Tag: Ripon Theatre Festival

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More Things To Do in York and beyond. Hutch’s List No. 27, from The York Press

SledOne’s mural, What Walks Amongst Us, taking shape at AcombFest. Picture: Art of Protest

MURALS in Acomb, early music beyond borders, Mystery Plays on waggons, a political swansong and compact Shakespeare keep Charles Hutchinson’s thoughts off the July heatwave.

Art event of the week: AcombFest, Acomb, York, today and tomorrow

CURATED by Art of Protest, York’s first international street art festival continues today and tomorrow with its theme of A Return To Nature, featuring 20 art installations, live murals, RARE Collective’s Paint Jam, spray battles and more than 30 bands, DJs and performers, across 22 venues.

Look out too for interactive family-friendly workshops, an art market, history walks and talks, special events and tastings and a community cinema. Muralists taking part include SMUG, from Australia, Sheffield muralist Peachzz, wildlife artist Curtis Hylton and Acomb’s very own SledOne. For full details, go to: https://acombfest.co.uk/.

Baroque collective Solomon’s Knot: Performing Friedrich Nicolaus Bruhns’ St Mark Passion, directed by Jonathan Sells, at The Quire, York Minster, on July 10

50th anniversary event of the summer: 2026 York Early Music Festival, Beyond Borders, until July 11

THE premier British early music festival marks its 50th anniversary with a celebration of “just how far early music has travelled – beyond the borders of the myriad historic venues of our city to a worldwide audience,” says director Delma Tomlin.

The festival welcomes The Sixteen, B’Rock Orchestra & Vocal Consort, Imago Mundi, mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, Solomon’s Knot and NCEM Platform Artists Anacronia and Contre le temps, among others. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk/yemf.

Bodhan Pitel’s Herod in DSpace Ukrainian Theatre’s The Massacre of the Innocents in the York Mystery Plays 2026. Picture: John Saunders

Theatrical outdoor event of the week: 2026 York Mystery Plays, streets of York, tomorrow, 10.30am to 4.50pm

THE four-yearly staging on the York Mystery Plays on pageant waggons takes place at four locations across the city: free viewing at the Minster Refectory Gardens, Deansgate, (from 10.30am) King’s Square (from 11.10am), St Sampson’s Square (from 11.50am) and ticketed seats at Dean’s Park (from 12.30pm). Ten core plays will be complemented by further extracts to tell the story from The War In Heaven to Doomsday. For full details, go to yorkmysteryplays.co.uk; tickets, ticketsource.com/york-festival-trust.

Clive Francis as Sir Humphrey Appleby in I’m Sorry, Prime Minister. Picture: Johan Persson

Political drama of the week: I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, Grand Opera House, York, July 7 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday matinees

JIM Hacker is back, older, but perhaps not wiser, and still utterly baffled by the real world. Hoping for a quiet retirement from government as the master of Hacker College, Oxford, Jim (Robert Kitson, replacing Simon Rouse) instead finds himself facing the ultimate modern crisis: cancelled by the college committee. Enter Sir Humphrey Appleby (Clive Francis), who has lost none of his love for bureaucracy, Latin phrases and well-timed obstruction.

Can Humphrey and Jim outmanoeuvre the hostile students, the Fellows and reality itself? Or is it finally time to say “I’m Sorry, Prime Minister”? Brimming with wit, nostalgia and more double-speak than a press briefing, the final chapter in the evergreen comedy series is written and directed by Jonathan Lynn,co-directed byMichael Gyngell and presented by The Barn Theatre, Cirencester. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Reduced Shakespeare Company’s 2026 tour cast for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

Shakespeare shake-up of the week: Reduced Shakespeare Company in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), York Theatre Royal, July 7 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees

MARKING 30 years of performances in the UK, the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s 2026 tour company of Efé Agwele, Woogie Jung, Tom Pavey and Kiran Raywilliams presents Hamlet told backwards, a micro-condensed Othello scored to a ukulele, a carnage-filled Titus Andronicus presented as a YouTube cookery tutorial and the History Plays as a manic football game, passing the crown from king to king.

Californian co-founders Adam Long,  Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield have re-booted, re-imagined, reinvented and updated the restless comedy for a new generation to undertake a rollercoaster ride through all 37 of the Bard’s First Folio of plays. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Stephen Smith’s Claude Monet in A Montage Of Monet

Busiest actor of the week: Threedumb Theatre presents Stephen Smith in A Montage Of Monet, York Medical Society, Stonegate, York, July 8, 7.30pm and July 11, 3pm; One Man Poe, Ripon Theatre Festival, Ripon Arts Hub, July 10, 8pm; One  Man Poe world premiere, York Medical Society, July 11, 7.30pm

THREEDUMB Theatre artistic director and actor Stephen Smith performs Joan Greening’s new play exploring French Impressionist artist Claude Monet’s life and loves: his two marriages, his first wife’s devastating death, his lover’s erratic behaviour, his suicide attempt, his thoughts on fellow Impressionists and the torment of his failing eyesight. The 55-minute Monet montage combines projection design and Joe Furey’s music with Smith’s storytelling in  two York performances.

Smith also presents four of Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic horror  works (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and The Pendulum, The Black Cat and The Raven) in Ripon, followed by the world premiere of his latest Poe double bill (The Business Man and The Case of M. Valdemar) in York. All six, amounting to 18,000 Poe words, will be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. Box office: York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Ripon, ripontheatrefestival.org.

Musical of the week: Top Hat and Tails Theatre in Little Shop Of Horrors!, Friargate Theatre, York, July 9 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

MEEK floral assistant Seymour Krelborn stumbles across a new breed of plant he calls Audrey II, a foul-mouthed carnivore that promises him fame and fortune if he keeps feeding it with blood. Over time, however, Seymour discovers Audrey II’s plans for global domination in Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s sci-fi B-movie monster spoof, presented here with a live band and professionally hand-crafted puppets.  Box office: ridinglights.org.

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys: Summer of Hits show at York Museum Gardens on Thursday

Music festival of the week: Futuresound presents Live At York Museum Gardens, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, July 9, gates 5pm; Self Esteem, July 10, gates 5pm, and Super Furry Animals, July 11, gates 4pm

WIRRAL synth-pop pioneers Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark open Futuresound’s third season of Live At York Museum Gardens concerts on Thursday with a Summer of Hits bill featuring Heaven 17, China Crisis and rising Newcastle singer-songwriter Andrew Cushin.

Mercury Prize nominee Self Esteem, aka Rotherham singer, songwriter and actress Rebecca Lucy Taylor, tops Friday’s line-up, featuring London indie group The Big Moon, South African ghetto funk musician Moonchild Sanelly and Nigerian-born musician and spoken-word artist Joshia Idehen.

Welsh psychedelic rock band Super Furry Animals are next Saturday’s headliners, joined by singer-songwriter Baxter Dury, indie-pop septet Los Campesinos!, Nottingham alt-country band Divorce and North Wales psychedelic act Pys Melyn.  Box office for July 10 and 11: futuresoundgroup.com/york-museum-gardens-events.

If I Knew The Way, I Would Take You Home, by Matt Sewell

In Focus: Birds of the week: Matt Sewell exhibition for RARE Collective at WET, Micklegate, York, until mid-July

SHROPSHIRE artist, illustrator and author Matt Sewelll is the latest street art luminary to be showcased in RARE Collective’s collaboration with WET wine bar, in Micklegate, York, in aid of SASH (Safe and Sound Homes), the York youth homelessness charity.

“We’re really chuffed to have Matt return to York with his fabulous Riso prints,” says RARE Collective exhibition organiser Sharon McDonagh. “If you came to the Vandalfest charity street art show last year, you would have seen his cracking bird mural on Floor 3 of the big disused office block in Low Ousegate.

Artist Matt Sewell at work

Sewell is an avid ornithologist, contributing regularly to the Caught By The River website and publishing the books Our Garden Birds, Our Songbirds, Our Woodland Birds, Owls, Penguins and A Charm Of Goldfinches And Other Collective Nouns.

He has illustrated for the Guardian, Barbour, V&A Museums, BBC, National Trust, Greenpeace, Big Issue and Levi’s and painted walls for Helly Hansen, Puma and the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). He has exhibited in Great Britain, New York, old York, Tokyo and Paris.  

Cuckoo Cuckoo Cuckoo, by Matt Sewell

Under RARE Collective’s partnership with WET, artists and photographers exhibit their work in a six-week solo show.  As well as at WET, work can be bought online both during and after the exhibition run at rarecollective.co.uk.

In addition, a selection of Sewell’s prints is featuring in RARE Collective’s exhibition for AcombFest at The Crooked Tap, on show until August 15 in support of SASH.

