Tag: Lizzie Lawton

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REVIEW: Rowntree Players in Boeing Boeing, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, in the air tonight until Saturday ****

Lizzie Lawton’s Robert, left, and Max Palmer’s Bernard in vexed conversation with Val Debenedetti’s Italian air hostess Gabriella in Rowntree Players’ Boeing Boeing. Picture: Jamie McKeller

LEEDS Conservatoire musical theatre masters graduate and freelance theatre-maker Hannah Shaw is directing her second Rowntree Players production of 2026.

After her LGBTQ+ exploration of gay playwright Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people” The Importance Of Being Earnest in March, she now pilots Marc Camoletti’s high-flying French farce Boeing Boeing, cleared for take-off with five cast members – Bethan Olliver, Jorja Cartwright, Lizzie Lawton, Max Palmer and Rebecca Thomson – returning from her Wilde nights.

Newly on board is Val Debenedetti, who draws on her Italian heritage to play the hot-blooded Gabriella, one of three air hostesses engaged to Palmer’s philandering American architect Bernard.

Rebecca Thomson’s house maid Bertha, fielding yet another problematic phone call in Boeing Boeing. Picture: Jamie McKeller

Shaw introduces all three fiancées, along with Bernard, his gloriously blunt, long-suffering French housemaid, Thomson’s Berthe, and his long-lost friend, Lawton’s callow, gauche Robert, from Wisconsin, in a pre-show sequence in the style of TV credits (think Friends, for example), set to Jennifer Carney’s choreography of Max Barron’s Sixties sitcom theme pastiche.

This establishes both the characters’ individual style and the location, Bernard’s Parisian apartment, with its seven doors – or eight if you count the central double doors – in Camoletti’s 1960 setting, adapted in 1962 by Beverley Cross and Francis Evans. In front is a large sofa, with a leather chair to one side, a bean bag to the other, a drinks trolley, a spinning globe, bannisters by the doors and a regularly ringing phone.

In the tradition of farce, Camelotti’s  smart, stylish comedy starts in a haven of calm, where Palmer’s self-satisfied  Bernard is the cat with the full-fat cream,  utilising the timetables dextrously to juggle his time with his airline fiancées, first  Olliver’s apple-pie American Gloria, next Debenedetti’s tempestuous Gabriella, and lastly, Cartwright’s slightly frightening, no-nonsense German, Gretchen.

Jorja Cartwright’s German air hostess Gretchen: All in yellow, right down to her painted eye lids. Picture: Jamie McKeller

Each entry is designated by their airline colour – red, blue, yellow – lighting up a door, immediately followed by a sound ‘sting’ from Barron’s  compositional tool box,  keeping the audience one step ahead every time those signals are repeated.

Into the farcical mix is stirred the interruptive presence of Lawton’s Robert, who has not seen Bernard for more than 18 years and is determined to make up for lost time, never leaving the apartment, always interjecting with a suggestion and then playing his own cards with Cartwright’s  Gretchen.

As in The Importance Of Being Earnest, Lawton (they/them) favours a physical form of comedy acting, constantly on the move and no less frenetic in their line delivery.

Lizzie Lawton’s jaunty, livewire Robert in Boeing Boeing. Picture: Jamie McKeller

It plays well against Palmer’s more laidback performance style, his calm-in-the-face-of-a-storm Bernard contrasting with the almost volcanic flow of suggestions and reactions from busy Lizzie’s Robert.

Shaw does not update the Sixties setting, but she has cut the backside-patting tropes, the women all the stronger for being empowered to be the decision makers, including Thomson’s ever-exasperated  Berthe demanding an ever-rising pay increase.

Camelotti’s men are exposed as chancers, flippant and indeed weak, despite thinking they hold the upper hand, when in fact the women call the shots.  

Bethan Olliver’s American air hostess Gloria: Bust-up incoming over her discovery of the discarded bras of another of brazen Bernard’s trio of fiancees. Picture: Jamie McKeller

Consequently, Camelotti’s French frolic retains its Parisian air, Sixties chic and outrageously clichéd national stereotypes – from the jet-set age when air hostesses were the height of glamour – but the humour is liberated from its period chains and now feels more truthful.

Shaw’s cast delights in the ever-quickening chaos of comedy that is frothy and frivolous, but deftly delivered, choreographed slickly with the doors in constant use. The performances are fun, the men, flighty; the air hostesses, saucy but sassy; Berthe, the Shakespeare’s Fool of the piece. 

