Laura Broughton-Janes’ Antipholus of Ephesus, second from right, and her servant, Liz Duggan’s Dromio, in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead
KATIE Leckey and Emily Carhart buckle up to steer Shakespeasre’s “shortest and possibly funniest play” into piratical waters, replete with lusty sea shanties and the sound of crashing waves.
“The morally questionable, yet still comedic, nature of many (if not all) of the characters put us in mind of some of our favourite piratical antiheroes,” they said in their mission statement.
“We felt like the framing device of piracy gave us the chance to include slapstick violence between ‘masters and servants’ in a way that wouldn’t seem too brutal or alien to a modern audience.”
Two masts from a shipwreck hang over the stage to evoke seafaring in the black box theatre, where the staging is otherwise minimalist, largely left bare for physical comedy and fast-fizzing farce.
Ben Reeves-Rowley’s Solinus, the Duke of Ephesus, in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead
A plinth is moved into place to denote the higher status of Solinus, the Duke of Ephesus (played by Ben Reeves-Rowley with the clipped vowels and tightened jaw of King Charles III). Later, two sets of doors – the time-honoured harbingers of imminent farce – make appearances, one as the entrance to the abbey, the other with skeleton door knockers in keeping with the piratical reboot.
Andrew Wrenn’s vexed Egeon has to wade his way through a chunk of exposition before the play settles into its rhythm of mistaken identities, spun around two sets of identical twins. Helen Clarke’s flamboyant Antipholus of Syracuse and her servant, Kat Lazarus’s flirtatious Dromio arrive on the corrupt pirate isle of Ephesus , where Laura Broughton-Janes’ Antipholus of Ephesus and her servant, Liz Duggan’s Dromio, are already caught up in the debauched shenanigans.
Add a tavern and booty, and let the misunderstandings and misbehaviour multiply, involving the likes of Ro Trimble’s haughty Adriana, wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, Leckey’s Luciano, always quick with a jest, and Harry Summers’ oft-baffled Angelo .
You will note that Antipholus times two are now female, all part of the gender fluidity brought to The Comedy Of Errors by Leckey and Carhart, prompted by being “intrigued by the lack of traditional gender and romantic dynamics in the play”.
“In Elizabethan culture, there was a more flexible understanding of physical and romantic intimacy between same sex partners, as well as a fluid approach to the representation of gender on stage,” they say. “We feel our production is a celebration of relationships of many kinds, platonic, familial and romantic.”
Kat Lazarus’s Dromio of Syracuse, front,and Helen Clarke’s Antipholus of Syracuse in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead
Laura Broughton-Janes’ Antipholus of Ephesus and her servant, Liz Duggan’s Dromio, in York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead
Luciana becomes Luciano, played by Leckey with a droll air and a cigarette in hand, in a late change of casting that affirms their relish for comic friction and interplay.
The slapstick even features slaps to the face; the likes of Trimble and Reeves-Rowley make the words sing; Andrea Mitchell’s Emilia, the Abbess, gives the peachiest cameo; the musicians on the mezzanine level (Rebecca Jackson, Izzie Burger de Fremol, Vicky Hatt and Emily Rowan) convey matters of the heart and sea, and the sets of twins are so identical that the audience may well have to keep looking twice.
The gender transitions add to the physical comedy, but this is not a play of memorable verbal wit or intellectual insight.
Carhart even called it “silly”, as light as a bubble, and certainly she and Leckey have fun with it, giving it fresh zest, although their claim of its status as “possibly Shakespeare’s funniest play” is debatable.
York Shakespeare Project presents The Comedy Of Errors, Theatre@41, Monkgate, 7.30pm nightly until Saturday, plus2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Cassi Roberts’s Messenger and Andrew Wrenn’s Egeon in rehearsal for York Shakespeare Project’s piratical The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead
IN Katie Leckey and Emily Carhart’s piratical twist on The Comedy Of Errors for York Shakespeare Project, the original text of Shakespeare’s “shortest and possibly funniest” play will be merged with slapstick, farce and physical comedy.
Opening tomorrow (21/10/2026) at Theatre@41, Monkgate, the production combines the directorial talents of Leckey, director of York company Griffonage Theatre, and Carhart, who worked with Katie on York Settlement Community Players’ staging of Joe Orton’s Loot and Griffonage’s showcase of Lady Augusta Gregory works, Fourtold.
In their opening statement, explaining the pirate overhaul, they say: “The morally questionable, yet still comedic, nature of many, if not all, of the characters put us in mind of some of our favourite piratical antiheroes.
“We felt like the framing device of piracy gave us the chance to include slapstick violence between ‘masters and servants’ in a way that wouldn’t seem too brutal or alien to a modern audience.”
Emily says: “We realised that we both wanted to pitch to direct this production, having become friends through working together, and so we chatted about it…
…“Two heads are better than one,” says Katie. “We wanted to use our individual strengths to look at different aspects to make a coherent whole, a well-rounded piece.”
The Comedy Of Errors co-director Emily Carhart
“Katie is more experienced in physical theatre and clowning, whereas I focus on the voice, text, relationships between character,” says Emily.
“It’s all in there anyway, where it begs for the comedy to be made physical,” says Katie. “Sometimes the physical just has to happen because otherwise a joke won’t land.”
Both co-directors were devotees already of Shakespeare’s “most farcical play”, the 1592 one with the two sets of identical twins. Why? “It’s just a really silly play,” says Emily. “In fairness, I think he intended it to be silly! It’s fast and zippy and a lot shorter than most of his plays, and when you unpick the language, it’s loaded with punchlines.
“It gives you a plot to play with because the characters are in a ridiculous situation and so you don’t have to take it seriously, but it’s written in a sophisticated way that uses metaphorical language. That said, it may be a controversial thing to say but it’s quite a surface-level play.”
Katie adds: “The reason I like it is because it’s a farce, and obviously I’m no stranger to farces [such as Orton’s Loot]. What drew me to it is that it’s such a succinct farce, whereas Twelfth Night and As You Like It are much longer and get muddled by having too many plotlines.
Ben Reeves-Rowley’s Solinus and Harry Summers’s Angelo in the rehearsal room for York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors. Picture: John Stead
“This play is cohesive, cut and dry, and that makes it easier to play with. There’s none of the weirdness of the ending of Love’s Labour’s Lost; nothing that doesn’t gel or make sense – and so I can just put slapstick in it!”
The pirate twist emerged in response to the “insinuation of domestic violence and adultery in the play”. “Characters are immoral or amoral – devoid of morals – which tonally didn’t meld with the play, so we thought, ‘how can we keep it as a light comedy?’, which led to pirates,” says Emily.
“Everyone has an idea of pirates, from Treasure Island, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Muppet Treasure Island, with all that swashbuckling flamboyancy of piracy,” says Katie, who will play Luciano, by the way. “It lightens the whole thing, with everyone knowing that pirates are into pirating and plundering, but everyone still likes them!”
