Bettrys Jones’s indefatigable Ellen Wilkinson MP in Red Ellen
Northern Stage, Nottingham Playhouse and Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh present Red Ellen, York Theatre Royal, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm and 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
UNTIL 2017, all seven of Middlesbrough’s statues had been of men. A poll put Ellen Wilkinson at the top of the list to be the town’s first female on a plinth.
Ellen Wilkinson, you ask? British Communist Party founder member turned Labour MP for Middlesbrough East and later Jarrow. Left-leaning journalist. Leader of the Jarrow Crusade to London when 80 per cent of the workforce were unemployed. Mobiliser of the Spanish Medical Aid Committee, taking up the cause against General Franco’s Fascists in the Spanish Civil War.
Member of Churchill’s wartime coalition government, in charge of air raid shelters. As Labour’s first female Minister for Education, she introduced free school milk and raised the leaving age from 14 to 15. A heavy-smoking asthmatic, she died, struggling for breath, her pills ineffectual, in 1947.
That’s the politics; a working-class female MP campaigning for social justice in a toxic, male-dominated world. What else? She had affairs with married men, whether a Soviet Communist spy or Labour government minister Herbert Morrison. She encountered Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway. She was always in a hurry, a flame-haired, 4ft 9 pocket dynamo known as the Elfin Fury and Mighty Atom.
“There are so many Ellens to choose from”, says playwright Caroline Bird, who has decided to highlight pretty much all of them, save for Ellen’s early Communist days, in her biographical play Red Ellen, wherein she picks up the story in 1933.
Just as Ellen, for all her failing health, tries to cram too much into each day, Bird seeks to squeeze too much into her three-hour play, where the diminutive Bettrys Jones brings extraordinary energy to an omnipresent role in which the constant speechifying leaves her voice shorn of light and shade, always pitched on the upwards, climbing a hill against the odds.
Bird’s first draft had run to five hours and it would take another six years of “Ellen running around her head like an unfinished ghost with unfinished business” for Northern Stage’s 2022 touring version to emerge from what became an obsession.
This week’s York run is the closing chapter of the premiere tour, presented in tandem with co-producers Nottingham Playhouse the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, and it is too late for director Wils Wilson to apply the scissors, but if Red Ellen is to have a further life, the story-telling will require more breathing space and selectivity, rather than the overwhelming feeling of needing to reach for an asthma inhaler.
The structure is a series of set pieces, rooted in gender politics and the agenda of politics, some scenes better than others: neither the Einstein scene, where Jones’s Ellen apologises to Mercedes Assad’s awkwardly bewigged Albert for the behaviour of The Anti-Fascist League, nor an exchange at the Europa Hotel with an over-the-top, drunken Hemingway, hits the right note.
Better by far are Ellen’s discussions with Jim Kitson’s north easterner David, burdened by ill health but desperate to undertake the Jarrow March; the political debate with Kitson’s Churchill (who is seen only from behind, with the audience eyes on Ellen); and the end-of-the-affair letdown with Kevin Lennon’s Morrison.
Director Wilson has fun with Ellen’s lack of inches, casting the towering Laura Evelyn as the British Communist activist Isabel for comic effect. Likewise, Wilson and designer Camilla Clarke play with scale: the gramophone player is a giant shell; houses in the street are represented by doll’s houses, on fire at one point for Ellen to put out while on air raid duty. There is visual wit throughout; on occasion, there could be more verbal comedy.
Ellen’s diaries were destroyed after her death, leading to Bird’s need to make “educated guesses” in her play, “imagining the contents in order to get personal”. When it comes to truths beyond political and historical fact, plenty can only be speculative, but the relationship that works best on stage is the one rooted in home truths: the volatile one with her loyal yet frank sister Annie (Helen Katamba), who absorbs all her wounding words but makes the most telling retort.
Passion abounds, in the pioneering Ellen herself, in Bird’s writing, in Jones’s performance, but if the enflamed, exasperated Ellen Wilkinson were to have encountered Red Ellen, she would be cracking the whip, demanding better results for all that exertion.
Behind you! Behind you: Will The Gruffalo pounce on Mouse in Tall Stories’ The Gruffalo?
POLITICS, the weather, monsters, Sixties and Eighties’ favourites, comedy songs and a north eastern tornado all are talking points for Charles Hutchinson for the week ahead.
