In the grip of dementia:Reece Dinsdale’s Howard and Shobna Gulati’s Sue in Through It All Together. Picture: Charlie Swinbourne
THROUGH It All Together is the third play about Leeds United after Anders Lustgarten’s ubiquitous, damnable The Damned United and Anthony Clavane and Nick Stimson’s lesser-spotted Promised Land, A Northern Love Story, staged in a community production with Red Ladder at Leeds Carriageworks Theatre in Summer 2012.
“About Leeds United” tells only half the story. The Damned United, adapted from David Peace’s literary psycho-drama, was rather more about Brian Clough, the Richard III of Leeds managers, and his 44-day impact on Revie’s champions versus their corrosive, longer-rooted impact on “Old Big ‘ead”.
A Promised Land, adapted from Clavane’s non-fiction book, interwove the repeat pattern of the rise and fall of Leeds United and the industries of Leeds with the story of the city’s Jewish community, who provided the club’s most successful chairmen, Manny Cussins and Leslie Silver.
Now Leeds United is only half the story once more in Chris O’Connor’s Through It All Together, a title taken from the club anthem Marching On Together (originally entitled Leeds! Leeds! Leeds! as the B-side to the official 1972 FA Cup Final song, Top Ten hit Leeds United, as the Courtyard theatre audience would all know!).
Everal A Walsh’s Leeds United director, left, and Dean Smith’s director of football Victor Orta in Through It All Together. Picture: Charlie Swinbourne
Forever Leeds fan O’Connor – known as “Leeds” at his London school – “could write one strand in his sleep”, and so the Leeds United story, a love letter to sainted Argentine maverick Marcelo Bielsa and his 2020 Championship champions, is indeed penned with all the self-deprecating humour, in-jokes, reverence and irreverence of a battle-hardened yet defiantly optimistic Peacocks supporter.
The other strand, drawn from the impact of dementia on the grandmother who helped to raise him, again is written from the inside track. “One aspect we really wanted to get right was making sure the show is dementia friendly and accurate to what people go through,” he told Graham Smyth [the Yorkshire Evening Post’s Leeds United reporter since 2019] in his interview for the Playhouse premiere’s excellent programme.
Your reviewer writes with investment too: both as a long-suffering Leeds United addict since 1969 and having experienced his father’s seven-year decline with dementia – it is never a battle – that ended in relief and release in January 2016.
O’Connor said he could be “incredibly confident and happy” with the Leeds United angle. He has taken every care – like the remarkable staff at dementia care homes – to bring similar authenticity to the dementia thread, backed by the work of Playhouse theatre and dementia research consultant Dr Nicky Taylor and the Courtyard corridor exhibition that rewards early arrival for perusal.
The veneration of Marcelo Bielsa in Amanda Stoodley’s church set design for Through It All Together at Leeds Playhouse. Picture: Charlie Swinbourne
Director Gitika Buttoo says O’Connor’s play is “for the people of Leeds, showing how football ripples through all the corners of life…but that story, while rooted in Leeds, is universal”. She’s right. You could transplant the structure to any football club’s origin story, such is the ubiquity of a supporter’s jam-side-down relationship with fate, while dementia is becoming pervasive.
In this story, Reece Dinsdale’s life-long Leeds United fan Howard Wright is in the early throes of dementia, his life-changing diagnosis coinciding with director of football Victor Orta’s left-field pursuit and recruit of Marcelo Bielsa to end LUFC’s wilderness years amid the Championship tundra.
The volcanic Orta is represented physically by one of two Paul Madeleys in Buttoo’s cast, the multi-role-playing Dean Smith (regular “Championship will Championship” contributor to The Square Ball podcast, by the way).
He teams up with Everal A Walsh in three partnerships, representing the club management (Orta and a calmer presence alongside); the fans, a diehard Elland Road attendee and a disaffected deserter newly magnetised by Bielsa’s beautiful game; and the media, podcasting and match dissecting much in the healthily cynical/sceptical/supportive style of The Square Ball, quirky adverts et al.
So many ups and downs: The life and pub philosopher times of Leeds United fans, played by Everal A Walsh, left, and Dean Smith
Unlike the omnipresent Clough in The Damned United, Bielsa is not portrayed physically (save for a delightful fantasy sequence where he dances the Argentine Tango with Shobna Gulati’s Sue in Newell’s Old Boys kit in his 1970s’ defender days). Nor is he symbolised by Bielsa’s Bucket (on which he would surely perch if the club were ever to bestow him a statue).
Instead, as mystical as Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name turning up out of nowhere, and more in keeping with Irek “Tankpetrol” Jasutowicz’s Bielsa mural at Hyde Park Corner, St Marcelo appears in a stained glass window, beatific, aura aglow, high above his Peacock flock, within set designer Amanda Stoodley’s open-plan framework of a church. How fitting!
Church structure meets the kitchen-sink drama of the Wright household’s kitchen and sitting room, home to Dinsdale’s Howard and fellow Leeds devotee Sue (Gulati), joined regularly by daughter and putative chef Hazel (Natalie Davies).
They will, in the words of the club anthem, go through it all together, both Howard’s descent into dementia and Leeds United’s typically flattering-to-deceive yet, hardly a spoiler alert, ultimately sublime rise to the Premiership’s golden gates that coincided with Covid’s lockdowns.
Shall we dance? Dean Smith’s Marcelo Bielsa, in his Newell’s Old Boys playing days in Argentina, struts the Tango with Shoba Gulati’s Sue in a fantasy scene in Through It All Together. Picture: Charlie Swinbourne
Two forms of distancing then play out: the fans consigned to listening to Adam Pope on BBC Radio Leeds, and Howard’s losing his sentient powers to dementia’s corrosion and erosion.
O’Connor writes brilliantly and so movingly of this struggle: the “forgetfulness”, the sudden moments of lucid clarity (such as naming Don Revie’s champion team); Howard’s wish to not be a burden to his family by listing preparations to move to a care home while he still has the mental minerals to make that decision.
More and more sticker messages are placed around the house to help Howard navigate his way through each day’s routines; daughter Hazel starts to question whether the measures they take are worth it; Sue is consigned to hospital with Covid, at which point Dinsdale’s performance hits new heights.
All the while, Howard and Sue will sing Marching On Together as the couple’s love song, “We love you, Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!” replaced by “I love you Sue, Sue, Sue”.
We know how it ended for LUFC, with promotion, only to be followed inevitably by Leeds falling apart again (as Walsh’s fan laments to the biggest knowing laughs).
Making plans: Reece Dinsdale’s Howard in discussion with Natalie Davies’s Hazel in Through It All Together
We know how it will end for Howard, so we don’t need to see it. They will go through it all together, like Leeds United’s motto, side before self.
Dinsdale, a Playhouse luminary since 1990’s debut production of Wild Oats after the Quarry Hill relocation, is terrific in his King Lear for the football masses, all the more so for putting his Huddersfield Town allegiances to one side to embrace Leeds United.
The ever supportive Gulati, always a hit with Leeds audiences, the doughty Davies and the Smith-Walsh double act at the treble are tremendous too under Buttoo’s direction that makes the play work for fan and theatre lover alike.
You will laugh, you will cry, you will cheer and groan, you will sing the songs, just like at Elland Road; you will miss Marcelo and you will know someone like Howard. At some we shall all have to go through it together, as we have our ups and downs.
Chris O’Connor has told a story of the everyman (Howard) and the extraordinary (Bielsa) with dignity, distinction and devotion.
Through It All Together, Leeds Playhouse, at least until the world stops going round, or more precisely July 19. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Olly Murs: Returning to familiar turf at York Racecourse’s first Summer Music Saturday meeting this afternoon
AS the outdoor concert season awakens, a festival goes to heaven and hell and a koala tries something new in Charles Hutchinson’s list for the upcoming week.
Back on track: Olly Murs, York Racecourse, Summer Music Saturday, today, first race at 1.55pm; last race, 5.25pm, followed by concert
ESSEX singer, songwriter, actor and television personality from Olly Murs completes his hat-trick of appearances at York Racecourse this weekend, having played the Knavesmire track in 2010 and 2017.
Performing after today’s race card, his set list will draw on his seven albums and 25 singles, including the number ones Please Don’t Let Me Go, Heart Skips A Beat, Dance With Me Tonight and Troublemaker. Race day tickets: yorkracecourse.co.uk.
Marcelo Nisinman: Argentinean bandoneon player, performing Martin Palmeri’s Misatango at York Guildhall today
Reverence and rhythm of the week: Prima Choral Artists presents Scared Rhythms: From Chant To Tango, York Guildhall, The Courtyard, Coney Street, York, tonight, 7.30pm
ARGENTINEAN bandoneon maestro and composer Marcelo Nisinman performs Martin Palmeri’s Misatango as the finale to director Eve Lorian’s Sacred Rhythms – From Chant To Tango concert.
He joins the 60-strong Prima Choral Artists choir, pianist Greg Birch, Yorkshire mezzo-soprano soloist Lucy Jubb and the New World String Quintet for tonight’s journey through sacred and spiritual choral music. Box office: primachoral.com.
Justin Moorhouse: Giving two of the greatest performances of his life at Pocklington Arts Centre this weekend
Comedy gigs of the week: Justin Moorhouse, The Greatest Performance Of My Life, Pocklington Arts Centre, today, 3pm and 8pm
ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE comedian, radio presenter and actor Justin Moorhouse covers subjects ranging from pantomimes to dreams, how to behave in hospitals, small talk, realising his mum is a northern version of Columbo, and how being a smart-mouthed child saved him from a life of continually being beaten up. Funny, interesting, perhaps it will warm the soul too. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Bluebird Bakery: Makers’ Summer Fair on Sunday in Acomb
Arts and crafts of the week: Makers’ Summer Fair, Bluebird Bakery, Acomb Road, Acomb, Sunday, 10am to 3pm; The Fox Summer Craft Market, The Fox Inn, Holgate Road, York, Sunday, 1pm to 5pm
ARTISAN baker and cafe Bluebird Bakery plays host to York artists and makers’ craft, jewellery, print, ceramic, plant, candle and woodwork stalls under one roof. Meanwhile, The Fox Inn holds its second annual Summer Craft Market, featuring live music, handmade gifts, craft stalls and street food vendors.
Swift service: Xenna pays homage to Taylor in Miss Americana at York Barbican
Tribute gig of the week: Miss Americana: The Eras Experience, A Tribute To Taylor Swift, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm
STEP into Step into world ofTaylor Swift and her Eras experience in Xenna’s homage to the Pennsylvania pop sensation’s music, style and stage presence, from her country roots to such hits as Love Story, Blank Space and Shake It Off. Cue replica costume changes, storytelling and dancers too. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Dawn Landes: Amplifying the voices of women who fought for equality at Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb
Country gig of the week: Dawn Landes, Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb, York, July 2, 8pm
AMERICAN country roots singer-songwriter Dawn Landes showcases The Liberated Woman’s Songbook, her March 2024 album that re-imagines music from the women’s liberation movement.
