Roy Chubby Brown – charleshutchpress

October 4, 2025October 4, 2025

More Things To Do in York & beyond when the air turns blue and the skies glower. Hutch’s List No. 44, from The York Press

Roy Chubby Brown: No offence, but it’s simply comedy, reckons Britain’s stalwart potty-mouthed joker at York Barbican

FROM sacre bleu comedy to a French silent film, Graham Nash and Al Stewart on vintage form to Grayson Perry on good and evil, love’s vicissitudes to the Hunchback musical, October is brewing up a storm of culture, reports Charles Hutchinson.

Blue humour of the week: Roy Chubby Brown, It’s Simply Comedy, York Barbican, tonight, 7.30pm

GRANGETOWN gag veteran Roy Chubby Brown, now 80, forewarns: “Not meant to offend, it’s simply a comedy tour”. After more than 50 years of spicy one-liners and putdowns, he continues to tackle the subjects of sex, celebrities, politics and British culture with a high profanity count and contempt for political correctness. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Gemma Curry in Hoglets Theatre’s The Tale Of The Loneliest Whale at York Theatre Royal Studio

Children’s show of the week: Hoglets Theatre in The Tale Of The Loneliest Whale, York Theatre Royal Studio, today, 11am and 2pm

FRESH from an award-winning Edinburgh Fringe run, York company Hoglets Theatre invite primary-age children and families to an exciting adventure packed with beautiful handmade puppets, sea creatures, original songs and audience interaction aplenty.

Performed, crafted and directed by Gemma Curry, The Tale Of The Loneliest Whale celebrates friendship, difference and the beauty of being yourself in Andy Curry’s tale of Whale singing his heart out into the deep blue sea, but nobody singing back until…a mysterious voice echoes through the waves, whereupon Whale embarks on an unforgettable adventure. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Graham Nash: Sixty years of song at York Barbican. Picture: Ralf Louis

Vintage gigs of the week: Graham Nash, An Evening Of Songs And Stories, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm; Al Stewart, The Farewell Tour, York Barbican, October 7, 7.45pm

GRAHAM Nash, 83-year-old two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Grammy award winner, performs songs spanning his 60-year career fromThe Hollies to Crosby, Stills andNash, CSNY (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) to his solo career, joined by Todd Caldwell (keyboards and vocals), Adam Minkoff(bass, drums, guitars and vocals) and Zach Djanikian (guitars, mandolin, drums and vocals). Long-time friend Peter Asher supports.

The poster for Al Stewart’s farewell tour, visiting York Barbican on Tuesday

Glasgow-born folk-rock singer-songwriter Al Stewart marks his 80th birthday (born 5/9/1945) with his UK farewell tour. After relocating to Chandler Arizona from Los Angeles, his home for the past 45 years, he is winding down his touring schedule with his long-running time band The Empty Pockets. Time for the last Year Of The Cat. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Jonny Best: Leading Frame Ensemble’s improvised score for The Divine Voyager at the NCEM. Picture: Chris Payne

Film event of the week: Northern Silents presents The Divine Voyager with Frame Ensemble, National Centre for Early Music, York, Monday, 7.30pm

FRAME Ensemble’s spontaneous musicians Jonny Best (piano), Susannah Simmons (violin), Liz Hanks (cello) and Trevor Bartlett (percussion) accompany Julien Duvivier’s lushly photographed, beautifully poetic 1929 French silent film The Divine Voyage with an improvised live score.

In a tale of faith and hope, rapacious businessman Claude Ferjac sends his ship, La Cordillere, on a long trading journey, knowing it is likely to sink after poor repairs. An entire village of sailors, desperate to support their families, has no choice but to set sail. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.