Matt Sewell’s wall of bird prints for sale at WET

Exhibiting too are: spAm (Sharon McDonagh), Sola, Alison Jagger, Al Murphy, Anthony Appleyard, Boxxhead, HazardOne, Lady Mkei, Lincoln Lightfoot, Liskbot, Michael Dawson, Nicolas Dixon, Slice Of Lino, STATIC and Stephen Bottrill.

“RARE are working in collaboration with the Art of Protest Project, after being invited by AcombFest curator Jeff Clark and the AOP team to curate the live PaintJam at the Carlton Tavern, in Acomb Road, Holgate, today and tomorrow,” says RARE Collective curator Sharon McDonagh.

“This will involve nine artists painting live from 10am to 4pm each day (Boxxhead, HazardOne, Lady Mkei, Lincoln Lightfoot, Liskbot, Nicolas Dixon, Sola, spAm and VYZ); live DJ sets by Alilou, Bob Yenz, Conor Rogan, Free Da Karlos and Sola plus guests, audiovisual artists Fred DWolf, Sonas and JohnManBand on a huge screen, cocktails and mixology by Tulum Spirits Collective and street food by El Chappo, all in support of SASH.”

Did you know?

MATT Sewell is also a musician, performing as Sewell &The Gong with Chris Tate and as the deep-cut compiler of the compilation series A Crushing Glow.

Matt Sewell’s work environment

In Focus too: Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance, 30th Anniversary Tour, York Barbican, July 6 to 8, 7.45pm

THE 30th anniversary tour of Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance promises a grand celebration of the revolutionary Irish dance production’s legacy after captivating more than 60 million fans in 60 countries since its 1996 debut.

The 30 Years of Standing Ovations tour will feature “brand-new choreography, stunning costumes, state-of-the-art special effects and cutting-edge lighting, ensuring that the production continues to push boundaries and deliver an unforgettable experience”. 

Creative manager James Keegan says: “Michael Flatley has taught me that there are no boundaries in the creative space. When he burst onto the scene in the mid-90s, he took traditional Irish dancing to a place nobody had ever dreamed of, and that has been the key to the show’s success.

“Michael often says in rehearsals that we need to push the boundaries as much as we can, and if it’s too far or doesn’t work, we can always pull it back. That mindset is what keeps Lord Of The Dance evolving.”

Lord Of The Dance on its 30th anniversary tour. Picture: Brian Doherty

Keegan believes that the core elements of Flatley’s visionary production – choreography, music and storytelling – remain timeless while still evolving. “What made Lord Of The Dance famous 30 years ago is still what makes it work today: 40 of the greatest Irish tap dancers in the world performing in one line in perfect sync. It’s a spectacle that never loses its magic,” he says.

Reflecting on Flatley’s impact, Keegan says: “Professional Irish dancing didn’t really exist until Michael created his shows and added a more entertaining twist to the art form.

“He wasn’t just a dancer; he was a highly tuned athlete who could perform at astonishing levels for a full two-hour show, seven days a week. Today, we see young competitive dancers around the world striving to reach the levels he set.”

But beyond the footwork and the spectacle, Keegan reckons Flatley’s greatest legacy is his ability to inspire. “Michael’s motto has always been, ‘Nothing is impossible.’ He took an already intricate dance form and pushed it even further, breaking records like 38 taps per second and incorporating upper body movements that defied tradition,” he says.

Michael Flatley

“I’ve seen it time and time again: a dancer who never thought they could be a lead receives Michael’s encouragement, and before long, they are fulfilling their dream on stage.”

For Keegan, one moment stands out above the rest. “In 1997, I was a ten-year-old competitive Irish dancer in Manchester, struggling with the name-callers and the challenges of being a young male dancer,” he says.

“Then Lord Of The Dance came to town. Watching Michael and the cast that night at the Apollo Theatre changed everything for me. The masculinity, the precision, the energy, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before.

“I met Michael at the stage door, and suddenly, I knew that being an Irish dancer could mean being a superstar. Nineteen years later, I had the honour of sharing his final show with him at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, in 2016. It was a full-circle moment I will never forget.”

Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance dancers

As Lord Of The Dance embark on its 30th anniversary tour, Flatley reflects on the journey. “The magic of Lord Of The Dance lives on in the hearts of our audience, and I am thrilled to bring this iconic show back to the UK in 2026,” he says.

“30 Years of Standing Ovations celebrates the incredible journey we’ve shared with fans over the years. It’s a tribute to the enduring power of dreams, the joy of dance and the unwavering support of our audience. This tour is our way of saying thank you for three decades of unforgettable memories.”

Although Flatley, now 67, retired from performing during his final tour in 2016, he has remained at the helm of Lord Of The Dance, guiding its evolution while preserving its timeless magic.

Now, as the production prepares for its biggest celebration yet, fans can look forward to a breathtaking spectacle that honours the past, embraces the present, and inspires the future of Irish dance.

The 30th anniversary tour also visits Hull New Theatre, July 22 to 25, and Sheffield City Hall, August 20 to 23. For full tour dates and ticket information, go to lordofthedance.com. York tickets:  https://www.yorkbarbican.co.uk/whats-on/lord-of-the-dance-30th-anniversary/.

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Top Ten Reasons why Ripon Theatre Festival is well worth a visit this week

Illyria in Oliver Grey’s adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In The Willows at Ripon Racecourse on July 5 at 5.30pm

RIPON Theatre Festival returns from July 1 to 6 with a line-up of shows, stories and community spirit that promises to light up the North Yorkshire city.

Drama, storytelling, puppetry, street theatre, circus and dance feature in more than 100 performances of 60 different events, backed by the festival’s first Arts Council funding, with a developing outreach programme too.

Festival director Katie Scott says: “Ripon Theatre Festival continues to grow, and we’re so excited to bring our biggest and boldest programme yet to the city. With the support of Arts Council funding, we can reach even more people and create a festival full of joy, creativity and unforgettable performances.

“Whether you’re a theatre enthusiast, a family looking for free entertainment, or someone who loves great stories, there’s something for everyone. We can’t wait to welcome audiences old and new to experience the magic of live theatre in Ripon.”

The best of British touring theatre 
Performances from top-quality touring companies, such as festival favourites Illyria bringing The Wind In The Willows to life in the leafy setting of Ripon Racecourse on July 5 at 5.30pm. 

Unforgettable outdoor theatre experiences 
From Breadcrumbs, Hansel & Gretel with a difference from Leeds company  Wrongsemble, on the Family Day on July 6 (10am to 4pm), to open-air Shakespeare in Three Inch Fools’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Old Deanery gardens on July 6 at 7pm, Ripon becomes the stage for magical performances under the summer sky.

Buzzing city vibe 
Ripon will be alive with street performers from across the UK, pop-up stages and 25 local groups showcasing their talents. The festival creates a vibrant, welcoming atmosphere across the city, using the streets and historic buildings as a unique backdrop.

Opportunities to be involved 
From storytelling workshops and community art installations to the chance to try out Flamenco or join in circus skills, there are plenty of ways for all ages to participate.

Something for everyone 
From classic theatre and cutting-edge new writing to comedy, and family-friendly fun,  the packed programme is for all ages and tastes. 

World-class storytelling 
International storyteller-in-residence Peter Chand will bring tales of love, loss and separation inspired by his British Punjabi heritage to the atmospheric Leper Chapel, St Mary Magdalen’s, in Mangoes On The Beach, on July 2 at 3pm.

Free family entertainment 
Two days packed with free performances and activities make Ripon a destination for families looking for affordable fun. The Spa Gardens are turned into a Family Theatre zone for Festival Sunday with a rolling programme of theatre, puppetry, music, dance and walkabout acts.

City-wide offers for festival-goers 
Ripon’s independent businesses will be participating too. The city’s cafés, restaurants, and shops are joining the celebration with offers for ticket holders.

Bringing theatre to every corner 
The festival’s outreach programme ensures that care homes and community spaces are part of the action, spreading the joy of theatre across the city.

Spoilt for choice on opening night
The festival kicks off on Tuesday (1/7/2025) with two very different shows. Audiences can choose from stand-up with rising comedy favourite Larry Dean and Lou Conran in the Hilarity Bites Festival Special at Ripon Arts Hub at 8pm or visit Ripon Cathedral for the gripping one-man theatre of Murray Watts’s The Beloved Son at 7.30pm.

For tickets, the full programme and festival details, visit www.ripontheatrefestival.org

Look out for: Third Class: A Titanic Story, Ripon Arts Hub, July 2, 8pm

Russell Lucas in Third Class, his one-man show about Titanic survivor Edward Dorking. Picture: Steve Ullathorne

THIRD Class – A Titanic Story is the latest project by writer, director and performer Russell Lucas, who specialises in staging new works.

Past projects include creating his one-man show The Bobby Kennedy Experience and Sarah Louise Young’s hit cabaret An Evening Without Kate Bush.

