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REVIEW: Charles Hutchinson’s verdict on Little Women, York Theatre Royal, until October 12 ****

Ainy Medina, left, Laura Soper, Freya Parks, front, and Helen Chong in Little Women at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Charlotte Graham

SEPTEMBER 30 marks the 156th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Louise May Alcott’s Little Women books. She wrote it in only ten weeks, a speed matched by the flashing hand of Freya Parks’s restless Jo March, beret in place as ever when at work, in Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster’s free-flowing production.

Alcott’s coming-of-age tale of the March sisters growing up in well-to-do New England during the American Civil War is deemed a “timeless classic” (to quote the Theatre Royal brochure), as popular now as when first published.

Yet the British stage has tended to stage adaptations of Jane Austen, Emily Bronte and Mary Shelley novels rather than Alcott. Looking back through The York Press archives, your reviewer cannot find any past productions in York, the closest being a Lip Service parody, Very Little Women, that toured the Theatre Royal in October 2004.

“I can’t remember ever reading Little Women as a child, but Sue [Ryding] did, and she wept buckets,” said her late partner in spoofery, Maggie Fox. “She said we must do it some time, so I had to read it, and she was absolutely right: we just had to do it. It’s so sanctimonious, so twee…just awful…and they’re Americans.”

Helen Chong’s Amy March and Nikhil Singh Rai’s Theodore ‘Laurie’ Laurence in Little Women. Picture: Charlotte Graham

Hold your high horses. Maggie went on to say the satire was applied with “affection, and also respect for Alcott. She was one of the first woman writers to write about her own life and she was able to make a living out of writing. She was incredibly successful in her own lifetime.”

Anne-Marie Casey brings a similarly affectionate tone to her adaptation of the story of sensible Meg (Ainy Medina), tomboy and would-be novelist Jo (Freya Parks, from the 2024 BBC series This Town), vain, silly Amy (Helen Chong) and consumptive, piano-playing Beth (York actress Laura Soper, in her first Theatre Royal appearance since her professional debut in Swallows & Amazons in 2019).

Sanctimonious? Twee? Just awful? No, no, and thrice no. Very American, yes, but Casey does not stir even a spoonful of sugar into her account of the siblings’ journey from childhood to adulthood in the mid-19th century.

Instead, she combines humour with sadness, candour with kindness, storytelling with travelogue, all the while addressing the matter of a women’s role in society, amid the fractious relationships, the pursuit of love, the absence of the father on chaplaincy duty in the war and the need for matriarch Marmee (York actress Kate Hampson) to be a single mother in such stressful circumstances.

The power of the written word: Freya Parks’s Jo March and Kate Hampson’s Marmee in Little Women. Picture: Charlotte Graham

Against the backdrop of a divided America’s November 2024 presidential clash coming down to a regressive man versus a progressive woman, with polar opposite views on such matters as abortion, resonance is not hard to find in Little Women.

Albeit that marriage is still the end-all, although not the be-all for Jo, who symbolically takes the lead when dancing, a habit forged in dancing with her sisters but also testament to her determination to do her own thing. Best summed up in burning the back of her dress when standing too close to the fire.

Parks is the stand-out here, a fiery talent fast on the rise (she heads off to her next filming engagement as soon as Little Women ends). The last time your reviewer saw an actor on the York stage destined for the heights was when Sally Hawkins, fresh from drama school, played Juliet in Romeo And Juliet. Parks’s Jo is full of humour, vigour, pathos, impetuous urges, artistic intellect and resolute ambition. Love too.

Medina, Chong and especially Soper more than play their part too, and there is a theatrical grace to the ailing Beth’s scene with Jo, culminating in an exit in white for Beth that symbolises the passing into death: a moment that film could not do so elegiacally or indeed so sparingly.

Clashing opinions: Freya Parks’s Jo March and Caroline Gruber’s Aunt March in Little Women. Picture: Charlotte Graham

Hampson’s Marmee is firm but as fair as her hair, always urging her daughters to maximise their talents, whether for music, dress-making, art or writing, equal in her love and counsel for each, but away from their gaze, sadness at her husband being away permeates the glowing surface.

A scene stealer emerges in Caroline Gruber’s match-making Aunt March, the Lady Bracknell of the piece with her waspish tongue, snobbery and insistent interventions.

