AS album number three arrives so soon, why are the Irish band being as prolific as the early Beatles? Two Big Egos In A Small Car culture podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson discuss Skinty Fia in Episode 89.
Plus: what happens to the BBC when the licence fee ends? Anything else? Sheffield Leadmill update; The Divine Comedy at York Barbican review; Gary Barlow’s show with a difference, and why Mischief and Penn &Teller’s Magic Goes Wrong is wand-erful.
Going out of his mind in forlorn pursuit of controlling yours: Rory Fairbairn’s Mind Mangler in Magic Goes Wrong
Magic Goes Wrong, by Mischief/Penn & Teller, York Theatre Royal, tonight at 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm and 7.30pm; Sunday; 2.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Age guide: 11+
IN a nutshell, Magic Goes Wrong, show goes right. Cue packed houses, just as there were for Mischief’s The Play That Goes Wrong (twice) and The Comedy About A Bank Robbery on past York visits, taking in both the Theatre Royal and Grand Opera House.
If those calamitous, chaotic comedies were essentially English in character, for Magic Goes Wrong, Olivier Award-winning Mischief writers Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields have gone international by teaming up with deconstructionist American magicians Penn & Teller.
Off to Las Vegas headed the Mischief triumvirate to match their verbal and physical comedy skills and instinct for catastrophic comedic structure with Penn Jillette and Teller’s magical sleight of hand.
The result is a show big on set pieces and spectacle, with the rhythm and flow of a speciality act bill or a circus and the cliff-edge drama of the audience knowing that if anything can go wrong, it will, but still being surprised by how it does just when you think you are one step ahead.
In a tight spot: Jocelyn Prah’s German contortionist Spitzmaus
In the play within the magic show, a hapless gang of magicians is staging an evening of grand illusion billed on a malfunctioning archway of lights as the Disaster In Magic Charity Fundraiser. In Mischief tradition, mayhem ensues as acts flounder, flounce or or fall out, accidents spiral beyond control and so does the ever-elusive fundraising target.
All the while, in the Mischief house style, all the acts take everything very seriously, the more so with every calamity, faces determinedly kept straight even when in panic or pain, as they try to stay as serene as a swan on water while paddling not so elegantly beneath the surface – and unlike observing a swan, we can see that frantic paddling: the perfect recipe for comedy.
Running the charity fundraiser is Sam Hill’s master of ceremonies Sophisticato, son of late, great magician The Great Sophisticato, who took perverse pleasure in refusing to pass on his skills or props. Embitterment is never far from the breaking through the oily façade.
Ruining ill-fated Sophisticato’s desire for a smooth-flowing night are what befalls not only himself but also Valerie Cutko’s statuesque Eugenia, Rory Fairbairn’s hapless Mind Mangler, Kiefer Moriarty’s The Blade, with his lust for endangering himself, and the sparring German act Spitzmauz (Jocelyn Prah) and Bar (Chloe Tannenbaum), capricious as cats as they constantly seek to outdo or undermine each other.
Cutting-edge comedy: Chloe Tannenbaum’s Bar and Kiefer Moriarty’s danger-magnet The Blade
Smashing down theatre’s “fourth wall”, audience participation plays a big part, with a cameraman filming audience members as they partake in the Mind Mangler’s inept mind games.
Pick your own favourite among the magic acts, maybe Prah’s wunderbar Spitzmauz, maybe Hill’s exasperated, thwarted, on-a-knife-edge MC, Sophisticato, but most probably Beverley-born Fairbairn’s Mind Mangler, the mentalist magician going out of his mind, initially vainglorious, inducing mockery, but gradually turning the audience to his side with cheers, maybe his ultimate mind game.
Allied to Penn & Teller’s penchant for the wow factor, the Mischief makers apply the ‘ow!’ factor, in the comic tradition of “no pain, no gain”. Magic Goes Wrong covers so many comedy bases under Adam Meggido’s direction, from downright silliness to upright characters; from physical danger to slapstick; from fast farce to slow-build momentum; from friction between the players to metatheatre.
The more you experience each character, amid the rising desperation, the funnier they become, in the tradition of Michael Crawford’s Frank Spencer or John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty.
Penn & Teller: Co-creators of Magic Goes Wrong with Mischief’s Jonathan Sayer, Henry Lewis and Henry Shields
Then wave the wand of magic over the mishaps, pratfalls and power struggles, and abracadabra, delusion and illusion combine to glorious comic effect. Amid the calamitous carnage, there are still “how-did-they-do-that?” magical moments, quickly followed by a give-away ‘reveal’ for the bigger laugh.
