Tag: Irwin Appel

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REVIEW: York Shakespeare Project in Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3, I Am Myself Alone, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York ****

George Young as the weakling king Henry VI in York Shakespeare Project’s Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3, I Am Myself Alone. Offering support are Jack Downey’s Suffolk, left, Frank Brogan’s Clifford and Nick Jones’s Somerset. Picture: John Saunders

IRWIN Appel, Professor of Theater at University of California Santa Barbara, first saw York Shakespeare Project in Maggie Smales’s all-female Henry V on his European research travels in 2015.

He vowed that one day he would direct YSP, and this spring that day has arrived with his condensed version of Henry VI, shrunk from a trilogy to a “thrillogy” of an action-packed 160 minutes (interval included) as part of the 2025 York International Shakespeare Festival.

Professional actor, director, composer and sound designer to boot, he has previous form for serving up Appel slices of Shakespeare’s History plays in the award-winning The Death Of Kings. To borrow a technique from the kitchen, he knows the power of reduction to strengthen the intensity, and in doing so he lets the full flavour flood out.

Henry VI director Irwin Appel, left, with York Shakespeare Project chair Tony Froud, who plays Humphrey of Gloucester

There is a swaggering confidence, brio rather than braggadocio, to his directorial decisions, matched  by placing his faith in the power of performance by his community cast of 21. They, in turn, have the most collective impact of any YSP company your reviewer has encountered since the project started in 2002.

This is aided by the physical theatre work of his fellow Americans, choreographer and movement director Christina McCarthy and fight choreographer Jeffrey Mills, to complement the mental muscularity of the dialogue, often wittier than you might have expected too, amid the carnage of the ever-rising body count.

Look out for the use of sticks, black face masks and black costumes in the burning of Pearl Mollison’s Joan La Pucells (Joan of Arc] and later Adam Price’s Richard York, with red gloves to denote his decapitation. Bob Fosse would have loved  that choreography, redolent of Chicago.

Eyes on the prize: Adam Price’s Richard York in York Shakespeare Project’s Henry VI. Picture: John Saunders

Appel’s Henry VI starts at the end, with Harry Summers’ glowering Richard Gloucester to the fore, foreshadowing his reign as Richard III (a link further emphasised by Appel concluding his production with Richard delivering his Winter of Discontent opening speech from Richard III, bringing the “Now is” forward to now. Seeing Summers’ incipient, spring version of Richard after the full lumpen winter coat of YSP’s April 2023 production of Richard III is canny casting too.

This is but one of several directorial flourishes by Appel, the best of them being Price’s outstanding Richard York giving a beginner’s guide to the chronology of the warring Houses of York and Lancaster and the followers of Nick Jones’s Somerset and scene-stealing Jodie Mulliah’s mutinous Jack Cade switching indecisively from one side to the other with every new promise that each makes. That scene is worthy of Monty Python’s The Life Of Brian.

The mutual flirting of Jack Downey’s Suffolk with Lily Geering’s hot-blooded Veronese queen Margaret is a delight too, although her later screaming histrionics need more variation in tone.

Pearl Mollison’s feisty Joan La Pucelle, aka Joan of Arc

Theatre@41, Monkgate, is a black box theatre, with the emphasis all the more on the black in Richard Hampton’s end-on set design, where everything is black, from the throne to assorted boxes. This enhances the contrast with every other colour, from the silver crown to the glinting daggers, the white and red roses for York and Lancaster to the myriad shades of bleu for the French (from berets to cloaks in Judith Ireland’s costumes).

Appel uses the “theatre of the absurd” skills of regular YSP music director and pianist Stuart Lindsay to disruptive effect, his score being as jagged as discordant jazz, and percussive too for the sound design as the brutal deaths pile up.

Appel applies sound and fury to signify everything rather than nothing in a world where George Young’s Henry VI is the weakling boy king on crutches that no-one ever hears. Young (they/them) is making their YSP and Shakespeare debut in the title role and is quietly impressive as the essence of being put in the corner.

The Yorks in York: Sonia Di Lorenzo’s George Clarence, left, Katie Flanagan’s Edward IV and Harry Summers’ Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Picture: John Saunders

Philip Massey’s stentorian-voiced Talbot, Maggie Smales’s turncoat Warwick and Yousef Ismail’s vainglorious Charles Dauphin bring eye-catching character  to supporting roles in a production in which bellicose ensemble heft  has equal weight with blunted  individual journeys, where Richard Gloucester is not alone in being “myself alone”.