Rowntree Players present Boeing Boeing, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight until Saturday, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.   

Hannah Shaw directing a rehearsal for Boeing Boeing. From December 5 to 12, she will step the other side of the footlights to play the villainous Maleficent in Rowntree Players’ pantomime Sleeping Beauty, directed and co-written by Howard Ella. Tickets will go on general sale from August 8 on 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

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Hannah Shaw’s empowering staging of French farce Boeing Boeing is ready for take off at Joseph Rowntree Theatre

Bumpy landing ahead: Bethan Olliver’s Gloria, left, Val Debenedetti’s Gabriella and Jorja Cartwright’s Gretchen, the three flight attendants in Rowntree Players’ Boeing Boeing

LEEDS Conservatoire musical theatre masters graduate Hannah Shaw is directing her second production of 2026 for Rowntree Players.

After her LGBTQ+ exploration of gay playwright Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people” The Importance Of Being Earnest in March, she returns to the Joseph Rowntree Theatre to stage Marc Camoletti’s high-flying French farce Boeing Boeing, cleared for take-off on Thursday.

Presented in Beverley Cross and Francis Evans’s 1962 translation, Boeing Boeing is set in 1960 Paris, where self-styled lothario Bernard, a successful architect living abroad, reckons he can juggle his three flight attendant fiancées – American Gloria, German Gretchen and Italian Gabriella – with ease on account of their frequent “layovers”.

All it demands is a question of timing and a little help from his trusted French housekeeper, the long-suffering and sarcastic Berthe, who reluctantly plays “romantic air traffic controller” as Bernard keeps “one up, one down, and one pending”.  

Jorja Cartwright’s’ Gretchen making her point to Lizzie Lawton’s Robert and Max Palmer’s Bernard in rehearsal for Rowntree Players’ production of Boeing Boeing

However, unexpected schedule changes suddenly bring all three to Paris, and to Bernard’s apartment, at the same time. Oops.

“I knew I wanted to do a farce, and Boeing Boeing was one of the first that came up, which I then read, along with our movement director, Jennifer Carney,” says Bradford-born Hannah, who now lives in South Cave, 40 minutes from York.

“It has pace, which farces have to have, it has lovely physical comedy element and it has clever wordplay.” It has doors too, plenty of them. “Seven!” says Hannah, looking up at the JoRo stage ahead of Monday’s rehearsal. “Or eight if you class the double doors as two.”

She is working with a cast that, predominantly, has undergone theatre training. “We’re very lucky that the majority of them will be playing the role they auditioned specifically for.  Val [Debenedetti ], who’s playing Gabriella, has Italian heritage.

Lizzie Lawton’s Robert, Max Palmer’s Bernard and Val Debenedetti’s Gabriella rehearsing a scene from Boeing Boeing

“Jorja [Cartwright] has had sessions with family members, who live in various places, to get Gretchen’s German accent right; Rebecca [Thomson] has done a lot of her own research for Berthe, listening to French performers speaking in English.”

The cast’s performances will not be playing to the stereotypes and caricatures of 1960s’ farce, however. “It would be very easy to fall into that trap because the script leans into those stereotypes, like the moment where Robert [Bernard’s friend] pats Gloria on the backside, but we’ve cut that because it doesn’t need it. We’ve done our best for our women in the play to be empowered,” says Hannah.

“When Gretchen and Robert meet for the first time, rather than being harassed by him, we make the directorial choice that Jorja’s Gretchen is playing a game with him, teasing him, so they’re both toying with each other, and she’s playing hard to get.

“You will find that both our male characters [Bernard and Robert] show weaknesses, whereas our female characters do not.”

Director Hannah Shaw overseeing a rehearsal for Rowntree Players’ production of Boeing Boeing

Movement director Jennifer Carney’s contribution is vital to the comedic interplay. “Physically, the way they embody a character comes through in their characterisation,” says Hannah, who also draws on 1960s’ sitcoms as a style influence.

Composer Max Barron, who worked with Hannah on her end-of-year show Going Out at Leeds Conservatoire in 2025, has written an original score for Boeing Boeing, also inspired by Sixties’ sitcoms. “We’ve created a pre-show ‘credits’ sequence performed by the cast to establish the character motifs, where Max has worked on our ‘theme song’, choreographed by Jenny,” she says.

