Sugar and spite and all things not so nice: Ellen Carnazza’s TV baking celebrity Petronella Parfait in Badapple Theatre Company’s Crumbs. Picture: Karl Andre
IN the week when jettisoned American TV institution The Late Show turned into the late show, as Stephen Colbert signed off, British TV’s favourite baking queen, Petronella Parfait, was cancelled too.
Mystery surrounds her disgraced exit, but ruthless, rather than rueful, Petronella is determined to bounce back, and tonight we are her audience – her “Crummies” – as she launches her online cookery channel, Dough My Gosh, as hot on gossip as tray bakes, as she looks to ride the social media influencer wave.
Will the cook crumble or rise anew like the dough for her signature Athenian Caraway Loaf? Will it be Crumbs of comfort or discomfort for the axed Bake-Up judge?
Find out in writer-director Kate Bramley’s latest comedy for Green Hammerton’s “theatre on your doorstep” rural-travelling troupe Badapple Theatre Company, newly installed as York Theatre Royal’s associate company for the next year.
To mark that partnership’s launch, Badapple are concluding their spring tour with four days of performances in the Theatre Royal Studio, where virtuoso Harrogate actress Ellen Carnazza is cooking on gas mark five as Petronella, the bad apple or good apple of the piece.
Bramley affectionately calls Carnazza “the hardest-working woman in theatre”, because although Petronella has an ego too big to accommodate anyone else in her kitchen, chameleon Carnazza will play multiple characters, foes, friends and family alike, glowing under the lights from so much physical exertion in this one-woman show of two 45-minute halves.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, as the old chestnut says, but Carnazza’s Petronella can very much stand the (self-inflicted) heat and stay in Petronella’s Perfect Kitchen to bake the bread that audiences will devour at the finale.
Will they, however, swallow everything else she says as the layers surrounding the mystery of her swift exit are peeled back with each new interruption of her live broadcast that takes the form of a series of phone calls and interviews, where Carnazza is framed by an oversized mobile phone case. Already her West Country assistant Demelza Meek has walked out, tired of being her Cornish patsy and vowing to bring her down.
One by one, we meet Petronella’s mother, Lady Payne, a still glamorous former Bond Girl; barrister Gloria Gluten, who shared her schooldays, and Mrs Crumble, the Welsh cook from her childhood whose recipes she may well have purloined for her own gain.
As she fights to prove she does not put the fake into bake, secrets are exposed and everything collapses around her on AJ Lowe’s amusingly Mischief Theatre-echoing misbehaving kitchenette set, with its malfunctioning tap, tumbling shelf of cookbooks and non-stick apron hook, topped off by the lights going out.
Now her last friend and sponsor, Penny Puttanesca, proprietor of the neighbouring Pizza Inferno chain, with her Gina/Sophia Italian allure and Mafia hauteur, has finally had enough of her freeloading.
After so much back-and-forth patter and constant changes of voice and character, with the aid of scarves, hats and glasses, Carnazza and Bramley surpass it all with the Puttanesca family’s henchman, Big Tony, who says nothing yet everything behind dark glasses with shrugs, grimaces and the folding of arms, before Carnazza plays both Petronella and Big Tony on the chase with all the madcap joy of a cartoon, all the funnier for being conducted in a small space, maximum gesture, minimal movement.
Bramley’s Petronella Parfait is an absurdist caricature, even more so for her script revelling in more puns than buns, yet for all the comic exaggeration in Carnazza’s performance, Crumbs is bang-on in its exposé of the cult of celebrity.
Petronella is sweet on the TV surface, yet sour when the heat is on; more back off than Bake-Off. She is a baker as needy as kneady; constantly plugging products, pushing her “brand” and placing endorsements. Ultimately, her cherry on top cannot hide the soggy bottom beneath.
Your reward is a feast of laughs in a comedy with bite, followed by a chunk of bread at the close, whose “secret recipe “ can be unlocked by scanning the QR code on the back of the programme.
Purely by coincidence, what should be playing on the main stage next door but another story of a TV celebrity fighting for her career (after being exposed as a charlatan in losing a court case with £500,000 costs): namely psychic medium Sheila Gold in Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman’s twisted thriller The Psychic, now in the last week of its world premiere.
