Check mate: Paul Kemp’s Ben Wilkes, left, cowers as Bill Champion’s Jack Bothridge terminates their chess match in Show & Tell. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
IN the words of Alan Ayckbourn, “Show & Tell is about something which has preoccupied me for the last 60 years and probably more – theatre.”
In those years, the Scarborough writer-director has chalked up 90 plays – and still more are on their way. His SJT play for 2026 is written already and he is part way through 2027’s premiere too.
Play number 90, Show & Tell, is a “love letter to theatre”: the joy of theatre, the pleasure of writing and directing for Ayckourn at 85; the abiding delight for his audience in his abiding wit, social and cultural observation, foresight and insight, mischief-making and rug-pulling darker undercurrents.
Show & Tell is among his most playful in its celebration of the possibilities presented by ‘the play’ as an artform, here refracted through a backward glance at its back pages and his own too. A play full of play and full of plays, and indeed a play within a play.
All this is wrapped up in dark farce that “lifts the lid on the performances we act out on a daily basis,” as Sir Alan puts it. How much do we “show and tell”; how much do we conceal?
In this case, retired West Yorkshire managing director Jack Bothridge (grizzled, irascible Ayckbourn regular Bill Champion) has invited Homelight Theatre Company actor Peter Reeder (Richard Stacey) to the Bothridge family hall to tie up arrangements for a birthday party performance for his wife.
Unfortunately, belligerent Jack has no recollection of making any arrangements, mistaking the unnerved Peter Reeder for a meter reader. What’s more, Jack is not so much forgetful as in the incipient stages of dementia, in a hinterland between assertive clarity and confusion, as Ayckbourn exposes the misogyny, gruff bluntness, delusion and self-entitlement born of running a family business often on a capricious whim.
Champion is in terrific form here as a latter-day Lear, while Ayckbourn’s study of the generation that soils and spoils a family business is spot on in a nod to Ibsen and Arthur Miller. Look at Jack’s bullying treatment of Ben Wilkes (Paul Kemp), who ran his formal clothing department and is now his carer, outwardly as loyal as Lear’s Gloucester.
Writer-director Alan Ayckbourn in the Stephen Joseph Theatre poster for his 90th play, Show & Tell
However, there is much more to the reserved Wilkes than first meets the eye, caught wonderfully by Kemp, the essence of the gradual “show and tell” in Show & Tell. His shattering revelation, told to the sympathetic ear of actress and company manager Harriet ‘Harry’ Golding (Frances Marshall) is a gem of a quietly detonating scene.
Kemp’s Wilkes becomes embroiled in the other side of the story: Ayckbourn’s depiction of the world of theatre, past and present. Through the tribulations of the ailing Homelight Theatre Company, desperately in need of Jack’s booking, Ayckbourn hones in on the dramas faced by companies post-Covid, the struggle to draw an audience, the battle between artistic ambition and exigency.
He comments too on the fad for changing a company name to meet changing times, in this instance from the pioneering Front Room Theatre to the more inclusive-sounding Homelight. He duly recalls the groundbreaking days of Centre 42, the radical project of Arnold Wesker and Charles Parker, one said to have “inflicted the most damage on theatre since Cromwell”.
Act Two recalls Ayckbourn’s 1984 play A Chorus Of Disapproval in going behind the scenes, but crucially too it draws on Ayckbourn’s earliest days at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, directing a French farce in 1961 when artistic director Stephen Joseph told him his budget was “technically nothing…and if you push me, £5”.
In theatre tradition, by now joined by Olivia Woolhouse’s insouciant actress Steph Tate, Kemp’s Wilkes steps in when needs must, the cue for Stacey’s exasperated Reeder to act like a spoiled child in the readthrough and Kemp to scene-steal gloriously.
What follows this character-revealing shenanigans is the play within the play: a full-scale French farce, A Friend Indeed, in Ayckbourn’s knowing pastiche of the artform, played straight but inherently over-the-top in full period costume.