Whereas celebrity-led fundraising telethons go so slickly, this Disaster Magic night could not be more contrasting, but what comic relief for anyone who finds those over-excited, tearful telethons a turn-off.
Keep an eye on the misbehaving Disaster In Magic Charity Fundraiser arch in Will Bowen’s hi-tech set design, spelling out new words from those letters as the lights go out in yet another font for comedy where one word sums up this fabulous, fun, funny show: MAGIC.
What if you don’t like magic? You will love Magic Goes Wrong.
Please note: Magic Goes Wrong co-creators Penn & Teller do not appear on stage.
Mind games: Beverley actor Rory Fairbairn as the Mind Mangler in Magic Goes Wrong, on tour at York Theatre Royalfrom Tuesday
MAGIC is on the cards in the week ahead, and you can’t wrong if you follow Charles Hutchinson’s tips for what else to do and see.
Mayhem in April: Mischief in Magic Goes Wrong, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Sunday, 7.30pm (except Sunday); 2pm, Thursday and Sunday, 2.30pm, Saturday
MASTERS of catastrophic comedy Mischief team up with deconstructionist American magicians Penn & Teller for Magic Goes Wrong, their most daring calamitous show yet.
When a hapless gang of magicians strive to stage an evening of grand illusion to raise cash for charity, magic turns to mayhem, accidents spiral out of control and so does their fundraising target. Penn & Teller will not be appearing on stage. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Kristin Hersh: Fronting her Electric Trio at The Crescent
Cult gig of the week: Kristin Hersh Electric Trio, The Crescent, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
BOSTON songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and author Kristin Hersh, leader of indie rock band Throwing Muses and noise rock power trio 50 Foot Wave, is on the road with her hard-hitting super-group.
Joining Hersh, 55, will be 50 Foot Wave drummer Rob Ahlers and Throwing Muses bassist Fred Abong, who opens the night playing solo, promoting his Yellow Throat album. Expect Throwing Muses’s 2020 album, Sun Racket, to feature alongside material spanning Hersh’s 30-year career. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
Improvising a musical: Showstoppers Ruth Bratt, left, Lauren Shearing and Pippa Evans with Duncan Walsh Atkins, on keys, and Chris Ash on reeds. Picture: Alex Harvey-Brown
Anything could happen: Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, York Theatre Royal, tonight, 7.30pm
OLIVIER Award winners Showstopper! return to York with…well, you decide! At each show, a new musical comedy is created from scratch as audience suggestions are transformed on the spot into an all-singing, all-dancing production.
From Hamilton in a hospital to Sondheim in the Sahara, you suggest it and The Showstoppers will sing it. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Blues power: Guitarist Joanne Shaw Taylor returns to York Barbican
Blues gig of the week: Joanne Shaw Taylor, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm
WEST Midlands blues guitarist and singer-songwriter Joanne Shaw Taylor plays York as one of five British dates this month, performing songs from 2021’s The Blues Album.
That album showcased covers of 11 rare blues classics first recorded by Albert King, Peter Green, Little Richard, Magic Sam, Aretha Franklin and Little Milton. Expect selections from her albums Reckless Heart, Wild, The Dirty Truth, Almost Always Never, Diamonds In The Dirt and White Sugar too. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Gabrielle Sargent: Soprano soloist for York Guildhall Orchestra’s St George’s Day concert
Celebration of the week: York Guildhall Orchestra’s St George’s Day Concert, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Sunday, 7.30pm
YORK Guildhall Orchestra make their JoRo debut under the baton of conductor Simon Wright, who turns the spotlight on English composers in an Anglophile programme of light music to mark St George’s Day.
“Come down for a springtime evening of joyful music and not a dragon in sight,” says Wright, who will be combining favourite pieces with lesser-known gems. Sullivan, Elgar and Handel feature; so do Strachy’s Party Mood (from Housewives’ Choice), Wood’s Barwick Green (The Archers) and Coates’s By The Sleepy Lagoon (Desert Island Discs). Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
One giant leap forLee Harris’s Mr Toad during rehearsals for NE Musicals York’s York premiere of The Wind In The Willows The Musical
Family musical of the week: NE Musicals York in The Wind In The Willows The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, April 27 to May 1, 7.30pm; 2.30pm matinees, Saturday, Sunday
NE Musicals York transform the JoRo theatre into a riverbank and wildwood for director and designer Steve Tearle’s York premiere of Julian Fellowes’ stage adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s story with a score by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.
