Tag: Nik Briggs

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Re-meet Mark Holgate and Suzy Cooper, the fairy king and queen of York Stage’s ‘Dream’ as Shakespeare goes Shameless

Suzy Cooper’s Queen of the Fairies, Hippolyta, in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

GARY Oldman will not be the only former Berwick Kaler co-star returning to a York stage in 2025.

Suzy Cooper, for more than 20 years the ditzy, posh-voiced, jolly super principal gal in the grand dame’s pantomimes, will lead Nik Briggs’s cast alongside York-born actor Mark Holgate in the dual roles of courtly Hippolyta and Theseus and the quarrelling Queen and King of the Fairies, Titania and Oberon, in York Stage’s reinvention of A Midsummer Night’s Dream from May 6 to 11.

In his tenth anniversary of producing and directing shows at the Grand Opera House, Briggs relocates his debut Shakespeare production from the court of Athens to Athens Court, a northern council estate, where magic is fuelled with mayhem and true love’s path still does not run smooth, set to a Nineties and Noughties’ dancefloor soundtrack of Freed From Desire, No Limits, Show Me Love, Everytime We Touch et al as Shakespeare meets Shameless.

Presented as York Stage’s first co-production with the Cumberland Street theatre, Briggs’s ‘Dream’ will feature a new score by musical director Stephen Hackshaw. “Whilst not being a musical, the show will include a live band alongside powerhouse vocals that York Stage are famous for with their musical production,” says Nik.

Mark Holgate and Suzy Cooper in rehearsal for York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Suzy last trod the Grand Opera House boards in dowager dame Berwick Kaler’s valedictory pantomime after 47 years on the York stage in Robinson Crusoe And The Pirates Of The River Ouse, the final curtain falling on January 6 2024.

“It will be lovely to be back in York, performing at the Grand Opera House again,” says Suzy. ““I’ve not worked with Mark before, but he did the Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre season in York the same summer that I did it at Blenheim, when we brushed shoulders in that amazing tent when we gathered for the start of the second summer. It’s going to be a lot of fun working with him.

“For ‘Dream’, the lovely Nik rang me and said, ‘it’s a very unusual thing we’re doing, a co-production with the Grand Opera House, and would you like to play Hippolyta?’. I didn’t  need to think about, and not to have to audition was music to my ears!”

Mark’s career has taken in the Royal Shakespeare Company, Cheek By Jowl, Sheffield Crucible and theatres across the UK, as well as such roles as Banquo in Macbeth and Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night in Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre seasons in 2018 and 2019 in his home city.

Forest fireworks: Mark Holgate’s Oberon in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

He last performed on a York stage in Riding Lights Theatre Company’s staged  reading of Maryland, Lucy Kirkwood’s “howl” of a protest play, directed by Bridget Foreman at the Friargate Theatre in November 2021.

Mark’s participation in York Stage’s ‘Dream’ was “actually all down to my Dad”. “He has always been a great support of my acting career,” he says. “He read an article in The Press and sent it over to me, about York Stage putting on ‘Dream’ and that they were holding auditions. I dropped Nik a line, came to York Stage to meet him and that was that.” 

Reflecting on the contrast between his past Shakespeare experiences, including Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, and now with York Stage, Mark says: “The main difference is the rehearsal schedule. A lot of the cast have 9-5s and so rehearsals have worked around people’s availability. Whereas I would rehearse for three or four weeks consecutively, with this production you could have a gap of two weeks before being back in the room again.

“So you really have to be on your game at keeping track of everything you’ve discovered and set in rehearsal. Working in this way is completely new to me. It definitely keeps it fresh and exciting.”

Suzy Cooper: “Making decisions organically about how we’ll play Hippolyta’s relationship with Theseus”

Suzy adds: “Mark and I have had around five days’ rehearsals, which though it sounds really scary, as you’d normally do three weeks, but actually they’re intense days, so I just have to keep calm and carry on!

“We’re still undecided, right up to the last minute, making decisions organically about how we’ll play Hippolyta’s relationship with Theseus, where she’s been won as a prize, but maybe she’s not unhappy about that. Wait and see!

“It’s trickier than Titania, and you know me, I need to get my [acting] shoes on to get my feet rooted in a role.”

What are the challenges of playing two roles, Theseus and Oberon, in one play, Mark? “Remembering who I am playing in each scene. Only joking! Theseus is quite tricky as, once you’ve seen him in the first scene, he doesn’t appear again right till the end. Keeping hold of his journey after playing Oberon in between will be the challenge.

Mark Holgate’s Oberon and Suzy Cooper’s Hippolyta, centre, with Sam Roberts’s Demetrius, left, Amy Domeneghetti’s Helena, Will Parsons’ Lysander and Meg Olssen’s Hermia in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“I’m really looking forward to taking them on to the Grand Opera House stage. Both of my daughters have performed there but I never have. They beat me to it.”

York Stage’s ‘Dream’ calls on Mark to do a double act at the double with Suzy Cooper’s Hippolyta and Titania. “Suzy and I have never worked together but we have crossed paths. On the first day of rehearsal I was a bit nervous as usual on the first day. Like the first day of school. Then Suzy entered the room, I walked over and gave her a hug and all my nervous energy disappeared.

“She has been an absolute joy to work with and I really look forward to sharing the Grand Opera House stage with her.” 

Both Suzy and Mark have “previous” form for appearing in Shakespeare’s most performed comedy. “I’ve never played Titania before, but I did play the fairy, Mustardseed, and Snout the Tinker in Lucy Pitman-Wallace’s production at York Theatre Royal, with Malcom Skates as Bottom and Andrina Carroll as Titania, and then Peter Quince in Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre’s production at Blenheim Palace in 2019, the summer when I also played Lady Macbeth in Macbeth,” says Suzy.