And what of the men? Nikhil Singh Rai’s Theodore ‘Laurie’ Laurence is the handsome, elegant, well-mannered, fun-loving prankster and foil for Jo, with the devilish player streak below that smart, engaging, enquiring posh-boy, privileged surface. Hard to resist, like a matinee idol, you might say. Later, such a type would be found in a Tennessee Williams play.

Jack Ashton reveals the importance of being earnest in not one but two roles as men with academic minds, serious intentions and not much income: firstly John Brooke, Meg’s devoted tutor; then the Teutonic professor, Bhaer, who could have been borrowed from a Chekhov or Ibsen play.

Jack Ashton in rehearsal for his role as Professor Bhaer in Little Women

Forster’s direction brings out the nuances in all these performances, never over-stating anything, but letting the power of storytelling take grip, whether in the first act, where the action is concentrated in the March house, save for a skating accident depicted with clever use of lighting by Jane Lalljee, or the second, where Amy goes travelling in Europe and Jo heads to New York to begin penning her sensationalist stories.

Ruari Murchison’s set design, first used in Pitlochry Theatre Festival’s production, is first class too, making expressive use of curtains, wooden furniture and in particular silver birch tree trunks, sometimes used for hanging a coat to convey a transition from outdoors to indoors. Her costumes delight too, as do Erin Carter’s movement direction and the sisters’ singing in harmony by the piano.

Freya Parks. Remember that name. A tall woman amid Little Women, making a big impact, with a stellar career ahead.

Little Women, presented by York Theatre Royal in association with Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Scotland, at York Theatre Royal, until October 12. Performances: 7.30pm, September 27 and 28, October 1, 3, 5, 8 to 12; 2pm, October 2, 3 and 10; 2.30pm, September 28, October 5 and 12; 6.30pm, October 4 and 7; 7pm, October 2. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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Kate Hampson returns to York Theatre Royal stage for matriarchal role in Little Women

“Marmee is a really fascinating character to play,” says Kate Hampson of her role in Little Women. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

YORK actress Kate Hampson returns to the York Theatre Royal stage on Saturday for the first time since her title role in the August 2022 community play The Coppergate Woman.

She will play Marmee, mother to the March girls, in creative director Juliet Forster’s repertory production of Anne-Marie Casey’s re-telling of Louisa May Alcott’s cherished American novel Little Women, presented in association with Pitlochry Festival Theatre.

She is joined in this coming-of-age story of growing up in New England during the American Civil War by This Town star Freya Parks as headstrong daughter Jo, Ainy Medina as Meg, Helen Chong as Amy and fellow returnee York actress Laura Soper as piano-playing Beth.

“It’s been a really challenging but joyful rehearsal period, working with Juliet again, and I can’t wait to play it to audiences – and I get to walk to work each day!” says Kate in a lunchtime break. “The cast are all fantastic, each bringing something new and unique to their roles. We’re all getting on really well, working with voice coach Yvonne Morley to get the accent right and united, because it’s not only a different [American] accent but an accent from a different time, and we have to sound related to each other.”

Describing Marmee’s matriarchal role, Kate says: “What’s really striking is that for most of the play, she’s a single mother, and that’s a hard task. She’s presented as wholesome and deeply loving, caring for each child equally, encouraging each of them to achieve their full potential, but she’s also Victorian, stiffer, more formal, than today.

“There’s a softness to her but there’s also that Victorian formality, which was the behaviour of the time. So you can’t go too gentle and soft in the role, even though she’s a great mum. It’s the way she gives them their autonomy that’s beautiful to watch. She lets her daughters make up their own minds, not collectively, but individually, seeing them as each being very different with very different needs.”

Kate continues: “Marmee is a really fascinating character to play. She’s a challenge because she’s often portrayed as this warm, kind woman, full of wisdom, the perfect mother, and to some extent she is that, but she’s multi-faceted, and I’m keen to explore that, especially in her relationship with Jo. Like when Jo says, ‘I have this rage’, and Marmee says, ‘I had this rage too and I had to learn to suppress it’.

“She’s very pragmatic, she knows the limitations, and yet she wants her daughters to ‘dream big’, but she had that rage and sadness that she couldn’t do the things she wanted to do. She is both very loving and good at imparting knowledge, getting her daughters to solve their problems themselves, rather than spoon-feeding them.”

Kate has enjoyed shaping her interpretation of Marmee’s role in the rehearsal room. “You get this thing with character development where you start in one place, take it to another place, and then you have to bring it back to what feels the right place, pulling it back by thinking ‘would I be standing like this?’ or ‘would I be so affectionate at this point?’,” says Kate.

