Adrian Cook’s Peachum and Cathy Atkin’s Mrs Peachum in York Opera’s The Beggar’s Opera. All pictures: David Kessel
YORK Opera is back with a spring in its step. John Gay’s ballad opera of 1728, now nearing its 300th anniversary, was given lively and sometimes sparkling treatment by its director, Chris Charlton-Matthews, offering the company an opportunity to show its strength in depth.
The choice of venue, The Citadel in Gillygate, York was not an easy option. With the audience seated on three sides, mostly at tables in cabaret style, the performance was virtually in the round. This meant that much of the dialogue came and went, depending on where the performers were facing and, as so often with singers of all shades, words were clearer in song than in speech.
The production firmly reminded us of the wealth of our musical heritage, thanks to the composer Johann Pepusch – Berlin-born but London-based for more than 50 years – who gathered together its 69 songs mainly from British ballads, alongside several by living composers including Purcell.
This production gained immensely from its string quartet, oboe (Alex Nightingale) and harpsichord (Tim Tozer), conducted by John Atkin, who delivered a consistently vivid underlay.
Mark Simmonds’s Macheath: “Every inch the dashing womaniser” in York Opera’s The Beggar’s Opera
At the head of proceedings was Adrian Cook’s determined, ruthless Peachum, who was the undoubted mayor of this unruly parish, gamely supported by Cathy Atkin’s Mrs Peachum and Hamish Brown’s Filch.
Alexandra Mather as their faux-naive daughter Polly and Sophie Horrocks as the more streetwise Lucy Lockit – rivals for the love of highwayman Macheath – were well contrasted, while Mark Simmonds was every inch the dashing womaniser they pursued.
There was a notable contribution, too, from Anthony Gardner’s gaoler Lockit – a David Jason look-alike – whose dialogues with Peachum were outstanding. The chorus was full-throated rather than subtle, but cameos from chorus members added considerable colour and kept up momentum.
Alexandra Mather’s faux-naive Polly Peachum
Even so, the performance lasted three hours and would have been punchier with half an hour excised.
The props by Teresa Carr and Jane Carr – a bar for the tavern, a desk for Peachum’s ‘office’ and a high trellis for the bars of Newgate prison – were more than enough to set the scenes, and Jane Woolgar’s choreography was consistently appealing.
The decision to dress the cast in costumes of every era (by the ever-imaginative Maggie Soper), to illustrate the maxim that the poor are always with us, was understandable but confusing.
The jollity of the proceedings was anyway inevitably at odds with the poverty-riddled story. The prologue and epilogue by the Beggar himself, Ian Thomson Smith, ensured a firm start and a happy ending.
Infinite possibilities, finite world: Emilio Iannucci’s Roland and Carla Harrison-Hodge’s Marianne in Constellations at the SJT. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
Nick Payne’s Constellations, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, written in the stars, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly, 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com
White Rose Theatre in Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, in the tunnel of love until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly; 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
HERE is a brace of award-garlanded boy-meets-girl one-act two-handers, each playing with time and space with all the elan of Alan Ayckbourn’s playful works of this ilk.
First up, Constellations, University of York alumnus Nick Payne’s multiverse play already staged in York this year by Black Treacle Theatre’s Andrew Isherwood and Jess Murray at Theatre@41 in February.
Named as one of the 50 best plays of the 21st century by the London Evening Standard, now it is in the supple hands of Stephen Joseph Theatre artistic director Paul Robinson, whose cast features Emilio Iannucci, an actor whose thrilling combination of mental agility and physical alacrity has delighted York Theatre Royal and Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre audiences alike.
In Payne’s exploration of the myriad paths one love story can take from one meeting, Iannucci plays beekeeper Roland – with more than one sting in the tale – opposite Carla Harrison-Hodge’s scientist Marianne. “The action takes place (sort of) chronologically,” the programme forewarns. “A change of scene indicates a change of universe”.
“Emilio Iannucci and Carla Harrison-Hodge jump from universe to parallel universe with dazzling speed”. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
To avoid any consternation over Constellations, in a nutshell, each scene – the first meeting, the first date and – spoiler alert – the break-up – unfurls in several different ways, as Iannucci and Harrison-Hodge jump from universe to parallel universe with dazzling speed over 70 minutes in a world of What Ifs and endless possibilities, the next leap dependent on the decision each makes.
Comparisons have been made with the films Sliding Doors and Groundhog Day and, more pertinently, with York-born author Kate Atkinson’s novel Life After Life. Sliding Doors keeps offering two possibilities; Groundhog Day replays the same day over and over; Life After Life positsalternative possible lives for Ursula Todd after death after death.
Bolder still, yet shadowed by the finite nature of life, Constellations combines science and art, physics and chemistry, romance and alternative realities, in an otherwise simple love story.
All life is here within these Constellations: happiness and sadness; honey sweetness and ill health; devotion and cheating; certainty and uncertainty; tremors of the heart and traumas of the mind; the everyday and the extraordinary; decisions big and small; questions and more question; connection and disconnection. A day in the life and the life in a day. The roll of the dice; the truth and the lies.