“Suzy has been an absolute joy to work with and I really look forward to sharing the Grand Opera House stage with her,” says Mark Holgate

“Those nights doing ‘Dream’ were so joyful, when director Juliet Forster said ‘just trust in what you do’, but Nik’s show is a very different ‘Dream to any I’ve seen or done before, with Nik’s wonderful design and working with a composer. It’s the youngest, most exciting version I’ve experienced. I’m seeing out my history in the play with these new actors.”

Mark was  part of Juliet Forster’s cast for Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre production of ‘Dream’ at the Eye of York in 2018. “The audience just love it,” he says, exploring the 1595 play’s abiding  popularity. “Apart from theatre being a great form of escapism, the play itself is such a fantastic piece. It has great characters, it’s funny, dramatic, poetic, and in this production the songs, movement and storytelling from a superb ensemble will really blow your socks off.

“I hope people come to see it because it will be so different to the idea of Shakespeare that you have in your head. It will be a lot of fun. It’s on for only one week, so get those tickets booked.”

York Stage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Grand Opera House, York, May 6 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinees . Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Dream casting: York Stage’s poster artwork for Suzy Cooper and Mark Holgate’s participation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Panto queen Suzy Cooper and RSC actor Mark Holgate to star in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream from May 6 to 11

Suzy Cooper and Mark Holgate: Playing Titania and Hippolyta and Oberon and Theseus respectively in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

GARY Oldman will not be the only former Berwick Kaler co-star returning to a York stage in 2025.

Suzy Cooper, for more than 20 years the ditzy, posh-voiced, jolly super principal gal in the grand dame’s pantomimes, will lead Nik Briggs’s cast alongside York actor Mark Holgate as the quarrelling Queen and King of the Fairies, Titania and Oberon, in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream from May 6 to 11.

In his tenth anniversary of producing and directing shows at the Grand Opera House, Briggs relocates his debut Shakespeare production from the court of Athens to Athens Court, a northern council estate, where magic is fuelled with mayhem and true love’s path still does not run smooth.

Presented as York Stage’s first co-production with the Cumberland Street theatre, Briggs’s Dream will feature a new score by musical director Stephen Hackshaw. “Whilst not being a musical, the show will include a live band alongside powerhouse vocals that York Stage are famous for with their musical production,” says Nik. “Keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks for more Dreamy cast announcements. The next one will be very soon.”

Suzy last trod the Grand Opera House boards in dowager dame Berwick Kaler’s valedictory pantomime after 47 years on the York stage in Robinson Crusoe And The Pirates Of The River Ouse from December 9 2023 to January 6 2024.

Britannia rules the waves: Suzy Cooper’s fairy in Robinson Crusoe &The Pirates Of The River Ouse at the Grand Opera House, York, in December 2023. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

“It will be lovely to be back in York, performing at the Grand Opera House again,” says Suzy, who will take the role of Hippolyta too opposite Holgate’s Theseus. “I’ve never played Titania before, but I did play the fairy, Mustardseed, at York Theatre Royal, with Malcom Skates as Bottom and Andrina Carroll as Titania, and then Peter Quince in Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre’s production at Blenheim Palace in 2019 [when she also appeared as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth].

“I’ve not worked with Mark before, but he did the Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre season the same summer that I did, and it’s going to be a lot of fun working with him.”

Explaining how this production and the initial casting came to fruition, producer-director Nik says: “This is a new venture for York Stage in our first co-production with the Grand Opera House, so as part of that we were looking at how we could create the next generation of York Stage productions.

“Like when we did our first pantomime [the socially distanced Jack And The Beanstalk in the Covid-shadowed winter of 2020] and we’ve also talked about using professional casting alongside our community casting, where a lot of our actors have professional credits too.

“It was important for York Stage to use professional actors with connections with York, and Suzy was someone I had wanted to work with for a long time. We’d talked several times about doing a show, and this was the perfect opportunity. It’s been in the offing since late-summer when we started talking about it.”

York Stage director Nik Briggs: Relocating Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream from the court of Athens Court, a northern council estate

Nik continues: “We were thinking about making ‘Dream’ like Brassic or Shameless, set on a northern council estate. In the original telling, Hippolyta is the Amazon queen, who is almost a prisoner of the Athenian court, and the idea struck me that with Suzy being a southerner but adopted by York after performing here for nigh on 30 years, she would be ideal as the southern counterpoint to the northern world in the tumultuous battle that unfolds, adding a North-South divide to it.”

Nik will be directing Mark Holgate for the first time too. “Our paths have never crossed before. Mark’s father had seen a piece in The Press about us looking for actors and said that Mark had had a career with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Cheek By Jowl, Sheffield Crucible and theatres across the UK and was a real master of Shakespearean acting, but he’d never performed at the Grand Opera House or York Theatre Royal.

“The opportunity to perform in one of the big theatres in his home city, with his family living in the city, was a real draw for him.  He’s played such roles as Banquo in Macbeth and Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night – he was sensational in that – for Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre but until now I wasn’t aware that he was from York.

“So we met up, he did some readings and he was exactly what I’d envisaged for Oberon. It really hinges on Oberon in this play, and Mark got my vision; he had just what I wanted from the role. It’s really exciting to see what he’ll bring to it.”

Suzy Cooper and Mark Holgate will star in York Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Grand Opera House, York, May 6 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinees . Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

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REVIEW: York Stage in Company, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight at 7.30pm; tomorrow at 2.30pm & 7.30pm ****

Girl trouble: Gerard Savva’s Booby being given a hard time by Hannah Shaw’s Amy, back left, Alexandra Mather’s Susan, Julie Anne Smith’s Joanne, Jo Theaker’s Jenny, front, left, Mary Clare’s Sarah and, under the covers, Florence Poskitt’s April. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

ON Bobby’s 35th birthday, his friends all have one question on their mind. Why is he not married?

On Gerard Savva’s return to the stage for the first time since 2008 to play Bobby, the question is: where has he been all these years?!

