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Stephen Joseph Theatre takes OutReach classes online for summer sessions

Playwright Nick Lane: Leading the Beginner’s Playwriting online course. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

SCARBOROUGH’S Stephen Joseph Theatre is moving its OutReach classes online from next week.

The first to do so will be the Beginner’s Playwriting course, running for five weeks from Tuesday, June 9, led at 11.30am each week by South Yorkshire playwright Nick Lane, who has written the SJT’s Christmas show for the past four years.

“Has lockdown got you feeling locked up? Have you had enough of seeing/posting pictures of homemade frittatas on Instagram? Are you looking for something creative to do before you watch the whole of Netflix again?” asks Nick, whose adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story The Sign Of Four played the SJT last spring.

“If you fancy trying your hand at playwriting, the SJT has got you covered with a course for first-time writers covering everything from character to dialogue to plot, through structure, editing and rewriting…which you can now do from your own home. 

“You could even do it while watching Netflix and making a frittata.* The course is simple, it’s fun and it might just help you uncover a talent you didn’t know you had.”

Why did you put the asterisk after that “making a frittata” line, Nick? What’s the caveat? “It’s not recommended. Seriously, you might burn yourself.” Good point!

Rounders, the SJT youth theatre, will go online from Tuesday for five weeks, led by the SJT’s associate director for children and young people, Cheryl Govan, and associate director Chelsey Gillard.

They will deliver three free virtual sessions per week: on Tuesdays, for ages eight to 11; Wednesdays, for 15-plus; Thursdays, for 12 to 14 years, each from 4pm to 5pm.

Cheryl says: “For all our current members, we’ve not forgotten about you! Rounders will be moving online. It won’t be the same, but we can assure you it will be fun and a great chance to catch up with all your friends for some virtual Rounders nonsense. Make sure your parents check their emails: we’ll be in touch!”

For five weeks from June 10, from 11.30am to 1.30pm each Wednesday, fun and friendly Script Reading classes will explore the work of Restoration playwrights. 

Participants will read aloud texts from the 17th century and work with SJT associate director Chelsey Gillard to look at the themes, stories, writing styles and historical context.

Digital copies of plays, including George Etheredge’s The Man Of Mode and Aphra Behn’s The Rover, will be provided and participants will be given a link to join each weekly session.

“I’m very excited that we will be exploring this unique era of playwriting that delighted audiences when theatres reopened after an 18-year ban [in 1660 at the start of Charles II’s reign],” says Chelsey.

“Theatre became a way to celebrate and reflect on society, so it’s the perfect inspiration as we wait to also re-open our doors.”

Script Surgeries in one-to-one sessions on Zoom will be available with professional literary consultant Suzy Graham-Adriani, who is best known for creating the National Theatre’s Connections programme.

She will read scripts in development to give individual, detailed feedback, exploring ways to take the script to the next draft and, if appropriate, ways to move it forward.

Suzy was responsible for commissioning and developing the first 100 plays and musicals from writers such as Alan Ayckbourn, Bryony Lavery, Mark Ravenhill, Dennis Kelly and Poet Laureate Simon Armitage. 

Cheryl concludes: “We are, of course, really looking forward to re-opening the theatre and welcoming our community back to our popular classes. But until that’s possible, we hope that as many people as possible will join us online. We’ll be adding more soon.”

For more information on the online classes, go to: sjt.uk.com/getinvolved#classes. The Beginner’s Playwriting course costs £35 for all five sessions; Script Reading classes, £5 per week or £20 if you book all five; Script Surgeries, £100.

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REVIEW: Alan Ayckbourn’s audio play Anno Domino…and return to acting after 56 years

Alan Ayckbourn and Heather Stoney in their Scarborough garden. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

Review: Alan Ayckbourn’s Anno Domino, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, online at sjt.uk.com until 12 noon on June 25.

HERE is a sentence your reviewer never thought he would write. 81-year-old Alan Ayckbourn is playing an 18 year old in his new audio play.

Such is the impact of life in lockdown limbo, when the Corona crisis put paid to this summer’s Stephen Joseph Theatre premiere of the director emeritus’s 83rd play, Truth Will Out.

As chance would have it, that now mothballed play portends the impact of another type of virus, “a virulent computer virus that brings the country to a standstill, in a doomsday scenario piece, perhaps not too cheering in these darker days,” as Ayckbourn reflected.

