Gray O’Brien as “retired” inspector John Rebus in Rebus: A Game Called Malice
SCOTTISH crime author Sir Ian Rankin has been writing about “this guy Rebus” since 1985.
The first book was published in 1987; the latest, Midnight And Blue, arrived last Thursday. “I’ve spent more than half my life with him. I still don’t quite know what makes him tick. I keep writing about him to get to the core of his identity,” he says.
Rankin has harboured thoughts of bumping off his gnarly Edinburgh inspector, but he reckons Rebus will tell him when it’s time to hand in his badge. Not this year, it would seem, what with the BBC television series, then the play and the book.
It turns out Rebus has done the quitting bit already after 30 years in A Game Called Malice. He has retired from Police Scotland, he tells his fellow guests at a swanky dinner party in Heriot Row, one of those plush, high-ceiling Edinburgh town houses full of “art, books and fancy pictures”. Terry Parsons’ stylish design more than does it justice, filled with paintings.
Brought to the party by lawyer Stephanie Jeffries (Abigail Thaw, a familiar face from Endeavour), Gray O’Brien’s John Rebus looks a little incongruous at such a gathering.
Standing at the back, observing, listening, suited and booted but tie undone, he is reading the room, not the room reading him, he later tells us, in one of those waspish, whiplash monologues that would be a voiceover on screen but has the added impact of breaking theatre’s fourth wall here.
In the kitchen, never seen, is a fancy-dan chef, hired for the night to let party hostess Harriet Godwin (Teresa Banham) focus on hosting the murder mystery game she has invented. It turns out, of course it does, that in playing the game, the guests expose secrets, fallible character traits, of their own.
Rebus is the only one who never leaves the room at any point, for a fag, a phonecall or whatever, so when casino boss Paul Godwin (Neil McKinven) discovers a bloodied body in an en-suite bathroom, while having a nosey upstairs, all fall under Rebus’s suspicion, as he laconically returns to detective duty with that familiarly unnerving manner.
Who’s dead? That would be telling, and besides, Rankin and co-writer Simon Reade do their stage business so briskly, so smartly, we are all heading home by 9.15pm, case solved, Rebus’s droll epilogue sending us on our way.
The murderer? Was it Harriet, always on edge, or Stephanie, whose past is not without unfortunate blemish? Or Godwin, one of those business types who gives to charity, likes to wear bespoke suits that speak far too loudly, and skates very close to the edge of the law.
Or maybe Godwin’s savvy young belle (Jade Kennedy), an influencer on social media, forever tapping away, who may run too close to the wind. Or Harriet’s partner, Jack Fleming (Billy Hartman), no replacement for late husband Callum, and doesn’t he know it.
Loveday Ingram’s direction, playful, dry witted and suspenseful, matches the pace, humour and intrigue of Rankin and Read’s dialogue, her cast delivering good performances all round.
O’Brien, who caught the eye as Juror 7 in Twelve Angry Men at the Grand Opera House earlier this year, has exactly the right hangdog air for Rebus, always stirring, playing his own game by his own rules in pursuit of the truth. Welcome back; that retirement was never going to last
Rebus: A Game Called Malice, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
UPDATE, 18/10/2024:Author Ian Rankin will take part in Friday’s post-show discussion with company members. Earlier in the day, sometime between 3pm and 6pm, he will be popping into Criminally Good Books, in Colliergate, to promote his October 10 novel, Midnight And Blue.
DEL Boy in a musical, a Dungeon murderess, a Greek teen tragedy and a top-Rankin Scottish detective are well worth investigating, advises Charles Hutchinson.
New attraction of the week: The Black Widow, York Dungeon, Clifford Street, York, from today, from 10am
THIS Hallowe’en season’s new show at York Dungeon opens today. Be prepared to encounter the grim tale of Britain’s first female serial killer: Mary Ann Cotton.
A north easterner with a propensity for lacing tea with a drop of arsenic, the Black Widow was convicted of only one murder but is believed to have killed many others, including 11 of her 13 children, and three of her four husbands. Box office: thedungeons.com/york/tickets-passes/. Pre-booking is essential.
Jude Kelly: Striving for a gender-equal world in The WOW Show
The WOW factor: The WOW Show with Jude Kelly, York Theatre Royal, tomorrow, 7.30pm
WOMEN of the World founder, chief executive officer and theatre director Jude Kelly CBE was director of West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, from 1990 to 2002 and London’s Southbank Centre from 2006 to 2018 and set up the WOW Foundation charity in 2010 to achieve a gender-equal world.
