Bookworm Matilda Wormwood (Aimee Dean-Hamilton) takes on the vile headmistress Miss Trunchbull (Jack Hambleton) with her special powers in Pick Me Up Theatre’s production of Matilda: The Musical Jr. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
HOW would Sam Steel, one of a brace of Miss Trunchbulls on Pick Me Up Theatre school play duty, sum up Roald Dahl’s joyous girl-power romp Matilda: The Musical Jr.
“It’s insane!” he decides. “There’s certainly anarchy. Everything that you think will happen won’t happen!”
Pick Me Up’s bright young things – some as young as six – are revelling in Robert Readman’s ebullient production all this week at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, led by Sam Steel and Jack Hambleton’s outrageous headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, and Aimee Dean-Hamilton and Juliette Sellamuttu’s Matilda, the precocious, courageous pupil with special powers and limitless imagination, as they alternate performances.
“It’s all about beating the child bully with the help of loveable teacher Miss Honey as they take on the hateful Miss Trunchbull, the Olympic hammer-throwing champion of 1969,” says Robert. “Not that any Olympic Games were held in 1969, but the line in the song rhymed!
“Miss Trunchbull is apparently based on Alastair Sim’s headmistress in the St Trinian’s films, when he was so good playing it as a character – and also playing the twin brother – that you don’t think of the headmistress as male or female, just as a character.”
Jack adds: “It’s a woman but she’s so butch! Play Miss Trunchbull as a woman and it doesn’t work, but play it as a man who happens to have boobs and big shoulders and a hairpiece, it works!
“I try to bring out the most grotesque elements of myself and there’s a bit in there too of the teachers that I don’t like! It’s about getting the physicality right and the tone of the voice.”
When Sam is playing Miss Trunchbull, Jack takes the role of Matilda’s dreadful dad, slimy car salesman Mr Wormwood, and vice versa. “We’ve watched each in rehearsal but I don’t think we’ve ever discussed the roles with each other,” says Sam. “We just instinctively took a bit of each other’s performance.”
Robert chips in: “But they’re physically different, their voices are different, their mannerisms are different. Sam is blond, Jack darker, so they have their different hairpieces too.”
Clash of wills: Sam Steel’s headmistress Miss Trunchbull and Juliette Sellamuttu’s highly imaginative pupil, Matilda, in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Matilda: The Musical Jr. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Likewise, Aimee, ten, and Juliette, nine, are “very different actresses”, says Robert, who welcomed the chance to have contrasting Matildas. “They didn’t audition for Matilda, but when did auditions for singing roles, they came out of the pack,” says Robert.
“I was kind of expecting to get a small role, so it was a bit of shock,” says Aimee. “But not like an electric shock!” says Juliette, who felt “very surprised” to be picked for the title role.
If Aimee could choose a special power, it would be “maybe healing people”. Juliette first liked the thought of being able to use the swish of a hand “if someone is being naughty”, then changed tack. “I’d like to make inanimate objects animate, like asking a stuffed animal to barge its way out of a window,” she says.
Juliette, whose father is Sri Lankan and mother, Polish, has been living in York for a year. “Before I came here, in Sri Lanka, I did a line as a witch in a small assembly piece for Halloween, when I was at Gateway College in Colombo,” she says.
Aimee, meanwhile, has performed with one of York’s leading amateur societies. “I’ve done shows in theatres with Steve Tearle for NE Musicals York,” she says.
On Readman’s stage design, bedecked in a multitude of letters to reflect bookworm Matilda’s love of words and spelling, Sam and Jack are throwing themselves with gusto into the appalling behaviour of Miss Trunchbull.
“It’s more interesting that she’s not just a villain, she’s an absolute monster,” says Jack. “It’s probably the most evil person I’ve played, which is a nice contrast after playing Adrian Mole – and I get to throw a girl [Amanda Thripp] by her pigtails!”
Please note, Amanda is played by a doll at this juncture, one of several little tricks up Robert Readman’s sleeve that add to the fun and games of a delightfully unruly show with a gleefully rebellious book by Dennis Kelly and smart, fun, bouncy songs by Tim Minchin, replete with such titles as Naughty, Chokey Chant and Revolting Children.
Pick Me Up Theatre in Matilda: The Musical Jr, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, until Sunday. Performances: 7.30pm, tonight, tomorrow and Saturday; 2.30pm, Saturday and Sunday. All SOLD OUT. A special performance of songs from a new musical, Prodigy, featuring the cast of Matilda, opens each show. Box office for returns only: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Pick Me Up Theatre’s poster for Matilda: The Musical Jr. All remaining shows have sold out
Paul French’s Prospero and Effie Warboys’ Miranda in rehearsal for York Shakespeare Project’s touring production of The Tempest. Picture: John Saunders
STORMY Shakespeare, bountiful balloons, rebellious schoolchildren, heaps of horror movies and Sherlock’s farewell tour are right up Charles Hutchinson’s street.
Theatre event of the week: York Shakespeare Project in The Tempest, on tour from September 23 to October 1
YORK Shakespeare Project’s 20-year journey to stage every Shakespeare play concludes with a Yorkshire tour of The Tempest, the Bard’s powerful last play, directed by Parrabbola artistic director Philip Parr with Paul French as Prospero.
When an unusual collection of people is thrown together on an island by a storm, old injuries must be resolved, a new generation makes new plans and everyone is driven to find something of themselves in a disrupted world.
Parr uses communal storytelling in a new interpretation to highlight themes of colonisation, reconciliation and change. Full tour and ticket details can be found at beta.yorkshakespeareproject.org/the-tempest/.
What’s on Watson’s mind? Mark Watson reckons This Can’t Be It in comedy tour dates in York, Helmsley and Selby. Picture: Matt Crockett
Comedy gig of the week: Mark Watson, This Can’t Be It, Burning Duck Comedy Club, The Crescent, York, tonight (17/9/2022), 7.30pm
EVERYONE has been pondering the fragility of life in Covid’s shadow. Don’t worry, Bristol comic Mark has it covered. At 42, he is halfway through his days on Earth, according to his £1.49 life expectancy calculator app.
That life is in the best shape in living memory, but one huge problem remains. Spiritual investigation meets observational comedy as Watson crams two years’ pathological overthinking into one night’s stand-up. “Maybe we’ll even solve the huge problem,” he ponders. “Doubt it, though.”
Watson also plays Helmsley Arts Centre on October 7 and Selby Town Hall on November 17. Box office: York, thecrescentyork.com; Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk; Selby, 01757 708449 orselbytownhall.co.uk.
Mikron Theatre Company’s tour poster for Raising Agents
History in the baking: Mikron Theatre Company in Raising Agents, Clements Hall, Nunthorpe Road, York, Sunday, 4pm
MIKRON Theatre Company’s 50th anniversary tour brings the Marsden travelling players to York for a second time this summer this weekend. After the premiere of Lindsay Rodden’s Red Sky At Night at Scarcroft Allotments in May, here comes Rachel Gee’s revival of Maeve Larkin’s play about the Women’s Institute, Raising Agents.
Bunnington WI is somewhat down-at-heel, with memberships dwindling, meaning they can barely afford the hall, let alone a decent speaker. However, when a PR guru becomes a member, the women are glad of new blood, but the milk of WI kindness begins to sour after she re-brands them as the Bunnington Bunnies.
A battle ensues for the very soul of Bunnington, perhaps the WI itself, in a tale of hobbyists and lobbyists that asks how much we should know of our past or how much we should let go of it.