James Lee, left, Helen Clarke, front, Wilf Tomlinson, back, and Katie Leckey rehearsing for Griffonage Theatre’s FourTold. Picture: John Stead

Time to discover: Griffonage Theatre in FourTold, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, October 6 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

YORK devotees of the madcap, the macabre and making the familiar strange and the strange familiar, Griffonage Theatre transport audiences to the quirky rural town of Baile Aighneas – The Town of Dispute – for FourTold, a quartet of comedies by early 20th century Irish playwright Lady Augusta Gregory, never presented together in the UK until now under Northern Irish director Katie Leckey.

Encounter the bustling market and all its gossip in Spreading The News; the restaurant where newspaper editors wine, dine and mix up their Coats; the post office, where the splendid Hyacinth Halvey has sent word he is coming to town, and the bus stop where strangers such as The Bogie Men can quickly become friends! Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Hannah Sinclair Robinson’s Jess and Joe Layton’s Robbie in Frantic Assembly’s Lost Atoms, on tour at York Theatre Royal next week. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Relationship drama of the week: Frantic Assembly in Lost Atoms, York Theatre Royal, October 7 to 11, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees

FRANTIC Assembly follow up York Theatre Royal visits of Othello and Metamorphosis with their 30th anniversary production, a two-hander memory play by Anna Jordan, directed by physical theatre specialist Scott Graham.

Joe Layton and Hannah Sinclair Robinson play Robbie and Jess, whose chance meeting, disastrous dates and extraordinary transformative love is the stuff of fairy tales. Or is it? Lost Atoms is a wild ride through a life-changing relationship, or Robbie and Jess’s clashing recollections as they relive the beats of connection, the moments of loss, but are their stories the same and can their memories be trusted? Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Grayson Perry: “Finding out if you really are thoroughly good or maybe quite evil, but in a fun way” at the Grand Opera House

Question of the week: Grayson Perry: Are You Good?, Grand Opera House, October 7, 7.30pm

AFTER A Show For Normal People And A Show All About You, artist, iconoclast, television presenter and Knight Bachelor Grayson Perry asks Are You Good? A question that he thinks is “fundamental to our humanity”.

“In this show I will be helping you, the audience, find out if you really are thoroughly good or maybe quite evil, but in a fun way,” says Sir Grayson. “I always start out with the assumption that people are born good and then life happens. So, let’s pull back the curtain and see where your morals truly lie.” Add audience participation and silly songs, and expect to come out with core values completely in tatters. “Is it more important to be good or to be right? It’s time to update what is a virtue and what is a sin. No biggie.” Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie: Pure entertainment at York Barbican on Thursday

Oh, lucky you gig of the week: Lightning Seeds, Tomorrow’s Here Today, 35 Years Greatest Hits Tour, York Barbican, October 9, 8pm

NOW in his 36th year of leading Liverpool’s Lightning Seeds, Ian Broudie heads to York on his extended Tomorrow’s Here Today tour. Cue Pure, The Life Of Riley, Change, Lucky You, Sense, All I Want, Sugar Coated Iceberg, You Showed Me, Emily Smiles, Three Lions et al. Casino support. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Jack Fry’s Quasimodo and Ayana Beatrice Poblete at Black Sheep Theatre Productions’s Selby Abbey photoshoot for The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, opening next week at the JoRo

Musical of the week: Black Sheep Theatre Productions in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, October 10, 11 and 14 to 18, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinees

BLACK Sheep Theatre Productions bring a cast of five leads, seven ensemble actors and a 23-strong choir to the York company’s larger-than-life staging of Alan Menken & Stephen Schwartz’s musical rooted in Disney’s 1996 musical film and Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel.

Combining powerful themes of love, acceptance and the nature of good and evil with a sweeping score, Matthew Peter Clare’s show will be “like nothing you’ve seen before”. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

May 2, 2023May 2, 2023

Babybird are back together for Leeds Brudenell Social Club gig as Stephen Jones keeps writing after heading back north

PLAYING Leeds Brudenell Social Club on Friday will bring back memories of Stephen Jones’s early Babybird travels.

“We deliberately requested these places [Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, London and Cardiff] as it feels like a rite of passage to return,” he says of this month’s short tour.

