Tag: Stephen Joseph Theatre

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Rob Rouse is ready to tickle Funny Bones on first tour since winning award from fellow comedians. Where’s he playing?

Rob Rouse : Comedians’ comedian of the year. Picture: Karina Lax

ROB Rouse takes to the roads from today, bringing his Funny Bones stand-up tour to Pocklington Arts Centre on March 12, buoyed by winning Comics’ Comic Best Act of the Year 2025.

Determined exclusively via a poll of comedians on the UK circuit, the award recognises the Cheshire-born comedian’s standing after more than 25 years on the circuit. “I’m thrilled and absolutely knocked over by it,” says Rob, 52, of his January honour.

“It’s taken me completely by surprise. I’m very grateful and genuinely touched to receive this. We all love making audiences laugh and we all love the feeling of getting a laugh from our fellow clowns at the back of the room. It’s one of the things that encourages us to keep going and keep writing.

“I’ve been doing this a long time and to be acknowledged by your peers, who truly understand the highs and lows of this crazy job, feels deeply moving and humbling.”

Rob further reflects: “It made me really quite emotional. I’ve never believed that showbusiness is competitive in any way, shape or form . It isn’t, and the more time you spend doing it, you realise that, even those who are at the top of the tree, even they can feel there’s something not quite in place or something they’ve never got right.

Rob Rouse: Comedian, actor, podcaster and comedy club host

“The essence of creativity is that you’re always searching, and this award was like lots of my friends and colleagues saying ‘we really like you, Rob’, just as I love them. We’re all part of this ragbag of clowns, and what we all share is standing on stage and just mucking around, making people laugh and having fun.”

He will be doing exactly that when his “lap of honour” travels with Funny Bones take in further Yorkshire gigs at Helmsley Arts Centre, March 20; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, March 21; Crookes Social Club, Sheffield, March 26; Richmond Georgian Theatre Royal, March 27; Leeds Glee Club, April 12, and Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, April 17, further boosted by Rob taking home the Best Act prize from the 2025 Yorkshire Comedy Awards.

We all know of the benefit of laughter, how it triggers the brain to releaseendorphins that act as “feel-good chemicals”. Does that make Rob smile? “I wholeheartedly believe it’s good for us, as the world is very complicated – though, despite what you might think, statistically we’re living in the safest time in history. These are immutable facts.” (Footnote: Rob was speaking before the unfolding of this week’s events in Iran and the Middle East.)

When putting together a new show, such as Funny Bones, he applies this modus operandi: “I just try to do on stage what I’d like to watch myself, so I’ll try stuff out at gigs and if it works, I keep doing it; if it sort of works, I keep doing it; if it doesn’t work, I stop doing it,” says Rob, who topped the Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club bill at York Barbican last March.

He recalls being inspired by the surrealist work of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. “They were the ones who lit a fire in me as a teenager, thinking, ‘this is fun, I love this’. What I really love about them is that they didn’t ask anyone’s permission to do what they do. They had the essence of punk about them,” says Rob.

“I love Fry & Laurie, Eddie Izzard, Fawlty Towers, Tommy Cooper, The Young Ones, but there was something about Vic and Bob that felt celebratory. Their comedy was a lightning bolt.”

One man and his skeleton dog: Rob Rouse in Funny Bones. Picture: Karina Lax

Yet he could not have foreseen his comedy career. “If anything, I was a shy child, and the thought of stepping out on stage frightened me,” he says. 

So much so that,  filled with nerves about performing at a primary school assembly, he accidentally placed his foot in a crate, cutting his head open on the corner of a table as he fell, and duly needed stitches. “I remember thinking, ‘that’s good, I don’t have to go on stage now,’” says Rob.

Rob studied Geography at Sheffield University “when it was just about escaping the world”. “A good friend of mine was in the university drama group; I’d split up with my girlfriend and was moping around the place, and they said ‘you should get off your backside and do an audition’,” he recalls.

On the first night of the subsequent production, when the stage ‘flats’ collapsed, Rob was the only one on stage. “I ended up talking to the audiences on my own, and the laughs I got from that felt different from the laughs I got in the play,” he says. “It made me think, ‘oh, that’s interesting’, so the bulb had been planted.”

Rob then performed a ten-minute set at a charity gig at the Fox & Duck, Sheffield. “I remember being nervous, even puking before the show, but it was also an absolute rush,” he says.

“I’ll try stuff out at gigs and if it works, I keep doing it; if it sort of works, I keep doing it; if it doesn’t work, I stop doing it,” says Rob Rouse. Picture: Karina Lax

Moving to London, he booked open-mic spots through Time Out and went on to win Channel 4’s So You Think You’re Funny Award at the 1998 Edinburgh Fringe with his combination of joyous silliness, infectious energy and storytelling craft.

He has since starred in the BBC’s Upstart Crow, playing manservant Ned Bottom to David Mitchell’s William Shakespeare, as well as appearing on 8 Out Of 10 Cats and The Friday Night Project, touring all over the world, clocking up 12 Edinburgh Fringe shows and performing in two sold-out West End runs of Upstart Crow The Play

Now living in the Peak District, he is resident host of The Comedy Village at the Crookes Social Club in Sheffield, where he bills himself as the “comedy village idiot”.