Raising Agents features not only a cast of Hannah Bainbridge, Thomas Cotran, Alice McKenna and James McLean but also songs by folk duo O’Hooley & Tidow, Mikron’s Marsden neighbours of Gentleman Jack theme-tune fame. Box office: email willyh@phonecoop.coop; ring 07974 867301 or 01904 466086; call in at Pextons, Bishopthorpe Road, York.
Boyzlife and balloons: Keith Duffy and Brian McFadden headline next Saturday’s line-up at the Yorkshire Balloon Fiesta
Festival of the week: Yorkshire Balloon Fiesta, Knavesmire, York, September 23 to 25
THE largest hot air balloon and music festival in the north will take off in York for the last time from Friday before moving elsewhere next year. Expect hot-air balloon launches, children’s entertainment, live music, a funfair, a Labyrinth Challenge obstacle course, food and drink and Friday and Saturday Night Glow lit-up balloons.
Friday’s acts will be Sam Sax, Scouting For Girls and DJ Craig Charles’s Funk and Soul Show; on Saturday, Huge, Brainiac Live (science show), Gabrielle, Heather Small and Boyzlife; on Sunday, YolanDa’s Band Jam, Andy & The Odd Socks, Howard Donald (DJ set) and Symphonic Ibiza, before a fireworks finale. Full details and tickets: yorkshireballoonfiesta.co.uk.
Clash of wills: Sam Steel’s headmistress Miss Trunchbull and Juliette Sellamuttu’s special-powered pupil, Matilda, in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Matilda: The Musical Jr. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Children’s show of the week: Pick Me Up Theatre in Roald Dahl’s Matilda: The Musical Jr, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, September 23 to October 2
REBELLION is nigh when Robert Readman’s York company Pick Me Up Theatre presents Matilda Jr, a gleefully witty ode to the anarchy of childhood and the power of imagination.
Packed with high-energy dance numbers and catchy Tim Minchin songs, this joyous girl power romp will have audiences rooting for the “revolting children” who are out to teach mean headmistress Miss Trunchbull a lesson, led by Matilda, the child with astonishing wit, intelligence, courage and…special powers! Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
All’s well that’s John Bramwell: I Am Kloot frontman to play “super-intimate” gig at Ellerton Priory. Picture: Ian Percival
Whatever happened to I Am Kloot? Off The Beaten Track presents John Bramwell, Ellerton Priory, Ellerton, near York, September 24, 7.30pm. UPDATE: 22/9/2022: GIG CANCELLED AFTER FAMILY BEREAVEMENT
FROM the team behind shows by Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys and The Beta Band’s Steve Mason in Stockton on the Forest Village Hall comes a “super-intimate” gig by I Am Kloot singer, songwriter and guitarist John Bramwell.
Since 2016, Bramwell has reverted to being a solo artist, releasing the home-recorded Leave Alone The Empty Spaces in 2018 and performing with John Bramwell & The Full Harmonic Convergence. The follow-up album, a more expansive affair with a working title of The Light Fantastic, is “scheduled for 2022”. Tickets are on sale via thecrescentyork.com or seetickets.com.
20 years later: Danny Boyle’s 2002 British post-apocalyptic horror film 28 Days Later will be shown in the Classic slot at the Dead Northern Horror Festival at City Screen. Copyright: Fox Searchlight
Film event of the week: Dead Northern Horror Festival ’22, City Screen Picturehouse, York, September 23 to 25
YORK’S only horror film festival returns to City Screen for three days, “bigger and bloodier than ever”, with a line-up of horror and fantasy-themed entertainment, new and classic feature films, live horror entertainment, parties, Q&As, special guests and exclusive merchandise.
Among the feature films will be After She Died, The Lies Of Our Confines, Shadow Vaults and Dog Soldiers on September 23; three world premieres with Q&As, Searching For Veslomy, Calling Nurse Meow and The Stranger, plus Eating Miss Campbell, on September 24, and The Creeping, The Group and 28 Days Later on the last day, when Paul Forster will host a séance at 7pm. Box office and full programme: deadnorthern.co.uk.
Farewell, but not goodbye: Dominic Goodwin’s Dr Watson, left, and Julian Finnegan’s Sherlock Holmes return in their long-running show, Holmes And Watson: The Farewell Tour
Double act of the week: Pyramus & Thisbe Productions in Holmes And Watson: The Farewell Tour, York Theatre Royal Studio, September 23 and 24, 7.45pm
JULIAN Finnegan’s Sherlock Holmes and Dominic Goodwin’s Dr Watson team up in Stuart Fortey’s “utterly bonkers” two-man play, wherein the detective has prevailed on the doctor, landlady Mrs Hudson and Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard to join him in a farewell tour of the British Isles before he retires.
For the first time ever, they will re-enact one of Holmes’s most baffling unrecorded cases, The Case Of The Prime Minister, The Floozie And The Lummock Rock Lighthouse, an affair on whose outcome the security of Europe once hung by a thread. Will Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime, make an appearance? Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Not before time: Suede announce their first York Barbican gig in a quarter of a century. Picture: Dean Chalkley
Gig announcement of the week: Suede, York Barbican, March 15 2023
SUEDE are to play York Barbican for the first time in 25 years on the closing night of their 2023 tour, in the wake of this week’s release of their ninth studio album, Autofiction, their first since 2018.
Next March’s tour will combine the London band’s classics, hits and selections from Autofiction, climaxing with their first Barbican appearance since April 23 1997. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk and ticketmaster.co.uk.
The poster for the York Printmakers Autumn Print Fair
Art event of the week: York Printmakers Autumn Print Fair, York Cemetery Chapel & Harriet Room, York, September 24 and 25, 10am to 5pm
INNOVATIVE printmaking can be discovered at York Cemetery Chapel, spanning etching, linocut, collagraph, monotype, screen print, solar plate and stencilling. Now in its fifth year, the York Printmakers Autumn Print Fair brings together a thriving, diverse group of enthusiastic artists who work independently but support and challenge each other by sharing opportunities, ideas and processes.
Hundreds of original prints will be on show and entry is free; prices range from £2 to £300. Some members run printmaking courses, so next weekend is a chance to find out more by chatting to the artists behind the prints.
York Printmakers’ member Russell Hughes printing in his “pop-up studio” in an empty office in York
York Printmakers: the background
EMILY Harvey started the group in 2015. “A new arrival in York contacted me via my website to ask if there was a printmakers’ group in the city, at that time the answer was ’no’,” she recalls.
“But I knew there were quite a few printmakers here, so I thought ‘why not?’. A few phone calls later, nine printmakers were sat round a table in the pub, and York Printmakers was born.”
The group now numbers about 50 from a wide range of printmaking backgrounds, from art students to professional artists who exhibit widely.
Emily loves the group’s “unconventional streak”. “We like to experiment with new methods and ideas,” she says. “Printing plates made from eggshells and prints developed using GPS tracking are just some of our recent adventures. Sharing these innovations helps to keep our work lively and relevant.”
York Printmakers’ member Jane Dignum in lino-printingmode
The group’s monthly meetings feature a sharing practice slot where printing problems and solutions are discussed. During the Covid lockdown, the group started a themed postcard-sized print challenge, the results being shared in Zoom meetings. Not only did this help the printmakers maintain their creativity, but it also produced some surprising and innovative results. Many of these small prints will be on display during the fair.
Group member Jo Ruth says: ‘One of the joys of being part of this group is the variety of experience among us. Some members are expert printmakers, others are just starting out, but we all have a lot to offer and to learn from each other.”
Members produce their work in their own spaces, some in purpose-built studios but many in far more humble surroundings, such as at their kitchen tables. Exhibitions and events showcase the group’s array of skills with printing processes that date back hundreds of years, through to those that push the boundaries of contemporary practice with innovation in laser-cut plates, digital elements and 3D techniques.