“These cities featured in our first tours in 1996 and 1997 and are the most memorable for the between-song banter and the enthusiasm. Though I live near Manchester, these other cities are our musical homes too.”

Joining 60-year-old Stephen on the road will be guitarist Luke Scott and drummer Robert Gregory, fixtures in the line-up since 1995, and bassist Danny Lowe, a band member for 15 years. “Everyone’s doing different things these days – Luke is a senior lecturer in London – but as soon as we get into the tour van it’s like a Chuckle tour,” he says.

Babybird officially split after ten Top 40 singles and 11 albums in 2013, but Stephen continues to write prolifically – up to seven songs a day – for solo release on Bandcamp. Around 100 albums so far and still rising, recorded on a laptop, Stephen still bursting with “monstrous lullabies for an unstable world”.

“Writing tunes is just something I can do,” he says. “Mowing the garden, I’ll put off forever, but going upstairs to the ‘fourth room’ to write the lyrics, that’s the hard part.”

He has been known to write in six-hour bursts, but he does not have a set routine. “Sometimes at four in the morning, I’ll have an idea that I’ll put on the phone, but I’ve never been the kind of writer who will be writing every day because that’s what they do. There’ll be days where I get up and don’t want to do it, but when I do it’s a pleasure,” he says.

“Looking back to those early albums [lo-fi Stephen Jones recordings made initially on cassettes in his Sheffield bedsit over six years], I had no intention of releasing them, but people were coming over and stealing them and saying I should release them!”

Now as then, “I always write for myself. I think everyone does. If you write for an audience, you become an automaton,” he says.

One tour preview summed up Stephen Jones’s post-2013 career as one where he will still “persist and meddle”. “I don’t think I would use the word ‘meddle’,” he says. “But I need to keep going financially, so you have to persist, and even if I had another job, I would persist with making music – but I’ve never had to give it up.”

Born in Wellington, Telford (“the same place as the comedian Stewart Lee,” he notes), Stephen was raised in Repton, Derbyshire, and Nottingham, where he studied film; made those notorious bedsit albums in the Steel City; moved to Manchester, and then to London for 15 years.

Home for the Jones family is now Hale in Altrincham, just outside Manchester. “We were living in a really nice place in London, a maisonette, but with no garden and with two kids, we decided to move back north. Nice garden…and my wife’s mother lives up here too. I love being on the verge of the Lake District,” he says.

If one album were still to sum up Babybird, it would be October 1996’s Ugly Beautiful, the one with “songs to annoy, enjoy and employ God with”; the one with the singles Goodnight, Candy Girl, Cornershop and global hit You’re Gorgeous.

*The poster for Babybird’s May tour that opens tonight and arrives in Leeds on Friday*

“Obviously some songs I write are out-and-out happy and beautiful too, but that album title sums up everything. I like to write about subjects that aren’t necessarily dark but are realistic. When lots of songs have a sheen, if you’re going to write songs like a David Lynch film, there has to be beauty within,” says Stephen.

“I studied film on the creative arts course at Clifton, at Nottingham Polytechnic as it was then. Fassbinder movies; David Lynch; Eraserhead made a big impression on me. That’s my humour. Dark!”

You’re Gorgeous, a number three hit in autumn 1996, will forever be the signature song, with its theme of male exploitation and yet a misleadingly upbeat chorus. “It’s funny what happened,” says Stephen. “Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown, whose humour I don’t like, did a version. The Wurzels have done a version. Pinky And Perky, they did it, without changing the lyrics. The Smurfs wanted to change the words, so we could say ‘No’ to that!” Dame Berwick Kaler once sang it in a York Theatre Royal pantomime too, by the way.

Stephen wrote the song in his lo-fi recording days. “I always thought it might be a hit of course, but I was listening to Stewart Lee talking to Adam Buxton on his podcast about successful acts who wanted to be cults and those who are underground but who wanted to be successful,” he says.

“It’s a hard gap to straddle, but I’ve kind of done both and that’s why ‘Gorgeous’ is good, because although it can define you, I can keep going into the studio because all the airplay keeps the money coming in.”