Inspired by a 1971 songbook of the same name, Landes breathes new life into powerful songs spanning 1830 to 1970, amplifying the voices of women who fought for equality throughout history. Box office: seetickets.com/event/dawn-landes/rise-bluebird/.
James Sheldon’s Mr Darcy and Rosa Hesmondhalgh’s Lizzy Bennet in Pride And Prejudice at the SJT, Scarborough
Introducing America’s most performed living playwright to North Yorkshire: Pride And Prejudice, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, July 3 to 26, 7.30pm plus 1.30pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
LOTTE Wakeham directs American writer Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s story of love, misunderstandings and second chances, staged with music, dancing, humour aplenty and a cast led by Rosa Hesmondhalgh’s Lizzy Bennet (CORRECT) and James Sheldon’s Mr Darcy in a whirl of Regency parties and courtship as hearts race, tongues wag and passions swirl around the English countryside. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
The Koala Who Could: Up a tree at York Theatre Royal for three days next week. Picture: Pamela Raith
Children’s show of the week: The Koala Who Could, York Theatre Royal, July 3, 1.30pm; July 4, 10.30am and 4.30pm; July 5, 11am and 2pm
JOIN Kevin the koala, Kangaroo and Wombat as they learn that “life can be great when you try something new” in this adaptation of Rachel Bright and Jim Field’s picture book, directed by Emma Earle, with music and lyrics by Eamonn O’Dwyer.
Danny Hendrix (Wombat/Storyteller 1), Sarah Palmer (Cossowary/Storyteller 2) and Christopher Finn (Kevin/Storyteller 3) perform this empowering story of embracing change – whether we like it or not. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Richard Hawley: Playing Coles Corner with strings attached at Live At York Museum Gardens on July 5. Picture: Dean Chalkley
Open-air concerts of the week: Futuresounds presents Live At York Museum Gardens, Elbow, July 3; Nile Rodgers & CHIC, July4; Richard Hawley, July 5; gates open at 5pm
LEEDS promoters Futuresound Group’s second summer of outdoor concerts in York begins with Bury band Elbow’s sold-out show next Thursday, when Ripon singer-songwriter Billie Marten and Robin Hood’s Bay folk luminary Eliza Carthy & The Restitution support.
New York guitarist, songwriter and producer Nile Rodgers and CHIC revel in Good Times, Le Freak, Everybody Dance and I Want Your Love next Friday, supported by Maryland soul singer Jalen Ngonda. Sheffield guitarist and crooner Richard Hawley revisits his 1995 album Coles Corner with a string section on its 20th anniversary next Saturday, preceded by Leeds band English Teacher and Manchester-based American songwriter BC Camplight. Box office: seetickets.com.
Le Consort: French orchestral ensemble, making York debut with Vivaldi concert at National Centre for Early Music on July 6
Festival of the week: York Early Music Festival, Heaven & Hell, July 4 to 11
EIGHT days of classical music adds up to 19 concerts featuring international artists such as The Sixteen, The Tallis Scholars, Academy of Ancient Music, viol consort Fretwork & Helen Charlston and the York debut of Le Consort, performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons “but not quite as you know it”.
Directed by Delma Tomlin, the festival weaves together three main strands: the 400th anniversary of Renaissance composer Orlando Gibbons, the Baroque music of Vivaldi and Bach and reflections on Man’s fall from grace, from Heaven to Hell. Full programme and tickets at ncem.co.uk/whats-on/yemf/. Box office: 01904 658338.
In Focus: Harry Baker, Wonderful 2.0, The Crescent, York, Sunday (29/6/2025)
Poet, mathematician and world slam champ Harry Baker
YOUNGEST ever World Poetry Slam champion Harry Baker’s two Wonderful 2.0 shows at The Crescent , York, tomorrow have sold out. Wonderful news for Harry; not so wonderful if you were yet to book for either bite of the poetic cherry, the 3.30pm all-ages matinee or 7pm evening event.
Enough negativity. Let this preview be suffused with positivity. “One thing that I know that I will always find amazing is what a thing it is to live a life,” posits Maths graduate Harry, who always looks for plus signs. “P.S. Let’s also do this loads before we die.” Good, because that means Baker will be back and next time you can be quicker off the mark.
Baker, the 34-year-old poet, mathematician, writer and comedy turn from Ealing, London, first spread his Wonderful wings from April to August 2024, visiting The Crescent on May 20 with poems about wellies, postcodes and his favourite German wheat beer Schöfferhofer on his sold-out 40-date itinerary.
At the time, the “Maths-loving, TED-talking, German-speaking, battle-rapping, happy-crying, self-bio-writing unashamed human” said: “After the mental health struggles I shared in my last show, this time around the plan was to have a fun time touring a fun show full of fun poems to celebrate coming out of the other side. But it hasn’t quite worked out like that.
“For the first time ever I have been to more funerals than weddings in the last year. I have hit the age where everyone around me is either having babies or talking about having babies or definitely not having babies, and found out first-hand how complicated and painful that can be. And yet I am more fascinated and amazed by the world around me than ever before.”
Harry added: “From the transformational power of documenting moments of everyday joy to the undeniable raw energy of performing a garage song about Greta Thunberg, I am learning more than ever that life can indeed be incredibly hard sometimes, but that doesn’t make it any less incredible.
“If anything, it is the darkness that helps us to appreciate the light, just as it is the puddles that help us to appreciate the wellies. And what could be more wonderful than sharing all of this with the glorious folk who come along after reading about it here.”
Now he returns with a new message to accompany his poems about “all the important stuff, like hope, dinosaurs and German falafel-spoons”. “May one thing match the gravity of all you’ve ever done. This wonderful reality: The best is yet to come,” Harry pronounces.
“More full of wonder than ever”, he will celebrate wellies and postcodes once more, funerals and fertility journeys too, in his trademark amalgam of the playful, the vulnerable and the hopeful.
How would he sum up Wonderful 2.0? “I like ‘Wonderfuller’. It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, but I like the connotation,” he says.
“Wonderful 2.0 hopes to make you cry with laughter, laugh through tears, or, dream scenario: both. The show will contain old faves as well as brand new work, celebrating what a thing it is to live a life.”
“What I ended up doing was I started writing a poem a day for the first 100 days of my son’s life, though ‘poems’ would be a generous description of the first ones,” says Harry
For all his popularity on TikTok and Instagram, Baker’s favourite place to be is still on stage in front of an audience, sharing his words in person. “By its very nature, I don’t think it makes sense for poetry to go viral,” he says.
“It is all about taking the time out of your day-to-day to stop and pay attention to the world and the wonder it contains, which it feels like so many of us are too busy to be able to carve out time to do. And yet I think it is precisely this reason why people have been able to connect with my work so much.
“From the vulnerability of sharing my own personal struggles with trying to conceive a baby, to the power of making list of requests in advance of what I would like to happen when I die (an obnoxious amount of sunflowers and negronis all round, please), or even just a stupid (yet subversive?) poem about how great my knees are, there is a playfulness and poignancy that has changed the way others look at the world too.”
Harry continues: “I have been performing for 15 years now and last year’s tour was my favourite by far, because of the openness audiences were willing to bring and share in, so that we could all have a cry and a laugh and go away feeling slightly more connected to one another and the world, and I am so excited for a chance to do this all over again.”
Assessing where he fits in as a performer, Harry decides: “I think I fall somewhere in between a band (where you hope they will do your favourite songs) and a stand-up (where you expect new material!). So, as well as keeping in the classics, I have updated the show with new poems about everything that has happened in the meantime, including (finally and joyfully) having a baby.”
Wonderful 2.0 picks up where Wonderful left off, knowing his “whole life was about to change but not knowing how he would feel”. It turns out that becoming a father, and experiencing a deep love for his child, has heightened his connection with the world around him, rather than numbed it.
“What I ended up doing was I started writing a poem a day for the first 100 days of my son’s life, though ‘poems’ would be a generous description of the first ones!
“People say ‘it’s the best thing in the world’ or that ‘you’re going to lose everything you’ve enjoyed’, so I thought to be able to have all these snapshots in the poems means you can have days where you were in the moment, thinking how fragile and precious life is, but also have days where it doesn’t feel like that, especially in those early days, when if feels like ‘this is it, it will never change’.
“But having written these things, less than a year later, I look back and feel like ‘I think you’re being a bit dramatic’…but that’s fine because some of it felt amazing, sometimes it felt raw and spiky.
“Hopefully these poems will feel precious to me and my wife, and by sharing them, anyone who has recently has a baby will connect with them, or, like my parents, they can relate with them, and those who haven’t had a kid can connect with these basic emotions.”
Harry’s aim was to “capture the newness, the helplessness and the tenderness, not to create a parenting manual”. To detach from the practice of finding punchlines to jokes felt important in his writing. “I wanted to lean into the emotional side of it and that’s something that changes from day to day,” he says.
“This is the point in between where you can say ‘life can be difficult but also amazing, and if anything, one heightens the other’,” says Harry
Harry had written candidly about how long it took the couple to become pregnant. “To be so honest about that painful experience gave permission to connect with that, and now these new poems feel like an evolution,” he says.
“People have thanked me for ‘saying things they couldn’t’. I’ve been trying to open up in a way that is safe for me and safe for others, and having honed those skills, or muscles, I was ready to apply it to the new poems.
“It’s also trying to acknowledge that just because I have this child and this joyful outcome, it doesn’t negate the experience I’ve been through.”
The sequel to his Wonderful poetry collection will be published by Canongate next March. “This is the point in between where you can say ‘life can be difficult but also amazing, and if anything, one heightens the other’. If you can share the hard times with people, just as you share the joyous times, they’re more bearable for that.”
Poems have an intensity that suits the combative nature of slams. “When I started out, I was entering these poetry slams where you have to say everything in three minutes, win over the audience, be funny, get them on board, deliver a message, wrap it up and send it off into the sunset,” says Harry.
“That was such a good training ground because you have to convey things in such a short space of time. That’s why these Wonderful shows are such a joy to do, particularly when the poems can feel vulnerable and heartfelt, and it’s up to you where you take it next.”
Next year’s poetry collection, Tender, will reflect that. “Why ‘Tender’? I think it was that thing of wanting to lean into the feeling of vulnerability, but as well as the connotation of being tender where you feel bruised, there’s the ripeness and readiness too.”
Did you know?
HARRY Baker’s honest, heartfelt and hopeful poems have reached more than ten million people on TikTok and Instagram.
Raised in a Christian community, Baker is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause For Thought.