In an evening of optimism, determination and laughter, she explores “our often exasperating and confusing journey towards gender equity, covering everything from money, sex, race, food, and ageing”. Expect personal anecdotes, guests and big ideas. “The message is: If you are a woman or you know a woman, please show up!” says Jude. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Sam Lupton: Playing Del Boy in Only Fools And Horses The Musical at the Grand Opera House, York
“Plonker” musical of the week: Only Fools And Horses The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, October 14 to 19, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees
BASED on John Sullivan’s long-running BBC One series, his son Jim Sullivan and comedy treasure Paul Whitehouse’s West End hit, Only Fools And Horses The Musical, combines 20 songs with an ingenious script.
“Join us as we take a trip back in time to 1989, where it’s all kicking off in Peckham,” reads the 2024-25 tour invitation. “While the yuppie invasion of London is in full swing, love is in the air as Del Boy sets out on the rocky road to find his soul mate, Rodney and Cassandra prepare to say ‘I do’, and even Trigger is gearing up for a date (with a person!). Meanwhile, Boycie and Marlene give parenthood one final shot and Grandad takes stock of his life and decides the time has finally arrived to get his piles sorted.” Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Gray O’Brien in the role of Inspector John Rebus in Rebus: A Game Called Malice at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Nobby Clark
Thriller of the week: Rebus: A Game Called Malice, York Theatre Royal, October 15 to 19, 7.30pm; 2pm, Wednesday, Thursday; 2.30pm, Saturday
SCOTTISH crime writer Ian Rankin’s much-loved detective, John Rebus, takes to the stage in a new storyco-written with Simon Reade. Gray O’Brien, from Coronation Street, Casualty and Peak Practice, plays Rebus in a cast also featuring Abigail Thaw and Billy Hartman.
When a splendid Edinburgh mansion dinner party concludes with a murder mystery game, suddenly a murder needs to be solved. However, guests have secrets of their own. Among them is Inspector John Rebus, but is he Is playing an alternative game, one to which only he knows the rules? Rankin will attend the October 18 post-show discussion with the cast. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Chris Mooney and Helen Spencer: Playing lovers with opposite takes on their relationship in The Last Five Years at the NCEM, York. Picture: Simon Trow
Debut of the week: Wharfemede Productions & Black Sheep Theatre Productions in The Last Five Years, National Centre for Early Music, St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, York, October 17 to 19, 7.45pm
HELEN Spencer and Nick Sephton launch their new York company, Wharfemede Productions, in tandem with Black Sheep Theatre Productions, by staging The Last Five Years, Jason Robert Brown’s musical story of two New Yorkers, rising novelist Jamie Wellerstein and struggling actress Cathy Hiatt, who fall in and out of love over the course of five years.
Combining only two cast members, York Theatre scene luminaries Chris Mooney and Spencer, with a small band, expect an intimate and emotive evening of frank storytelling and gorgeous music. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk/wharfemede-productions-ltd.
Alexander Flanagan-Wright in Helios, a modern take on an Ancient Greek myth, performed under the Great Hall dome at Castle Howard
Theatrical event of the week: Wright & Grainger in Helios, The Great Hall, Castle Howard, near York, October 17, 5pm and 7.30pm
A LAD lives halfway up an historic hill. A teenager is on a road trip to the city in a stolen car. A boy is driving a chariot, pulling the sun across the sky. In a play about the son of the god of the sun, Helios transplants the Ancient Greek tale into a modern-day myth wound round the winding roads of rural England and into the everyday living of a towering city.
“It’s a story about life, the invisible monuments we build to it, and the little things that leave big marks,” says writer-performer Alexander Flanagan-Wright, who presents his delicate tale with a tape-player beneath the Great Hall dome’s mural, painted by 18th century Venetian painter Antonio Pelligrini, whose depiction of the Fall of Phaeton was the thematic inspiration behind Helios. Box office: castlehoward.co.uk.
Squeeze: 50th anniversary celebrations at York Barbican
Recommended but sold out already: Squeeze, York Barbican, October 18, doors 7pm
DEPTFORD’S answer to The Beatles mark their 50th anniversary as Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook manage to Squeeze in hit after hit, like pulling musses from a shell. Don’t miss the support act, one Badly Drawn Boy.
