Tag: Jonathan Wells

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REVIEW: Pick Me Up Theatre in The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York ****

Alison Taylor’s Mrs Alexander, left, Jonathan Wells’s Christopher Boone, centre, and Beryl Nairn’s Siobhan with Pick Me Up Theatre ensemble members Jon Cook, Tom Riddolls and Lee Harris. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

THE Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time is playing York for the third time in ten years.

First came the National Theatre’s bells-and-whistles production, winner of seven Olivier awards, at the Grand Opera House in January 2015, with its white box framework of graph-paper lines on moving walls and flooring to match the mathematical mind of teenage protagonist Christopher Boone.

Next, the performing arts department at All Saints RC School combined dance, original livemusicand movement sequences in a February 2023 adaptation wherein ten narrators represented Christopher’s imagination and inner thoughts, while highlighting  the key motifs of letters, as well as Chris’s love of numbers and space, through physical theatre and projections.

Now comes York company Pick Me Up Theatre’s interpretation, using University of York history graduate Simon Stephens’s superlative script, premiered by the National Theatre, under the imaginative and inventive direction of Andrew Isherwood,  a regular presence on the York stage and increasingly in the director’s chair too.

“Directing this show has absolutely been one of the best experiences over the past 12 years I’ve had making theatre,” he says in his programme note – and it shows in an ensemble production that is cinematic yet boldly theatrical in its fusion of video projection, effects and lighting and sound by Will Nicholson, always in harmony with the mathematical shapes, emotional frictions and physical theatre of Isherwood’s team of 11 players.

Jonathan Wells’s Christopher Boone and his pet rat Toby with Beryl Nairn’s Siobhan. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

His choice of recorded music is impeccable too, especially Cat Power’s heart-rending Maybe Not and Moby’s God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters, last used so evocatively in Robert De Niro and Al Pacino’s face-off in Heat in 1995.

On arrival, the audience is confronted by the sight of Elanor Kitchen’s model of a dead dog, Wellington, pinned to the ground by a garden fork, on the end-on raised stage. Welcome to a “murder mystery like no other”.

Jonathan Wells’s Christopher John Francis Boone is rocking, traumatised, even more so when accused of killing the dog by Mrs Shears (Natalie Melia), his potty-mouthed neighbour in Swindon, Wiltshire.

Christopher is 15 years three months and two days old; he attends a special needs school, and although he is never attributed with Asperger’s syndrome by source novel writer Mark Haddon, this fearful yet fearless boy can calculate A-level Maths to A* standard at 15 but is ill-equipped to work out everyday life.

Christopher does not like to be touched, is incapable of lying and has powers of logic beyond conventional reasoning or normal patterns of behaviour. He loves red, his lucky colour, but rejects an offer of Battenberg cake because of his dislike of yellow.

Such frankness and original thinking instil humour and wonderment in his bright, naive, unpredictable utterances, but pain and puzzlement bubble beneath the surface too in Jonathan Wells’s performance, expressed in his twitching, fidgety fingers and downward gaze.

Jonathan Wells’s Christopher Boone, centre, with fellow Pick Me Up Theatre cast members Jon Cook, left, Lee Harris, Catherine Edge, Beryl Nairn and Tom Riddolls. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

This Elvington GP has favoured musical theatre in his York stage appearances, but here he returns to straight theatre for the first time since Berkoff and Strindberg plays in his Sheffield student days, making you wonder why he has not done so previously.

What a revelation his performance is. Slim of frame, boyish of looks, not unlike Ben Whishaw, he is 34 yet wholly believable as 15 – the age, by the way, that he took his A-level in computing, giving him an immediate connection with Christopher.

His physical demeanour is only part of the equation, Equally significant is how to convey Christopher’s intelligence and more significantly, the way he thinks, and both Wells and Isherwood maximise how Stephens’s script travels both inside and outside Christopher’s head as he vows to defy his father by “doing detective work” to hunt down Wellington’s killer.