Badapple Theatre Company in Crumbs, York Theatre Royal Studio, baking at 2pm and 7.45pm today. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Eileen Walsh’s TV psychic Sheila Gold in York Theatre Royal’s world premiere of Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman’s The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
JEREMY Dyson and Andy Nyman’s world premiere of The Psychic is into its last week at York Theatre Royal, where lead actress Eileen Walsh and professional theatre newcomer Megan Placito have been enjoying every twist and turn of the writer-director duo’s psychological thriller.
Eileen is playing popular TV medium Sheila Gold, who loses a high-profile court case that brands her a charlatan, costing her not only her reputation but also a fortune in legal fees. When a wealthy couple ask Sheila to conduct a séance to attempt to make contact with their late child, she senses an opportunity to bleed them for money. What follows makes her question everything she has ever believed, leading her on a journey into the darkest corners of her life.
Joining her on that journey is Megan’s Tara, Sheila’s ambitious, resolute niece, who combines vulnerability and underdog defiance with a determination to inherit her family’s fairground wisdom and tricks.
“I did a Zoom meeting with Jeremy and Andy two months before we started rehearsals after they’d seen my work and said, ‘Can we send you the script?’,” says Eileen. “I’d never done a play like this, but the lads were so enthusiastic about their subject, the magic and the jump scares that it was an easy ‘yes’ for me.”
Megan, who trained at ArtsEd, had appeared in the television series Father Brown, Casualty and Doctors and the films Peter Pan’s Neverland, Decode Me and The Salt Path, but not yet on stage when she was contacted by casting director Arthur Carrington.
“Jeremy and Andy had asked him, ‘can you find any girls from a showman background?’, and I was the first one they saw in January, after I was sent the script on my birthday in December – on the same day that my boyfriend bought me a book on witchcraft! It was like all these things were coming together,” says Megan.
“I’d done some indie films and the usual rites-of-passage TV shows, but I was desperate to do theatre, although Arts Ed was more focused on TV and film training, but all the performances that had captivated me had been on stage. Like seeing Eileen’s performance in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at the National [Theatre], playing John Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth.”
Megan met Jeremy and Andy at the Umbrella Rooms in Shaftsbury Avenue. “I was just wanting to rack their brains as I grew up in a travelling showman community in Chertsey in Surrey, who worked on fairgrounds,” she says.
“My mum is a showman and my father is a ‘joskin’ [a non-traveller], as she wanted to get out of the showman world, where, in a lot of the communities, there are pressures. But I had freedom, I went to a regular GCSE school, and when I said I wanted to be an actor, my mum said, ‘yeah, do it’. Showmanship is in my heart; it’s in my blood to perform.”
Megan Placito’s Tara in The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
At her first meeting with Jeremy and Andy, Megan was “asking them about the language in the play, and how they’d written about a matriarchal world when it’s called ‘showman’ – though actually the community is run by the women.”
Eileen was drawn to Dyson and Nyman’s fascination with the powers of psychics. “The way the guys spoke about ‘reading people’ intrigued me,” she says.
“I’d just done a show called The Second Woman with an Australian company at Cork Opera House, when it was an opportunity to see how I could hold up for 24 hours, playing the same scene 100 times opposite 100 men, so I felt it was moving in the right direction for me to come out and talk with a live audience straightaway in The Psychic.
“It was not something scary for me to deal with, bringing the audience on a journey into the play through direct address.”
Eileen continues: “It’s really interesting to give people in the audience the chance to talk if they fill out the ‘share card’: they’ll share their stories, share eye contact with you, and it’s amazing how many people will share intimate details about themselves.
“I love the bravery that it takes for them to do that, standing up in front of the audience, who actually become the eighth character in the play.”
York Theatre Royal is running a 35 Live ticket offer for 18 to 35-year-olds, where they can acquire two tickets for £15 each. “People in that age group should see The Psychic because it’s on-trend with TikTok and Tarot card reading, and so many people are interested in spiritualism, ‘the other’ and ‘manifesting’,” says Megan.