Stephen has come through a heart attack too in 2017. “It did stop me in my tracks. It was like having an iron cage put over me, but it was coming,” he says, attributing what happened to alcohol. “Does it make you reassess? Well, you do for a while, but then you go back to a glass of wine.

“What I’m doing is the same as an office job. Now I get up every 20 minutes when I’m writing – and I go to the gym too. I was in a ward with four men who looked so much worse than me, but then depression comes, but you come out of that. The doctors say I’m in better health than ever, with a stent in me, and now I’m just having a good time doing these gigs.

“There’s no pressure to promote things, which doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s perfect now. I’m older now. I was inspired by the tail end of punk, seeing The Stranglers, and it’s still that DIY thing of glueing your sleeves together, thinking it’s totally up to you what you do.”

Stephen’s 20-year friendship with Johnny Depp found “lyrical diamond” Stephen attending the Hollywood A-lister’s guest appearance with guitarist Jeff Beck in Manchester last May in the aftermath of Depp’s successful libel trial against ex-partner Amber Heard. “I was meeting him in the dressing room, shortly after the verdict. I fell over and smashed my leg. I now have a huge tear,” he says.

Nothing that will stop him from performing in Leeds on Friday, however, still searching for the meaning of life that he happily acknowledges he may never find.

Babybird, supported by Terrorvision’s Tony Wright, Leeds Brudenell Social Club, May 5, doors 7.30pm. Box office: brudenellsocialclub.co.uk.

Did you know?

STEPHEN Jones has written two novels, The Bad Book in 2000 and Harry And Ida Swap Teeth (also the title of a Babybird B-side) in 2003. He wrote the score for the 2004 film Blessed.

Did you know too?

CHEF, cookery book writer, TV presenter and restaurateur Gordon Ramsay used Babybird’s song The F-Word in one of his TV series.

March 25, 2023April 14, 2023

More Things To Do in York and beyond for those about to rock…or put Spring in their step. Hutch’s List No. 13, from The Press

*The return of RSJ: York metalcore band reconvene for one -off reunion at The Crescent*

HEAVYWEIGHT comedy, hardcore rock, reshaped Shakespeare and a ‘roarsome’ children’s show fire up Charles Hutchinson’s enthusiasm for the week ahead.

Resurrection of the week: Mr H presents RSJ, The Crescent, York, tonight, doors 7pm

YORK’S mightiest metalcore groovers reunite for a special one-off show, fronted once more by Dan Cook, now of Raging Speedhorn. “RSJ were/are one of the most intense groove and hardcore noise monsters, not just in York but across the UK. It’s no wonder they stormed stages at Bloodstock, Knebworth and Hellfire,” says promoter Tim Hornsby.

RSJ’s spine-rattling polyrhythms and huge guitars will be preceded by the return of much-missed melodic hardcore band Beyond All Reason and Disinfo. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

*Justin Moorhouse: Plenty on his plate to get off his chest at Burning Duck Comedy Club night*

Lancastrian in York of the week: Burning Duck Comedy Club presents Justin Moorhouse, Stretch And Think, The Crescent, York, Sunday, 7.30pm

MANCHESTER stand-up, radio presenter and actor Justin Moorhouse is back, “still funny, yet middle aged” (he’s 52), in a new suit for a new show that may contain thoughts on yoga, growing older, Madonna, shoplifters, Labradoodles, cyclists, the menopause, running, hating football fans but loving football…

…not drinking, funerals, tapas, Captain Tom, Droylsden, the environment, self-improvement, horses, the odd advantages of fundamental religions, the gym and shop-door etiquette. “Come, it’ll be fun,” he says. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

Royal Shakespeare Company: Linking up with York Theatre Royal for York Associate Schools Playmaking Festival

School project of the week: York Theatre Royal and Royal Shakespeare Company present York Associate Schools Playmaking Festival of The Merchant Of Venice, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday and Wednesday, 6.30pm

SHAKESPEARE’S play is told in six sections by six schools each night, using choral and ensemble approaches to relate Shylock’s story through multiple bodies and voices in a celebration of the joy of performance that explores themes of prejudice, friendship and self-interest.