On a breathtaking set by TK Hay of wooden blocks within a geometric carapace of one and a half miles of fibre-optic cable lighting, Iannucci and Harrison-Hodge talk and move equally nimbly, in response to Payne’s text, Robinson’s direction and Jennifer Kay’s movement direction alike. Sign language speaks volumes too.
Like the sky-at-night lighting’s evocation of drawing lines from star to star, the multifarious stories travel up and down lines of humour and heartbreak, light and darkness, exhilaration and loss, warmth and sudden chill, to the point where you care deeply about Roland and Marianne, whatever direction their paths take. What’s more, you ponder what alternative routes your own life could have followed.
As Robinson puts it, Constellations is “deeply human, deeply moving, genuinely tilting the world for you”. In his notes, he challenges anyone not to leave the theatre “just a bit more aware of what a fragile and remarkable thing life is”. Job done, Mr Robinson. Fragile, remarkable, and always better for a trip to the theatre to appreciate that.
Close together and drifting apart: Simon Radford’s Jamie and Claire Pulpher’s Cathy in a montage for The Last Five Years
YORK Stage director Nik Briggs has long wanted to bring Jason Robert Brown’s emotionally charged 2001 American musical The Last Five Years to York, but his ideal couplings to play Cathy and Jamie have never been in York at the same time.
The York premiere instead falls to White Rose Theatre, the city’s newest stage company, in a passion project for director Claire Pulpher and fellow actor Simon Radford, who both name it as their favourite musical.
Brown drew on the trials and tribulations of his own failed marriage to Theresa O’Neill. So much so that she sued him on the grounds of the musical’s story violating non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements within their divorce decree by representing her relationship with Brown too closely.
For Brown, read successful young novelist Jamie Wellerstein, Random House’s rising poster boy. For, well, let’s not say O’Neill, but any struggling actress, read Cathy Hiatt, from Ohio.
Brown’s sung-through musical has the novel structure of Cathy telling her side of the story from the end of the relationship backwards, while, at the other end of the stage, Jamie does so from the start forwards, as he lands a publishing deal at 23.
The songs take the form of internal monologues, alongside the occasional phone call, usually delivered with the other partner having left the stage, save for a duet where they touch for the first time, exchange marriage vows and swap ends to continue on the same trajectory. There is to be no middle ground in this relationship, no alternative paths, unlike in Constellations.
Simon Radford and Claire Pulpher in rehearsal for The Last Five Years
The singing brings to mind the work of Stephen Sondheim, melody playing second fiddle to recitative, (the form of accompanied solo song that mirrors the rhythms and accents of spoken language), whether upbeat when courting or for broken-hearted ballads.
The accompaniment, however, under the musical direction of Jon Atkin, is often beautiful as he leads a six-piece band with the strings to the fore: Marcus Bousfield on violin and Rachel Brown and Lucy McLuckie on sublime cello. Paul McArthur on guitar and Christian Topman provide the electricity.
The balance in the relationship can be played in different ways, more often with Jamie trying everything to save the relationship, to stimulate Cathy, in a gentler interpretation of the role. In song, Radford’s Jamie is intense, hyper, rising to the point of anger and shouting, uncompromising, in your face, over-confident, deceitful too.
Pulpher’s Cathy tunes into a different wavelength, more controlled, one where she experiences flights of happiness, frustration rather than embitterment with failed auditions, but moments of humour too before loss of confidence, insularity and loneliness take over.
Done this way, where Jamie is the one who is unreasonable, you wonder whether these two would ever have lasted five years or whether they were polar opposites never meant to travel in the same direction.
Nevertheless, the structure is engaging; the songs draw you in; the simple set of two chairs and one table at each end is well chosen, complemented by the regular changes of attire that match the two stories in one’s progress.
After the last two years in Covid’s shadow, seeing a new company of established York talents take its first steps in The Last Five Years is another reason to celebrate Theatre@41’s upward curve under chair Alan Park.
Review by Charles Hutchinson
Award-winning TK Hay lights up the SJT with fibre-optic design ‘unlike anything ever seen in a theatre production before’
Only connect: Cast members Carla Harrison-Hodge and Emilio Iannucci on TK Hay’s ground-breaking set design for Constellations. All pictures: Tony Bartholomew
HOTSHOT young designer TK Hay has created a dazzling and innovative set design for the multiverse story world of Nick Payne’s Constellations at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre.
Crowned Best Designer in the Stage Debut Awards 2022, Hay has used over one-and-a-half miles of glowing fibre optic cable to create a web of light that surrounds actors Carla Harrison-Hodge and Emilio Iannucci.
Payne’s play looks at the ‘What Ifs’ that arise from a single meeting, following the crazy paving of the couple’s path through a multitude of possibilities depending on the decisions they make.