“I do think that people will enjoy that side of it: the question of whether any of it is real or unreal. There’s so much interest in ghost stories, and I love how it feels like a Victorian melodrama too.”
The Psychic, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees.Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The Psychic: York Theatre Royal is offering 35 Live ticket offer for 18 to 35-year-olds
Cone, by Alison Jagger, on show at WET Bar & Plates
FROM street photography to an introduction to ballet, sparring spiritualists to acidic German comedy about the English weather, Charles Hutchinson highlights all manner of cultural delights ahead.
Photographic show of the week: Alison Jagger, After The Crowds, WET Bar & Plates, Micklegate, York, until June 3
AS a lone traveller and self-confessed free spirit, York street photographer Alison Jagger draws inspiration from the urban landscape, whose vitality she loves to capture with her mobile phone camera.
“There is nothing better than waking up in an unfamiliar city and recording its character, colour and vibrancy through my curious lens,” says Jagger. After The Crowds is the second in RARE Collective’s programme of solo exhibition at James Wall and Ella Williams’ indie wine bar and restaurant in aid of SASH (Safe and Sound Homes), the York youth homelessness charity.
English National Ballet School students in My First Ballet: Cinderella, on tour at Grand Opera House, York
Children’s show of the week: English National Ballet & English National Ballet School, My First Ballet: Cinderella, Grand Opera House, York, today, 10.30am and 2pm; tomorrow, 1pm and 3pm
MEET the nature-loving Cinderella, who lives on the edge of an enchanted forest where she once gardened and sang with her mother. After loss and silence settle over her home, she is left with a sharp-tongued stepmother, two noisy stepsisters and a house full of chores and shadows.
However, when a letter arrives, inviting all to a garden ball, Cinderella’s journey to find her true self begins, guided by the spirit of her mother and the magic of the forest. Using a narrator to help the young audience follow the story, and a shortened, recorded version of Prokofiev’s score, this introduction to ballet is choreographed byGeorge Williamson and performed by English National Ballet School Graduate Artists Programme students. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Sparring spiritualists Sheila Gold (Eileen Walsh) and prickly mum Rosa (Frances Barber) in Rosa’s mobile home in York Theatre Royal’s world premiere of The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
World premiere of the month: The Psychic, York Theatre Royal, until May 23
“IS any of it real,” ask Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman in The Psychic, the latest spook-fest from the writer-director duo behind Ghost Stories. In their twisted new thriller, popular TV psychic Sheila Gold (Eileen Walsh) loses a high-profile court case that brands her a charlatan, costing her not only her reputation but also a fortune in legal fees.
When a wealthy couple ask Sheila to conduct a séance to attempt to make contact with their late child, she senses an opportunity to bleed them for money. What follows makes her question everything she has ever believed, leading her on a journey into the darkest corners of her life. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Tenor Christopher O’Gorman
Lunchtime concert of the week: York Late Music presents Christopher Gorman (tenor) & Mark Hutchinson (piano), Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, today, 1pm
THE first complete performance of York composer Steve Crowther’s song settings of poems by late York writer Helen Cadbury will be given by tenor Christopher O’Gorman and pianist Mark Hutchinson this afternoon. The concert also features Richard Allain’s Three Shakespeare Sonnetsplus music by Emily Hall and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Songs Of Travel. Box office: latemusic.org or on the door.
Louise Davies in her Woolwich studio
Exhibition opening of the week: Louise Davies and Glassmakers, Journey In Colour, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, today, 11am to 2.30pm, until July 4
PAINTINGS and etchings by South East London artist and printmaker Louise Davies will be complemented by glass by Allister Malcolm, Madeleine Hughes, Margaret Burke, Charlie Burke and Amelia Burke.
Pink Moors, oil on canvas, by Louise Davies
Davies, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, combines fluid lines and rich colour in vibrant landscape prints and oil paintings. Gallery owner Terry Brett drove to Stourbridge to pick up glass works by Malcolm and his workshop assistant, Hughes. Margaret Burke, son Charlie and his wife, hot glass specialist Amelia, run the hand-blown glass studio E&M Glass at The Old Bakery, Sarn Bridge, Malpas, Cheshire.