Strictly between us: Husband-and-wife dancers Aljaž Škorjanec and Janette Manrara look forward to A Night To Remember at York Barbican next June
Show announcement of the week: Aljaž Škorjanec and Janette Manrara: A Night To Remember, York Barbican, June 1 2025
STRICTLY Come Dancing favourites Aljaž Škorjanec and Janette Manrara – married since 2017 – will be touring next year with A Night To Remember, featuring an ensemble of “some of the UK’s very best dancers and singers”.
Aljaž, partnering Tasha Ghouri in the 2024 series, and It takes Two presenter Janette will “perform stunning routines to an eclectic array of music”, spanning the Great American songbook through to modern-day classics, backed by their own big band, fronted by boogie- woogie star Tom Seal. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk/whats-on/aljaz-and-janette-a-night-to-remember.
In Focus: Black Treacle Theatre in Accidental Death Of An Anarchist, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Oct 15 to 19
Superintendent Curry (Chris Pomfrett) and DI Daisy (Adam Sowter) are pushed to the edge by The Maniac (Andrew Isherwood), when they are surprised in Accidental Death Of An Anarchist. Picture: John Saunders
BENT police and politics come under fire in York company Black Treacle Theatre’s provocative production of Dario Fo’s uproarious farce Accidental Death Of An Anarchist next week.
In a new adaptation by Tom Basden, creator of Plebs and Here We Go, the setting is updated to the rotten state of present-day Britain.
The satirical play is set in a police station where a suspect has “accidentally” fallen to his death, but did he jump or was he pushed? As the police attempt to avoid yet another scandal, a mysterious imposter (the Maniac) is arrested and brought in for questioning.
Seizing the chance to put on a show, he leads the officers in an ever-more ridiculous reconstruction of their official account, exposing their cover-ups, corruption and (in)competence.
The original 1970 Italian farce by Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo and Franca Rame was based on the real-life case of an anarchist suspected of a bombing, who plunged to his death from a Milan police station in suspicious circumstances and was later exonerated. Now comes the British re-boot.
The Maniac (Andrew Isherwood) peruses the Anarchist’s case file as Inspector Burton (Paul Osborne) interrupts him
Director Jim Paterson says: “I’m really excited to bring this new adaptation of one of my favourite plays to York. Dario Fo was a master of using comedy to talk about the social and political issues of the day – particularly state corruption and hypocrisy.
“What Tom Basden’s version does brilliantly is bring the plot bang up to date in both setting and references, taking in police scandals and political issues of recent years – as well as packing it full of hilariousjokes! It’s fast, furious and funny, and I can’t wait for opening night.”
Lead actor Andrew Isherwood says: “Playing the Maniac, I get the opportunity to play multiple roles, with a variety of voices, which is always fun for me as I really enjoy getting the chance to play around, have some fun and indulge a little bit, which I don’t normally get to express in the same show.
“I think audiences will get a real kick out of the bizarre nature of this show, with all its twists and turns and bitingly satirical elements woven in, all performed by a brilliantly talented cast!”
PC Joseph (Guy Wilson) attempts to keep a record of the increasingly complex story being spun in Accidental Death Of An Anarchist. Picture: John Saunders
Black Treacle Theatre in Accidental Death Of An Anarchist,Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, October 15 to 19, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee.Box office: https://tickets.41monkgate.co.uk. Running time: Two hours 15 minutes, including interval.
In the cast will be: The Maniac – Andrew Isherwood; Inspector Burton – Paul Osborne; DI Daisy – Adam Sowter; PC Joseph – Guy Wilson; Superintendent – Chris Pomfrett; Fi Phelan/PC Jackson – Jess Murray.
Production team: Director, Jim Paterson; lighting designer, Adam Kirkwood; set designer, Richard Hampton; costume/props, Maggie Smales.
Did you know?
Black Treacle Theatre’s past productions were: Constellations (March 2022), Iphigenia In Splott (March 2023) and White Rabbit, Red Rabbit (November 2023), all at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York.
Last Chance To See: Jack Ashton starring in Little Women at York Theatre Royal, today at 2.30pm and 7.30pm
Jack Ashton as Professor Bhaer in Little Women at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Charlotte Graham
STARRING in a much-loved television series can be a boon or a bother for an actor who becomes identified with a particular character. Directors may be reluctant to offer different sorts of role.
Happily, Jack Ashton, best known as the Reverend Tom Hereward in BBC One’s Sunday night staple Call The Midwife, has escaped being typecast. So much so that in York Theatre Royal’s production of Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age classic Little Women, he is playing not one but two very contrasting characters.