“It’s lovely to have had the time to do that, and I feel that on the first night, it’ll be where I want it to be, but characters always develop further in the run, when you find new things and the relationships develop too.”

Reflecting on the abiding popularity of Louisa Alcott’s story, Kate says: “I think she was so progressive as a writer. You only have to look at her own life, how she lived it, her relationship with her parents. She was progressive, she was feminist and she was brave.

“People can still identify with that. There are still the same issues on life’s journey; the ups and downs of family relationships in that world still prevail. There’s also the challenge to modern audiences, where they have to think: how can we continue to strive to be better and strive for more equality, especially in societies where there is still none. Both remain relevant goals, because it’s not finished, it’s not done.”

Urging York audiences to attend Little Women, Kate says: “Come and sit in a beautiful space and be entertained by a classic play told in a new way. You want people to enjoy it but to go away with questions to answer because the story still resonates.

“It deals with universal themes of family, love and loyalty, the good times and the bad times, so though it’s historical, you can make it relevant to today, resonating with the experiences we have to deal with or might yet have to face.”

Little Women, York Theatre Royal, September 21 to October 12. Performances: 7.30pm, September 21, 24 to 28, October 1, 3, 5 and 8 to 12; 2pm, September 25 and 26, October 2, 3 and 10; 2.30pm, September 28, October 5 and 12; 6.30pm, October 4 and 7, and  7pm, October 2 (fundraising gala). Post-show discussion: October 11. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

* The special fundraising gala performance on October 2 will raise vital funds for York Theatre Royal’s continued work as a producing theatre and for the development of future community projects.

Copyright of The Press, York

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Juliet Forster’s production of American classic Little Women confirmed for Theatre Royal autumn season. Who’s in the cast?

York Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster

SCREENWRITER, novelist and playwright Anne-Marie Casey’s adaptation of Little Women will lead York Theatre Royal’s autumn season. Tickets for a special fundraising gala on October 2 go on sale today.

Running on the main stage from September 21 to October 12, Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster’s production will offer a fresh take on Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 coming-of-age novel set in Massachusetts, New England, where headstrong Jo March and her sisters Meg, Beth and Amy grow up during the American Civil War.

“We are thrilled to be staging an adaptation of such a much-loved classic,” says Juliet. “Louisa May Alcott’s story of Jo and her sisters finding their way in the world is so relatable to modern audiences and Anne-Marie Casey’s brilliant adaptation really brings to life the wonderful characters. We have such a great cast lined up and I can’t wait to get started later this year!”

Leading the cast as Jo March will be Freya Parks, who this year starred as bass-playing record shop worker Fiona in the BBC television series This Town and played Logan Somerville in an episode of the ITV detective drama Grace. 

Ainy Medina will play Meg, after appearing in ITV’s Archie, and Helen Chong, from Cassie And The Lights, will be Amy.

Easingwold-raised Laura Soper, once a member of York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre before training at Bristol Old Vic, will return to the stage where she appeared in Hetty Feather and Swallows And Amazons, Damian Cruden’s last Theatre Royal production in 2019 after 22 years as artistic director. Fresh from touring with Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of), she will take the role of Beth.

Returning to the Theatre Royal too will be York actress Kate Hampson, playing Marmee after taking the title role in the August 2022 community production of Maureen Lennon’s The Coppergate Woman. Her other stage roles include Mother/Mrs Perks in The Railway Children at Hull Truck Theatre in 2021.

A third returnee will be Caroline Gruber, linking up again with Juliet Forster to play Aunt March after appearing as Vashti in her York Theatre Royal Studio production of E M Forster’s The Machine Stops in 2016. Nikhil Singh Rai’s Laurie completes the casting by Ellie Collyer-Bristow.

The Theatre Royal show is presented in association with Pitlochry Festival Theatre, by arrangement with Lee Dean, and is designed by Ruari Murchison.

The October 2 gala performance will raise vital funds for York Theatre Royal’s continued work as a producing theatre and for the development of future community projects.

Members’ priority booking for the rest of the performances will open on July 3; tickets will go on general sale on July 8 at 1pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Did you know?

ANNE-MARIE Casey’s stage adaptation of Little Women premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in November 2011.

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REVIEW: The Coppergate Woman, York Theatre Royal, until Sunday ***

Radiant: Kate Hampson’s Coppergate Woman sees the light in The Coppergate Woman. Picture: : Jane Hobson

THIS is the first York Theatre Royal community play in five years and, more significantly, the first since pandemic restrictions were lifted, although the cloud of Covic hangs all too heavy over Maureen Lennon’s storytelling drama.