Adding to the international flavour, American actress Katie Flanagan takes to an English stage for the first time in the role of Edward IV, a late arrival in proceedings but well worth the wait for a supremely assured performance.

Defining Henry VI as “a cautionary tale of power and greed that shows how a tyrant can rise in a torn and broken society”, Appel has made it feel anything but a History play, but a play for the madness, malevolence and mayhem of today.

Crowning moment for Katie Flanagan’s Edward IV in the courtly company of Maggie Smales’s Warwick, left, Harry Summers’ Richard Gloucester and Sonia Di Lorenzo’s George Clarence. Picture: John Saunders

In the raw, high-energy style of his Naked Shakes productions at UC Santa Barbara, he makes imaginative, impactful, intelligent, instinctive theatre out of “a bare space, a crown and a throne”. It is truly international, but resonant in York too, especially with its image of Richard York’s severed head being stuck on “the gates of York”.

York International Shakespeare Festival presents York Shakespeare Project in Henry VI: I Am Myself Alone, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: yorkshakes.co.uk or tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

A Conversation with Irwin Appel, interviewed by Professor Anne-Marie Evans, York St John University Creative Centre Auditorium, Saturday, 5pm, admission free; tickets at yorkshakes.co.uk.

“I am myself alone”: The loneliness of George Young’s Henry VI in Irwin Appel’s condensed version of Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3. Picture: John Saunders

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American professor Irwin Appel shakes up Henry VI for York Shakespeare Project

York Shakespeare Project in rehearsal for Irwin Appel’s production of Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3, I Am Myself Alone. Picture: John Saunders

HOW come an American theatre professor is directing York Shakespeare Project’s production of Henry VI for York International Shakespeare Festival next week?

Irwin Appel, Professor of Theater at University of California Santa Barbara and founder and artistic director of Naked Shakes, first encountered YSP in 2015 when he came to York on a tour of Europe researching Shakespeare’s History plays. He saw Maggie Smales’s all-female Henry V, a few days after visiting Agincourt, and loved it so much,  he vowed to come back to direct for YSP.

Ten years on, that vow comes into play from April 22 to 26 when Irwin stages Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3, I Am Myself Alone, in a version of the trilogy condensed into one play running for two and a half hours for a York community cast of 21.

“In 2014 I had the ridiculous idea to distil the eight Shakespeare History plays into two plays, and I wanted them not to be ‘marathons’ but each to be the length of a typical Shakespeare play: no more than three hours,” recalls Irwin, who has been producing the Bard’s work in the United States and internationally since 2006.

“I entitled it The Death Of Kings, a line from Shakespeare’s Richard II, divided into I Came But For Mine Own, comprising Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V, and The White Rose And The Red, comprising Richard III and the Henry VI trilogy.”

He then went on a year’s sabbatical that brought him to Europe in 2015. “I’m also a professional actor, director, composer and sound designer, who’d never imagined he would be a college professor,” says Irwin, who trained at Princeton University and the Juilliard School in New York City.

“I was pursuing ‘being a star’ as an actor, but then came to the point where I wanted an artistic home, and I’ve been at University of California Santa Barbara for 26 years now, but also continuing to direct and design throughout the United States, Europe and in China.”

He used his research sabbatical to seek out plays, theatres and sites in Britain and France. “I wasn’t looking for historical accuracy per se in plays, because I wanted to feel the ground beneath my feet, to observe how the light came into a room or a castle, for example, and went to some extremely interesting places, like being on the battlefield of Agincourt on October 25 2015, the 600th anniversary of Henry V’s victory there. That was a quite a feeling,” he says.

He decided he would travel from London to York and it was then that he saw a small advert for YSP’s Henry V. “I fell in love with the production, set in a munitions factory in the First World War. I fell in love with York. I love cities that are very contemporary but at the same time present their history, and I reckon York does that with great balance.