“Still, I nearly predicted it correctly – I just got the wrong virus,” he said. Ayckbourn and SJT artistic director Paul Robinson promptly hatched a plan for an alternative AA premiere, one that could be recorded at home and aired exclusively on the Scarborough theatre’s website for free.

Former radio producer Ayckbourn duly unlocked a shelved piece of writing from its own lockdown for a new lease of life as the equivalent of a radio drama that marks the first time he has written, directed and performed in one of his plays. Not to mention parade his foley artist skills for sound effects, Anno Domino rose-pruning secateurs et al.

Heather Stoney and Alan Ayckbourn in Two For The Seesaw at Rotherham Civic Theatre in 1964

Ayckbourn last appeared on a professional cast list in the 1964 Rotherham Civic Theatre programme for Two For The Seesaw. Sharing the stage in William Gibson’s American two-hander was Heather Stoney. “We were both totally unsuitable,” he recalled of taking on roles broken in by Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft.

Still in his twenties, Ayckbourn played a middle-aged Nebraskan businessman; Stoney, a young Jewish dancer from the Bronx. Fifty-six years since that exit stage left, Ayckbourn now plays four characters ranging in age from 18 to mid-70s, and so too does Stoney, his wife.

Billed by Ayckbourn as “altogether lighter and more optimistic” than Truth Will Out but still with “dark corners”, and introduced on the audio recording by Robinson as “huge fun”, Anno Domino charts the break-up of a long-established marriage and the domino effect that has on family and friends.

“The inspiration came from the idea that all relationships ultimately, however resilient they appear to be, are built on sand!” says Ayckbourn, from the land of sand, Scarborough. “And it only takes one couple to break up abruptly to take us all by surprise, then all of a sudden everyone is questioning their own unshakeable relationship.”

He divides Anno Domino into two acts, the 56-minute Preparations and 48-minute Repercussions. Those Preparations are for successful West Sussex architect Sam and reasonably successful lawyer Milly Martin’s silver wedding anniversary party, where we learn they will be making a big revelation.

The Stephen Joseph Theatre artwork for Alan Ayckbourn’s audio play Anno Domino

At the hotel party will be Sam’s parents, gruff retired criminal lawyer Ben, set in his wary ways, prone to forgetting to put on his trousers these days, “staggering on to the finishing line” with his brusque wife Ella, the play’s “darkest corner”.

There too will be Ben and Ella’s daughter Martha, a nursery-school teacher blighted by phobias and a troubled past, now six weeks into her relationship with garage mechanic Craig, a dour, kind-hearted Yorkshireman from Heckmondwike, after depressing “waste of space” poet Sefton left her.

Martha’s taciturn teen son Raymond, or Raz as he insists on being called, will eventually turn up too to, phone in hand, cheeky eye on young waitress Cinny.

The big revelation – the break-up announcement, brought on by boredom with each other – triggers the Repercussions of Act 2, where the dark corners are ultimately turned..

The best scenes, in interchanges with advice-seeking, out-of-his-depth Craig and later Martha, centre on the domineering, blinkered Ella, Ayckbourn once more writing so brilliantly for his female characters, recalling Woman In Mind. “Because I know men,” says Ella, who has the dismissive manner of a Lady Bracknell, when in fact she does not know men at all.

The poster artwork for Alan Ayckbourn’s virus play Truth Will Out, the SJT summer production scuppered by the Covid-19 pandemic strictures

Ayckbourn, in that playing-things-down way of his, described making the play with Stoney as “just mucking about in our sitting room”, but it is an utter joy to hear them performing and, more to the point, performing together, with their natural chemistry,  moving from voice to voice, the recording given a final mix of pleasing clarity by Paul Steer. There is pleasure too in visualising the characters from those voices.

Ayckbourn’s tone may be “lighter”, from an S&M/M&S in-joke with the listener to the pronunciation of fuchsia, but the barb is still there too with digs at cynical, untrustworthy, ruthless, amoral lawyers and an authorial comment on the negative perception of “light on their feet” people in the arts. Yet again, he has found more to say about love too.

“Ah well, life goes on, I suppose, life goes on, doesn’t it,” says Ben, at the play’s close. It does indeed, and there may yet be life anew for Truth Will Out.

“I do hope it won’t get lost or forgotten,” said Ayckbourn in last week’s interview. “The SJT have agreed that this was merely a postponement. Shame to lose it as it’s a lot of fun. Watch this space, as they say.”

In the meantime, tune in to Anno Domino, an Ayckbourn rose in full bloom but with very prickly thorns too.