Theatre laid bare, life laid bare, warts and all, yet delivered with a love of the stage that never dims.
Alan Ayckbourn’s Show & Tell, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 5. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Bill Champion and Paul Kemp in rehearsal for Alan Ayckbourn’s Show & Tell. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
ALAN Ayckbourn’s 90th play, a love letter to theatre delivered under the title of Show & Tell, opens at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tonight.
Ayckbourn directs Bill Champion, Paul Kemp, Frances Marshall, Richard Stacey and Olivia Woolhouse in a delightfully dark farce that lifts the lid on the performances we act out on a daily basis.
The plot? Jack is planning a big party for his wife’s birthday. Pulling out all pulling the stops, he has booked a touring theatre company to perform in the main hall of the family home. Unfortunately, however, Jack is becoming forgetful in his old age, unable to remember all the details of the booking.
The other side of the story? The Homelight Theatre Company is on its knees, desperately in need of a well-paid gig – and Jack’s booking is very well paid – but pinning him down on the details has been tricky. Something does not feel quite right.
“Show & Tell is about something which has preoccupied me for the last 60 years and probably more – theatre,” says Sir Alan, now 85. “It’s a love letter to theatre.
“The play is a dark farce that reflects that real life is curling around it all the time, with the structure of a play within a play: a play of the sort we would do in my second year with the Stephen Joseph Theatre Company at the Library Theatre, like A Game Of Love And Chance, a French farce. We had such a lark with that play, done as one of our attempts to attract a seaside audience.”
Show & Tell writer-director Alan Ayckbourn in his garden in Scarborough. Picture: Tony Barthlomew
Show & Tell presents an interesting challenge for the cast, says Sir Alan. “Once it starts, they have two challenges: they have to be the persona who comes into the rehearsal room, the actor they are playing, and then the character they’re playing in the play within the play.
“One of the things we’ll do is go from modern naturalism to French farce, but I don’t much of that leaping in and out. Once they start doing the play within the play, they do the play – and I don’t want to make the farce bad as it’s a celebration of theatre.
“They’re at the level where it’s not laughing out loud at their ineptitude, nor is it making fun of amateurs as then you’ve lost the point of the play. I’ve never tried to do that; I didn’t do that in A Chorus Of Disapproval either. The performance level should remain reasonably high.”
Come the finale, the play and play within a play elide. “There’s a moment at the very end, where the farce and Show & Tell proper coincide, when they’re taking their bow to endless empty rows, at which point a dormant member of the audience wakes with a jolt and joins in the clapping, and in doing so he encourages us all to do so as he breaks through the fourth wall. We get a Pirandelloesque flip there that I’m anxious to pull off.”
Ayckbourn’s love letter to theatre comes in the wake of a General Election where barely a breath was spent on the future of the arts. “Theatre is not a vote catcher,” reasons Sir Alan. “We need to make the arts more valued in the community. You do that by making people want to come and see it, and you don’t do it by pretending it’s something it isn’t.
“It isn’t an educational tool or an organised sing-song in an old people’s home; but it’ s something that is quite expensive to put on, and in order to put it in a space, whether small large, it depends on the financing.
Richard Stacey and Olivia Woolhouse rehearsing a scene from Show & Tell. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
“But we need to make theatre less expensive. A few years ago, when we took Private Fears In Public Spaces to New York and received wonderful reviews, I was approached by the Shubert Organization, the big boys of New York theatre, who said they would like to transfer it to off-Broadway.
“I said the cast had gone on to do other things, but they said we could use American actors, and we put a company together, but then they started saying, ‘you need an assistant director’. ‘No, I don’t,’ I said. They kept adding roles. Fight director. Movement director.”
Size of theatre. Cost of furniture and set design. The list and potential costs grew. “So we abandoned the production in the end because it was too expensive to do, when in fact it was a six-hander with a simple stage and simple sound design. The old expression ‘two planks and a passion’ came to me, and I thought, anything we do has got to go back to basics.”