There is a sense of relief that we can gather again, perform together, build plays from scratch with faces old and new, but The Coppergate Woman is not a drama suffused with joy until its finale’s promise of a post-apocalyptic green new world.

Such a vision is ushered in with composer and musical director Nicolas Lewis’s most upbeat song, hand claps and all, but given all that is going around us, from higher and higher temperatures to higher and higher living costs and fuel prices, it is sung on a wing and a prayer.

The harsh realities of these times have seen cast members pull out through not being able to afford the travel costs or having to commit to working extra shifts to make ends meet, and therefore no longer being available for the heavy rota of rehearsals.

Ancient meets modern in The Coppergate Woman at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Jane Hobson

That said, community spirit bursts out of the 90 performers and plentiful choir members, as they build on the legacy of Blood + Chocolate (on York’s streets in 2013), In Fog And Falling Snow (at the National Railway Museum in 2015) and Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes (by the Minster and at the Theatre Royal in 2017 ).

All three were rooted in York history, and so, to an extent, is The Coppergate Woman, albeit she is as much a woman of mystery as Viking history. Her bones were found in a shallow grave in an excavation by the River Foss and she has since lain encased in glass at Jorvik Viking Centre.

Research revealed she had moved to Jorvik (York) from either South-West Norway or northernmost Scotland, was robustly built, had a pronounced limp from a degenerative joint disorder, consumed a heap of herring in her lifetime and died at 46.

Hull playwright Maureen Lennon’s number one haunt as a child was Jorvik, where she was drawn to those bones and to the model of that woman in blue. Now she puts flesh on those bones, and after the choir, ensemble and assorted principals set the play in motion on Sara Perks’s open-plan, uncluttered set with a backdrop of David Callanan’s audio-visual designs, professional actor Kate Hampson’s Coppergate Woman emerges in her glass case in that familiar blue.

Breakout moment: Kate Hampson’s Coppergate Woman emerges in her glass case. Picture: Jane Hobson

She duly smashes the case – as denoted by the sound of breaking glass and accompanying visuals – and sets about smashing the scientific facts as she re-awakes in modern-day York, charged with uncovering the answers as to why we are where we are.

She was 44, she corrects with a smile, probably a weaver, and now certainly a weaver of stories. Now let’s get down to business. She will be the conduit between past and present in Lennon’s world of myth and modern reality, but first she sets the scene, with a humorous observant eye, one that made your reviewer crave for rather more of this then-and-now contrasting York detail.

Coppergate Woman comments with amusement on Jorvik Viking Centre’s infamous stinking smell, but then sniffs 2022 York air for the first time. It smells of metal, she says, chemicals and cleaned surfaces: a triple-whammy discomfiting reminder of pollution, climate change and Covid.

Later, reference is made to King’s Square now being the place of buskers: another wry observation that plays well to the home crowd filling the Theatre Royal auditorium.

Sigyn (Catherine Edge) catches venom to protect her imprisoned husband Loki (Edward Hammond). Picture: Jane Hobson

Past and present constantly interweave in Lennon’s dense construction as she asks: “In an ever-changing world, how do we hang on to who we are when the grounds are shifting beneath our feet? How do we look forward and rebuild, when the End Times feel ever more real?”

Coppergate Woman sheds the rudimentary clothing to be revealed as a Valkyrie, a shepherd of the dead and dying, a servant of Odin, whose duty is to guide lost souls to the halls of Valhalla. Why? Because Ragnarok is coming, “when the gods will perish, fire will triumph, and only then will the world will rise again, made anew”.

In other words, Hell on Earth is nothing new, as Lennon mirrors four stories of ghastly, grim, abominable Norse legend with torrid tales of toiling, struggling people in York today.

As old gods do battle with new, Lennon favours an epic scale for the past, the world of Odin (Paul Mayo Mason), Frigg (Jessica Murray), Baldr (Andy Williams), thunderous Thor (Andrew Isherwood), cunning Loki (Edward Hammond), wife Sigyn (Catherine Edge) and Fenrir, the wolf (portrayed by a swaying sextet of bodies, superbly choreographed by movement director Xolani Crabtree).

York Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster, left, and playwright Maureen Lennon with the model of the Coppergate Woman at Jorvik Viking Centre

Modern York’s stories are more in keeping with soap opera or kitchen-sink drama: from Nicola Wild’s Sarah to Val Burgess’s Nana, Joanne Rule’s Fern to community play debutant Darren Barrott, constantly kicking out in frustration.