Children’s show of the week: Tall Stories in The Gruffalo, Grand Opera House, York, today, 1pm and 3pm; tomorrow, 11am and 2pm
JOIN Mouse on a daring adventure through the deep, dark wood in Tall Stories’ magical, musical, monstrous adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s picture book, suitable for children aged three upwards.
Searching for hazelnuts, Mouse meets cunning Fox, eccentric old Owl and high-spirited Snake. Will the story of the terrifying Gruffalo save Mouse from becoming dinner for these hungry woodland creatures? After all, there is no such thing as a Gruffalo – or is there? Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
True or false: Is Tony Hadley playing York Barbican on Sunday? True!
Eighties’ nostalgia of the week: Tony Hadley, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm
I KNOW this much is true: smooth London crooner Tony Hadley is celebrating 40 years in the music business with a 2022 tour that focuses on both his Spandau Ballet and solo years.
Once at the forefront of the New Romantic pop movement, Islington-born Hadley, 61, is the velvet voice of hits such as True, Gold, Chant No. 1, Instinction and Paint Me Down and solo numbers Lost In Your Love and Tonight Belongs To Us. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Up and at’em, Fladam: York musical comedy duo Florence Poskitt and Adam Sowter
Comedy songs of the week: Fladam & Friends, Let’s Do It Again!, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, today at 2.30pm and 7.30pm
YORK musical comedy duo Fladam, alias Florence Poskitt and piano-playing partner Adam Sowter, vowed to return after last year’s Hootenanny, and return they will this weekend. But can they really “do it again?”, they ask. Is a sequel ever as good?
Mixing comic classics from Victoria Wood with fabulous Fladam originals, plus a sneak peak of this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe debut, this new show will “either be the Empire Strikes Back of musical comedy sequels or another case of Grease 2”. Tickets to find out which one: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Always take a brolly with you just in case: Mikron Theatre Company’s James Mclean, left, Hannah Bainbridge, Alice McKenna and Thomas Cotran on tour in Lindsay Rodden’s all-weathers play, Red Sky At Night. Picture: Liz Baker
Whatever the weather, nothing stops Mikron Theatre Company in Red Sky At Night, Scarcroft Allotments, York, Sunday, 2pm
HAYLEY’S sunny, beloved dad was the nation’s favourite weatherman. Now, she is following in his footsteps, joining the ranks of the forecasting fraternity, or at least local shoestring teatime telly.
When the pressure drops and dark clouds gather, Hayley melts faster than a lonely snowflake. She may be the future’s forecast, but will anyone listen in Lindsay Rodden’s premiere, toured by Marsden company Mikron’s 50th anniversary troupe of James Mclean, Hannah Bainbridge, Alice McKenna and Thomas Cotran. No tickets are required; a Pay What You Feel collection will be taken after the show.
Stop Stop Start: The Hollies’ rearranged 60th anniversary tour will arrive at York Barbican on Monday
Sixties’ nostalgia of the week: The Hollies, 60th Anniversary Tour, York Barbican, Monday, 7.30pm
MOVED from September 2021, with tickets still valid, this 60th anniversary celebration of the Manchester band features a line-up of two original members, drummer Bobby Elliott and lead guitarist Tony Hicks, joined by lead singer Peter Howarth, bassist Ray Stiles, keyboardist Ian Parker and rhythm guitarist Steve Lauri.
Expect He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, I Can’t Let Go, Just One Look, Bus Stop, I’m Alive, Carrie Anne, On A Carousel, Jennifer Eccles, Sorry Suzanne, The Air That I Breathe and more besides. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Giving an earful: Bettrys Jones’s Ellen Wilkinson MP, left, has a word with Laura Evelyn’s British Communist activist Isabel Brown in Red Ellen
A bit of politics of the week: Northern Stage in Red Ellen, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm; 2pm, Thursday; 2.30pm, Saturday
CAROLINE Bird’s new play turns the overdue spotlight on “Mighty Atom” Ellen Wilkinson, the crusading Labour MP cast forever on the right side of history, but the wrong side of life.
Caught between revolutionary and parliamentary politics, Ellen fights with an unstoppable, reckless energy for a better world, whether battling to save Jewish refugees in Nazi Germany; leading 200 workers on the Jarrow Crusade; serving in Churchill’s war cabinet or becoming the first female Minister for Education. Yet somehow she still finds herself on the outside looking in. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Steven Jobson, as Jekyll/Hyde, and Nicola Holliday, as Lucy Harris, in York Musical Theatre Company’s photocall for Jekyll & Hyde The Musical at York Castle Museum
Musical of the week: York Musical Theatre Company in Jekyll & Hyde The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm; 2.30pm, Saturday matinee
BE immersed in the myth and mystery of London’s fog-bound streets where love, betrayal and murder lurk at every chilling twist and turn in Matthew Clare’s production of Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse’s musical adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s epic struggle between good and evil.