Join Ratty (Finlay Butler), Mole (Jack Hambleton), Badger (Tom Henshaw) and the impulsive Mr Toad (Lee Harris), whose insatiable need for speed lands him in serious bother. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Horse Chestnut Leaves, a watercolour by Selby artist Lynda Heaton, from her Village Gallery exhibition in York
Exhibition launch of the week: Lynda Heaton, Expressions In Watercolour, Village Gallery, Colliergate, York, Tuesday to June 4
SINCE retiring, Selby artist Lynda Heaton has spent much of her time painting in her home studio. “I’m passionate about watercolour painting and love the way the colours mingle and move across the paper, sometimes giving surprising effects,” she says.
“My works come from my imagination or from memories of somewhere I’ve been and the mood of that place.” Other pieces are inspired by the natural world, the colours, textures and rhythms found in nature.
Diversity performing Connected in their April 4 performance at York Barbican. Picture: Sarah Hollis
Quick return of the week: Diversity: Connected, York Barbican, Wednesday, 7.45pm
HOT on the heels of their April 4 visit, London street dancers Diversity return to York Barbican due to public demand as part of their 79-show 2022 tour.
In a show created by choreographer Ashley Banjo, the 2009 Britain’s Got Talent winners will be building their routines around the internet, social media, the digital era and how it connects us all. Their Black Lives Matter-inspired dance, premiered on Britain’s Got Talent to a flood of complaints to Ofcom in September 2020, definitely features. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
This woman’s re-work: Sarah-Louise Young in An Evening Without Kate Bush at Theatre@41
An Evening Without Kate Bush but with Sarah-Louise Young, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Thursday, 7.30pm
THE “chaotic cabaret cult”, An Evening Without Kate Bush”, finds Cabaret Whore, The Showstoppers, La Soiree performer Sarah-Louise Young teaming up theatre maker Russell Lucas to explore the music and mythology of one of the most influential voices in British music.
Kate’s not there, but you are, for a show that is as much about fandom as Bush’s songs and wider cultural impact. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Playing on the mind: Rory Fairbairn as the Mind Mangler in Magic Goes Wrong
BEVERLEY actor Rory Fairbairn is making his debut for mayhem makers Mischief as the Mind Mangler in Magic Goes Wrong, on tour at York Theatre Royal from Tuesday.
Trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, he has since performed for such companies as the Dead Puppet Society, Lion & Unicorn Theatre and Bard In The Botanics but has always had Mischief in mind.
“I’ve been aware of Mischief for a very long time, maybe 12/13 years,” says Rory. “I remember seeing Lights Camera Action, a show about every film that has ever been made and every film yet to be made, performed by Mischief’s Jonathan Sayer at the Edinburgh Fringe.
“Then, a couple of years later, I saw Mischief Theatre’s brilliant The Play That Goes Wrong upstairs at the Pleasance Courtyard, a tiny venue at the Fringe, and you think, ‘oh, I’ll never get to work with them’!”
Hey ho, that was the thought that went wrong because here is Rory, playing the Mind Mangler in Magic Goes Wrong, Mischief’s magically chaotic, comically catastrophic show created with deconstructionist American masters of magic Penn & Teller.
“After coming out of lockdown, when I worked at Tesco in Beverley – so many actors I know worked at Tesco, six of them! – I did my audition tape with a bunch of things you have to read for what’s called ‘a self tape’ for Magic Goes Wrong,” recalls Rory.
“The show is such a mind-warp because everything has to be technically right to make the magic look like it’s gone wrong,” says the Mind Mangler, Rory Fairbairn
“Then I went down to London for the audition and had a really fun couple of days of working with [magic consultant] Ben Hart – a magician who you might recognise from Britain’s Got Talent – where he got us in for a magic try-out day, making sure we fitted the tricks and weren’t claustrophobic, as we looked at these insane props, as none of us had ever done a show like it.”
Magic had never been part of Rory’s acting repertoire of skills. “But I’ve always been fascinated by it, like the Masked Magician on TV revealing how tricks were done. I don’t think he was very popular among magicians!” he says.
Now, as Mischief complete a hattrick of shows in York after The Play That Goes Wrong and The Comedy About A Bank Robbery, Rory is part of a touring cast featuring the likes of Sam Hill’s Sophisticato, Kiefer Moriarty’s The Blade and Jocelyn Prah’s Spitzmaus in a hapless gang of magicians that stages an evening of grand illusion to raise cash for charity. When the magic turns to mayhem, accidents spiral out of control and so does their fundraising target.