He tours the UK in comedy-rap-jazz duo Harry and Chris Baker, also appearing on The Russell Howard Hour.
Baker released his third poetry collection, Wonderful, in May 2024, featuring fan favourites Wellies, Sunflowers and Sticky Toffee Pudding. Published by Burning Eye, copies are available at gigs, all good bookshops and www.harrybaker.co.
REVIEW: Through It All Together, Leeds Playhouse, until July 19 *****
Reece Dinsdale’s Howard and Shobna Gulati’s Sue in Through It All Together. Picture: Charlie Swinbourne
THROUGH It All Together is the third play about Leeds United after Anders Lustgarten’s ubiquitous, damnable The Damned United and Anthony Clavane and Nick Stimson’s lesser-spotted Promised Land, A Northern Love Story, staged in a community production with Red Ladder at Leeds Carriageworks Theatre in Summer 2012.
“About Leeds United” tells only half the story. The Damned United, adapted from David Peace’s literary psycho-drama, was rather more about Brian Clough, the Richard III of Leeds managers, and his 44-day impact on Revie’s champions versus their corrosive, longer-rooted impact on “Old Big ‘ead”.
A Promised Land, adapted from Clavane’s non-fiction book, interwove the repeat pattern of the rise and fall of Leeds United and the industries of Leeds with the story of the city’s Jewish community, who provided the club’s most successful chairmen, Manny Cussins and Leslie Silver.
Now Leeds United is only half the story once more in Chris O’Connor’s Through It All Together, a title taken from the club anthem Marching On Together (originally entitled Leeds! Leeds! Leeds! as the B-side to the official 1972 FA Cup Final song, Top Ten hit Leeds United, as the Courtyard theatre audience would all know!).
Forever Leeds fan O’Connor – known as “Leeds” at his London school – “could write one strand in his sleep”, and so the Leeds United story, a love letter to sainted Argentine maverick Marcelo Bielsa and his 2020 Championship champions, is indeed penned with all the self-deprecating humour, in-jokes, reverence and irreverence of a battle-hardened yet defiantly optimistic Peacocks supporter.
The other strand, drawn from the impact of dementia on the grandmother who helped to raise him, again is written from the inside track. “One aspect we really wanted to get right was making sure the show is dementia friendly and accurate to what people go through,” he told Graham Smyth [the Yorkshire Evening Post’s Leeds United reporter since 2019] in his interview for the Playhouse premiere’s excellent programme.
Your reviewer writes with investment too: both as a long-suffering Leeds United addict since 1969 and having experienced his father’s seven-year decline with dementia – it is never a battle – that ended in relief and release in January 2016.
O’Connor said he could be “incredibly confident and happy” with the Leeds United angle. He has taken every care – like the remarkable staff at dementia care homes – to bring similar authenticity to the dementia thread, backed by the work of Playhouse theatre and dementia research consultant Dr Nicky Taylor and the Courtyard corridor exhibition that rewards early arrival for perusal.
Director Gitika Buttoo says O’Connor’s play is “for the people of Leeds, showing how football ripples through all the corners of life…but that story, while rooted in Leeds, is universal”. She’s right. You could transplant the structure to any football club’s origin story, such is the ubiquity of a supporter’s jam-side-down relationship with fate, while dementia is becoming pervasive.
In this story, Reece Dinsdale’s life-long Leeds United fan Howard Wright is in the early throes of dementia, his life-changing diagnosis coinciding with director of football Victor Orta’s left-field pursuit and recruit of Marcelo Bielsa to end LUFC’s wilderness years amid the Championship tundra.
The volcanic Orta is represented physically by one of two Paul Madeleys in Buttoo’s cast, the multi-role-playing Dean Smith (regular “Championship will Championship” contributor to The Square Ball podcast, by the way).
He teams up with Everal A Walsh in three partnerships, representing the club management (Orta and a calmer presence alongside); the fans, a diehard Elland Road attendee and a disaffected deserter newly magnetised by Bielsa’s beautiful game; and the media, podcasting and match dissecting much in the healthily cynical/sceptical/supportive style of The Square Ball, quirky adverts et al.
Unlike the omnipresent Clough in The Damned United, Bielsa is not portrayed physically (save for a delightful fantasy sequence where he dances the Argentine Tango with Shobna Gulati’s Sue in Newell’s Old Boys kit in his 1970s’ defender days). Nor is he symbolised by Bielsa’s Bucket (on which he would surely perch if the club were ever to bestow him a statue).
Instead, as mystical as Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name turning up out of nowhere, and more in keeping with Irek “Tankpetrol” Jasutowicz’s Bielsa mural at Hyde Park Corner, St Marcelo appears in a stained glass window, beatific, aura aglow, high above his Peacock flock, within set designer Amanda Stoodley’s open-plan framework of a church. How fitting!
Church structure meets the kitchen-sink drama of the Wright household’s kitchen and sitting room, home to Dinsdale’s Howard and fellow Leeds devotee Sue (Gulati), joined regularly by daughter and putative chef Hazel (Natalie Davies).
They will, in the words of the club anthem, go through it all together, both Howard’s descent into dementia and Leeds United’s typically flattering-to-deceive yet, hardly a spoiler alert, ultimately sublime rise to the Premiership’s golden gates that coincided with Covid’s lockdowns.
Two forms of distancing then play out: the fans consigned to listening to Adam Pope on BBC Radio Leeds, and Howard’s losing his sentient powers to dementia’s corrosion and erosion.
O’Connor writes brilliantly and so movingly of this struggle: the “forgetfulness”, the sudden moments of lucid clarity (such as naming Don Revie’s champion team); Howard’s wish to not be a burden to his family by listing preparations to move to a care home while he still has the mental minerals to make that decision.
More and more sticker messages are placed around the house to help Howard navigate his way through each day’s routines; daughter Hazel starts to question whether the measures they take are worth it; Sue is consigned to hospital with Covid, at which point Dinsdale’s performance hits new heights.
All the while, he and Sue will sing Marching On Together as the couple’s love song, “We love you, Leeds, Leeds, Leeds” replaced by “I love you Sue, Sue, Sue”.
We know how it ended for LUFC, with promotion, only to be followed inevitably by Leeds falling apart again (as Walsh’s fan laments to the biggest knowing laughs).
We know how it will end for Howard, so we don’t need to see it. They will go through it all together, like Leeds United’s motto, side before self.
Dinsdale, a Playhouse luminary since 1990’s debut production of Wild Oats after the Quarry Hill relocation, is terrific in his King Lear for the football masses, all the more so for putting his Huddersfield Town allegiances to one side to embrace Leeds United.
The ever supportive Gulati, always a hit with Leeds audiences, the doughty Davies and the Smith-Walsh double act at the treble are tremendous too under Buttoo’s direction that makes the play work for fan and theatre lover alike.
You will laugh, you will cry, you will cheer and groan, you will sing the songs, just like at Elland Road; you will miss Marcelo and you will know someone like Howard. At some we shall all have to go through it together, as we have our ups and downs.
Chris O’Connor has told a story of the everyman (Howard) and the extraordinary (Bielsa) with dignity, distinction and devotion.
Through It All Together, Leeds Playhouse, at least until the world stops going round, or more precisely July 19. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Pease in our time: John Pease tops bill at Patch’s new Funny Fridays comedy forum at the Bonding Warehouse
A NEW comedy night in a bygone location and Shakespeare on a council estate stand out in Charles Hutchinson’s picks for cultural exploration.
Laughter launch of the week: Funny Fridays, Patch, Bonding Warehouse, Terry Avenue, York, May 9, doors 7pm for 7.30pm start
LIVE comedy returns to the Bonding Warehouse for the first time since the days of the late Mike Bennett presenting the likes of Lee Evans and Ross Noble under the Comedy Shack banner. Stand up for Funny Fridays, hosted by York humorist Katie Lingo (alias copywriter Katie Taylor-Thompson) with an introductory price of £6.50.
On her first bill will be Kenny Watt, Tuiya Tembo, BBC New Comedy Awards semi-finalist Matty Oxley, Saeth Wheeler and Edinburgh Fringe Gilded Balloon semi-finalist John Pease. Box office: eventbrite.co.uk/e/funny-fridays-at-patch-tickets.
Sean Heydon: Magical sleight of hand at the Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club tonight
Magical comedy gig of the week: Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club presents Sean Heydon, Big Lou, Oliver Bowler and MC Damion Larkin, The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York, tonight, 8pm
LAUGH Out Loud headliner Sean Heydon has performed to A-list celebrities and blue-chip companies, as well as at comedy clubs, with his combination of madcap comedy, sleight-of-hand magic and illusions for more than 15 years.
Big Lou offers a modern twist on old-school joke telling in the Les Dawson style; comedian, actor and writer Oliver Bowler discusses life experiences on the mean streets of Bolton; regular host and promoter Damion Larkin keeps order. Box office: 01904 612940 or lolcomedyclubs.co.uk.
Anastacia: Playing York Barbican on her Not That Kind 25th anniversary tour
Anniversary tour of the week: Anastacia, Not That Kind Tour, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.45pm
CHICAGO singer-songwriter Anastacia , 56, heads to York on her European tour marking the 25th anniversary of her debut album Not That Kind and its breakthrough hit I’m Outta Love.
Further singles Not That Kind, Paid My Dues, One Day In Your Life, Left Outside Alone and Sick And Tired charted too, as did 2001 album Freak Of Nature (reaching number four) and 2004’s chart-topping Anastacia, 2005’s Pieces Of A Dream, 2008’s Heavy Rotation, 2014’s Resurrection and 2015’s Ultimate Collection Her special guest will be Casey McQuillen. Box office: for returns only, yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Newton Faulkner: Unveiling new songs from his upcoming Octopus album at The Crescent, York
“No technological funny business” of the week: Newton Faulkner, Feels Like Home Tour 3, The Crescent, York, Sunday, 7.30pm
LET Reigate singer-songwriter Newton Faulkner describe his York gig: “Folks, I give you the Feels Like Home Tour 3. We’re talking no technological funny business in my set-up. I love switching my focus back to just playing and singing. I also cannot wait to introduce you properly to the new material and my new head.”
Often Faulkner has found himself in his home studio working solo, but not for this next record, nor for this tour. His new phase is full of collaboration, one where “seeing these songs come to life on stage is going to be nothing short of joyous” ahead of the September 19 release of Octopus. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape on his return to York Theatre Royal after 45 years. Picture: Gisele Schmidt
York theatre event of the year: Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape, York Theatre Royal, until May 17
OSCAR winner Gary Oldman returns to York Theatre Royal, where he made his professional debut in 1979, to perform Samuel Beckett’s melancholic, tragicomic slice of theatre of the absurd Krapp’s Last Tape in his first stage appearance since 1989.
