Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita: New date for Pocklington Arts Centre concert
WELSH harpist Catrin Finch and Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita will play Pocklington Arts Centre on May 21 2022.
The 7.30pm concert has been rescheduled from June 10 2021 for the usual C-word reasons.
All original tickets for the mesmerising, intricate and ethereal virtuoso collaboration will remain valid and further tickets will be on sale from 10am on Friday (7/5/2021) at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Finch and Keita will be showcasing songs from their next album, as yet untitled and set for release next year.
Pocklington Arts Centre (PAC) director Janet Farmer says: “Having seen this superb world music duo at English Folk Expo in Manchester in 2018, it’s a privilege to welcome these BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winners to PAC next year.
“It will be the first time we’ve welcomed both Catrin and Seckou to Pocklington for what we know will be a stunning exhibition of world-class musicianship and a truly remarkable night of live music.”
Drawing deep on their diverse traditions and transforming them with synergy, Finch, 41, and Keita, 43, released their debut album, Clychau Dibonback, in 2013, followed by long-awaited Soar in 2018, when they mounted spring and autumn UK tours.
Soar takes flight on the wings of the osprey, the bird of prey now returned to Wales after centuries of absence, that makes its annual 3,000-mile migration from the coasts of West Africa to the Welsh estuaries of Wales, “soaring like music and dreams over man-made borders, on its innate and epic journey of endurance”.
Soar soared to the heights of winning the fRoots Critics Poll Album of The Year in 2018, Best Fusion Album in the Songlines Music Awards and Best Transregional Album in the Transglobal World Music Charts, both in 2019.
That year too, the album was nominated for Album of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, where Finch and Keita won Best Group/Duo and Seckou was named Musician of The Year.
Any ticket holder needing further information about the change of date should contact the box office.
Jon Marshall, of Magic Carpet Theatre and the Inner Magic Circle, who presents tonight’s live online talk on the history of the building now known as Pocklington Arts Centre
FROM Penny Arcadia To Pocklington Arts Centre, the story behind the historic Market Place venue, will be told by magician and performer Jon Marshall in a Zoom event this evening (May 4).
Pocklington Arts Centre (PAC) has been staging events for more than 20 years, but should you be wondering what the Grade II listed building was once used for and how it came to be the arts hub it is today, Jon has the answers.
Tales of fire-eaters, magicians and amusements all will feature in the 7.30pm illustrated talk as Jon, director and performer with Hull company Magic Carpet Theatre, takes his audience on a trip down memory lane, delving into the origins of the building formerly known as Oak House, dating back to the 1700s.
“The talk promises to be a fascinating and entertaining online event unveiling the story behind the building, from doctor’s house, cinema and museum housing Europe’s largest collection of amusement machines, to East Yorkshire’s premier arts venue,” says PAC director Janet Farmer.
Marshall, a member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star, promises a fascinating and entertaining evening, replete with tales of former owners of the building Jon and Pat Gresham.
From Penny Arcadia To Pocklington Arts Centre: Jon Marshall’s online audience will hear tales of the Gresham family, who once owned the historic venue. Pictured are the late Pat and Jon Gresham with their son Maxwell
“They were larger-than-life local characters, cinema proprietors and museum curators,” he says. “All will be revealed about the exploits and colourful adventures of Jon, who was once a magician, fire-eater, pantomime promoter and sideshow showman.
“The audience will also hear about Pat, who was determined that when the Penny Arcadia closed, the building should not become yet another retail unit but instead should provide entertainment and a service to the people of Pocklington and the surrounding area.
“I had the privilege of knowing the Gresham family for over 50 years from the mid-1960s, so participants will be able to see many previously unpublished photographs and images from over the years.”
Marshall’s company Magic Carpet Theatre are regular performers at PAC and last October they recorded two shows there for streaming for free on PAC’s YouTube channel: Magic Circus from January 7 to 21 and The Wizard Of Castle Magic from February 18 to March 4, both with financial assistance from the I Am Fund and Smile Foundation.
Now comes From Penny Arcadia To Pocklington Arts Centre. “When I moved into area, I’d already met Jon, and then got to know Jon and Pat really well. They became great family friends,” says Marshall.
Director Jon Marshall as the Ringmaster, showing his frustration with Steve Collison’s Clown in Magic Carpet Theatre’s Magic Circus
“The Pocklington Arts Centre building goes back to the 1700s, and it opened as a cinema in the 1930s. Jon bought the Ritz Cinema in 1981 and that’s when he started putting his collection of amusement machines in there.
“They lived in Westwood House, North Dalton, a big old house and grounds that Jon and Pat did up and lived there for some time. After Jon died, Pat continued to run the building, and she was determined it should not be turned into shops despite receiving various offers.”
Encouraged by Pocklington Town Council, Pat ran Penny Arcadia until 1996, when the last event was a September display of Jon Gresham’s magical props.
“It was a totally unique enterprise, collecting arcade music machines, which is a huge part of our culture,” says Marshall. “Jon’s interest had been sparked by being given a music box by Pat and he went on to become president of the British Music Box Society.
“At that time, the country was going into decimalisation and that meant many, many penny-operated music machines became redundant overnight, and that was perfect for Jon, who drove around the country as pier arcades were throwing them off the piers.