“He just applied from our social media posts and came down to audition for us!” explained York Stage director, choreographer and designer, when your reviewer asked him where he had discovered Savva’s talents. “I knew from his energy and initial chemistry that he was our Bobby!”

Just to re-emphasise the point: Savva isn’t just making a test-the-waters return in a chorus line: he is playing the lead, the suave, sleek Bobby, a charmer certainly, if elusive in the marriage stakes. He looks the matinee idol part too: tanned, immaculately coiffured, sharp suited and glittery in his T-shirt detail.

Briggs is in supreme form, not only in his casting – Savva is in good company in Company – but in his staging too, brightening the Theatre@41 black box with the prettiest of drapes and colourful boxes with ribbon that serve as both birthday presents and for standing on. Boxes, coincidence or not, have been prevalent in this autumn’s production in York and beyond, making for quick scene changes.

Company is Stephen Sondheim at his very best, here teaming up with George Furth for a bravura, sophisticated and wittily insightful 1970 American musical comedy that follows Savva’s Bobby as he “navigates the world of dating and being the third wheel to all of his now happily and unhappily married friends”. Where will his exploration of the pros and cons of settling down and leaving his single life behind lead him? Ultimately into a celebration of being alive in Savva’s vocal high point.

The music has the pitter-patter of patter songs, a typically steep challenge, but one met brilliantly by Briggs’s company, in particular by Hannah Shaw’s Amy in Getting Married Today – the unbelievably fast one – and Julie Anne Smith’s heavy-drinking Joanne in The Ladies Who Lunch.

Florence Poskitt, ever the comic gem on the York musical theatre scene, is sublime as ditzy air hostess April, her bedroom scene with Savva’s Bobby receiving the biggest cheer on press night.

Couple after couple delight: Jack Hooper’s Harry and Mary Clare’s ever-questing Sarah; Dan Crawfurd-Porter’s  pot-stirring Peter and Alexandra Mather’s hippy-chic Susan; Stu Hutchinson’s David and Jo Theaker’s Jenny; Robbie Wallwork’s Paul and Hannah Shaw’s outstanding Amy, and Matthew Clarke’s Larry and Julie Anne Smith’s intemperate Joanne. Kelly Stocker’s Kathy and Lana Davies’s Marta add to the fun too.

Briggs’s costumes and choreography are full of panache; musical director James Robert Ball and his band play gorgeously, and lighting designer Adam Moore, sound designer Ollie Nash and hair and make-up artist Phoebe Kilvington are at the top of their game too. Don’t miss this savvy, snazzy, snappy New York classic; you will be in the best of Company if you go. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

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REVIEW: York Stage in School Of Rock The Musical: The Next Generation, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday ****

Finn East’s Dewey Finn: Reasserting his golden talent to amuse. All pictures: Felix Wahlberg

AS the new school year settles its feet under the table, School Of Rock opens for alternative lessons in life: music to the ears of anyone who believes that education should add up to more than Rishi Sunak’s vision of compulsory Maths to the age of 18.

After John Godber’s Teechers and Willy Russell’s Our Day Out both espoused the value of looking outside the box to stimulate children’s minds and actions, a more innocent force does so in School Of Rock in the idiot-savant form of Dewey Finn (Finn East).

Kicked out of his band, this failed rock-god guitarist is now in danger of being booted out of best mate Ned Schneebly’s (James Robert Ball) flat for pushing his freeloading beyond the tolerance of Ned’s insufferable, controlling partner Patty Di Marco (a suitably shrill and shrewish Amy Barrett).

Down but not yet out, he pretends to be teacher Ned to take up a substitute teacher’s post at posh and proper prep school Horace Green, immediately jettisoning Maths, tests and gold stars for lessons in the history of rock. Heavy rock, hard rock, not the swiftly dismissed Taylor Swift and Kanye.

Dewey is committing identity fraud, but he has a rebellious charm, the cheeky big kid within him encouraging his young charges to express themselves, all the more so in the hands of Finn East, who may have shades of Jack Black (from Richard Linklater’s 2003 film) in his performance but bags of personality of his own making, built on his instinctive comic timing and irrepressible stage presence.

He just happens to be a cracking rock singer too, and these are big, big rock songs, challenging to sing in the compositions of Andrew Lloyd Webber, especially When I Climb To The Top Of Mount Rock.

Crucial too, in the guise of Dewey, is his interaction, his easy connection with the multitude of children that makes up the Next Generation of the title: led by the supremely talented young band of Charlie Jewison’s knee-slide guitarist Zack Mooneyham, Daniel Tomlin’s geeky keyboard wizard Lawrence Turner, Zack Denison’s all-action drummer Freddie Hamilton and Matilda Park’s ace “bass face” Katie Travis (Park having mastered bass in a matter of weeks).

Plenty of children’s roles add to the joy in Julian “Downton Abbey”  Fellowes’ ebullient script (rooted in Mike White’s screenplay), from Theo Rae’s fashion-fixated Billy Sandford to Molly Thorne’s bossy Summer Hathaway and Eady Mensah’s shy Tomika, from Team Gibson (with performances being shared with Team Fender, the names referring to makes of guitar).

Adults tend to play second fiddle, except for Megan Waite’s operatic-voiced head teacher, Rosalie Mullins, so repressed and orderly until Dewey brings out the Stevie Nicks butterfly from her dowdy chrysalis, and Dewey’s flatmates, Barrett’s ever-exasperated Patty and Ball’s Ned, a bundle of nerdy nerves that craves release in reconnecting with his past. Look out too for late replacement Flo Poskitt’s comical cameos as Ms Sheinkopf and Mrs Sandford.

School Of Rock is described as “technically challenging”, partly on account of having two bands, not only the burgeoning young players but musical director Stephen Hackshaw’s band that plays in the theatre boxes, rather than the pit, at one point stepping forward to watch the young’uns in the climactic Battle of the Bands.

