From North Korea Into Iraq: Yorkshireman Michael Palin’s journey for his TV series, tour show and book
MONTY Python comedy legend and intrepid globetrotter Michael Palin will give a first-hand account of his extraordinary journeys through two countries on the dark side of history on his new solo tour this autumn, From North Korea Into Iraq.
The Yorkshireman’s only Yorkshire destination on his nine-date itinerary will be the Grand Opera House, York, on October 6.
Using photos and film shot at the time, Palin, 79, will recall his challenging adventures in the tightly controlled time bomb of the People’s Republic of North Korea and the bruised land of Iraq, once the home of civilisation, torn apart over the past 30 years by brutal war and bloodshed.
Both named by President George Bush as being part of the Axis of Evil, these two countries are often portrayed as international pariahs, two of the last places you would want to visit, but for Sheffield-born Palin the best part of travelling is looking behind the headlines and discovering what life is really like for the people who live there.
“We shouldn’t forget that we share a common humanity with the people of North Korea and Iraq,” says globe-trotting Michael Palin
“We shouldn’t forget that we share a common humanity with the people of North Korea and Iraq, and in both these tough and difficult countries we found, as you will see, humour and hope, ambition, expectation, warmth, hospitality and extraordinary resilience,” he says.
“These journeys were for me a total eye-opener. From North Korea Into Iraq may take you out of your comfort zone but I hope, like me, that once we’ve travelled together, your feelings about these two countries, and the wider world we share, will never be quite the same again.”
Palin’s theatre tour will follow the autumn launch of his new Channel 5 series, Michael Palin: Into Iraq, produced by ITN Productions.
Palin’s accompanying new book, Into Iraq, will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann on September 15.
York tickets are on sale on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
The poster for Michael Palin’s From North Korea Into Iraq tour
Chemistry: Sanna Buck’s femme fatale and Aran MacRae’s Richard Hannay in Settlement Players’ The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders
John Buchan, Alfred Hitchcock, Simon Corble, Nobby Dimon and Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps, York Settlement Community Players, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, no longer dashing about with pencil-slim moustache panache until Sunday afternoon, alas, after cast illness.
DRINK in hand, it was time to sit back in the John Cooper Studio’s cabaret-style seating, relax and let the suspenseful comic drama begin.
Glass empty, (product-placed York Gin) bottle likewise, Aran MacRae’s Lieutenant Richard Hannay is slumped in his dull, lonely, newly rented Portland Place flat. He’s a man in an emotional pickle, on the edge, on the ledge, “tired of the world and tired of life” as the problems pile up. Suicidal, even, and in need of love as it later turns out.
So far, so sombre. What the dashing but hopes-dashed Hannay needs is “something pointless and trivial” to shake him out of his torpor. “I know,” he says. “Go to the theatre.” Boom, there goes the first big laugh, an insider knowing joke told against theatre, delivered with perfect comic timing, and so Harri Marshall’s production immediately hits its stride.
Writer Patrick Barlow: Fast-moving, snappily-clever, needs-must version of The 39 Steps
This is Patrick Barlow’s fast-moving, snappily clever version of The 39 Steps, the one he scripted for the West Yorkshire Playhouse and later West End and international success from an original Yorkshire-founded concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon.
In a nutshell, Marshall’s cast is charged with hitching John Buchan’s story of murder, suspense and intrigue to the thrills, spills and daring deeds of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film in a deranged marriage of comedy, farce, misadventure, mystery and thriller.
In Barlow’s National Theatre of Brent days, he would have his mock two-man theatre troupe, Desmond and Raymond, re-enact the Light Brigade and the Zulu Wars in a send-up of short-handed theatre companies.
Past productions of The 39 Steps divided its 135 characters between a cast of four, one man for Hannay, a woman for three women, and two men or a man and a woman (as in Rowntree Players’ 2015 production at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre), nominally called Man 1 and Man 2, for the rest.
Aran MacRae’s “tired of the world and tired of life” Richard Hannay. Picture: John Saunders
Marshall marshals rather more forces, calling on six men in black, Daniel Boyle, Andrew Isherwood, Matthew Lomax, Jim Paterson, Matt Pattison and Stephen Wright, to take on Barlow’s trademark needs-must, bargain-basement theatre style as The Clowns.
This demands that they must improvise props on the hoof amid the dearth of resources, wear multiple hats metaphorically and sometimes physically in leaping from role to role, and somehow ensure the smooth delivery of a performance, (hoping the audience won’t notice the absence of an errant stage manager, but Barlow/Marshall knowing they will).
From Lip Service to Mischief’s The Play That Goes Wrong, this is a slick, precise, unflappable comic device that has borne the ripest fruit, and here Marshall’s misrule of six brings a new dimension to both the madcap comedy capers and to the underlying darkness.
Barlow’s play often draws comparison with the anarchic spirit and teamwork of Monty Python; now, after Marshall’s innovation, the absurdist League of Gentlemen come to mind too. Daniel Boyle’s voice and looning eyes remind you of late Python Terry Jones; Matthew Lomax’s female characterisations echo the Gents.