The late Jon Gresham with assorted penny arcade machines
“Some were acquired for free, some he paid for, and he amassed one of Europe’s largest collections. Much of it is still together in a collection, and no, not in America.”
After Jon died, Pat kept them in the outbuildings of Westwood House, for use at the Penny Arcadia. “She was a very astute businesswoman, continuing to run Penny Arcadia very well and Beverley Playhouse too, putting on such live shows as children’s theatre and plays,” says Marshall.
Tonight’s Zoom show will tap into the nostalgia emanating from the Gresham story. “Jon and Pat were huge characters in their own right with big personalities. He was a public schoolboy, who went to Oundle School, and his father ran a timber importers’ business in Hull with sawmills in Brough and Sheffield,” he says.
“Jon was destined to go into the family business, and though he didn’t do National Service for medical reasons, he said he wouldn’t be able to work for the family for at least two years as he should have been doing National Service, and so instead he trained as Europe’s youngest fire-eater, calling himself ‘Jon Gresham from Copenhagen’, as he thought being Scandinavian would add something to the act – and he was blond.
“He toured Europe but then his father said it was ‘now or never’ for him to join the timber business. He did so, but he’d made many great friends touring Europe, and so he also started to promote pantomimes in Harrogate, Scarborough and on the coast, such as Cinderella and Aladdin, appearing as a fire-eating genie in the shows, while working for the family.”
Jon Gresham was a “real dynamo”, in Marshall’s appraisal. “As well as all this going on, he’d do his fire-eating at music halls and on variety bills, and he could appear at fairgrounds, blowing fire in air outside the fairground to attract people inside to see the shows,” he says.
Jon Gresham: Billed as “The world’s youngest fire-eater from Copenhagen”
“He really got a taste for it and decided to open his own sideshow in 1956, The Robot Show, staged in one of the Corrigans’ buildings, as he knew the fairground family well and had become a friend.”
Jon Gresham continued to run the family business as managing director, Monday to Friday, but at weekends he was a sideshow showman and proprietor, spreading his time between 12 sites, among them Rhyl, Porthcawl, Great Yarmouth, Dreamland at Margate and Hull Fair.
From the Smallest Ironing Lady in the Country to the Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, Gresham’s sideshows were often elaborate, as well as curious. Annual accounts show he would have at least two girls, a manager and box-office manager per site.
Before marrying Jon Gresham, Pat had been an interior designer and colour consultant. “He used her skills for decorating the sideshows and the Penny Arcadia,” says Marshall.
“Pat also designed and decorated the captain and crew’s quarters for trawlers at Hull, when it was unheard of for a woman to do that.
The Headless Lady: One of Jon Gresham’s live illusion sideshows
“If a girl in the shows was suddenly taken away by the police, somebody had to take her place, so Pat always kept alert. ‘I never knew if I was going to be legless in Margate or headless in Scarborough,’ she once said.”
The Greshams travelled by pantechnicon van, an old vehicle painted purple and known affectionately as “Gertrude”. “The season would run from Whitsun to September, and they would tour their live illusion sideshows throughout that period,” says Marshall.
“The sideshows ran until 1969, when the problem was the resistance to prices going up from six pence and a shilling, but there was another problem too: the crowds going to the seaside resorts were declining in the face of the rise in package holidays, so you now had to rely on footfall on the day.
“It was all by chance, if people were walking by in the daytime or in the evening after the meal at the digs. He would send out the Headless Lady to pique their interest. By then two thirds of the business was on Sundays; Saturday was change-over day, and Sunday was the peak day, running from 10am to 10pm.”
Showman Marshall has since restored some of the sideshows to take them out to festivals to entertain new audiences. “Normally I’d be doing it from April/May to September, but alas we’ve not been out since Derby Feste in September 2019, though we’re hoping we may be able to go out again in 2022,” he says.
Jon and Pat Gresham with their daughter Lindsey at Penny Arcadia, now Pocklington Arts Centre
Marshall’s decision to revive sideshows began with a conversation at a dinner with Pat Gresham. “We thought, ‘wouldn’t it be fun to restore a sideshow for a Magic Circle dinner?’,” he recalls.
“We found the gaudy frontispiece to The Flash with slogans and the picture to entice people in: ‘It’s not the show that gets the dough. It’s The Flash that gets the cash’, it said, and we were off and running.”
Jon Gresham’s sideshows had been in storage from 1969 to 2004 in outbuildings at Westwood House. “They’d been moved around, there’d been pigeons and rats, and nothing was in any order or visible, frankly.
“So, it was out with the rubber gloves to start a detective hunt, and that’s when we found The Flash frontispiece and, by a stroke of luck, the goldfish bowl, alas with cracks in it, from the Girl in the Goldfish Bowl.
“They’re like the ones you see in cartons, and they’re hard to find now, but luckily with some acrylic we’ve been able to mend it and make it watertight.”
The late Pat Gresham. “She was an enormous help to us in our research, as the Greshams never threw anything away in terms of records,” says John Marshall
Marshall has restored seven shows in all now, comparing the experience of finding the Gresham show stock to British archaeologist Howard Carter locating King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. “Because they had been painted in the 1950s with layers of varnish to protect against the sea salt, we had very little restoration to do,” he says.