During the past year, work from the group has featured in events across the country, including the Rheged Centre in Penrith, The Inspired By…Gallery in Danby and Ferens Art Gallery in Hull.
Burning Duck Comedy Club presents Helen Bauer in Madam Good Tit at Theatre@41 in October
NEW partnerships, returning performers, comedy acts aplenty and community theatre regulars make up the autumn and winter season at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York.
One year on from throwing open its doors post-pandemic, the black-box studio will play host to Yorkshire and national companies and artists alike.
“We’re doing all right, whether by chance or design!” says chair Alan Park. “In the year since we took over the programming, there’s been a nice balance between comedy, music and theatre, with a focus on new writing, as well as continuing our relationships with York Stage, Pick Me Up Theatre, White Rose Theatre, York Settlement Community Players and York Musical Theatre Company.
“The mailing list has gone up from 40 to 2,000 and we feel that people are invested in the building, our charity status, the work we present, and want us to do well. There are plenty of people who run theatres, but we want to run a ‘movement’ and we think we’re getting there.”
Colin Hoult in The Death Of Anna Mann. Picture: Linda Blacker
Looking ahead to the new season, one new partnership finds Theatre@41 linking up with York promoter Al Greaves’s well-established Burning Duck Comedy Club, complementing his programme at The Crescent (and previously at The Basement at City Screen Picturehouse).
“Maggie Smales, one of our trustees, reached out to Al,” says Alan. “Initially, comedy promoters were contacting us directly, and we were doing maybe two comedy shows a season, but we got in touch with Al to say ‘we don’t want to tread on your toes, but we’d love to work with you’, and so now we have six shows this autumn through linking up with Al.”
Among those shows will be Lauren Pattinson’s It Is What It Is on September 16; Colin Hoult, from the Netflix series After Life, presenting The Death Of Anna Mann on October 8; the returning Olga Koch, star of her own BBC Radio 4 series, in Just Friends on October 15 and fellow Edinburgh Festival Fringe Best Newcomer nominee Helen Bauer’s Madam Good Tit, on October 22. Look out too for Taskmaster winner Sophie Duker next April.
Returning to Theatre@41 will be Dyad Productions, following up the sold-out I, Elizabeth with Christmas Gothic, adapted and performed by Rebecca Vaughan, on November 26 and 27, and Sarah-Louise Young, building on the sold-out success of Alan’s favourite show so far, An Evening Without Kate Bush, by presenting her charming yet cheeky West End and Off-Broadway cabaret hit Julie Madly Deeply, a tribute to Julie Andrews.
Sarah-Louise Young in her Julie Andrews tribute, Julie Madly Deeply. Picture: Steve Ullathorne
Further returnees will be East Riding company Other Lives Theatre Productions in Landmarks, Nick Darke’s environmentally topical story of a farming family feud, and Nunkie Theatre’s Robert Lloyd Parry with two more gripping MR James ghost stories by candlelight in Oh, Whistle on November 25.
“We’ve had a lot of good feedback from artists, such as Olga Koch’s agent,” says Alan. “We know there’s paint peeling off walls, the roof is leaking, but we believe in making the artists welcome, like giving them a little York Gin pack on arrival. We try to be a friendly venue where everyone will want to come back.”
Endorsements for Theatre@41 are spreading, leading to debut visits by Mark Farrelly in his Quentin Crisp show, Naked Hope, on September 7 and Olivier Award-winning actor and director Guy Masterson, staging his one-man adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol on November 24.
Seven York companies and performers are booked in. Robert Readman’s Pick Me Up Theatre will stage Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical Jr from September 23 to October 2 and The Sound Of Music from December 16 to 30 in the Christmas slot. York Settlement Community Players will perform Christopher Durang’s Tony Award-winning Broadway comedy Vanya And Sonia And Masha And Spike from November 3 to 5.
Rebecca Vaughan in Dyad Productions’ Christmas Gothic. Picture: Ben Guest
White Rose Theatre will deliver The Last Five Years, an emotionally charged musical full of upbeat numbers and beautiful ballads by Jason Robert Brown that tells the story of two lovers over the course of five years, with Cathy starting her tale at the end of the relationship and Jamie telling his story from the beginning. Directed by Claire Pulpher, it will run from November 9 to 12.
Barnstorming country-rock band The Rusty Pegs will play Rumours (Again!) in a 45th anniversary celebration of the Fleetwood Mac nugget on October 9, after giving Theatre@41’s re-launch gig post-Covid; Jessa Liversidge will sing Some Enchanted Sondheim on October 9, and York Musical Theatre Company will mark their 120th anniversary with A Musical Celebration on October 13 and 14.
Spookologist and ghost-botherer Doctor Dorian Deathly, a winner in the 2022 Visit York Tourism Awards, will make his Theatre@41 debut with his Halloween show, A Night Of Face Melting Horror!, from October 26 to 31.
“Each night, Dorian will be hot-footing over here after doing his Deathly Dark ghost tour for a cabaret evening with a bar of the dead and cocktails,” says Alan. “He came to us with the idea, and we thought, ‘yeah, let’s do it’. He has a huge following, so we’re delighted he wanted to come here.”
The horror! The horror” The poster for Doctor Dorian Deathly’s Halloween show, A Night Of Face Melting Horror!
Paul Birch, one of the stand-outs in York Theatre Royal’s Green Shoots showcase for new work in June, will bring his improv group, Foolish, to Theatre@41 for the third time. On September 15, he will host a night of ad-hoc comedy improvised from suggestions written in chalk on the stage floor under the title of Cobbled Together.
Seeking to foster a growing relationship with The Groves community, Theatre@41 will play host to the inaugural Groves Community Cinema: a weekend of classic films old and new right on residents’ doorsteps when visitors will be invited to “pay what you feel”, with support from an ARG Events and Festivals Grant in partnership with Make It York and City of York Council.
“Historically, we’re on the edge of The Groves, and maybe The Groves has never quite felt this is The Groves’ theatre, but we hope that putting on a community cinema weekend will make it feel more like it’s part of their community, rather than people just walking past our doors,” says Alan.
Olga Koch: Returning to Theatre@41 to present Just Friends
September 10 will offer Encanto Singalong at 2.30pm and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind at 6pm; September 11, Kes at 2.30pm and Nomadland at 6.30pm.
Three more new additions add to the sense of momentum at Theatre@41. Firstly, £5,000 funding from City of York Council and the Liz and Terry Bramall Foundation will ensure the lighting rig “no longer wobbles”; secondly, the theatre will resume being a polling station for elections.
Last, but not least, the Monkgate building will be turned into the rehearsal rooms for veteran dame Berwick Kaler’s Grand Opera House pantomime, Old Granny Goose. “We’re giving them multiple rooms, including the dance studio,” says Alan. “They’ll have the run of the building basically.”
For performance times and to book tickets for the new season, head to: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Copyright of The Press, York
Pantomime dame Berwick Kaler and daft-lad sidekick Martin Barrass will be rehearsing Old Granny Goose at Theatre@41 ahead of its run at the Grand Opera House, York
Sanna Jeppsson in noblewoman Viola’s guise as young actor Thomas Kent. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
SHAKESPEARE In Love was a film about theatre, as much as it was about love. Now it is a play about theatre, with even more theatre in it, more Marlowe as well as Shakespeare, as much as it is still about love.
It makes perfect sense to transfer the period rom-com from screen to its natural bedfellow, the stage, and who better than Lee Hall to effect that transition.