Welcome to York: York Shakespeare Project chair and producer Tony Froud, right, greets American university professor Irwin Appel, director of next week’s production of Henry VI

Once Irwin’s Henry VI application was successful,  he headed back to York for auditions last November at Southlands Methodist Church. “I was in Europe, playing Shylock at the Estates Theatre in Prague, where Mozart had debuted his opera Don Giovanni in 1787,” he recalls. “After that I came to York and was very excited to cast Maggie [Smales] as Warwick after seeing her Henry V.”

Creating his Henry VI has been a labour of love. “Through The Death Of Kings, I have an affinity for the History plays, which I feel have some of Shakespeare’s greatest material,” says Irwin .

“I’ve condensed the plays to tell the story and the character arcs at a manageable length. I’ve chosen I Am Myself Alone [as the subtitle] as it’s a line that Richard, Duke of Gloucester – later to be Richard III – says about himself at the end but it also applies to Henry VI and many other characters in the play and encapsulates what the play is about.”

Building his production around a bare space, a crown and a throne, he will utilise his ensemble cast to “engender actor-generated theatricality and transformation in a physical theatre piece that tells a cautionary tale of power and greed that shows how a tyrant can rise in a torn and broken society”.

The theatrical style will be in keeping with Naked Shakes, the company he founded at UC Santa Barbara and is now into its 20th season.

“Our desire is to create raw, energetic and thrilling Shakespeare productions through using the power of the actors and the imagination of the audience,” says Irwin, who has been joined in the rehearsal room by movement coach Christina McCarthy, from UC Santa Barbara, and fight director Jeff Mills, from DePaul University, Chicago.

“When I set out to do The Death Of Kings, I was not looking to do ‘museum Shakespeare’ but Shakespeare as an allegory for our times. When I did it in the States, it was at the time of the primaries when Donald Trump first ran to be the Republican presidential candidate – trying to be king.”

Looking forward to next week’s run, Irwin says: “I feel that this is a truly special company. I’m honoured that they invited me and I would like to make the people of York proud that they allowed an American to direct a play about the House of York in York.”

York International Shakespeare Festival presents York Shakespeare Project in Henry VI: I Am Myself Alone, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, April 22 to 26, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: yorkshakes.co.uk or tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

In Focus: A Conversation with Irwin Appel, York St John University Creative Centre Auditorium, April 26, 5pm

Irwin Appel

IN this special session, Professor Anne-Marie Evans interviews Irwin Appel to discuss his varied and distinguished career, Henry VI, the importance of the York International Shakespeare Festival and York Shakespeare Project, and all things Shakespeare.

Evans is Professor of American Literature and Pedagogy and Head of School for Humanities at York St John University; Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a long-time Shakespeare fan.

As a professional director, actor, and composer/sound designer, Irwin Appel has worked with the New York, Oregon, Orlando, Utah, New Jersey and other prominent Shakespeare and regional theare companies throughout the United States.

In Europe, he has played the title role in King Lear for Lit Moon World, as well as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 for the Prague Shakespeare Company.

In November 2024, he played Shylock at the Estates Theatre in Prague, where Mozart premiered the opera Don Giovanni in 1787. He is the founder and artistic director of Naked Shakes, producing Shakespeare’s plays in the USA and internationally since 2006.

In 2023, Naked Shakes was selected to bring his original adaptation of eight Shakespeare’s history plays entitled The Death Of Kings as the closing performance in the Verona Shakespeare Fringe Festival in Italy.

He has led workshops and presentations about Naked Shakes throughout the US and in China, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

He is Professor of Theater at University of California Santa Barbara and is a graduate of Princeton University and the Juilliard School.

Admission is free; tickets at yorkshakes.co.uk. 

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More Things To Do in York, looking in great Shakes over the Easter holidays. Here’s Hutch’s List No.17, from The York Press

Gary Oldman in rehearsal for his return to York Theatre Royal in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, now heading into a week of press shows. Picture: Gisele Schmidt

YORK International Shakespeare Festival’s tenth anniversary programme is among Charles Hutchinson’s recommendations as April blossoms.

York theatre event of the year: Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape, York Theatre Royal, until May 17

OSCAR winner Gary Oldman returns to York Theatre Royal, where he made his professional debut in 1979,  to perform Samuel Beckett’s melancholic, tragicomic slice of theatre of the absurd Krapp’s Last Tape in his first stage appearance since 1987.