The first night is not without technical hitches in the sound balance, but these are ironed out quickly, and in every way this is a show with high production values, from Nik Briggs’s direction, bringing out such confident, expressive, energetic performances in his next generation, to Danielle Mullan-Hill in her rock choreography, peaking with Stick It To The Man.

Lighting designer Adam Moore and sound designer Ian Thomson evoke the atmosphere of a rock gig, the lighting rig absolutely looking the part, topped off by fireworks fizzing at the finale. Briggs’s set and costume design rock, and Phoebe Kilvington’s hair and make-up is the icing on the cake.

The accents are uniformly spot on too in this all-American celebration of music, friendship and the power of self-expression, where the young cast all deserves gold stars and Finn East reasserts his golden talent to amuse.

York Stage presents School Of Rock The Musical: The Next Generation, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus  2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

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REVIEW: York Stage in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday ****

Gold top performance: Reuben Khan’s Joseph in York Stage’s Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. All pictures: Charlie Kirkpatrick

AFTER Lee Mead, Keith Jack, Joe McElderry and Union J’s Jaymi Hensley, Joseph’s coat of many colours fits Reuben Khan delightfully lightly at the Grand Opera House.

The University of York psychology student, from Burnley, has plenty on his mind: third-year studies; his debut York Stage title role and applications to London drama schools to do a Masters degree in musical theatre.

On the evidence of his assured performance at 23, especially vocally, his future looks as bright as the Technicolor Dreamcoat that had him “saying the colours of Jospeh’s coat before I could spell them” on car journeys with his mum.

Director, producer and designer Nik Briggs returns to Lloyd Webber and Rice’s early musical for the first time since his “Joseph as you’ve never seen it before” show at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre in November 2018 with its  cast of 50 and Joseph in pyjamas.

Performing on crutches: Finn East’s Simeon singing with the Brothers

The Grand Opera House offers the opportunity to deliver a production on a bigger scale, not in cast size, but in lighting, staging and visual impact, aided by the fabulous parade of costume designs from Charades Theatrical Costume, St Helens.

The stage is built from scratch, as first the Narrator, Hannah Shaw, then Joseph and children from York Stage School (divided into Team Canaan and Team Egypt) oversee the creation of the world of Canaan, home to Jacob and his 11 sons (some of them daughters in Briggs’s company).

It looks so inviting, you want to book a holiday there. All it needs now to complete the scene is a camel. Oh, and here comes a camel on wheels, pretty much life-size!

From the off, this sung-through pop musical moves at a lick: typified by Finn East’s Simeon defying his injured knee to speed around on crutches, popping up everywhere and taking on a second role too as the Snake.

Hannah Shaw, who studied music at York St John University, sets the tone and style in glittering dress and shiny boots, engaging with the children like a teacher, driving the show forward and singing with oomph, both in her high notes and a lower register.

Storyteller in song: Hannah Shaw’s Narrator

Reuben Khan’s Joseph sings like a dream, whatever a song demands, whether tenderness, drama, power, or emotion further heightened by standing atop a ladder on a stage suddenly full of them in one of Briggs’s most striking designs.

Khan’s characterisation of Joseph has to be expressed largely through Rice’s narrative lyrics, and he does so particularly strongly in the dark ballad Close Every Door, while Any Dream Will Do is as irresistible as ever.

Lesley Hill’s choreography is as playful, fun and camp as this glitterball of a musical demands, at its best in the glorious ensemble number Joseph’s Coat, where Adam Moore’s lighting design matches every change of colour in the lyric.

Briggs’s company revels in playing old favourites with a knowing campness that has only increased with the passing of the years, especially in Jacob (Martin Rowley) and the brothers’ cod rendition of the sad chanson Those Canaan Days, exaggerated French accents et al.

The York Stage company in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Benjamin’s Calypso is even dafter, full of Caribbean joy as Cyanne Unamba-Oparah’s Judah has the brothers walking on sunshine.

Pop hit after pop hit hits home in all manner of musical styles, from Alex Hogg leading the brothers in the One More Angel In Heaven hoedown to Matthew Clarke’s vainglorious Potiphar luxuriating in the richness of his self-titled song.

In the absence of Carly Morton with shingles (get well soon, Carly), Amy Barrett takes on the rock’n’roll role of Pharaoh, traditionally played in sequinned-Elvis-in-Las-Vegas style. Not so much Elvis as Elvira here, but her Song Of The King is still a peach (one of the 29 colours in Joseph’s coat, by the way).

Adam Tomlinson’s 15-piece orchestra is on top form throughout, savouring the multitude of song styles and pumping up the beat for the Joseph Megamix finale as the party vibe suffuses the cast and cheering audience alike.

York Stage in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Grand Opera House, York, 7.30pm tonight, Wednesday and Thursday; 5pm and 8pm, Friday; 2.30pm and 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york

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On your marks, get set, go, go, go, Joseph as York Stage opens audition registration

GO, go, go, Joseph! Audition registration time is here for York Stage’s “dazzling” spring production of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

“Alongside our main adult casting, we’re also looking for children aged seven to 12, at the time of the audition, to join our cast,” says producer Nik Briggs.

Auditions will be held this month, beginning with initial adult auditions on January 9 from 7pm, followed by children’s ensemble auditions on January 11 from 7pm and recall auditions on January 14 from 1pm, all at Theatre@41, Monkgate. Nik will aim to release the cast list within 48 hours.

To resister for an audition, go to: www.yorkstage.com/event-details/joseph-2024-auditions. The full audition pack can be found at: www.yorkstage.com/_files/ugd/ce9cd2_86a604a4aafa470e82d1c030ef479fb4.pdf.

Joseph was first written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice at the request of a friend of Andrew’s father, Colet Court School choirmaster Alan Doggett, for the school’s 1968 end-of-term concert.

The full-scale musical will be presented by York Stage at the Grand Opera House, York, from April 12 to 20, at 7.30pm, except Fridays and Sunday; Fridays, 5pm and 8pm, and Sunday matinee, 4pm.