“That’s why you buy into the convention that it’s fun and silly,” says Emily. “I think it also makes it more accessible to modern audiences because of the dynamics of ‘masters and servants’, so we’ve set it in the golden age of piracy,” adds Katie.
When? The end of the Stuart era/beginning of the Georgian era… “but we’ve added Victorian costumes too because of how people think of pirates in that time,” says Katie. “It’s very much a vibe, rather than historical accuracy,” says Emily, who will bring her puppetry skills to the show.
The Comedy Of Errors co-director Katie Leckey
The co-directors were keen to apply gender swapping to “make some things less unpalatable while still drawing attention to how sexist the text is”.
“We were intrigued by the lack of traditional gender and romantic dynamics in the play,” they say. “In Elizabethan culture, as depicted in many of Shakespeare’s plays, there was a more flexible understanding of physical and romantic intimacy between same sex partners, as well as a fluid approach to the representation of gender on stage. We feel our production is a celebration of relationships of many kinds, platonic, familial and romantic.”
Katie says: “We’ve made it a matriarchy, rather than a patriarchy. We also have a same sex couple now, which I was keen to do as it feels the perfect time to do it, without shoehorning it into the plot.”
Emily adds: “It’s interesting to see a woman play such an unpleasant character [Antipholus], when we’re used to seeing men playing the role, which makes it all the more jarring.”
Katie concludes: “People will hopefully accept what we’ve done with the play. It feels right, rather than forced, so I can’t see it being done any other way now!”
York Shakespeare Project in The Comedy Of Errors, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, October 21 to 24, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
High laughs on the high seas: York Shakespeare Project’s piratical poster for this week’s production of The Comedy Of Errors
Plot summary for York Shakespeare Project’s The Comedy Of Errors
“AVAST ye landlubbers! Set sail for York Shakespeare Project’s piratical production of The Comedy of Errors!,” reads the invitation from directors Katie Leckey and Emily Carhart.
“The flamboyant captain Antipholus and flirtatious first mate Dromio arrive at the corrupt pirate isle of Ephesus to find that it has everything a salty sea dog requires: a tavern, a shipwreck, sea shanties, talking parrots, general debauchery and (of course) a whole lot of booty!
“However, things start to get very confusing very quickly, when both the captain and first mate don’t seem to be acting like themselves.
“In a plot laden with mistaken identity, colourful characters, swashbuckling action and a fair bit of slapstick, this be Shakespeare but not as ye know it.”
Who is in the cast for The Comedy Of Errors?
Antipholus of Syracuse: Helen Clarke Dromio of Syracuse: Kat Lazarus Antipholus of Ephesus: Laura Broughton-Janes Dromio of Ephesus: Liz Duggan Adriana: Ro Trimble Luciano: Katie Leckey Solinus, The Duke of Ephesus: Ben Reeves-Rowley Egeon: Andrew Wrenn Emilia, The Abbess: Andrea Mitchell Angelo: Harry Summers Balthazar: Grace Scott Officer/Messenger: Cassi Roberts Courtesan: Jacob Bassford Dr Pinch/Nell: Jess Netherway First Merchant/Nell: Stuart Green Second Merchant: Thomas Jennings
The poster for Wildflower Wildfire’s Botanically Brontë – A Literary Cocktail Experience. Artwork by Laura Crow. Calligraphy by Emily Hansen, Leaf on Letters
WILDFLOWER Wildfire invites you to step in the world of Yorkshire’s scribbling siblings, the Brontës, for Botanically Brontë – A Literary Cocktail Experience at Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, on September 25.
This original immersive theatre event blends storytelling, performance and botanical drinks in a journey through the seasons alongside Charlotte, Anne, Emily and Branwell Brontë, exploring their lives, relationships and literary legacy.
“Across the performance, audiences will be served four specially created botanical cocktails, each inspired by a different season and member of the Brontë family, from the bright florals of Elastic Springs to the bittersweet Last Winter Rose,” says event creator Xandra Logan, York actress, writer and producer – and barrister to boot – who has moved into theatre development to make this 90-minute piece for this autumn’s York Food and Drink Festival.
Miles John: Playing Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls
“Expect literature, atmosphere, storytelling and a little theatrical magic as the world of the Brontës is brought to life around you. No prior knowledge of the Brontës needed.”
Incorporating bespoke cocktails as part of the package, “there will be both alcoholic and non-alcoholic options to suit audience preference”.
The cast comprises Vicki Glover as Charlotte Brontë; Xandra Logan as Emily Brontë; Leah Paige as Anne Brontë; Katie Leckey as Branwell Brontë; Adam Marsdin as Patrick Brontë; Miles John as Arthur Bell Nicholls; Laura Haynes Bury as Martha Brown and Molly Meleady-Hanley as The Phantom.
Xandra Logan: Founder of Wildflower Wildfire, who will play Emily Brontë
“The production is an ensemble piece and the characters all make up an important part of the Brontë story,” says Xandra. “The actors are largely based in this region or derived from here. The production is an ensemble piece and the characters all make up an important part of the Brontë story.”
Drawing on her Yorkshire roots, Xandra is “delighted to portray Emily and explore her fierce imagination, independence and connection to the landscape that shaped her work.”
Her latest role follows screen appearances in Cut Deep, Closing Time and Before The Leaves Turn and the title role on stage in Mary Rose.
Vicki Glover: “Delighted to return to the Brontë world as Charlotte”
Vicki Glover trained on the RADA Foundation course and is completing her BA (Hons) Acting studies at Manchester School of Theatre. Acting professionally since the age of 14, her credits include Shrek 2, The Murder Trial Live, The Manson Family Massacre and Operation Sparrowhawk. “After portraying Emily Brontë, Catherine Earnshaw and Catherine Linton previously, I’m delighted to return to the Brontë world as Charlotte,” she says.
West Yorkshire actress Leah Paige, who has experience across stage and screen, will play Anne. “Passionate about bringing overlooked stories to life, I’m thrilled to portray the often-underestimated Anne Brontë, celebrating her quiet strength, kindness and unwavering principles,” says Leah, who will make her feature debut on Amazon Prime later this year.
Northern Irish actor and director Katie Leckey (they/them), who will play Branwell Brontë, holds an MA in Theatre-Making from the University of York and is co-founder and artistic director of York company Griffonage Theatre, for whom they perform, write and direct.
Katie Leckey: “Looking forward to giving a voice to the often-underrepresented Branwell”
Leah Paige: “Passionate about bringing overlooked stories to life“
Their credits include A Kingdom Jack’d (Merchant Adventurers’ Hall), Shakespeare and Rome (York Museums Trust/York International Shakespeare Festival), Queer Spaces (York Theatre Royal/Stephen Joseph Theatre), Dung Beetle Dan (Thunk-It Theatre, Deer Shed Festival) and The Courteous Enemy (Edinburgh Fringe).