“Pat was an enormous help to us in our research, as the Greshams never threw anything away in terms of records. Jon left his memoirs and there’s a biography with a chapter by Pat [who died in 2019] and a contribution by Professor Eddie Dawes, the Yorkshire magician and biochemist [who founded the University of Hull’s biochemistry department].
“I’ve written a chapter on the Penny Arcadia and on Jon’s straitjacket, which went to an escapologist called Danny Hunt, and his fire-eating equipment, which is still being used by Tom Cockerill, who has re-created the act for the International Brotherhood of Magicians Convention, performing the original acts with that original equipment.”
The biography, Jon Gresham: The Life And Adventures Of A Sideshow Showman, is available on Amazon and eBay and from Pocklington Arts Centre too, and more information on the revived sideshows can be found at sideshowillusions.com, with details soon to be added on the 2022 season.
Tickets for tonight’s Zoom illustrated talk cost £5 at: ticketing.eu.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=5c398sshg8x6xjr7k9mw32dvr8
POCKLINGTON Arts Centre has confirmed its first live shows since Tom Rosenthal’s Manhood comedy gig on March 14 last year.
The East Yorkshire venue, in Market Place, Pocklington, has been closed to the public since March 17 2020 but comedian Omid Djalili is to perform twice on Thursday, July 22.
Significantly too, those 7pm and 9pm performances will be without social-distancing measures.
British-Iranian comedian, actor, television producer, presenter, voice actor and writer Djalili, 55, originally had been booked for July’s now-cancelled Platform Festival at the Old Station, Pocklington.
When Pocklington Arts Centre’s festival organisers, director Janet Farmer and venue manager James Duffy, decided not to stage the large-scale indoor festival under the continuing pandemic cloud, award-winning Djalili agreed to do two shows in one night at PAC to ensure all those who had purchased tickets for the festival gig would not miss out.
Pundemonium: Gary Delaney promises oodles of one-liners in his new show next year
Janet says: “We’re over the moon that despite having to change our plans for putting on a full-scale Platform Festival this year, Omid Djalili will perform at PAC twice in one night, and those performances will be non-socially distanced.
“In the event of Covid restrictions being reintroduced, we will let customers know in advance.”
Djalili’s comedy is at once intelligent, provocative, boundlessly energetic and rooted in cultural observations, wherein he explores the diversity of modern Britain.
Tickets for the original event at Platform Festival remain valid and any ticket holder needing further information should contact the box office. Remaining tickets for the new shows cost £25 at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Looking ahead, Janet says: “We have some outstanding live comedy lined up as part of our forthcoming live events programme, and Omid is the perfect addition to this.
“We have more exciting announcement coming up and we cannot wait to be able to bring our audiences some incredible live shows once again.”
What’s on for Watson? A third show for Mark Watson at Pocklington Arts Centre next February after earlier visits in 2016 and 2019
Newly in the PAC diary for 2022 are two more comedy shows: Mark Watson on February 12 and Gary Delaney on May 26 on his newly extended Gary In Punderland tour.
Bristol stand-up comedian, novelist and sports pundit Watson, 41, will be completing a hattrick of Pock appearances, prompting Janet to say: “It will be an absolute joy to welcome Mark Watson back to the venue, having had him perform live here in 2016 and again in 2019.
“After the year we’ve just had, I think we could all do with some laughter, so Mark is the perfect addition to our forthcoming programme of live comedy.”
In the ever-innovative Watson’s latest show, spiritual enquiry will meet high-octane observational comedy as the Taskmaster survivor and No More Jockeys cult leader attempts to cram a couple of years of pathological overthinking into an evening of stand-up.
Watson has made his Mark not only on Taskmaster but also on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Have I Got News For You and emerged safely from his Celebrity Island experience with Bear Grylls.
Stream team: Compere Tim FitzHigham, left, and comedian Mark Watson in their living rooms for the first Your Place Comedy online show
During the first lockdown last year, Watson was part of the first double bill for Your Place Comedy, the virtual comedy club set up to support independent venues across the Yorkshire and Humber region, including PAC.
On April 19 2020, a pyjama-clad Watson and Hull humorist Lucy Beaumont performed live online from their homes, in his case, in the living room, in hers, down the pub, The Dog And B**tard, that she and fellow comedian husband Jon Richardson have set up in their Hebden Bridge garden.
In Gary In Punterland, longstanding Mock The Week guest Gary Delaney will “dive into a rabbit hole of the best jokes in the world”.
Delaney’s last tour was extended four times, eventually playing more than 200 venues. For the follow-up, apparently Delaney has been through the laughing glass, re-emerging to deliver a new show tooled with punch after punch of knock-out one-liners.
Janet says: “We’re delighted to announce that Gary Delaney will be bringing his new show to our stage next year as part of our live events programme that we can’t wait to resume, welcoming everyone back and having our auditorium filled with laughter once again.”
Tickets for Watson and Delaney’s 8pm shows each cost £20 at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk; seetickets.co.uk are selling Watson tickets too.