Steven Jobson plays the dual role of Dr Henry Jekyll and Mr Edward Hyde in the evocative tale of two men – one, a doctor, passionate and romantic; the other, a terrifying madman – and two women – one, beautiful and trusting; the other, beautiful and trusting only herself– both women in love with the same man and both unaware of his dark secret. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Coastal call: Sam Fender kicks off the 2022 season at Scarborough Open Air Theatre
Award winner of the week: Sam Fender, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, May 27, gates open at 6pm
WINNER earlier this week of the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for his Seventeen Going Under single, North Shields singer-songwriter Sam Fender opens the 2022 Scarborough Open Air Theatre summer season next Friday.
Already Fender, 28, has the 2022 Brit Award for Best British Alternative/Rock Act in his bag as he heads down the coast to perform his frank, intensely personal, high-octane songs from 2019’s Hypersonic Missiles and 2021’s Seventeen Going Under. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.
Rallying call: Bettrys Jones as Ellen Wilkinson MP, the groundbreaking first female Minister for Education, in Red Ellen
WHO was the Elfin Fury, the Mighty Atom, the Fiery Particle?
The answer is Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson (1891-1947), a working-class northern woman in a man’s world, whose presence inside the walls of Westminster prompted the reaction: “If that is not espionage, I do not know what is.”
Seven years since the initial commission from Lorne Campbell – Northern Stage’s artistic director at the time – playwright and poet Caroline Bird’s play Red Ellen has taken flight at last, “full of life, passion and humour” in Wils Wilson’s touring production.
Next stop, York Theatre Royal, from May 24 to 28, in the wake of Northern Stage turning the spotlight on another should-be-better-known inspiring political story in The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff at the Theatre Royal last October.
Labour of love: “I knew little about Ellen, but then I got obsessed,” says playwright Caroline Bird
“Ellen was a complex person by anyone’s standards and she never stopped, but despite her herculean efforts, she is largely forgotten by history,” says Leeds-born Caroline. “The irony, of course, about ‘forgotten women of history’ is invariably the facts of their lives turn out to be acutely memorable: they’re not forgotten because they’re forgettable.
“I’ve been living with Ellen Wilkinson in my head for seven years now and I can honestly say, after writing this play, Ellen has done the impossible: she has given me back a glimmer of faith in politics.
“We need politicians like Ellen, and we also need to look after them and support them. She failed at so many things, and yet she was a total, stonking, miraculous, life-affirming, bl**dy wonderful triumph. A bright and particular star. I hope that some of Ellen’s light can still reach us all the way down here, and that this play might reignite a spark or two.”
In a nutshell, Red Ellen depicts a woman “forever on the right side of history, forever on the wrong side of life, caught between revolutionary and parliamentary politics, as she fights against the odds with an unstoppable, reckless energy for a better world”.
On the front foot: Ellen Wilkinson (Bettrys Jones, centre) leading the Jarrow March
These are the facts: Ellen Wilkinson, MP for Middlesbrough East and later Jarrow, campaigned tirelessly for social change, raising the school-leaving age, bringing in free school meals and leading the Jarrow March from the North East to London through York, Nottingham and the Midlands to deliver a petition to reduce unemployment and poverty.
Not only was she the only female minister in Attlee’s government, she also served as a vital member of Churchill’s war cabinet, taking sole charge of air raid shelters as “the Shelter Queen” during the Second World War.
Further afield, Ellen campaigned for Britain to aid the fight against Franco’s Fascists in Spain, battled to save Jewish refugees in Nazi Germany and published some of the first anti-fascist literature in Britain.
She encountered Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway, had affairs with Communist spies and government ministers alike but still found herself on the outside looking in.
The short and the long of it: “Mighty Atom” Ellen Wilkinson MP (Bettrys Jones) and British Communist activist Isabel Brown (Laura Evelyn) in Red Ellen
Rather like her under-appreciated place in British political history, Caroline? “When I was commissioned, I knew little about Ellen, but then I got obsessed,” she says. “I found most people hadn’t heard of her, but it’s like a magician’s top hat: the more you reach in, the more material you find.”
Ellen’s personal papers were burnt after her death, leaving gaps in the story. “I wasn’t interested in writing a eulogy; I wanted to focus on both the personal and political side of her and how her personal side affected her political life,” says Caroline.