Funny Bones marks his return to solo touring in a high-spirited show built on craftily spun tall tales, eerily convincing characters, bucketfuls of manic energy, daft flights of fancy and a barrage of one-liners in a celebration of comedy and being alive.

“I purchased the skeleton suit online for the photo-shoot, but it had a boil-in-the-bag effect on me! It’s made of plastic, completely unbreakable, but it’s just too hot to perform in,” says Rob. “I wouldn’t inflict that on the audience. After three nights, I’d have to hand out nose pegs!”

Tickets are on sale at: Pocklington, 01759 301547or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk; Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com; Sheffield, thecomedyvillage.com; Richmond, 01748 825252 or georgiantheatreroyal.co.uk; Leeds,  0871 472 0400 or glee.co.uk; Huddersfield, 01484 430528 or thelbt.org.

“We’re all part of this ragbag of clowns, and what we all share is standing on stage and just mucking around, making people laugh and having fun,” says Rob Rouse of the life of a comedy performer. Picture: Karina Lax

Rob Rouse: back story

Television and film work

STARTED his career in television as a “warm-up” on the hit BBC sitcom Coupling, where he entertained the studio audience between filming.

Rouse starred in the first series of the BBC Three sitcom Grownups and Guilty Pleasures, a new chat show that he hosted. Played uncredited role in Penelope,  Mark Palansky’s feature film premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in September 2006.

In 2005, Rouse co-presented Channel 4 entertainment show The Friday Night Project, now known as The Sunday Night Project. Starred in Channel 4 sketch show Spoons.

Acting work took in a role in ITV comedy-drama Tunnel Of Love and starring role in BBC3 sitcom The Bunk Bed Boys. Cast member for E4’s The Pilot Show.

Panellist on 8 Out of 10 Cats and Bognor Or Bust.

In 2007, he starred as Robert Thornton in ten episodes of Paramount Comedy shorts The Former Ambassador Robert Thornton.  Starred in Mad Mad World on ITV1 since Spring 2012.

Plays Ned Bottom in BBC Two’s Shakespeare sitcom Upstart Crow, written by Ben Elton, appearing alongside David Mitchell, Harry Enfield, Mark Heap and Liza Tarbuck.

Other work
Rouse and his wife, comedy writer and performer Helen Rutter, present comedy self-help podcast Rob And Helen’s Date Night, charting a series of odd dates including horse riding, life-drawing in front of a fire, and the couple recording Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name, live in their garage.

Rouse and Rutter starred in Rutter’s play The Ladder, premiered at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe, based on an accident when Rutter’s hand became stuck in a ladder at home, necessitating Rouse’s attempts to help her.

Specialising in self-aware collaborative comedy focusing on their real-life relationship, they presented Funny In Real Life at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe.

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Rob Rouse, the comedians’ favourite comic, to shake his Funny Bones on tour. Seven Yorkshire venues await from March 12

Rob Rouse: Craftily spun tall tales, eerily convincing characters, bucketfuls of manic energy, daft flights of fancy and a barrage of one-liners in Funny Bones. Picture: Karina Lax

ROB Rouse will play seven Yorkshire gigs on his Funny Bones stand-up tour, buoyed by winning Comics’ Comic Best Act of the Year 2025 in the UK Comedy Awards and Best Act at the 2025 Yorkshire Comedy Awards.

Rouse, 52, will play Pocklington Arts Centre on March 12; Helmsley Arts Centre, March 20; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, March 21; Crookes Social Club, Sheffield, March 26; Richmond Georgian Theatre Royal, March 27; Leeds Glee Club, April 12, and Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, April 17.

Determined exclusively via a poll of comedians on the UK comedy circuit, the Comics’ Comic award recognises the Cheshire-born comedian’s standing after more than 25 years on the road.

“It’s taken me completely by surprise, I’m very grateful and genuinely touched to receive this,” says Rouse. “We all love making audiences laugh and we all love the feeling of getting a laugh from our fellow clowns at the back of the room. It’s one of the things that encourages us to keep going and keep writing.

“I’ve been doing this a long time and to be acknowledged by your peers, who truly understand the highs and lows of this crazy job, feels deeply moving and humbling.”

Rouse first rose to prominence after winning Channel 4’s So You Think You’re Funny Award at the 1998 Edinburgh Fringe, building a reputation for his joyous silliness, infectious energy and storytelling craft.

“To be acknowledged by your peers, who truly understand the highs and lows of this crazy job, feels deeply moving and humbling,” says Rob Rouse. Picture: Karina Lax

He has gone on to appear in the BBC’s Upstart Crow, playing manservant Ned Bottom to David Mitchell’s William Shakespeare, as well as on 8 Out Of 10 Cats, The Friday Night Project and Dave’s One Night Stand and making countless radio appearances too.

Rouse has toured all over the world, from Australia to the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, clocked up 12 Edinburgh Fringe shows, mounted three UK solo tours and performed in two sold-out West End runs of Upstart Crow The Play.

Now living in the Peak District, he is resident host of The Comedy Village at the Crookes Social Club in Sheffield, where he bills himself as the “comedy village idiot”.

Funny Bones marks Rouse’s return to solo touring after support slots with Nina Conti, Kerry Godliman, Rory Bremner and Marcus Brigstocke. The high-spirited new show is packed with craftily spun tall tales, pitch-perfect, eerily convincing characters, bucketfuls of manic energy, daft flights of fancy and a barrage of one-liners in a celebration of comedy and being alive.