Set in ancient Egypt, this vibrant musical tells the biblical story of Joseph, his coat of many colours, and his prophetic journey as he learns that dreams really can come true. Among the songs are Any Dream Will Do, Go, Go, Go, Joseph, Close Every Door and the Elvis pastiche Song Of The King.

Tickets are on sale at atgtickets.com/york.

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REVIEW: York Stage in Festive Feast, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, ends Friday ****

Putting the East into Festive Feast: Finn East with Carly Morton, left, and York Stage newcomer Jess Parnell. All pictures: Kevin Coundon

YORK Stage director Nik Briggs likes to try out different shows for the Christmas season.

Whether staging the company’s one-off pantomime, Jack And The Beanstalk, in the Covid winter of a socially distanced 2020 at Theatre@41, or his sparkling, exuberant Elf The Musical at the Grand Opera House in 2021, he has come up trumps.

This winter, he is presenting not one, but two shows, back at Theatre@41. By day, Mick Liversidge’s Mr Claus and Joanne Theaker’s Mrs Claus are to be found in their very busy house, preparing for the big day but still finding time to entertain children with 45 minutes of sing-a-longs, Christmas stories, interactive wonderment and Christmas songs aplenty each day until Saturday in Santa’s Sing-A-Long.

By night, diverse York Stage vocal talent is serving up a Festive Feast of Christmas songs, ranging from the traditional chestnuts to modern pop, washed down with lashings of musical theatre favourites, under the musical direction of Adam Tomlinson.

Always on hand with quips or quiz questions at the keyboard, he is accompanied by Rosie Morris on bass and Alex Woolgar on drums to one side of the raised end-on stage in an auditorium bedecked with festive lighting, a red bow and grey backdrop, decorations, ceiling baubles, a wood burner, Christmas stockings, tinsel tassels and assorted Christmas trees. Merry Christmas reads the lettering above the mantlepiece.

Jess Main, left, Hannah Shaw and Katie Melia up front in an ensemble number in York Stage’s Festive Feast

To the other side are gathered 11 singers, who will be a constant presence, either seated on chairs or stools and gazing stage-wards supportively, when not singing, or leaping up to take centre stage in solos, duets, trios or quintets or to share in an ensemble number.

In glittering party frocks, York Stage regulars Katie Melia, Jess Main, Tracey Rea, Cyanne Unamba Oparah, Hannah Shaw and Carly Morton are joined for the first time by Guildhall School of Music & Drama student Jess Parnell.

Alongside the bow-tied, dinner-jacketed Matthew Clarke, Stuart Hutchinson and Jack Hooper is Finn East, all in black at Friday’s performance, adding a Jack Black in School Of Rock vibe to the festive formality around him. Welcome back Finn. So pleased to see you restored to the York Stage ranks; we have missed you, big fella.

The first half opens with That Time Of Year (Olaf’s Frozen Adventure), a chance for all the company to loosen their vocal chords, before Matthew Clarke confirms It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas and Finn East reaches for his guitar in Chris Rea’s winter warmer Driving Home For Christmas.

The Festive Feast company, bar Stuart Hutchinson: Hannah Shaw, left, Carly Morton and Matthew Clarke; middle, Jess Main, left, Jack Hooper and Jess Parnell; back, Cyanne Unamba Oparah, Tracy Rea, Katie Melia and Finn East

Musical theatre is represented in the spot-on choice of Turkey Lurkey Time from Burt Bacharach and  Hal David’s Promises, Promises, and those promises are certainly delivered by Carly Morton, Katie Melia and Jess Parnell.

Oh, what fun it is for Hutchinson, Clarke, Jess Main, Cyanne Unamba Oparah and Tracey Rea to sing James Lord Pierpont’s Jingle Bells, surely the jolliest ride to Christmas of all the seasonal favourites.

Rea’s rendition of Christmas Song, full of diva drama, leads off a run of solo numbers. Unamba Oparah, in red, turns up the heat in the cheeky Santa Baby, then Hannah Shaw impressively rides the Weimar cabaret-style twists & turns and mood changes of a woman scorned in Surabaya Santa, from Jason Robert Brown’s 1997 musical Songs For A New World: another inspired pick for a set list with room to surprise and seek out less familiar pearls. Whereupon Jess Parnell announces a new talent to watch with Christmas Lullaby, pure and midnight clear.

Songs from Christmas films are heralded by, what else, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas from 1942’s Holiday Inn, in a dreamy duet for a crooning Clarke and Melia. Bags of personality filter through the combative You’re A Mean One Mr Grinch, Jack Hooper and East jousting ever more grouchily with each retort from behind magic light books in the show’s comedic high point.

Hip hippo hooray: Breathless excitement from Katie Melia in I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas

A Christmas at the Movies Medley, arranged delightfully by Tomlinson, sees out the first half in the merriest Christmas spirit.

Bohemian Rhapsody might not be an obvious choice for a Festive Feast, but Queen’s rock-operatic behemoth twice topped the Christmas chart, in 1975 and 1991, a month after Freddie Mercury’s death. What an second-half opener it proves in an ensemble number that showcases the company’s singing chops, nods to the iconic video’s torch-lit operatic Galileo section, then rocks out gloriously.

Another Christmas number one, 1983’s Only You, is transformed from the Flying Pickets’ a cappella sextet to Only Stu, Hutchinson flying solo with all the bleak midwinter yearning of Vince Clarke’s paean to lost love.

Melia seeks out a reviving cocktail mid-song in the breathless rush of the daffy I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas and Shaw’s Holly Jolly Christmas sure is perky and bright. Parnell excels again in the Basque folk carol Gabriel’s Message, to Tomlinson’s minimalist accompaniment, as the mood turns more reflective, and magical too, in the ensemble performance of another folk carol, Gaudete, as popularised in Steeleye Span’s 1973 a cappella hit. Stepping out from behind the keys, Tomlinson extracts spine-tingling choral interplay from his singers.