Participating schools on March 28: Acomb Primary, Applefields School, Millthorpe School, Vale of York Academy, St Barnabas CE Primary; March 29, Clifton Green Primary, Poppleton Road Primary, Brayton Academy, Scarcroft Primary, Fulford School and Joseph Rowntree School. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

*Big in the Eighties: Andy Cryer in The Comedy Of Errors (More Or Less) at the SJT, Scarborough*. *Picture: Patch Dolan*

Shake-up of the week: The Comedy Of Errors (More Or Less), Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Thursday to April 15

ORIGINALLY by Shakespeare, now messed around with by Elizabeth Godber and Nick Lane, SJT director Paul Robinson’s vibrant new staging of the Bard’s most bonkers farce arrives in a co-production with Prescot’s Shakespeare North Playhouse.

The Comedy Of Errors (More Or Less) is brought to life in neon-lit 1980s’ Scarborough. Cue mistaken identities, theatrical chaos and belting musical numbers from the era of big phones and even bigger shoulder pads. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com. SEE REVIEW BELOW.

*The poster artwork for Pick Me Up Theatre Company’s Oh! What A Lovely War*

Revival of the week: Pick Me Up Theatre in Oh! What A Lovely War, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, March 31 to April 8, 7.30pm, except April 2 and 3; 2.30pm, April 1, 2 and 8

PICK Me Up Theatre present a 60th anniversary production of Oh! What A Lovely War, a satirical chronicle of the First World War, told through songs and documents in the form of a seaside Pierrot entertainment.

Devised and presented by Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in 1963 before being turned into a film by Richard Attenborough in 1969, now it is in the hands of Robert Readman’s York cast. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

*Feeling hot, hot, hot: Zog is on fire in Freckle Productions’ show at York Theatre Royal*

Children’s show of the week: Freckle Productions in Zog, York Theatre Royal, March 31, 4.30pm; April 1, 10.30am, 1.30pm and 3.30pm

JULIA Donaldson and Alex Scheffler’s Zog takes to the stage in a magical Freckle Productions show most suitable for age three upwards, although all ages are welcome. Zog is trying very hard to win a golden star at Madam Dragon’s school, perhaps too hard, as he bumps, burns and roars his way through Years 1, 2 and 3.

Luckily plucky Princess Pearl patches him up, ready to face his biggest challenge yet: a duel with knight Sir Gadabout the Great. Emma Kilbey directs; Joe Stilgoe provides the songs. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

*Roy “Chubby” Brown: Bluer than Stilton at York Barbican*

Still in rude health: Roy “Chubby” Brown, York Barbican, March 31, 7.30pm

ROY “Chubby” Brown – real name Royston Vasey, from Grangetown, Middlesbrough – is on the road again at 78, 50 years into a blue comedy career that carries the warning: “If easily offended, please stay away”.

Chubby may not be everyone’s cup of tea but a lot of people like tea, he says. Thirty DVDs in 30 years, thousands of shows worldwide and four books testify to the abiding popularity of a profane joker full of frank social commentary, forthright songs and contempt for political correctness. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

*In the doghouse: Ferocious Dog attack songs with bite at York Barbican*

Where there is despair, may they bring Hope: Ferocious Dog, supported by Mark Chadwick, York Barbican, April 1, 7pm

FEROCIOUS Dog, a Left-leaning six-piece from Warsop, Nottinghamshire, slot somewhere between Levellers and early Billy Bragg in their vibrant vein of Celtic folk-infused punk rock.