Tickets are on sale at: Pocklington, 01759 301547or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk; Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com; Sheffield, thecomedyvillage.com; Richmond, 01748 825252 or georgiantheatreroyal.co.uk; Leeds,  0871 472 0400 or glee.co.uk; Huddersfield, 01484 430528 or thelbt.org.

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Brassed Off resonates down the years in new revival of colliery band drama at SJT

A scene from Liz Stevenson’s production of Brassed Off. Picture: Pamela Raith

LIZ Stevenson’s new staging of Brassed Off marks the 40th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike and the 30th anniversary of the 1994 setting of York film-maker Mark Herman’s pit community drama.

Adapted for the stage by Paul Allen, the co-production by Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and Octagon Theatre, Bolton, has moved from Keswick to Scarborough, where the cast of ten, including several actor-musicians, will perform Herman’s story of northern grit, heart and defiant humour from tonight until August 31.

Ten years after the Miners’ Strike, the mining community of Grimley, Yorkshire, is fighting to keep the colliery open. Meanwhile, revered band leader Danny is battling to keep his dispirited band of brass-playing miners together, fuelled by the dream of qualifying for the national championships at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Loyalty is tested, pressure mounts and the community begins to break apart, but can the band find a way to play on? 

“It’s a timely moment to present this iconic play, 40 years after the 1984 Miners’ Strike,” says Liz, Theatre by the Lake’s artistic director. “Our production looks back on the battles of this close-knit mining community, asking: what has changed? And what does this play mean to us today? We’ve assembled an incredible team to deliver a moving theatrical experience that celebrates the resilience of communities and the transformative power of music.” 

Liz’s vision for the production started with the question: How do you see the play from a 2024 perspective?  “It occurred to me that in our audience, there will be people who lived through the Miners’ Strike, worked down the pit,  and are still affected by it. Others will have had little experience of it and won’t have been affected.

“There’ll be some who know and love Mark’s film; others who won’t have seen it. So, what’s your starting point? In our production, we’ve imagined how young narrator Shane, the eight-year-old son of Phil and Sandra in the film, would be 38 now, not dissimilar to my age.

“So we’re now treating it like a memory play, where he re-lives his memories of his childhood, his father and his grandfather [band leader Danny], seeing them through adult eyes and reflecting on how the events of 1984/1994  made him the man he is today.

“Obviously lots of things have changed – though some haven’t – so it feels like a period piece, but for others it still feels like recent history, and some of our cast have grown up playing in brass bands.”

Brassed Off resonates as much as ever in 2024, when “deindustrialisation, inequality and poverty is still felt today in former mining towns and across different communities around the world”, says Liz.

“What there’s no denying in this country is that we still have a great deal of poverty, like the characters in this play. There’s a scene where Phil tries to take his life, and  it was an important decision how we would handle that scene: what led him to that point, as we see him become more and more desperate. Lots of people will be able to relate to that – it’s probably the most relatable thing in the play.”

Crucial too is Danny’s climactic speech at the Royal Albert Hall, the one where, in the moment of winning the national championships, he says: “I thought that music mattered, but does it bol****s, not compared with how people matter”. “We didn’t want to make it a nostalgia festival. We wanted to lift it out of that, stripping it back, simplifying the design too,” says Liz.

“There’s something important to be said, locally, nationally and internationally, about the significance of community and how we have to look after each other, how people matter more than money.

“This play shows how vital community is, and this production manifests that by having not only a cast of ten but also a community cast with three teams of two children and members of the local community playing in the band at each show.  That brings a community spirit to the performances – which is such a joy.”

That sense of community is enhanced by the theatre-in-the-round configuration of all three theatres. “It’s an inclusive, intimate setting, with audiences on all sides and everyone close to the action, but it’s a challenge too as the Scarborough stage is small but we have to have 19 bodies on stage at one point! You’re thinking, ‘how do we do this, with all the music, in that space, with lots of episodic scenes that flow into each other’?” says Liz.

“It needs to be fluent and dynamic, and especially as a memory play where one moment triggers the next. Something special happens when the band plays for the first time on stage: that feeling of everyone playing together in a collective endeavour. You see the importance of collaborating in the play, but when they perform the music, it takes it to another level.”

Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, and Octagon Theatre, Bolton present Brassed Off, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tonight to August 31. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

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REVIEW: The 39 Steps, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday ****

Safeena Ladha, left, Eugene McCoy, Tom Byrne and Maddie Rice in a scene from The 39 Steps. Picture: Mark Senior

FIERY Angel’s spiffing touring production of The 39 Steps is back on the road after eight years, although Patrick Barlow’s rollercoaster ride through John Buchan’s tale of murder, suspense and intrigue and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 spy thriller is never far from a Yorkshire stage.

In that touring hiatus, Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre has staged it twice (in 2018 and 2023) and Harri Marshall directed York Settlement Community Players at Theatre@41, Monkgate, in November 2021.

Yet not everyone has strapped in previously for Barlow’s delirious, dextrous delight of a comic misadventure. “Brilliant theatre,” kept coming a voice from the dress-circle row behind, experiencing its ingenuity for the first time at Wednesday’s matinee.

