Inspired By Theatre principal cast members for RENT: left to right, Maddie Jones, Jess Gardham, Iain Harvey, Dan Poppitt, Gi Vasey, Mikhail Lim, Tom Collins and Fen Greatley-Hirsch. Picture: Dan Crawfurd-Porter
FROM the York theatre company that brought the Hutch Award-winning production of Green Day’s American Idiot to the Joseph Rowntree Theatre last July comes another iconic American rock musical, RENT.
Directed once more by company founder Dan Crawfurd-Porter, Jonathan Larson’s groundbreaking Tony Award winner will run at the JoRo from April 10 to 12 with its celebration of life, even in the face of adversity.
“RENT tells a story of love, resilience and artistic defiance, making it as relevant today as it was when it debuted 30 years ago,” says Dan.
Dan Poppitt’s Roger, left, Gi Vasey’s Mimi and Mikhail Lim’s Benny in Inspired By Theatre’s RENT. Picture: Dan Crawfurd-Porter
Set in the heart of New York City’s East Village at the apex of the AIDS epidemic, RENT follows a group of young artists struggling to survive, create and hold onto hope in the face of uncertainty.
Larson’s revolutionary score, with its blend of rock, pop and musical theatre, features such numbers as Seasons of Love, La Vie Bohème and Take Me Or Leave Me.
“This isn’t just another revival; for us, it’s personal,” says writer-director Dan, who credits the show as a major inspiration for his company’s formation and mission to bring bold, meaningful theatre to York audiences.
Fen Greatley Hirsch’s Angel and Joseph Hayes’s Tom Collins. Picture: Dan Crawfurd-Porter
“RENT is the reason we exist and the reason we fell in love with theatre in the first place. It’s a show that has inspired us to tell stories, push boundaries and build a thriving theatre community.
“This production brings together returning favourites and exciting new members of the company, and I’ve never seen a cast quite like this before. We’ve assembled a powerhouse of performers, ready to bring this iconic show to life like never before.”
Crawfurd-Porter’s principal cast comprises American Idiot leading man Iain Harvey as Mark; Dan Poppitt as Roger; Gi Vasey as Mimi; Joseph Hayes as Tom Collins; Maddie Jones as Maureen; York blues musician Jess Gardham as Joanne; Fen Greatley-Hirsch as Angel and Mikhail Lim as Benny.
Iain Harvey’s Mark in Inspired By Theatre’s RENT. Picture: Dan Crawfurd-Porter
In the ensemble will be: Richard Bayton; Katie Brier; Kailum Farmery; Rebecca Firth; Jack Fry; Chloe Pearson; Lucy Plimmer-Clough; Fernadna Aqueveque Retamal; Connie Richards; Josh Woodgate and Tiggy-Jade.
Crawfurd-Porter is joined in the production team by choreographer and assistant director Freya McIntosh, musical director Matthew Peter Clare and assistant producer Charlie Clarke.
Inspired By Theatre was known formerly as Bright Light Musical Productions. “We rebranded as Inspired By Theatre to reflect our evolving vision: theatre that moves people, challenges perspectives and delivers unforgettable moments both on and off the stage,” says Dan.
Maddie Jones’s Maureen and Jess Gardham’s Joanne. Picture: Dan Crawfurd-Porter
“We saw this philosophy come to life with our highly successful production of Green Day’s American Idiot last summer when more than 1,000 audience members, many covered head to toe in merchandise, packed the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, proving that a show can be more than just a performance, it can be an event.”
“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.