Like a Keaton or Chaplin, Wells’s Christopher makes us laugh at the absurdity of others, or whoever he winds up with his candid, unconventional manner, but he never sets out to be a clown or funny. Christopher is serious, earnest, but his comments are the stuff of observational comedy.

Such is the skill of novelist Haddon and playwright Stephens’s writing, where we wholly empathise with the young boy who follows his own path, however unsafe he may feel amid the chaotic cacophony, on a bigger journey of discovery that combines abnormal intellect with bewildering, baffling new experiences.

Jonathan Wells’s Christopher Boone cowers from his father Ed (Mike Hickman) as a policeman (Jon Cook) looks concerned. Picture: Matthew Kitchen

Yes, we laugh, but we are also stopped regularly in our tracks by the feeble behaviour of his elders, but certainly not betters, who let him down, in particular his mendacious father Ed (Mike Hickman), a boiler engineer with a tendency to boil over into rage, even violence.

The one exception is special needs teacher and mentor Siobhan (Beryl Nairn), who encourages him in his writing.

Catherine Edge, so elegantly impressive in Settlement Players’ Separate Tables in February 2024, excels again as Judy, the mother that, spoiler alert, Christopher had been told was dead but had in fact fled to London with her feckless lover, neighbour Roger Shears (Lee Harris). Hers is the most emotionally complex role, the least black and white, and Edge finds those nuances.

In the ensemble, Alison Taylor, Natalie Melia, Lee Harris, Jon Cook, Tom Riddolls and Alexandra Mather both play multiple roles and bond in choreographed movement and babbling, threatening noise on Christopher’s first solo train journey to London with pet rat Toby, into the pandemonium of a Tube station, and out on to the alienating, disorientating streets.

Nicholson’s lighting is key to Pick Me Up’s technical flourish, but all in service of Wells’s remarkable portrayal of a boy with a beautiful mind in search of a safe haven.

Pick Me Up Theatre in The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, 7.30pm tonight and tomorrow; 2.30pm and 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office:  tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

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Pick Me Up Theatre go boldly into The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time at Theatre@41, Monkgate, from today

Jonathan Wells’s Christopher Boone – and his pet rat Toby – with Beryl Nairn’s Siobhan in Pick Me Up Theatre’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time

PICK Me Up Theatre take on the challenge of bringing Simon Stephens’ stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s multi-million-selling novel The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time to the York stage from today.

The York company is following in the esteemed footsteps of the National Theatre, winner of seven Olivier awards for its remarkable production that played the Grand Opera House, York, on its first tour in January 2015.

Director Andrew Isherwood is at the helm for Haddon’s story of fearful yet fearless 15-year-old Christopher Boone, who can work out A-level Maths but is ill-equipped to work out everyday life, distrusting strangers deeply, never venturing alone beyond the end of his road.

Novelist Haddon never called him autistic or attributed Asperger Syndrome to him, but Christopher does not like to be touched, is incapable of lying, can count binary numbers to infinity and has powers of logic beyond conventional reasoning or normal patterns of behaviour.

Everything changes when Christopher falls under suspicion for killing his neighbour’s dog, propelling him on a journey of self-discovery that upturns his world.

“When I spoke to Pick Me Up producer Robert Readman in January last year, when we did Young Frankenstein, I put down a list of a range of shows I would love to be part of, and Curious Incident was one of them,” recalls Andrew. “I also said I didn’t understand any reluctance to do productions related to children’s stories.

“To my surprise, Robert already had this play on his radar and had secured the rights.” Now, to Andrew’s delight, Curious Incident forms Pick Me Up’s first show of 2025, with no fewer than three matinees in the hope of attracting school audiences to assist with their GCSE studies of Haddon’s book.

Andrew has seen the National Theatre show on its NT At Home streaming service but will be putting his own mark on the play. “I’m  certainly trying to do my own version with projection and contemporary classical music,” he says.

“Over the years, even when I was studying film and television at York St John, I’ve always had an affinity with Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore and John Williams and how films used their music, and we’ll be using music as part of the stream of consciousness in the play, to complement the scene, setting the mood and tone.”