“We were given magic skills to learn, involving cards, but most of the magic is in the tricks themselves because they’re so well designed and well built, though we did have to learn some little things,” says Rory.
“The show is such a mind-warp because everything has to be technically right to make the magic look like it’s gone wrong,” adds the Mind Mangler.
The cast members have not met Penn & Teller. “Sadly not, but the Mischief boys [writer-directors Sayer, Henry Lewis and Henry Shields] did fly out to Vegas to meet them and write the show with them, and I think Penn Jillette popped over for the original London run in 2019.”
Penn & Teller: Co-creators of Mischief’s Magic Goes Wrong
Should you have it in mind to enquire as to what a Mind Mangler does, let Rory elucidate: “He’s a take on the mentalist type of magician who claims they can read your mind and speak to the dead – or that’s what he believes, but he’s unbelievably bad at it and the audience ends up being better at his job than he is!”
Has anything gone wrong in Magic Goes Wrong’s tour performances that was not planned to do so? “Oh, absolutely! But that’s live theatre in general. This show is a fascinating piece because it’s a scripted play with improvised sections and really good magic, and as with any live show things can go wrong, and when that’s happened you have to style it out. We just work together, whatever goes wrong, and hope the audience don’t notice it.”
Rory has loved working with Mischief, directed by Adam Meggido as part of a fresh troupe of Mischief makers. “It’s a brand new company for this tour, a group of lovely people to work with, getting the chance to make wonderful theatre, and that’s a sad side of acting: you work so closely together, and then it’s over,” he says.
“We’re not too far from the end of this tour, but I’d love to audition for Mischief again, for any of their shows, as they’re so good at what they do. They really have made a niche for themselves and it’s so noticeable how they get younger audiences than so many shows, when so often theatre isn’t included on people’s To Do list.
“It’s just wonderful that we can make people laugh so much post-lockdown, which of course we need more than ever right now.”
Mischief in Magic Goes Wrong, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Sunday, May 1, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm matinees, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Age guide: 11+. Please note, Penn & Teller will not be appearing on stage.
Magic Goes Wrong: Magical mayhem at York Theatre Royal from April 26
AMERICAN comedy magicians Penn & Teller have been sawing the magic rulebook in half for five decades. Now they have teamed up with British masters of mishap Mischief for Magic Goes Wrong, heading for York Theatre Royal on tour from April 26 to May 1.
Teller, 74, and Penn Jillette, 67, have long specialised in combining bamboozling illusions with dark comedy, their magic often seeming to go horribly wrong in its combination of comic danger, sometimes gore, even violence.
Their notorious habit of repeatedly revealing to the audience exactly how their tricks work has long prevented the duo from being members of the Magic Circle. Not that they mind. Far from it. patter-merchant Penn and the silent Teller revel in the illusion of chaos, typified by one of their stage shows beginning with a giant fridge falling on the pair, apparently crushing them.
Meanwhile, the Mischief team of Henry Shields, Henry Lewis, and Jonathan Sayer have delivered such calamitous comedy hits as The Play That Goes Wrong, Peter Pan Goes Wrong and The Comedy About A Bank Robbery, along with the BBC One series The Goes Wrong Show, where the comedy is rooted in the show-must-go-on spirit of the straight-faced cast members determinedly defying everything collapsing around them.
Penner & Tell plus Mischief equalled the perfect match in the making. Sure enough, in 2019, the Americans announced they would be teaming up with the Brits. Cue Magic Goes Wrong opening in the West End, London, and subsequently casting a spell on tour.
How did the marriage in magical mayhem come to fruition? A few years ago, Penn & Teller were performing in London when Penn’s family decided they wanted to see a West End show. “I don’t go to comedy theatre at all,” recalls Penn.
Penn & Teller: Revelling in the illusion of chaos
“I like theatre to be deadly dull, slow and depressing, but my wife and children picked The Play That Goes Wrong. I realised that not only was my family laughing harder than I’ve ever seen them, but I was too.” Immediately, he told Teller to book a ticket.
Despite being known for his onstage silence, it was Teller who started discussions with Shields, Lewis and Sayer, Mischief’s artistic directors. “I am more shy than Teller, so it never crossed my mind to go backstage,” says Penn. “But Teller took himself backstage and said, ‘hey I’m a star’!”
Teller insists it was a somewhat different story: “As I was sitting in my seat, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You’re Teller, aren’t you? The cast wants to give you free ice cream’. So, afterwards, I went backstage to thank the cast and compliment them, because it really was one of the finest shows I’ve ever seen.”
