restless performance, spoilt, temperamental, teenage to the max, not averse to blunt northern humour, and she makes Shakespeare’s language catch fire with her Hull vowels. Pre-notoriety Amy Winehouse to his Summer Holiday Cliff Richard, at a stretch.

Sitting on the dock: The audience watching Mark Babych’s cast members in Hull Truck Theatre’s Romeo & Juliet

Hull Truck artistic director Mark Babych’s two hours’ traffic on the R&J stage is not unlikeable but nor is it is loveable, either.

In the rudimentary amphitheatre of Hull’s converted former dry dock, he sets up a traverse stage to emphasise the antipathy between the warring Capulets and Montagues, with a tent at either end for props and instruments.

Those costume designs, by Sian Thomas, are a star turn on the otherwise bare wooden stage: a catwalk for 1950s’ Italian and American college fashion that inevitably echo West Side Story, Bernstein and Sondheim’s American spin on R&J.

One American voice pops over the Atlantic in the dapper form of Reno-born, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama-trained Richard McIver’s hat-tilting Mercutio, every inch the scene stealer he should be. (Back in 1977, in an English Literature class, your reviewer was told Shakespeare killed off Mercutio prematurely because he was pinching the play from an under-par Romeo!).

McIver’s Guys And Dolls panache is typical of the knowing, bite-your-thumb irreverence that permeates Babych’s interpretation, where all manner of accents and acting styles prevail.

Multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Goode’s Prince Escalus and Friar John could have popped out of a Kneehigh Theatre show; Laurie Jamieson’s double bill of fiery Tybalt and fixer Friar Lawrence would suit a Shane Meadows film or Shameless; EM Williams’s bleached Benvolio is part Puck, part punk.

Lady and Lord Capulet fuse into Carolyn Backhouse’s Capulet, a Cruella de Vil figure, while Amanda Gordon’s Nurse is suitably irritating, irrational, contradictory yet kind all at once.

Babych has fun with a colourful, impassioned Romeo And Juliet, rather than finding the aching poetry and doomed love at this time of a plague on all our houses. Playing broader strokes is a gamble, one that leads to less rather than “more woe”, but the get-up-and-go suits the setting, distracting from regrets over not bringing cushions to soften the seating.

Review by Charles Hutchinson