Hannah’s directorial style for Boeing Boeing will marry the visual, the aural and the characters. “For example, you will know which of the flight attendants is entering from the colour flashing on the door to represent their airline colours and then a sound ‘sting’, and then she will make herself known and the scene will continue,” she says.

Hannah’s Boeing Boeing production will not be a 1960s’ museum piece. “I think if you viewed it through that lens, it wouldn’t age very well, but it’s flex enough that if you have a vision not to be sexist, it won’t be sexist,” she says. “We don’t abandon the text, but it’s all about changing the subtext. That’s how you create the magic.”

Rowntree Players in Boeing Boeing, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Thursday to Saturday, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Jorja Cartwright’s Gretchen and Rebecca Thomson’s Berthe clash in Boeing Boeing

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REVIEW: Rowntree Players in The Importance Of Being Earnest, going Wilder at Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York ***

Jorja Cartwright’s Algernon Moncrieff, in Ernest mode, right, woos Katie Shaw’s Cecily Cardew in Rowntree Players’ The Importance Of Being Earnest. All pictures: Jamie McKeller

LIKE the best cucumber sandwiches, Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people” can be sliced in different ways, but always with the crusts, not the upper crust, removed.

The dust has not long settled on Stephen Fry’s Lady Bracknell in the National Theatre production at the Noel Coward Theatre, a role David Suchet had played on the London stage a decade earlier.

Cross-dressing comedy duo Hinge & Bracket went Wilde in 1977, as did satirical duo Lip Service in 2001, when the late Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding set the Victorian comedy of manners in the 1950s.

In 2015, Nigel Havers’s Algernon Moncrieff and Martin Jarvis’s John Worthing teamed up with Siân Phillips’s Lady Bracknell for the Bunbury Company of Players’ “golden-oldies” version, playing the Grand Opera House on tour that November.

Lizzie Lawton’s yearning Jack Worthing and Bethan Olliver’s enamoured Gwendolen Fairfax in Rowntree Players’ The Importance Of Being Earnest

In September 2022, Denzel Westley-Sanderson sassy co-production for English Touring Theatre, Leeds Playhouse and Rose Theatre, Kingston, “melded Wilde’s wit with chart-toppers, shade and contemporary references”.

Setting Oscar’s satire of dysfunctional families, class, gender and sexuality in Black Victorian high society, he cast Daniel Jacob, alias drag queen Vinegar Strokes, as Lady Bracknell and added to the gender fluidity with Dr Chasuble being played by Anita Reynolds, bonding in a lesbian relationship with Joanne Henry’s Miss Prism.

All this is by way of introduction to Hannah Shaw’s LGBTQ+ exploration of gay playwright  Wilde’s comedy for Rowntree Players, where she introduces new young players to the company too. This re-invention is not far-fetched, by the way, as a quick search reveals that “Importance” is “widely interpreted by critics and scholars as having a significant queer subtext, acting as a ‘gay play’ encoded for contemporary audiences”.

To further quote “AI Thinking”, “while the plot revolves around heterosexual romances, it is celebrated for its camp style, irony and subtle references to same-sex desire, often termed ‘Bunburying’.”

Checking the diary: Katie Shaw’s Cecily Cardew, left, and Bethan Olliver’s Gwendolen Fairfax

And there’s more: ‘Bunburying’ is “a code for leading a secret life to pursue forbidden, potentially gay, sexual activity”; the name “Earnest” was “a late-Victorian euphemism for a homosexual or queer man”; the play is “a foundational work of queer literature”.

Until now, your reviewer has been in Wilde’s “serious people” mode, but Hall’s light and bright production is very much in the spirit of “trivial comedy”, having as much fun and games as possible by going Wilder in the country, even when stretched to Wilde’s original four-act, three-hour version, reconstructed by Vyvyan Holland, at the request of the Rowntree Players committee.

From Stephanie Cullingford  & Hannah Shaw’s costumes, all vintage lines yet modern too, to Nathan Kirby’s classical instrumental arrangements of pop  nuggets such as Abba’s I Do, I Do, I Do and Sabrina Carpenter’s Nonsense, Shaw’s show straddles Wilde’s dapper past and today’s dandy designs.