Now he presents Third Class, a well-known story, but one with an unknown hero, Titanic survivor Edward Dorking: one of the estimated 172 of the roughly 709 passengers who travelled in Steerage on the stricken luxury liner lucky enough to emerge unscathed. To do so, he swam for 30 minutes towards an already full collapsible lifeboat.

“Edward was gay. Openly gay, and on Wednesday April 10th, 1912, he set sail on a ticket bought for him by his parents in the hope his American family could put him ‘right’,” says Russell.

Using music, projection and movement, interwoven with historical fact, Third Class charts Edward’s journey of survival and how, on arriving in New York, he toured the vaudeville circuit, re-creating the stories for a fact-hungry public.

“Edward Dorking was a poverty-stricken gay man, travelling to the US to be ‘fixed’, who became a vaudeville curiosity and an angry campaigner against the injustices of the shipping disaster,” says Russell, who promises a “thrilling new perspective on what feels a familiar tale”.

“Edward didn’t want fame; he wanted revenge. When everyone was talking about the deaths of millionaires and society figures, few were discussing the people who took the lion’s share of the losses that night: the third class. Edward was coming for the upper classes.”

Wednesday’s 70-minute performance will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Russell. Third  Class also plays Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, on July 12 at 3pm (box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk).

Further Ripon Theatre Festival theatre highlights

Louise Geller in Almost Austen at Ripon Arts Hub on July 5

ANDREW Harrison, stalwart of York’s Riding Lights Theatre Company, performs fellow Riding Lights luminary Murray Watts’s The Beloved Son at Ripon Cathedral on July 1 at 7.30pm.

Dutch Catholic priest and psychologist Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) abandoned academia for a new calling, caring for people with intellectual disabilities in a challenge to church and society. Hope and longing, family dynamics, sexual and emotional crisis and the profound insights of a spiritual writer inform Harrison’s solo performance, peppered with multiple characters played with dizzying speed.

LIZ Grand, who portrayed crime writer Agatha Christie at the 2023 Ripon Theatre Festival, returns with Mrs Churchill – My Life With Winston at Ripon Arts Hub on July 3 at 7.30pm.

Churchill once said: “My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.” Here Grand offers a sensitive, informative portrayal of Clementine, Winston’s wife for 56 years.

IN Norwich Theatre and Albert Cabbage’s Edinburgh Fringe hit Spy Movie: The Play!, at Ripon Arts Hub on July 4 at 8pm, Agent Blonde has 24 hours to save the world. The only thing standing in her way are dastardly villains, an outrageous plot and a lack of funding.

When Hollywood rejects her script, a frustrated screenwriter invites you, an audience of producers, to a one-night-only presentation of The Greatest Spy Movie (n)Ever Made, in an homage to Bond films and Fringe theatre from the stars of The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong.

SINGER Louise Geller brings her delightful musical theatre show Almost Austen to Ripon Arts Hub on July 5 at 8pm with its 60-minute story of Catherine, a modern girl in love with Jane Austen’s world who cannot believe her luck when she meets her very own Mr Tilney.

Through passages from Northanger Abbey, songs from musicals and operatic classics, Geller relates Catherine’s romantic ups and downs as real life and fantasy collide in a meeting of Bridget Jones and Northanger Abbey.

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More Things To Do in York & beyond when the stakes are high in Dracula. Get stuck in to Hutch’s List No. 28, from The Press

The Gesualdo Six: Performing in the Chapter House at York Minster on July 9 as part of the 2024 York Early Music Festival. Picture: Ash Mills

A CELEBRATION of the voice, the truth behind Dracula, flying doctors and grim tales lead off Charles Hutchinson’s tips for jaunty July trips.

York festival of the week: 2024 York Early Music Festival, Metamorfosi, today until July 13

IN an eight-day celebration of music from the medieval to the baroque under the title of Metamorfosi, York Ealy Music Festival will focus on the human voice and song with performances by Concerto Soave, The Gesualdo Six, festival newcomers Vox Luminis and Cappella Pratensis & I Fedeli, The Sixteen, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Rose Consort of Viols and Gawain Glenton’s Ensemble In Echo.

Taking part too will be mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, the Consone Quartet, Cubaroque, Apotropaïk and Utopia, climaxing with the biennial York International Young Artists Competition. Full festival programme and tickets at ncem.co.uk/whats-on/yemf/. Box office: 01904 658338.

Princess locked up in the castle: Freckle Productions in Zog & The Flying Doctors

Children’s show of the week: Freckle Productions in Zog & The Flying Doctors, Grand Opera House, York, today and tomorrow, 10.30am and 1.30pm

ZOG, super-keen student-turned-air ambulance, still lands with a bang-crash-thump. Together with his Flying Doctor crew, Princess Pearl and Sir Gadabout, they tend to a sunburnt mermaid, a unicorn with one too many horns and a lion with the flu.

However, Pearl’s uncle, the King, has other ideas about whether princesses should be doctors, and soon she is soon locked up in the castle. Can her friends and half a pound of cheese help Pearl make her uncle better and prove princesses can be doctors too in this Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler story with music and lyrics by Joe Stilgoe? Suitable for age three upwards. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Carnival time in Copmanthorpe

Carnival of the week: Cop’ Carnival, Copmanthorpe Recreation Centre, Barons Crescent, Copmanthorpe, York, today, 11.30am to 7pm

IN its 55th year, Cop’ Carnival features live music acts and dance troupes on the main stage, an inflatable assault course, fairground rides and attractions, street food vendors, free children’s entertainment, stalls and more besides. No dogs are allowed on site, apart from assistance dogs. Tickets are on sale at copcarnival.org.uk/tc-events/the-cop-carnival-day/; under-14s are admitted free of charge. 

Sam Johnson: Playing with his jazz trio at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York

Jazz gig of the week: Sam Johnson Trio, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tomorrow (7/7/2024),

THE Sam Johnson Trio, led by pianist Sam Johnson with Georgia Johnson on bass and James Wood on drums, bring a mid-20th century jazz vibe to their performance, in the style of the Vince Guaraldi Trio, Oscar Peterson Trio and vintage Blue Note and Verve Records artists.

Combining original material with jazz standards from the past seven decades, the trio will be joined by guest soloists and frequent collaborators Richard Oakman (saxophone) and Kirsty Hughes (vocals). Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Macabre: Killian Macardle, left, Annie Kirkman and Chris Hannon in Dracula: The Bloody Truth at the SJT. Picture: Pamela Raith

Comedy drama of the week: Dracula: The Bloody Truth, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tonight to July 27

THE Stephen Joseph Theatre teams up with Bolton’s Octagon Theatre to stage physical theatre comedy exponents La Navet Bete & John Nicholson’s Dracula: The Bloody Truth, based very loosely on Bram Stoker’s story.

SJT artistic director Paul Robinson directs Chris Hannon, Annie Kirkman, Alyce Liburd and Killian Macardle as vampire hunter Professor Abraham Van Helsing reveals the real story behind the legend of Dracula, the one with the Whitby connection. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

Paul Weller: Reflecting on turning 66 at Scarborough Open Air Theatre

Coastal gigs of the week: Fatboy Slim, today; Paul Weller, tomorrow, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, gates open at 6pm

NORMAN Cook has come a long way, baby, since he played bass in Hull band The Housemartins. Now the BRIT award-winning, Brighton-based DJ, aka Fatboy Slim, heads back north to fill Scarborough with big beats and huge hooks in Rockafeller Skank, Gangster Trippin, Praise You and Right Here Right Now et al tonight.

The Modfather Paul Weller showcases his 17th studio album, 66, full of ruminations on ageing, in Sunday’s set of songs from The Jam, Style Council and his solo years. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

Here wig go: Sarah-Louise Young in I Am Your Tribute at Theatre@41 Monkgate, York

Fringe show of the week: Sarah-Louise Young, I Am Your Tribute, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, July 11, 7.30pm

AFTER An Evening Without Kate Bush, the Julie Andrews-focused Julie Madly Deeply and The Silent Treatment, Sarah-Louise Young returns to Theatre@41 with her Edinburgh Fringe-bound new show, I Am Your Tribute.

In her “most ambitiously interactive performance yet”, she invites you to help her create the ultimate tribute to an act of your choosing. Along the way she will teach you the tricks of the trade, share her greatest hits and uncover the occasionally darker side of living in someone’s else’s shadow. Expect music, wigs and wonderment. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Rowntree Players cast members rehearsing for Grimm Tales

Fairy tales of the week: Rowntree Players in Grimm Tales, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, July 11 to 13, 7.30pm

AMI Carter directs Rowntree Players in Carol Ann Duffy’s adaptation of Grimm Tales, dramatised by Tim Supple, with Chris Meadley in the role of the Narrator.