“York, for me, is the completion of a cycle,” says the Slow Horses leading man. “It is the place ‘where it all began’. York, in a very real sense, for me, is coming home. The combination of York and Krapp’s Last Tape is all the more poignant because it is ‘a play about a man returning to his past of 30 years earlier’.” Tickets update: check availability of returns on 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
York musician Steve Cassidy: Once he worked with John Barry and producer Joe Meek, now he plays with his mates on regular nights at the JoRo
Return of the week: Steve Cassidy Band, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Sunday, 7.30pm
YORK singer, songwriter, guitarist and former head teacher Steve Cassidy will be joined by special guests when he lines up as usual with John Lewis on lead guitar, Mick Hull on bass guitar, ukulele, guitar and vocals, Brian Thomson on percussion and George Hall on keyboards.
Expect rock and country songs, as well as instrumental pieces, selected especially for this evening. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Mark Holgate’s Oberon and Suzy Cooper’s Titania, centre, with Sam Roberts’s Demetrius, left, Amy Domeneghetti’s Helena, Will Parsons’ Lysander and Meg Olssen’s Hermia in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Reinvented play of the week: York Stage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Grand Opera House, York, May 6 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinees
YORK pantomime golden gal Suzy Cooper turns Fairy Queen Titania opposite York-born Royal Shakespeare Company actor Mark Holgate’s Fairy King Oberon in Nik Briggs’s debut Shakespeare production for York Stage.
In his first co-production with the Cumberland Street theatre, Briggs relocates the Bard’s most-performed comedy from the court of Athens to Athens Court, a northern council estate, where magic is fuelled with mayhem and true love’s bumpy path is played out to a new score by musical director Stephen Hackshaw and Nineties and Noughties’ dancefloor fillers, sung by May Tether. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Katherine Toy in rehearsals for AKA Theatre’s The Flood, on tour in York, Hull and Leeds. Picture: Cian O’Riain
Premiere of the week: AKA Theatre Company in The Flood: A Musical, Friargate Theatre, York, May 9 and 10, 7.30pm; Godber Studio, Hull Truck Theatre, Hull, May 13, 7pm; Leeds Playhouse Burton Studio, May 14 and 15, 8pm
AKA Theatre Company’s premiere of Lucie Raine and Joe Revell’s musical The Flood blends live music and heartfelt storytelling based on true accounts of facing up to disaster in West Yorkshire in 2015.
“This is a story about what it means to come together when everything falls apart,” says writer-director Raine, who uses a cast of five actor-musicians. “It’s not just a play. It’s a tribute to resilience and creativity, inspired by Hebden Bridge and its people. It’s a celebration for all communities who have faced adversity and emerged stronger.” Box office: York, ticketsource.co.uk; Hull, hulltruck.co.uk; Leeds, leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox: Putting the retro into today’s hits at York Barbican
Nostalgia for today: Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox: Magic & Moonlight Tour 2025, York Barbican, May 7, doors 7pm
AFTER chalking off their 1,000th show, retro collective Postmodern Jukebox are on the British leg of their Moonlight & Magic world tour. Enter a parallel universe where modern-day hits are reimagined in 1920s’ jazz, swing, doo-wop and Motown arrangements. Think The Great Gatsby meets Sinatra At The Sands meets Back To The Future. Dress vintage for the full effect. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
In Focus: York Late Music, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, Stuart O’Hara & Marianna Cortesi, today at 1pm; Trio Agile and Northern School of Contemporary Dance, today at 7.30pm
Stuart O’Hara & Marianna Cortesi
YORK Late Music plays host to two concerts today, the first featuring bass Stuart O’Hara and pianist Marianna Cortesi this afternoon as Sounds Lyrical presents settings of poets Hugh Bernays, John Gilham, Richard Kitchen and Alan Gillott by composers Thomas J Crawley, Robert Holden, Jenny Jackson, Katie Lang, Dawn Walters and James Else.
The concert comprises: Elizabeth Lutyens’ Refugee Blues (Auden); David Blake’s Morning Sea (CP Cavafy); Dawn Walters’ Pre-dawn (Richard Kitchen); Jenny Jackson’s Collecting Stones (Richard Kitchen); Robert Holden’s Flaneur (John Gilham) and Katie Laing’s Maker (Richard Kitchen).
Then come Thomas J Crawley’s Leather Heart (Hugh Bernays); James Else’s Retras IV (Alan Gillott); Tim Brooks’s Jeer (Lizzie Linklater); David Blake’s Voices (CP Cavafy) and Stephen Dodgson’s Various Australian Bush Ballads, 2nd Series. The programme also includes music by David Blake and Elizabeth Lutyens.
Northern School of Contemporary Dance dancer Antonio Bukhar Ssebuuma: Performing with Trio Agile tonight
TONIGHT’S concert marks a first collaboration between York Late Music and the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Trio Agile and NSCD’s Freedom Dances programme.
Bringing together the freedoms of dance, music and rhythm, Trio Agile combine their experimental flair and improvisatory talent with four dancers from the Leeds school, Antonio Bukhar Ssebuuma, Darcy Bodle, Genevieve Wright and Maya Donne.
The 7.30pm performance blends a range of styles from across the globe in a shared expression of the power and joy of the arts, including new works from Indian composer and performer Supriya Nagarajan, Angela Elizabeth Slater, David Lancaster, Steve Crowther, David Power, Athena Corcoran-Tadd and James Else.
Curated by James Else in partnership with the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, the programme comprises: Susie Hodder-Williams & Chris Caldwell, Prelude; Angela Elizabeth Slater, Weaving Colours; Paul Honey, Une Valse Assez Triste; James Else, Freedom Dances and David Lancaster, The Compendium Of Ingenious Mechanical Devices.
Then follow Susie Hodder-Williams & Chris Caldwell, Pas de Deux; Tom Armstrong, Aunt Maria’s Dancing Master; Paul Honey, Pizzìca; Athena Corcoran-Tadd, To You; Supriya Nagarajan, Mohanam Raga; Steve Crowther, Once Upon A Time Harlequin Met His Columbine; David Power, Something In Our Skies; Susie Hodder-Williams & Chris Caldwell, Light Dances and Athena Corcoran-Tadd , Hope Is A Boat.
The musicians will be: Susie Hodder-Williams, flutes; Chris Caldwell, saxophone and bass clarinet; Richard Horne, vibraphone and percussion; Supriya Nagarajan, voice, and Paul Honey, piano.
Chris Caldwell, Susie Hodder-Williams and composer James Else will give a pre-concert talk at 6.45pm with a complimentary glass of wine or juice.
Tickets are on sale at latemusic.org or on the door.
In Focus: The Wedding Present return to Leeds University roots to play Stylus on May 9, 7.30pm
Returning home: Former Mathematics degree student David Gedge outside Leeds University Union, where he will lead The Wedding Present in a 40th anniversary performance at Stylus
DAVID Gedge returns to Leeds University with The Wedding Present, playing Stylus to mark 40 years since he formed the band in his days of studying Mathematics on the campus.
Billed as “Back To Where It All Began”, this Leeds University Union gig brought David back north from his Brighton home on April 14 to re-visit early landmarks in The Wedding Present story to promote both this anniversary celebration and York writer-director Matt Aston’s upcoming musical Reception, inspired by Gedge’s songs for The Wedding Present and Cinerama. More on that August 22 to September 6 show at The Warehouse, Slung Low’s theatre space in Holbeck, later.
The Stylus gig will be the first of two Yorkshire engagements for The Wedding Present in quick succession. On May 10, Gedge’s band will be hooking up with Peter Hook & The Light (Best of Joy Division & New Order) The Farm and Spear Of Destiny on the Interzone bill at Scarborough Spa.
“We did it in Newcastle last year too. It seems to be Peter Hook’s festival – Interzone is a Joy Division song, isn’t it,” says David. Doors open at 4pm with tickets available at seetickets.com and scarboroughspa.co.uk.
Charles HutchPressmet up with David on the day of the photo-shoot, over a light bite in the university student union refectory, the scene of many a gig down the years.
“If I’m honest with you, I studied Mathematics here because I found it quite easy,” he says. “I remember at school finding Maths lessons a doddle. I just clicked with it. My other A-levels were Biology and Physics, and I never knew how I would then use it, but being in a band band is what I’d always wanted to do, really from the age of five, where there are photographs of me playing the recorder, pretending to be in a band.
“From schooldays onwards, I was always in bands. The simple answer is I never decided to do it; it was just always going to be the case. I thought, ‘I’ll go to university, doing Maths will be dead easy and I’ll have a lot of time to do other things’.
“It turned out to be more difficult than I expected and a lot of work, so I kind of regretted doing it – but I got a 2.2, then started to do a MSc, but then the band took off.”
Rising from the ashes of The Lost Pandas, The Wedding Present “kind of existed from 1983-84 but with different line-ups”. The first single, Go Out And Get ‘Em, Boy!, emerged in May 1985 – hence this 40th anniversary gig – with vocalist and guitarist Gedge and bassist Keith Gregory by then being joined by fellow Leeds University alumni Peter Solowka (guitar) and Shaun Charman (drums).
“Actually our first gig was in Allerton Bywater, a mining village half an hour from here, at The Shires Club. The second, third and fourth were here, at the university. We’ve played the Refectory at least once, maybe twice; the Tartan Bar, the R H Evans Lounge and the Riley Smith Hall, as we were getting bigger.
“This will be the first time we’ve played Stylus. We haven’t played the university for years, as we usually play either the O2 Academy or, for a smaller gig, the Brudenell Social Club.”
David has never kept count of how many musicians have passed through the Wedding Present ranks in the past four decades. “I don’t know how you define it, because sometimes you need a stand-in and we’ve had musicians come in as extra players,” he says.
At Stylus, David will be fronting a line-up he had had in place for a couple of years: Vincenzo Lammi on drums; Paul Blackburn on bass and Rachael Wood on guitars (and vocals too). “Weirdly, like me, they’re all based in Brighton, though Vinny is from Sheffield, Paul, from Southport, and Rachael, from Derby, so we’re all northerners. Brighton’s a nice place to be, but it’s expensive.”
Playing in The Wedding Present after 40 years “feels the same”. “It hasn’t changed. The strange thing is, if it’s 40 years, you think of The Rolling Stones or Status Quo, but actually, no, it’s The Wedding Present now.
“Rock’n’roll was a youth culture, but those who who enjoy it now are our age and are still going to gigs, so the whole genre has grown.”
Harry Wyatt’s Madame Bellie Fillop, Michael Lambourne’s Baron Bon Bon, Tim Stedman’s Philippe Fillop and Anna Campkin’s Belle in Harrogate Theatre’s Beauty And The Beast. Picture: Karl Andre
HARROGATE Theatre – or the Grand Opera House as it was first called – opened on January 13 1900, squeezing a capacity of 1,300 into Frank Tugwell’s design.