What’s more, Penn had mentioned to Teller that the show featured a magic trick. “He told me there’s a moment where a person reappears in a grandfather clock, and it’s going to fool you,” Teller explains. “And he was right. It absolutely fooled me. So, I said to the Mischief guys, ‘You do stuff that is so much like magic, we should do something together sometime’.”
A few months later, all five of them were eating homemade pancakes at Teller’s Las Vegas house and plotting a new stage show. Working with unfamiliar people was a new experience for Penn & Teller who, despite decades in show business, rarely collaborate beyond the two of them. Teller has directed two Shakespeare plays, as well as a documentary film, but for Penn it was nerve-wracking.
What could possibly go wrong? Magic Goes Wrong up to its tricks on tour
“Teller and I have a dynamic that we’ve built over 46 years, so this was a huge leap of faith,” he says. “We couldn’t go out to dinner with these guys; we had to jump straight into bed. We were told: ‘they are going to be here at 10am on Wednesday and you’ll start writing your show. You won’t even know which one is Jonathan and which ones are Henry [times two]. But it took about 20 minutes before I felt like I was around my closest friends.”
Shields, Lewis and Sayer spent a week and a half putting together the show’s bones in a small side room off the stage of The Rio hotel, where Penn & Teller are the longest-running headline act in Las Vegas history. Penn & Teller taught the team magic – “they picked it up incredibly quickly” – and suggested tricks to include, while the Mischief trio improvised dialogue and story.
Just as Mischief were excited to be working with two of their heroes, Penn & Teller were no less in awe of Mischief’s talent. “There was one moment Henry (Lewis) and Jonathan said, ‘it could kind of go like this’, and then the two of them did a five-minute improvisation,” recalls Penn.
“Now, I have sat in a room with Lou Reed playing Sweet Jane four feet from me. I’ve talked to Richard Feynman about physics. I’ve spoken to Bob Dylan. But I said, ‘this is a moment I will bookmark for the rest of my life’.
“I felt like I was watching the Pythons at their peak, and I thought, ‘this is why I’m in showbiz: to be that near that level of talent and skill’. And when I’m on my deathbed listing the 100 artistic events of my life, that moment will be there.”
Tricky! Magic Goes Wrong combines the trick that goes wrong with the trick that dazzles the audience
Roll on a few more sessions and the show had come together, its storyline built around a disastrous fundraising benefit. However, by adding the trademark Goes Wrong approach, all the tricks had to work on two levels: there had to be the trick that goes wrong, and then the trick that dazzles the audience.
How did they devise these illusions? As Teller explains, the process can be laborious. “You get an idea, which is usually quite grand, then you find that it’s impossible, and you revise it over and over again until it works.
“There’s a trick in the show where one of the cast members gets accidentally sawed in half by a buzzsaw. That was more than a year of work. Part of the trick involves blood, but if you just show the blood on stage, it looks boring; it has no impact at all.
“So a big part of the buzzsaw trick for us was developing it in such a way that when the blood came, it would be sprayed up against a huge backdrop where you could truly enjoy the bright red colour.”
While on the subject of blood and buzzsaws, Magic Goes Wrong is more comically gory than Mischief’s previous work. Was that Penn and Teller’s influence? “Guilty!” says Penn. “I’m afraid it might have something to do with us,” Teller admits. “We think that gore is essentially funny. It’s really hard to pull off serious gore in the theatre because people tend to want to laugh. They know that it’s fake, but they see that it looks real. And that’s very much like a magic trick.”
“We don’t ever allow the possibility of something going seriously wrong because if we did, we wouldn’t have been working successfully for 46 years,” says Teller
Penn & Teller’s work thrives on this clash of instinct and intellect. “What you want to do is get the visceral and the intellectual to collide as fast as possible,” says Penn. “It’s like being on a rollercoaster: I’m safe; no, I’m not; I’m safe; no, I’m not. Those two parts of your body are fighting.”
Despite Mischief and Penn & Teller having built their careers on making it appear that everything is going horrifically wrong, they insist that mishaps are incredibly rare in real life. “While we’re rehearsing, we might get a minor cut or bruise,” says Teller. “But we don’t ever allow the possibility of something going seriously wrong because if we did, we wouldn’t have been working successfully for 46 years.”
Indeed absence of safety angers Penn & Teller, who show disdain for “edgy’ magicians who put themselves in actual physical danger, even lampooning them in the show with the character of The Blade, who puts his limbs on the line for art’s sake.
“If you want to see someone actually get hurt, go watch NASCAR [ferocious high-speed car racing with frequent crashes],” says Penn. “If you want your art to be dangerous, stay away from me.”