“I’m looking forward to giving a voice to the often-underrepresented Branwell and bringing his poetry to life in Botanically Brontë,” says Katie.
Last seen on stage in York in Party Piece at Theatre@41, Monkgate. and as Dr Little in Goodnight Mister Tom at Harrogate Theatre, Adam Marsdin will play Patrick Brontë. Alongside numerous film credits across Yorkshire, he presents Pantheon Mythology, trains at NGA Leeds and is an Equity member.
“I relish exploring the warmth behind the disciplined Victorian father,” says Adam Marsdin of his role as Patrick Brontë
“I relish exploring the warmth behind the disciplined Victorian father: Patrick’s delight in his children’s imaginations, his love and pride in who they become, and the poignancy of a man who ultimately outlived them all,” says Adam.
Miles John, a professional actor raised in Scarborough and trained at UCA Farnham, is cast as Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls. Working across stage, screen and voiceovers, his credits include Watch Me Die (Edinburgh Fringe), Loot (York Theatre Royal), The Grieving Stones (feature film), For King And Country (short film) and Pipistrelle Pipistrelle (radio drama).
Laura Haynes-Bury’s role will be Martha Brown. “I have particularly enjoyed exploring Martha as the eyes and ears of the Brontë household, offering an intimate glimpse into the family’s lives,” says Laura, whose credits include Till The Stars Come Down for York Actors Collective and various site-specific theatre performances.
Molly Meleady-Hanley: Appearing as The Phantom in Botanically Brontë
After graduating from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice, Sheffield-born actor and playwright Molly Meleady-Hanley will play The Phantom.
Her credits include Bigmouth at the Courtyard Theatre, London, as part of Camden Fringe, a self-written production at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre, and feature film Fritz And Matlock with Invisible Engine Films. “I’m excited to explore the world of the Brontës and sisterhood in Botanically Brontë as The Phantom,” she says.
Seat of power: Rosy Rowley’s Jack Falstaff, the fool mid-stool expunging on the throne. Picture: John Saunders
AMERICAN playwright Scott Bradley plays his Trump card by association in the York International Shakespeare Festival world premiere of A Kingdom Jack’d.
In situ for a month of rehearsals with fellow American Tempest Wisdom’s York company 1st Zanni Theatre, award-winning Iowa playwright, actor, director, producer and university lecturer Bradley asks the question: What if disgraced knight Jack Falstaff had landed on the throne in 1399, instead of serious warrior king Henry IV?
Enter birthday girl Rosy Rowley’s Falstaff – now King John II, no less – with a bibulous burp. Stupid, lecherous, selfish and still as funny as Queen Elizabeth I once found her favourite Shakespeare rogue, Bradley’s rambunctious lush must somehow fund the army, balance the budget and make foreign policy, betwixt naps, plentiful imbibing at the Boar’s Head Inn, Eastcheap, and multiple meals at any excuse.
At full throttle: Oliver James Parkins’ Henry “Hal” Holingbroke in a fight to the death with Katie Leckey’s Harry “Hotspur” Percyin A Kingdom Jack’d. Picture: John Saunders
In Bradley’s satirical spin on Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I, Falstaff’s government is drunk, his enemies are plotting, the Welsh are rising, even his allies are scheming, and girlfriend Doll Tearsheet (the outstanding Julia Bisby), the smart London harlot, wants in on the action.
Whipped up in two brisk 45-minute halves, book-ended by Jai Rowley’s pastiche period score, A Kingdom Jack’d pumps up the satirical volume with clowning physicality under Wisdom’s direction, while sounding the alarum bells for the consequences of buffoonery in positions of power.
As Wisdom puts it: “Scott has made Falstaff not only unpredictable, but dangerous. He now has institutional power on top of his pre-existing social power, and the thrill of watching the effects of that power unfold is hilarious and sickening in equal measure.”
Ro Trimble’s Lady “Kate” Percy in discussion with Katie Leckey’s Harry “Hotspur” Percy. Picture: John Saunders
In performance, the impact is more scabrously and scatalogically humorous than sickening (unless you are squeamish about the surfeit of swordplay in the Grand Guignol finale as the bodies pile up like uncollected bin bags in Birmingham in Pearl Mollison’s no-holds-barred fight choreography).
Rowley’s Falstaff is lairy, licentious, lewd, flippant as a pancake, and Bradley, Wisdom and Rowley alike revel in the symbolism of Falstaff flagrantly conducting ablutions in full view of all and sundry. By Rowley’s side, Bisby’s nimble Doll is droll and astute with a waspish crack of the quip in her putdowns.
Julia Bisby’s Doll Tearsheet stands over Rosy Rowley’s prone Jack Falstaff. Writer Scott Bradley, second from left, seated, front row, looks on. Picture: John Saunders
In a cast of 12, Wisdom draws both high energy and rhythmic versifying from their cast of 12, all relishing the proximity of the audience to the thrust staging within the timber frames of the history-soaked hall.
Kitted out splendidly in Grae Heidi-Brookes’s hand-made costumes, Oliver James Parkins evokes Charlie Chaplin’s face, floppy hair and impishly disruptive comedy in Henry “Hal” Holingbroke; Jodie Foster is a riot as Lady Quickly and especially the intemperate Owen Glendower; Jimmy Johnson and Katie Leckey maximise the clowning in their head-banging Sir Pistol & Sir Nym double act and Ro Trimble’s impresses equally in the high camp of Edmund Mortimer and the scheming allure of Lady “Kate” Percy.
In a running joke by Bradley, Lou Dunn’s shrunken wallflower John Bolingbroke keeps being forgotten or ignored by everyone on stage, but not by the audience. Elsewhere, not everything is easy to follow in the plot, especially in Act Two, but maybe that is a nod to Shakespeare too by the ever canny, mischievous Bradley.
KATIE Leckey and Emily Carhart will co-direct York Shakespeare Project’s autumn production of The Comedy Of Errors from October 21 to 24 at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York.
Katie and Emily worked together previously on York Settlement Community Players’ February 2025 production of Joe Orton’s Loot and Griffonage Theatre’s showcase of Lady Augusta Gregory plays, FourTold,last October.
“We promise an exciting take on Shakespeare’s shortest and possibly funniest play, re-imagining his early farce with a piratical twist, setting sail to the corrupt island of Ephesus, a land rife with crime, debauchery, swashbuckling action and a fair bit of slapstick,” they say.
Now all they need is a cast. Auditions will take place at Southlands Methodist Church, Bishopthorpe Road, York, from 2pm to 5pm on May 16 and 17, then 6.30pm to 9.30pm on May 18 and 19.
If you are interested in auditioning, please email [email protected] for more information.