Charles Hutchinson

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SJT and National Literacy Trust unite for young writers’ online project Your Stories

Author Saviour Pirotta. Online story creation adventure. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

THE Stephen Joseph Theatre and the National Literacy Trust are calling on young writers across North Yorkshire to tell Your Stories.

Children’s author Saviour Pirotta, actor and poet Nadia Emam and illustrator Simon Whittaker are on the team for this new project: an online story creation adventure for five to 12 year olds.

For six weeks from Monday, June 1, daily content will be released via the National Literacy Trust’s local Facebook page to encourage creativity through story creation and reading for young people along the North Yorkshire coast.

This will include exercises on how to create characters and settings, such as storytelling bingo, role-playing, drawing comic strips and sound recording, and using all kinds of everyday things to create the adventure.

There will be short vlogs from Saviour Pirotta, writer of children’s novels The Orchard Book Of First Greek Myths, The Ancient Greek Mysteries Series and The Unicorn Prince, and Nadia Emam, who has worked extensively at the SJT and with Slung Low Theatre Company, including playing Gloriana in the BBC’s televised version of the Leeds company’s Flood: Part 2.

The pair also will give dramatic readings of some of the submitted stories and recommended books in the form of accessible e-books and audiobooks.

Nadia Emam: Dramatic readings

At the end of each week, illustrator Simon Whittaker, from House Of Deadleg, will create drawings based on stories submitted. He also will give video tutorials on creating illustrations.

The SJT’s associate director, Chelsey Gillard, says: “Participants can choose to engage every day, or just dip in and out as they like. By the end of the six weeks, they will have all they need to create an exciting adventure set in their hometown.

“Our artist will create illustrations of the characters and settings of the stories, as well as drawing elements from them to create one brilliant mega story curated by Saviour Pirotta.”

Liz Dyer, Our Stories manager, says: “We can’t wait to hear your stories. We’re thrilled to be partnering with the Stephen Joseph Theatre on this project. Having the tools to tell your own story builds confidence in young people that supports them at school, at home and in the future.”

To take part in Your Stories, simply visit the Our Stories website.

The National Literacy Trust’s local Facebook page is: facebook.com/Our-Stories-Whitby-Scarborough-Filey-115012336805179/.

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“I nearly predicted it correctly – I just got the wrong virus,” says Alan Ayckbourn after Corona crisis puts paid to Truth Will Out

ALAN Ayckbourn’s play number 83, Truth Will Out, will not be out this summer after Covid-19 intervened, but spookily another virus struck the Stephen Joseph Theatre world premiere. From within.

Let Ayckbourn explain. “Truth Will Out is concerned with another type of virus, a virulent computer virus, though, which brings the country to a standstill.

“A type of doomsday scenario piece and perhaps not too cheering in these darker days. Still, I nearly predicted it correctly – I just got the wrong virus.”

Truth Will Out may yet have its day at the Scarborough theatre. “I do hope it won’t get lost or forgotten,” says Ayckbourn. “The SJT have agreed that this was merely a postponement. Shame to lose it as it’s a lot of fun. Watch this space, as they say.”

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Truth Won’t Out, but a new lockdown Ayckbourn play will, and he’s acting in it. UPDATED WITH INTERVIEW

Alan Ayckbourn and Heather Stoney: Re-uniting as performers for the first time in 56 years in Anno Domino. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

WHEN the Coronavirus pandemic decreed Truth Will Out would not be out this summer in Scarborough, Alan Ayckbourn responded by unlocking a new play in lockdown, Anno Domino.

Not only has he written it, but he is performing in the audio recording too, marking his return to acting, 58 years after his last appearance on a professional stage, no less.

What’s more, the 81-year-old playwright has teamed up with his wife, actress Heather Stoney, his co-star in that 1964 production, to record the new show, his 84th play.

Billed as a Stephen Joseph Theatre production, the world premiere of Anno Domino will be streaming for free exclusively on the SJT’s website, sjt.uk.com, from noon on Monday (May 25) to noon on June 25. 

Ayckbourn had been due to direct the world premiere of Truth Will Out, from August 20 to October 3, alongside his revival of his 1976 garage-and-garden dark comedy of four birthdays, Just Between Ourselves, in an SJT summer season completed by artistic director Paul Robinson’s production of The Ladykillers.

The domino effect: The Stephen Joseph Theatre poster for Alan Ayckbourn’s 84th play, Anno Domino, streaming from May 25

However, once the SJT’s summer was scuppered by the Corona crisis, former radio producer Ayckbourn and Robinson hatched a plan to create a play that Ayckbourn and Stoney could record and present online.