For the north-eastern mining and dancing drama Billy Elliot, he adapted his own screenplay; this time, he makes merry with Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman’s boisterous and romantic script for John Madden’s 1999 award-winner, ruffing it up to the neck in Shakespeare in-jokes, but not roughing up its sophisticated wit.
Robert Readman: Producer, set designer and builder, costume guru and thespian, playing hammy Elizabethan actor Ned Alleyn. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Pick Me Up Theatre’s always quick-off-the-mark founder, Robert Readman, was typically speedy to pick up the rights to Shakespeare In Love for the York company’s tenth anniversary, whereupon a series of spot-on decisions were made.
First, appoint Bard buff and Pick Me Up ace card Mark Hird to direct the rollicking romp. Second, bring George Stagnell back to the York stage to play the title role. Third, talent-spot Swedish-born Sanna Jeppsson in York Settlement Community Players’ The 39 Steps (even when it fell at the first step, called off through cast illness after one night last November).
Four, utilise Readman’s skills, not only as producer and designer/builder, but also his dormant love of performing. When you need a thick slice of ham to play larger-than-life Elizabethan actor Ned Alleyn, “prince of the provinces”, who you gonna call? Why, Mr Readman, of course, tapping into his inner plummy Simon Callow.
Sanna Jeppsson’s Viola de Lesseps and George Stagnell’s Will Shakespeare mutually admire his newly quilled lines in Shakespeare In Love. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Readman has conjured an end-on, raised stage built for the outdoors, but no less suited to the John Cooper Studio’s black box, with its echoes of Shakespeare’s Globe or the Rose; decorative flowers; curtains to cover amorous going-ons behind, and traps for hasty exits and entries.
Ensemble cast members sit beside the stage apron, watching the action when not involved. On a mezzanine level, musical director Natalie Walker and Royal College of Music student Tom Bennett are playing Paddy Cunneen’s gorgeous score.
Hird’s company looks the Elizabethan part too, Readman’s costume brief requiring hires from the Royal Shakespeare Company, no less, as well as York Theatre Royal and Leeds Playhouse, plus ear studs and earrings aplenty (for the men).
Ian Giles’s Henslowe and Andrew Roberts’s Ralph. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Praise too for Emma Godivala and York College’s work on hair, fake moustaches and make-up, especially for Jeppsson when taking the guise of young actor Thomas Kent.
The make-up for the men is deliberately heavy, in keeping with Shakespeare’s day, but everything else is conducted with a delightfully light touch under Hird’s direction, where the next scene chases the previous one off the stage, such is the gleeful urgency to crack on with such a cracking plot replete with cross-dressing, swordplay and backside-biting puppetry (courtesy of Elanor Kitchen’s Spot the Dog).
The only slowness is in the pace of lines coming to Shakespeare’s quill, surrounded by the company of actors awaiting the next play of his still fledgling career, outshone by dashing, daring Kit Marlowe (Adam Price), amusingly providing his young friend (Stagnell’s Will) with all his best lines.
Adam Price’s devil-may-care Kit Marlowe has a word with George Stagnell’s Will, in desperate disguise for his safety at this juncture. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Theatre bosses Henslowe (Ian Giles) and rival Richard Burbage (Tony Froud) are vying for Shakespeare’s services; theatre backer “The Money” Fennyman (Andrew Isherwood) keeps applying the financial squeeze, often with menaces; Tilney (Neil Foster), the supercilious Lord Chamberlain with the insufferable killjoy manner of Malvolio, is determined to shut down theatres, whatever excuse he can find.
Queen Elizabeth (Joy Warner) wants a dog to have its day in every play; Guy Wilson’s John Webster just wants a chance; Shakespeare needs a muse. Enter Jeppsson’s Viola de Lesseps, alas promised to the ghastly Lord Wessex (Jim Paterson) against her wishes. Viola is banned from the stage under the rules, but takes the dangerous step of performing as Thomas Kent, and what a performer he/she is.
Viola’s amusing West Country Nurse (Beryl Nairn) becomes the template for that very character in Romeo & Juliet, and as Shakespeare’s work in progress changes from comedy to tragedy, Alleyn plays Mercutio, fabulously outraged at being killed off so early.
Sam Hird, left, and Tom Bennett, from the Royal College of Music, on song in Shakespeare In Love
Shakespeare In Love gives us a developing play within a play, and while it helps to have some knowledge of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Burbage et al, it echoes Blackadder in having such fun with a period setting and re-writing history, here imagining how Romeo & Juliet and in turn Twelfth Night may have emerged.
What’s more, Stagnell and Jeppsson are a delight in the swelling love story, as well as in delivering Shakespeare’s lines when called on to do so.
Terrific performances abound around them, especially from Price, Isherwood, Paterson and Wilson, a young talent with a gift for physical comedy in the Marty Feldman and Tony Robinson tradition, while Warner’s cameos as Queen Elizabeth are a joy too.
To cap it all, Sam Hird and Tom Bennett’s performance of an Elizabethan ballad is beautiful, typical of a swashbuckling performance that is a palpable hit in every way. If you love theatre, this play is why you do. If you don’t, go anyway and be converted. Tonight until Friday’s shows have sold out but tickets are still available for 2.30pm and 7.30pm on Saturday at tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Pen pals:George Stagnell’s Will Shakespeare and Sanna Jeppsson’s Viola de Lesseps in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Shakespeare In Love. All pictures: Matthew Kitchen Photography
YORK company Pick Me Up Theatre mark their tenth anniversary with a rollicking celebration of the joys of theatre, Shakespeare In Love.
Adapted for the stage by Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall from Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman’s screenplay for the Oscar-winning 1999 film, the Elizabethan love story will be performed under the direction of Bard buff Mark Hird at Theatre@ 41, Monkgate, from tomorrow (1/4/2022) to April 9.
First staged by Sonia Friedman Productions in the West End with Cheek By Jowl’s Declan Donnellan in the director’s chair in 2014, Hall’s play was snapped up for its York premiere by Pick Me Up’s ever-alert founder, artistic director, designer and producer, Robert Readman (who will be making a rare appearance as actor Ned Alleyn).
“When Robert got the rights, I read it, and straightaway I thought, ‘my god, it’s brilliant’, with Stoppard and Norman as the starting point for the fantastic script, and Lee Hall then transforming it into a great piece of theatre,” says director Mark Hird.
“Anyone who thinks this Shakespeare In Love will be just the film on stage, it’s absolutely not. It’s so theatrical, and that makes it such a joy to put on. That’s what so special about it: it’s a love letter to theatre as well as being a great love story.
Where there’s a quill, there’s a way: George Stagnell’s Will Shakespeare at work
“Anyone who comes to the play who loves theatre will leave with a great big smile on their face at all the theatrical allusions. Lee Hall has put even more theatre aficionado jokes in there.”
Shakespeare In Love delights in the love story of struggling young playwright Will Shakespeare (played by George Stagnell) and feisty, free-spirited young noblewoman Viola de Lesseps (Sanna Jeppsson), his greatest admirer, who helps him to overcome writer’s block and becomes his muse.
She will stop at nothing, even breaking the law and dressing as a boy actor to appear in his next play, whereupon, in this turbulent world of mistaken identity, ruthless scheming and backstage theatrics, Will’s love for Viola quickly blossoms, inspiring him to write his breakthrough romantic drama, Romeo and Juliet.
“Basically, you have Will Shakespeare right back in the early days of his career, having done Titus Andronicus, Two Gentlemen Of Verona and Henry VI, but he’s not yet had a big hit,” says Mark.
“All Marlowe’s plays are being bigger hits at the time, and in fact there’s a lot more of Kit Marlowe in the play than there was in the film,” says George.