The voice of the future, the herald of hope, is young Liv (Hannah Simpson on Wednesday, sharing the role with Ilya Cuthell), driven by her predilection for painting in the rain (and if she didn’t start off with watercolours, they would be by the end).

Lennon does not shy away from the blood and guts of Norse legend, for example Loki being bound in chains made from the stretched entrails of his son. Those entrails are red, a virulent colour motif that runs throughout the play, used to powerful effect both by designer Perks and movement director Lewis.

Hampson, in her belated Theatre Royal debut in the city where she has lived for three decades, leads with a performance that glows: she can be gravely serious, frustrated, questing, comforting, resolute, but also delights in shards of humour and a narrator’s permission to step outside the action.

Hammer to the Thor: Andrew Isherwood enjoys delivering another blow in The Coppergate Woman. Picture: Jane Hobson

Isherwood’s Thor, hair extensions et al, has something of the Marvel comic-book about him; Barrott and Hammond stand out too, but this is a team show, from ensemble to choir, musicians to a multitude of costume makers and the hair and make-up crew.

Hazel Jupp’s costume designs are worthy of a carnival, and praise too for Craig Kilmartin’s lighting and Mike Redley’ sound (making light of having so many voices on stage).

Nicolas Lewis’s largely earnest compositions would benefit from more oomph and greater contrast, characteristics essential to community singing that demands rather more fun and coloratura. Too much had to weigh on that last number.

Directors Juliet Forster and John R Wilkinson pull the strings of such a large-scale enterprise with a passion for community theatre writ large, spectacle aplenty and more than a nod to in-vogue gig theatre. The joy here, however, rests more in that return after five years than in a troubling play for the End of Days that feels a bit of a drag when we need an uplift.

The Coppergate Woman, York Theatre Royal, 7.30pm tonight until Saturday; 2.30pm matinees, Saturday and Sunday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

The end: Composer and musical director Nicolas Lewis, centre, leading the finale to The Coppergate Woman. Picture: Jane Hobson
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More Things To Do in York and beyond amid festival fever and a Viking reawakening. List No. 93, courtesy of The Press, York

Bull : York band play Deer Shed Festival 12 on Sunday

MUSIC in meadows and parks, a Viking community play and Osmondmania revisited, knitting and a superstar by the sea are Charles Hutchinson’s alternatives to summer holiday queues at ports.    

Festival of the weekend: Deer Shed Festival 12, Baldersby Park, Topcliffe, near Thirsk, today and tomorrow

DEER Shed Festival 12 takes the theme of Pocket Planet, “a celebration of different things from different planets”, spanning live music, DJ sets, comedy, science, Fringe and children’s shows, spoken word, films, sports, workshops and wellbeing.

John Grant, from Buchanan, Michigan, headlines the main stage tonight, preceded by a special guest set from Self Esteem, alias Rebecca Lucy Taylor, from Sheffield/Rotherham. Art-rock Londoners  Django Django top Sunday’s bill, backed up by South London post-punk hipsters Dry Cleaning, while York’s ebullient Bull headline the Acorn Stage that night. For ticket details, head to: deershedfestival.com.

The Feeling: Headlining MeadowFest in Malton. Picture: Andy Hughes

The other festival at the weekend: MeadowFest, Talbot Hotel gardens and riverside meadows, Malton, today, 10am to 10pm

MALTON’S boutique midsummer music festival, MeadowFest, welcomes headliners The Feeling, Alistair Griffin, New York Brass Band, Huge and Hyde Family Jam to the main stage.

Performing on the Hay Bale Stage will be Flatcap Carnival, Ross McWhirter, Simon Snaize, George Rowell, Maggie Wakeling, Nick Rooke, The Twisty Turns and Graeme Hargreaves.

Children’s entertainment, inflatables, fairground rides, street food and a festival bar are further attractions. Bring folding chairs, picnics…and well-behaved dogs on leads. Tickets: tickettailor.com/events/visitmalton.

Kate Hampson in the title role of The Coppergate Woman, York Theatre Royal’s summer community play

Play of the week: The Coppergate Woman, York Theatre Royal, today until August 7

IN an ever-changing world, how do we hang on to who we are when the grounds are shifting beneath our feet? How do we look forward and rebuild, when the end times feel ever more real? In the heart of York lies a woman with the answers.