Holy Moly & The Crackers: “Always putting on such an energetic, vivacious show”
FIERY gypsy folk’n’rollers Holy Moly & The Crackers will return to Pocklington Arts Centre on October 16 as the East Yorkshire venue “excitedly resumes its live events”.
The North Yorkshire and Newcastle band are noted for sparking up a raucous, feelgood party atmosphere at their blazing live shows, built on soul, rock indie and Balkan folk.
Pocklington Arts Centre director Janet Farmer says: “Holy Moly & The Crackers always put on such an energetic, vivacious show, featuring their unique sound that has our audiences foot stomping and dancing in the aisles, so we can’t wait to welcome them back after their sold-out show back in February 2019.”
The band formed in 2011 almost by mistake, when singer, guitarist and trumpet player Conrad Bird, fellow singer and violinist Ruth Patterson and costume designer and accordion player Rosie Bristow met at a house party in Leamington Spa, of all places, in their late teens.
Enamoured by Rosie’s party-prop accordion, the three decided to start playing music together, mainly stomping Irish, American and Balkan folk and drinking songs at open mics and dive bars, as an alternative to Smack, Leamington’s main student club that provided the only other option for a night out.
After moving north, the founders were joined by jazz/funk bass player Jamie Shields and drummer Tommy Evans in 2015, when they released the single A Punk Called Peter, a “sort of New Orleans funeral march mixed with some fine and highly danceable reggae”.
Holy Moly & The Crackers’ artwork for Take A Bite, their 2019 album
Second album Salem marked the 2017 launch of their own label, Pink Lane Records, and a heightened profile for the band after lead single Cold Comfort Lane was picked up by Hollywood producers to turbo-boost the stick-it-to-the-man comedy crime caper Ocean’s 8 in 2018.
Classically trained but psychedelic and DIY punk-inspired guitarist Nick Tyler came on board that year to add to The Crackers’ grunt and diesel power.
Reuniting with Salem producer Matt Terry, they recorded swaggering third album Take A Bite in 2019, once again at Vada Studios, built in a 1260 chapel near Alcester on the Warwickshire /Worcestershire border.
“Apparently it’s called Vada Studios because the owner is obsessed with Star Wars’ Darth Vader,” says Conrad, whose band stayed in one of the outhouses.
Teaming up with Terry for a second time proved fruitful. “He’s worked with bands like The Prodigy and The Enemy and he has really good ideas for pop sensibilities,” says Conrad. “I was always against ‘pop’, but there’s a real skill to it. There was a chance for us to go with another producer, but we felt we could do more with Matt to develop our sound.”
Whereupon The Crackers hit the road in full throttle, joining shanty punks Skinny Lister on tour around Europe, before appearing at more than 30 festivals and undertaking a victorious headline lap of the UK, culminating in selling out their biggest show to date at Sage Gateshead on the banks of the Tyne. Ruth and Conrad tied the knot that busy year too.
2020 saw the band blasting out of the blocks with the single Road To You, “a shot of espresso that comes loaded and ready to work in a short, sharp shock”. Twenty-seven dates across ten countries should have added up to their biggest European tour to date, to go with support slots for fan Frank Turner across France and Germany and a return to Glastonbury for its 50th anniversary, but we all know what happened next.
Tickets for Holy Moly & The Crackers’ 8pm gig cost £20 at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Tom Rosenthal: The last show at Pocklington Arts Centre before the first lockdown last March
POCKLINGTON Arts Centre (PAC) has been closed to the public since March 17 2020, curtailing that year’s 20th anniversary celebrations after comedian Tom Rosenthal’s Manhood show on March 14, but the venue will “hopefully be re-opening our doors this summer”.
Watch this space for further updates, but already director Janet Farmer and venue manager James Duffy have confirmed that the PAC-programmed Platform Festival at the Old Station, Pocklington, has been called off for a second successive summer.
Festival shows by the likes of comedian Omid Djalili, Richard Thompson and Shed Seven duo Rick Witter and Paul Banks in acoustic mode initially had been moved from 2020 to 2021, although former Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant’s Saving Grace acoustic gig with fellow vocalist Suzi Dian never had a new Platform date set in place.
“Robert hasn’t rescheduled any of his 2020 shows, originally because he was recording with Alison Krauss in Nashville,” says James.
“We looked into moving Richard Thompson’s date too, but he’s cancelled his plans because amid the continuing uncertainty over Covid, he’s not sure where he would stand, what with being based in the United States.”
More details are yet to be confirmed, but Pocklington Arts Centre is contemplating reopening with a film programme from July 2, followed by the full reopening in September, with greater clarity once the Government roadmap is rubber-stamped.
Velma Celli: Drag diva to play Pocklington Arts Centre in December
“It will be a slow re-start at first to restore audience confidence in coming to PAC, and film is a good way of doing that,” says Janet. “With films, you naturally socially distance to get the best view.
“But that’s why we couldn’t go ahead with the Platform Festival, because there are still uncertainties and it made sense to call it off.”
Plans are afoot instead for Primrose Wood Acoustic, a short series of outdoor shows in a 60 to 70-capacity woodland setting at Primrose Wood, Pocklington, in early July. Two shows are pencilled in for PAC in July too, subject to the Government’s Covid statements. Again, watch this space for more info as and when.