Algernon’s London abode is dominated by heavy curtains, complemented by an old lamp shade, a timeless hat stand and modern sofas. Max Palmer’s butler, Lane, is thoroughly modern in attire, but old school in demeanour.

Jorja Cartwright’s Algernon Moncrieff, in the guise of Ernest, evoking Gentleman Jack in The Importance Of Being Earnest

Jorja Cartwright’s Miss Algernon Moncrieff, in tassled boots, dark trousers and waistcoat, is working her way through the cucumber sandwiches, awaiting effervescent, financially reckless bachelor friend Jack Worthing (Leeds Conservatoire graduate Lizzie Lawton (they/them)). Therein lies Shaw’s gender exploration and LGBTQ+ integration into Wilde’s mannered comedy.

Both must lead double lives, Algernon inventing an ever-ailing friend Bunbury to escape dull duties; Jack engineering a fictional younger brother, Ernest, to facilitate his partying in London and wooing of Gwendolen Fairfax (Leeds Conservatoire third-year student Bethan Ollivier), rebellious daughter of Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell has always been a snob, a stickler for social niceties, a dragon snorting disdain, but here, as played with burning acidity by Jeanette Hambridge, she becomes a social climber, a successful businesswoman, in Shaw’s vision,  working her way up from nothing to be the breadwinner for the stay-at-home Lord Bracknell, never shedding her London accent  in her rise up the ladder.

In this guise, she is more cynical, on occasion sarcastic, her manner perma-frosty, putting a more poisonous sting into Wilde’s waspish wit.

Lizzie Lawton’s Jack Worthing checking the military records for the importance of being Ernest

Olliver’s Gwendolen has all the trappings and airs of a posh education, bursting with over-excitement at the mention of the name “Ernest”, even growling playfully; all part of turning Wilde wilder. Likewise, Lawton, so dextrous both vocally and physically, so joyously energetic, so top of the fops, has a tendency to take exaggerated movement into clowning territory.

By contrast, Jorja Cartwright, arriving on the York scene via Greater Manchester, favours a less gaudy acting style, a flick of a leg here, an elegant clamber over a sofa there. Miss Algernon Moncrieff  becomes Mr Ernest when wooing Jack’s ward, Cecily Cardew (Londoner Katie Shaw) in country matters behind Jack’s back, by now in tassled boots, white trousers and a brocade waistcoat, blond locks in a ponytail.

If you are picking up Gentleman Jack/ Ann Lister vibes, then Cullingford and Shaw’s work is done here. Cartwright is outstanding, her voice playful, her movement just right, even when talking while filling her face with muffins.

Katie Shaw’s Cecily Cardew writing her latest gushing diary entry

Katie Shaw’s diary-keeping Cecily is to the spoilt-ingenue manner born, behind the pretty frills, and her spat over tea and cake with Olliver’s Gwendolen is a comedic high point as they climb ever higher on chairs to assert their claims to each being betrothed to Ernest Worthing.

Palmer’s brace of long-suffering butlers, Lane and not-so-Merriman, adds cameo dry humour, while the slow-burning romance of Wayne Osguthorpe’s bookish Reverend Canon Chasuble  and Rebecca Thomson’s moral novel-writing tutor Miss Prism warms pleasingly in the background, played in a lower key to match Hambridge’s underwhelmed Lady Bracknell.

Under the Shaw touch, The Importance Of Being Earnest bends willingly to the gender agenda, bringing fresh fun and freedom to Wilde’s Victorian social satire, but Lady Bracknells of yore would surely give short shrift to this nouvelle-riche arriviste, more snotty than snooty.

Rowntree Players, The Importance Of Being Earnest, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 2pm and 7.30pm today (21/3/2026). Box  office for “last few tickets”: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Jorja Cartwright’s Algernon Moncrieff makes a hasty exit. You will not be seeking to do likewise, even though Rowntree Players’ four-act The Importance Of Being Earnest runs to three hours

NEWFLASH 23/03/2026

HANNAH Shaw will direct Rowntree Players’ production of Marc Camoletti’s French farce Boeing Boeing in Beverley Cross’s English adaptation at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, from July 23 to 25.

In Paris, in 1960, Bernard, a successful architect living abroad, reckons he can juggle his three flight attendant fiancées with ease. All it demands is a question of timing and a little help from his trusted housekeeper, who reluctantly plays “romantic air traffic controller”. Tickets are on sale on 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.