Bradley Creswick: Violin soloist at York Guildhall Orchestra’s concert tomorrow
Classical concert of the week: York Guildhall Orchestra Spring Concert, York Barbican, Sunday, 3pm
YORK Guildhall Orchestra continues its celebration of the works of German composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist and critic Carl Maria von Weber, this time recognising his considerable input into the world of opera with the overture to Der Freischütz.
Tomorrow afternoon’s soloist will be Bradley Creswick, leader emeritus of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, playing the Bruch Violin Concerto No 1. The second half features Verdi’s overture to his opera The Force Of Destiny, Britten’s Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Peter Grimes and Ravel’s orchestral showpiece La Valse. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Martha Godber’s Jesse North in her play Jesse North Is Broken. Picture: Ian Hodgson
Solo show of the week:John Godber Company presents Martha Godber in Jesse North Is Broken, York Theatre Royal Studio, May 11 to 14, 7.45pm plus 2.30pm Thursday matinee
JESSE North, 25, from Hull, is a carer on minimum wage, keeping the elderly alive while trying to live her own messy, chaotic life. Told over one night, writer-performer Martha Godber’s play follows Jesse from care shift to the dance floor, from the late-night kebab to an early-morning call-out as she battles the system that undervalues her and the city that shapes her, all while her ADHD-fuelled thoughts and anxious mind crave order in the chaos.
“Both political and personal, the show shines a light on working-class survival in Britain today – where carers are underpaid, the care system is crumbling and young women are left to piece themselves together in a society that keeps breaking them,” says Martha, whose solo play is directed by Millie Gaston. A post-show discussion follows Wednesday’s performance. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The poster for James Morrison’s 20 Years Of Undiscovered tour
Anniversary of the week: James Morrison, 20 Years Of Undiscovered, York Barbican, May 13, doors 7pm; Sheffield City Hall, May 23, doors 6.30pm
UNDISCOVERED was the number one debut album that changed everything for Rugby soul singer-songwriter and guitarist James Morrison (or James Morrison Catchpole to give him his full name). Back then, he was fitting carpets by day, playing open mics by night and driving up and down to London at any spare moment, taking meeting after meeting with multiple record companies.
On his 18-date May and June tour, 2007 British Male Solo Artist BRIT award winner Morrison is playing Undiscovered in its entirety in a set taking in big hits such as You Give Me Something and Wonderful World, fan favourites The Pieces Don’t Fit Anymore and This Boy, rarely performed gems One Last Chance and How Come and highlights from his six-album songbook, topped off by 2025’s Top Five success Fight Another Day. Cordelia supports. Tickets update: York, limited availability at yorkbarbican.co.uk; Sheffield, https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/james-morrison-sheffield-23-05-2026/event/35006367D9B1B6C6.
Wehn and where? Henning squeezing every German joke out of the British weather at Grand Opera House, York
Comedy gig of the week: Henning Wehn, Acid Wehn, Grand Opera House, York, May 14, 7.30pm
GERMAN Comedy Ambassador Henning Wehn takes an unbiased look at climate change. “It’s a topic sure to delight audiences and no surprise,” he says. “After all, everyone loves talking about the weather. Rain or shine, all will be fine. Or maybe it won’t. Who knows?! Come along. Or else.” Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Tim Lowe: Launching 2026 York Chamber Music Festival with NCEM recital with Stephen Gutman
Festival launch of the week: Tim Lowe (cello) & Stephen Gutman (piano), Gems Of The Romantic Cello, National Centre for Early Music, York, May 15, 7.30pm
DIRECTOR and cellist Tim Lowe previews the 2026 York Chamber Music Festival (September 11 to 13) in concert with pianist Stephen Gutman in a passionate exploration of expressive and beautiful works from the cello and piano repertoire.
Their programme will be the same as they played at St Mary le Strand, London, on Wednesday: Beethoven’s 12 Variations on See The Conquering Hero Comes from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus; Saint-Saëns’ Cello Sonata No 1 in C Minor; Richard Strauss’s Cello Sonata in F Major and Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro. Box office: eventbrite.co.uk.