Eugene McCoy, left, Safeena Ladha and Tom Byrne in Fiery Angel’s touring production of The 39 Steps. Picture: Mark Senior

Mischief Theatre have a had a field day since the 2012 premiere of The Play That Goes Wrong, with clever, chaotic comedy rooted in mishaps, clowning pratfalls and exquisite comic timing. Yet Barlow’s play – and indeed North Yorkshire company North Country Theatre’s original 1996 concept by Simon Corble & Nobby Dimon that inspired it – pre-dates the Go Wrong brand, debuting at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, in June 2005.

It has gone right ever since, especially under the direction of Maria Aitken in Fiery Angel’s tours, and now in the hands of 2024 tour director Nicola Samer, still true to the Aitken template but not exactly. The same, but Samer, as it were.

Tom Byrne, familiar to The Crown devotees from playing Prince Andrew aged 22 to 32 in the Netflix series, now turns his hand to another posh chap, the unflappable Richard Hannay in a helter-skelter play that hitches the storytelling of Buchan to the thrills, spills and daring set-pieces of Hitchcock’s thriller and then entrusts 139 roles to a cast of only four, most of them shared between Eugene McCoy’s Clown 1 and Maddie Rice’s Clown 2.

Tom Byrne: From Prince Andrew in The Crown to Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps

In the ennui of August 1935, Byrne’s lanky Hannay is in an emotional stew in his lonely, rented Portland Place pad, slumped in his leather armchair, pencil-slim moustache downturned, contemplating ending it all, in desperate need of… well, love, as it turns out later.

More immediately, this dashing, clipped and proper fellow must “find something to do…something mindless and trivial. Something utterly pointless. Something – I know! A West End show! That should do the trick!”

Barlow instantly establishes the “meta-theatre” of a play that revels in the possibilities and limitations of theatre, even in self-deprecation at what naysayers consider its ridiculousness, its bloated self-importance, as well as its wonder.

On the run: Tom Byrne’s Richard Hannay seeeks to escape the constabulary in The 39 Steps. Picture: Mark Senior

Hannay heads to the London Palladium for some excitement, but not the kind of excitement that ensues. The gun-firing, mysterious German fräulein in the box opposite him, Annabella Schmidt (Safeena Ladha), demands he must take her home, only to drop dead in his lap, knifed in the back.

Hanney takes flight – or rather a train ride – to Scotland, now murder suspect number one, in urgent need of crucial information to extricate himself from such accusations.

Policemen, secret agents, a farmer, a mysterious professor and assorted women stand in his way, delicered with breathless speed, breathtaking brilliance and comedic brio by the loose-limbed McCoy and the nimble Rice, the first woman to play Clown 2 in a Fiery Angel tour.

Tom Byrne’s Richard Hannay: In need of “something mindless and trivial. Something utterly pointless” in the opening scene to The 39 Steps. A night at the theatre awaits. Picture: Mark Senior

What’s more, as well as evoking Charlie Chaplin and even Samuel Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting For Godot, both are in cross-dressing mode, equally as likely to play a woman or a man, whatever a scene demands, Rice even performing two roles at once, turning back and forth in a half-and-half costume.  

Ladha multi-tasks too, reappearing as an alluring, feisty femme fatale and a shy but obligingly helpful farmer’s wife.

Byrne’s handsome hero lets the darker side of Hannay poke through the surface, but the theatrical sleight of hand prevails, not least in the bargain-basement re-enactment of Hitchcock’s familiar scenes, topped off by a North By North West shadow-play spoof.

The Fiery Angel tour poster for The 39 Steps

The second act slows a tad, but Barlow’s witty, period-pastiche dialogue keeps you on the edge, either suspenseful or in fear of another pardonably terrible pun. All the while, Samer’s cast must battle against the odds, improvising props and scenery, whether with stepladders for a bridge, or chairs for a car, moving the furniture on and off, and defiantly keeping their head above water, even when a ringing phone or dry-ice Scottish mist is miscued.

As the thrilling twists and turns of this Hitchcock homage somehow go off without a hitch, Byrne, Ladha, McCoy and Rice make a fabulous four, never missing a step in the cause of  comedy.

Fiery Angel presents The 39 Steps, Grand Opera House, York, cutting a dash until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

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REVIEW: Northanger Abbey, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, till April 13 **

Rebecca Banatvala’s Cath, back, AK Golding’s Iz and Sam Newton’s Hen in Northnager Abbey

THE journey from page to stage is familiar, well trodden, but still unpredictable for classic novels. Sometimes it works, sometimes it tries too hard, when a book remains better read than said.

This co-production by the SJT, Scarborough, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, Octagon Theatre, Bolton, and Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, is one such occasion.

We have seen many adaptations in this manner: a small, busy-as-Heathrow cast working with more imagination than props in Hannah Sibai’s design, breaking down theatre’s fourth wall from the start,  speeding between roles and  differing theatre styles, but here falling short of the best work of Tilted Wig, Wise Children and Nick Lane’s adaptations.

Writer Zoe Cooper defines Jane Austen’s coming-of-age satire of Gothic novels as “a book about invention that revels in layers of fictionality, of imagination”, one that she first read at 19, roughly the same age as lead character Catherine Morland when she leaves behind her claustrophobic northern family to join the smart set in Bath.