“In the absence of her papers, the play is fictionalised, in that I don’t have written proof, but everything has been written with the clout of research behind it for me to make a dramatic representation of her personality and what makes her a beacon of humanity.”
Ellen was always in such a rush, always running, that she often fell over. “She was only 4ft 9 tall, she just couldn’t move fast enough to do everything she wanted to do – and she had asthma too – but nothing would stop her,” says Caroline. “Like when she was driving in a blackout in the war, colliding with lorry and fracturing her skull but went back to work.”
Ellen Wilkinson (Bettrys Jones) speaks out as a lone working-class northern woman in a man’s world in Caroline Bird’s Red Ellen
Caroline felt “sad and reflective” when being struck by Red Ellen’s pertinence as she wrote her story. “There’s a feeling that Ellen spent her whole life walking, marching down a moving walkway that was going in the opposite direction,” she says.
“She had the wind in her face. Sometimes she was having to fight just to stay still. And sometimes it feels like that now. We have to fight to keep what we’ve got before we can even move further along – and there was so much further to go on this march, so much further to go.
“And the left is divided. That’s the other thing that Ellen really fought for. She wanted unity.”
Northern Stage, Nottingham Playhouse and Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh present Red Ellen, York Theatre Royal, May 24 to 28, 7.30pm nightly; 2pm, Thursday; 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The tour poster for Red Ellen, marching into York from Tuesday
The Young’uns in The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. Picture: Pamela Raith
The Young’uns in The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff, York Theatre Royal, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm, 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
AT 17, the under-age Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes were drawn to the sound of singing in the back room of The Sun Inn in Stockton-on-Tees. They burst into song, harmony singers so natural that The Young’uns were born there and then.
Music had bypassed them at school, but they wondered why sea shanties, folk songs of real stories and home truths, had never been taught there.
In the 1930s, Johnny Longstaff left school at 14, suffered burns in an industrial injury in his first job at a smelting factory, and left Stockton at 15 in search of work. Told he was too young to join the Hunger March to London, he nevertheless followed its path, half a mile back, until he was discovered and allowed to take part, and then stayed in London.
By 17, he had already taken on Oswald Mosley’s Fascists – and the police – in the Battle of Cable Street and was on his way to the Pyrenees, against the rules, to train as part of the British Battalion of the International Brigade to join the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.
What the two paths share is a refusal to take No for an answer, to react to rejection, to find a way to make connections. The Young’uns have gone on to win a BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards three times; Johnny Longstaff’s story of working-class-hero political activism is the stuff of six hours of Imperial War Museum recordings, a Young’uns album and now a piece of gig theatre that burns with the same north-eastern fire that lit up Sting’s Tyneside shipbuilding musical The Last Ship.
There are four voices to this performance, first directed by Lorne Campbell in his days as artistic director at Northern Stage, Newcastle, as he brought a theatrical symmetry to Cooney’s songs while retaining the trio’s immediacy as always moving, sometimes humorous, storytellers in song.
The impassioned harmony singing, as beautiful as it is stirring and lyrical, is interwoven with their own storytelling and that fourth voice: extracts from those 1986 recordings in Longstaff’s Middlesbrough home that inspired Cooney’s songs.
Jack Rutter: Deputising for Michael Hughes at The Young’uns’ York Theatre Royal performances
What a potent combination it becomes: the songs make powerful statements on their own right, as with the political songwriting of Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello or Christie Moore, all the more so for the instinctive harmonies (imagine The Proclaimers with an extra voice), and then, even more resonant are the recollections of Johnny Longstaff, who has the last word, in song as his 1986 recording of The Valley Of Jarama takes over from The Young’uns live rendition.
In the absence of Michael Hughes, indisposed as he is now a full-time teacher on half-term leave, Huddersfield traditional singer Jack Rutter steps in to suffuse the harmonies, whether a cappella or augmented by keyboards, guitar or Eagle’s urgent accordion.
Campbell told The Young’uns, “don’t worry, you won’t have to act”, but nevertheless there is superb movement direction to this performance; much humour, especially from Eagle, and an awareness of how to tell the story to maximum effect, particularly from Cooney.
In an earlier life, The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff was performed with a backdrop of Johnny Longstaff, but Campbell called on Teesside animator Scott Turnbull to add his imagery to the already potent brew, and as Campbell promised, it takes the show to a heightened level by accompanying the songs and stories with a combination of beauty, industrial grit and even cartoon humour.