On Wednesday night, Harrogate Theatre marked its 125th anniversary with the launch of a fundraising campaign for the symmetrical sum of £125,000 – although £1.25 million would surely be more welcome – at the 7pm pantomime performance of Beauty And The Beast, played to a capacity of 500.
“Everything is smaller now,” noted chief executive David Bown. Smaller-scale shows prevail; Victorian melodramas a thing of the past, like the theatre’s ghost, Alice. The days of 40 repertory shows a year are long gone too. Casts are down-sized. Even the theatre name is shorter!
Most significantly, Bown mentioned the post-Covid cut in funding, necessitating the year of “fab and fun” fundraising events, introduced in the new season’s brochure distributed to mayoral party and panto punters alike in the 125th anniversary party bags.
Nothing surely will be more “fab and fun” than Beauty And The Beast, a riotous French fancy of a pantomime enjoyed for a second time this season by CharlesHutchPress, who was left wondering why other theatres have closed their winter big earners already, one as early as December 28.
Written by David Bown, from an original idea by his late writing partner Phil Lowe, with additional material by Michael Lambourne, Marcus Romer and Tim Stedman, Beauty And The Beast is directed by Romer (who has programmed the 125th anniversary season too).
Once the pioneering force behind Pilot Theatre at York Theatre Royal and beyond, Romer brings a playful energy, zest for spectacle, awareness of the power of a knockout pop song old or new, a passion for storytelling and relish for high-tech panache to an outstanding show that still has five performances to go, as full of Parisian chic as Yorkshire humour.
He has a cracking production team too: from Morgan Brind’s vibrant set and costume designs, especially for Harry Wyatt’s flamboyant dame, Madame Bellie Fillop, to Charlie Brown’s superb sound; from Nick Lacey’s arrangements, all snap, crackle and pop, in his 21st year as musical director, to Alexandra Stafford’s lighting design, at its best in Stedman and Lambourne’s ultraviolet-lit Highway To Hell scream of a motorcycle ride. To top it all, David Kar-Hing Lee’s choreography hits the groove throughout.
From Stedman’s filmed opening in airman’s goggles to Romer’s trademark closing film credits, Beauty And The Beast combines Romer tropes with his canny appreciation of the long-established cornerstones of a Harrogate Theatre pantomime.
Stedman is in his 24th season as the helium-voiced, strawberry-cheeked, idiot-savant buffoon, as vital to the show’s flow and comic spark as Billy Pearce at Bradford Alhambra, and here the subject of an affectionate pre-show dig by Bown about his seemingly ageless programme headshot. He is as delightfully daft as ever as Philippe Fillop, and even the rest of the cast stands in admiration to applaud his piece de resistance: a Catherine wheel blur of sound and vision as he reprises what’s happened in the show so far.
Glory be, however, Stedman is not alone in warranting such applause. Romer has all his cast in superb form. Assistant director Lambourne, he of the booming voice and Edwardian beard, has switched from last year’s dark side to be the grandest of grand actors, even sending up himself for “understatement” as the thoroughly thespian cafe owner Baron Bon Bon. Make that tres bon. Harrogate is growing to love him as much as York Theatre Royal audiences did down the years.
After more than ten years as Sheringham Little Theatre’s dame, Harry Wyatt headed north to play Sarah the Cook in Dick Whittingham last winter and he is even more of a Wyatt riot here as another cook, Madame Bellie Fillop, so at ease in costume and comedy alike, and packing a vocal punch in his songs. He is indeed an eyeful in his Eiffel Tower attire.
Colin Kiyani’s Beast/Prince and Anna Campkin’s Belle are proper romantic leads; no song has more impact than Kiss From A Rose, sung so beautifully that it would surely have received a Seal of approval, justifying Romer’s long-held wish to use the vertiginous ballad in a stage show.
The Beast’s 360-degree rotating transformation scene – flying effects courtesy of Flying By Foy – is a spectacular denouement too; the scene truly moving as Romer gives due weight to the drama at the heart of this torrid fairytale.
Romer’s six-pack of stellar performances – backed up by an ensemble of dancers – is completed by another actress with “previous” with him: Joanne Sandi, whose Mona Lisa, the Sorceress and Parisian fashion designer, gives off vibes of Wicked and Beyonce too, albeit with a Texan swagger, outwardly incongruous and yet it works! Her rendition of Freedom, off Beyonce’s Lemonade, makes you go Wow.
Alongside Leeds Playhouse’s fabulous The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, this monster hit is the five-star show of CharlesHutchPress’s winter tour of the north. Make a note in your diary: Bown and Romer will be defying size confines once more next winter in Jack And The Beanstalk, wherein big, magical things grow from small. How apt!
Beauty And The Beast, Harrogate Theatre, 7pm tonight; 12 noon and 5pm, Saturday and Sunday. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk.
Taboo-shattering comedy: Ed Byrne in Tragedy Plus Time at Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Roslyn Grant
FROM Narnia to ice sculptures, comedy in wolf’s clothing to Ayckbourn’s 91st play, Charles Hutchinson finds plenty to perk up the days and nights ahead.
Taboo subject of the week: Ed Byrne: Tragedy Plus Time, Grand Opera House, tonight, 7.30pm
MARK Twain, the 19th century American writer, humorist, and essayist, defined humour as Tragedy Plus Time. Irish comedian Ed Byrne tests that formula by mining the most tragic event in his life – the death of his brother Paul from Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 44 – for laughs.
Byrne’s show carries the content warning “Discussions of death”. “But as with any subject I do, there are always digressions into asides,” he says. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Mark Reynolds’ illustration for Stewart Lee Vs The Man-Wulf, on tour at York Theatre Royal for five nights
Comedy and not comedy: Stewart Lee Vs The Man-Wulf, York Theatre Royal, January 28 to February 1, 7.30pm; The Shed presents Indeterminacy with Tania Caroline Chen, piano, Steve Beresford, piano and objects, and Stewart Lee, voice, National Centre for Early Music, York, February 1, 3.30pm
IN Stewart Lee Vs The Man-Wulf, Lee shares the stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian from the dark forests of the subconscious who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the “culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee”: can the beast inside us all be silenced by the silver bullet of Lee’s deadpan stand-up? Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
On John Cage and David Tudor’s 1959 double LP Indeterminacy, Cage read 90 of his stories, each one, whether long or short, lasting precisely one minute. Unheard by Cage, Tudor simultaneously played the piano and other things in another room. Now Stewart Lee joins pianists Tania Caroline Chen and Steve Beresford to do their own version of Cage’s work in a 40-minute performance in one room, where the musicians do their best not to hear Lee’s reading. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
York Ice Trail 2025: Taking the theme of Origins on February 1 and 2
After this week’s deep freeze, here comes York Ice Trail 2025, February 1 and 2
YORK’S “free weekend of frosty fun” returns with a 2025 theme of Origins as York’s streets are turned into an icy wonderland of frozen tableau in this annual event run by Make It York. Among the 30 ice sculptures showcasing 2,000 years of city history will be a Roman shield, a Viking helmet, a chocolate bar, a drifting ghost, a majestic train and a Yorkshire rose, all captured in the language of ice by Icebox. Full details can be found at visityork.org/york-ice-trail.
The book cover for Elizabeth Sharkey’s Why Britain Rocked: Under discussion with musician and environmental campaigner husband Feargal at Pocklington Arts Centre
One-off interview comes into view: Why Britain Rocked: Elizabeth and Feargal Sharkey, Pocklington Arts Centre, February 13, 7.30pm.
FEARGAL Sharkey, former frontman of The Undertones, will interview his wife, author Elizabeth Sharkey, on one night only of her debut book tour: the final show, which just happens to be in Pocklington.
Together they will explore the history of British pop music, as charted in Why Britain Rocked: How Rock Became Roll And Took Over The World, wherein Elizabeth re-writes the established history by uncovering the untold stories behind Britain’s musical evolution and challenges the American claim to have invented rock’n’roll. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
The Corrs: Kicking off the 2025 season at Scarborough Open Air Theatre
Off to the East Coast this summer: Scarborough Open Air Theatre season
IRISH siblings The Corrs lead off Cuffe & Taylor’s 2025 season in Scarborough with support from Natalie Imbruglia on June 11. In the diary too are Gary Barlow, June 13; Shed Seven with special guests Jake Bugg and Cast, June 14; Pendulum, June 15; Basement Jaxx, June 21, and The Human League, plus Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey and Blancmange, June 28.
July opens with The Script and special guest Tom Walker on July 5; UB40 featuring Ali Campbell, with special guest Bitty McLean, July 6; Blossoms, with Inhaler and Apollo Junction, July 10; Rag’n’Bone Man, with Elles Bailey, July 11; McFly, with Twin Atlantic and Devon, July 12; Judas Priest, with Phil Campbell & The Bastard Sons, July 23, and Texas, with Rianne Downey, July 26. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.
Bunmi Osadolor (Edmund), Jesse Dunbar (Peter), Kudzai Mangombe (Lucy) and Joanna Adaran (Susan) in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe at Leeds Playhouse. Picture: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg
Touring show of the year: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Grand Opera House, York, April 22 to 26, 7pm plus 2pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees
STEP through the wardrobe into the kingdom of Narnia for the most mystical of adventures in a faraway land. Join Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter as they wave goodbye to wartime Britain and say hello to Mr Tumnus, the talking Faun, Aslan, the Lion, and the coldest, cruellest White Witch.
Running at Leeds Playhouse until January 25 in the most spectacular production of the winter season, this breathtaking stage adaptation of CS Lewis’s allegorical novel then heads out on a new tour with its magical storytelling, bewitching stagecraft and stellar puppets. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Alan Ayckbourn: Directing his 91st play, Earth Angel, at the SJT, Scarborough, in the autumn. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
Alan Ayckbourn’s 91st play: Earth Angel, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, September 13 to October 11
STEPHEN Joseph Theatre director emeritus Alan Ayckbourn directs his 91st play, Earth Angel, wherein Gerald has lost his wife of many years. Amy was the light of his life, almost heaven sent. It is tricky thinking about life without her but he is trying his best to put a brave face on things, accepting help from fussy neighbours and muddling along as best he can.
Then a mysterious stranger turns up at Amy’s wake. He seems like a nice enough chap, washing the dishes and offering to do a shop for Gerald, but is he all that he appears? Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
In focus: The Waterboys’ new album and tour dates at York Barbican, May 15; Sheffield City Hall, May 9, and Leeds O2 Academy, June 17
Mike Scott: Leading The Waterboys at York Barbican for the eighth time on May 15. Picture: Paul MacManus
THE Waterboys will showcase “the most audacious album yet” of Mike Scott’s 42-year career, Life, Death And Dennis Hopper, on their latest return to York Barbican, having previously played their “Big Music” brand of folk, rock, soul and blues there in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2023.