In her programme note, Cooper recalls how she felt out of place, awkward and grubby in her posh university town. Austen’s Catherine Morland (Rebecca Banatvala’s Cath) is a bookworm who feels that same discomfort and disconnection after being drawn to Bath by books and dreams.

Cooper and Banatvala express Cath’s tendency to over-excitement and bad behaviour, ending up in difficult situations that she navigates by warping reality with fiction amid the balls and parties.

Cooper draws on another recollection of her English Literature studies, how her tutorials were “generally male, very white, and very heterosexual”. Her reading of Northanger Abbey was rather different: she liked the book because “it felt a little bit naughty” in the friendship of Catherine and society sophisticate Isabella.

That plays out passionately in this account, where the loving bond between impressionable Cath and worldly Iz (AK Golding) runs deeper than Cath’s relationship with Hen (Sam Newton).

Tessa Walker’s production, however, needs to be more humorous, darker in its Gothic climax, but that requires sharper writing by Cooper. The performances have to swim against the tide, too much work to do.

Matt Haskins’ lighting is a delight, but that should never be the stand-out feature. An Audience with Lucy Worsley on Jane Austen, with “new research and insights into a passionate woman who fought for her freedom”, at York Barbican on October 14 will be more enlightening.

Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

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Pocklington Arts Centre opens debut in-house theatre show The Elves And The Shoemaker Save Christmas tomorrow

The poster for Pocklington Arts Centre’s festive family show The Elves And The Shoemaker Save Christmas

POCKLINGTON Arts Centre’s debut in-house theatre production, The Elves & The Shoemaker Save Christmas, opens tomorrow with the Godber family at the helm.

Jane Thornton, actress and writer wife of playwright John Godber, directs daughter Elizabeth Godber’s original adaptation of the traditional tale of The Elves & The Shoemaker for Christmas 2023.

This 70-minute, family-friendly, fun, festive musical show will feature three cheeky elves, Jingle, Sparkle and Daredevil Dave, as they journey through a variety of well-known fairy tales with a cast of familiar characters, leading to plenty of comedy capers and mishaps along the way.

Put it this way: “‘Twas the night before Christmas and across East Yorkshire land/Excited children count sheep as three cheeky elves lend a hand/Yes, Jingle, Sparkle and Daredevil Dave have gingerbread to cook, peas to find and shoes to make But who gives the Elves their Christmas? Surely they too deserve a break?”

Jade Farnill: Starring as Jingle in The Elves And The Shoemaker Save Christmas

Pocklington Arts Centre (PAC) has committed to supporting East Yorkshire talent with early career creatives and emerging actors to the fore in this show. Alongside Jane and Elizabeth in the production team are Rick Kay, set design and build, Benjamin Wall, production manager and lighting designer, and Kate Noble, wardrobe and props supervisor, while PAC director Angela Stone has been working closely with crew and cast as producer.

Hull born and bred Jade Farnill will step into the role of Jingle. She is a 2023 graduate and Godber Theatre Foundation Award recipient from the Hammond School in Chester, where she completed a degree in musical theatre performance.

Dylan Allcock will play Daredevil Dave with “just the right balance of characterisation and comedy timing”. As an actor/musician, Dylan will be responsible for musical direction and the creation of an original composition for the show.

Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts graduate Matheea Ellerby will complete the cast in her professional debut as Sparkle.

Dylan Allcock: Playing Daredevil Dave

Writer Elizabeth Godber says: “I am so excited to be writing The Elves And The Shoemaker Save Christmas for Pocklington Arts Centre. Being born and raised in East Yorkshire, I grew up visiting the arts centre to see shows and films and attend workshops as a kid, so now, getting to write their Christmas show for children and families, it really feels as if it has come full circle!

“I’ve had so much fun working on the script:  there’s going to be lots of laughs, lots of live music, lots of local references and lots of Christmas fun that can be enjoyed by everyone of all ages and really bring the community together this December.”

The Elves And The Shoemaker Save Christmas will run for 15 performances, including two matinees for schools only. Schools interested in attending those performance should contact the box office on 01759 301547 or email boxoffice@pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk as they are not bookable online.

Matheea Ellerby: Making her professional debut as Sparkle

PAC is offering a relaxed performance on Sunday at 10.30am for families that require a more relaxed environment when going to the theatre. This will include house lights (rather than dark), a relaxed attitude to involuntary sounds and moving around the auditorium during the performance, a straight run through with no interval, and a quiet break-out space available.

For that show, a section of seats with social distancing is reserved to support those who may prefer some spaces between parties. Four blocks of four seats and one block of two seats can be pre-booked through the box office.

The Elves And The Shoemaker Save Christmas, Pocklington Arts Centre, December 7 to 16. Performances: 7.30pm, December 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15 and 16; 1.30pm, December 9, 10, 15 and 16; 10.30am, December 10. Tickets (£12 adults, £9 under 25s, £35 family of four) can be booked at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk or on 01759 301547.

Elizabeth Godber

Elizabeth Godber: the back story

Hull-born writer. Studied BA in Creative Writing and English at University of Hull and MA in Writing for Performance and Publication at University of Leeds. Now PhD student at University of Hull.