Discovered in a shallow pit by the River Foss, the remains of an unknown woman are displayed in a Jorvik Viking Centre glass cage for all to see. Until, one day, the visitors are no more, the city is quiet and the Coppergate Woman rises again in Maureen Lennon’s community play, directed by Juliet Forster and John R Wilkinson with a cast of 90 led by Kate Hampson. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Crowning glory: Annie Stothert’s papier-mâché sculpture at Blossom Street Gallery

Exhibitions of the week: Colourforms, by Fiona Lane and Claire West; Enchanted Forest, by Annie Stothert, Blossom Street Gallery, York

BLOSSOM Street Gallery has two exhibitions running simultaneously until the end of August.

Colourforms presents brightly coloured paintings by York Open Studios mixed-media artist Fiona Lane and “art to make you smile” painter Claire West, from Beverley. Enchanted Forest brings together a highly imaginative collection of papier-mâché sculptures by Annie Stothert, from Yorkshire, inspired by folklore, myth and fairy tales.

Yoshika Colwell: Knitting together music, metaphysics and words in Invisible Mending at the Stilly Fringe

Edinburgh Fringe taster of the week: Yoshika Colwell in Invisible Mending, Stilly Fringe, At The Mill, Stillington, near York, Sunday, 7pm

IN the summer of 2020 as a pandemic raged, Yoshika Colwell was processing the death of her beloved grandmother, Ann. A woman of few words, Ann’s main outlet was her glorious, virtuosic knitting. As she approached the end of her life, Ann started a project with no pattern and no end goal.

Yoshika takes up this piece where Ann left off, creating a show about love, grief and knitting with fellow experimental music/theatre-maker Max Barton, from Second Body. Original music, metaphysics and verbatim material combine to explore the power in small acts of creativity. Box office: atthemill.org.

How they became big in the Seventies: The Osmonds: A New Musical tells the family story in song at the Grand Opera House, York

Musical of the week: The Osmonds: A New Musical, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday to Saturday

YOU loved them for a reason. Now, for the first time, family drummer Jay Osmond turns his story into a family drama on the musical stage, offering the chance to re-live the ups and downs, the hits and the hysteria of the clean-living Seventies’ boy band from Utah, USA.

Directed by Shaun Kerrison and choreographed by Olivier Award-winning Bill Deamer, this is Jay’s official account of how five brothers born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints faith were pushed into the spotlight as children on the Andy Williams Show and the hits then flowed, Crazy Horses, Let Me In et al. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

Christina Aguilera: Biggest American female star to play Scarborough Open Air Theatre since Britney Spears

American superstar grand entrance of the week: Christina Aguilera, supported by Union J, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, Tuesday, gates open at 6pm

CHRISTINA Aguilera piles up the Billboard Hot 100 hits, the Grammy awards and the 43 million record sales, to go with the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the honour of being the only artist under the age of 30 to feature in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 greatest singers of all time.

Add to those accolades her coaching on NBC’s The Voice and her role as a global spokesperson for World Hunger Relief. Tuesday, however, is all about Genie In A Bottle, Beautiful, What A Girl Wants, Dirty and Fighter. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

Kate Pettitt: Kate Pettitt: One of the artists taking part in Arnup Studios Summer Open Weekend. Picture: Olivia Brabbs

Open studios of the week: Arnup Studios Summer Open Weekend, Panman Lane, Holtby, near York, August 6 and 7, 10am to 5pm

ARNUP Studios open their countryside doors for a weekend of art, craft and, fingers crossed, summer sunshine.

Once the home and workplace of the late potter and sculptor Mick and Sally Arnup, Arnup Studios are now run by daughter and stoneware potter Hannah, who oversaw their renovation. Liz Foster, Michelle Galloway, Kate Pettitt, Reg Walker, Emma Welsh and Hannah all have working studios there.

All but abstract sculptor Reg of these resident artists will be taking part, showing a mix of painting, print, drawing, ceramics and jewellery. They will be on hand to discuss their work and share processes and techniques with visitors, who are invitated to buy original one-off pieces of art and craft, smaller gifts and cards direct from the makers or simply to browse and enjoy the day.

As well as a small carpark on site, free on-street parking is available in the village. The studios are bike and dog friendly; families are welcome. 

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Who was the Coppergate Woman? Kate Hampson prepares to put flesh on Viking bones in Theatre Royal community play

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

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

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

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

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

Kate Hampson in rehearsal for The Coppergate Woman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright of The Press, York