Released on April 4 on Sun Records, their 16th studio album charts the epic path of the trailblazing American actor and rebel, as told through a song cycle that depicts not only Hopper’s story but also the saga of the last 75 years of western pop culture.
“The arc of his life was the story of our times,” says Scott, “He was at the big bang of youth culture in Rebel Without A Cause with James Dean; and the beginnings of Pop Art with the young Andy Warhol.
“He was part of the counter-culture, hippie, civil rights and psychedelic scenes of the ’60s. In the ’70s and ’80s he went on a wild ten-year rip, almost died, came back, got straight and became a five-movies-a-year character actor without losing the sparkle in his eye or the sense of danger or unpredictability that always gathered around him.”
As a first taste of what lies in store, Hopper’s On Top (Genius) was unveiled on streaming and video this week, capturing the electric, heady moment when Hopper’s Easy Rider became a cultural phenomenon and cemented his place in Hollywood history. Buoyed by Scott’s searing vocals, vibrant instrumentation and a psychedelic edge, the song channels the euphoria and hubris of the 1960s’ counterculture that Hopper epitomised.
Scott worked for four years on Life, Death And Dennis Hopper. Produced with Waterboys bandmates Famous James and Brother Paul, the album spans 25 tracks that trace the trace the extraordinary ups and downs of Hopper’s life, from his youth in Kansas to his long rise, five wives, tumultuous fall and ultimate redemption.
The album cover artwork for The Waterboys’ Life, Death And Dennis Hopper, set for release on April 4
Every song has its own special place and fascinating, deep-rooted story. “It begins in his childhood, ends the morning after his death, and I get to say a whole lot along the way, not just about Dennis, but about the whole strange adventure of being a human soul on planet Earth,” says Scott.
The album will be The Waterboys’ first for Sun Records. “Hey, we’re label mates with Howlin’ Wolf and young Elvis,”says Scott, who is joined by a stellar line-up of guests, ranging from Bruce Springsteen, Fiona Apple and Steve Earle to Nashville-based Alt Americana artist Anana Kaye, English singer Barny Fletcher, Norwegian country-rockers Sugarfoot, Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, Kathy Valentine of The Go-Go’s and punk arch-priestess Patti Palladin.
The 31-date UK and Ireland tour will run from May 1 to June 19. Box office: York, yorkbarbican.co.uk; Sheffield, sheffieldcityhall.co.uk; Leeds, academymusicgroup.com.
Life, Death And Dennis Hopper track listing:
1. Kansas (featuring Steve Earle) 2. Hollywood ’55 3. Live In The Moment, Baby 4. Brooke/1712 North Crescent Heights 5. Andy (A Guy Like You) 6. The Tourist (featuring Barny Fletcher) 7. Freaks On Wheels 8. Blues For Terry Southern 9. Memories Of Monterey 10. Riding Down To Mardi Gras 11. Hopper’s On Top (Genius) 12. Transcendental Peruvian Blues 13. Michelle (Always Stay) 14. Freakout At The Mud Palace 15. Daria 16. Ten Years Gone (featuring Bruce Springsteen) 17. Letter From An Unknown Girlfriend (featuring Fiona Apple) 18. Rock Bottom 19. I Don’t Know How I Made It (featuring Taylor Goldsmith) 20. Frank (Let’s F**k) 21. Katherine (featuring Anana Kaye) 22. Everybody Loves Dennis Hopper 23. Golf, They Say 24. Venice, California (Victoria)/The Passing Of Hopper 25. Aftermath
Opera North in James Brining’s revival of The Magic Flute. Picture: Tristram Kenton
FOR the start of her first full year as general director, Laura Canning is presiding over an autumn of three revivals, of which this production by James Brining is the first.
Doubtless she had no say in the schedule, but it still looks cautious, especially when viewed in the wake of, for example, Buxton Festival’s five new productions this summer.
Brining operates as artistic director of Leeds Playhouse, just a short walk away from the Grand Theatre, and this had been his first full operatic production. It still shows signs of over-calculation.
Before the curtain we are treated to a welcome designed to embrace newcomers. Old-stagers might have regarded it as patronising but, seen alongside a bare-bones outline in the programme of what constitutes opera in the first place, it is arguably a useful introduction to an artform that too many have found intimidating: an attempt to cast the audience net more widely, in other words.
This process must be treated gingerly, however, if the company’s core audience is not to be deterred. The overture is intended as an introduction, presenting themes and building anticipation.
All of that is dissipated when it is overlaid with a dumb show, based on Bergman’s cinematic view of the whole work being a child’s dream/nightmare, that has little or nothing to do with Mozart. So, overture and dumb show are at odds with one another: in our screen-obsessed age, the eyes take over and the overture goes for naught.
As it was, Christoph Koncz, making his Leeds debut, opened the overture very slowly and followed with an extremely rapid allegro, which the orchestra – now under its new leader Katie Stillman – handled with panache. Thereafter Koncz impresses with the transparency of the textures he conjures.
Egor Zhuravskii has graduated from Fenton in Falstaff to Tamino here, and does so smoothly enough. Narrow at the start, his tone opens out over time but remains a little dry, albeit stylish. There is not much genuine feeling between him and Claire Lees’s admirable Pamina, but she entrances with every appearance and sounds ready for greater things.
Leaning heavily on his Welsh lilt, Emyr Wyn Jones makes an affable dunderhead of Papageno, almost taking the pantomime route, while Anna Dennis makes an imposing Queen of Night, edgy, determined and accurate.
Msimelelo Mbali, as Sarastro, lacks the gravitas shown by Andri Björn Robertsson’s Speaker, but his bass grows in authority in Act 2. Colin Judson offers an apt irritant as Monostatos, in place of the repellent figure we had last time.
Pasquale Orchard makes a charming Papagena, although she is introduced to Papageno early and deprived of her ‘old lady’ disguise. Many of the lesser roles are ably assumed by members of the chorus, proving its versatility.
Colin Richmond’s flexible set proves its worth once again, as does Douglas O’Connell’s high-impact video effects.
Brining envisaged Blakean poles of innocence and experience. He might instead have allowed Mozart and Schikaneder – in Jeremy Sams’s colloquial translation – to speak for themselves. The plot is complicated enough as it is.
Review by Martin Dreyer
Performances: Leeds Grand Theatre, February 12, 13, 15 and 22 2025, 7pm. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com. Hull New Theatre, March 27 and 29 2025, 7pm. Box office: hulltheatres.co.uk.
Melissa James as Lou and Patrick Heusinger as James in Paranormal Activity at Leeds Playhouse. Picture: Pamela Raith
IT is a balmy Summer evening in Leeds but despite the sweltering temperatures, there is a chill in the air as the world premiere of Paranormal Activity arrives at the Playhouse.
A Leeds Playhouse and Simon Friend Entertainment co-production in association with Gavin Kalin, Ken Davenport and Jonathan & Rae Corr, the show is based on a film first released by Paramount Pictures in the UK 15 years ago.
A relatively low budget found-footage film, the original became a word-of-mouth hit and is regarded as being one of the most profitable films ever made.
If you have seen that film (or any of its many sequels), you will be familiar with the basic premise. A young couple are haunted by a strange presence within their home, inspiring them to set up a camera to try and capture evidence. Of course, technology has come on a long way since then…
In keeping with the subject matter, the whole show seems to be shrouded in mystery, with signs outside the theatre reminding us that we are not allowed to take any photographs or breathe a word of what we have seen to others. “SHHH!” instruct the posters, “NO SPOILERS”.
Perhaps, therefore, it is best to play it safe with the synopsis provided by the Playhouse website, which states: “American couple James and Lou move to London to escape their past…we can’t say anything else.”
We may not know what to expect but expectations are still high that this will succeed in maintaining the original spirit of those films and go some way towards re-creating the fear. As with many scary films, the real horror here is less related to the events themselves and more the impact that they are having on their relationship.
Fly Davis’ residential set is on more than one level, and it is worth keeping an eye on what is happening upstairs when the characters are downstairs and vice versa. It manages to be spacious but claustrophobic, cosy yet disconcerting. Several of the home appliances seem to be in desperate need of an electrical safety test. It might be time to call in the professionals to investigate.
Written by Levi Holloway and directed by Felix Barrett, the artistic director of Punchdrunk, who specialise in creating unsettling immersive theatre, it is no exaggeration to say that this is a sensory experience with a cacophony of disturbing sounds, atmospheric rumblings and frequent blackouts that serve to intensify the impact of what you have just seen.
The sense of impending dread is palpable throughout as we silently scream warnings at the cast (Melissa James’s Lou, Patrick Heusinger’s James, Jackie Morrison’s Ethylene Cotgrave and Pippa Winslow’s Carolanne, James’s mother). You are anxious to know what happens next but genuinely afraid to watch. There were blood-curdling screams, hands over eyes and leaping up from seats…and that was just the audience.
Your overall enjoyment may depend to an extent on your own beliefs regarding the supernatural, but seeing is believing and not everything here is quite what it seems to be. The effect is often disorientating, and like the characters themselves, by the end, we are left uncertain as to who or what to believe – creating an overwhelming sense of paranoid activity that will follow you home afterwards and linger long after the final curtain falls.
Paranormal Activity ran at Leeds Playhouse from July 4 to August 2, featuring illusions by Chris Fisher, lighting designs by Anna Watson and sound design by Gareth Fry.
Jessica Baglow’s Lady Macbeth and Ash Hunter’s Macbeth
WHEN shall we meet Amy Leach’s Macbeth again? Only two years to the month since its Leeds Playhouse premiere.
Sixty-nine schools from across Yorkshire attended the 2022 run, “introducing more than 5,000 students to the excitement and lasting resonance of Macbeth – and giving some of them their first electrifying experience of live theatre,” as artistic director and chief executive James Brining recalls in his programme notes.
Even more school-friendly matinees have been fitted in for the return of GCSE Eng Lit set text Macbeth, supported by a programme of resources and activities to “bring additional depth and breadth to students’ appreciation of this incredible play”.
Striking up a pre-show conversation with the student in the neighbouring back-row seat at Thursday’s lunchtime matinee, she had first seen a version of Macbeth when she was ten and it had since become her favourite play. Now she is studying its psychology on her GCSE course.
And what a psychological thriller to be watching to elucidate those studies, in a theatre full to the brim with excited school uniforms, all enraptured from start to finish by Leach’s vision of all-inclusive theatre-making. Theatre for all the senses, all audiences, all performers, deaf, visually impaired, included. Each performance has integrated audio description.
Think of modern theatrical retellings of historical stories with nods to concert culture, and up pops SIX The Musical, the Spouse Girls’ revenge of Henry VIII’s wives. Another controversial king, Macbeth, is now framed in a setting that would not be out of place in a stadium rock show.