The plot thickens: Paul Osborne’s Thomas Cromwell, left, and Ian Giles’s Cardinal Wolsey in Black Treacle Theatre’s Anne Boleyn
ANNE Boleyn (c.1501-1536) had an extra finger and one head too few after her execution by a French swordsman in the Tower of London.
One of these statements is fiction, the other is fact, but both persist down the years as how we know Anne best, such is the way myth and history overlap.
The sixth finger story was a 16th century fabrication spun by Roman Catholic polemicist Nicholas Sander in 1585 to suggest Anne was a witch in a smear campaign against her daughter, Queen Elizabeth I.
Yet acts of besmirching her as a whore were rife in Anne’s lifetime too, led by those at the very top, leading to her beheading, as Howard Brenton explores in his witty political drama.
Nick Patrick Jones’s Henry VIII in a tender moment with Lara Stafford’s Anne Boleyn. Picture: John Saunders
Premiered at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2010, Anne Boleyn now breaks its York duck under the direction of Black Treacle Theatre founder Jim Paterson, whose experience of watching a friend in the Globe cast had left an indelible impression.
“This year marks 500 years since Henry’s courtship of Anne began in earnest – in 1526. So it felt like serendipity to stage this play, which makes us reconsider who Anne was, and what an important figure she is in our history,” says Paterson, explaining the timing of his production.
Here’s the history bit: Anne Boleyn was the second wife of King Henry VIII, whose desire to marry her forced the break from the Roman Catholic Church and the dawn of the English Reformation. She was well read, intelligent, queen for only 1,000 days – and by common agreement, the best of the six, so sassy and saucy, in the ultra-competitive Six The Musical.
Brenton puts her front and centre of his historical yet modern epic, both as a ghost in the court of James I and in charting her courtship with Henry VIII, presenting a more rounded and nuanced portrait of Anne as lover, heretic, revolutionary, queen, at once brilliant and bright but reckless too, hot-headed and then not-headed. Was she prey or predator? You decide, maybe for the first time
In need of a stiff drink: Cameron O’Byrne’s George Villiers and Katie Leckey’s James I. Picture: John Saunders
The play opens with Lara Stafford’s Anne Boleyn in monologue mode, as she enters the checkboard stage in her bloodstained execution dress, carrying a large embroidered bag. Brenton’s opening stage instruction reads “Aside. Working the audience”, immediately establishing that this play will be on her own terms, like a comedian’s opening gambit or a Fool’s mission statement in Shakespeare, as she teases the audience over the bag’s potential content.
“And why should I want you to love me?” she asks us. “Did anyone around me ever love me, but for the King?” And there’s the rub. Who was on her side? Brenton, as it turns out, Jesus, as she declares, and a curious James I (Katie Leckey), keen to use her information to aid his unconventional attempts to bring warring religious factions together decades later.
Anne pulls out the Bible, or more precisely William Tyndale’s banned version that would sew the seeds of her execution, with a flourish worthy of Tommy Cooper, but with a heavy heart, before making light of her execution when finally producing the severed head. “Funny, a head’s smaller than you think. Heavy little cabbage, that’s all.”
This sets Brenton’s tone, one where his comic irreverence rubs up against reverence, or more precisely the mirage of reverence in a world where Henry’s England waives the rules, where the intrigue and political machinations of Henry’s court undermine and belie the intersection of crown and church.
Anne Boleyn director Jim Paterson
Somehow, Stafford’s Anne must show her mettle to find her way through that ever-tightening thicket, and likewise Leckey’s James I, the Scottish king (here with a fellow Celtic/Northern Irish accent), must negate all the vipers’ poison when assuming the English throne.
In an outstanding return to a lead role, Stafford’s risk-taking Anne exudes intelligence, pluck, conviction, sometimes with humour, like when she mocks Ian Giles’s West Country Cardinal Wolsey for being woolly; sometimes with grave sadness, in the abject despair at failed pregnancies; or at the close, with sincerity, as she champions the power of love (uncannily just as Hercule Poirot does in the finale to Death On The Nile, on tour at the Grand Opera House this week).
Leckey, one of the volcanic forces of the 2020s’ York theatre scene with her Griffonage Theatre exploits, is tremendous here too. Surely James I should not be so much fun, but he is, whether flaunting his relationship with Cameron O’Byrne’s George Villiers, reaching for a glass, mocking the martinet dourness of Paul Stonehouse’s Robert Cecil or being as capricious as President Trump in making decisions.
Bible matters: Maurice Crichton’s William Tyndale in discussion with Lara Stafford’s Ann Boleyn. Picture: John Saunders
Stafford’s Anne aside, the women have to play second fiddle, treading on glass to survive in the court, whether Lady Rochford (Abi Baxter), Lady Celia (Isabel Azar) or next-in-Henry’s- roving- eye-line Lady Jane (Rebecca Jackson).
Heavyweights of the York stage assemble for the juiciest male roles. Nick Patrick Jones brings Shakespearean heft (rather than physical bulk) to Henry, already entitled and erratic, demanding and wilful, boastful of his writing powers, but still allowed shards of humour by Brenton (albeit at Henry’s expense) in this clash of the legal and the regal.
Paul Osborne’s Thomas Cromwell, statesman, lawyer and Henry’s chief minister, emerges as the villain of the piece, misogynistic, devious, manipulative, his language industrial, his actions self-serving behind the veneer of duty, with “something of the night about him”. Osborne makes for a complex character rather the two-dimensional baddie of pantomime.
Giles’s Catholic cardinal Thomas Wolsey is the stuffed shirt of Brenton’s piece, righteous, exasperated, as forlorn as Canute when standing against the winds of change.
Drafting the Reformation Act: Paul Miles’s Sloop, left, Harry Summers’ Simpkin and Paul Osborne’s Thomas Cromwell. Picture: John Saunders
Never averse to scene-stealing impact, Maurice Crichton brings a twinkle and bravado to William Tyndale, writer of the outlawed Bible that would later form the basis of the King James version. His scenes with Stafford’s Anne are an especial joy.
Harry Summers’ Simpkin/Parrot, Paul Miles’s Sloop, Sally Mitcham’s Dean Lancelot Andrewes and Martina Meyer’s John Reynolds further stir the murky waters, while Richard Hampton’s open-plan set and Julie Fisher and Costume Crew’s costumes evoke the Tudor and Stuart periods.
All in all, Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn is far funnier than living in those turbulent times must have been.
Anne Boleyn, Black Treacle Theatre, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight, 7.30pm; tomorrow, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: https://tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Making a splash: Katie Leckey’s Darby and Ben Koch’s Taig in The Bogie Men in Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold showcase of Lady Augusta Gregory plays. Picture: John Stead
THIS is a landmark production by Griffonage Theatre, the York company that likes to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.
