REVIEW: NE Theatre York in A Christmas Carol, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York ***

Chain reaction: Steve Tearle’s Jacob Marley spooks Kit Stroud’s Ebenezer Scrooge in NE Theatre York’s A Christmas Carol

NE Theatre York – or NE Musicals York as they were back then – staged the York premiere of this all-singing version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the JoRo in November 2018.

More Christmas advert season than Advent season on that occasion, but the show’s return heralds Advent’s arrival on Sunday, and the festive mood is already alive and noisy, like the crisp and sweet packet scrunching that accompanied Tuesday’s opening night.

Scrooge moan over, some things have changed since 2018, some have not. More on the changes later, but first: the cast numbers 60 once more; Steve Tearle is directing and playing the ghost of Jacob Marley in white suit and face paint again, and the Sold Out signs will be greeting theatregoers again and again on the street scene on the JoRo forecourt. No tickets left, not one.

A roll of thunder announces the arrival of Tearle’s Marley on a London set familiar to audiences who saw his production of Oliver!. Temporarily, north easterner Steve turns Brummie to make the obligatory mobile phone pronouncement but with the impish humour that will mark a frenetic, fantastical, phantasmagorical production into which he will throw everything, magical books, bouncing balls and kitchen sink included (metaphorically speaking).

Perri Ann Barley’s Ghost of Christmas Past

Look out too for the misbehaving chairs and bed in Scrooge’s house, leaping into the air as if propelled by the handiwork of ghosts.

Written by Beauty And The Beast and The Little Mermaid composer Alan Menken, with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and book by Mike Ockrent and Lynn Ahrens, the musical began life as a film before being re-created for the Broadway stage, opening at Madison Square Garden.

Its driving force is the modern musical score under Scott Phillips’s enthusiastic direction,  but the dialogue fizzes along too – everything is home and hosed by 9.30pm – with Tearle’s Marley as host, ghost and timekeeper.

Changes afoot? The familiar tale of miserable, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge’s redemptive journey through Christmas Eve night still takes the form of encounters with Ghosts of the Past, Present and Yet To Be but Tearle has fortified the circus setting first evoked in 2018, while Melissa Boyd’s choreography nods to both 1856 and modern moves for ensemble numbers.

Once more the ghosts are first seen in their real-world guises as a lamplighter (Perri Ann Barley), Ring Master (Chris Hagyard, taking the circus theme further than James O’Neil’s charity show barker of 2018), and an Old Hag (John Mulholland). Note their Christmas colours of snow white, ivy green and holly berry red.

Chris Hagyard’s Ghost of Christmas Present

Tearle loves theatricality, spectacle in particular, and here he quite surpasses himself by having Marley wreathed in 100 metres of white fabric, stretched like waves across the stage as he urges Kit Stroud’s grouchy Scrooge to learn the error of his ways before it is too late. Marley’s trademark chains are more like a rapper’s bling adornments by comparison.

Graduating from his 2018 role as Young Ebenezer, Stroud’s Scrooge is mean of voice and demeanour at the outset, his lead performance being alive to both the humour and inhumanity the part demands.

Shocked by what he learns of himself, his Scrooge is pained by the recollections of his younger self, when guided by Perri Ann Barley’s Ghost Of Christmas Past with her coat of lights leading the way.

Ockrent and Ahrens’s book weaves one departure from Dickens’s novella into the plot: the story of Scrooge’s father, John William Scrooge, being sentenced to a debtors’ prison while his horrified wife’s family look on as they sing God Bless Us, Everyone.

Cowering into a ball, Stroud’s Scrooge screams “Mother” (as played by Rebecca Jackson), the stuff of a psychological thriller to counter the pantomimic comedy mayhem that subsequently permeates Mr Fezziwig’s Annual Christmas Ball.

John Mulholland’s Ghost of Christmas Yet To Be

Hagyard, out of luck in October when Bev Jones Company’s Guys And Dolls had to be called off, puts that frustration behind him in a terrific performance,  pulling strings as Ring Master cum Ghost of Christmas Present.

Greg Roberts’s clown-wigged Mr Fezziwig and Ali Butler-Hind’s Mrs Fezziwig enjoy themselves too in that first-half climax, while Kristian Barley’s Bob Cratchit and Alice Atang’s Tiny Tim maximise their moments too.

Mulholland’s Ghost of Christmas Yet To Be transforms from Old Hag to flame-maned heavy metal frontman, the shock of the new steering Stroud’s alarmed Scrooge towards the dawn of realisation and change.

Visually arresting, largely playful rather than psychological, A Christmas Carol is a typically vibrant, helter-skelter Tearle production, where the singing and musicianship is of varied quality, the dancing and acting being more assured by comparison.

NE Theatre York in A Christmas Carol, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, until Saturday; 7.30pm nightly and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. SOLD OUT. Box office for returns only: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

REVIEW: NETheatre York in Grease The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, until Saturday ***

Filling the stage: NETheatre York’s cast for Grease The Musical

IF a picture paints a thousand words, then look at the one above. It captures the essence of NETheatre York.

That stage looks busy, very busy, bursting with happy faces, everyone revelling in performing and being in a group whose love of entertaining York audiences is writ large in every buoyant show. Such is the sugar rush of a Steve Tearle production – he has become the P T Barnum of York – that the impact is almost giddying. No wonder the ‘E’ in NETheatre stands for ‘exciting’.