Her 2023 adaptation of The Comedy of Errors (More Or Less), co-written with Nick Lane for Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and Shakespeare North Playhouse, has been nominated for UK Theatre Award. 

Her 2023 play The Remarkable Tale of Dorothy Mackaill was premiered at East Riding Theatre, Beverley, in September.

Further writing credits: Ruby And The Vinyl (John Godber Company/tour); M&S: Dressed In Time (Leeds Playhouse); Three Emos (tour); The Remarkable Tale Of Dorothy (Hull New Theatre); Festive Spirits” (Hull City Hall/Burton Constable Hall).

Poetry and film/audio credits: Forget Me Not (BBC Radio 6 Music); The Way You Look Tonight (BBC Upload Festival/iplayer); Does This Make Sense?” (Random Acts for Channel 4); Restless Verse (online).

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When Torben Betts had one actor in mind to play a washed-up pop star, he wrote Murder In The Dark for Tom Chambers

Tom Chambers’ troubled pop star Danny Sierra in a scene from Murder In The Dark. Picture: Pamela Raith

TORBEN Betts first made his mark at a North Yorkshire theatre when Alan Ayckbourn talent-spotted the fledgling playwright and gave him a residency at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1999.

That year, the Scarborough theatre presented the premiere of his debut play, A Listening Heaven.  Now, Betts’s new thriller, the ghost story Murder In The Dark, is heading to York Theatre Royal from September 19 to 23 on Original Theatre Company’s tour, directed by Philip Franks.

“Horror films have been my guilty pleasure since I was a morbid child,” says Philip, who was at the helm of Original Theatre’s touring production of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d at the Theatre Royal last October too.

“Now is the time to find out whether many years’ worth of jump scares and terrible nightmares can be put to good use. We’ll also see whether my more adult theory – that horror often puts its finger on what worries us most as a society at any given time – will also hold true.”

Betts’s setting is a modern-day New Year’s Eve, when a car crash on a lonely road brings famous but troubled singer Danny Sierra and his extended family to an isolated holiday cottage in rural England.  From the moment they arrive, a sequence of inexplicable events begins to occur…and then the lights go out!  

Susie Blake, Miss Marple in last year’s visit, will play farmer’s wife Mrs Bateman alongside 2008 Strictly Come Dancing champion, Top Hat leading man and Holby City, Waterloo Road and Father Brown star Tom Chambers as Danny, Rebecca Charles as Rebecca, Jonny Green as Jake, Owen Oakeshott as William and Laura White as Sarah. 

Tom Chambers: “One of these flattering moments,” he says, of Torben Betts writing the role of Danny Sierra expressly for him

When the Covid19 pandemic shut down his tour in Dial M For Murder overnight, Tom appeared in Original Theatre’s remotely recorded lockdown film of Torben Betts’s Apollo 13: The Dark Side Of The Moon and subsequently in Original Theatre artistic director Alastair Whatley’s online piece Into The Night.

“About a year later, out of the blue I got a text from Alastair saying he’d commissioned Torben to write a ghost story with me in mind for the lead role,” he recalls. “It was one of those flattering moments you dream of!”

Ten pages arrived, then the full draft, and now here Tom is, two weeks into the tour. “The Dark Side Of The Moon was only 50 minutes. This [rather longer] new play has been really fascinating but also extremely challenging because Torben has written it like machine gunfire, firing off in all directions, so you think ‘who’s line is it next?’!”

Working on the play in rehearsals and now in its early weeks on stage, 46-year-old Tom says: “It’s one of those pieces where, as we’ve gone along, we’ve all thought on our feet, with none of us quite sure at first what it was.

“With its dysfunctional family at odds in a psychological thriller, I knew it was an emotional piece, with all the humour in there too, but you don’t know what you’re dealing with, because it is scary, funny and emotional at the same time, and so you’re not sure how the audience will take it!

“On stage, it’s become more like a dark comedy, and it’s been really interesting listening to the audience reactions and realising they’re laughing from very early on. But there are really scary moments too and a couple of twists that we’re asking people not to give away afterwards.”

Learning his lines has found Tom thinking: “Torben is like Marmite! I sort of love him and hate him at the same time. His script is very interesting, very exciting and an absolute pig to learn.

Tom Chambers, seated, shares a lighthearted moment with director Philip Franks in the rehearsal room for Torben Betts’s thriller Murder In The Dark. Picture: Pamela Raith

“I haven’t talked to him about the part, though he did sit quietly in the corner at rehearsals on a few occasions, typing away, but not interfering. Torben has allowed Philip to shave, trim and manipulate the script, letting the production grow under his directorship.”

In turn, “Philip is one of the best directors I’ve worked with, always very patient” says Tom. “He’s an actor as well as a director, and so he really lets you play with it at first, and then he very carefully re-shapes it, inspiring you with his ideas. He’s like a wonderful conductor working with an orchestra, a fantastic maestro.”

Tom describes his lead role, Danny Sierra, as a “washed-up pop star from 20 years ago”. “To play his character, to be aware of his body language, I approach him as someone who’s been in the limelight, which I’ve experienced: the shiny bits, the pitfalls, the facades, the truth and reality of how jaded he is,” he says.

“I just try to make him human. Like all of us, he tries to justify the reasons things have happened in his life. He’s made mistakes, but he does have a heart, he’s not soulless, not completely selfish.”