Certainly Lady Augusta Gregory’s plays would qualify as unfamiliar, but maybe it is not so strange that they are strangers to the British stage. They were, they are, Irish plays about Irish people for Irish actors and Irish audiences, presented predominantly at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre and in America too but rarely crossing the Irish Sea.
Now, Katie Leckey, Northern Irish actor-director, University of York MA graduate and co-founder of Griffonage Theatre, is presenting her adaptation of four of the late-blooming County Galway playwright’s largely forgotten one-act plays, penned from 1903 to 1914 and never previously staged together over here.
This is a passion project for Leckey, a Lady Augusta enthusiast with plans to study the “criminally under-performed” plays of the Roxborough rural estate dramatist, folklorist and Abbey Theatre co-founder for a PhD. Theatre@41, sure to become increasingly experimental under Tom Bellerby’s directorship, is just the place to dust off her ladyship’s light comedies for reappraisal.
Grace Palma’s Mrs Tarpey and Ben Koch’s James Ryan in Lady Augusta Gregory’s one-act comedy drama Spreading The News. Picture: John Stead
The black-box theatre takes on a traverse configuration, the audience seated to either side of the combustible capers that unfold in Baile Aighneas, or “The Town of Dispute”, as Leckey terms it to reflect how each play is so disputatious.
As presented in the Fay Brothers’ house style at the Abbey Theatre, performances would focus on the storytelling, the voice, the lyrical Irish dialect. Leckey emphasises that too, but rather than “park and bark” theatre, she has favoured the injection of physicality, both in the presentation of that language and in the characterisation, now rooted as much in movement as meter.
You might see parallels with Dylan Thomas’s Welsh village Llareggub in Under Milk Wood; Leckey sees the plays as a “snapshot of a very strange rural Irish town: like Royston Vasey, home of The League Of Gentlemen, meeting Father Ted”.
The League Of Gentlemen is closest to the exaggerated comedic style here, where the comedy may be billed as light but is invariably darker and more heavy handed in performance. The audience laughter comes more from the physicality than Gregory’s often truculent dialogue, penned in Irish dialect but now performed in myriad accents.
Clash of coats: James Lee’s Mr Mineog and Katie Leckey’s Mr Hazel, newspaper editors writing each other off in Lady Augusta Gregory’s Coats. Picture: John Stead
What’s more, being convoluted and percussive in sentence structure, its loquacity can make it hard to follow. The tendency is for the playing to be so boisterous in pushing for the laughs that combative voices become cacophonous, but pumping up the volume is no guarantee to tickle the funny bone.
Blarney and bluster are the heartbeat of the four plays, first up the bustling market place of Spreading The News, where town gossip wreaks havoc, rumours spiral beyond control, apples and maybe blood is spilled, tongues wag and Leckey’s tricycle-riding magistrate is a law unto himself, imagination running roughshod over the truth.
Ben Koch’s James Ryan, spiralling around his walking stick, and Grace Palma’s bow-legged, bent-double Mrs Tarpey bring clowning personality to their roles.
Coats has the classic comedic structure of a mix-up: two coats being taken off, then the wrong one being put back on, with a piece of paper in the pocket of each coat now being in the possession of the wrong person.
Cheered to the rafters: Ben Koch’s Hyacinth Halvey in Lady Augusta Gregory’s Hyacinth Halvey at Theatre@41, Monkgate. Picture: John Stead
Caught in a war of words are two highly competitive newspaper editors, James Lee’s Mr Mineog and Leckey’s Mr Hazel, who have brought each other’s obituary notice to their club restaurant, where polite etiquette comes under ever greater threat as the heat and volume rises in the serpentine scheming.
Next stop, the post office, where Hyacinth Halvey (Ben Koch) has sent word he is coming to town. The young dandy’s reputation precedes him, sending the townsfolk into a frenzy, hanging on his every word on arrival, no matter what he says. Wilf Tomlinson’s preening James Quirke comes to the fore too as Koch’s Hyacinth takes everything in his stride.
Leckey and executive producer Jack Mackay’s company like their shows to stand at the intersection of the madcap and the macabre. Gregory tends more towards the madcap, although the macabre, or maybe the grotesque, nudges into Spreading The News and Hyacinth Halvey.
The climactic two-hander The Bogie Men could be a forerunner of fellow Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s 1952 tragicomedy Waiting For Godot, with its chimney-sweep protagonists, Leckey’s Darby and Koch’s Taig, forging a double act in Vladimir and Estragon mode, in matching brace, shirts, trousers, boots and even battered hats at one point.
Helen Clarke-Neale’s Mrs Delane and James Lee’s Miss Joyce in Griffonage Theatre’s Hyacinth Halvey. Picture: John Stead
Rather than passing the time waiting for Godot, they find themselves at a coach stop, “almost indistinguishably similar” but soon finding mutual reasons to argue and fall out. Again, the volume is turned up as high as Spinal Tap’s “11”, but Koch and Leckey elicit the show’s most successful comic friction.
Helen Clarke-Neale, Emily Carhart and Peter Hopwood add to the ensemble’s colourful characterisation, while James Lee cos-plays mischievously as Mrs Tully and Miss Joyce.
Joined by Leckey’s lusty vocals for Irish pub songs in the interval, Ayse Kaban-Bowers delights with her fiery fiddle when playing between plays.
Truth be told, FourTold is unlikely to spark a nationwide rush to rediscover Lady Augusta Gregory’s obscure curiosities, but Leckey’s enthusiasm is matched by a cast determined to re-light their fire in explosive fashion.
Griffonage Theatre presents FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Griffonage Theatre’s poster for this week’s quadruple bill of Lady Augusta Gregory comediesat Theatre@41, Monkgate
Griffonage Theatre director Katie Leckey in rehearsal for FourTold, next week’s focus on Irish playwright Lady Augusta Gregory at Theatre@41, Monkgate. Picture: John Stead
CHANCES are high that you will never have heard of Lady Augusta Gregory, but why not?
“Because she fell out of favour in her native Ireland,” says Griffonage Theatre co-founder and director Katie Leckey, introducing the neglected playwright from rural Roxborough, County Galway, whose work will be reactivated in FourTold, the York company’s quadruple bill of one-act comedies at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York from October 6 to 10.
Here are the facts: Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory was an Anglo-Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager, who co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, with William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn.
“She was very popular in the early 20th century, in America too, and she was especially popular in own lifetime [Augusta died on May 22 1932, aged 80]. She was still being performed regularly until the mid-1950s,” says Katie. “But her plays died out mainly because they were mostly performed at Abbey Theatre, which she’d helped to create.
“What these plays were at the time was commercial theatre, light comedies. Irish plays written for Irish people, performed by Irish actors.
James Lee in the rehearsal room for Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold. Picture: John Stead
“Only one of the plays we’re doing has been toured anywhere near recently, and even that was 25 years ago, when two productions were done in England, but Coats has never been performed in the UK.”