Fifth album Hope came out in 2021, charting at number 31 in the Official UK Charts. Special guest will be Levellers’ leader Mark Chadwick, joined by Ferocious Dog violinist Dan Booth for part of his 7pm set. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

*Artwork by Cuban painter Leo Morey, one of the new artists taking part in York Open Studios 2023*

Early sighter of the week: York Open Studios 2023 Taster Exhibition, The Hospitium, Museum Gardens, York, April 1 and 2, 10am to 4pm

FOR the first time since 2019, York Open Studios will be launched with a taster exhibition next weekend featuring examples of work by most of the 150 artists and makers set to open their studio doors on April 15, 16, 22 and 23.

This free preview gives a flavour of what will be coming up at more than 100 venues next month. Full details of this year’s artists and locations can be found at yorkopenstudios.co.uk. Look out for booklets around York.

In Focus: Luke Wright, The Remains Of Logan Dankworth, Selby Town Hall, March 30, 8pm

*In the Wright place: Luke Wright making his political point in The Remains Of Logan Dankworth*

PERFORMANCE poet Luke Wright returns to Selby Town Hall on Thursday to peform his 2022 Edinburgh Fringe political verse play The Remains Of Logan Dankworth.

Columnist and Twitter warrior Logan Dankworth grew up romanticising the political turmoil of the 1980s. Now, as the EU Referendum looms, he is determined to be in the fray of the biggest political battle for years.

Meanwhile, Logan’s wife Megan wants to leave London to better raise their daughter. As tensions rise at home and across the nation, something is set to be lost forever.

The third in Wright’s trilogy of lyrically rich plays looks at trust, fatherhood and family in the age of Brexit. Winner of The Saboteur Award for Best Show, it picked up four and five-star from the Telegraph, the Scotsman, the Stage and British Theatre Guide.

Wright was a founder member of poetry collective Aisle16, who shook up the spoken-word scene in the 2000s, helping to kick-start a British renaissance of the form. He is the regular tour support for John Cooper Clarke and often hosts shows for The Libertines.

He is a frequent guest on BBC Radio 4, a Fringe First winner for writing and a Stage Award winner for performance.

“Luke Wright is an astonishing performer and one of the best political writers around today, whose wonderful, lyrical writing translates really well to full-length plays,” says Selby Town Council arts officer Chris Jones.

“I was lucky enough to see The Remains Of Logan Dankworth in Edinburgh last summer and made sure I booked it for Selby Town Hall straight away. It’s a brilliantly told story by a powerhouse poet.”

For tickets: ring 01757 708449 or book online at selbytownhall.co.uk.

REVIEW: The Comedy Of Errors (More Or Less), Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough *****

*David Kirkbride’s Antipholus of Scarborough in a headlock with Claire Eden’s Big Sandra in The Comedy Of Errors (More Or Less). All pictures: Patch Dolan*

Stephen Joseph Theatre and Shakespeare North Playhouse in The Comedy Of Errors (More Or Less), Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until April 15, 7.30pm plus 1.30pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com

THIS Comedy Of Errors gets everything right. Not more or less. Just right. Full stop.

Shakespeare’s “most bonkers farce” has been entrusted to Nick Lane, madly inventive writer of the SJT’s equally bonkers pantomime, and Elizabeth Godber, a blossoming writing talent from the East Yorkshire theatrical family.

How does this new partnership work? In a nutshell, Lane has penned the men’s lines, Godber, the female ones, before the duo moulded the finale in tandem.

SJT artistic director Paul Robinson, meanwhile, selected a criminally good play list of Eighties’ guilty pleasures, from Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again to Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl, Nik Kershaw’s Wouldn’t It Be Good to Toni Basil’s Mickey, Cher’s Just Like Jesse James to Kenny Loggins’ Footloose, to be sung in character or as an ensemble with Northern Chorus oomph.

*Oh, Dromio, Dromio, wherefore art thy other Dromio? Oliver Mawdsley’s Dromio of Prescot in the SJT’s The Comedy Of Errors* *(More Or Less)*

Aptly, the opening number is an ensemble rendition of Dream Academy’s one-hit wonder, Life In A Northern Town, that town being 1980s’ Scarborough, just as Lane always roots his pantomimes in the Yorkshire resort.