That thought sparked a memory of Sir Alan directing his first production for the SJT: Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight at the Library Theatre in 1961. “I asked Stephen [artistic director Stephen Joseph] how much the budget was. ‘Technically nothing,’ he said. “And if you push me, £5’. We scraped and we borrowed, and we still did it. The only cost that came in was the actors’ salaries and stage manager’s salary,” he recalls.
“What Stephen presented, and it comes into my play Show & Tell too, is that theatre is a meeting of audience and performers, and the audience are certainly not interested in who the director is – except with the cult of the director being so important now!”
Alan Ayckbourn’s Show & Tell, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tonight until October 5, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinees and 1.30pm matinees on September 12, 18, 19, 25 and 26, October 2 and 3. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Alan Ayckbourn in the poster image for Show & Tell
In Focus: Rehearsed reading of Alan Ayckbourn’s Father Of Invention, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, 15/9/2024
THE first ever public performance of the AI-futuristic Father Of Invention, written by Alan Ayckbourn in lockdown, will be given in a fundraising rehearsed reading at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on September 15 at 3pm.
Ayckbourn directs a cast of Bill Champion, Paul Kemp and Frances Marshall from his 90th play, Show & Tell, joined by Ayckbourn alumni Liza Goddard, Elizabeth Boag, Laurence Pears and Naomi Petersen. This will be the first time the Scarborough writer-director, 85, has heard the work read aloud.
“Take a look at their rollcall of Ayckbourn-written-and-directed shows – we reckon they’ve racked up an impressive 39 between them,” says SJT press officer Jeannie Swales. “We haven’t counted last year’s reading of Truth Will Out, only shows that had a full production either here at the SJT or at The Old Laundry Theatre, Bowness-on-Windermere, including Show & Tell. Mind you, that’s still not quite half of the Ayckbourn canon of 90!”
One of a handful of dramas penned by Ayckbourn in the creative cocoon of his Scarborough home during the pandemic, Father Of Invention takes its title from its central character of technology magnate Lord Onsett, who has passed away.
“Lord Onsett was an entrepreneur who made billions from the rapid acceleration of Artificial Intelligence,” says Sir Alan. “His company introduced the now ubiquitous Artificial Sentient Lifeforms, which carry out vast swathes of jobs for humanity from cleaning to security.
“His family are gathered to discuss how his enormous estate will be divided but as ever with Lord Onsett, there are a few surprises in store…”
The Stephen Joseph Theatre artwork for Alan Ayckbourn’s Father Of Invention
Leading the gaggle of familiar faces will be “our old friend” Liza Goddard, who has appeared in Ayckbourn premieres of If I Were You, Snake In The Grass, Life & Beth, Communicating Doors, Life Of Riley and The Divide.
The omnipresent Bill Champion has roles in Comic Potential, Haunting Julia, GamePlan, FlatSpin, RolePlay, A Chorus Of Disapproval, Intimate Exchanges, Woman In Mind, Absurd Person Singular, Surprises, Arrivals & Departures, Farcicals, Henceforward…, No Knowing, By Jeeves, Season’s Greetings, The Girl Next Door, Welcome To The Family and now Show & Tell to his name.
Paul Kemp has made his mark in This Is Where We Came In, Drowning on Dry Land, Private Fears In Public Places, The Champion Of Paribanou, Woman In Mind, My Wonderful Day and The Divide, this summer adding Show & Tell to that list.
York actress Frances Marshall has appeared in premieres of A Brief History Of Women, Joking Apart, Season’s Greetings, Family Album and Truth Will Out; Elizabeth Boag in Arrivals & Departures, Farcicals, Roundelay, Confusions, Hero’s Welcome, The Divide, Family Album and Truth Will Out; Naomi Petersen in By Jeeves, Joking Apart, Better Off Dead, Birthdays Past, Birthdays Present, Haunting Julia, The Girl Next Door, Constant Companions and Truth Will Out.