Towards the finale, Johnny Longstaff’s recordings have him talking with such conviction and humanity about the importance of the Spanish Republicans taking on General Franco, almost 50 years after he was there, going days without food, being served a family cat as his supper, living off oranges and being the endangered messenger at the front.
He met Churchill on his return at Westminster, who wondered if he would bring such dedication and zeal to fighting Nazism. At first, however, he was not allowed to serve in the Second World War, having gone against the Government’s neutral position by going to Spain. Once more, he would not take No for an answer.
Oh, for the honesty, the desire to make a difference, the guts and the quest for betterment for all to surge through today’s politicians. Post-war, Johnny settled for the quieter life as a civil servant, Labour voting to the last, but still full of that drive in his recordings. Thanks to his son, Duncan Longstaff, passing on a photograph and a list of Johnny’s achievements to The Young’Uns, his story is being championed loud and proud in song.
Three performances to go in York: make sure to be there; no excuses. Amid all the ghost talk of Halloween this week, and this show’s inclusion in the Theatre Royal’s Haunted Season, Johnny Longstaff is anything but a ghostly presence; his voice so full of life and belief as it reverberates down the years.
The Young’uns Michael Hughes, David Eagle and Sean Cooney performing The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. Picture: Pamela Raith
MAY 2015. Teesside folk trio The Young’uns have just concluded a gig in Somerset when up comes Duncan Longstaff with two pieces of paper.
On one is a black-and-white picture of a man. “This is my dad,” he says. On the other is a list of achievements that reads like a litany of defining moments of early 20th century working-class struggle. “This is what he did,” he explains.
Duncan hoped the Stockton-on-Tees vocal, accordion, guitar and keyboard group might write a song about his father. One song? They duly wrote 17, whereupon a show about Johnny Longstaff was born.
From tonight to Saturday, The Young’uns – Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes – perform a theatrical version of The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff at York Theatre Royal, the show now featuring songs from the original album alongside new material and animation.
Young’un Sean Cooney recalls the May 2015 night that spawned their musical celebration of northern working-class activism. “It was really special. Duncan Longstaff, who was in his late-60s/early 70s, had heard us on the radio and knew we were from the north-east, from Stockton-on-Tees, Johnny’s hometown.
“He had this lovely photograph of his dad, this scruffy-looking lad, and as he was aware we wrote songs about real people, with a north-east flavour, he thought we might get one song out of it.
“But it turned out there were six hours of recordings of Johnny at the Imperial War Museum, and once we’d made time to listen to them properly, we realised we had something really special that could never be just one song.”
The resulting show, the true story of The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff, is billed as a “timely, touching and often hilarious musical adventure, following the footsteps of a working-class hero who chose not to look the other way when the world needed his help”.
The Young’uns singing an a cappella number in The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. Picture: Pamela Raith
Johnny’s journey took him at 15 from poverty and unemployment in Stockton, through the Hunger Marches of the 1930s, the mass trespass movement and the Battle of Cable Street, to fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
That journey is recorded not only on tape but also in writing. “Duncan kept bombarding us with stuff: Johnny had written his memoirs, but they’d never been published, and suddenly there were these 600 pages, left at my front door,” recalls Sean.
“Then he lent us Johnny’s books, with corrections that he’d written down the side when he didn’t agree with the accounts of what had gone on.
“With all these resources, we thought we’d love to use Johnny’s voice from the recordings and tell his story through song.”
The Young’uns drew inspiration from the ground-breaking BBC Radio Ballads documentaries produced by folk musician Ewan MacColl and Charles Parker in the late 1950s for the BBC Home Service. “They pretty much put working-class voices on the radio, with Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl writing songs to go with those voices,” says Sean.
“For our show, the songs and story are very much interwoven with Johnny’s voice. You’ll hear Johnny talking and then we’ll break into song, and there’s a special sequence at the finale, with our voices, Johnny’s voice, a little bit of narration…and then Johnny singing.
“At the end of those six hours of recordings at the Imperial War Museum, you hear him breaking into song. He’s singing The Valley Of Jarama [also known as El Valle del Jarama], and for those people who know about the Spanish Civil War, that was the song that was always being sung.”
The Young’uns first envisaged The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff as a radio series, “but then came the touring opportunity to put together something new for the road, with a promoter arranging dates for us for March 2018,” recalls Sean.