Danny has headed to the isolated cottage for a family funeral and must communicate with his brother for the first time in years. “Everything unravels in this old farm cottage, which is like a deserted island with very few creature comforts. That initially turns the play into a comedy, but then it becomes twisted, warped, deranged and strange, so it’s very intriguing!” says Tom.

As for the ghost story…wait and see.

Original Theatre Company in Murder In The Dark, York Theatre Royal, September 19 to 23, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Age guidance: 14+. 

“Torben’s script is very interesting, very exciting and an absolute pig to learn,” says lead actor Tom Chambers. Picture: Pamela Raith
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REVIEW: The 39 Steps, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until July 29 ****

Niall Ransome, left, Olivia Onyehara, Dave Hearn and Lucy Keirl in the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s even better 2023 revival of The 39 Steps. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

THE 39 Steps has enjoyed a happy association with Yorkshire, first in North Country Theatre founder Nobby Dimon and Simon Corble’s initial stage concept of taut thriller and comic release.

Next came Patrick Barlow’s frantically fast-moving yet unflappable West Yorkshire Playhouse adventure with seeds sown in the earlier show.

Barlow’s spiffing version has since played here, there and everywhere, first given Stephen Joseph Theatre comedic top spin by artistic director Paul Robinson in June 2018.

Five summers on, Robinson revisits that slick, playful jaffa of a show, with the promise of 39 new gags, one for each step, to supplement the elegance, eloquence and elasticity of this dapper and dastardly clever whodunit.

Niall Ransome is back from 2018, in the same role (make that multiple roles) but now called Clown 1, rather than Man. Significantly, he teams up with fellow Mischief maker Dave Hearn, duly mining the hugely popular Mischief brand for dextrous feats of physical comedy rooted in a battle of wits and will against chaos and catastrophe.

York audiences have experienced Hearn’s manic craft already this year in Original Theatre’s three-hander account of HG Wells’s The Time Machine, another comedy vehicle steered by a short-handed cast in a race against time.

On that occasion, in a play within a play conceit, his assertive, egotistical Dave Wells was in such a hurry, he wore tracksuit trousers and trainers.

This time, in a play with a novel and a film within it, Hearn is playing more of an old-fashioned, cigarette-card matinee idol, Richard Hannay, side-parting in his immaculate haircut, side splitting in his comic clambering on the Forth Bridge, reminiscent of a Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton. Suspense in suspension.

This is but one of a series of scenes that re-creates setpieces from The Master’s movies, complemented by pastiches and references to other Hitchcock classics, with new additions among those 39 new jokes.

The novel is John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps; the film is Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 British spy thriller, based loosely on Buchan’s serialised 1915 work. Barlow and in turn Robinson marry the two together, gravely serious in replicating the tone and dramatic peaks of both against all logical odds, while finding comedy at every opportunity without turning everything into a stiff upped-lipped send-up.

This is Hearn’s skill too, serving Hannay’s dispirited mien first and foremost before the John Cleese school of alarm-bell comedy bursts through. Dashing and upright, yes, with pipe and pencil-slim moustache, but newly returned to his lonely Portland Place abode, he is tired of life and its mounting pile of problems. Feeling anything but alive in 1935. Suicidal even. 

What he needs is…a night at the theatre (don’t we all, especially one like this!), only for a much bigger problem to ensue once there. Not only must he navigate his way through the hairpin bends of Buchan’s book and Hitchcock’s film, but now too he finds himself  murder suspect number one when a mysterious German woman, Annabelle Schmidt (Olivia Onyehara), dies in his arms after insisting on leaving the London Palladium by his side, desperate to impart vital information.

In a moment typical of the comic invention in Hearn’s performance, he extricates himself from beneath the dead weight of the woman’s body by using the knife in her back as a lever.

Hannay must hot-foot it to Scotland by train. On his fluttering jacket tail are policemen, secret agents and assorted women, all delivered with elan by Ransome and Lucy Keirl’s Clown combo, parading accents and exaggerated characters stride by stride, sometimes side by side.

What cracking casting in Ransome making his return in tandem with Keirl, who is as delightful as she was in Nick Lane’s Cinderella at the SJT last winter.  

Onyehara, a familiar name to Yorkshire credits lists from her work with Pilot Theatre, Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, Hull Truck and York Theatre Royal, is terrific too. Not only as anguished Annabelle, but also as femme fatale Pamela and shy but far from retiring Scottish farmer’s wife Margaret, each drawn to the cut of Hannay’s jib.

Ever straight as Geoffrey Boycott’s bat at North Marine Road, Hearn’s narrator Hannay takes on whatever is thrown at him, defying the need to lead the story-telling with such limited resources, improvising emergency props and scenery, chalking up those extra gags amid the comic carnage.

Robinson’s 2023 company applies even quicker sleight of hand to Barlow’s spinning plates of verbal wit, theatrical anarchy, satirical savvy and visual panache, somehow pulling off their Hitchcock homage without a hitch.

Simon Slater’s sound design, compositions and nods to swing tunes play their part too, as do Helen Coyston’s fabulous, fun costumes and set design, stretched by Robinson’s direction beyond the SJT stage to the aisles and director’s box too.