The cast of 15 takes a journey through a selection of delightfully bizarre stories from the Brothers Grimm collection to reveal their true origins and to discover that the path to a happy ending can, indeed, be a little grim. Box office: 01904 501395 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

In Focus: Weekend events at Ripon Theatre Festival, July 6 and 7

The Tea Cosies: Street entertainment with Kitch’n’Sync today

PUPPETS, stories, dance, drama, circus and street entertainment pop up in new and surprising places alongside more familiar venues, such as Newby Hall, The Old Deanery, Ripon Cathedral, Ripon Arts Hub and Fountains Abbey, as Ripon Theatre Festival returns for its third year.

Saturday keeps festivalgoers on the move in a day of Pop-Up Events at various locations from 9.30am to 6pm. Ilaria Passeri hosts a morning of adventures for four-year-olds and upwards in Tales From Honeypot Village, featuring Rita the Mouse and the Tidy Trolls in the front room of The Unicorn Hotel at 9.30am and the back room of The Little Ripon Bookshop at 11.30am.

Puppeteers Eye Of Newt open their magical miniature suitcase for Ayla’s Dream, a captivating tale of night skies, light and counting sheep for three to ten-year-olds at Ripon Library at 10.30am (accompanied by a puppet workshop) and Ripon Cathedral from 12 noon to 12.30pm (performance every ten minutes).

York performer Tempest Wisdom takes a journey down the rabbit hole in the family-friendly Curiouser & Curiouser, a show for age five + packed with Lewis Carroll’s whimsical writings, inspired by Ripon Cathedral’s nooks and crannies. Free performances take place at Ripon Cathedral at 11am, 12.30pm and The Little Ripon Bookshop at 2.30pm.

Join the Master and Matron on the front lawn for an interactive game of giant Snakes And Ladders At The Workhouse Museum. Learn how life then, as now, is as precarious as a shake of the dice; slither down the snake to a shaven head and defumigation or ascent to a life out of the ashes from 11am to 12.30pm or 1pm to 3pm.

Festival favourites Lempen Puppet Theatre return with the free show Theatre For One in Ripon Cathedral from 10.45am to 11.30pm and Kirkgate from 1.30pm to 2.30pm and 3pm to 4pm. In a micro-theatre experience for one at a time, plus curious onlookers, a mini-performance of The Belly Bug or Dr Frankenstein will be staged every five minutes.

Tempest Wisdom: Taking a journey down the rabbit hole in Curiouser & Curiouser

Members of the Workhouse Theatre Group invite you to experience justice 1871 style in The Trial Of John Sinkler in a case of poaching and threatening behaviour from 2pm to 3pm at The Courthouse Museum.

Ensure justice is seen to be done or perhaps take a more active role in a lively scripted re-enactment led by Mark Cronfield, formerly of Nobby Dimon’s North Country Theatre company.

The festival fun continues in Kirkgate with buskers, bands and more from 3pm to 6pm, while Street Entertainment will be spread between Market Place, Minster Gardens and city streets with a fiesta of free events from 10am to 4pm.

Mark Cronfield and Tom Frere invite you to hail down the ultimate in Georgian transport for Sedan Chair Stories. Be carried above the hoi polloi as your footmen pass on their scurrilous stories from Ripon’s scandalous past.

Bearded Belfast multi-manipulator and circus performer Logy will be juggling danger and excitement in Logy On Fire, a show of full of raw rock’n’roll comedy. Look out for the beautiful birds of The Bachelors Of Paradise parading their glorious wingspans and beautiful tailfeathers.

In Stone Soup, a suitcase show performed from a travelling cart with music and comical puppets, Hebden Bridge company Eye Of Newt ask this question: can you really make soup with only a stone? The secret to making a delicious soup rests with a wandering stranger.

Street performers and fatal fools Medieval Maniax promise to amuse and bemuse with their historical hysterics, music and illusions. Kitch’n’Sync, from Wales, invite you to have a natter with their colourful crochet trolley dollies, Dorothy Dunker, Tippy Teapot and Barbara Bourbon, alias The Tea Cosies.

Logy On Fire: Multi-manipulator and circus performer

A friendly team from Casson & Friends will connect you with the childlike joy of play in their interactive games, set to a bouncing electronic soundtrack, in Arcade.

Playing their part in the day too will be Yorkshire Voices, Medusa, Ripon City Morris Dancers, 400 Roses And Thorns, Ripon Drum Circle, The U3A Folk Group, The Wakeman Mummers, Ripon Rock Choir and Workhouse Walkabouts.

Weekend community performers contribute to the festival on Sunday too in the form of Lily Worth, Trinity Singers, Freddie Cleary, Ripon Goes To Bollywood, Henshaws Performing Arts Group, Danceability, Passion For Movement, Cricket On The Hearth, The U3A Ukulele Group and Ripon Walled Garden Performers.

Open-air theatre specialists Illyria present Oliver Grey’s adaptation of Hugo Lofting’s The Adventures Of Doctor Doolittle in the Newby Hall Gardens at 5.30pm (gates 5pm). In this new family musical, performed with wit and flair, Doctor Doolittle leads a simple life as a village doctor until one day, with the help of his wise old parrot Polynesia, he makes an extraordinary discovery: he can talk to animals.

Radical Leeds troupe Red Ladder Theatre Company return to the festival to with We’re Not Going Back, Boff Whalley’s Miners’ Strike musical comedy about 75 mines, three sisters, one cause and a six-pack of Babycham at Ripon Arts Hub at 7.30pm.

In early 1984, the everyday squabbles of sisters Olive, Mary and Isabel collide with a strike that forces them to question their lives, their relationships and their family ties.

Sunday has a couple of Pop-Up Events, led off by Opera Brunch with down-to-earth diva Nicola Mills, from Huddersfield, whose song menu at Valentino’s Ristorante ranges from Italian arias to crossover classics, served with sweet or savoury pastries and Bucks Fizz or a hot drink from 10.30am to 12 noon.

From 3pm to 4.30pm, in the Guardians’ Room of The Workhouse Museum, Fellfoss Theatre present a rehearsed reading and workshop performance of Fate And The Warrior, Mark Cronfield’s new play about the troubled and prolific Guyana-born author Edgar Mittelholzer, a pioneer of Caribbean culture. Join Cronfield and his scratch team of actors for a dark and intriguing tale in atmospheric surroundings.

Thingumajig Theatre in Kit And Caboodle

Ripon Spa Gardens and Market Place will play host to Sunday’s Family Day from 10am to 4pm. Look out for the Hedge Heads, suspicious-looking shrubbery lurking in the bushes; Henshaws Performing Arts Group’s The Golden Tree, fairy tales of heroes, villains, royalty and fools, and  Open The Books’ The Story Of Daniel, a distillation of all the best bits in 20 minutes, dreams, lions et al.

In Wrongsemble’s epic new adventure The Not So Big Bad Wolf favourite tales are re-spun and woven by Little Red, adventurer, heroine and True Grimm podcaster, on a mission to debunk the myths around her so-called nemesis, with the help of a few storybook staples, her red cloak and a basket full of music, mayhem and magic tricks.

Thingumajig Theatre, from Hebden Bridge, return to Ripon with their big, beautiful, rolling mule packed with miniature puppet shows, full of stories and songs of remarkable journeys and refugees. Struzzo and Maxim, stalwarts of street theatre for many decades, promise music, magic and their famous ostrich.

Three quirky characters are waiting for a train but how will they pass the time in Grantham company Rhubarb Theatre’s show The Three Suitcases? Three Marie Antoinettes take to the street to feed the public their tasty treats in Let Them Eat Cake. Expect a right royal ruckus wherever these comedy pompous poodle-haired queens of comedy go.

Three courageous airmen, Roger, Reggie and Rupert, are caught in a freak storm in The Bombardiers. Armed only with their wits and extremely good looks, who knows where they will end up!

In The Fireman Dave Circus Skills Drop-In, Dave Ford, from Hebden Bridge, invites you to have a go at juggling, plate-spinning, diabolo, hula-hooping and more at Ripon Spa Gardens from 1pm to 2.30pm.

The 2024 festival concludes with Scottish company Folksy Theatre’s open-air production of Shakespeare’s leafy tale of banishment, love and disguise, As You Like It, at The Old Deanery at 7pm. Cue comedy stuffed with music, bold characters and audience interaction. Bring something to sit on, pack a picnic and come prepared for the weather.

“We believe that theatre should be for everyone,” says festival director Katie Scott. “Our varied and accessible programme of events provides real theatrical treats for seasoned theatre-goes, but also lively and low-cost opportunities for first-timers and families. We love bringing events to non-theatre spaces and working with local businesses and other partner organisations to create a buzz in the city which all can enjoy.”

For full festival details and tickets, head to: ripontheatrefestival.org. A preview of further events at Ripon Theatre Festival on July 6 and 7 will follow.