Andrew brings his background in television and film and 12 years of acting on stage into his directorial role. “I like to set the scene to get it on its feet straightaway in rehearsals, where I’ll say, ‘show me what you’ve got’ and then we’ll adapt it from there. I’ll always listen to an idea and if it’s good, I’ll look to use it,” he says.  

Evocative lighting by Will Nicholson, on the back of his designs for Wharfemede Productions’ Little Women and Black Sheep Theatre’s The Tempest, will play its part in his third Theatre@41 show of 2025.

“We’re doing the show pretty much in the round, or more like a horseshoe, but with projection at the far end and we’ll be using a raised stage, like Pick Me Up did for Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and before that Shakespeare In Love,” says Andrew.

“There’ll be very little set, but lots of light boxes and lots of props, and lots of playing with levels, on the balcony as well as the stage, and plenty of sound effects too as we create illusions through sound and light.

“We’ll have strip lights around the stage and lights under the raised stage to serve a story purpose and thematic purpose, but I don’t want to overuse these effects in the first half hour because people can become desensitised.

“We want the audience to keep being surprised, so we’re doing it in a way where we don’t do things all the time. It’s not about throwing things at the wall and bombarding people with sound and noise, but it has to be evocative and emotional in its impact.”

The balance of visual and verbal is the key. “The play lends itself to strong visual representation but the actors shouldn’t be overpowered by that side of it, although they are always in shapes, whether standing in squares of triangles, because it’s always playing to how Christopher thinks mathematically,” says Andrew.

He has enjoyed bringing so many components together under his direction. “I like the opportunity to be more abstract as it’s non-linear. We can be more out there but hopefully be evocative too, as well as somewhat esoteric and abstract, all for the purpose of storytelling to put across what’s going on in Christopher’s mind, if we can pull it off.” he says.

“It’s abstract, it’s out there, but it’s got heart too, and a cast of 11 who I’ve encouraged to really go for it. I think they’re having a lot of fun with it – and they tell me they are!”

Jonathan Wells’s Christopher Boone and fellow cast members in a scene from The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time

Taking the role of Christopher will be 34-year-old Jonathan Wells. “I was about 15 when I first read it, Christopher’s age, and it was probably the first book I read from that teenage perspective, which was a new method of fiction for me,” he says. “It’s the way he sees and interprets the world that jumps out at you because it’s written in his words, seeing things the way he does, but with a back story too.

“I went back to the book after I got the part and it struck me how literal the play script is, how direct the transfer is from page to stage.”

Almost 20 years on, Jonathan notes how “there’s much more awareness now of neurodivergence and the different range of ‘normal’”. In turn he will bring both sympathy and empathy to playing Christopher. Sympthy first: “There are times when he is very vulnerable, not just when being hit by his dad, but also in thinking about his mother, who he thinks is dead, and it’s open to your interpretation how you present that sadness,” he says.

And empathy? “I think back to myself as a teenager, doing an A-level in computing at 15,” says Jonathan, finding common ground with Christopher’s gift for Maths. “My dad was a computer teacher and my brother was a teacher too, giving me some of his A-level Maths books.”

Jonathan went on to study medicine and is now in his fifth year as a GP in Elvington. “I’m also teaching medical students in the practice on Thursday mornings at the moment,” he says, keeping teaching in the family.

On the York stage scene, Jonathan has focused on musical theatre shows until now. “The last ‘straight’ play I did was at university in Sheffield, when I did Steven Berkoff’s The Trial and also did August Strindberg’s A Dream Play, another ensemble play, like ‘Curious Incident’, so it’s been nice to get back to that,” he says.

“Depending on the musical, depending on the show, you have more straightforward characters in musicals, where you can create as much depth as you like, but with a play like this you can really get into the depth of the character to spend a couple of hours on stage as Christopher.”