Until now…when Griffonage Theatre, the York company with University of York roots and a flair for the madcap and macabre, will feature Coats in FourTold, an “evening of captivating storytelling, complete with a live band, performed in an intimate setting that makes you feel right at home, wherever that may be”.
FourTold will transport next week’s audiences to the quirky rural town of Baile Aighneas, or “The Town of Dispute,” as Katie calls it. “The town boasts many splendid features, as presented in the four plays: the bustling market – and all its gossip – in Spreading The News!; the restaurant where two well-to-do newspaper editors wine, dine and mix up theirCoats; the post office, where the splendid Hyacinth Halvey has sent word he’s coming to town, and the…er, coach stop…where strangers like The Bogie Men can quickly become friends!” she says.
Lady Augusta is a passion project for Northern Irish actor, director and sound designer Katie, forming part of her now completed MA theatre studies at the University of York. “I did The Bogie Men for a closed, invitation-only exam piece, when it had never been performed in England before,” she says.
“Even in Ireland its performance record is tenuous! Only one performance in 1903. Hyacinth Halvey wasn’t done over here either, so our production marks the first time these four plays will be performed together in Great Britain.
Script in hand: Katie Leckey in rehearsal for FourTold. Picture: John Stead
“She didn’t start writing until her 40s and then wrote more than 60 plays, in the decades preceding the Irish Civil War – and novels too, translating Irish myths into English. She was a crazy lady! The best!
“Because she wrote so prolifically, I’ve taken an eclectic mix from 1903 to 1914, picking plays I liked – though I could have chosen any four because they’re so good.
“They’re tiny, tiny pieces, almost like sketches: Spreading The News! is 20-25 minutes; Coats, a rip-roaring 15 minutes; Hyacinth Halvey, 35 minutes, The Bogie Men, 25. Though she did also write Graina, a tragedy, a big epic tale, nothing like these plays, that the Abbey Theatre revived a year ago. She could do the whole scope.”
Katie has decided not to ‘Anglicise’ the plays “because they were written in the Irish dialect, where she listened to people on her estate in the tiny village of Gort,” she says. “I’ve been there. It’s a lovely part of the world.
“She would listen to the labourers, servants and villagers because she was very philanthropic. The dialect would die out in her lifetime. It was born out of English having to be learned because of colonisation and was spoken by villagers who didn’t speak English well and were uneducated. It’s known as Hiberno English, but more specifically it was specifically KIltartanese because Gort is in and around Kiltartan.
James Lee, left, Helen Clarke=Neale , front, Wilf Tomlinson, back, and Katie Leckey rehearsing for Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold. Picture: John Stead
“The fascinating thing is that I’ve found it very similar to the Northern Irish dialect, born out of the English and the Scots coming over, so it’s similar to my own upbringing. It feels familiar to me, and rather than having Irish accents in the show, I want to do an homage to this Irish dialect, like the villagers would have had to learn.”
Katie continues: “The language is beautiful! They say things that you would never say; it’s still in English but the words are in a really fascinating order. It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn – and I had to learn both roles in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter last year!”
Katie’s cast of eight will be mirroring the performance manner of the Fay Brothers at the Abbey Theatre, while expanding on its confines. “They trained actors in a very specific style that was expressly for Irish actors, mostly based on the voice,” she says. “They focused on line delivery and rhythm, so there wasn’t much movement in the pieces – and that’s another reason her plays died out outside southern Ireland. They never even broke out into Northern Ireland.
“The other reason she died out? She’s a woman, whereas WB Yeats’s work has always been done. But we all know everyone loves an Irish accent, and just as the Fay Brothers focused on the lyrical and the voice, so I’m doing that too because it should be preserved, but I’m also focusing on the physicality of the language and the individual characters, because the characters are nuts – such as the butcher who sells unwholesome meat!
“The plays are a snapshot of a very strange rural Irish town: like Royston Vasey, home of The League Of Gentlemen, meeting Father Ted.”
Katie hopes to do a PhD on Lady Augusta. “I’m applying for it here because you can do a PhD through practice at the University of York,” she says. “I’d love to take her work out of being performed in the Fay Brothers style.
Making an entrance: Katie Leckey’s Magistrate rides on to the Theatre@41, Monkgate stage in the opening Lady Augusta Gregory play, Spreading The News, as James Lee’s Mrs Tully looks on. Picture: John Stead
“Her life was quite politically scandalous as she married a Unionist Anglo-Irish landowner, and had an affair with an Irish Republican. At some point she ran for the Irish Senate [the Seanad Éireann] but didn’t win.
“There’s no theatrical scholarship of her work, though there are biographies of her life story and you can read her letters and some studies of the myths around her work, but no studies of her theatrical work, which I think is criminal.”
Does Lady Augusta have a statue, Katie? “One, at Trinity College in Dublin. W B Yeats has more!” she says. To mark St Brigid’s Day, in February 2023, Trinity College installed four new sculptures in its Old Library to honour the scholarship of four trailblazing women: scientist Rosalind Franklin, mathematician Ada Lovelace, women’s right advocate Mary Wollstonecraft and folklorist, dramatist and theatre-founder Augusta Gregory.
Katie’s cast plays 22 characters between them in her multi-role-playing production. “We have a double task: to make plays that are not familiar feel more familiar, and when her plays are already strange, how do we present them in a familiar style? That’s a big challenge, especially when they’re all wee pieces, almost like sketches,” she says.
“What we’ve done is call on what we’ve done before [productions of Poe In Pitch Black, Patrick Hamilton’s Rope and Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Winter] and call on everyone’s suggestions in rehearsals.
Ben Koch’s Taig and Katie Leckey’s Darby, the chimney sweeps, in The Bogie Men. Picture: John Stead
“Her plays have a very melodramatic, very specific style, one that I’ve never seen on stage, which is why I’m so fascinated by her writing. They’re very stylised, almost like being in a courtroom at points; very joyful in tone and full of very much larger-than-life characters.
“When the plays were put on at The Abbey Theatre, the performances were bare with no theatrical spectacle, just people talking, which hopefully I’ve retained but there now needs to be physicality to supplement the dialogue, which is why I’ve put in slapstick. That’s what I learned from doing The Bogie Men for my Masters, so I’ve tried to extrapolate that to the extreme!”
Describing Lady Augusta’s theatrical tropes, Katie says: “Each of the plays has a dispute or misunderstanding at its centre: the classic comedy sketch set-up with either a minor misunderstanding or a massive argument – and she’s very good at writing massive fall-outs. A lot of the comedy comes from schadenfreude, especially in Coats.”
To capture that abundant friction, Katie has settled on a “thrust-plus” set, created by production designer Wilf Tomlinson. “It’s a traverse stage [with the audience placed either side] but it also goes half way round the balcony as well, so it’s almost in the round too but not quite! I’ve not really set it in any specific time or place, in the Town of Dispute but with modern references such as Rubik’s Cubes, yo-yos and a tricycle. All very playful, for comic effect.”