Folksy Theatre in As You Like It in the open air at The Old Deanery on Sunday
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Red Ladder mark 40th anniversary of Miners’ Strike with Women Against Pit Closures comedy We’re Not Going Back

Victoria Brazier, left, Stacey Sampson and Claire O’Connor in Red Ladder’s We’re Not Going Back, on tour at Ripon Arts Hub tomorrow. Picture: Lian Furness

RADICAL Leeds troupe Red Ladder Theatre Company return to Ripon Theatre Festival tomorrow with a reboot of Boff Whalley’s We’re Not Going Back, marking the 40th anniversary of the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike.

75 mines, three sisters, one cause and a six-pack of Babycham go into Chumbawamba founder Whalley’s musical comedy, on a tour supported by Unite the Union that visited the former pit town of Selby for a Town Hall performance last night.

We’re Not Going Back is set in the midst of the Miners’ Strike, but no miners feature. Instead, the focus falls on the fortunes of three South Yorkshire pit-village sisters – Olive, Mary and Isabel – hit hard by the Government’s war against miners and determined to fight back with their own branch of Women Against Pit Closures.

In a celebration of the resilience of working communities, the make-and-mend fabric of family, and the power of sticking two fingers up to a government hell-bent on destruction, the sisters’ everyday squabbles collide with a  strike that forces them to question their lives, their relationships and their family ties.

“I find writing women’s voices is much easier than writing men’s voices,” says Boff. “In terms of telling a story, men are not good at going into depth. My observation is that if you see two men together and one says ‘I like your shoes’, the other will say just say ‘oh’, whereas women will enjoy taking that conversation much further.”

Stacey Sampson, left, as Mary, Claire Marie Seddon (now Claire O’Connor), as Isabel, and Victoria Brazier, as Olive, in the original Red Ladder production of We’re Not Going Back ten years ago

His setting is February 1984, when the rumour mill stirs with news of impending pit closures as the coal miners’ unions anxiously prepare for the imminent confrontation with the government.

Forced into unemployment, miners and their families take up the fight and become part of a battle that will change the course of history. Through music, comedy and grit, the three sisters embrace the values of the strike and underline the empowerment, determination and vulnerability communities were faced with during the toughest of times.

Originally commissioned by Unite the Union in 2014 to mark the 30th anniversary of the strikes, this rebooted version brings together all four original cast members, Victoria Brazier, Claire O’Connor, Stacey Sampson and musician Beccy Owen, who reprise their original roles.

Boff says: “It remains an important story to tell, and instead of focusing on the battle between miners, police and government – the fighting, the scabs, the police waving fivers – we shine a light on the thousands of women who organised and rallied in support the strike.

“For me, the strongest part – the heart of the miners’ strike – was always the family support, specifically the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. Despite the outcome of the strike, all the hardship and poverty, the main memory of that year for the women was of laughter, fun and surprise – a big adventure. How to take on the machinery of the capitalist state and have a good time doing it.”

Making a stand: A Garston Women Against Pit Closure umbrella with Stacey Sampson’s Mary in the background. Picture: Lian Furness

Boff’s play seeks to highlight the deep-rooted social impact of the mining community’s anger. “The focus is on what it was like in the living room,” he says. “That’s a huge part of any historic moment in history that gets overlooked, so the first thing that happened when Rod [former artistic director Rod Dixon] got the chance to do the play was I said, ‘yes, but I don’t want it to be police and pickets, with verbal and physical clashes, but instead we should meet the women who were so resilient, and the stories poured out of them as they talked in their kitchen over cups of tea.”

For this 40th anniversary revival, the new factor is the vision of director Elvi Page. “I was the newbie to the team, when everyone else came back with so much love for it as it was such a special project,” she says.

“So much of it was already there, in terms of the text and the richness of the female experience, and it felt right that if a new director was coming in ten years on, the new addition should be a female voice.

“We could really dig deeper into focusing on the women’s experience, with the men becoming less and less important to the framing. It was the women’s resistance that needed to be told.”

Boff may have jested that Elvi “slashed and burned” his text, but rather than imposing draconian changes, she took a collective approach. “Everyone is creative, all of the actors, the writer, as well as the director, so you revisit the story to find the best way to tell what we needed to say,” she says.

Coal Not Dole: Victoria Brazier’s Olive and Claire O’Connor’s Isabel in We’re Not Going Back. Picture: Lian Furness

“It’s now shorter as we acknowledge that people’s appetite for watching films and theatre is all about pace, if we want to appeal to new audiences as well as to those who loved it last time, and it doesn’t feel like it has lost anything.

“The other thing that’s gone is the set. Now there’s no set at all, which makes it more nimble for touring, but it’s still so rich as a piece of theatre. It’s all about telling the story, where a set was almost slowing it down. We were thinking, ‘how would these women tell their stories’? Just chairs around a table.”

Boff notes one difference from ten years ago. “The history of the miners’ strike has changed. It’s become a big historical fact, like how the demand for a public inquiry into what happened at Orgreave has not stopped but grown,” he says.

“Now it’s part of history that young people know about. My daughter had to do an essay entitled ‘Did Mrs Thatcher engineer the miners’ strike’. I wanted her to say ‘yes’, but she wrote an evenly balanced answer, though she then concluded, ‘considering all the facts…’!”

Boff draws comparison with how the Suffragettes of the early 20th century were treated by the media. “If you go back and look at what the Daily Mail and Telegraph wrote, they were as hate-filled and bigoted as they are today, and you could not have imagined that the Suffragettes would become the heroes that they are today,” he says.

Red Ladder Theatre Company’s tour poster for We’re Not Going Back

“So maybe we can get to the day where we have a sculpture of Anne Scargill [NUM president Arthur Scargill’s wife Anne Harper, activist and co-founder of the National Women Against Pit Closures movement, from Barnsley].”

Reflecting on the importance of Red Ladder’s tour, Elvi says: “I would hope that the appetite for this play continues to be as hungry as it was ten years ago, and in this 40th anniversary year, it feels vital that it reaches as many people as possible.

“You think about how it mirrors the strike situations we see now. It’s harder now, as hard as it’s ever been, when unions are weaker and people’s opinions of people going on strike is volatile.

“But one of things that people find when looking for a message to digest in this play is that when we mull over events from the past, a little distance helps people come to clearer, balanced conclusions.”

Red Ladder Theatre Company in We’re Not Going Back, Ripon Arts Hub, All Hallowgate, Ripon, Ripon Theatre Festival, July 6, 7.30pm. Box office: ripontheatrefestival.org.

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More Things To Do in York & beyond when art goes wall to wall and opera takes a love potion. Hutch’s List No. 27, from The Press

One of James Jessop’s works on show in Rise Of The Vandals in the disused office block at 2, Low Ousegate, York

GRAFFITI writ large, an American rock musical, G&S and afternoon tea, a theatre festival and a football play find Charles Hutchinson in tune with the joys of June.

Exhibition/installation of the week: Bombsquad, Rise Of The Vandals, 2, Low Ousegate, York, today, tomorrow, then July 5 to 7, 11am to 6pm.

SPREAD over four floors in a disused Low Ousegate office block, York art collective Bombsquad showcases retrospective and contemporary spray paint culture, graffiti, street art and public art in three galleries, a cinema room, a Wendy house and art shop, in aid of SASH (Safe and Sound Homes).

Taking part in Rise Of The Vandals are York graffiti archivist Keith Hopewell, James Jessop, Bristol legend Inkie, Chu, Rowdy, Kid Acne, Remi Rough, Prefab77, SODA, Replete, Jo Peel, Sharon McDonagh, Lincoln Lightfoot, Anonymouse, Boxxhead and live DJs in SODA’s booth. Free entry; donations are encouraged. Dog friendly.

Johnny Marr: Playing songs from The Smiths to Electronic to his solo career (compiled on his Spirit Power collection) at Scarborough Open Air Theatre

Coastal gigs of the week: Johnny Marr and The Charlatans, tonight; Gregory Porter, Monday, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, gates 6pm

JOHNNY Marr, The Smiths and Electronic guitarist, superstar collaborator and solo artist, cherry-picks from all eras of his career, right up to his November 2023 compilation Spirit Power in his headline set. First up on this north-western double bill on the East Coast will be The Charlatans, as full of indie rock swagger as ever after 22 Top 40 hits.