Cowboy Junkies: 40 years and counting
In Focus: Cowboy Junkies, Celebrating 40 Years And Beyond Tour, Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, tonight; doors 7pm for 7.45pm start
Cowboy Junkies: 40 years and counting
TORONTO’S Cowboy Junkies are playing British venues for the first time since 2022 on April and May’s Celebrating 40 Years and Beyond tour, promoted by Hurricane Promotions. Next stop, Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, tonight.
Coinciding with the 11-date itinerary, the Canadians have released a triple LP/ double CD/digital collection of songs from their 21st century releases, Open To Beauty.
Released on May 1 on Cooking Vinyl, this ‘Best Of’ set revisits selected tracks from the albums Open, One Soul Now, Early 21st Century Blues, At The End Of Paths Taken, Renmin Park, Demons, Sing In My Meadow, The Wilderness, All That Reckoning, Songs Of The Recollection and 2023’s Such Ferocious Beauty.
Speaking of the new compilation, Cowboy Junkies’ Michael Timmins says: “We are now 25 years into this century, the beginning of which saw us leave the world of major labels and return to making music as an independent band.
“We figured this was as good a time as any to look back, reassess and reflect on the music that we have recorded over these past two and a half decades and, hence, Open To Beauty – The Best of the 21st Century.”
Tour tickets are on sale at: https://cowboyjunkies.com/tour/. Tonight’s show has sold out: for returns only, https://www.operanorth.co.uk/whats-on/cowboy-junkies/.
Did you know?
COWBOY Junkies’ signature performance of Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground composition Sweet Jane was featured in the final episode of Netflix TV series Stranger Things.
Cowboy Junkies’ Peter Timmins, Margo Timmins, Michael Timmins and Alan Anton
Cowboy Junkies: back story
SOMETIMES revolutions begin quietly. In 1988, Canadian alt. country band Cowboy Junkies proved there was an audience waiting for something quiet, beautiful and reflective. The Trinity Session was like a whisper that cut through the noise – and it was compelling, standing out amid the flash and bombast that defined the late 1980s.
The now classic recording – made live at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto in November 1987 – combined folk, blues and rock in a way that had never been heard before and went on to sell more than a million copies.
Cowboy Junkies’ ability to communicate volumes before the lyrics kick in defines an enduring career. Where most bands chase trends, the Junkies have stayed their course, maintaining a low-impact excavation of melody and evocative language delivered sotto voce in singer Margo Timmins’s feathery alto.
Forming in Toronto in 1985, Margo was joined by siblings Michael Timmins on guitar and Peter Timmins on drums, plus Michael’s life-long friend Alan Anton on bass, to begin a journey that has evolved over 29 albums.
“I’ve known Alan longer than I’ve known Pete,” says Michael. “We were friends before Pete was born.”
Unlike most long-lasting groups, Cowboy Junkies have never had a break-up or taken a sanity-saving hiatus. There’s an appreciation of each other that keeps them constantly working. “It’s that intimacy and understanding of what each one of us brings to the table,” says Michael.
The oldest, Michael is the chief architect; songwriter, and guitarist, who works with Margo on sculpting the emotional planes and vocal performances before bringing in Peter and Alan to create the soundscapes that have made Cowboy Junkies a band that defies categories.
“The expectations and responsibilities of our roles are a big part of the band’s ethos,” says Michael. “We’re still amazed that we’re doing things our way and continuing to grow the band, but the longer we are at it, the more fun it’s become. We don’t take it for granted.”
Margo adds: “We do what we do and it feels right for all of us. After 30-plus years of playing together, the band and its music are more important to us than ever. The music we make brings each of us a great sense of contentment, a knowledge of place, and a sense of doing what we were meant to do.”
Sheila Gold: Frank, incensed and muddying the truth in The Psychic at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Manuel Harlan
THIS critique comes with a personally signed request from theatre makers Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, paperclipped to the programme for their world premiere of The Psychic.
“Whilst we know it makes your job a little harder, we would love it if your review could steer clear of spoilers of any of the twists or secrets that you are about to learn,” they ask.
The Psychic has been up and running for a week of previews before Wednesday’s press night – with Jonathan Ross and actor Tim McInnerny among the high-spirited full house – and no doubt those twists and secrets are being shared already, but your reviewer’s lips are sealed on the minutiae of what unfolds.