“The play what I wrote”: George Stagnell’s Will shows his latest work to Sanna Jeppsson ‘s Viola
“But the love story is still at the heart of the play, and it’s as beautiful on stage as it was in the film, but there’s now a lot more changes of energy, moving back and forth from the chaotic rehearsals, and all the fun that goes with that, interspersed with the love story,” says Mark.
Sanna first saw the film on Swedish TV with Swedish subtitles before moving to Britain and has watched it again since landing her role as the ground-breaking Viola. “She’s a very brave woman, doing something that was forbidden at the time; something she wouldn’t be allowed to do, being in a space she wouldn’t have had access to as herself, having to take the guise of a boy actor, Thomas Kent,” she says.
“Being on stage, feeling so alive for the first time, I can connect with that. I remember going on a backstage tour of Mamma Mia!, and then getting to go out on to this amazing stage and looking at all those seats, and wanting to be on there performing.
“That’s what I bring with me when Viola comes on as Thomas Kent, knowing she shouldn’t be there, and normally could only imagine the audience looking at her.”
“I always like to go on stage before a show, when the auditorium is empty,” says George. “When it’s quiet and no-one’s there, you take the space in and imagine how it will erupt with life. It’s like the calm before the storm.”
Mark adds: “There’s something about an empty theatre: you can feel the presence of the ghosts of all those who have been there before.”
Sanna rejoins: “A theatre is a space where anything can happen, that moment of magic and then it’s gone.”
George Stagnell’s Will and Sanna Jeppsson’s Viola in disguise as young actor Thomas Kent
George has focused on playing young Will Shakespeare, not the feted Bard. “Pretty much since day one, I’ve had to come in not thinking ‘this is William Shakespeare’,” he says. “I don’t want to have that mentality of thinking about who he became, but to see him as this young man trying to find his way through a very complicated time in history, in the early days of his writing, when there was a lot of history that we don’t know and a lot of conjecture.”
Mark concurs: “That’s what’s so gorgeous about this piece. We all think we know about Shakespeare, but here we are watching a three-dimensional character called Will.”
Sanna had studied Shakespeare “a little bit at school, but not in its original language”, when growing up in Molkom, but when she lived out her long-held dream of moving to London in 2013, she attended the International College of Musical Theatre, rather than focusing on classical theatre.
“Almost every other person in London is an actor, which makes it hard there, and so I moved to York in 2019, where I now work as a civil servant for the Ministry of Justice, sitting on in trials sometimes.”
From courtroom dramas, Sanna’s attention now switches to courtship dramas on stage.
Pick Me Up Theatre in Shakespeare In Love, Theatre@41 Monkgate, York, April 1 to 9, 7.30pm, except April 3 and 4; 2.30pm, April 2, 3 and 9 . Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Quick step: Jake Quickenden as dancing cowboy Willard in Footloose The Musical at York Theatre Royal
FROM Holding Out For A Hero to Search For The Hero, Charles Hutchinson is on a quest to find heroic deeds and much else to entertain you.
Musical of the week: Footloose at York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday
DANCING On Ice champ Jake Quickenden rides into York as cowboy Willard and musicals stalwart Darren Day plays Reverend Moore in Racky Plews’s touring production of Footloose The Musical.
Reprising the 1984 film’s storyline, teenage city boy Ren is forced to move to the rural American backwater of Bomont, where dancing and rock music are banned. Taking matters into his own hands, soon he has all hell breaking loose around him and the whole town on its feet.
The set design, by the way, is by Sara Perks, who designed York Theatre Royal’s open-air show Around The World In 80 Days last summer and Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre productions in York. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Reunited: EastEnders soap stars Adam Woodyatt and Laurie Brett in the chilling thriller Looking Good Dead
Thriller of the week: Looking Good Dead, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday to Saturday
AFTER playing bickering husband and wife Ian and Jane Beale in EastEnders for years and years, Adam Woodyatt and Laurie Brett are re-uniting, this time on stage in Shaun McKenna’s stage adaptation of Peter James’s thriller Looking Good Dead.
No good deed goes unpunished in this story of Woodyatt’s Tom Bryce inadvertently witnessing a vicious murder, only hours after finding a discarded USB memory stick.
Reporting the crime to the police has disastrous consequences, placing him and his family in grave danger. When Detective Superintendent Roy Grace becomes involved, he has his own demons to face while he tries to crack the case in time to save the Bryces’ lives. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Writer, journalist and historian Simon Jenkins: Appearing at York Literature Festival
Festival event of the week: York Literature Festival presents Europe’s 100 Best Cathedrals with Simon Jenkins, St Peter’s School, Clifton, York, tonight, 7pm
FOR Europe’s 100 Best Cathedrals, former editor of the Evening Standard and The Times Simon Jenkins has travelled the continent, from Chartres to York, Cologne to Florence, Toledo to Moscow, to illuminate old favourites and highlight new discoveries.
Tonight he discusses the book’s exploration of Europe’s history, the central role of cathedrals in the European imagination and the stories behind these wonders. Box office: yorkliteraturefestival.co.uk.
That Old Devil Moon, by Richard Kitchen, from Navigators Art’s Moving Pictures exhibition at City Screen Picturehouse
Exhibition of the week: Navigators Art in Moving Pictures, City Screen Picturehouse café and first-floor gallery, until April 15
FROM December’s ashes of the Piccadilly Pop Up Collective studios and gallery in the old York tax office, Navigators Art have re-emerged for a spring exhibition at City Screen.
For their first post-lockdown project, founder Navigators Steve Beadle and Richard Kitchen have invited fellow artist and teacher Timothy Morrison to join them for Moving Pictures: From Fan Art To Fine Art.
“The title is deliberately ambiguous, and we’ve responded to it accordingly,” says Richard. “There are works that relate to cinema and other media but also many of which interpret ‘Moving’ in other ways.”
BC Camplight: Examining madness and loss at The Crescent, York
Rearranged York gig of the week: BC Camplight, supported by Wesley Gonzales, The Crescent, York, Thursday, 7.30pm
MOVED from March 10, BC Camplight’s gig in York highlights the final chapter of his “Manchester trilogy”, Shortly After Takeoff.
“This is an examination of madness and loss,” says BC, full name Brian Christinzio. “I hope it starts a long overdue conversation.”
Fired by his ongoing battle with mental illness, Shortly After Takeoff follows 2018’s Deportation Blues and 2015’s How To Die In The North in responding to BC’s move from his native Philadelphian to Manchester. Cue singer-songwriter classicism, gnarly synth-pop and Fifties’ rock’n’roll. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
Sanna Jeppsson’s Viola de Lesseps and George Stagnell’s Will Shakespeare in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Shakespeare In Love. Picture: Matthew Kitchen Photography
York premiere of the week: Pick Me Up Theatre in Shakespeare In Love, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, April 1 to 9
LEE Hall’s 2014 stage adaptation of Shakespeare In Love, the Oscar-winning film written by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman, celebrates the joys of theatre in Pick Me Up’s first show of 2022.
Directed by Mark Hird, it recounts the love story of struggling young playwright Will Shakespeare (George Stagnell) and feisty, free-thinking noblewoman Viola de Lesseps (Sanna Jeppsson), who helps him overcome writer’s block and becomes his muse.
Against a bustling background of mistaken identity, ruthless scheming and backstage theatrics, Will’s love for Viola blossoms, inspiring him to write Romeo And Juliet. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Heather Small: Proud moment at York Barbican
Voice of the week: Heather Small, York Barbican, April 2, 7.30pm
BILLED as “The voice of M People”, soul singer Heather Small will be combining songs from her Nineties’ Manchester band with selections from her two solo albums.
