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The HandleBards ride roughshod over Romeo & Juliet as tragedy turns to comedy in York Theatre Royal’s Love Season

“Kissing by the book” for pandemic masked ball times in The HandleBards’ unhinged and bonkers re-cycling of Romeo & Juliet for The Love Season at York Theatre Royal

IN the exhortative words of the late Freddie Mercury, “Get on your bikes and ride”.

Eco-friendly, perma-cycling Shakespearean travelling theatre company The HandleBards will be heading to  York Theatre Royal on May 25 and 26.

Directed by Nel Crouch, company founders Paul Moss and Tom Dixon and partner in chaotic irreverence Lucy Green have created an “unhinged and bonkers” version of Romeo & Juliet, the pulp fiction, early Sixties’ girl-group teenage tragedy of the Shakespeare canon.

“Forget the tears and tragedy, and get ready for some live and wired Shakespeare as you’ve never seen it before,” they advise after fashioning a show replete with music, mayhem and a pile-up of costume changes under the influence of cabin fever when cooped up together in lockdown.

“It was pure fortitude that the three of us were living together,” says Paul. “We ended up living in a three-bedroom house in Crystal Palace for the whole of lockdown, and we just opened a bottle of wine and started rehearsing.”

Crouch had adapted Romeo & Juliet originally as an all-female four-hander in 2016 that then toured internationally to Singapore, Malaysia, India and Myanmar in 2017 and 2018, when Lucy slipped into various roles.

“I’d even played Juliet and the Nurse when needed, and Tom had been an emergency understudy too, so we all knew the show really well, and we decided to adapt it as a three-hander for when we could tour outdoors [in a social bubble] last year,” says Paul.

“We rehearsed it in our living room and a rehearsal room, and then we managed to tour it throughout July, August and September, and we ended up doing about 50 shows, so it was pretty extensive. We then started talking to theatres about doing a tour in March and April, but of course that all got cancelled, though we’ve managed to move a lot of the tour dates to September and October.”

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? Lucy Green’s Juliet giving out distress signals in The HandleBards’ Romeo & Juliet

The HandleBards have toured York since four fearless friends, Moss, Dixon, Callum Cheatle and Callum Brodie pedalled Twelfth Night to 20 venues in 2013. “In our first days, I drew up a map of beautiful places we could go to, and of course York was on there,” recalls Paul.

“Someone suggested Merchant Adventurers’ Hall [in Fossgate], and we made contact with Lauren Marshall [hall manager and audience development officer]. We didn’t realise there was an outdoor performance space there, but that’s where we played and then camped by the river that night! The shows became so popular that we had to move them inside the hall.”

York missed out on the Romeo & Juliet tour in 2020, but Paul’s past association with Theatre Royal chief executive Tom Bird in their days at Shakespeare’s Globe has brought about next week’s stand-alone performances.

“Tom used to be executive producer at the Globe, and I was among the first Candlelighters in the Sam Wanamaker indoor theatre [where plays are lit by candlelight]. Tom and I have kept in touch to help each other out, and when he was interested in putting on shows outdoors at the Theatre Royal, we spoke, but instead we’re now doing the Love Season indoors.”

Usually, The HandleBards travel by cycle on their tours. “But for Romeo & Juliet, we’ve toured by van with a stage for socially distanced performances, and we’ll be taking the train to York,” says Paul.

Looking ahead, he adds: “For our upcoming all-female, comical Macbeth tour, our stage will now fit into an electric van, to go with the cycles, to give us carbon neutrality. If the show doesn’t make it to York this summer, it definitely will next year.

“Lucy, meanwhile, is going into rehearsals for Nel Crouch’s new version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest: not Shakespeare and probably not cycling, for my new company, Slapstick Picnic, where basically the company premises will be wherever I have my laptop! Only two actors will be doing the entire show: Lucy and Bill Ross-Fawcett.”

Should anyone be a newcomer to The HandleBards, what should they expect from Romeo & Juliet? “Unbridled joy!” says Paul. “There are so many parts to our shows, always changing costumes, playing different roles, always having a good time. Romeo & Juliet may be one of the world’s great tragedies, but we’re here to entertain, so if there are tears, they will be tears of joy.

Wherefore art I? Cast thine eye hither, O Juliet. Paul Moss’s Romeo pulls a face of exasperation in The HandleBards’ Romeo & Juliet

“Shakespeare’s plays are there to entertain and we’re just here to tell good stories. The interesting thing about Shakespeare’s tragedies is that there’s so much humour and comedy in them! 

“Until Mercutio bites the dust, there’s very little tragedy in it. It’s a comedy till then, and people forget that, trying to make it so dark. You can play it that way, but it’s a family comedy in the first half. Even if the plays are tragedies, we approach them first with the aim of finding the comedy within the tragedy.

“There’s very little violence in Romeo & Juliet until it’s self-inflicted, so it’s all revolving around a ‘thumb bite’ up to that point!”

Reflecting on the spoke in the wheel of Lockdown x 3, applied to both The HandleBards and theatre, Paul says: “We’ve been some of the luckiest people in our industry, being able to tour last year and getting back up on our feet so quickly this spring.

“The Arts Council has been so supportive to theatres, but when things start opening up again and the furloughs drop out, I think we’ll see holes where people who are freelance haven’t been able to survive . I fear there’ll be a definite impact on theatre over the next two years.”