Grammy Award-winning Californian jazz vocalist and songwriter Gregory Porter performs songs from Liquid Spirit, Take To The Alley, Nat King Cole & Me, All Rise and more besides on Monday night. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

Hamish Brown’s Alexis, left, Alexandra Mather’s Miss Aline Sangazure and Anthony Gardner’s John Wellington Wells in York Opera’s The Sorcerer. Picture: John Saunders

Everything stops for tea:  York Opera in The Sorcerer, York Theatre Royal, July 3 to 6, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee

JOHN Soper directs York Opera in The Sorcerer, Gilbert and Sullivan’s first full-length comic opera, wherein Sir Marmaduke Pointdextre (Ian Thomson-Smith) hosts a tea party in the Ploverleigh Hall gardens to celebrate the betrothal of his only son, Alexis (Hamish Brown) to Miss Aline Sangazure (Alexandra Mather), daughter of Lady Annabella Sangazure (Rebecca Smith).

When a love-at-first-sight elixir is mixed into the celebration tea by a sorcerer, John Wellington Wells (Anthony Gardner, in the role played by Soper for York Opera in 2001), mayhem follows as the assembled guests fall under his magic spell. What could possibly go wrong? Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Julia Bullock’s Geraldine Granger, Oliver Clive’s Hugo Horton and Grahame Sammons’s David Horton in 1812 Theatre Company’s The Vicar Of Dibley

Religious conversion of the week: 1812 Theatre Company in The Vicar Of Dibley, Helmsley Arts Centre, July 3 to 6, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

JULIE Lomas directs Helmsley Arts Centre’s resident company in a stage play adapted from the original BBC television series by Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer. When Reverend Pottle dies, much to the surprise of the Dibley Parish Council, his replacement is Geraldine Granger, a vicar who is also a chocoholic sex kitten.

Follow the antics of David Horton, his son Hugo, Jim, Owen, Frank and Mrs Cropley as they adjust to working with the witty and wonderful Geraldine, assisted by her verger, Alice Tinker. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.

Bright Light Musical Productions in Green Day’s American Idiot: York premiere at Joseph Rowntree Theatre. Picture: Dan Crawfurd-Porter

Musical of the week: Bright Light Musical Productions in Green Day’s American Idiot, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, July 4 to 6, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee

NORTH Yorkshire company Bright Light Musical Productions make their JoRo debut in the York premiere of punk rock opera Green Day’s American Idiot with a cast of 14 directed by Dan Crawfurd-Porter and a seven-piece band under Matthew Peter Clare’s musical direction.  

Inspired by the Californian band’s 2004 album, American Idiot tells the story of Johnny (Iain Harvey), “Jesus of Suburbia”, and his friends Will (William Thirlaway) and Tunny (Dan Poppitt) as they attempt to break out of their mind-numbing, aimless suburban existence. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

The bootiful game: Long Lane Theatre Club in The Giant Killers at the Milton Rooms, Malton

Football alternative to England at the Euros: Long Lane Theatre Club in The Giant Killers, Milton Rooms, Malton, July 4, kick-off at 7.30pm

THE Giant Killers tells the story of how Darwen FC came to the public’s attention in 1870s’ Lancashire to proclaim Association Football as the people’s game and not only the preserve of the upper classes.

Andrew Pearson-Wright & Eve Pearson-Wright’s play recounts how a ragtag bunch of mill workers in Darwen took on the amateur gentlemen’s club of the Old Etonians in the FA Cup quarter-final in 1879, rising up against prevailing social prejudice and the might of the Football Association to earn a place in history as the first real ‘‘giant killers’’ in English football. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.

For those about to rock: Live/Wire take the highway to hell with AC/DC classics at The Crescent

Tribute show of the week: Live/Wire, The AC/DC Show, The Crescent, York, July 5 and 6 (sold out), doors 7.30pm

LIVE/WIRE, The AC/DC Show pays tribute to the Aussie heavy rock band, replete with a wall of Marshall amps for two hours of high voltage rock’n’roll. Podge Blacksmith, a double take for frontman Brian Johnson, revels in a set taking in everything from Highway To Hell and Whole Lotta Rosie to Back In Black and latest album Rock Or Bust. Box office for July 5 only: thecrescentyork.com.

In Focus: Shepherd Group Brass Bands, Best Of Brass, York Theatre Royal, tonight, 7.30pm

The poster for Shepherd Group Brass Bands’ Best Of Brass at York Theatre Royal

TONIGHT’S Shepherd Group Brass Bands concert features all of the Shepherd bands playing individually and then a mighty ensemble piece, when all 170 players perform a specially composed piece by Liz Lane to mark 20 years of the bands’ sponsorship by the Shepherd Group.

Liz’s celebratory work represents the bands – Brass Roots, Academy Brass, Youth Band, Concert Band and Shepherd Group Brass Band – and the company support that provides first-class rehearsal facilities and has enabled the band organisation to grow.

Liz has led  several workshops, where she has worked with each band, “ storyboarding players’ feelings about the band, what we get from it as players and as a band family as a whole”.

She has been allowed to visit the Portakabin production site too, where she drew inspiration from the machinery used in the production of product lines.

On May 21, players from each band gathered in the band room for the first full run-through in Liz’s presence.  Afterwards she went away with a couple of ideas for final tweaks. Now comes the premiere performance with “a few real surprises in store for the audience”. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

In Focus too: Festival of the week: Ripon Theatre Festival, July 2 to 7

Barrie Rutter: Presenting Shakespeare’s Royals in Ripon Cathedral on July 4 at 7.30pm

PUPPETS, stories, dance, drama, circus and street entertainment pop up in new and surprising places alongside more familiar venues, such as Newby Hall, The Old Deanery, Ripon Cathedral, Ripon Arts Hub and Fountains Abbey, as Ripon Theatre Festival returns.

In all, 109 events and activities will be crammed into five days and six nights. Among the highlights will be Barrie Rutter’s Shakespeare’s Royals, The Adventures Of Doctor Dolittle, Red Ladder’s Miners’ Strike musical comedy We’re Not Going Back, the Family Day on July 7 and Folksy Theatre’s open-air As You Like It.

Opening the festival on Tuesday at 11am and 2pm, Andrew Bates’s Brother Aidan brings heritage crafts, history and storytelling to his new home at Fountains Abbey. In Hazelsong Theatre’s interactive event for adults, he creates an Anglo-Saxon book, interwoven with stories of his life as a monk, with his demonstration including parchment and ink making, bookbinding and calligraphy.

On the first night, the Hilarity Bites Festival Special comedy bill will be hosted by Ripon favourite Lee Kyle at Ripon Arts Club on Tuesday at 8pm. Taking part will be sketch supergroup Tarot, musical comedy duo Black Liver and 2023 BBC New Comedian of the Year Joe Kent-Walters in the guise of his outrageous comic creation, Frankie Monroe, the MC of a working men’s club that provides a portal to hell.

York company Pilot Theatre and One To One Development Trust present daily screenings of Monoliths, an immersive, digital theatre experience that interweaves three northern landscapes – a moor, a city and a coast – with sweeping soundscapes and poetic monologues at Ripon Cathedral.

Written by Hannah Davies, from York, Carmen Marcus, from Saltburn-by-the-Sea, and Asma Elbadawi, from Leeds, the stories are an arresting testament to the inextricable link between person and place. Directed by Lucy Hammond, each performance lasts 11 minutes and can be experienced by three visitors at a time, wearing XR headsets. Times: 1.30pm to 3.30pm, July 2 to 5; 10.30am to 3.30pm, July 6.

Nicola Mills is joined by pianist Maria King for A Spoonful Of Julie, an hour-long tribute to Julie Andrews, full of charming stories of her life, songs, singalongs, medleys and favourite things, at Holy Trinity Church on Wednesday from 1pm to 2pm.

In Look After Your Eyes, at Ripon Arts Club at 8pm that night, Yorkshire theatre-maker, performer and physical comedian Natalie Bellingham reflects on the pain and beauty of love: what it is to both connect and unravel.  

Performed by a clown “delving into the space inside us left behind by loss”, her show celebrates being human in all its banality, sprinkled with joy and ridiculousness.

Natalie Bellingham in Look After Your Eyes

Thursday opens with Stand Up Stories, presented by Ripon Theatre Festival storyteller in residence Ilaria Passeri at the Storehouse Bar. Describing herself as the product of a bold Scottish mother, an errant Italian father and a little sister with the vocabulary of a truck driver, Ilaria has found herself in more than a few scrapes, situations and silly scenes.

In a whistlestop twilight tour through the confusing comedy of errors of her life, her tales introduce her family, friends, pets and one very peculiar clown.

From 7.15pm, Ripon Museum Trust guides lead the Ripon Heritage Ghost Walk from the Market Place. At 7.30pm, Northern Broadsides founder Barrie Rutter OBE celebrates the Bard’s Kings and Queens, their achievements, conquests and foibles, in Shakespeare’s Royals at Ripon Cathedral. Cue anecdotes and memories from a globe-spanning career of playing and directing Shakespeare.