Within PAC, the lavatories have been refurbished and upgraded; air-purifying units to increase air flow are being installed around the building; a Covid-secure screen is in place at the box office, and such Covid measures as an app for ordering drinks, anti-bacteria spray “foggers” and hand-sanitising stations will be the way forward.
The frustrating year of lockdown x 3 has kept Janet and James busy rearranging concerts by, for example, The Felice Brothers and Courtney Marie Andrews three times and New Yorker Jesse Malin twice.
The management duo have been working their way through 20 years of paper work in the attics and have set up a beehive on the flat roof as part of a PAC environmentally friendly package.
So, now there is a buzz about the place in more ways than one, and on the Pocklington horizon is a theatrical ghost-walk promenade, commissioned from Magic Carpet Theatre founder Jon Marshall for the dark nights of November before the December dazzle of glam cabaret supreme in the company of York drag diva deluxe Velma Celli (date TBC).
Maggie Fox, left, and Sue Ryding in a scene from LipService Theatre’s Withering Looks
POCKLINGTON Arts Centre favourites LipService Theatre will present a special live stream of their savvy yet delightfully silly Bronte sisters spoof Withering Looks tomorrow night (22/4/2021).
Forming part of the still-closed East Yorkshire venue’s ongoing series of online events during the pandemic lockdowns, the 7.30pm streaming will be introduced on Zoom by LipService duo Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding.
They will conduct a live question-and-answer session too at the finale. “We’ll either be on Maggie’s sofa or mine, with some no doubt very interesting photographs behind us!” says Sue.
Tickets are selling fast with customers from far and wide – including Belgium – snapping them up.
Dubbed “the Laurel and Hardy of literary deconstruction” by the Guardian, LipService have visited Pocklington Arts Centre regularly, and when pandemic restrictions put a cross through their latest return, they settled on tomorrow’s stream instead.
“We’re doing this live stream specially for Pocklington Arts Centre, who had booked us to perform Withering Looks as part of their grand celebrations for their 20th anniversary last year, when obviously we couldn’t do it,” says Sue.
For the uninitiated in the Lip Service world of affectionate parody and pastiche, Withering Looks explores a day in the life of the Bronte sisters. “Well, two of them, Anne’s just popped out for a cup of sugar,” say the duo. “And in true David Attenborough style there’ll be additional footage, going behind the scenes of the making of the show.”
Commissioned by the Bronte Parsonage Museum, the filmed performance by “Britain’s favourite literary lunatics” was recorded by Maggie, from York, and Sue, from the other side of the Pennines, at the Bronte family’s home at Haworth, West Yorkshire.
Scenes from Withering Looks filmed “in the actual parsonage where the Bronte sisters wrote their actual books actually” will be complemented by additional material by Maggie and Sue recorded in and around Haworth village and on the wild and windswept moors in sub-zero temperatures.
“We made the recording three years ago in January, when the Parsonage was closed for cleaning, so we could do the filming,” says Sue. “That’s when we also filmed some scenes on the moors…in a blizzard. It was freezing! I think we nearly died! I’ve never been so cold!”
Maggie recalls the filming sessions: “We worked with a wonderful crew, with Noreen Kershaw directing us. She got a fantastic team together with the floor manager from The Teletubbies, the soundman from The Night Manager, and a brilliant cameraman, who did documentaries outdoors with Billy Connolly, so he was used to the cold.”
Maggie and Sue first met as drama students at Bristol University in a “very serious Henrik Ibsen production that had the audience on the floor laughing”. A tragedy for Ibsen nevertheless turned out to be the launching pad to a very long partnership in satirical comedy.
Lip Service’s promotional image for their digital performances of Chateau Ghoul in lockdown
Forming LipService in Manchester in 1985, Maggie and Sue have chalked up 22 original comedies from a distinctly female perspective, as well as series for BBC Radio and tours of Germany, Eastern Europe, the United States and Pakistan, over the past 35 years.
Not everyone has appreciated their comic tone. “We did a ‘very controversial’ production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest, when someone asked: ‘Who thought this was a good idea, with all the cross-dressing and the underlying scandal that was going on among the actors?’,” says Maggie.
LipService are keeping busy, despite the hiatus in live performances. “We should be on tour with our new show, a farce set in a hotel called Chateau Ghoul, but we’ll now be doing that tour this autumn,” says Sue. “In the meantime, while venues remain closed, we’ve being down live stuff on Zoom to keep our audiences involved, offering an interactive digital performance, with the invitation for people to make origami windmills.”
Maggie adds: “We’ve had lovely feedback, with people saying how much they’re enjoying see us close up for about 50 per cent of the show. But it is quite disconcerting seeing people with their ‘computer face’ on. That neutral face, where you think, ‘Do they hate us?’. It’s weird for us getting familiar with seeing them so close up!
“Doing a digital performance is a new way of performing for us, and we’ve really enjoyed it, because it means we can perform ‘live’, but we can have a different relationship with our audience, chatting with them beforehand, where they’ll tell us on the stream where they’re watching from, or what they’ve had for dinner…”
…“Or we can pick on people for the quality of their origami!” says Sue. “But what’s been interesting is that we’ve had an international response, with people watching from Belgium, Oklahoma and San Francisco.”