As part of M People, she chalked up hits and awards with Moving On Up, One Night In Heaven and Search For The Hero and the albums Elegant Slumming, Bizarre Fruit and Fresco. The title track of her Proud album has since become a staple at multiple ceremonies.
At 57, she will never be one to rest on her laurels: “If you got the feeling I do when I sing, you’d understand,” she reasons. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Steven Jobson (Jekyll/Hyde) gets to grips with Matthew Ainsworth (Simon Stride) in rehearsals as York Musical Theatre Company director Matthew Clare looks on
Book early for: York Musical Theatre Company in Jekyll & Hyde The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, May 25 to 28
FLOOR rehearsals are well under way for York Musical Theatre Company’s spring production under the direction of Matthew Clare, who is delighted by how the cast is responding and supporting each other.
The epic struggle between good and evil in Jekyll & Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale of myth and mystery on London’s fog-bound streets, comes to stage life in Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse’s pop-rock musical, where love, betrayal and murder lurk at every chilling twist and turn.
YMTC are running an early bird discount ticket offer with the promo code of JEKYLL22HYDE when booking at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk by April 10.
Pick Me Up Theatre’s cast members: back row, Toni Feetenby, left, Alan Park, Ian Giles, Andrew Isherwood and Emily Halstead. Middle row: Adam Sowter, left, Flynn Coultous, Jack Hambleton, Florence Poskitt, Freddie Adams, Guy Wilson and Alexandra Mather. Front row: Sandy Nicholson, left, Flynn Baistow, Benedict Wood and Dotty Davies. All pictures: Matthew Kitchen Photography
DIARY entry, April 6th 2021. Robert Readman announces Pick Me Up Theatre’s Christmas show for 2021 will be the Broadway hit SpongeBob The Musical.
Diary entry, December 5 2021. No, it won’t be. Robert is directing Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary’s The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ The Musical instead, booked into Theatre@41, Monkgate, York from December 8 to 18,
SpongeBob The Musical may yet re-emerge down the line in winter 2023, but Robert made the call to pick up Pick Me Up’s theatre-making for the first time since March 2020’s Covid-curtailed run of Tom’s Midnight Garden with the musical version of the trials and tribulations of Sue Townsend’s teenage diarist.
“It’s my kind of show,” says Robert. “I love British musicals; I loved the TV series and I loved Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole books.
“Pick Me Up will be doing a season of works by British writers in spring 2022, with George Stagnell starring in both Billy in March and Shakespeare In Love in April, and when we got the chance to do Adrian Mole, I knew we had to do that as this winter’s show – though I didn’t actually know it would be the British amateur premiere until the writer [Pippa Cleary] told me.
Toni Feetenby’s Pauline Mole and Jack Hambleton’s Adrian Mole from Pick Me Up Theatre’s Team Townsend
“But it’s perfect timing for us to do the show now because the story runs from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve.”
Robert and musical director Tim Selman are working with a cast of experienced York hands such as Sandy Nicholson, Andrew Isherwood, Adam Sowter, Florence Poskitt, Alan Park and Alexandra Mather and two sets of teen talents, rather sweetly designated as Team Sue and Team Townsend.
“They’re all aged either 13, early-14 or late-14, but they’re different in height, so what I did was to match each team to Adrian’s height. Team Sue – Flynn Baistow’s Adrian, Benedict Wood’s Nigel, Dotty Davies’ Pandora and Freddie Adams’ Barry – all turned out to be from Lancashire, apart from Benedict,” says Robert.
“Team Townsend – the taller Jack Hambleton’s Adrian, Flynn Coultous’s Nigel, Emily Halstead’s Pandora and Guy Wilson’s Barry – happen to be all from Yorkshire.
“Although Sue Townsend was a Leicester writer, and set her stories there, we’ll be using northern accents, which suits the characters just as well.”
Team Townsend’s Flynn Coultous as Nigel and Emily Halstead as Pandora in The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾
In the cast too is veteran actor and drama teacher Ian Giles, who played his part in Sue Townsend’s rise as a writer. “In the summer of 1977, I was appointed artistic director of the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester, and one of my innovations was to create a writers’ group for local people,” he recalls.
“The then unknown Leicester housewife Sue Townsend was among those who came along. She was in her thirties, from a council estate, had worked as a factory worker and shop assistant, and was very shy. She only attended because her partner, Colin [Broadway], told her to give it a go, though she used to love reading the likes of Dostoevsky.”
Ian put Sue forward for a Thames Television Writer’s Bursary and her manuscript for Womberang duly won the Thames Television Playwright Award, setting her on the path to writing plays for the Royal Court and the Adrian Mole series of books.
Coming full circle, Ian, now 72, will play grumpy old Bert Baxter in the Mole musical. “He’s an 89-year-old curmudgeon, so that should be easy for me!” he says, delighted to be reconnecting with his Townsend past.
“I’m surprised the Adrian Mole books aren’t on the school curriculum, because the issues raised are still so pertinent. The first book is 40 years old now, and the books were like the Harry Potter books of their time. Only the Bible and Shakespeare outsold them!”
Toni Feetenby’s Pauline Mole and Flynn Baistow’s Adrian Mole from Team Sue
Re-joining the discussion, Robert says: “We love Adrian Mole because it’s a boy expressing how awful life is when you’re going through puberty. The young cast find it very funny, but it’s interesting to see how differently they interpret their characters, especially the two Adrians.
“What works best is the fun Sue had in having all the characters being seen through Adrian’s lens.”
“And with a working-class ethic to it,” says Ian. “Sue was writing from council-estate experience, growing up not far from where playwright Joe Orton grew up. There’s a lot of Sue in the character of the mother, Pauline.
“It’s all pertinent to the 1980s when it was written, but it also resonates with all teenage experiences that people go through.”
Robert adds: “Because of the ‘80s’ retro culture that’s going on now, young people are wise to that, which makes it a good time to do this show.
Time to brush up: Ian Giles’s curmudgeonly Bert Baxter makes his point to Jack Hambleton’s Adrian Mole
“But what’s nice about the music is that Jake and Pippa have not pastiched the Eighties’ pop style. They’ve made their own style of music, so you will enjoy the story being in a musical structure, with some lovely balladry, and a lot of sadness and heartbreak in there, and the parents and classmates being given good songs as well as the leads.”
The John Cooper Studio will be set up as a traverse stage with the audience in raked seating to either side and on the mezzanine level above. “The set design will feature two houses, one to either side, with everything going on in between,” says Robert.
“The reason I’ve done that is because all the scenes are quite short and it moves at a pace, so you can’t have lots of scenery to move around, slowing it down.”
Now make a date in your diary to see Adrian Mole, Pandora and co at Theatre@41.
Pick Me Up Theatre present Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, The Musical, John Cooper Studio, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, December 8 to 18, 7.30pm, except December 11 and 12; 2.30pm matinees, December 11, 12 and 18. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Ian Giles’s Bert Baxter and Jack Hambleton’s Adrian Mole in Pick Me Up Theatre’s The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, The Musical. Picture: Matthew Kitchen Photography
YORK actor and drama teacher Ian Giles played his part in the rise of writer Sue Townsend in his days in Leicester.
Now, 72-year-old Ian is to play grumpy old Bert Baxter in Townsend’s The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ in Pick Me Up Theatre’s musical production at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, from December 8 to 18.
“In the summer of 1977, I was appointed artistic director of the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester, and one of my innovations was to create a writers’ group for local people,” he recalls.