The link is that both are suitors of the titular Little Women – John Brooke and Professor Bhaer, the love interests for Meg and Jo March. Not that Jack downplays the problems of leaving Call The Midwife after five years as the vicar of Poplar in the series set in an East End Anglican convent in the late 1950s and 1960s.
“It was difficult, more difficult than I thought,” he admits. “It was hard for a few years for my agent to get me seen for something. If you’re known as a particular character, it can be hard to do something that’s opposite to that and challenge yourself, which is what you want to be as an actor.”
In the past Jack has said that Call The Midwife changed his life, a reference to becoming a father – of Wren, six, and Lark, two – through his relationship with co-star Helen George. “It was a lovely time in my life,” he says. So much so that the last time he acted in York, in Strangers On the Train at the Grand Opera House in March 2018, newly-born Wren came on tour with them.
Jack Ashton’s John Brooke and Ainy Medina’s Meg March in Little Women, adapted by Anne-Marie Casey, at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Charlotte Graham
Juliet Forster’s production of Little Women at York Theatre Royal, where he has performed since his early days as an actor, certainly offers the chance to do something different: two different characters in one show.
One of them, Professor Bhaer, requires a German accent, necessitating Jack to work with a voice coach.
He has not read Little Women, although he has seen Great Gerwig’s 2019 film version, and coincidentally has just finished working with Saoirse Ronan, who played burgeoning writer Jo March in the American movie.
While he has not worked previously with any of the Little Women cast members, he has done so with director Juliet Forster, York Theatre Royal’s creative director.
She directed him in productions that have punctuate his life, going from a young man fresh out of drama school in 2006 to present-day leading man, appearing in Twelfth Night and the Studio double bill of Escaping Alice and End Of Desire, as well as The Guinea Pig Club and The Homecoming under former artistic director Damain Cruden’s direction.
Jack Ashton rehearsing the role of Professor Bhaer in Little Women. Picture: S R Taylor Photography
York remains one of his favourite places. “It’s such a great city. I love coming back, it’s a no-brainer when that kind of offer, like Little Women, comes along,” says Jack.
“I have really good friends in York and I’ve befriended Rita and Paul, the original people on the digs list. I got so lucky because I stayed with them the first time and have continued to stay with them every time since.”
He is realistic about the pitfalls of being an actor. “Sometimes people think an actor’s life is quite glamorous. We just audition and audition, and sometimes people say ‘yes, we want you’. Most of the time they say, ‘no thank you very much’.”
He has several projects waiting to be seen, including Jonatan Etzler’s satirical comedy Bad Apples – the one with Saoirse Ronan – and a small role in Lockerbie, a Sky drama series about one man’s battle to learn the truth about the Pan Am Flight 103 bomb explosion over the Scottish town on December 21 1988. He continues to play Harry Chilcott in BBC Radio 4’s long-running series The Archers too.
Returning to the topic of Little Women, does he have any sisters? “Two older sisters,” he replies. “I can definitely relate to not being able to get a word in edgeways.”
Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
“We just audition and audition, and sometimes people say ‘yes, we want you’. Most of the time they say, ‘no thank you very much’,” says actor Jack Ashton
Gray O’Brien as Inspector John Rebus in Rebus: A Game Called Malice, on tour at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Nobby Clark
GRAY O’Brien makes his second stage appearance in York in 2024 next week, following up his Juror 10 in Twelve Angry Men at the Grand Opera House in May with Inspector John Rebus in Rebus: A Game Called Malice at York Theatre Royal.
Ian Rankin’s Scottish detective has been portrayed on stage, radio, television and online by such actors as Ken Scott, Brian Cox, Charles Lawson, John Hannah and, in six BBC One episodes in May and June this year, by Richard Rankin (no relation).
They have done so with varying degrees of success. John Hannah considered himself “miscast”, handing over to a more downbeat Ken Scott in the ITV series. Richard Rankin, the latest TV incarnation and younger than some of his predecessors, has met with approval.
O’Brien has not read the Rebus books, considering the thriller series to be “one of those things you get into or which just pass you by”, whereas devotees will be rushing out to acquire Rankin’s 25th detective novel, Midnight And Blue, published by Orion today (10/10/2024).
O’Brien has, however, spoken at length with the author, who says different actors bring out different aspects of Rebus, helping him to learn more about the character for the next book.