Shining light: Designer TK Hay
Hay was inspired by two installation artists to create a set “that is believed to be unlike anything ever seen in a theatre production before”: Chiharu Shiota from Japan, who makes huge and intricate networks of thread and yarn, and Italian “artist of pure light” Carlo Bernardini, who uses fibre optics, prisms and sculptural elements to form laser-like geometric installations.
“What we wanted was a design that responded to the action of the play, so the direction from the start was very visually focused,” says Hay.
“I was thinking about the connection between the two protagonists and how across all these different realities they are somehow managing to connect with one another.
Illuminating: TK Hay’s fibre-optic design for the SJT’s production of Constellations
“I pitched to Paul Robinson, the director, that we took Shiota’s and Bernadini’s work and fused it together – I thought it would look incredible!”
Robinson says: “TK’s design is absolutely remarkable: we’re pushing at not just what this play can do, but also what theatre form can do with what he’s come up with.”
The set design has created its own challenges for SJT’s production manager Denzil Hebditch, and technical manager Tigger Johnson.
Denzil says: “Working with fibre optics in this way wasn’t something we had done before, and we were concerned that we would struggle to achieve TK’s vision, but the results have been pretty spectacular!”
A floor-level view of TK Hay’s design in the Round at the SJT
Simon Radford and Claire Pulpher in rhearsal for White Rose Theatre’s York premiere of The Last Five Years
GIVE a round of applause to actor Simon Radford, who has been travelling back and forth from Edinburgh to rehearse with director and fellow cast member Claire Pulpher for York company White Rose Theatre’s production of The Last Five Years.
One week of crossing and re-crossing the border has been followed by a further week of rehearsals, now in situ in North Yorkshire, but still involving plenty of movement, taking in Our Lady’s Church Hall in Acomb, a day at Ripon Arts Hub, in All Hallowgate, Ripon, followed by two performances there last Thursday and Friday, and a day of rehearsing and filming a promotional video at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York.
From tomorrow until Saturday, Simon and Claire will perform Jason Robert Brown’s emotionally charged American musical there with a six-piece band led by musical director John Atkin, who accompanied the duo on piano in Ripon.
Joining Atkin will be Marcus Bousfield on violin; Rachel Brown and Lucy McLuckie on cello; Paul McArthur on guitar and the ubiquitous Christian Topman on bass.
Claire Pulpher: Actress, director and debutant producer
“It’s been pretty intensive in rehearsal, more like a professional process, crammed into a short time,” says Claire, who plays struggling Ohio actress Cathy Hiatt opposite Simon’s rising novelist, Jamie Wellerstein, as Brown charts the path of two lovers over the course of five years of courting and marriage, trials and tribulations.
She is delighted to be working with Simon as they unite for York’s newest theatre company. “We first met when doing Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods with Pick Me Up Theatre at the Grand Opera House in 2014,” recalls Claire. “The Last Five Years is my favourite show and Simon’s favourite show, and ever since I met Jon Atkin, when he was the musical director for Chess in 2019, we’d wanted to do the show together.
“We thought, ‘let’s make it happen’, and we’ve all put ideas together and it’s somehow happened!”
She first saw the show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008/2009. “But we’ve never seen it done locally, so I set about organising the licence. I’ve directed shows, choreographed shows, but I’ve never produced a show before, so that was a new challenge, me being a novice!
Close together and drifting apart: Simon Radford’s Jamie and Claire Pulpher’s Cathy in a montage of their five-year relationship in Jason Robert Brown’s American musical
“But as a two-person, one-act show, it was affordable, and we didn’t have to panic about getting the rights as no-one else around here was after it,” she says.
“It’s over an hour long, more like 90 minutes with no interval, and when I saw it at the Fringe, it was staged in a pub off the beaten track, and it’s stayed with me as a show ever since.
“The way I saw it presented, the band was on stage and they became immersed in the performance, with each performer singing alone, Cathy to an imaginary Jamie, and vice versa, except in the duets. We’re doing the same.”
In Brown’s theatrical structure, Cathy’s side of the story starts at the end of the relationship; Jamie tells his tale from the beginning, but will they ever meet in the middle in a musical full of laughter, tears and everything in between, played out to a score of upbeat songs and beautiful ballads?
“It’s a rom-com but so relatable as it’s a bit more naturalistic, maybe even uncomfortable,” says Claire Pulpher of The Last Five Years
“It’s a rom-com but so relatable as it’s a bit more naturalistic, maybe even uncomfortable, because we’ve all been through those trials and tribulations,” says Claire. “It’s showing things the creative arts don’t normally show.
“The relationship is seen from each perspective, presented as internal monologues rather than discussions, as they go in opposite directions on the time line with each song.
“Jamie is 23 at the start when he gets his first book deal, and he’s hugely successful from a young age with everything moving so fast that gradually everything spirals out of control. Cathy is struggling in her acting work, and so their career paths are contrasting and are not aligning.”
The Last Five Years will be staged over the next four days with a sound design by Ollie Nash and lighting by Ruth Symington. Tickets for tomorrow to Saturday’s 7.30pm performances and Saturday’s 2.30pm matinee are on sale at tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