Teller concurs: “Anytime I hear that in the making of a movie somebody was actually injured or killed, I’m angry about that, because art is what you do for fun.” The paradox of the magician duo’s work, and of Magic Goes Wrong too, is that everything must be incredibly safe precisely in order to make it look so dangerous.
Magic Goes Wrong: “A full magic show and a full comedy show,” says Penn
For Penn, what makes Magic Goes Wrong so right is the combination of magic and comedy. “It’s a full magic show and a full comedy show happening at the same time,” he says.
Teller highlights a deeper, more unexpected layer to the show: “What’s interesting to me is how well it reflects the actual culture of the magic world,” he says. “It’s mostly populated by well meaning, very nice amateurs. And there is a great, heart-tugging beauty about that to me.
“The poignancy of the magic trick that isn’t quite achieved, where your aspirations are to behave in a godlike manner, and instead you’re slapped in the face by reality – I think that’s such a beautiful thing. That’s what this show is about. It has all these laughs and all these wild, crazy moments, but when it lands at the end, it’s about the sweetness of friends who love magic.” Mischief and Penn & Teller’s Magic Goes Wrong appears at York Theatre Royal from April 26 and vanishes from York after May 1; performances, 7.30pm, plus 2pm, Thursday, and 2.30pm, Saturday. Please note, show co-creators Penn & Teller will not be appearing on stage.
What happens in Magic Goes Wrong?
A HAPLESS gang of magicians is staging an evening of grand illusions to raise money for charity, but as the magic turns to mayhem, accidents spiral out of control, so does the fundraising target. Cue dare-devil stunts, jaw-dropping feats and magical mishaps.
Hot pants! Jake Quickenden’s hunky cowboy Willard Hewitt strikes a pose in Footloose The Musical
THERE was a time when Racky Plews’s touring production of Footloose The Muscal would have played the Grand Opera House, not York Theatre Royal, as indeed it did in May 2017 with Bradford’s Gareth Gates’s cowboy Willard as the star attraction.
Just as the Mischief’s brand of comic mayhem with a team of accident-prone Charlie Chaplins has moved from Cumberland Street (The Play That Goes Wrong, September 2021) to St Leonard’s Place (Magic Goes Wrong, April 26 to May 1), Footloose’s transfer is a sign of chief executive Tom Bird balancing the Theatre Royal’s obligations as a producing house with the need for commercial prudence after the triplet of Covid lockdowns.
Sure enough, Plews’s new production – “reworked with a new set, new costumes, the lot,” as Darren Day, one of two new star names, put it – was playing to a full stalls and dress circle at Wednesday’s performance. Box-office business has been brisk, driven by the industry’s time-honoured key ticket purchaser: women, especially for musical theatre.
Bereft: Darren Day’s burdened Reverend Shaw Moore
Men, outnumbered as ever on Wednesday, nevertheless would have a fun time at this feelgood, then feelevenbetter show, delivered by Plews’s cast of actor-musicians with the pizzazz befitting Holding Out For A Hero, Let’s Hear It For The Boy and the title number.
Faithful to the 1984 teen movie, Footloose is the teen-rebel story of Ren McCormack (Joshua Hawkins), the high-school newcomer who has blown into Bible Belt Bomont from Chicago with mum Ethel (Geri Allen) after his father deserted them without explanation.
An innocent abroad, Ren is out of step with a stymied town that buckles the Bible belt on the tightest notch, the town council having banned dancing in the wake of four Bomont High pupils perishing in a drink-and-drug fuelled car accident.
Lucy Munden’s Ariel, right, with Oonagh Cox’s Rusty, Samantha Richards’s Urleen and Jess Barker’s Wendy-Jo
In contrast with that tragedy’s fun-negating shadow, Dean Pitchford, Walter Bobbie and Tom Snow’s musical does indeed cut loose, demanding an exuberant, high-energy performance from start to finish.
Footloose is light, insubstantial, even a little daft, being a dance-filled musical about not being allowed to dance, but let’s not split hairs. Last time it felt dated too, but deliberately and knowingly Eighties in style, and that look is still there in Sara Perks’s designs and costumes, but so are tattoos galore and ripped jeans, along with a state-of the-art lighting design by Chris Davey.
What’s more, there is just enough of a sting in the tale of stultifying life in the WASP smalltown of Bomont, where the music died five years ago in this quiet Deep American South backwater.