Ilaria Passeri returns on Friday morning from 10.30am to 11am for Storytime for pre-schoolers at Ripon Library, featuring Derek the Dragon, Rita the skateboarding Mouse and Brian the Chicken’s messy bedroom. A short-story writing workshop for adults follows from 11.30am to 1pm; bring a pen and notepad.

At 2pm at Ripon Cathedral, Redheart Theatre presents Rupert Mason in Mr Owen’s Notebook, an exploration of Wilfred Owen’s experience of war through his poetry and the works of his contemporaries.

Written and directed by Justin Butcher, Mason’s one-man performance recalls how Owen lived his last summer in Ripon, where he spent his last birthday in the cathedral, now the backdrop to this sold-out show.

Mason charts how an officer travels from the Allied HQ to the Western Front one week before the Armistice and discovers the pocketbook of a young lieutenant killed that day: Wilfred Owen.

In a marquee at The Ripon Inn, in Park Street, Tell Tale Hearts serve up the teatime entertainment Trunk Tales, wherein a well-travelled lady arrives with her trunk of tales that tell of boastful toads, magical fish and fearsome beasts.

Using only the contents of her magical luggage, she creates Arabic seas, epic mountains, fields of turnips and the tallest trees in her interactive stories from around the world for four-year-olds and upwards.

Paulus the Cabaret Geek in Looking For Me Friend

Paulus the Cabaret Geek’s tour of Looking For Me Friend, The Music Of Victoria Wood arrives at Ripon Arts Hub on Friday at 8pm, accompanied by Fascinating Aida pianist Michael Roulston for an hour of songs and stories.

In telling Wood’s story, Paulus unfolds his own in a relatable account of a 1970s’ childhood and what it really means to find your tribe.

Saturday keeps festivalgoers on the move in a day of Pop-Up Events at various locations from 9.30am to 6pm. Ilaria Passeri hosts a morning of adventures for four-year-olds and upwards in Tales From Honeypot Village, featuring Rita the Mouse and the Tidy Trolls in the front room of The Unicorn Hotel at 9.30am and the back room of The Little Ripon Bookshop at 11.30am.

Puppeteers Eye Of Newt open their magical miniature suitcase for Ayla’s Dream, a captivating tale of night skies, light and counting sheep for three to ten-year-olds at Ripon Library at 10.30am (accompanied by a puppet workshop) and Ripon Cathedral from 12 noon to 12.30pm (performance every ten minutes).

York performer Tempest Wisdom takes a journey down the rabbit hole in the family-friendly Curiouser & Curiouser, a show for age five + packed with Lewis Carroll’s whimsical writings, inspired by Ripon Cathedral’s nooks and crannies. Free performances take place at Ripon Cathedral at 11am, 12.30pm and The Little Ripon Bookshop at 2.30pm.

Join the Master and Matron on the front lawn for an interactive game of giant Snakes And Ladders At The Workhouse Museum. Learn how life then, as now, is as precarious as a shake of the dice; slither down the snake to a shaven head and defumigation or ascent to a life out of the ashes from 11am to 12.30pm or 1pm to 3pm.

Festival favourites Lempen Puppet Theatre return with the free show Theatre For One in Ripon Cathedral from 10.45am to 11.30pm and Kirkgate from 1.30pm to 2.30pm and 3pm to 4pm. In a micro-theatre experience for one at a time, plus curious onlookers, a mini-performance of The Belly Bug or Dr Frankenstein will be staged every five minutes.

Members of the Workhouse Theatre Group invite you to experience justice 1871 style in The Trial Of John Sinkler in a case of poaching and threatening behaviour from 2pm to 3pm at The Courthouse Museum.

Ensure justice is seen to be done or perhaps take a more active role in a lively scripted re-enactment led by Mark Cronfield, formerly of Nobby Dimon’s North Country Theatre company.

The festival fun continues in Kirkgate with buskers, bands and more from 3pm to 6pm.

For full festival details and tickets, head to: ripontheatrefestival.org. A preview of further events at Ripon Theatre Festival on July 6 and 7 will follow.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond when saying Yes to a love of food and music. Hutch’s List No. 22, from The Press

Malton Spring Food Lovers Festival: Look out for the festival guide and map on site

FOOD for thought on the arts and culture front, from street cookery to dance, trailblazing women to Drawsome! artists and musicians, prog-rock and folk greats to coastal Dexys, as Charles Hutchinson reports.

Flavour of the week: Malton Spring Food Lovers Festival, today, from 9am; tomorrow and Bank Holiday Monday, from 10am

ON the streets of “Yorkshire’s Food Capital”, Malton Food Lovers Festival celebrates Yorkshire’s supreme produce and cooking over three days of 120 artisan stalls and street food vendors, talks, tastings, chef demonstrations, brass bands and buskers, festival bar, food shops, sculpture trail, entertainment, blacksmith workshops, vintage funfair and family fun with Be Amazing Arts’ Creativitent, Environmental Art’s Creative Chaos and Magical Quests North.

The live musicians will be: today, Malton White Star Band, 11am to 1pm, The Rackateers, 1pm to 3pm, and Oz Ward, 6pm to 8pm; tomorrow, White Star Training Band, 11.30am to 12.30pm, and The Rackateers, 1pm to 3pm, and Monday, The Acoustic Buddies, 11am to 12pm and 2pm to 3pm. Festival entry is free.

Mary Ward (Augsberg portrait): Foundress of the Bar Convent, featuring in the Trailblazers audio trail

Exhibition launch of the week; Trailblazers of the Bar Convent, Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre, Blossom Street, York, opening today

THE Trailblazers of the Bar Convent audio trail focuses on uncovering the stories of key characters from the history of the oldest surviving Catholic convent in Great Britain.

Among them are foundress Mary Ward, who believed that girls deserved an equal education to boys; Mother Superior Ann Aspinal, who determined to build a secret chapel totally hidden from the outside world, and Sister Gregory Kirkus, who set up the convent’s first ever museum. Tickets: barconvent.co.uk.

What a hoot: Gemma Curry and her owl puppet in Hoglets Theatre’s Wood Owl And The Box Of Wonders

Pre-festival show of the week: Hoglets Theatre in Wood Owl And The Box Of Wonders, Fountains Mill, Fountains Abbey, near Ripon, tomorrow, 11am and 2pm

IN an Early Bird event for the 2024 Ripon Theatre Festival, York company Hoglets Theatre presents director Gemma Curry’s solo show Wood Owl And The Box Of Wonders for age three upwards.

A lonely little owl wants nothing more than to fly into the night and join his friends, but how can he when he is made from wood in Gemma’s magical half-term journey of singing owls, fantasy worlds, friendship and an age-old message about love?  The 40-minute show featuring beautiful handmade puppets and original music will be complemented by an optional puppet-making activity. Box office: ripontheatrefestival.org.

Lesley Ann Eden and her York School of Dance and Drama pupils: Presenting Pinocchio And Ponchetta at Joseph Rowntree Theatre. Picture: Nigel Holland

Dance show of the week: York School of Dance and Drama in Pinocchio And Ponchetta, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tomorrow, 6.30pm

YORK choreographer and dance teacher Lesley Anne Eden presents her 50th anniversary York School of Dance and Drama show with a company ranging in age from six to 70.

Pinocchio And Ponchetta is Lesley’s take on the old story of Pinocchio and his sister, “full of fabulous dancing and great fun for all the family”, with the promise of her trademark quirky props. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

The cover artwork for York Barbican-bound Richard Thompson’s new album, Ship To Shore

Folk luminary of the week: Richard Thompson, York Barbican, May 27, doors 7pm

GUITARIST, singer and songwriter Richard Thompson showcases his 20th solo album – and first since 2018’s 13 Rivers – ahead of the May 31 release of Ship To Shore on New West Records.

Notting Hill-born Thompson, 75, who made his name with folk rock pioneers Fairport Convention before forming his Seventies’ duo with Linda Thompson, will be performing with a full band. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Yes: Playing York Barbican on Tuesday

Rock gig of the week: Yes, The Classic Tales Of Yes Tour 2024, York Barbican, May 28, 8pm

PROG-ROCK legends Yes perform iconic songs from more than 50 years of groundbreaking music-making, definitely including a 20-minute medley from their 1973 album Tales From Topographic Oceans and “possibly” from latest album Mirror To The Sky too.

In the line-up will be Steve Howe, guitars and vocals, Geoff Downes, keyboards, Billy Sherwood, bass guitar and vocals, Jon Davison, vocals and acoustic guitar, and Jay Schellen, drums. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk. 

Kathryn Williams and Withered Hand: Teaming up at Selby Town Hall

Duo of the week: Kathryn Williams & Withered Hand, Selby Town Hall, May 29, 8pm

KATHRYN Williams is the Liverpool-born, Newcastle-based, Mercury Music Prize-nominated singer-songwriter with 16 albums to her name. Withered Hand is singer-songwriter Dan Willson, from the Scottish underground scene.