“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’.” Tickets update: check availability of returns and additional seats on 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

The Counterfeit Sixties: Swinging into Sixties’ recollections at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre tonight

Tribute show of the week: The Counterfeit Sixties Show, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight, 7.30pm

THE Counterfeit Sixties pay tribute to 25 acts of the Swinging Sixties in a show encompassing everything from that golden pop age, from the clothes to flashbacks of television programmes, adverts and clips from the original bands.

The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Dave Clark Five, The Kinks and The Monkees all feature in a hit parade performed by musicians who have worked with The Searchers, The Ivy League, The Fortunes and The Tremeloes. Tickets update: Limited availability on 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Some Enchanted Evening: Celebrating Rodgers and Hammerstein with the English Musical Theatre Orchestra at the Grand Opera House, York

Show tunes of the week: English Musical Theatre Orchestra presents Some Enchanted Evening, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday, 7.30pm

 EXPERIENCE the grandeur of Broadway as the English Musical Theatre Orchestra serenades you with show tunes from I Could Have Danced All Night ,People Will Say We’re In Love and You’ll Never Walk Alone to Getting To Know You and My Favourite Things.

Two star vocalists join the orchestra of 26 musicians, placing the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein centre-stage in renditions of songs from Oklahoma, The Sound Of Music, South Pacific and The King And I. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Full steam ahead: next stop Grand Opera House, York, for The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe on 2025 tour

Touring show of the week: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Grand Opera House, York, April 22 to 26, 7pm plus 2pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees

STEP through the wardrobe into the kingdom of Narnia for the most mystical of adventures in a faraway land. Join Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter as they wave goodbye to wartime Britain and say hello to Mr Tumnus, the talking Faun (Alfie Richards), Aslan, the Lion (Stanton Wright), and the coldest, cruellest White Witch (Katy Stephens). 

Directed by Michael Fentiman, this breathtaking stage adaptation brings magical storytelling, bewitching stagecraft and stellar puppets to CS Lewis’s allegorical novel. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Philipp Sommer: Performing Re-Lording Richard 3.0 at York St John University Creative Centre Auditorium on April 24 at 7.30pm as part of York International Shakespeare Festival

Festival of the week: York International Shakespeare Festival, April 22 to May 4

YORK International Shakespeare Festival is marking its tenth anniversary with a programme incorporating artists from the Netherlands for the first time; Croatia for Marin Drzic Day; Ukrainian artists from Ivano Frankisk and Bulgaria.

Among the highlights will be Berlin actor Philipp Sommer’s riposte to Shakespeare’s hatchet job on York’s own Richard III, Re-Lording Richard 3.0 (April 24); Olga Annenko’s Codename Othello (April 25); York company Hoglets Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Mischief with Team Titania and Team Oberon (April 26); Stillington writer/actor/director Alexander Wright’s immersive, existential Hamlet Show (April 28 to 30); Ridiculusmus’s Alas! Poor Yorick (April 29) and the Shakespeare’s Speakeasy play in a day (May 2). For the full programme and tickets, head to: yorkshakes.co.uk.

York Shakespeare Project in rehearsal for Irwin Appel’s production of Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3 for York International Shakespeare Festival. Picture: John Saunders

Condensed play of the week: York Shakespeare Project in Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3, “I Am Myself Alone”, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, April 22 to 26, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee

UNIVERSITY of California Santa Barbara theatre professor Irwin Appel, artistic director of Naked Shakes, directs York Shakespeare Project in his condensed, physical theatre version of Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy.

A bare space, a crown and a throne meet an ensemble cast in a powerful show of “actor-generated theatricality and transformation”, wherein they tell a cautionary tale of power and greed that charts how a tyrant can rise in a torn and broken society. Box office: yorkshakes.co.uk or tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Matt Goss: Tipping his hat to The Hits & More at York Barbican next Friday. Picture: Paul Harris

Pop concert of the week: Matt Goss, The Hits & More, York Barbican, April 25, 8pm

MATT Goss, the Bros pop pin-up-turned- Las Vegas showman, says: “Trust me, what I’ve learnt over the years being on countless stages around the world, this will be your best night of the year.”