Giant leap: Joshua Hawkins’s Ren McCormack swaps Chicago for backwoods Bomont
Sunday’s earnest sermons by the anguished Reverend Shaw Moore (Darren Day) set the tone, having administered the dance ban after losing his son. Day, hair newly grey and goatee bearded, grey suit as buttoned up as Moore’s emotions, is the old hand among predominantly young players, and he brings gravitas to the heavyweight role.
He has one of the hit-filled show’s non-hits to navigate in Heaven Help Me, but does so, not once, but twice, with beautifully controlled singing, where less is Moore. Look out for his Elvis impersonation in Reverend Moore’s transitional moment: a lovely light touch.
Moore’s counterpoint is Hawkins’s appealing Ren, the clean-living, accidental rebel who breaks every Bomont taboo, complicating matters further by falling for Ariel (Lucy Munden), the preacher man’s equally rebellious poetess daughter, setting him on a collision course with college bad-lad Chuck (Tom Mussell).
Cutting loose: Joshua Hawkins’ Ren and Lucy Munden’s Ariel
Those of a certain age were excited that Day – who was called theatre royalty on television the other day – would be in the cast. Gen Z were far more excited at the presence of 2018 Dancing On Ice winner Jake Quickenden in the comedy role of hunky cowboy Willard Hewitt, the lovably hapless town hick.
Boy, he delivers, being delightfully dim in failing to read the endless advances of Oonagh Cox’s spunky Rusty and revelling in stripping off to his toned, tattooed torso in Holding Out For A Hero (recalling his time in The Dreamboys revue).
As for his singing, Quickenden nails the comedy number, Mama Says (You Can’t Back Down), one of the high points of Matt Cole’s exuberant choreography.
Jack Quickenden’s cowboy Willard strips down in Footloose The Musical
Hawkins’s Ren, Munden’s Ariel, Mussell’s Chuck, Cox’s Rusty, Samantha Richards’s Urleen, Jess Barker’s Wendy-Jo and the multi role-playing Geri Allen bring plenty to the party (or non-party, as the Reverend would prefer it).
Indeed, let’s hear it for all the boys and girls, as they sing, dance, play instruments and skilfully walk the tightrope between the serious and the tongue in cheek in their performances. Let’s hear it for the drummer too, Bob Carr, ever-present up top at the back, making everything stick and click.
Footloose and fancy free this weekend? This show is just the ticket for you.
Footloose, York Theatre Royal, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm, 7.30pm, tomorrow. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Liam Gallagher: Tomorrow’s headliner at Leeds Festival
SUMMER ends with Leeds Festival, apparently, but Charles Hutchinson begs to differ by highlighting plenty more reasons to be cheerful as nights start to lengthen.
Biggest crowd of the week: Leeds Festival, Bramham Park, near Wetherby, tomorrow (27/8/2021) to Sunday
AFTER a gap year in Covid-crocked 2020, Leeds Festival returns from tomorrow with a sold-out crowd at full capacity.
Among the first day’s top acts are headliners Lian Gallagher and Biffy Clyro, Gerry Cinnamon, Wolf Alice, Blossoms and Doncaster’s Yungblud.
Saturday’s names to watch are Stormzy, Catfish And The Bottlemen, AJ Tracey, Mabel, Sam Fender and Sports Team. Sunday promises Post Malone, Disclosure, Two Door Cinema Club, The Wombats and Slowthai.
Shed Seven: Topping the all-Yorkshire bill at The Piece Hall, Halifax, on Saturday
On the other hand, Yorkshire’s gig of the week is…Shed Seven at The Piece Hall, Halifax, Saturday.
YORK favourites Shed Seven at last can go ahead with their all-Yorkshire bill after 2020’s two postponements and a move from June 26 to August 28 this summer.
The dates may change but the bill remains the same: York’s on-the-rise, rousing Skylights, Leeds bands The Pigeon Detectives and The Wedding Present and the Brighton Beach DJs on the decks.
Never mind the clash with Leeds Festival. “Let’s just say our fans are not their demographic,” says the Sheds’ Rick Witter.
Andrew Harrison: Performing Nigel Forde’s one-man show, The Last Cuckoo, at Stillington Mill, near York, tomorrow night
Bird song of the week: Sea View Productions in Nigel Forde’s The Last Cuckoo, Theatre At The Mill, Stillington, tomorrow, 7.30pm.
ON his return home from his irascible ornithologist uncle Harry Baskerville’s ’s funeral, Duncan Campbell begins the slow, sad process of working through its effects in The Last Cuckoo, a one-man show about loss, hope and birds.
As he does so, he finds within the ghostly confines of this remote coastal cottage a way into a world he never knew existed: the entrance into a life he never dared hope for. However, this awareness brings with it costly choices and, most daunting of all, the possibility of real change.