Carly Morton: Outstanding renditions of River and All I Want For Christmas Is You

Joni Mitchell’s River, from 1971’s Blue album, was never released as a single but has become her second-most covered song. Here, company leading lady Carly Morton’s gorgeous version re-emphasises why, capturing the heartbroken Mitchell’s wish for a river she could skate away on.

Christmas can be a season of tears as much as good cheer, as represented in Festive Feast’s programme, but it feels right that the home straight should accentuate the joys, from Hooper’s It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year to Unamba Oparah and Shaw’s all-female reinvigoration of Baby It’s Cold Outside, a song that some considered to be coercive in its original man-cajoling-woman call-and-respond format.

Jess Main’s A Place Called Home is as warming as that wood burner looks on stage, and now is the time for what Tomlinson calls “a bit of a Christmas banger”. “I’ll try” says Morton, as she starts to climb the vertiginous vocal slopes of Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You…and duly hits the peaks, joined in joyful celebration by her fellow singers.

No better way to finish than with We Wish You A Merry Christmas, served a cappella, as York Stage revels in parading vocal prowess beyond the realms of musical theatre.

York Stage in Festive Feast, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York. Further performances, Tuesday to Friday, 8pm. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk (for Santa’s Sing-A-Long too).

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REVIEW: York Stage in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Grand Opera House, York, moving the earth until Saturday ****

Grace Lancaster at the piano in her role as Carole King in York Stage’s York premiere of Beautiful. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

BEAUTIFUL is “filled with the songs you remember – and a story you’ll never forget”, says Nik Briggs, director and producer of York Stage’s York premiere of The Carole King Musical.

Put another way, there are songs you know but may not know they are by Brooklyn-born Carole, whose story stayed in the background, much like Carole herself did until moving centre stage with Tapestry, before Douglas McGrath wrote the book for the musical. Tony and Grammy awards have ensued.

Leeds Grand Theatre played host to the first British tour in June 2018, and now Briggs delivers a sparkling York production every note as enjoyable, as lushly musical and, typical of Briggs, visually impactful too, with a wonderful lead performance by Grace Lancaster, a York-raised triple threat of singer, musician and actress.

McGrath’s book does not reveal the full tapestry – King’s flop 1970 debut album, Writer,  is as absent as James Taylor – but it wholly captures the spirit, courage and resilience of her constant creativity that blossomed as a teenager, told here with warmth, wit and charm, pathos too, and bursts of frank Jewish humour in her exchanges with her wise, if cautious mother, Genie Klein (Sandy Nicholson, perfect casting), a Manhattan teacher who would prefer her daughter to follow that career path too.

Teenagers in love: Grace Lancaster’s Carole King and Frankie Bounds’ Gerry Goffin in Beautiful. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

Bookended by Carole’s celebrated performance at Carnegie Hall, with Lancaster at the grand piano, Beautiful’s storyline opens with ordinary schoolgirl Carole Klein writing incessantly at 16, landing her first songwriting deal with Donnie Kirshner (an urbane Bryan Bounds) as Carole King.

Utilising cast members for scenery moves, Beautiful cracks on in a whirl, much like Carole’s songwriting success. She meets lyricist and putative playwright Gerry Goffin (Frankie Bounds), her fellow teen, and is pregnant and married at 17. What a productive partnership!

The hits keep piling up from their Kirshner-administered songwriting factory for the likes of The Drifters (Faisal Khodabukus, Christopher Knight, Munya Mswaka and Baz Zakeri) and The Shirelles( Cyanne Unamba Oparah, Maria Ghurbal, Nicole Kilama and Lauren Charlton-Matthews, who also plays Janelle Woods). Delightful performances all round.

Even their babysitter (Kilama’s Little Eva) hits the chart peak with The Loco-Motion – and everyone’s doing The Loco-Motion in black and white in the show’s best ensemble choreography by Danielle Mullan-Hill.

Frankie Bounds’ Gerry Goffin, centre, performing Pleasant Valley Sunday in an ensemble number in Beautiful. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

Unlike too many jukebox musicals, McGrath’s script does more than link the songs, telling the story behind them with breezy dialogue, yet giving due space to life-changing events, as the story moves between recording studio, record company offices, the home and the concert hall.

If Beautiful underplays the ugly side of the story, the restless, unfaithful Goffin’s straying from the happy-at-home Carole, Frankie Bounds (in his Marlon Brando white vest) seeks to invest the role with more darkness of the soul. He is no pantomime villain, even though one stage entry is greeted with a boo from one voice in the dress circle at Saturday’s matinee.

For contrast with the brooding Bounds’s increasingly troubled Goffin and the downward spiral of the Goffin-King marriage, the friendly rivalry at Kirshner’s 1650 Broadway building with fellow songwriting partners Barry Mann (Alex Hogg) and Cynthia Weil (Harriet Yorke) is depicted with lightness and plenty of laughter, as they progress, step by slower-than-Gerry and-Carole step to a number one hit (You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling) and wedding bells. Hogg’s somewhat hangdog, anxious Mann is ever humorous; Yorke’s Weil more spiky.

Canny operator: Bryan Bounds as recording company boss Donny Kirshner. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

Throughout, Lancaster conquers York. What a talent! Leeds Conservatoire tutor by day, New York Brass Band saxophonist and clarinet player by night, she has polished up her piano playing too to complement her delightful singing voice, as uplifting and moving as King’s, especially on Tapestry’s songs from the broken heart.

From precociously gifted yet demure teenager, to diligent young mother, to solo singer-songwriter, embracing the spotlight at last after such hurt, Lancaster evokes all facets of the King character. Her renditions of It’s Too Late and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman are the crowning glory for King and Lancaster alike.

You will feel the earth move, thanks not only to Lancaster, but also to Briggs’s potent direction, full of drama, emotion and humour, to go with his snappy, snazzy costumes and Phoebe Kilvington’s hair and make-up, propelled by the fabulous playing of Stephen Hackshaw’s band, always in view at the back.