From an original idea by Robinson, Lane and Godber’s reinvention of Shakespeare’s comedy is not too far-fetched but far enough removed to take on its own personality and, frankly, be much, much funnier as a result. To the point where one woman in the front row was in the grip of a fit of giggles. Yes, that joyous.

For Ephesus, a city on the Ionian coast with a busy port, read Scarborough, a town on the Yorkshire coast with a fishing harbour, although all the fish and chip cafés were shut without explanation on the evening of the press night. Was something fishy going on?

Ephesus was governed by Duke Solinus; Scarborough is run by Andy Cryer’s oleaginous Solinus. Still the merry-go-round action is spun around outdoor public spaces on Jessica Curtis’s set, where protagonists bump into each other like dodgem cars. Just as Syracusans were subject to strict rules in the original play, now Lancastrians are given the Yorkshire cold shoulder in a new war of the roses, besmirched Eccles Cakes et al.

*In with a shout: Claire Eden, right, meets a Scarborough greeting from Alyce Liburd, left, Valerie Antwi and Ida Regan in The Comedy Of Errors (More Or Less)*

So begins a tale of two rival states and two sets of mismatched twins (Antipholus and Dromio times two) on one nutty day at the seaside. Cue a mishmash of mistaken identities, mayhem agogo, and merriment to the manic max, conducted at an ever more frenetic lick.

It worked wonders for Richard Bean in One Man, Two Guvnors, his Swinging Sixties’ revamp of Goldoni’s 1743 Italian Commedia dell’arte farce, The Servant Of Two Masters, setting his gloriously chaotic caper, as chance would have it, in another English resort: Brighton. Now The Comedy Of Errors evens up the mathematical equation for two plus two to equal comedy nirvana from so much division.

One ‘guvnor’, Lancastrian comic actor Antipholus of Prescot (Peter Kirkbride) crosses the Pennine divide to perform his one-man show. Trouble is, everyone has booked tickets for the talent show across the bay, starring t’other ‘guvnor’, the twin brother he has never met, Antipholus of Scarborough (David Kirkbride, different first name, but same actor, giving licence for amusing parallel biographies in the programme).

The two ‘servants’ of the piece, Dromio of Prescot and Scarborough respectively (Oliver/Zach Mawdsley), are equally unaware of the other’s presence, compounding a trail of confusion rooted in Scarborough’s Antipholus owing money everywhere but still promising his wife a gold chain. He needs to win the contest to appease Scarborough’s more unsavoury sorts.

*Comedy gold: Andy Cryer in The Comedy Of Errors (More Or Less)*

Kirkbride takes the acting honours in his hyperactive double act with himself, Mawdsley a deux is a picture of perplexity; Cryer, in his 40^th year of SJT productions, is comedy gold as ever in chameleon roles; likewise, Claire Eden fills the stage with diverse riotous, no-nonsense character, whether from Lancashire or Yorkshire.

Valerie Antwi, Alyce Liburd and Ida Regan, each required to put up with the maelstrom of male malarkey, add so much to the comedic commotion, on song throughout too.

Under Robinson’s zesty, witty direction, everything in Scarborough must be all at sea and yet somehow emerge as comic plain sailing, breaking down theatre’s fourth wall to forewarn with a knowing wink of the need to suspend disbelief when seeing how the company will play the two sets of twins once, spoiler alert, they finally meet.

Who knew shaken-and-stirred Shakespeare could be this much fun, enjoying life in the fast Lane with Godber gumption galore too. Add the Yorkshire-Lancashire spat and those Eighties’ pop bangers, Wayne Parsons’ choreography and the fabulous costumes, and this is the best Bard comedy bar none since Joyce Branagh’s Jazz Age Twelfth Night for Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre in York in 2019.

When The Comedy Of Errors meets the 1980s, the laughs are even bigger than the shoulder pads. A case of more, not less.

Review by Charles Hutchinson