Hey presto, Anno Domino, Ayckbourn’s audio account of the break-up of a long-established marriage and the domino effect that has on family and friends.

“The inspiration for Anno Domino came from the idea that all relationships ultimately, however resilient they appear to be, are built on sand!” says Ayckbourn. “And it only takes one couple to break up abruptly to take us all by surprise, then all of a sudden everyone is questioning their own unshakeable relationship.”  

Anno Domino marks the first time Ayckbourn has both directed and starred in one of his own plays, even providing the sound effects too. Performed by Ayckbourn and Stoney, with a final mix by Paul Steer, it requires the duo to play four characters each, with an age range of 18 to mid-70s: Ayckbourn adjusting the pitch of his voice to denote Ben, Sam, Craig and Raz; Stoney, likewise, for Ella, Milly, Martha and Cinny.

This SJT audio recording is the first occasion they have acted together since Ayckbourn’s stage exit left in William Gibson’s two-hander Two For The Seesaw at the Rotherham Civic Theatre in 1964.

Multi-tasking: Alan Ayckbourn and Heather Stoney: are playing four characters each in Anno Domino

Ayckbourn subsequently has pursued a prolific, glittering writing and directing career, all the way to Olivier Award and Tony Award success and a knighthood; Stoney continued to act, appearing in many Ayckbourn world premieres. Her last full season as an actress was at the SJT in 1985, when she appeared in the world premiere of Ayckbourn’s Woman In Mind. 

Now they renew their performing partnership, enjoying “just mucking about in our sitting room,” as Ayckbourn put it.

Here Charles Hutchinson puts questions to writer, director, sound-effects foley artist and performer in lockdown, Alan Ayckbourn

What prompted you to respond to such dark times with a “lighter” piece?

“It was written long before this virus decided to rear its ugly head! Actually, before the SJT new play Truth Will Out. But the latter was an altogether darker piece and was concerned with another type of virus, a virulent computer virus, though, which brings the country to a standstill. A type of doomsday scenario piece and perhaps not too cheering in these darker days.

The Stephen Joseph Theatre poster for this season’s postponed world premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s 83rd play, Truth Will Out

“Still, I nearly predicted it correctly – I just got the wrong virus. Anno Domino, though, is altogether lighter and more optimistic. (Though, knowing me, it still has its dark corners!)  

You are well accustomed to the discipline of working in isolation, but has it been in any way different under the present circumstances?

“No, the past couple of months has been no different to any other year, really. Though the past few days, I have suddenly felt the difference as this was the week when I was scheduled to start for this season’s AA revival, Just Between Ourselves, which I had not directed since I premiered it back in the ’70s in our first home at The Library Theatre. I was really looking forward to revisiting that.” 

There’s ring rusty and then there’s you returning to performing after 56 years! How’s the “muscle memory” after all those years?! 

“Well, I’ve been writing and directing throughout the intervening years. When I’m writing, I tend to say everything out loud, in character; when directing, I tend to say everything silently, under my breath but, of course, NEVER out loud! Most off-putting that would be for the actors, poor things.”  

Heather Stoney and Alan Ayckbourn in William Gibson’s American two-hander Two For The Seesaw at the Rotherham Civic Theatre in 1964. “We were both totally unsuitable,” recalls Ayckbourn

What do you recall of your last stage appearance in 1964, again with Heather and again in a two-hander?

“It was a production of an American two-hander by William Gibson, in which we were both totally unsuitable. I played, whilst still in my twenties, a middle-aged businessman from Omaha, Nebraska, originally played by Henry Fonda. Heather did her version of Anne Bancroft’s performance as a young Jewish dancer from the Bronx. Hallo and goodnight Rotherham, Yorkshire!” 

What are the plus points of an audio recording, as opposed to a stage performance? What possibilities does it open up?

“Interestingly, audio and in-the-round stage performance are very similar. People always say with radio plays, that they enjoy them ‘because they ask you to use your imagination’. People say similar things when watching plays in-the-round. The only difference is that audio has no pictures!”

Any thoughts on what may now happen to Truth Will Out?

“I do hope it won’t get lost or forgotten. The SJT have agreed that this was merely a postponement. Shame to lose it as it’s a lot of fun. Watch this space, as they say.”

Lastly, how would you interpret the instruction to Stay Alert?