Tickets for Tuesday to Saturday’s 7.30pm evening performances and Saturday’s 2.30pm matinee are on sale at atgtickets.com/york.

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Why Grace is in favour to play Carole King in York Stage’s Beautiful musical at Grand Opera House as Lancaster returns to York

Grace Lancaster at the piano in the role of Carole King in York Stage’s York premiere of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick

FEEL the earth move as Beautiful: The Carole King arrives in York for the first time tomorrow in York Stage’s production at the Grand Opera House.

“This Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical phenomenon is filled with the songs you remember – and a story you’ll never forget,” says director-producer Nik Briggs, introducing the Broadway and West End hit with a book by Douglas McGrath and those songs. Oh, those songs.

“She created the sound of a generation, so iconic,” says Nik.” “Those songs have then passed through the generations because they’re so relatable, especially on Tapestry, after her break-up with Gerry Goffin.”

Will You Love Me Tomorrow?. Take Good Care Of My Baby. It Might As Well Rain Until September. Up On The Roof. One Fine Day. So Far Away. You’ve Got A Friend. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman. It’s Too Late. I Feel The Earth Move. All by the writer or co-writer of 118 hits on the American Billboard Hot 100. The most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century in the United States.

Beautiful tells the story of an ordinary girl, born Carole Klein in Manhattan, New York, with an extraordinary talent that took her from being part of a songwriting team with fellow teenager and later husband Gerry Goffin, through her creative relationship with fellow writers and best friends Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, to solo success with Tapestry and beyond.

Taking the role of Carole King, opposite Frankie Bounds’ Gerry Goffin, will be York-born actress and singer, New York Brass Band saxophonist and Leeds Conservatoire teacher Grace Lancaster.

“With her voice, her stage presence and her musicality, Grace was the perfect choice to lead our cast of 30,” says Nik. “Grace is 28 now but she’s always had that Carole King girlish charm, so it’s great to watch her charting that same path in Carole’s story.

“We’ll have an 11-piece band on stage, plus Grace on piano, with Stephen Hackshaw returning as our musical director.”

Grace is “really looking forward to the show this week…if a little nervous about the magnitude of the role”. “I’ve grown up with the songs of Carole without even knowing that she was the mastermind behind the music,” she says.

“Everyone knows Natural Woman and The Loco-Motion, right, but I didn’t quite realise that she had written them until I saw Beautiful in the West End back in 2015.

“I was at drama school at the time, and Katie Brayben (who was then Carole King) had just won the Olivier award for her portrayal and I was acutely aware that she’d trained on the very same course as me at Rose Bruford!

“Watching that performance blew me away so much and I felt such a connection that I knew one day I would just have to play Carole King!” 

Assessing what makes Carole King’s songs and life story so apt for a musical that is much more than a jukebox musical, Grace says: “Carole was in a golden era for songwriting. She was a young teenager when the one and only Elvis Presley came on the scene and was inevitably drawn to the rock’n’roll style. That type of music connects to a lot of people!

“The way Carole writes melodies is so organic and she often describes the music as just coming through her without her having to think. When music comes from a place of truth then there is something very Beautiful about it (no pun intended).

“I felt such a connection that I knew one day I would just have to play Carole King,” says Grace Lancaster

“The story weaves through Carole’s life and gives us an insight into how these songs were written in a ‘music factory’, the events that inspired them and how they reflect Carole’s life at that time.

“The fact that you’re watching a story that is about real people gives the musical a more personal feel and hopefully the audience will connect with this more than a regular jukebox musical.”

Picking a favourite Carole King song is almost like picking a favourite child, reckons Grace. “From what I’ve read, she’s written over 400 songs! You’ve Got A Friend and Will You Love Me Tomorrow? have popped up in other shows I’ve performed in, so I feel a deep connection to those,” she says.

“But Natural Woman is another strong contender: the gospel chords and the superb imagery make the song an utter delight to perform. These songs are multi-generational, passed on, still relevant today, and that’s another reason why Carole is such a wonder.”

Preparing for Beautiful has been the biggest challenge of Grace’s performing career. “I don’t think there’s a single point in the show where I have time to go back to my dressing room and sit down,” she says.

“A lot of work has gone into memorising the script, but even more time has gone into memorising the piano parts. As a musician, I would describe myself as a saxophone/clarinet player first; piano doesn’t come as naturally to me. So practising the piano to the point where my hands know what they’re doing without my brain getting involved – my brain needs to focus on acting/singing – has been the challenge of the last three months.”

Grace spent time aplenty researching Carole King’s story. “I read her memoir and watched interviews and have been delighted to find so many similarities in our beliefs and musical habits. She truly is an incredible woman,” she says. 

Rehearsals have been an “amazing way” for Grace to reconnect with her York roots. “I first performed with York Stage back in 2007 in We Will Rock You, so I’m so delighted to see that the theatre scene is as strong here as it is!” she says. “The cast are all very talented and play such an important role in this show, so I’m very proud to have them supporting me.”

Out of rehearsals, Grace fills her time with an eclectic mix of work. “I play the saxophone and assist with managing the New York Brass Band, which has taken me as far away as China and Kuwait and this summer to Glastonbury festival for the fifth time!” she says.

“Last year I started teaching on the Actor Musicianship course at Leeds Conservatoire and I’m thrilled to be able to see the talent and drive that these students have – but also to be a part of the theatre industry in the north who are nurturing talent outside of London.”

Looking ahead, over the next few months Grace will be developing her own business as a solo singer/saxophone player at weddings and events. “I’m also looking after my four-month-old Labrador puppy Winnie. So I’ve definitely got my hands full!” she says. “Winnie has been subjected to my constant piano practice since moving in with us and now the music of Carole King sends her to sleep.”