Penned exquisitely by Warter poet and writer Nigel Forde, former presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Bookshelf, this beautiful theatre piece will be performed by Riding Lights Theatre Company alumnus Andrew Harrison, directed for Sea View Productions by Robin Hereford. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill.
The Carpenters Experience: Tribute show to Karen and Richard at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre
Tribute show of the week: The Carpenters Experience, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Saturday, 7.30pm
IT’S Yesterday Once More as British singer Maggie Nestor and eight musicians capture the smooth American sounds of Richard and Karen Carpenter.
Expect echoes of Karen’s silky contralto, Richard’s pretty piano and seamless harmonies in a big production featuring Close To You, We’ve Only Just Begun, Top Of The World, Rainy Days And Mondays, Solitaire, Goodbye To Love, For All We Know and Only Yesterday. Box office: josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Being Frank: Stephen Tompkinson in Educating Rita, on tour at York Theatre Royal from Tuesday. Picture: Matt Humphrey
Theatre show of the week in York: Educating Rita, York Theatre Royal, August 31 to September 4
WHEN married hairdresser Rita enrols on a university course to expand her horizons, little does she realise where her journey will take her.
Tutor Frank is a frustrated poet, brilliant academic and dedicated drinker, less than enthusiastic about taking on Rita, but soon they learn how much they have to teach each other.
Directed by Max Roberts, Willy Russell’s comedy two-hander stars Jessica Johnson as Rita and Stephen Tompkinson as Frank. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Curtains! Another catastrophe is imminent in Magic Goes Wrong, Mischief and Penn & Teller’s calamitous comedy caper at Leeds Grand Theatre
Theatre show of the week ahead outside York: Magic Goes Wrong, Leeds Grand Theatre, casting a spell from August 30 to September 4
BACK with another comedy catastrophe, this time dusted with magic, Mischief follow up The Play That Goes Wrong and The Comedy About A Bank Robbery with a show created with Penn & Teller, no less.
A hapless gang of magicians is staging an evening of grand illusion to raise cash for charity, but as the magic turns to mayhem, accidents spiral out of control and so does the fundraising target.
On tour for the first time, the show is written Penn Jillette, Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, Henry Shields and Teller and directed by Adam Meggido. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or at leedsheritagetheatres.com.
Fangfest co-organiser Gerry Grant dunking a raku ceramic in water
Top of the pots: Fangfest, Fangfoss, September 4 and 5, 10am to 4pm each day
FANGFEST, the celebration of pottery, crafts, art and scarecrows in Fangfoss, ten miles east of York, returns next month after a Covid-enforced hiatus in 2020.
To keep the family event as Covid-safe as possible, much of the festival organised by Gerry and Lyn Grant, of Fangfoss Pottery, will be taking place outdoors.
The weekend combines art, pottery, illustration, jewellery, printmaking, archery, wood carving, textiles, willow weaving, classic cars, East Yorkshire history, food and scarecrows. Entry is free.
Kate Winslet, left, and Saoirse Ronan in Ammonite, showing at the Yorkshire Fossil Festival in Scarborough
Dinosaurs, stones and more in Yorkshire Fossil Festival’s fistful of films: Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, September 10 and 11
FOR the first time, the Stephen Joseph Theatre is teaming up with the Yorkshire Fossil Festival SJT to bring five palaeontology-inspired films to the McCarthy screen.
Highlights include September 10’s 8pm screening of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen’s 1969 dinosaur classic, The Valley Of Gwangi, introduced by palaeo-artist James McKay, who hosts a post-screening Q&A too.
Further films on September 10 will be Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur (2pm) and Jurassic Park (5pm); September 11, The Land Before Time (2pm and 5pm) and Ammonite, starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan (8pm). Box office: 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com.
Fish’n’quips: George Egg serves up his Movable Feast on tour in October
Meals on wheels, jokes on a plate, here comes George Egg’s cracking tour show…
COMEDY and cooking combine when anarchic cook George Egg serves up his Movable Feast on tour in Yorkshire in October.
Determined to make food on the move, Egg offers his guide to cooking with cars, on rail tracks and in the sky. “It’s time for Planes, Trains and Automob-meals (sorry),” he says.
Sprinkled with handy hacks, the 7.30pm shows conclude with the chance to taste the results on the three plates. Tour dates include Stillington Village Hall, near York, October 10; Pocklington Arts Centre, October 13, and Terrington Village Hall, near Malton, October 17. Box office: georgeegg.com.