All money raised from the rehearsed reading will go towards the SJT’s New Work Fund, helping the theatre to present new work on its two stages and to nurture new talent.
Ticket availability is “limited”. Hurry, hurry, to book on 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
York actress Frances Marshall in rehearsal for Alan Ayckbourn’s 90th play, Show & Tell at the SJT. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
ALAN Ayckbourn’s 90th play and the Fangfest arts weekend lead Charles Hutchinson’s recommendations for the weeks ahead.
Premiere of the week: Alan Ayckbourn’s Show & Tell, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, September 5 to October 5
BILL Champion, Paul Kemp, Frances Marshall, Richard Stacey and Olivia Woolhouse will be the cast for the 90th play by Scarborough writer-director Alan Ayckbourn, a love letter to theatre.
In a delightfully dark farce that lifts the lid on the performances we act out on a daily basis, Jack is planning a big party for his wife’s birthday. Pulling out all the stops, he has booked a touring theatre company to perform in the main hall of the family home. Unfortunately, Jack is becoming forgetful in his old age, rendering him unable to remember all the details of the booking.
The Homelight Theatre Company is on its knees, desperately needing a well-paid gig – and Jack’s booking is very well paid. Pinning him down on the details has been tricky, however, and something does not feel quite right. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Mealtime mayhem in The Tiger Who Came To Tea at the Grand Opera House, York
Children’s show of the week: Nicoll Entertainment presents The Tiger Who Came To Tea, Grand Opera House, York, today and tomorrow, 11.30am and 2.30pm
JUDITH Kerr’s picture-book story The Tiger Who Came To Tea is celebrating 15 years on stage in writer-director David Wood’s 55-minute production that returns to York this weekend, exactly a year on from its last visit.
The doorbell rings just as Sophie and her mummy are sitting down to tea. Who could it possibly be? What they don’t expect to greet at the door is a big, stripey, tea-guzzling tiger in a family show packed with oodles of magic, sing-a-long songs and clumsy chaos! Age guidance: three upwards. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Allied Air Forces Memorial Day at the Yorkshire Air Museum, pictured in 2023
We will remember them: Allied Air Forces Memorial Day, Yorkshire Air Museum, Halifax Way, Elvington, near York, tomorrow (Sunday), from 1.45pm
THE Yorkshire Military Marching Band will lead the 1.45pm parade featuring standard bearers from 16 Royal British Legion and RAF Association branches in one of the biggest events in the museum’s calendar.
Representatives of the RAF will join with counterparts from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and France in honouring the bravery and sacrifices of the allied air crews who flew from the airfield during the Second World War, many of whom did not survive. The day will climax with a 2.15pm service in the main hangar, under the nose of Halifax Bomber Friday the 13th. Open to museum visitors and invited guests.
Busted: Concluding the 2024 season at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on Saturday
Coastal gig of the week: Busted, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, today, gates open at 6pm
BUSTED close Cuffe & Taylor’s summer of outdoor gigs in Scarborough 22 years after first bouncing into the charts with the pop-punk energy of What I Go To School For and a year on from releasing Greatest Hits 2.0, an album of re-recorded hits with guests to mark the reunion of James Bourne, Matt Willis and Charlie Simpson.
Expect number one smashes Crashed The Wedding, Who’s David, Thunderbirds Are Go and You Said No to feature in Saturday’s set list, along with Year 3000, Air Hostess, Sleeping With The Lights. Support comes from Skinny Living and Soap. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com/busted.
William Dalrymple: Reflecting on India’s impact on the ancient world in his Grand Opera House talk
History talk of the week: William Dalrymple, How Ancient India Transformed the World, Grand Opera House, York, September 2, 7.30pm
HISTORIAN William Dalrymple, co-host of the Empire podcast, tells the story of how, from 250BC to 1200AD, India transformed the world: exporting religion, art, science, medicine and language along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific, creating a vast and profoundly important empire of ideas.