“The then- unknown Leicester housewife Sue Townsend was among those who came along. She was in her thirties, from a council estate, had worked as a factory worker and shop assistant, and was very shy. She only attended because her partner, Colin [Broadway], told her to give it a go, though she used to love reading the likes of Dostoevsky.”
What happened next, Ian? “The chairman of the group managed to get hold of a manuscript off her for Womberang, and on the strength of that first play, I put Sue up for a Thames Television Writer’s Bursary, and she got it,” he says.
“Michael Billington [the esteemed Guardian theatre critic], who was on the panel, told me it was the funniest thing he had read in years.”
Womberang won the Thames Television Playwright Award, and Townsend was on her way, writing Bazaar And Rummage (1982) and The Great Celestial Cow (1984) for the Royal Court Theatre, Chelsea.
Townsend first penned what became The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ as a one-man show: a workshop production starring Nigel Barnett as Nigel, rather than Adrian, Mole, recounting the diary he had written when he was aged 13 and three quarters.
“We think we then changed it to Adrian, because Nigel Mole sounded too like Nigel Molesworth [the subject of Geoffrey Willans’s series of books about life in English prep school St Custard’s], but the BBC say they changed it!” says Ian.
Either way, Adrian became the name when Sue was invited to convert the play into a novel. “She was a dramatist first and was very happy to write the novel as it meant she could use only one voice, Adrian’s, to tell his story,” says Ian.
“Published by Methuen in 1982, it went stratospheric,” says Ian. So much so, The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ and its 1984 sequel, The Growing Pains Of Adrian Mole, made Townsend the best-selling British author of the 1980s. A further six books in the series took sales worldwide past the 20 million mark.
Inevitably, the books were adapted for the radio, television and theatre. “Sue worked on the first musical version, which was a play with songs, and then came the first West End theatre version,” says Ian.
Robert Readman’s York company, Pick Me Up Theatre, will be presenting the latest musical adaptation by Jake Brunger (book and lyrics) and Pippa Cleary (music and lyrics), premiered at the Leicester Curve in March 2015.
“They’d formed a partnership while studying music and contacted Sue about doing a musical, but sadly she died [on April 10 2014) before the premiere,” says Ian.
Now the story comes full circle for him as he takes to the stage as Sue’s character, the 89-year-old curmudgeon Bert Baxter. “Sue became resident writer at the Phoenix, and I moved on, and now the theatre is called the Sue Townsend Theatre in the place where I worked for four years, when she took her first step into writing plays.”
Pick Me Up Theatre present Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, The Musical, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, December 8 to 18, 7.30pm, except December 11 and 12; 2.30pm matinees, December 11, 12 and 18. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
“Secret mission”: York actor Aran MacRae looks forward to making his York Shakespeare Project debut as a sonneteer in Sonnets At The Bar in the “secret garden” of the Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre
ARAN MacRae joins Lindsay Waller Wilkinson, Luke Tearney and Josh Roe in the four new sonneteers corralled for York Shakespeare Project’s Sonnets At The Bar 2021 from this evening.
Not that Aran is “new” to the acting scene. Far from it, the York actor, singer, songwriter and self-taught guitarist and percussion player returned to his home city in March 2019 after building momentum in his career in London, Europe and beyond.
After training in musical theatre for three years at the Guildford School of Acting, post-graduation in 2017 he had originated the role of 14-year-old Tink in the West End premiere of the Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf musical Bat Out Of Hell at the London Coliseum, following up with the Canadian run at the Ed Mirvish Theatre in Toronto.
“If you shave off your beard, you’ve got the part,” he was told at the last audition: a wonderful start to life on the professional boards.
“We did the show for 13 months and it gave me such an insight to musical theatre and to rock’n’roll too, going to Toronto and falling in love with a beautiful woman who’d just joined the cast there,” he says.
Aran then appeared in the immersive promenade production of Jonathan Larson’s Rent at the world’s oldest working paper mill, Frogmore Paper Mill in Apsley, Hertfordshire, in July 2018 and sang in Midas’s Twelve Tenors tour across Europe and South Korea in 2018 and early 2019.
His profile on Mandy states he is now “busking in my hometown of York, playing acoustic covers and putting together lyrics and music for solo material”.
Sonnets At The Bar brings him back to theatre work in the city where, in York College days, he had starred in York Stage Musicals’ The Flint Street Nativity and Mayhem, NUEMusic Theatre’s Bare, Bat Boy The Musical and Rent and Pick Me Up Theatre’s Evita, Che Guevara beard et al. If memory serves, he was the singer in The Frizz too, in even younger days.
“I’d been living in Potters Bar in London, plying my trade as an actor, when I decided to come back to York in Spring 2019,” says Aran. “I was aware of York Shakespeare Project and got in touch straightaway to join their mailing list because I knew that Macbeth and The Tempest were coming up and I was really up for directing The Tempest.
“Then ‘the Cloud’, as I shall call it, came along and slowed things down; Macbeth was put back, but then I saw they were doing Sonnets At The Bar and I jumped on to it.
Aran MacRae originating the role of Tick in Bat Out Of Hell at the London Coliseum in 2017
“I’m a fan of Shakespeare’s sonnets: not that they need a lot of investigating, but they explore the concept of love in a manner full of thought and consideration, and what is very special about them is the answer that’s given to any Shakespeare question: they are timeless and you can find modern-day parallels in them.”
Directed by Emilie Knight and produced by fellow company regular Maurice Crichton, Sonnets At The Bar 2021 will be staged in the “secret garden” of the Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre, in Blossom Street, from tonight to August 7.
Emilie, who played a Covid nurse in last year’s Sit-down Sonnets at Holy Trinity churchyard in Goodramgate, has come up with the conceit of the Bar Convent being in use for all sorts of community centre-type activities, some of them outdoors in the garden on account of Covid, with the sonneteers either hosting classes or groups or attending them, all under the watchful eye of the caretaker, Mr Barrowclough.
In YSP’s now time-honoured fashion, each character has a sonnet to set up, the pairing of character and sonnet opening up unknown sonnets in an accessible way or giving well-known ones a new angle.
Aran will be performing Sonnet 25, Let Those Who Are In Favour With Their Stars, in the role of Paul, clerk to the parish council in this age of new awareness of parish-council machinations after the explosive Jackie Weaver and Handworth shenanigans on Zoom went global.
“He’s a little bit righteous, I think,” he says. “He’s not got a point to prove but when he witnesses injustice, he takes it on his shoulders to deal with it, leaving him between a rock and a hard place.
“He has to have a lot of integrity and non-bias and that’s an incredibly lofty responsibility, when you’re dealing with care for the community and injustice, though what he’s witnessed is more to do with internal parish [council] matters, rather than the community.”
Analysing Sonnet 25, Aran says: “My sonnet is about idol worship, and I can certainly find modern-day resonances within it. I’m sure Shakespeare wasn’t thinking of me 420 years ago (!), but I’m thinking of him 420 years later, taking me to an emotional place. It’s like time travel.”
Aran has relished rehearsals under Emilie’s guidance. “It’s been really free spirited, and that freedom has been wonderful, especially in ‘the Cloud’,” he says. “Not only does everyone jump in and sound ideas off each other, but Emilie basically gave each of us a small piece of text to set up each sonnet and said, ‘if you’d like to ad-lib the lead-in to the sonnet, go for it, or if you’d like to add to it, do that’.
Che days: Aran MacRae’s Che Guevara with Robyn Grant’s Eva Peron in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Evita at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, in April 2013
“That was quite testing for me because I then had to look at the structure of what the character was going to say, working out how the parish clerk would communicate in a way that was more astute and level-headed than I would be in that situation!”