What next? “We’ve been thinking about turning our Sherlock Holmes show into an interactive murder mystery, using the material in a different way for a streamed show,” says Maggie.
Above all, they long for a return to taking to the stage. “I really, really miss loading the van, driving to venues, looking around towns – like going to York Minster – doing the shows and hoping there’s a bar open afterwards,” says Sue.
Meanwhile, what about those ticket holders from Belgium, Luc and Hilde Verstraeten-Mariën, who will Zoom into the PAC show after their plans to catch LipService live were thwarted by the pandemic?
“We were excited to hear that Lip Service had created Zoom performances,” say Luc and Hilde. “We’ve just watched Château Ghoul and it made our day! We really enjoyed the show: it was funny, cheeky, and mad. We enjoyed the interactive part of it and we thought they made clever and creative use of Zoom. We kept giggling for the rest of the evening!
“We are looking forward to more of the same: refreshingly funny, intelligently witty and slightly mad at the same time, highly creative, high-standard comedy with a twist by two fabulous women.”
Tickets for Withering Looks cost £15 at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding in LipService Theatre’s literary spoof of the writerly Bronte sisters, Withering Looks
POCKLINGTON Arts Centre favourites LipService Theatre will present a special live stream of their savvy yet delightfully silly Bronte sisters spoof Withering Looks on April 22.
Forming part of the still-closed East Yorkshire venue’s ongoing series of online events during the pandemic lockdowns, the 7.30pm streaming will be introduced on Zoom by LipService duo Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding, who will conduct a live question-and-answer session too at the finale.
Tickets are selling fast with customers form far and wide – including Belgium – snapping them up.
Commissioned by the Bronte Parsonage Museum, the filmed performance by “Britain’s favourite literary lunatics” was recorded by Maggie and Sue at the Bronte family’s home at Haworth, West Yorkshire.
Scenes from Withering Looks filmed “in the actual parsonage where the Bronte sisters wrote their actual books actually” will be complemented by additional material recorded in and around Haworth village and on the wild and windswept moors in sub-zero temperatures.
“Withering Looks explores a day in the life of the Bronte sisters (well two of them, Anne’s just popped out for a cup of sugar) and in true David Attenborough style there will be additional footage going behind the scenes of the making of the show,” promise the duo.
Maggie, from York, and Sue, from t’other side of the Pennines, first met as drama students at Bristol University in a “very serious Henrik Ibsen production that had the audience on the floor laughing”.
A tragedy for Ibsen nevertheless turned out to be the launching pad to a very long partnership in satirical comedy, as the duo recall. Forming LipService in Manchester in 1985, Maggie and Sue have chalked up 22 original comedies from a distinctly female perspective, as well as series for BBC Radio and tours of Germany, Eastern Europe, the United States and Pakistan, over the past 35 years.
Dubbed “the Laurel and Hardy of literary deconstruction” by the Guardian, LipService have visited Pocklington Arts Centre regularly. PAC director Janet Farmer says: “I’m absolutely delighted to have LipService returning to our live events programme, albeit this time virtually.
“PAC has a longstanding relationship with the company, with Maggie and Sue selling out numerous performances in recent years with their unique theatrical style and infectious enthusiasm.
“I, along with fellow PAC staff members, will be attending the performance and this will be the first time the venue has had direct interaction with its audience members, at an event, in over a year.”
Meanwhile, what about those ticket holders from Belgium, Luc and Hilde Verstraeten-Mariën, who will Zoom into the PAC show after their plans to catch LipService live were thwarted by the pandemic?
“We were excited to hear that Lip Service had created Zoom performances,” say Luc and Hilde. “We’ve just watched Château Ghoul and it made our day! We really enjoyed the show: it was funny, cheeky, and mad. We enjoyed the interactive part of it and we thought they made clever and creative use of Zoom. We kept giggling for the rest of the evening!
“We are looking forward to more of the same: refreshingly funny, intelligently witty and slightly mad at the same time, highly creative, high-standard comedy with a twist by two fabulous women.”
Tickets for Withering Looks cost £15 at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
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.
AFTER years of speculation, much-loved English folk duo Spiers & Boden are back together, working on new material and bringing a live show to Pocklington Arts Centre (PAC) this autumn.
John Spiers, 46, and Jon Boden, 44, former leading lights of big folk band Bellowhead, will perform in Pock on Wednesday, October 20.
PAC director Janet Farmer says: “Spiers & Boden are a fantastic addition to our live events programme, and the fact that Pocklington Arts Centre will be one of their first live dates after they re-formed as a duo, following a hiatus of several years, is just incredible. Tickets have only just gone on sale and are already selling fast.
“We cannot wait to welcome this talented duo, and of course our wonderful audience, through our doors for what will be an utterly brilliant night of world–class live music.”
Forming a folk duo in 2001, Spiers & Boden won a clutch of BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards: the Horizon Award for Best Newcomerin 2003 and the Best Duo Award in 2004 and 2006.