Dalrymple explores how Indian ideas crossed political borders and influenced everything they touched, from the statues in Roman seaports to the Buddhism of Japan, the poetry of China to the mathematics of Baghdad. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Kiri Pritchard-McLean: Tales of a foster parent in her Peacock show at Pocklington Arts Centre
Comedy gig of the week: Kiri Pritchard-McLean: Peacock, Pocklington Arts Centre, September 5, 8pm
KIRI Pritchard-McLean has had a busy few years, hosting Live At The Apollo, fronting the BBC Radio 4 panel show Best Medicine, co-hosting the All Killa No Filla podcast, starting a comedy school and becoming a foster parent.
After a couple of the eggiest gigs of her career in boardrooms, a show about being a foster carer has been signed off, wherein she lifts the lid on social workers, first aid training and what not to do when a vicar searches for you on YouTube. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Story Craft Theatre’s Cassie Vallance, left, and Janet Bruce: Making their Fangfest debutwith a magical and adventurous story for two to eight-year-olds, featuring music, games and puppetry, on both days at 2.30pm in the Fangfoss Hall orchard
Festival of the week: Fangfest Festival of Practical Arts, Fangfoss, near York, September 7 and 8. 10am to 4pm
THE annual Fangfest returns with its celebration of traditional and contemporary art and craft skills as creatives, businesses and charities gather next weekend.
The event features a flower festival, vintage and veteran cars, archery, Stamford Bridge History Society, music on the green, the Story Craft Theatre Company, a teddy bear trail, produce stalls and free craft activities, as well as 30 working craft exhibitors and workshops in needle felting, wood carving, spinning and embroidery. Entry to Fangfest is free; parking is £2 per vehicle in aid of Friends of St Martin’s School.
Bjorn Again: Thanking Abba for the music at York Barbican and Connexin Live, Hull, on their 2025 tour
Gig announcement of the week: Bjorn Again, York Barbican, September 28 2025, and Connexin Live, Hull, October 29 2025
AFTER festival appearances at Wilderness and Glastonbury this summer, Bjorn Again announce a British and Irish tour from September 26 to November 2 2025, taking in York Barbican on the third night and Connexin Live, Hull, a month later.
Founded in 1988 in Melbourne by Australianmusician/manager Rod Stephen, the tribute show carries the endorsement of Abba’s own Agnetha Fältskog. Designed as a tongue-in-cheek, rocked-up, light-hearted ABBA satire, the show is in its 37th year, having seen more than 100 musicians and vocalists and 400 technical crew/support staff contribute to 5,500 performances in 75 countries. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk and connexinlivehull.com.
In Focus: 60 songs, 50 years, four concerts, two nights, add up to Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall
Elvis Costello: 60 songs from 50 years in four shows in two nights at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall in September
ELVIS Costello brings his new career-spanning presentation, 15 Songs From 50 Years, to Leeds City Varieties on September 2 and 3 for four unique performances over two days, all sold out.
Walking in the footsteps of Harry Houdini and beyond the long shadow of Charlie Chaplin, Frank Carson and Leonard Sachs at the Swan Street music hall, Costello will be joined at each 75-minute show by keyboard player Steve Nieve, his long-serving, Royal College of Music-trained cohort in The Attractions and The Imposters.
Each day, the 7pm soiree will feature an entirely different repertoire to the 9.30pm set list, the songs being selected from each of the five decades of Costello’s songwriting, whether solo or in the company of Flip City; American country rock band Clover; The Attractions; Squeeze’s Chris Difford; The Coward Brothers, with T-Bone Burnett; the Confederates; Paul McCartney; the Brodsky Quartet; The Imposters; Burt Bacharach, Allen Toussaint or the Roots.