They first met in 2019 in an Edinburgh Book Festival spiegeltent, prompting Williams to tweet Willson: “What kind of songs would we write together and what would they sound like?” The results can be heard on the album Willson Williams, released on One Little Independent Records on April 26, and in concert in Selby (and Otley Courthouse on May 30). Box office: selbytownhall.co.uk.

Dexys: Heading to the Yorkshire coast on May 30

Coastal trip of the week: Dexys, Scarborough Spa Grand Hall, May 30, doors 7pm

AFTER playing York for the first time in their 45-year career last September, Dexys return to North Yorkshire on the latest leg of The Feminine Divine Live!

Led as ever by Kevin Rowland, Dexys open with a theatrical presentation of last year’s album, The Feminine Divine, to be followed by a second soulful set of beloved hits, from Come On Eileen and Jackie Wilson Said to The Celtic Soul Brothers and Geno. Box office: 01723 376774 or scarboroughspa.co.uk.

Bonneville (York singer-songwriter Bonnie Milnes) promotes her debut album New Lady at Drawsome! 2024 gig at The Crescent

York festival of the week: Drawsome! 2024, Young Thugs Studio, May 31; The Crescent, June 1; Arts Barge, Foss Basin, York, June 2

DRAWSOME! combines exhibitions and workshops with live music each evening. York multi-disciplinary artist Rowan Jackson will be exhibiting at Angel on the Green, Bishopthorpe Road, from 7pm on May 27; Things Found and Made at The Golden Ball, Cromwell Road, from May 31 and Greek-Australian graphic novel artist Con Chrisoulis for one night only at Young Thugs Studio, Ovington Terrace, on May 31 from 7pm, when Ichigo Evil, Plantfood, Mickey Nomimono and Drooligan will be performing.

On June 1, Bonneville, Lou Terry, Captain Starlet and Leafcutter John play at The Crescent community venue, where workshops run from 1 to 4pm, featuring Bits and Bots Recycled Robot, with Tom Brader, and Creative Visible Mending, with Anna Pownall, complemented by Zine Stalls hosted by Things Found and Made, Adam Keay and Teresa Stenson. 

On June 2, the Arts Barge presents Dana Gavanski, Kindelan, Moongate and We Are Hannah, after three 11am to 2pm workshops: Poem Fishing with Becca Drake and Jessie Summerhayes, Adana Letterpress and lino printing, and Screenprinting with Kai West. Drawsome! is run in aid of Bowel Cancer UK.

The poster for Drawsome! 2024

In Focus: Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, York Theatre Royal, May 29 and 30, 7,30pm; The Showstopper Kids Show, May 30, 2pm

SHOWSTOPPER! The Improvised Musical heads back to York Theatre Royal in an expanded format with a children’s version of the spontaneous musical comedy for half-term week.

The Showstoppers have 14 years behind them at the Edinburgh Fringe, to go with a BBC Radio 4 series, a West End run and an 2016 Olivier Award for their blend of comedy, musical theatre and, wait for it, spontaneity. 

Each Showstopper show is created live on the spot from audience suggestions, resulting in a new musical comedy at each performance, which is then named by the audience. 

The cast takes suggestions for the setting, genre and style to transform them into an all-singing, all-dancing production with humorous results. Anything can be expected at a Showstopper show, so if the audience fancies Hamilton in a hospital or Sondheim in the Sahara, The Showstoppers will sing it.

Thursday’s Showstopper Kids Show is for children of all ages, who will see their own ideas being turned into a fully improvised musical right in front of them. 

The children will decide where the story is set, what happens next and who the characters are. The Showstoppers will create whatever is suggested, so the characters could be anyone, such as the children’s favourite TV show characters, and the show could be set under the sea or in a doll’s house. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

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Tales of Barrie and the Bard to be told in Shakespeare’s Royals at York Theatre Royal

Barrie Rutter: Going face to face with Shakespeare’s Royals at York Theatre Royal Studio

IN his X profile, veteran Yorkshire actor Barrie Rutter OBE introduces himself as: “Lover of language. Awobopaloobopalopbamboom – everything else is Shakespeare”.

Barrie and the Bard have had a long, long relationship, one that is the subject of his new show, Shakespeare’s Royals, whose 11-date tour sends him to the York Theatre Royal Studio tomorrow (26/4/2024) as part of the York International Shakespeare Festival.

Barrie, founder and former artistic director of Northern Broadsides, celebrates the Bard’s kings and queens – their achievements, conquests and foibles – with tales, anecdotes and memories from a career of playing and directing Shakespeare’s Royals.

Told he could never play a king on account of his Yorkshire accent, Hull-born Rutter, now 77, took the revolutionary step of creating his own theatre company in 1992 at Dean Clough in Halifax to use the northern voice for Shakespeare’s kings, queens and emperors, not only the usual drunken porters, jesters or fools.

It has been said that the Yorkshire dialect most readily matches the Elizabethan language of Shakespeare’s time. “I can’t say that would be the case,” says Barrie. “I never claimed that, but all those short vowels and granite-heavy consonants are great lanes for language to travel down, and the northern voices of our country suit that language, that sound – as we know from all the work I did for Tony Harrison, echoing Ancient Greek dramas [The Mysteries, The Oresteia and The Trackers Of Oxyrhynchus].”

Shakespeare’s Royals was first staged as a one-off in Halifax last April. “The evening was such a success that I’m now touring it,” says Barrie. “The first one was at The Viaduct, the cellar theatre space I created at Dean Clough, which I have a real fondness for, and it worked really well.

“Sarah and Jamie Horsley, who run the True North restaurant at Dean Clough and now The Viaduct, suggested putting things on there and taking things out on tour as Sarah sits on the touring board of Arts Council North, so that’s what I’m doing.”

Barrie stepped down from the artistic director’s post at Northern Broadsides in April 2018 in frustration at what he saw as inadequate Arts Council funding for the company. Since then he has worked as a freelance actor, such as performing with Clive Anderson in the world premiere of Daniel Taub’s Winner’s Curse at the Park Theatre, London, in February last year, as well as coming through treatment for throat cancer in 2020.

A show such as Shakespeare’s Royals gives him a chance to keep squeezing his artistic juices. “You need your ego, the one that doesn’t get in the way, but keeps you going, keeps you being imaginative, keeps the brain working,” says Barrie. “This is a way to say I still have something to offer, something entertaining, something informative…and always pleasurable. This show is a bit of all that…and it’s political too.

Barrie Rutter as Lear in Shakespeare’s King Lear in 2015. Picture: Nobby Clark

“I make no secret of choosing Titania’s climate change speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream [Act II, Scene 1] and the ‘basic anti-Brexit edit’ of John of Gaunt’s This England monologue [from Richard II, Act II, Scene 1].

His favourite speech from Henry VI, Part Three, others from Henry V and King Lear, feature too, bookended by Macbeth, his first show as a “winsome 18-year-old at school” in 1964.

Shakespeare’s Royals combines Rutter’s guide to Shakespeare’s royalty, from Richard III to Henry IV, V and VI and the fairy king and queen of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with humorous anecdotes from his life in the theatre, whether founding Northern Broadsides, directing Lenny Henry in his Shakespeare debut as Othello, portraying assorted royals or encountering Dizzy Gillespie and Rudolf Nureyev.

As he reflects on a career that has taken him from Hamburg to Helsinki, Brazil to Beijing, Shakespeare’s Globe to the amphitheatre of Epidaurus in Greece, he says: “Some stories are very personal, some are instructive of what makes me tick, what I enjoy; hopefully they will be relatable and fun.

“In the case of the Calypso that accompanies Richard II, I was just going along my shelves, seeing what was there, and I remembered this Calypso that I sang in 1966 and didn’t sing again until last year – and yet I could recall every line.”

Barrie will be joined by Emily Butterfield from Northern Broadsides. “I didn’t want there to be no female voice in the show,” he says. “So I have Emily for Titania, Cleopatra and Elizabeth from Richard III, and there’ll be more music: a dirty limerick with Henry V and 12-bar blues with Cleopatra. Emily also plays the flute, and she’ll close the show with the last song from Twelfth Night.”

At school, an English teacher had frogmarched Rutter into the school play because he had “the gob for it”, and feeling at home on stage, he chose his future direction and has never looked back. Now he returns to York Theatre Royal, where he last appeared in November 2017 in his farewell Broadsides tour, For Love Or Money, a typically anarchic theatrical double act with Blake Morrison.

Time for Barrie Rutter to shake up Shakespeare once more.

Barrie Rutter: Shakespeare’s Royals, York Theatre Royal Studio, tomorrow (26/4/2024), 7.45pm;. Also Ripon Theatre Festival, Ripon Cathedral, July 4, 7.30pm. Box office: York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Ripon, ripontheatrefestival.org.