A sojourn in Eliza Carthy & The Ratcatchers included a performance at the Mercury Music Prize Awards. After years of touring, in 2011 they headlined their own star-studded show at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire to celebrate their tenth anniversary.
Bellowhead: Boden and Spiers’ 11-piece folk big band
Meanwhile, they had built on their early success as a duo to found the ground-breaking folk big band Bellowhead, going on to achieve Royal Albert Hall sell-outs, Proms In The Park successes, multiple awards, signing to Universal Records en route to 250,000 album sales, and headlining PAC’s Platform Festival at The Old Station, Pocklington, in July 2015.
Inevitably, Bellowhead increasingly dominated their time and in 2014 Spiers & Boden made the tough decision to rest the duo, with Bellowhead bowing out two years later.
Since then, Boden has carved out a career as both a solo performer and with his own band, Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings, while continuing to work on his creative trilogy of albums exploring a post-apocalyptic world and his work writing music for theatre. On November 6 2017, he launched his album Afterglow with a solo gig at Pocklington Arts Centre.
Melodeon player Spiers formed performance collaborations with fiddler Peter Knight, of Steeleye Span and Feast Of Fiddles, and separately folk singer and fiddler Jackie Oates.
He is a member too of the Gigspanner Big Band, with Knight, percussionist Sacha Trochet, guitarist Roger Flack and the multi-instrumental Edgelarks duo of Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin.
What an autumn week this is shaping up to be at PAC: Irish chanteuse Mary Coughlan on October 19, Spiers & Boden, October 20, and Texas-born singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman on October 23. Tickets for Spiers & Boden’s 8pm Pocklington concert cost £20 at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Jon Marshall, of Magic Carpet Theatre and the Inner Magic Circle, who will present a live online talk on the history of the building now known as Pocklington Arts Centre
FROM Penny Arcadia To Pocklington Arts Centre, the story behind the historic Market Place venue, will be told by magician and performer Jon Marshall in an online event on May 4.
Pocklington Arts Centre (PAC) has been staging events for more than 20 years, but should you be wondering what the Grade II listed building was once used for and how it came to be the award-winning arts hub it is today, Jon has the answers.
Tales of fire-eaters, magicians and amusements all will feature in the 7.30pm illustrated talk as Jon, director and performer with Hull company Magic Carpet Theatre, takes his audience on a trip down memory lane, delving into the origins of the building formerly known as Oak House, dating back to the 1700s.
“The talk promises to be a fascinating and entertaining online event unveiling the story behind the building from doctor’s house, to cinema, and museum housing Europe’s largest collection of amusement machines, to East Yorkshire’s premier arts venue,” says PAC director Janet Farmer.
Jon, a member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star, promises a fascinating and entertaining evening, replete with tales of former owners of the building Jon and Pat Gresham.
From Penny Arcadia To Pocklington Arts Centre: Jon Marshall’s online audience will hear tales of the Gresham family, who once owned the historic venue. Pictured are Pat and Jon Gresham with their son Maxwell
“They were larger-than-life local characters, cinema proprietors and museum curators,” he says. “All will be revealed about the exploits and colourful adventures of Jon, who was once a magician, fire-eater, pantomime promoter and sideshow showman.
“The audience will also hear about Pat, who was determined that when the Penny Arcadia closed, the building should not become yet another retail unit but instead should provide entertainment and a service to the people of Pocklington and the surrounding area.
“I had the privilege of knowing the Gresham family for over 50 years, so participants will be able to see many previously unpublished photographs and images from over the years.”
Jon’s company Magic Carpet Theatre are regular performers at PAC and last October they recorded two shows there for streaming for free on PAC’s YouTube channel: Magic Circus from January 7 to 21 and The Wizard Of Castle Magic from February 18 to March 4, both with financial assistance from the I Am Fund and Smile Foundation.
From Penny Arcadia To Pocklington Arts Centre will take place live on Zoom. Tickets go on sale at £5 each at 10am tomorrow (1/4/2021) at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
To keep up to date with all of PAC’s planned online and live events, follow PAC on Facebook @pocklingtonartscentre, Instagram @pocklingtonartscentre and twitter @PocklingtonArts.
Director Jon Marshall as the Ringmaster, showing his frustration with Steve Collison’s Clown in Magic Carpet Theatre’s Magic Circus
Becky Gee, curator of Fine Art at York Art Gallery, with Michael Lyons’ 1993 sculpture Amphitrite in the Artists Garden in May 2019. Picture: Charlotte Graham
ONLINE entertainment is still ruling the Stay Home world, but more promoters are announcing shows for the summer as the recovery roadmap begins to twitch our cultural satnav. Charles Hutchinson reaches for his diary.
Last chance to see: Michael Lyons’ Ancient And Modern sculptures, York Art Gallery Artists Garden and Edible Wood
THE free display of large-scale works by late Cawood sculptor Michael Lyons behind York Art Gallery will close on April 11.
On show in his biggest ever exhibition on York soil are nine sculptures created between 1982 and 2000, inspired by nature, myth and ancient cultures, with the central space dominated by Amphitrite, a large painted steel structure evoking the sea that he fashioned in 1993.