Look out for the ushers blocking the exits at one particularly urgent moment. Even the theatre is against Hannay! Make sure you too are trapped in his breathless, befuddled world before this month is out. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.

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REVIEW: Northern Broadsides/New Vic Theatre in Quality Street, York Theatre Royal, plenty in the tin until Saturday ****

Jamie Smelt’s Recruiting Officer, Paula Lane’s Phoebe Throssel, Aron Julius’s Captain Valentine Brown and Alex Moran’s Ensign Blades in Northern Broadsides’ Quality Street

EVERYONE has a favourite Quality Street – purple, green…orange, not so keen – but there is only one Quality Street play to bite into.

Nevertheless, Northern Broadsides artistic director Laurie Sansom gives it a new wrapper, “stirring in a good helping of Yorkshire wit” from the retired workers of Halifax’s Mackintosh factory, makers of Quality Street.

And so a work from Toffee Town heads to Chocolate City this week, much later than first planned. Sansom’s Broadsides debut had to be put back in the sweetie cupboard after only four weeks when Covid put a red line through theatre shows in March 2020.

This spring he picks up the mantle with plenty of new flavours in the cast, only two of the originals still making the selection for the revived co-production with Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre.

Here is the history bit. Quality Street is a “delicious Regency rom-com” from the 1901 pen of J M Barrie, pre-dating the better known Peter Pan but a huge hit on Broadway in its own right.

Come 1936, Mackintosh’s management hit on the idea of assembling beautifully wrapped toffees, chocolates and sweets in a tin encased in a picture of Quality Street’s principal characters, Phoebe Throssel and Captain Valentine Brown.

Cue Sansom’s idea to weave verbatim recollections from the Quality Street factory floor into Barrie’s play, the red-hatted workers serving as a Greek chorus cum collective narrator, passing comment on the play’s unfolding dramas, recalling their working days and their own romances, and reflecting on how courting has changed.

The to-and-fro format takes a while to settle, not least because the ‘Mack’ workforce open the play with their fourth wall-breaking gossip and nostalgia. They are never more than convivial commentators by comparison with the fateful scene-setting of the Witches in the thunder and lightning prologue to Macbeth and their subsequent encounters with the murderous Macbeth .

Something sweet and nutty this way comes as Barrie introduces his Regency romp with Paula Lane (once Kylie Platt in a different cobbled street, of the Coronation  soap variety) in the role of Phoebe Throssel, a woman scandalised by having allowed Captain Valentine Brown (Aron Julius) to kiss her on the cheek. Ten years ago.

Aron Julius’s Captain Valentine Brown and Paula Lane’s Phoebe Throssel in Quality Street: Picture: Andrew Billington

Ten years when he has been away fighting Napoleon, while Phoebe and sister Susan (Louisa-May Parker) have had to make a living, running a school for unruly children. They look exhausted, enervated, contemplating the prospect of having to add algebra to the curriculum without any enthusiasm. Understandable caution, you might say, in spite of PM Rishi Sunak’s enthusiasm for adding more Maths to the curriculum.

At this juncture, aside from Gilly Tompkins’ blunt-speaking maid Patty, more humour has been mined from the factory workers’ chatter than Barrie’s story, as supporting cast members switch between tea-break comment and rom-com roles. But once Julius’s Captain reacts so negatively to the older-looking Phoebe, still only 30, the play finds its sweet spot.

For a lavish ball, Phoebe transforms herself into lively, vivacious, flirty, flighty Miss Livvy, her “niece”, an alter-ego that will soon require her to be in two places at once in one of comedy’s favourite devices, from Shakespeare comedies of mistaken identity to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest, chaotic Mischief capers to myriad pantomimes.

Not before Jessica Worrall’s witty design has served up the gorgeous spectacle of all the ladies in Quality Street wrapper dresses, Miss Livvy in the most popular purple, of course.

Not only Captain Brown is smitten, so too are Jamie Smelt’s Recruiting Sergeant and Alex Moran’s Ensign Blades as the comedy picks up pace and impact. Cross-dressing Jelani D’Aguilar’s Fanny Willoughby adds to the fun, and Parker’s Susan, forced to play a straight bat to keep Phoebe/Livvy one step ahead, personifies resourceful understatement.

At first you may wonder – as your reviewer did when watching a performance at Leeds Playhouse – why Quality Street made Barrie a fortune, but as should always be the case, the second half is better than the first, In particular in the all-important frank discussions between Phoebe and Captain Brown, where Barrie’s writing, suddenly more serious, goes to the heart of a woman’s woes, mistreatment and frustrations.

From the brief appearances of puppets to Ben Wright’s choreography for the ball, the design’s colour palette and the cast’s colourful northern vowels to Sansom’s beautifully judged direction, Quality Street ends up being a tin of purple and green ones.

Lane’s performance, especially when she has to have a filling of Phoebe within a chocolate coating of Miss Livvy, is top Quality too.

Northern Broadsides and New Vic Theatre present Quality Street at York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Also: Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, May 25 to 27; Hull Truck Theatre, May 31 to June 3; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, June 6 to 10; Victoria Theatre, Halifax, July 4 to 7. Box office: Sheffield,  0114 249 6000 or sheffieldtheatres.co.uk; Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com; Halifax, 01422 351158 or victoriatheatre.co.uk.