A 15-song programme will be printed in advance of each concert with few, if any repeats anticipated but with the possibility of impromptu choices along the way. Costello. 69, and Nieve, 66, very occasionally take requests but should never be mistaken for a jukebox.
The third and fourth performances, on the second day, will “propose a deuce of delights”: two entirely different 15-song set-lists selected from half a century of popular songwriting craft.
“Leeds City Varieties Music Hall has always been known for magic, melody, mirth and mayhem,” says Elvis Costello
“The four shows are guaranteed to feature 60 different songs, but we suspect this is just the start,” predicts the shows’ publicity machine.
Those who wanted to attend all four contrasting shows in this exclusive engagement were able to obtain a special season ticket to include premium seats for each show in the front rows or boxes with exclusive use of the bar in between shows.
Asked about the involvement of his perennial cohort, Steve Nieve, Costello said: “Well, to paraphrase John Lennon, Steve Nieve will ‘leap over horses, through hoops, up garters and lastly, through a hogshead of real fire’ to bring his particular brand of musical magnificence to these performances.”
Costello added: “The City Varieties Music Hall has always been known for magic, melody, mirth and mayhem. These are all well within our grasp. By the way, had my father not taken a trumpet-playing engagement in London, just before my arrival into this world, I would have been a Chapeltown boy and this would be my hometown gig.“
In the wortds of the City Varieties blurb: “Unsurpassed in variety and voluminosity, Costello’s renowned refrains, romances, broadsides, bulletins and ballads are perfectly matched by Steve Nieve’s pulchritudinous and pulsating piano playing.
“The paragon of the profound and the peculiar, these premier performers present a penetrating pageant for perceptive and perspicacious patrons.”
For ticket updates on late availability, visit leedsheritagetheatres.com/whats-on/costello-and-nieve-2024.
York actress Frances Marshall in rehearsal for Alan Ayckbourn’s 90th play, Show &Tell. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
ALAN Ayckbourn’s 90th play and the Fangfest arts weekend lead Charles Hutchinson’s recommendations for the weeks ahead.
Premiere of the week: Alan Ayckbourn’s Show & Tell, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, September 5 to October 5
BILL Champion, Paul Kemp, Frances Marshall, Richard Stacey and Olivia Woolhouse will be the cast for the 90th play by Scarborough writer-director Alan Ayckbourn, a love letter to theatre entitled Show & Tell.
In a delightfully dark farce that lifts the lid on the performances we act out on a daily basis, Jack is planning a big party for his wife’s birthday. Pulling out all the stops, he has booked a touring theatre company to perform in the main hall of the family home. Unfortunately, Jack is becoming forgetful in his old age, rendering him unable to remember all the details of the booking.
The Homelight Theatre Company is on its knees, desperately needing a well-paid gig – and Jack’s booking is very well paid. Pinning him down on the details has been tricky, however and something does not feel quite right. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Allied Air Forces Memorial Day at the Yorkshire Air Museum, pictured in 2023
We will remember them: Allied Air Forces Memorial Day, Yorkshire Air Museum, Halifax Way, Elvington, near York, Sunday, from 1.45pm
THE Yorkshire Military Marching Band will lead the 1.45pm parade featuring standard bearers from 16 Royal British Legion and RAF Association branches in one of the biggest events in the museum’s calendar.
Representatives of the RAF will join with counterparts from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and France in honouring the bravery and sacrifices of the allied air crews who flew from the airfield during the Second World War, many of whom did not survive. The day will climax with a 2.15pm service in the main hangar, under the nose of Halifax Bomber Friday the 13th. Open to museum visitors and invited guests.
Busted: Concluding the 2024 season at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on Saturday
Coastal gig of the week: Busted, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, Saturday, gates open at 6pm
BUSTED close Cuffe & Taylor’s summer of outdoor gigs in Scarborough 22 years after first bouncing into the charts with the pop-punk energy of What I Go To School For and a year on from releasing Greatest Hits 2.0, an album of re-recorded hits with guests to mark the reunion of James Bourne, Matt Willis and Charlie Simpson.