The Love Season presents The HandleBards’ Romeo & Juliet, York Theatre Royal, May 25, 8pm; May 26, 3pm and 8pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. YTR is complying with government and industry Covid-19, social-distancing guidelines to ensure safety of staff and audiences.

Riding ruff-shod: The HandleBards’ Paul Moss, left, Lucy Green and Tom Dixon transforming Shakespeare’s tragic teen romance into a chaotic comedy under the influence of lockdown cabin fever

Copyright Of The Press, York

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Curse of Macbeth strikes again as York Shakespeare Project postpones show

Hand-washing for our times: Amanda Dales as Lady Macbeth in York Shakespeare Project’s now postponed Macbeth. Picture: Amanda Dales

YORK Shakespeare Project’s Macbeth should have opened this evening, but the curse of “the Scottish play” has struck again.

Although Macbeth is play number 29 in Shakespeare’s chronology of 38 plays, YSP had held back the Bard’s tragedy big hitter until production number 36 of 37 as part of a grand finale to the 20-year project in 2020, with The Tempest as the final curtain this autumn.

Now, however, theatre’s harbinger of bad luck and its Weird Sisters have delivered double, double toil and trouble to YSP, whose March 30 to April 4 run at the John Cooper Studio, Theatre @41 Monkgate, is mothballed until further notice under the Coronavirus shutdown.

Amanda Dales, left, as Lady Macbeth, and Emma Scott, as Macbeth, in rehearsal for York Shakespeare Project’s Macbeth. Picture: John Saunders

“We were six rehearsals short of the finishing line,” says YSP’s Tony Froud, who was to have played Ross in Shakespeare’s dark tale of ambition, murder and supernatural forces. 

“The ideal solution would be to pick it up again with the same company of actors later in the year, but there could yet be complications.”

Come what may, Tony envisages the project still finishing with The Tempest, originally planned for this October, rather than Macbeth going on hold to form the closing chapter.

Emma Scott as Macbeth in Leo Doulton’s futuristic cyberpunk production of Macbeth. Picture: Amanda Dales

“I would be very surprised if we didn’t want to retain The Tempest as the finale. It being Shakespeare’s final play [that he wrote alone], it is entirely appropriate to round things off with The Tempest, inviting as many people as possible who have been involved over the 20 years to join us for the celebrations.”

The final production is likely to be accompanied by an exhibition charting YSP from 2001 formation to 2021 conclusion. “The York Explore library is expressing an interest in presenting it, ideally to coincide with The Tempest’s run.”

Where The Tempest may be staged is yet to be decided after the initial plan to work in tandem with York Theatre Royal this autumn fell by the wayside. “It’s now the case that we’re looking into the possibility of doing a touring production as our final show, culminating in a York run,” says Tony.

“We were six rehearsals short of the finishing line,” says Tony Froud, who was to have played Ross in this week’s run of York Shakespeare Project’s Macbeth

Should Macbeth have gone ahead tonight, Leo Doulton’s production would have been set in a dystopian “cyberpunk” future and performed in a promenade style, with the action taking place on the move, around the audience, led by Emma Scott’s Macbeth. Two performances on Wednesday would expressly have been for schools’ audiences studying the play.

“Macbeth is a magnificent tragedy about the earthly struggle between the forces of order and chaos, and how the world becomes corrupted by Macbeth’s strange bargains,” says Doulton, who made his YSP directorial debut at the helm of last October’s stripped-back Antony And Cleopatra.

“Cyberpunk is an exciting genre for exploring, highlighting, and visualising those ideas for a modern audience. We no longer fear witches, but we are still scared of our society being shaped by powers with no concern for those below them.”

Leo Doulton: director of York Shakespeare Project’s production of Macbeth. Picture: Amanda Dales

Whenever we more than three shall meet again, let us look forward to Doulton’s show “capturing all the original’s epic drama in its poetry and production” with Emma Scott in the title role. In the meantime, now is the time to follow Lady Macbeth’s latter-day practice: constant hand washing, over and over again.

York Shakespeare Project’s cast for Macbeth

Macbeth: Emma Scott

Lady Macbeth: Amanda Dales

Banquo, Siward: Clive Lyons

Fleance, Donalbain, Son, Young Siward: Rhiannon Griffiths

Macduff: Harry Summers

Duncan, Lady Macduff, Menteith: Jim Paterson

Malcolm: Eleanor Frampton

Lennox: Nick Jones

Ross: Tony Froud

Angus: Sarah-Jane Strong

First Witch, First Murderer, Doctor: Joy Warner

Second Witch, Second Murderer, Gentlewoman: Alexandra Logan

Third Witch, Third Murderer, Caithness, Seyton: Chloe Payne.

The York Shakespeare Project cast in rehearsal for Macbeth. Picture: John Saunders

Crew

Director: Leo Doulton

Set designer: Charley Ipsen

Lighting designer: Neil Wood

Costume designer: Scarlett Wood

Sound designer: Jim Paterson.

Did you know?

WILLIAM Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is said to be cursed, so actors avoid saying its name when in the theatre. The euphemism “the Scottish Play” is used instead.

Should an actor utter the name “Macbeth” in a theatre before a performance, however, they are required to perform a ritual to remove the curse.

When the Grand Opera House reopened after a £4 million refurbishment on September 26 1989, the York theatre tempted fate by presenting Macbeth (in a Balinese version) as the first show, 33 years since the last professional stage performance there. Only two years later, the theatre closed again, staff arriving to find the doors locked.