Frances Barber’s prickly Rosa in The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
The north and south writer-director combo of Dyson (from Ilkley) and Dyson (from London) made the same request for Ghost Stories, their audacious spooky conceit that is still freaking out audiences after 16 years (and played the Grand Opera House, York, in March 2020).
After the paranormal scares and shrieks of Ghost Stories, Dyson, alumnus of the deeply, madly, darkly twisted League Of Gentlemen, teams up anew with regular creative co-pilot Nyman, actor, director, writer and collaborator with psychological illusionist Derren Brown for two decades, who played Winston Churchill in Peaky Blinders, by the way.
Illusions and disillusion play their part in The Psychic, a twisted dark thriller of jet black humour wrapped inside a state-of-the-nation study of fame and the corrosive impact of the Fourth Estate and radio shock-jocks, delivered with a theatrical sleight of hand in tandem with illusions designer Chris Fisher, lighting designer Zoe Spurr, sound designer Nick Manning, video designer Duncan McLean and, above all, set and costume designer Rae Smith, whose scene-setting is outstanding and well worth the longer-than-usual interval wait for the revelation of the gaudy interior of a Spanish villa.
Writer-directorsAndy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson in rehearsal for The Psychic’s world premiere at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Manuel Harlan
Dyson and Nyman were delighted to team up with the Theatre Royal in York, a city “drenched in the supernatural” as Nyman described it, for the torrid tale of TV’s most famous psychic, Sheila Gold (Eileen Walsh) in the immediate aftermath of losing a high-profile court case, costing her not only her reputation but also £500,00 in legal fees.
We join her as the audience on the first night of her latest tour, fighting back against the charge of being a charlatan with her golden Irish brogue and “gift” for contacting the other side.
It will not be an easy ride: heat-seeking, scandal-stirring, slick and slimy radio presenter Robert Hamm (Mischief Theatre regular Dave Hearn) is out to give her a hard time; niece Tara (Megan Placito, in her professional stage debut) demands she trains her in her showman skills and won’t take ‘No’ for an answer.
Showing her the ropes: Eileen Walsh’s Sheila Gold working with her “protege”, Megan Placito’s Tara in The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
Enter a wealthy couple, Deepak (Jaz Singh Deol) and Nisha (Nikhita Lesler), with a desperate request for Sheila to conduct a séance to attempt to make contact with their late child. Sheila duly snatches at the opportunity to bleed them for money.
In the words of Dyson and Nyman, “what follows makes Sheila question everything she ever believed and leads her on a journey into the darkest corners of her life”. Occupying the darkest corner of all is her dysfunctional relationship with her mother, the anything-but-rosy Rosa (Frances Barber), her spiteful spiritualist forebear as a fortune teller on the Blackpool pier.
Central to The Psychic is the question: “Is any of it real?”, not only asking whether TV and stage show psychics are fakes, but also what is the truth of such lives beyond the TV screen, as Dyson and Nyman question “what really matters in life”.
Dave Hearn’s arch cynic of an investigative radio presenter, Robert Hamm, in The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
Can you trust what you are watching amid Fisher’s illusions and McLean’s videos, and who is deceiving who in the fractured mother-and-daughter relationship of Rosa and Sheila? The greater truth here, beyond the price of fame, is the cost of greed and jealousy, as captured in the terrific performances of Walsh’s Sheila, Barber’s waspish, embittered Rosa and impressive debutant Placito’s aspirational Tara (Placito having grown up in a travelling showman family).
Dyson and Nyman serve up moments of shock-horror and utilise a disorientating sound pool – much in the manner of Danny Robbins’s 2: 22 A Ghost Story – but for all the supernatural intrigue, at its heart The Psychic mirrors Greek tragedies in its study of mortality and morality, the maternal and the matriarchal, the eternal and the material, the ethereal and the real, the heaven and the hell.
Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s The Psychic, York Theatre Royal, until May 23. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Seeking contact with their late child:Jaz Singh Deol’s Deepak and Nikhita Lesler’s Nisha in The Psychic. Picture: Manuel Harlan