Initially, Aran had envisaged “just performing the sonnet and walking off with my chest out”. “But doing it this way, building up a character, allows me to test my writing skills too…because if I’m going to be in a film, I’m going to have to write it myself!” he says.
Where does Aran see his future? “Doing Bat Out Of Hell gave me an insight into where I want to direct my abilities. I loved being in a musical, with all that high energy and lots of post-teens diving around saying ‘this is it’, ‘it’s punk!’, but sometimes I wanted to be thinking more about the task in hand, when it was on stage.
“I want to pursue my career by continuing to work in musical theatre but also look to break into theatre, even though it’s such a closed circle.
“Coming back to the city where I’d lived from the age of three to 21, suddenly there was that ‘Cloud’ and a lot of solitary confinement, so I’ve been reading the classics after I’ve not had the time to read for years, in order to consider it as a career when it’s your heart that calls you to this profession.”
One classical role Aran will not be giving us is his Lady Macbeth in York Shakespeare Project’s promenade production of Macbeth in October, staged at Theatre@41 Monkgate by director Leo Doulton in a “corrupted world of moving forests, daggers from the dark and cyberpunk dystopia, falling from civilisation into a civil war between darkness and light”.
Lady Macbeth, Aran?. “I put my two-penneth in at the auditions to play her as I thought, ‘what better chance to play one of the great string-puller roles, like in The Hunger Games in a past of such apocalyptic brutality, with suave sophistication,” he says. “I gave it a good shot…”
The role has gone to Nell Frampton instead, but Aran can still apply to direct The Tempest, with no production dates set in place yet for York Shakespeare Project’s final play.
York Shakespeare Project presents Sonnets At The Bar 2021, Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre, Blossom Street, York, today (30/7/2021) until August 7; no show on August 2. Performances: 6pm and 7.30pm nightly, plus 4.15pm on both Saturdays. Tickets: 01904 623568, at yorkthreatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the YTR box office.
York actor-writer Anna Soden in rehearsal for Strawberry Lion’s streamed performance of E Nesbit’s Five Children And It
ROLL on Monday and Step 2 of the Government’s roadmap to recovery, when outdoor hospitality can resume and zoos, theme parks, drive-in cinemas and libraries can re-open.
Charles Hutchinson casts an eye over what’s on and what’s next.
Strawberry Lion’s show poster for Five Children And It
Children’s stream of the week: Strawberry Lion in Five Children And It, via Explore York libraries
YORK company Strawberry Lion’s streamed production of E Nesbit’s novel Five Children And It can be viewed for free on @YorkExplore’s YouTube channel daily until April 14 at 5pm.
Suitable for children aged five and over, the show is written and performed by York actor, musician, writer, theatre-maker and company founder Anna Soden, who has set Nesbit’s 1902 story with the grumpy magical creature on Scarborough beach.
Sailing Hopefully, by Jack Hellewell, from Jack’s Travels at Kentmere House Gallery, York, from next Monday
Exhibition launch of the week ahead: Jack Hellewell: Jack’s Travels, Kentmere House Gallery, Scarcroft Hill, York, from April 12
CURATOR Ann Kentmere is toasting Roadmap Step 2 Day by reopening Kentmere House Gallery on April 12 with Jack Travels, the first in a lockdown-delayed series of exhibitions to celebrate the centenary of the late Bradford artist Jack Hellewell.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Ann and David Petherick’s gallery in their York home, and Hellewell’s show will be open every day from April 12 to 17, 11am to 5pm, with extended opening to 9pm next Thursday, before Ann resumes her regular opening hours on the first weekend of each month and Thursdays from 6pm to 9pm. Or you can just ring the bell on the off-chance.
York Dungeon: Heading out into York’s haunted streets for a walking tour
Walking tour launch of the month ahead: The York Dungeon, from April 16
THE York Dungeon will spring its “frighteningly fun but family-friendly” walking tour on this socially distanced haunted city from next Friday.
Taking The York Dungeon above ground on Fridays to Sundays, guests will be led on a tour of hair-raising historic locations by two of the Clifford Street visitor attraction’s most/least loved characters, who will tell horrible tales of York’s murkiest, darkest history, wrapped up in suspense and surprises. Start times will be throughout each day; tickets must be pre-booked at thedungeons.com/york/.
Ela Bochenek, documentations assistant for Scarborough Museums Trust, with Bathers In Sunlight by Zdzislaw Ruszkowski , on show at Scarborough Art Gallery in Scarborough: Our Seaside Town, from next month
A day by the sea but inside a gallery: Scarborough: Our Seaside Town, Scarborough Art Gallery, May 18 to September 12
SCARBOROUGH Art Gallery’s summertime exhibition will look at life in a seaside town, as seen through the eyes of local people.
Curator Esther Lockwood interviewed team members from Scarborough Museums Trust, asking for their personal views and recollections of life by the sea year-round before selecting items from the trust’s extensive collections.
These will include an early 20th century ice cream cart that once operated on Scarborough’s South Bay beach; the East Coast resort’s Pancake Bell, rung to signal the start of the unique tradition of skipping on the seafront on Shrove Tuesday, and other seaside ephemera, paintings, vintage photographs and postcards.
Kinky Sex, Grayson Perry’s first plate, now among the “lost pots” brought together for his Pre-Therapy Years exhibition at CoCA, York
Missing Grayson’s Art Club on Channel 4 already? Head to Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years, York Art Gallery, May 28 to September 5
GRAYSON Perry’s lockdown-delayed “lost pots” exhibition at York Art Gallery’s Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA) will open at last next month.
This touring show is the first celebration of Perry’s earliest forays into the art world, re-assembling the explosive and creative works the Chelmsford-born artist, author and television presenter made between 1982 and 1994.
“It’s as near as I will ever get to meeting myself as a young man, an angrier, priapic me with huge energy but a much smaller wardrobe,” says Perry.
SpongeBob The Musical: Pick Me Up Theatre have acquired the rights for a winter production in York
Audition opportunity: Pick Me Up Theatre, SpongeBob The Musical, Theatre @41 Monkgate, York
YORK company Pick Me Up Theatre are to stage SpongeBob The Musical from December 7 to 18 at Theatre @41 Monkgate, York.
Director Robert Readman and musical director Sam Johnson will hold auditions there in July and August for performers aged 15 to 23 and actor-musicians for the Bikini Bottom Band.
Anyone interested is asked to email pickmeuptheatre@gmail.com for an audition form.
Del Amitri: First album in 19 years and first York Barbican gig after the same hiatus
Gig announcement of the week in York: Del Amitri, York Barbican, September 18
DEL Amitri will follow up the May 28 release of their seventh studio album, Fatal Mistakes, with a September 18 gig at York Barbican.
Justin Currie’s Glaswegian band last played the Barbican in May 2002, the year they released their last album, Can You Do Me Good?.
Greatest hits and new material will combine in a set supported by The Bryson Family. Tickets will go on sale tomorrow (9/4/2021) at 9am at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
John Spiers, left, and Jon Boden: Pocklington Arts Centre gig in October for the former Bellowhead cornerstones
Gig announcement of the week outside York: Spiers & Boden, Pocklington Arts Centre (PAC), October 20, 8pm
AFTER years of speculation, much-loved English folk duo Spiers & Boden are back together and not only working on new material, but also bringing a live performance to Pock in the autumn.
John Spiers, 46, and Jon Boden, 44, were the driving forces in big folk band Bellowhead, who played a glorious headline set at PAC’s Platform Festival at The Old Station, Pocklington, in July 2015. Tickets cost £20 at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