A huge drawbridge hangs heavy over Hayley Grindle’s stage. Searchlights scan the auditorium from metallic towers spread out like a forest. Fog enfolds. Deafening noise bursts through the air. For those about to rock, however, stop. You notice a puddle of water; muddy ground; grit too. Something witchy this way comes.
Enter the weather-watchful Witches (Charlotte Arrowsmith, Karina Jones and Elkanah Wilder, all from 2022), spinning opening words that are re-shaped, re-ordered, with rhythms afresh, their sound as important as their meaning.
What’s this? Macbeth (Ash Hunter, last seen on Yorkshire boards as Heathcliff in Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights at York Theatre Royal) and Lady Macbeth (the returning Jessica Baglow) are cradling a new-born baby, only for the bairn to die within a heartbeat.
In the Playhouse’s wish to “explore the damaging physical, spiritual and psychological effects of treachery on those who seek power at any cost”, Leach has put child loss, lineage and legacy at the heart of the Macbeths’ behaviour, the acts of murder, the need to eliminate all threats to their ill-gotten power.
Leach then takes it even further, Baglow’s Lady Macbeth being pregnant when she beseeches “unsex me here” and later suffering a miscarriage as blood seeps through her nightgown. Come the finale, Leach adds prescient text to give a foretaste of Banquo’s son, Fleance, becoming king as the Witches had prophesied.
Those Witches typify Leach and Brining’s “commitment to accessible and inclusive theatre-making”, as does the participation of the blind Benjamin Wilson as audio description consultant.
Supernatural soliciting: Elkanah Wilder, Karina Jones and Charlotte Arrowsmith’s Witches in Amy Leach’s Macbeth. Picture: Kirsten McTernan
Among the witches, Karina Jones is visually impaired and Charlotte Arrowsmith is profoundly deaf, while Elkanah Wilder “interrogates multifaceted sociopolitical oppressions from a queer and disabled lens”.
Here, Shakespeare’s “weird sisters” are neither weird, nor alien, in the way they are often played, but are as wild as the landscape instead.
Arrowsmith also plays Lady MacDuff, partnered once more by the profoundly deaf Hull actor Adam Bassett as MacDuff. Paul Brown’s Lennox vocally interprets the sign language, complementing the intensity of Bassett’s expressive face, hands and arms with the staccato rhythms of his speech.
Learning of, spoiler alert, his wife and children’s deaths is even more shocking, heart-rending, in this form of news delivery: theatre at its unique best, living and breathing in the rawness of the moment.
Not only do lighting designer Chris Davey’s searchlights induce a sense of paranoia (later turning from white to red after yet more murdering), but relentlessly oppressive natural elements prevail too, along with the sound and fury of machismo war.
These are all big, muscular, mud-and-blood splattered men, ready to rut like stags, except for Aosaf Afzal’s King Duncan; their physicality being emphasised by Georgina Lamb’s movement direction and Claire Lewellyn’s fight direction. Likewise, Nicola T Chang’s sound design adds to the cacophony.
Macbeth’s vaulting ambition may in part be represented by the drawbridge, crowned when on top of it, but broken beneath it, but Leach’s production is deeply human amid the technology.
In the relationship of Hunter’s reactionary Macbeth and Baglow’s more intuitive Lady Macbeth, the shifting sands become less about calculating mind games, controlled initially by her, more about brute physicality and brutal will, imposed by him, as intense love and mutual hopes are snuffed out in the face of ultimate destiny being beyond their control, whether shaped by supernatural witchcraft or the resurrection of natural order.
Hunter’s Macbeth is as physical in his language as in his pugilist’s body, his soliloquies carrying the force of punches amid the fevered actions of his bloody rise and fall. He is so spent – “Enough, enough, I am done” – that he lays down to let Macduff administer the final blow.
Above all, Leach puts Lady Macbeth’s motives under the spotlight, and if purists feel she has gone too far in doing so, the reality is that Baglow’s performance is all the better, more rounded, for it.
Risk-taking change can be liberating, rather than be judged as taking liberties, as Leach’s emboldened Playhouse productions affirm, from Romeo And Juliet to Macbeth X 2.
What’s more, there is no damned spot to ‘out’ here. Leach’s Macbeth was already beyond blemish in 2022 and is even better in 2024.
Macbeth, Leeds Playhouse, today at 2pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
2023 Strictly champ Ellie Leach’s Miss Scarlett, front right, with her fellow colourful characters in the new whodunit comedy Cluedo 2, on tour at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Alastair Muir
A WHODUNIT comedy, mischievous theatre as a team game, a wicked return, cocktail-bar tales, political satire and one-liners and a very muddy pig are Charles Hutchinson’s clues to the best upcoming shows.
Whodunit, with what and where, of the week: Cluedo 2, York Theatre Royal, March 12 to 16, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
STRICTLY Come Dancing 2023 champion and Coronation Street star Ellie Leach is making her stage acting debut as Miss Scarlett in the world premiere British tour of Cluedo 2, marking the 75th anniversary of the Hasbro boardgame. Next stop, York.
This follow-up to the original play (based on Jonathan Lynn’s 1985 film Clue) is an original comedy whodunit, set in the Swinging Sixties, with a script by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran (Birds Of A Feather, Goodnight Sweetheart and Dreamboats And Petticoats) and direction by Mark Bell (Mischief Theatre’s The Play That Goes Wrong). Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Ash Hunter’s Macbeth and Jessica Baglow’s Lady Macbeth in Amy Leach’s revival of Macbeth at Leeds Playhouse. Picture: Kirsten McTernan
Something wicked this way comes…again: Macbeth, Leeds Playhouse, until March 23
AMY Leach reactivates her 2022 Leeds Playhouse production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth with a wickedly good cast, now led by Ash Hunter, who returns to Yorkshire after his terrific Heathcliff in Emma Rice’s Wuthering Heights at York Theatre Royal.
“Macbeth investigates the nature of belief, love, ambition and desire, asking us to root for two humans who drive each other to do utterly terrible things,” says Leach. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Let the games begin: Gemma Curry, left, Claire Morley and Becky Lennon in Hoglets Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Mischief at York Theatre Royal Studio
Shakespeare shake-up of the week: Hoglets Theatre in A Midsummer Night’s Mischief, York Theatre Royal Studio, March 9, 10.30am
EVERYTHING is kicking off as the fairies in the forest start a fight, but which side will you be on? Team Titania or Team Oberon? York company Hoglets Theatre presents an interactive, fun, larger-than-life production for young children, based on Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Expect wild characters, raucous singalong songs, puppets, stunts and some frankly ridiculous disco dancing from director/writer Gemma Curry and fellow cast members Claire Morley and Becky Lennon. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Comedian Matt Green: “Trying to make sense of the world”. Picture: Karla Gowlett
Political satire of the week: Matt Green: That Guy, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, March 10, 8pm
THE debut national tour by That Guy (@mattgreencomedy) is a stand-up show full of jokes both political and non-political after he achieved millions of views for his online satirical videos launched in lockdown.
Green is touring his first show “since the madness of Covid/Johnson/Truss/Lord-knows-what-else began”, trying to make sense of the world in another year of elections and culture wars. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Jake Bugg: Playing our city on his Your Town Tour
Singer-songwriter of the week: Jake Bugg, Your Town Tour 2024, York Barbican, Tuesday, doors 7pm
ON his 15-date tour, Nottingham singer-songwriter Jake Bugg is performing two sets per night, first acoustic, then electric, as he rattles through his biggest hits, plus songs from 2021’s top three-charting Saturday Night Sunday Morning.
Two nights earlier, founder member Graham Gouldman leads art pop and soft rock innovators 10cc on their Ultimate Ultimate Greatest Hits Tour 2024 at 7.30pm. Ticket availability is limited. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Peppa Pig’s Fun Day Out: Songs, muddy puddles and snorts at the Grand Opera House
Children’s show of the week: Peppa Pig’s Fun Day Out, Grand Opera House, York, Wednesday, 1pm and 4pm, and Thursday, 10am and 1pm
PEPPA Pig is joined by her family and friends as they head to the zoo and the beach for a special party, with the promise of a fun-packed day. Prepare to sing with colourful scarecrows, feed the penguins, build big sandcastles and even swim in the sea in a show packed with songs, dancing, muddy puddles, giggles and snorts. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Facing the shift from hell in the worst bar in town: Sophie Bullivant, Abi Carter, Holly Smith and Laura Castle in Rowntree Players’ Shakers
Comedy play of the week: Rowntree Players in Shakers, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, March 14 to 16, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee
WELCOME to Shakers, the worst bar in town where everyone wants to be seen. Carol, Adele, Niki and Mel face the shift from hell. The lights are neon, the music is loud, and shoes must be smart. No trainers.
Jane Thornton and John Godber’s 1984 comedy exposes the sticky-floored world behind the bar on a busy Saturday night. Here come the girls, the lads, the yuppies and the luvvies, all played by Sophie Bullivant, Laura Castle, Abi Carter and Holly Smith under the direction of Jamie McKeller, who worked previously with Bullivant and Castle on Godber’s Teechers in 2023. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Rebecca Vaughan in Dyad Productions’ Austen’s Women: Lady Susan, scheming at Theatre@41 for two days
Solo show of the week: Dyad Productions in Austen’s Women: Lady Susan, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, March 15, 7.30pm and March 16, 2.30pm
FROM the creators of I, Elizabeth, Female Gothic, Christmas Gothic and A Room Of One’s Own comes a new Austen’s Women show, based on Jane Austen’s first full-length work from 1794, performed by Rebecca Vaughan.
Created entirely from letters, this one features the devil-may-care Lady Susan, the coquettish, scheming black widow, hunting down not one, but two, fortunes. Then add oppressed, rebellious daughter Frederica; long-suffering sister-in-law Catherine; family matriarch Mrs De Courcy and insouciant best friend Alicia in this darkly comic tale of Georgian society and the women trapped within it. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Shock in shirts: Comedian Milton Jones will be displaying his sartorial eloquence in his Ha!Milton tour show
Gig announcement of the week: Milton Jones, Ha!Milton, Grand Opera House, York, September 7; Sheffield, City Hall, December 4; King’s Hall, Ilkley, December 8
MILTON Jones, the shock-haired master of the one-liner, will take his 2024 tour, Ha!Milton, on the road from September 3 to December 15. “This is not a musical,” says Jones, in a nod to the title.
“I am tone deaf and have no sense of rhythm, but at least I don’t make a song and dance about it. This is a whole new show of daftness. You know it makes sense.” Topics will include giraffes…“and there’s a bit about tomatoes”. Box office: miltonjones.com; York, atgtickets.com/york; Sheffield, sheffieldcityhall.co.uk; Ilkley, bradford-theatres.co.uk.