Jonathan reveals he did not apply initially for the role of Christopher. “I auditioned for one of the voice parts as I thought I’d be too old for Christopher, but at the audition Andrew had a thought: could I play Christopher?”

Further audition calls ensued, and Andrew had found his Christopher. “I’m playing him with that vulnerability you associate with young people, dressing in a tracksuit and T-shirts, as I would have done at that age, for the rehearsals as I don’t like rehearsing in my work clothes,” says Jonathan.

He is drawing not only on Simon Stephens’ script and Mark Haddon’s book for his portrayal of Christopher but also on Atypical, the Netflix series about Sam, an American high school teenager on the autism spectrum. “It’s a coming-of-age story and family drama, which has a lot of parallels with Haddon’s book, and I’ve taken a lot from Sam’s character,” says Jonathan.

His medical training has played its part too. “As part of our mandatory training, we have to do autism training, which has come a lot into the NHS with online training developed by a mother whose son has autism. That’s been really useful to learn more about the way it affects behaviour,” says Jonathan.

“I am very much aware I’m not an autism expert, and I’m probably at the other end of the spectrum, so I’m  playing him very much as a character [rather than from personal experience], drawing inspiration from what I’ve seen and read about it, taking that information, experimenting with different ways of moving and different ways of expressing the words, to keep the performance interesting.”

Pick Me Up Theatre in The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, today (1/4/2025) to Saturday, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

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REVIEW: York Musical Theatre Company in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Joseph Rowntree Theatre ****

Ah, that Technicolor Dreamcoat moment as colours spread across the Joseph Rowntree Theatre stage. Picture: Lucy Baines, Joy Photography

COLET Court School in London has its place in British musical theatre history.

It was at this Barnes prep school that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice – whatever became of them? – first staged Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, performed by the school choir as a 15-minute pop cantata.

The original West End production opened in February 1973 at the Albery Theatre; the soundtrack LP followed in 1976, and many a revival and tour since then. Jason Donovan, Donny Osmond, Phillip Schofield, Joe McElderry, Gareth Gates, Steps’ Ian H Watkins and Lee Mead have all donned that famous coat on the London stage.

Some things change – Colet Court School became St Paul’s Juniors in 2016 – but some things don’t. School choirs (from Knavesmire Primary and Wiggington Primary Singstars) still feature in York Musical Theatre Company’s Joseph.

This week’s run is selling well, very well. No change there. Go, go, go, Joseph ticket seekers; there’s not a second to be wasted. Saturday’s matinee has sold out and only the last few tickets are available for the evening performances.

Red is the dominant colour in this scene in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Picture: Lucy Baines, Joy Photography

One significant change to report in this 50th anniversary production: Songs still refer to Egypt, but director-choreographer Kathryn Addison has switched the setting to the Yorkshire farming community of the 1920s/1930s with a “Peaky Blinders vibe” to Joseph’s brothers. “They were a nasty bunch,” she reasons, as waistcoats and caps flatter than Yorkshire vowels adorn the stage.

Antony Gardner’s Pharaoh is still the expanding Elvis Presley of the Las Vegas rhinestone years, albeit more of an Elvis tribute act on the Scarbrough sea front, where he rules the roost from his casino.

Always in shades, but never one for the shadows, his Song Of The King is a gloriously daft Presley pastiche, thank you very much, typical of the joy that percolates through Lloyd Webber’s plethora of musical magpie styles and Rice’s witty, storytelling lyrics.

Egypt, Yorkshire, wherever! Lloyd Webber and Rice take in Parisian chanson for Those Canaan Days, sung with a wonderfully exaggerated French cabaret accent by Anthony Pengelly, who also makes his mark as Potiphar, lounging like Jacob Rees-Mogg in the House of Commons. Later they veer wildly to the Caribbean for Adam Gill’s Benjamin Calypso (a kind of forerunner of 10CC’s reggae chart topper Dreadlock Holiday).