Unforgettable: Daniel Boyle as Mr Memory in The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders
All the while, there is a story to tell, driven by narrator Hannay, MacRae’s upright Hannay playing it absolutely rod-straight, whatever hurdle is thrown his way from Hitchcock’s thriller and other Hitchcock works besides, as he ends up as murder suspect number one when a mysterious German woman with a gun, Annabelle Schmidt (Sanna Buck), dies in his arms after insisting on leaving the London Palladium by his side, desperate to impart important information.
On his tail as he heads to Scotland by train are policemen, secret agents and assorted women, and Marshall’s forces pull off Barlow’s obstacle course with elan, whether faced by re-enacting Hitchcock’s chase on the Flying Scotsman, the escape from the Forth Bridge, the first ever theatrical bi-plane crash [reprised from 1959’s North By Northwest] or a death-defying finale. Every Hitch homage defiantly goes off without a hitch.
Particularly strong is the chemistry between MacRae and Buck, a Swedish-born stage and film actor performing in York for the first time. MacRae, a professional with West End credits, now back in his home city, wholly lives up to Marshall’s billing that he would “balance brilliant playfulness against being earnest when required”, while Buck is to the Thirties’ manner born in her trio of roles as mystery German woman Annabelle, an alluring English femme fatale and a shy but helpful Scottish farmer’s wife. What a debut!
Caught on the hop: Harri Marshall’s company breaks into a dance step in The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders
Praise too for Helen Taylor’s wardrobe, especially for MaCrae and Buck, and Richard Hampton and Graham Sanderson’s set and lighting designs.
What rotten luck that, after the supremely assured first night, cast illness should rob the company and audiences alike of further performances of such verbal vim, satirical brio, dextrous stage craft, inventive surprise and even a sudden outbreak of dancing, as taught in rehearsal to the ever-game cast by York Lindy Hop.
No matter how frustrating the sudden curtailment must feel to Harri and her cast, Settlement Players’ first live show since March 2020 has been totally worthwhile, reminding us of MacRae’s considerable talent, first shown in youth theatre days, introducing York to Buck and bringing together a pool of performers it would be good to see working together again.
Director Harri Marshall: Heavy heart at having to call off the remaining performances
York Settlement Community Players’ statement on Friday:
“We are very sorry to announce that, due to cast illness and circumstances beyond our control, all remaining performances of The 39 Steps are cancelled (Fri 12, Sat 13 and Sun 14 November).
“All ticket holders for these affected performances will be contacted by email and receive a full refund. We ask that you please bear with us and theatre@41 while the necessary arrangements are made and thank you for your patience at this time.
“We would like to express our utmost thanks to the cast and crew for their commitment and creativity over the past months. It is with a heavy heart that we make this necessary decision but look forward to putting on more great theatre in York next year.”
BLAME Tim
Brooke-Taylor for the stereotype image of the mithering, miserable, tight but
bragging Yorkshireman.
Well, not
only Tim, as we celebrate the comic genius and geniality of this son of
Derbyshire, Cambridge Footlights president, Goodie and stalwart I’m Sorry I Haven’t
panellist, who passed away yesterday, taken by the Covid-19 blight at 79.
The Four
Yorkshireman sketch is often attributed to Monty Python, but wrongly so. It was
in fact co-written by Brooke-Taylor for At Last The 1948 Show, the ITV series
he made with Marty Feldman and future Pythons John Cleese and Graham Chapman in
1967 and 1968.
Monty Python were subsequently to appropriate it and so too was The Secret Policeman’s Ball charity bash, when performed by Cleese, Terry Jones, South Yorkshireman Michael Palin and a young Rowan Atkinson.
“And you
try telling the young people of today that and they won’t believe you,” you
might say, borrowing the sketch’s pay-off line.
Tim
recalled the sketch’s motivation when interviewed ahead of his An Audience With
Tim Brooke Taylor show at Selby Town Hall in November 2014: the year when the grainy
black-and-white footage of the original recording for At Last The 1948 Show was
re-discovered.
“I come from
Derbyshire, so all Yorkshiremen are a pain in the neck and we have a chip on
the shoulder about them,” said the Buxton-born Brooke-Taylor, not entirely
seriously.
“In the Seventies,
I was asked by five different publishers to write about Yorkshire because I’d
picked on the county, but then Yorkshiremen were not at their best in the
Seventies, were they!”
“Geoffrey Boycott!”
scoffed the cricket enthusiast. “But I’ve since met some very nice Yorkshiremen
and I’ve had to change my attitude, which is rather annoying.”
Tim, the perennial wounded innocent in
The Goodies alongside Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, went on to say why he loved
being a team player, rather than performing solo. “I find that comedy is
funnier in groups; there are great stand-ups but I love seeing people bouncing
words off each other,” he reasoned.
Had Tim ever been tempted to write his
autobiography, came the final question? “I’ve been offered deals, but I think
the interesting ones are written by those with nasty things to say, like Roy
Keane’s book,” he said. “My book would be too happy.”
Too happy? For all four of the grouchy Four Yorkshiremen, maybe, but not for the rest of us. Thank you, Tim Brooke-Taylor, for all the years of happiness and laughter your brought us.
“We’ll lead you to a better life,” you
sang. “Goodies, goody, goody, yum, yum.”