One final thought from Katie: “I have a sneaky feeling Samuel Beckett must have read The Bogie Men because there are very strange Beckettian tones to it,” she says, in a nod to sparring chimney sweeps Darby and Taig being forerunners of Waiting For Godot’s clownish Vladimir and Estragon
Griffonage Theatre presents FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, October 6 to 10, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Did you know?
LADY Augusta Gregory acted on stage only once. “She said she would never do it again as she didn’t like the feel of the greasepaint, but she would often be there at performances of her plays, floating around the theatre,” says Katie.
Griffonage Theatre’s poster for FourTold, starring Katie Leckey as The Magistrate, Mr Hazel and Darby; Ben Koch as James Ryan, Hyacinth Halvey and Taig; Wilf Tomlinson as Shawn Early and James Quirke; Emily Carhart as Mrs Fallon and Jo Muldoon; Helen Clarke as Bartley Fallon and Mrs Delane; Grace Palma as Mrs Tarpey and Phoebe Farrell; James Lee as Mrs Tully, Mr Mineog and Miss Joyce and Peter Hopwood as Jack Smith
Griffonage Theatre: the back story
YORK theatre company with University of York origins, devoted to the madcap and the macabre, eliciting humour from the darkness. “We aim to make the strange familiar, and the familiar strange,” vows the company motto.
Founded in 2022, Fourtold is Griffonage Theatre’s fourth production, after the devised Poe In Pitch Black, Patrick Hamilton’s Rope, and Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter. “We can be found, lurking in shadows, smiling deviously, at https://www.griffonage.uk/,” says Katie.
The crew for FourTold comprises: director and sound designer, Katie Leckey; assistant director, Miles John; lighting designer and technical stage manager, Leo McCall; set designer, Wilf Tomlinson; stage manager, Zoe Deacy-Clarke; marketing manager, Jamie Williams; executive producer, Jack Mackay.
York companyGriffonage Theatre in debut production Poe In Pitch Black
Who’s conning who? Emily Carhart’s Fay, Jack Mackay’s Hal, centre, and Stuart Green’s Truscott in a scene from York Settlement Community Players’ Loot. Picture: John Saunders
THE monochrome cover to York Settlement Community Players’ programme for Joe Orton’s dark farce Loot takes the form of a death notice. Rest in Peace Mary McLeavy. Born 1916, called home 1966. Remembrance services will be held: 18th – 27th February 2025.
For “Remembrance Services”, read performances that raise Orton’s scandalous, scabrous first farce from the grave, directed by the “young (and probably) angsty” Katie Leckey with brio and brains, fresh from completing her MA in Theatre-making at the University of York.
Already she and lead actor Jack Mackay have made their mark on the York theatre scene with their company Griffonage Theatre, latterly swapping the roles of hitmen Ben and Gus for each performance of Harold Pinter’s menacing 1957 two-hander The Dumb Waiter at Theatre@41, Monkgate, last July.
Jack Mackay’s Hal, trying not to look alarmed in Loot. Picture: John Saunders
Now Mackay forms part of another “double act” on the wrong side of the law: bungling thieves Hal (Mackay) and Dennis (Miles John), in essence representing Orton’s lover Kenneth Halliwell and Orton, in Loot.
Sixty years on from its Cambridge Arts Theatre premiere, when Orton deemed the play to be “a disaster” and the Cambridge News review called it “very bad”, it remains a shocking play. Not shockingly bad, but a shock to the system, still carrying a content warning.
It reads: “The show contains adult themes and offensive language (including sexism and xenophobia). There are also sexual references and references to sexual assault (including rape and necrophilia) and references to smoking on stage.” Sure enough, Stuart Green’s inspector, Truscott, hiding behind his smokescreen of being “from the Water Board”, smokes without fire, never lighting his pipe.
Emily Carhart’s nurse, Fay, and Miles John’s arch thief, Dennis, in Loot. Picture: John Saunders
Loot remains an iconoclastic play, even angrier than those Angry Young Men that preceded him, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, John Wain, et al. You might call it ‘odd’, or ‘strange’, but its audacious humour tugs persuasively at your arm, its attacks on convention beneath its conventional farce format landing blows on those cornerstones of the state, the (Catholic) church and the police force, as well as undermining the nuclear family.
It makes you ask what has changed since the 1965 premiere, as Leckey highlights in her programme note, drawing attention to the continuing prevalence of violence, racism, homophobia and misogyny.
She quotes Orton, who wrote “I’m too amused by the way people carry on to give in to despair”. There, in a nutshell, is the role of comedy, to home in on the warts and all and laugh at our failings and foibles. The bigger shock here is that we have not moved on, but on second thoughts, in the week when every new Trump utterance trumps the last one, maybe not.
Loot director Katie Leckey
Orton was once castigated for his play’s immoral tone, but it is the behaviour that is immoral, not Orton. Don’t shoot the messenger. Laugh, instead, at our failure to clean up our act, especially those in authority.
Leckey has not edited Orton’s text, letting it stand or fall in all its bold affronts, not least on life’s ultimate taboo: death. Preceded by Ortonian fun and games by a six-pack of support players, from a drunken priest (James Wood) to an excitable nun (Xandra Logan), Loot begins with an open coffin. Inside rests the aforementioned Mary McLeavy (a dead body played by a live actor [Caroline Greenwood] with Orton irreverence). Today is her funeral.
In the room, designed with kitsch Sixties’ detail by Wilf Tomlinson and Richard Hampton, matched by Leckey’s soundtrack, are widower Mr McLeavy (played with suitable befuddlement by Paul French) and Mrs McLeavy’s nurse, Fay, (Emily Carhart in her impressive Settlement debut). She may wear a cross, but Fay has an unfortunate of seeing off her husbands, seven in seven years, and now she has her eye on Mr McLeavy.
Eyeball to eyeball: Stuart Green’s Truscott carries out a close inspection in Loot. Picture: John Saunders
Enter Mackay’s Hal, who protests he is too upset to attend the funeral, and John’s Dennis, whose heart is lost to Fay. Rarely for a farce, there is only one door into the sitting room, but a second door is all important: the cupboard door, behind which they have hidden their stash from a bank job.
A glass eye, a set of teeth and the constant movement of Mrs McLeavy’s body will follow, involving the cupboard, the coffin and the stash, in classic farce tradition, with rising irreverence and desperation as the investigations of Green’s Truscott mirror the impact of Inspector Goole in JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, written 20 years earlier, but this time with humorous results.