Dreamcoat dreamboat: Jonathan Wells’s all-in-white Joseph with Jennie Wogan-Wells’s Narrator and the Wiggington Primary Singstars choir. Picture: Lucy Baines, Joy Photography

Any other changes? Joseph, son of Jacob (Rob Davies), is one of ten, rather 12 brothers, two of them strictly sisters as they are played by Lauren Charlton-Mathews and Rachel Higgs but credited as brothers and looking the part in their Great Yorkshire Show farming gear.

The leads are new to York Musical Theatre Company but not new to the musical theatre scene: husband and wife Jonathan Wells and Jennie Wogan-Wells, living their dream theatrical life in their dream roles as Joseph and the Narrator respectively.

The bearded Wells looks more like the Bee Gees of the Saturday Night Fever Seventies era all in white, later adding shades and a red waistcoat, rather than stripping down in Joseph and his amazing bare chest tradition. 

He has the toothpaste smile, the twinkle in the eye, the handsome swagger, for the Dreamcoat dreamboat, and he sings with warmth and boy band appeal, if a little diffidently in his first rendition of Close Every Door. Go, go, go, for it, Joseph! Don’t hold the drama in check!

Kathryn Addison: Director-choreographer for York Musical Theatre Company’s Joseph And The Technicolor Dreamcoat

Since childhood days of listening to the soundtrack LP, Knavesmire Primary teacher Wogan-Wells has craved playing the Narrator. Aside from opening the show on her laptop, with pupils on screen on Zoom, this is not an Are You Sitting Comfortably, Then I’ll Begin narrator. She is on her feet, dancing, singing, even fitting in a cameo as Mrs Potiphar, and no-one sings more through this sung-through musical than her. Her singing is top notch throughout, full of personality and power.

The set is a familiar construction: a scaffolding edifice with a mezzanine level and stairways either side, populated by the young choir, the rest left empty to accumulate the ensemble work of the 23-strong adult cast.

Musical director John Atkin has fun with Lloyd Webber’s chameleon ability for constant change, from ballad to pop anthem and more besides. Director Kathryn Addison has even more fun, sheep puppets, megamix finale and all. Rehearsals were a delight, and it shows in this radiant show, one that captures the innocence of Lloyd Webber and Rice’s bygone days and puts summer rather than a spring in your step.

Now, go, go, go for those last few tickets before they’re gone, gone, gone.

Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, York Musical Theatre Company, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York. Performances at 7.30pm tonight and tomorrow; 2.30pm and 7.30pm on Saturday. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

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Jennie’s dream role in Kathryn’s Dreamcoat show for York Musical Theatre Company

Jennie Wogan-Wells: Teacher and Narrator, in rehearsal for York Musical Theatre Company’s Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

KATHRYN Addison directs York Musical Theatre Company in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s ever popular, ever colourful 1968 debut musical at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, from tonight.

From the book of Genesis to the musical’s genesis as a cantata written for a London school choir, Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has grown into an iconic musical theatre staple with its story of the biblical journey of Joseph, son of Jacob and one of 12 brothers, and his coat of many colours.

Here husband and wife Jonathan Wells and Jennie Wogan-Wells lead the cast as Joseph and the Narrator respectively.

“I directed it in 2015 with my Year 3 and 4 pupils at Knavesmire Primary School, where there are 120 children in those classes – and they knew all the words,” recalls Jennie of her past involvement at the helm of Joseph.

“Now I’m playing the Narrator – a very important role! – who knits the whole show together. It’s a bit of a dream role for me as my parents had the LP and I remember spinning round and round to Potiphar with my brother in the front room because it gets faster and faster.

“Now I get to play the Narrator, indulging in my childhood dream to be in the show.” What’s more, the choir from Jennie’s school will be singing at the Thursday evening and Saturday matinee performances. (Wigginton Primary School will provide Years 4 to 6 pupils to perform tonight, Friday and Saturday night.)

“They’re obsessed with it! We practise every lunchtime, and yes, they’ve learnt all the colours in the dreamcoat! It’s nice because parents and teachers remember it from their own childhood, and now, for the children, it will be the first time they’ve been on a stage away from the school.”