Now living in central London after many years of blue skies in America, Goss, 56, will be celebrating all he has achieved in his music career and beyond in a rock’n’roll show, but still with a horn section (featured previously in the Matt Goss Experience show with the MG Big Band and the Royal Philharmonic at York Barbican in April 2023). Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk. 

In Focus: Badapple Theatre Company in The Thankful Village, York Theatre Royal Studio, April 24 to 26, 7pm and 2.30pm Thursday and Saturday matinees

Pip Cook, left, Josie Morley and Keeley Lane in Badapple Theatre Company’s revival of Kate Bramley’s The Thankful Village, playing York Theatre Royal Studio next week

IN a new departure for Green Hammerton touring company Badapple Theatre, writer and artistic director Kate Bramley will be playing a live score for the first time to accompany her poignant First World War comedy-drama The Thankful Village.

Bramley is an international touring musician, who started her professional music career aged 17, with tours of the USA and UK, but this will be the first time that she has made a musical contribution to a show by her Green Hammerton company, specialists for 27 years in touring “theatre on your doorstep”.

Kate Bramley: Playing a live score in a Badapple Theatre Company production for the first time at York Theatre Royal Studio

“It has been our ambition since the play was created back in 2014 to have a live score accompanying the story,” says Kate. “Thanks to our collaboration with York Theatre Royal, I will appear with the stellar 2025 cast of Pip Cook, Keeley Lane and Josie Morley.

“I’m delighted to be performing at York Theatre Royal this spring. One performance is already sold out, so we’re looking forward to an exciting time at my favourite local theatre.”

Boasting original songs and music by Sony Radio Academy Award winner Jez Lowe, Bramley’s story of hope, humour and humanity is seen through the eyes of three Yorkshire women from the same rural household, below and above stairs.

Badapple Theatre Company in the rehearsal room for The Thankful Village

Left behind to cope after their men-folk march off to Flanders, Pip Cook’s Edie, Keeley Lane’s Victoria and Josie Morley’s Nellie each face up to the challenges in their own way as they wait anxiously for news of their loved ones far away. Box office:  01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Did you know?

“THE Thankful Villages” were those rare places that lost no men in the Great War because all those who left to serve came home again.

Badapple Theatre Company’s poster for The Thankful Village at York Theatre Royal Studio

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American director Irwin Appel to hold auditions for York Shakespeare Project’s Henry VI in November. Apply now

Welcome to York: York Shakespeare Project chair Tony Froud, right, greets American university professor Irwin Appel, director of next April’s production of Henry VI

YORK Shakespeare Project will hold auditions next month for Henry VI, to be directed by American university professor Irwin Appel.

In April 2025, YSP will stage all three parts of William Shakespeare’s Henry VI as one show in a condensed version of the trilogy by the University of California Santa Barbara Professor of Theater. “It promises to be a fascinating piece of theatre,” says YSP chair Tony Froud.

Irwin’s interest in YSP began in 2015 when he happened to be in York on a tour of Europe researching Shakespeare’s history plays. He saw Maggie Smales’s all-female Henry V, a few days after visiting Agincourt, and loved it, vowing to come back to direct for YSP.

Next year he returns to achieve that ambition. “I am excited and honoured at the prospect of creating some truly special magic with actors in the York community,” says Irwin.

A professional actor, director and composer/sound designer, he trained at Princeton University and the Juilliard School in New York City. He is the founder and artistic director of Naked Shakes, now in its 19th season at UC Santa Barbara.

His condensed Henry VI will draw upon his award-winning adaptation of Shakespeare, The Death Of Kings, his distillation of all of Shakespeare’s History cycle into two plays. 

The rehearsal process should be exciting. Joining Irwin, from the United States of America, for part of the rehearsal period will be two experienced colleagues: movement coach Christina McCarthy, a multi-disciplinary artist, who teaches and choreographs at UC Santa Barbara, and fight director Jeff Mills, an award-winning actor, director, fight director and musician, who teaches movement at DePaul University in Chicago.

Welcoming Irwin to York, Tony says: “Irwin is making a special visit for the auditions while he is in Europe. They will take place at Southlands Methodist Church, Bishopthorpe Road, on November 7 and 8 and at Theatre@41 on November 9 and 10.   Don’t miss the chance to be part of this unique opportunity.”

For further information and audition details, email info@yorkshakespeareproject.org.