“We thought, ‘yes, let’s take it on the road’, but as we sat in the pub at Sheffield railway station [Sean lives in Sheffield] in May 2017, I was thinking, ‘we’ve only done three months’ work on it so far, we’ve only got ten months to go’, and we still didn’t know if we’d just do the songs, with us introducing them, or whether we’d use Johnny’s voice.
The Young’uns incorporate Scott Turnbull’s animation in their theatrical performances of The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. Picture: Pamela Raith
“That’s when we came up with the idea of doing the show as ‘gig theatre’ with a backdrop image of Johnny behind us. It felt exciting and trepidatious at the same time, but the reaction we got was so great that what was originally going to be a side project, diverging from our main work, became much more than that.”
The album recording ensued and then came a show in Toronto where “we became really pally with the team there, and they said, ‘Have you heard of Lorne Campbell at Northern Stage’, as they’d worked with Lorne on Sting’s shipbuilding musical, The Last Ship, so they had a connection with him,” says Sean.
The Young’uns met up with artistic director Campbell in September 2019. “We knew we had a show that was so personal and special to us, and we wondered, ‘what would they want to do with Johnny, with us?’, but Lorne was great, saying he just wanted to heighten it, to bring it to bigger audiences,” says Sean.
“The key, he said, was to ‘make you as comfortable as you can be, and no, you won’t have to act’. Because the backbone of the show is Johnny’s voice and the songs, we’d never thought about the visuals, but Loren brought in an animator, Scott Turnbull, from Teesside, and now these beautiful images are built into the songs and there’s a lot of movement in the show too.”
From tonight, Johnny’s voice and Sean’s songs will unite and resonate anew. “We never strive to make links with today, but it’s clearly obvious,” says Sean. “He was fighting for the future in the 1930s, and the biggest parallel now is the fight to deal with climate change.”
Like The Young’uns, Johnny was a young’un when he started out on his adventures. “He was 15 when he walked from Stockton to London; 17 when he crossed the Pyrenees, but though they’re now seen as huge politically charged events, when Johnny lived through them, he didn’t grab that significance,” says Sean.
“He went on the Hunger March to look for work, and when he was told he was too young at 15, he followed them in secret until he was discovered, and they then said he could join.
“He went on the Cable Street march because he’d met a Jewish refugee. He didn’t understand Fascism’s doctrines; he just wanted to make human connections.”
At 17, The Young’uns made their under-age way into singing in the back of The Sun Inn pub in Stockton for the first time. “We stood up and sang unaccompanied, and it just felt natural,” Sean says. “As we were 40 years younger than anyone else there, we got called ‘The Young’uns’, and unfortunately the name stuck, but we realised we had a voice and it connected with people.
The Young’uns with an image of Johnny Longstaff behind them. Picture: Pamela Raith
“It felt welcoming, it felt ordinary, because as a kid I couldn’t access music at school, where it felt like it was for someone else, for other people, as I couldn’t play an instrument.
“But once we discovered that world of folk music, where everyone is encouraged – big voice, little voice, in tune, out of tune – this group of people who met in the back room of a pub, sharing songs and stories – wondered why we had never been taught this at school.
“Learning sea shanties that everyone could sing, we found the audience singing along with us, and from that moment, we wanted to keep doing it.”
Twenty-one years down the line, with three BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards to their name, The Young’uns are not so young’uns at 36, but their return to the stage after the pandemic lockdowns has had the same exhilarating impact on them. “For so many people in our world, it’s been incredibly emotional to get back out there,” says Sean.
Even more so, when spreading The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. “In many ways there’s potential for people, when they see a show poster or hear a story of Johnny, to pigeonhole it in our divided land, but we want to stress the humanity in that story and in what other people did in the 1930s.
“Johnny became a member of the Labour Party, but in the Spanish Civil War, people came from different backgrounds to fight Fascism, from public schools too.
“When people hear Johnny’s voice, there’s great respect for that voice and what he’s saying. It’s a different kind of story, that’s not well known, but…”
…thanks to Duncan Longstaff’s two pieces of paper, The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff is now being sung loud and proud.
The Young’uns in The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff, York Theatre Royal, tonight to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.Further Yorkshire concerts by The Young’uns: Square Chapel Arts Centre, Halifax, December 11, 7.30pm; The Greystones, Sheffield, December 12, 3pm and 8pm; The Coliseum Centre, Whitby, December 17, 7.30pm. Box office: Halifax, squarechapel.co.uk; Sheffield, ents24.com/sheffield-events; Whitby, eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-younguns.