Director-choreographer Kathryn Addison was born in the year that Joseph made its debut (1968). “It started as a 15 to 20-minute school musical, so look how it’s grown since then,” she says.

Passion project for Kathryn Addison: Directing York Musical Theatre Company’s production of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

It changes again in her hands: rather than 12 brothers, it becomes a story of a family: brothers and two sisters (although credited as brothers). “It’s not an issue. We still acknowledge the brothers who have ‘not turned up’ – and we’ve been really lucky in the casting. We’ve neither had to drag people in and nor would we have wanted to,” she says.

“I was in York Shakespeare Project’s all-female Henry V, and it isn’t about gender. It takes gender out of it. It’s not about male/female but who’s right for a role and what can they bring to it?”

Kathryn is “staying true to the spirit of Joseph”. “That’s really important,” she says. “I think Lloyd Webber is a bit ‘Marmite’, but like every writer or composer, there are things you like, things you don’t.

“I feel this musical has an innocence that allows people to really enjoy it as a company show, and it’s felt like a company in rehearsal. It feels tight and there’s a collective will. There’s been no egos in the rehearsal room and nor will there be any on stage.”

The cast of 23 will be complemented by 21 children from Knavesmire Primary and 17 from Wigginton Primary at this week’s performances. “It’s just fun for all of us,” says Jennie.

“If you’re enjoying it on stage, then the audience are going to enjoy it too. Rehearsals have been great fun and I’ve really looked forward to them.”

Nothing delights more than Pharaoh’s Song Of The King: the Elvis one, performed this week by newly married Anthony Gardner. “There’s no point trying to make it anything else than it is: some Elvis impersonator going down to sing on the Scarborough sea front!” says Kathryn. “So you recognise that and crack on with it! Let’s bring out that style as director/choreographer.”

Jennie says: “Kathryn has a clear vision, with room for nice little mood changes and quirks, and it’s great to have that freedom within it. It’s got great balance.”

It all adds up to a show that appeals to children and adults alike. “Everyone enjoys themselves, and it’s rare in being a show that brings people to the theatre that don’t normally go. It’s always nice to do that, for people to realise that theatre is open for them.”

A contemplative moment for Jonathan Wells’s Joseph in the reherarsal room

Jennie is enjoying performing alongside husband Jonathan’s Joseph. “It’s been lovely to do the show together, though we’ve done that before, but we’ve never been principals together before,” she says.

“The Narrator is the framework of the show. It’s that whole thing of me telling the story to the children, so it’s a busman’s holiday really.

“During the rehearsal weeks, I can switch off more than him. He’s always humming the tunes, singing in the car, but it’s very much our life at the moment. We’re going to be bereft when it finishes, but it’s been really lovely as I’ve been able to rehearse at home with him.”

Kathryn has her own fond memory of bygone Joseph performances. “I did the show with my dad, playing Jacob, more than 30 years ago. That really tugs at my heartstrings, but also I’m at the stage when being on stage is quite hard work, and I’ve done a lot of directing and choreographing, though this show is much harder to direct than I’d first given it credit for because it’s sung through,” she says.

“But I love the show. It’s a passion project, and to be able to work with a group of people on a community project, where it’s all about the whole company working together, has been a really positive process for me.

“From the start, I’ve seen this story as being based in Yorkshire; these farmers in the 1920s/1930s, with a bit of a Peaky Blinders vibe to it. They were a nasty bunch to their brother! So we travel from the Yorkshire farms to Scarbados and that sea front, our Las Vegas!

“When I think of Joseph and Scarborough, I think of Mark Herman’s film of Little Voice, with the lights on the sea front at night. And a casino; that’s where I see Pharaoh.”

As for the Technicolor Dreamcoat of the title: thank you to Ripon Amateur Operatic Society for providing wardrobe services.

York Musical Theatre Company in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 7.30pm tonight until Saturday plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee (sold out). Ticket update: limited availability for tonight and tomorrow; last few for Friday and Saturday. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

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