‘Excitable’ would be true too, maybe even over-excitable, in that desire to delight, with the opening night in too much of a rush at the start amid a few technical gremlins. No doubt those theatrical E numbers will settle down, but the sound balance with so many performers on stage – a cast of 60 – always will be a challenge.

Finlay Butler’s Danny Zuko, centre, with Flynn Coultous’s Roger, left, and Calum Davis’s Kenickie

Tearle has found a formula that works at the box office, one that appeals to family, friends and stalwart supporters alike. If you build a production with a big cast, giving opportunities to young performers to cut their stage teeth, as well helping nascent talents to bloom and calling on a stock of regulars, they will come. In big numbers.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and the Saturday matinee have sold out already; Thursday and Saturday night are down to the last few tickets (box office, 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk).

Another factor is at play here: Grease, in a word. Everyone loves Grease, just as everyone loves Abba and Queen, don’t they. Don’t they?!  That film, those iconic John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John performances, those songs, are embedded in more than one generation, reflected in the wide age range attending on Tuesday.

Tough cookie: Melissa Boyd’s outstanding Rizzo

Sensibly, NETheatre York (the latest name for NE Musicals York) applied for the extra rights to be allowed to use the opening title song, You’re The One That I Want, Sandy and Hopelessly Devoted To You from the 1978 movie. Out go Drive In Movie, All Choked Up and It’s Raining On Prom Night. In come four songs that all made the UK top three, the John and Olivia duet topping the charts for nine weeks.

Tearle likes a night at the theatre to be a full experience for the audience from the moment of arrival, in this case running a glitter station for sparkling facial adornments. Aptly, your reviewer’s programme sparkled on the Creative Team page, from stray glitter particles as it turned out.

Scott Kendrew, in de rigueur spangly trousers, opens the show, fulfilling his dream to sing a solo song in a musical, performing Grease in the guise of Frankie Valli with an all-American swagger. Soon the stage is populated by the T-Birds greaser gang, the Pink Ladies, more and more Rydell High School pupils and the new, young 1959 intake, under the charge of Perri Ann Barley’s indefatigable head teacher Miss Lynch.

NETheatre York director/producer/co-choreographer Steve Tearle, centre, with co-choreographer Ellie Roberts and musical director Scott Phillips

It does provide a wow factor, such a full stage, but this staging comes with complications. The central focus of a scene is not always clear amid so many bodies; voices become muffled in dialogue on one occasion when two performers move beyond the stage apron into the auditorium; peripheral movement sometimes distracts from the principals, Maia Beatrice’s college newcomer Sandy Dumbrowski is too crowded in by the ensemble in that all-important Summer Nights duet with Finlay Butler’s Danny Zuko.

The traffic is less heavy, indeed clear, for the confessional, heartfelt solo numbers, emphasising the song and its delivery, whether Butler’s Danny in Sandy; Beatrice’s Sandy in Hopelessly Devoted To You or, best of all, the stand-out Melissa Boyd’s cynical tough cookie Rizzo in There Are Worse Things (I Could Do).

Rizzo is her dream role and it shows. Sparks fly in the company of Calum Davis’s cocksure Kenickie, who revels in his big number, Greased Lightnin, the peak of Ellie Roberts’s choreography too.

Back to back: Maia Beatrice’s Sandy Dumbrowski and Finlay Butler’s Danny Zuko

University of Hull theatre student Butler and Cleethorpes pantomime star Beatrice first performed together in York College days, re-sparking that chemistry as strutting Danny and a grittier-than-usual Sandy, culminating in the pent-up romantic release of You’re The One That I Want.

Broad humour courses through the somewhat graphic performances of T-Birds Roger (Flynn Coultous in his NETheatre debut), Sonny (Kristian Barley) and Doody (guitar-playing Matthew Clarke). Juliette Brenot’s Frenchy, Mo Kinnes’s Jan and Erin Greenley’s Marty, leader Rizzo’s fellow Pink Ladies, are not content to stay in the background.

Sam Richardson and Chloe Drake play the nerdy Eugene and goody-goody/irritating cheerleader Patty respectively with admirable enthusiasm for such uncool roles. Ellie Roberts’s Cha-Cha and Kit Stroud’s radio jock Vince Fontaine make the most of their cameos.

Mo Kinnes’s Jan and Flynn Coultous’s Roger

Musical director Scott Phillips pops out of the pit to transform into band leader Johnny Casino. Director/producer/co-choreographer Steve Tearle turns into Las Vegas Elvis – if Elvis had made it to his silver sixties – for the Teen Angel set-piece, Beauty School Dropout, all in white, tongue in cheek, lights flickering in his cape.

Phillips leads his band – two tenor sax, guitars, bass and drums – from the keyboards with exuberance and a dash of jazz swing. The ensemble, whether speeding through the aisles or giving their all in the routines, relishes every scene.

Some might want Tearle’s Grease to be a little calmer, less frenetic, to let scenes breathe, but just as the show’s Grease car sign was made and sent from China in only two weeks, so this Grease works flat out to deliver its thrills, right down to Phillips’s Grease Mega-Mix party finale, everyone up on their feet busting their John and Olivia moves.

NETheatre York presents Grease The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office for last few tickets: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatreyork.co.uk

Yes, You’re The One That I Want, NETheatre York style