Opened in late-May 2019, Ancient And Modern originally was booked to run until May 2020, but has remained in place through these pandemic times.
Caroline Gruber as Vashti in E M Forster’s The Machine Stops, now starting up again in a York Theatre Royal and Pilot Theatre webcast. Picture: Ben Bentley
Recommended resonant webcast of the week and beyond: The Machine Stops online
YORK Theatre Royal and Pilot Theatre’s 2016 co-production of The Machine Stops can be watched at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/show/the-machine-stops-webcast/ until April 5.
Adapted for the stage by Neil Duffield, E M Forster’s 1909 short story is set in a futuristic, dystopian world where humans have retreated far underground and individuals live in isolation in “cells”, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine.
Director Juliet Forster says: “It’s even more striking today than it was at the time we staged it: things like human contact and human touch becoming something that’s almost taboo, things that didn’t seem relevant back in 2016 but are really, really striking and even more relevant now.”
Ensemble Augelletti: Recording for the Awaken online weekend at the National Centre for Early Music, York
Springtime celebration of music online: Awaken, National Centre for Early Music, York, Saturday and Sunday
THE NCEM’s Awaken weekend will present York countertenor Iestyn Davies and Fretwork, the all-male vocal group The Gesualdo Six, I Fagiolini and the English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble, Ensemble Augelletti and The Consone Quartet.
The six-pack of online festivities will celebrate the sublime sounds of spring, recorded in a range of historic venues to mark “the unique association between the City of York and the exquisite beauty of the music of the past”.
Among the architectural gems will be Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, St Olave’s Church, Marygate, the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall and the NCEM. Full details can be found at ncem.co.uk/awaken.
Becky Lennon and Jules Risingham: Ready to host Thunk-It Theatre’s online youth theatre sessions
Online youth theatre opportunity: Thunk-It Theatre sessions with Pocklington Arts Centre
POCKLINGTON Arts Centre’s youth theatre partnership with York company Thunk-It Theatre is to continue for a second series of online drama classes.
Becky Lennon and Jules Risingham’s all-levels drama sessions for children aged six to 11 will be held on Zoom every Sunday during term-time from April 25 to May 30.
The 10am to 11am sessions for Years 2 to 6 children will include fun games, exercises and storytelling, aiming to encourage confidence building, life and social skills, creativity and positivity. Participants will work collaboratively to create a short performance that will explore storytelling. To book, go to pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Abba Mania: Booked for Sounds In The Grounds at York Racecourse
Live music returns to Knavesmire: Sounds In The Grounds at Clocktower Enclosure, York Racecourse, June 25 to 27
NORTH Yorkshire impresario James Cundall’s Sounds In The Grounds is adding a new location to its picnic-concert portfolio for summer 2021.
Complying with Covid-19 guidelines, the Clocktower Enclosure of York Racecourse will play host to the Beyond The Barricade celebration of musicals on June 25, Abba Mania on June 26 and A Country Night In Nashville on June 27.
The capacity will be capped at 1,400 for the fully staged productions with LED screens on either side of the stage. Tickets are on sale at: soundsinthegrounds.seetickets.com.
Paul Winn: Co-organiser of the 2nd York Blues Festival in July
Here comes a dose of the blues: York Blues Festival, July 24, 12.30pm to 11pm
THE 2nd York Blues Festival will be held on Saturday, July 24 at The Crescent Community Venue, York, organised by Paul Winn and Ben Darwin.
No strangers to the British Blues scene, they present Blues From The Ouse on Jorvik Radio and are members of York band DC Blues.
Winn and Darwin have booked a bill of Robbie Reay; The Swamp Hoppers; Dori & The Outlaws; John Carroll; Dr Bob & The Bluesmakers; DC Blues and Nick Steed Five. Tickets are on sale at yorkbluesfestival.co.uk, thecrescentyork.com and earwormrecords.co.uk.
Racing cert: Shed Seven will ride out at Doncaster Racecourse next May after moving post-racing gig…again
Sheds on the move…again: Shed Seven, Live After Racing, Doncaster Racecourse, May 14 2022
YORK heroes Shed Seven’s twice-postponed post-racing gig at Doncaster Racecourse will come under starter’s orders on May 14 202.
First diarised for August 15 2020, then May 15 this spring, each show was declared a non-runner under the Government’s pandemic lockdown restrictions.
Let Donny Races wax lyrical: “So don’t have your friends asking ‘where have you been tonight?’ We have ‘high hopes’ that ‘the heroes’ Shed Seven will deliver an outstanding night of music. ‘It’s not easy’ but you’d be stuck to find a ‘better days’ entertainment in Doncaster next summer.” To book raceday tickets, go to: doncaster-racecourse.co.uk/whats-on/
Graham Gouldman, second from left, will be returning to York Barbican with 10cc
Gig announcement of the week: 10cc, York Barbican, March 26 2022
10cc will play York Barbican next spring in the only Yorkshire show of their 13-date Ultimate Greatest Hits Tour.
“It’s difficult to express just how much we have missed playing live and how much we want to be back playing concerts for you,” says Graham Gouldman, the one group founder still in the touring line-up. “We look forward to seeing you all again in 2022.”
Tickets are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk and ticketline.co.uk.