Gray O’Brien’s Juror 10, left, with Michael Greco’s Juror 7 in Twelve Angry Men at the Grand Opera House, York, in May. Picture: Jack Merriman
As he prepared to play Rebus, O’Brien asked the writer which books he should read to gain an insight into the character. Rankin’s reply came as a surprise. “He said, ‘don’t read them, you don’t need to, because this man is completely on his own. He’s now at a certain age where he’s retired. What’s been in the past is the past’,” O’Brien recalls.
In the new play, the retired detective finds himself at a posh Edinburgh dinner party where the guests play a murder mystery game. “He’s sitting there, a fish out of water thinking, ‘what the heck have I got myself into?’,” says O’Brien. “Then we discover why he’s really there, something happens, and the real Rebus bounces back.”
O’Brien likes how the whodunnit aspect was handled by Rankin, who co-wrote the play with Simon Reade after penning the first draft. The genre demands a denouement where the suspects are gathered together and the guilty party is exposed. “But we do it differently in this play,” he says, without giving too much away.
Given that his books are read worldwide, Rankin was keen to write a play that could be staged around the globe – another reason he wanted no constraints on the portrayal of the stage Rebus.
“It’s not Ken Stott’s Rebus or John Hannah’s Rebus. Your reading of the book is different to my reading of the book,” O’Brien says. “You read something like Lord Of The Rings or Game Of Thrones and you have the characters very much set in your head. Then you see it televised and go, ‘that’s the character I’m seeing in my head’.
Writer Ian Rankin, in the rehearsal room, reading the script for Rebus: A Game Called Malice. Picture: Jonathan Phang
“I can’t mimic or can’t try to copy someone else’s Rebus because we’re all made up completely differently. I can’t hold myself the way Ken Stott holds himself. We’re all different shapes, different sizes, we’re educated differently, we’re from different regions.”
Rebus’s accent was important to O’Brien, who grew up in Ayreshire, Rebus hails from Fife. Both men have Scottish accents but not necessarily the same-sounding accent. The Glasgow-born actor was keen to pay homage to the Edinburgh accent when the production played the Festival Theatre there last month and not resort to a generic Scottish accent.
“To English listeners it probably won’t matter as much,” he says. “Some people thought I was crazy doing an Edinburgh accent because I’m Scottish and I have a Scottish accent. I found the rhythms difficult because it’s a bit like getting someone from Milwaukee to do a Minnesota accent. They’re quite different. The Edinburgh vowel sounds and the line endings are completely different from the West Coast of Scotland.”
O’Brien has played major TV roles as Tony Gordon in Coronation Street, Richard McCaid in Casualty and Dr Tom Deneley in Peak Practice, but theatre remains an essential part of his work, whether touring in the 1954 courtroom drama Twelve Angry Men or starring alongside Dallas star Patrick Duffy in the American caper Catch Me If You Can.
“Theatre is a necessity because TV work stops and sometimes it doesn’t stop forever but there are certainly long hiatuses,” he says. “New people come into TV. Casting directors who championed you leave, the new ones don’t know you, and young people come in and don’t know my work. So you can get overlooked. Many careers crash and burn.
“I can’t mimic or can’t try to copy someone else’s Rebus because we’re all made up completely differently,” says Gray O’Brien
“I’ve been very, very lucky with the loyalty of [the late] producer Bill Kenwright. He’s always wanted me on stage if I’m available. Pretty much every year I get asked to do one of these stage tours. I jump at the challenge each time.”
O’Brien takes the responsibility of touring theatre seriously. “People are paying their hard- earned cash to come and have an experience in theatre. I would always encourage people to come and see a live play,” he says. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s always a jeopardy moment on stage.
“It could be performance 100 or performance 24 where things don’t go fully as expected. Maybe an actor tries something slightly different and says a line with a different inflection. It can change the dynamic of the piece and it’s very exciting.”
What is the worst thing to have befallen him on stage? “Drying is terrible, just literally dropping the ball for half a second,” he says, referring to forgetting lines. “People don’t realise the concentration that’s involved in a play. You’ve got to be completely on the moment and be listening to everything.
“You cannot for a second think, ‘I wonder if I should have fish fingers tonight’. As soon as that happens you’releft with a cue but don’t know what you’re saying. That happens all the time and it’s just how quickly you can pick it up.”
Rebus: A Game Called Malice, York Theatre Royal, October 15 to 19, 7.30pm; 2pm, Wednesday and Thursday; 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