In Focus: Navigators Art & Performance, GUNA: Views and Voices of Women, City Screen Picturehouse, York
Collaborative banner by Navigators Art workshop group, including first-time artists, for York International Women’s Week 2024
YORK collective Navigators Art & Performance presents GUNA: Views and Voices of Women, at City Screen Picturehouse, Coney Street, York, from March 10 to April 5.
Run in association with York International Women’s Week 2024, this exhibition explores and celebrates the creativity of women and non-binary artists.
On show in the cafe and the upstairs gallery is an array of paintings, textiles, collages, photographs and more by 20 emerging and established York makers, curated by York artist Katie Lewis.
Navigators Art & Performance’s poster for GUNA: Views and Voices of Women
“Women have used textiles as an art form to tell their stories and express views for centuries,” says Katie. “Many of the artists are using recycled fabrics that give further meaning to their work.”
The official launch night event on March 11 offers the chance to meet the artists over a complimentary drink from 6pm. All are welcome, with no need to book; more details at https://www.facebook.com/events/6804352783003925
The exhibition is free to enter every day during cinema hours. City Screen is fully accessible.
Suffragette City, by Katie Lewis
NAVIGATORS Art & Performance will co-host GUNA: An Evening of Music, Spoken Word, Performance Art and Comedy to complement the exhibition and further celebrate the creativity of women and non-binary artists in The Basement at City Screen on March 23 from 7pm to 10.45pm.
GUNA is a version of the ancient Greek word for ‘woman’, leading to a line-up of poets Danae, Olivia Mulligan and Rose Drew; performance artist Carrieanne Vivianette; global songs and percussion from Soundsphere; original music from Suzy Bradley; comedy from Aimee Moon; and a rousing appearance by the multi-faceted singer, author and artist Heather Findlay.
“The venue is small and our shows often sell out, so book soon,” advises Navigators’ organiser, Richard Kitchen. Full details and TicketSource booking are available at https://bit.ly/nav-guna
In with a shout: Jorvik Viking Festival returns to York
INVASION? Installation? Theatre innovation? Half-term challenges? Giants and dinosaurs? Yes, yes, yes. Charles Hutchinson signposts what to catch in the days and weeks ahead.
Festival of the week: Jorvik Viking Festival 2024, invading York from February 12 to 18
NOW in its 39th year, Europe’s largest annual Viking festival will be attracting up to 45,000 visitors of all ages over the week ahead. “We’d always advise booking in for some of the activities – including a visit to Jorvik Viking Centre and the Festival Finale – but many have booking slots available on the day too,” advises event manager Abigail Judge.
Family activities include Monday’s smelly, squelchy Poo Day! at DIG, St Saviourgate, from 11am to 3pm; daily Berserker Camp, family crafting and saga story-telling Arena! shows, and a new event, the Best Dressed Viking, Best Beast and Best Beard competitions, on February 18 at 12.30pm in St Sampson’s Square. For tickets and the full programme, visit: jorvikvikingfestival.co.uk
Georgia-Mae Myers and Nedum Okonyia in rehearsal for the Imitating The Dog and Leeds Playhouse co-production of Frankenstein. Picture: Ed Waring
Yorkshire theatre premiere of the week: Frankenstein, Leeds Playhouse Courtyard Theatre, February 15 to 24
PIONEERING Leeds company Imitating The Dog teams up with Leeds Playhouse for a “visually captivating and psychologically thrilling” multi-media exploration of Mary Shelley’s Gothic tale of fear and anxiety, posing the question “what is it to be human?”.
Georgia-Mae Myers and Nedum Okonyia play all the roles across parallel narratives, threading together the late-18th century’ story of Frankenstein with a contemporary conversation between a pregnant young couple, fearful of what it means to bring life into the world. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Ironing 1924 style at Nunnington Hall over half-term. Picture: Arnhel de Serra
Half-term family activity of the week: Nunnington Hall, Nunnington, near Helmsley, February 10 to 18, 10.30am to 4pm, last entry at 3.15pm.
TRAVEL back to 1924 this half-term when families can enjoy being tasked with carrying out activities performed by household servants 100 years ago, from ironing to dusting bannisters, cross stitch to flower arranging.
The National Trust property has created a fun, interactive trail around the manor house in the form of a CV that guides visitors through the various servant skills. Children can find out if they meet the requirements necessary to fulfil the responsibilities of the desired positions, and then decide which roles, if any, they would choose to accept. Tickets: nationaltrust.org.uk/nunnington-hall.
Going Wilde in the country: Tiny & Tall Productions and Soap Soup Theatre’s touring production of The Selfish Giantvisits Helmsley
Children’s show of the week: Tiny & Tall Productions and Soap Soup Theatre in The Selfish Giant, Helmsley Arts Centre, February 11, 2.30pm
BRISTOL family theatre companies Tiny & Tall Productions and Soap Soup Theatre head north with their collaborative exploration of Oscar Wilde’s children’s story of an unusual friendship, The Selfish Giant.
In this version, the giantGrinter lives happily alone in her huge icy house, shutting out the world that long ago shut her out. Outside, very little greenery is left. One spring day, the children, tired of playing on hard roads and grey rooftops, climb through a chink in her garden walls, changing the course of their lives forever and Grinter’s too. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyartscentre.co.uk.
Jonathan Pie: Hero or villain? Time for a rant at York Barbican
York comedy gig(s) of the week: Jonathan Pie: Hero Or Villain?, York Barbican, February 14 and 15, 7.30pm
FOR the record, ranting political correspondent Jonathan Pie is a fictional character portrayed by British comedian Tom Walker, scripted by Walker and Irish comedian Andrew Doyle. In his latest slice of Pie, he hopes to answer the question: hero or villain?
Join him, on a St Valentine’s Day date or the night after, as he “celebrates the UK’s greatest heroes (nurses/Gary Lineker/24-hour off licence proprietors), takes a verbal blowtorch to its villains (the Tories/cyclists), kicks in the Establishment’s back doors and rifles through its kitchen cupboards”. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Jurassic Live: Dinosaur adventures on a musical journey at York Barbican
Swimming dinosaur alert: Jurassic Live, York Barbican, February 16, 5pm; February 17, 11am, 3pm; February 18, 1pm
NEW for 2024 in this interactive theatrical dinosaur show is the Tylosaurus, a genus of Mosasaur: the largest predatory marine reptile to ever grace our oceans and now the largest marine puppet ever made as it swims in its gigantic purpose-built Jurassic tank on stage. Be warned: if you sit near the front, you will get wet!
Family show Jurassic Live undertakes a musical journey as little Amber, Ranger Joe and Ranger Nora strive to save the day from an evil man determined to close the Jurassic facility. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Barrie and the Bard: Barrie Rutter discusses Shakespeare’s Royals at the SJT, Scarborough, Salts Mill, York Theatre Royaland Ripon Theatre Festival
Regal tour of the north: Barrie Rutter: Shakespeare’s Royals, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, March 1, 7.30pm; Arrival Of Spring Gallery, Salts Mill, Saltaire, April 13, 7.30pm; York Theatre Royal Studio, April 26, 7.45pm; Ripon Theatre Festival, Ripon Cathedral, July 4, 7.30pm
BARRIE Rutter, founder and former director of Northern Broadsides, celebrates the Bard’s kings and queens – their achievements, conquests and foibles – with tales, anecdotes and memories from a career of playing and directing Shakespeare’s Royals.
After being told he could never play a king on account of his Yorkshire accent, Hull-born Rutter, now 77, took the revolutionary step of creating his own theatre company in 1992 in Halifax to use the northern voice for Shakespeare’s kings, queens and emperors, not only the usual drunken porters, jesters or fools. As he says on X: “Lover of language. Awobopaloobopalopbamboom – everything else is Shakespeare”. Box office: Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com; Salt’s Mill, https://bit.ly/RutterAtSalts; York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Ripon, ripontheatrefestival.org.
In Focus: Art installation Colour & Light, York Art Gallery, going full frontal until February 25
Colour & Light: Art from the York Art Gallery collection spreads over the gallery facade in Double Take Projections’ installation. Picture: York BID/Double Take Projections
YORK BID links up with York Museums Trust for the return of Colour & Light: an innovative project designed to warm up York Art Gallery’s facade in the cold winter with an art-filled light installation by David McConnachie’s Edinburgh company Double Take Projections.
This “high impact and large-scale visual arts project” uses 3D projection mapping to bring York’s iconic buildings to life, first York Minster last year, now York Art Gallery, where the projection will play every ten minutes from 6pm to 9pm daily in a non-ticketed free event.
Highlighting York’s UNESCO Media Arts status, this outdoor projection is the work of Double Take Projections, who architecturally scanned the gallery facade to generate a 3D model.
This model served as the template for content application. From there, they used multiple projections to create one seamless image by projecting from different angles and wrapping content on the irregularly shaped frontage.
Viewers can notice something new at each viewing, such as York’s skyline being hidden in different mediums or artistic elements of the gallery’s façade that they may not have spotted previously.
The William Etty statue in front of the gallery, in Exhibition Square, has been brought to life too. Born in Feasegate and buried just around the corner from the gallery in Marygate, Etty is York’s most iconic artist.
Considered the first significant British painter of nudes and still lifes, Etty’s 19th century paintings were somewhat controversial at the time, but he also played a role in the conservation of the city walls. His work Preparing For AFancy Dress Ball features in the Colour & Light display.
Not only York Art Gallery’s paintings are highlighted. Spot the reference to the extensive Centre of Ceramic Arts (CoCA) and the two tiled panels on the side of the building, Leonardo Expiring In The Arms Of Francis I and Michelangelo Showing His Moses
Viewers can pick up exclusive Colour & Light merchandise from the Sketch Box for £2 or less while watching the show, as well as churros, soft serve and hot drinks.
Carl Alsop, York BID’s operations manager, says: “This event is all about making world-class culture more accessible, and it’s been brilliant watching the show from Exhibition Square, traditionally a quiet and reserved space, with children playing, dancing and laughing, and people from all backgrounds enjoying the show together.
“It’s also been great to see people discovering some of the less obvious aspects of the projection on a second viewing. Audiences have enjoyed various buildings from York’s skyline reimagined in different mediums, as well as seeing elements of York Art Gallery, like the mosaics on each side of the building, brought to life.”
Richard Saward, York Museums Trust’s head of visitor experience and commercial, says: “We are thrilled to be involved with York BID’s Colour & Light show. This event kicks off a fantastic season at York Art Gallery, including The Aesthetica Art Prize 2024 exhibition and Claude Monet’s painting The Waterlily-Pond, which will be on display in York from May 10 to celebrate the 200th birthday of the National Gallery.”