Green, in his Settlement debut after returning to the stage in 2023 from an hiatus, has spot-on comic timing, a twinkle in his eye and the over-confidence of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Paul French’s Mr McLeavy, left, Stuart Green’s Truscott, Jack Mackay’s Hal, Emily Carhart’s Fay (seated) and Emily Hansen’s Meadows in Loot. Picture: John Saunders
Mackay and John evoke the Sixties in looks, acting style and attire, playing to the Orton manner born as the hapless thieves, somehow negotiating their way through a farce with a farce with aplomb and insouciance.
York Settlement Community Players in Loot, York Theatre Royal Studio, until February 27, 7.45pm nightly except February 23, plus 2pm matinee, February 22. Age guidance: 16 plus. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Post-show discussion tomorrow (21/2/2025).
TAKING part in pre-show and interval Orton-style vignettes, devised by James Lee, are: Xandra Logan (Sister Barbara); Chris Meadley (Sergeant Timothy Carruthers); Victoria Delaney (Mrs Edna Welthorpe); Helen Clarke (Edith, the church organist); James Wood (Priest) and Serafina Coupe (Keith Kevin O’Keefe).
Xandra Logan’s Sister Barbara and James Wood’s inebriated Priest in an interval vignette in York Settlement Community Players’ Loot at York Theatre Royal Studio. Picture: John Saunders
York Settlement Community Players’ Stuart Green’s inspector, Truscott, left, and Miles John’s thief, Dennis, rehearsing a scene from Joe Orton’s Loot
LOOT, Joe Orton’s scandalous first farce, opened at the Cambridge Arts Theatre on February 1 1965 with Kenneth Williams and Geraldine McEwan in the cast.
“The play is a disaster,” the iconoclastic Leicester playwright wrote in a letter to his lover, Kenneth Halliwell. “A very bad play,” sniffed the Cambridge News review. Ouch!
Loot would close after 56 performances and three re-writes, the cast declining the chance to transfer to London, but…Orton’s provocatively controversial, free-wheeling and ferocious dark farce about life’s ultimate taboo – death – is very much alive and kicking up a storm 2025, still suited and booted to shock, amuse and entertain in Orton’s signature scabrous style.
…And still carrying a Content Warning, to be found when booking tickets for Katie Leckey’s production for York Settlement Community Players, running at York Theatre Royal Studio from February 18 to 27.
It reads: “The show contains adult themes and offensive language (including sexism and xenophobia). There are also sexual references and references to sexual assault (including rape and necrophilia) and references to smoking on stage.”
Jack Mackay’s Hal, left, Emily Carhart’s Fay and Miles John’s Dennis in the rehearsal room for York Settlement Community Players’ production of Loot
All this, 60 years since Orton premiered his two-act satire on the Roman Catholic Church, social attitudes to death and the integrity of the police force, wrapped in the story of the fortunes of two thieves, Hal and Dennis, as they navigate the ridiculous farce they find themselves in. Cue such props as rolling eyeballs, flying false teeth and a live actor playing a dead body.
“We made the choice to set the production in the time it was produced, so that audiences can see what has changed about ideas of ‘Britishness’, religion and institutional tyranny since then (if anything) and what still shocks and outrages us today,” says Katie, a Northern Irish actor and director, who completed her Masters degree last year at the University of York, where she set up Griffonage Theatre with co-artistic director Jack Mackay, now cast as Hal in Loot.
“Are we still homophobic, are we less Catholic? The fact that we have to warn people that it’s still a shocking and scandalous play speaks volumes. The thing is this: we do need to give some sort of warning because some of the content is so abhorrent, mostly what Hal says.
“It’s about setting expectations fairly, but I still think the play should be shocking and done as written, so there are insidious lines that I have kept in that I don’t like, but it shows how people were thinking at that time – and still do today, especially men.
Loot director Katie Leckey
“Interestingly, we had 45-50 people auditioning, mostly men wanting to play the inspector, Truscott, although there’s pretty much an equal split of male-female characters in our production.”
The strongest voice of all in Loot belongs to Orton, suggests Katie. “That’s what fascinates me: the more I do the play, the stronger his voice becomes. He’s the most authorial writer. There’s something vicious in everything that is said, but it punches up,” she says.
“Orton was so angry about so many things and that’s why the viciousness is so poignant. Like how he was treated by the police, especially as a gay man who had to adapt. So the play is performative to an extent, but it is situated in lived experience.
“I can’t not speak to my actors about him, I can’t not contextualise, Hal is essentially Halliwell and Dennis is Joe. The more you read about his life, the more you can’t separate it from what he’s written.
“I try to get some distance as a director, but I don’t think you can with this, because of how Orton’s life ended [he was murdered, aged 34, by Halliwell in 1967] and how he wrote.
Paul French’s Mr McLeavy, left, and Stuart Green’s Truscott in rehearsal for Loot
“If you had interviewed Orton in 1965, he would have said Loot is a serious play, why is everyone finding it funny? But it absolutely is a farce, rigid in its form as a farce, going through the motions of a farce, which is funny in itself.”
Katie continues: “But what makes it one of the funniest plays is the language. If he had written it as a ‘normal farce’, it would instead have been a tragedy, but he has this flamboyant way of writing, partly upper class, partly colloquial. Using obtuse language deliberately too, where the rhythms sound so ridiculous.”
Translating Orton’s assertion of Loot’s seriousness to her actors, “everything has to be done with conviction in my direction,” she says. “It has to be done that way, with believability. I’m not into breaking ‘the fourth wall’. The characters have to come across as desperate.
“The only difference between tragedy and farce, Orton, said was the treatment of themes. If you made a play about police brutality and homophobia, you could do that as a tragedy, but what makes it funny here is how Orton has singed those subjects with his fire.”
Katie is delighted to be directing a Settlement show for the first time, having first performed with the company in Government Inspector in October 2023. “I went to the group audition and I was shocked and excited by how talented everyone was! I wheedled my way in and I’ve stayed because there’s something rewarding about working with a long-established company,” says Katie. “I felt I wanted to work with these guys as much as possible.”
On finishing her Masters degree, Katie “needed to do something or I will go bananas”. “I saw that Settlement had put out a call for directors and I thought, ‘it’s my time to do something similarly wacky and wild as Griffonage do, and luckily they said ‘yes’.”
York Settlement Community Players in Loot, York Theatre Royal Studio, 7.45pm nightly, February 18 to 27, except February 23; 2pm matinee, February 22. Age guidance: 16 plus. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Who’s in York Settlement Community Players’ cast for Loot?
JACK Mackay, as Hal; Miles John, Dennis; Paul French, Mr McLeavy; Caroline Greenwood, Mrs McLeavy; Stuart Green, Truscott; Emily Hansen, Meadows, and Emily Carhart, Fay.
Helen Clarke, Xandra Logan, James Wood, Chris Meadley, Victoria Delaney and Serefina Coupe will feature too in Orton-inspired vignettes before the show and in the interval, penned by James Lee.