Expect number one smashes Crashed The Wedding, Who’s David, Thunderbirds Are Go and You Said No to feature in Saturday’s set list, along with Year 3000, Air Hostess, Sleeping With The Lights On, Loser Kid and Everything I Knew. Support comes from Skinny Living and Soap. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com/busted.
William Dalrymple: Reflecting on India’s impact on the ancient world in his Grand Opera House talk
History talk of the week: William Dalrymple, How Ancient India Transformed the World, Grand Opera House, York, September 2, 7.30pm
HISTORIAN William Dalrymple, co-host of the Empire podcast, tells the story of how, from 250BC to 1200AD, India transformed the world: exporting religion, art, science, medicine and language along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific, creating a vast and profoundly important empire of ideas.
Dalrymple explores how Indian ideas crossed political borders and influenced everything they touched, from the statues in Roman seaports to the Buddhism of Japan, the poetry of China to the mathematics of Baghdad. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Kiri Pritchard-McLean: Tales of a foster parent in her Peacock show at Pocklington Arts Centre
Comedy gig of the week: Kiri Pritchard-McLean: Peacock, Pocklington Arts Centre, September 5, 8pm
KIRI Pritchard-McLean has had a busy few years, hosting Live At The Apollo, fronting the BBC Radio 4 panel show Best Medicine, co-hosting the All Killa No Filla podcast, starting a comedy school and becoming a foster parent.
After a couple of the eggiest gigs of her career in boardrooms to social workers, a show about being a foster carer has been signed off, wherein she lifts the lid on social workers, first aid training and what not to do when a vicar searches for you on YouTube. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Tribute acts at the treble: Coldplay It Again, Stereoconics and Oasis Here Now re-heat the hits at Milton Rooms, Malton
Tribute gig of the week: Coldplay It Again, Stereoconics and Oasis Here Now, Milton Rooms, Malton, September 7, 7pm
THIS tribute triple bill brings together Coldplay It Again replicating the look, sound and spirit of a Colplay show, Stereoconics’ faithful versions of Stereophonics’ songs and Oasis Here Now’s devotion to the style and swagger of Oasis in their Nineties’ heyday, just as the Gallagher brothers announce their first gigs since 2009 for next summer. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.
Gerry Grant: Demonstrating Raku firing at Fangfoss Pottery
Festival of the week: Fangfest Festival of Practical Arts, Fangfoss, near York, September 7 and 8. 10am to 4pm
TWENTY-FIVE years on from its inception, the annual Fangfest returns with its celebration of traditional and contemporary art and craft skills as creatives, businesses and charities gather next weekend.
The festival features a flower festival, vintage and veteran cars, archery, Stamford Bridge History Society, music on the green, the Story Craft Theatre Company, a teddy bear trail, produce stalls and free craft activities, as well as 30 working craft exhibitors and workshops in needle felting, wood carving, spinning and embroidery. Entry to Fangfest is free; parking is £2 per vehicle in aid of Friends of St Martins School.
Bjorn Again: Thanking Abba for the music in York and Hull on their 2025 tour
Gig announcement of the week: Bjorn Again, York Barbican, September 28 2025, and Connexin Live, Hull, October 29 2025
AFTER festival appearances at Wilderness and Glastonbury this summer, Bjorn Again announce a British and Irish tour from September 26 to November 2 2025, taking in York Barbican on the third night and Connexin Live, Hull.
Founded in 1988 in Melbourne by Australianmusician/manager Rod Stephen, the tribute show carries the endorsement of Abba’s own Agnetha Fältskog. Designed as a tongue-in-cheek, rocked-up, light-hearted ABBA satire, the show is in its 37th year, having seen more than 100 musicians and vocalists and 400 technical crew/support staff contribute to 5,500 performances in 75 countries. Tickets go on sale on Friday at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk and connexinlivehull.com.