York Stage in York premiere of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, September 15 to 23, 7.30pm except Sunday and Monday; 2.30pm Saturday matinees; 4pm, Sunday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

One last question

DO you have Tapestry in your record collection, if such a thing as a record collection still exists in the house of Lancaster?!

“Tapestry is regularly played on my Spotify account,” says Grace.

Copyright of The Press, York  

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REVIEW: York Stage in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Teen Edition, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Saturday ****

New face in town: Ryan Addyman in his York Stage debut as Jamie New in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Teen Edition. All pictures: Matthew Kitchen

MADE in Yorkshire, “the hit musical for today” began life at Sheffield Crucible Theatre in 2017. Now comes its York premiere in the Teen Version with a cast of 13 to 19-year-olds led by Ryan Addyman, 17, from Knaresborough, in his York Stage debut.

Inspired by the Firecracker documentary Jamie: Drag Queen At 16, composer Dan Gillespie Sells (from Horsham’s finest pop practitioners The Feeling) and writer/lyricist Tom MacRae worked their magic from an original idea by director and co-writer Jonathan Butterell.

What emerged was the completion of a populist trilogy of Sheffield comedy dramas: the defiant spirit and sheer balls of The Full Monty, the classroom politics and fledgling frustrations of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, and now Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, the unapologetic story of the boy who sometimes to be wants to be a girl, wear a dress to the school prom and be a drag queen.

Since Jamie’s blossoming, two on-topic television shows have had a stellar impact: the couture and coiffeur catwalk and cat-talk contests of RuPaul’s Drag Race on the Beeb and the sass, too-cool-for-school dress sense and multi-cultural diversity of Sex Education, the Netflix binge-watch through lockdowns.

Sex Education shares Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’s bold humour, jagged wit and spot-on social awareness as a barometer of our changing times and attitudes towards gender, bigotry, bullying, homophobia, absentee fathers and the right to self-expression.

Jaia Howland’s teacher Miss Hedge

Meet the Year 11 pupils of Mayfield School, a typical comprehensive classroom of 16-year-olds full of hopes and aspirations, filtered through the realities of life in a northern town.

Among them is Addyman’s Jamie New, from a Sheffield council estate, but feeling out of place, so restless at sweet 16 to be “something and someone fabulous”. After Billy Liar’s Billy Fisher and Kes’s Billy Casper, here is another young Yorkshire dreamer in need of escape from the grey grime, this time in a classic teen rebel story, told from the teen perspective, but rooted in kitchen-sink northern drama rather than the white-toothed gleam of an American high-school musical.

It does nevertheless share one characteristic with the all-American Hairspray, for example, by giving the adult viewpoint in spades. Step forward Jamie’s world-weary, self-sacrificial, ever supportive mum Margaret (Maggie Wakeling, in terrific voice in her heartfelt ballads, If I Met Myself Again and especially He’s My Boy, the show’s most powerful vocal performance).

Always on the lookout for a bargain and ready with a comforting word or a putdown for authority is Margaret’s no-nonsense, cheery best friend Ray (an amusing Eve Clark), and further support comes from dress-shop boss Hugo/veteran drag act Loco Chanelle (resolute Sam Roberts).

Giving Jamie grief are his stay-away, mullet-haired Dad (Tyler Costello) and narrow-minded teacher Miss Hedge (Jaia Rowland).

Maggie Wakeling’s Margaret, Jamie’s mum

The Teen Edition necessitates giving these adult roles to young actors but all respond with performances that convey the age gap, not least in their singing performances.

As for the teens playing teens, not only Addyman’s Jamie scores high marks among the classroom performers, so too do Jack Hambleton, outstanding yet again on a York stage as the everybody-hating, self-loathing bully Dean Paxton, the big fish soon to lose his small pond, and Erin Childs’ quietly impressive, self-assured doctor-in-waiting Pritti Pasha, whose solo number It Means Beautiful is an Act II highlight.

Above all else, everyone will be talking about Addyman’s Jamie. A new face to York audiences, he is Jamie to the manner born: high of voice and heels, a shaker and a heartbreaker, a lippy kid in lip gloss, confident on the swan surface but naïve and vulnerable, wanting to strut before he can walk. Ugly In This Ugly World is his best number, almost matched by his kitchen duet with Wakeling’s Margaret, My Man, Your Boy.

Serious points are made in MacRae’s book, where the multiple confrontations carry both poignancy and punch, and you will love the Yorkshireness of it all: the blunt, knowing humour and the rough-rouge glamour of drag queens Sandra Bollock (George Hopwood), Tray Sophistacay (George Connell) and Laika Virgin (Harvey Jardine), Sheffield’s answer to the travelling trio in The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert.

Gillespie Sells’ tunes and MacRae’s lyrics are a delight too, led off by the immediately infectious And You Don’t Even Know It, through the irresistible title number to the show-closing defining statement of Out Of The Darkness (A Place Where We Belong).

Sam Roberts’s dress-shop owner Hugo recalling Loco Chanelle’s days as a drag diva

Musical director Jessica Viner works with a recorded score, but never sits back, always in view of the hugely energetic cast from the mezzanine level. Emily Taylor’s choreography is as vigorous and fun as ever, relished by leads, supports and ensemble alike. 

Jo Street’s wardrobe and Phoebe Kilvington’s make-up and hair add to the spectacle, while the design combines glamour with grit: the John Cooper Studio is bedecked in shiny tinfoil and gold leaf with room for Margaret’s kitchen, the classroom and Hugo’s shop to glide on and off.

Nik Briggs’s direction goes to the top of the class, capturing the spirit of a show that “celebrates being yourself and finding a place where you belong”. Individuality and teamwork in tandem, the place where everyone here belongs is on stage, once more emphasising why the arts should never be undervalued in young lives, why there should always be a place for the Jamies of this world to express themselves.

How apt that this thrilling, uplifting production’s weekend climax should coincide with York Pride.

York Stage in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Teen Edition, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm, sold out; Saturday, 2.30pm (last few tickets) and 7.30pm, sold out. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.