“Keep your eyes peeled, your head down and look both ways before sneezing!”

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Truth Won’t Out, but a new lockdown Ayckbourn play will, and he’s acting in it

Alan Ayckbourn and his wife Heather Stoney in their Scarborough garden. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

WHEN the Coronavirus pandemic meant Truth Will Out would not be out this summer in Scarborough, Alan Ayckbourn responded by unlocking a new play in lockdown, Anno Domino.

And not only has he written it, but he is performing in the audio recording too, marking his return to acting, 58 years after his last appearance on a professional stage.

What’s more, the 81-year-old Olivier and Tony Award-winning playwright has teamed up with his wife, actress Heather Stoney, his co-star in that 1964 production, to record the new show, his 84th play.

Heather Stoney and Alan Ayckbourn in his last professional stage appearance in Two For The Seesaw at the Rotherham Civic Theatre in 1964

The world premiere of Anno Domino will be available for free exclusively on the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s website, sjt.uk.com, from noon on Monday, May 25 to noon on June 25. 

Ayckbourn had been due to direct the world premiere of Truth Will Out, from August 20 to October 3, alongside his revival of his 1976 garage-and-garden dark comedy of four birthdays, Just Between Ourselves, in an SJT summer season completed by artistic director Paul Robinson’s production of The Ladykillers.

However, after the SJT’s summer was scuppered by the Corona crisis, former radio producer Ayckbourn and Robinson hatched a plan to create a new play that Ayckbourn and Stoney could record and present online: “just mucking about in our sitting room,” as Ayckbourn put it.

Alan Ayckbourn and Heather Stoney: Re-united in a production for the first time in 56 years. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

Hey presto, Anno Domino, Ayckbourn’s audio account of the break-up of a long-established marriage and the domino effect that has on family and friends.

“The inspiration for Anno Domino came from the idea that all relationships ultimately, however resilient they appear to be, are built on sand!” says Ayckbourn. “And it only takes one couple to break up abruptly to take us all by surprise, then all of a sudden everyone is questioning their own unshakeable relationship.”  

Anno Domino marks the first time Ayckbourn has both directed and starred in one of his own plays – and even done the sound effects too. Performed by Ayckbourn and Stoney, with a final mix by Paul Steer, it requires the duo to  play four characters each, with an age range of 18 to mid-70s. This Stephen Joseph Theatre audio recording is the first occasion they have acted together since Ayckbourn’s stage exit left in William Gibson’s two-hander Two For The Seesaw at the Rotherham Civic Theatre in 1964.

“We can’t wait for our audiences to hear Anno Domino,” says Stephen Joseph Theatre artistic director Paul Robinson. “It’s one of Alan’s ‘lighter’ plays, a hopeful and rather joyous piece”

Ayckbourn subsequently pursued a prolific, glittering writing and directing career, while Stoney continued to act, appearing in many Ayckbourn world premieres. Her last full season as an actress was at the SJT in 1985, when she appeared in the world premiere of Ayckbourn’s Woman In Mind. 

Robinson enthuses: “We can’t wait for our audiences to hear Anno Domino. We were all hugely disappointed to have to suspend our summer season. We were so looking forward to seeing the brilliant Just Between Ourselves – ‘the one with the car on stage’ – and the world premiere of Alan’s up-to-the-minute satire, Truth Will Out.

“Anno Domino is one of Alan’s ‘lighter’ plays, a hopeful and rather joyous piece, which will provide perfect entertainment in these troubled times. This is a hugely exciting and very contemporary response to the current situation and shows yet again how Alan has always moved with the times.”

“All relationships ultimately, however resilient they appear to be, are built on sand,” says Alan Ayckbourn . How apt for a play written in Scarborough.

The now mothballed Truth Will Out was written by Ayckbourn in late-2019 as a satire on family, relationships, politics and the state of the nation.

“Everyone has secrets,” says the tantalising synopsis in the SJT summer-season brochure. “Certainly, former shop steward George, his right-wing MP daughter Janet, investigative journalist Peggy, and senior civil servant Sefton, do.

“All it’s going to take is one tech-savvy teenager with a mind of his own and time on his hands to bring their worlds tumbling down – and maybe everyone else’s along with them. A storm is brewing.”

The Stephen Joseph Theatre’s artwork for this summer’s now-postponed world premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s Truth Will Out

When that storm will now break cannot be forecast. Alan Ayckbourn’s Official Website states: “It is not known what the future holds for Truth Will Out…”, but the truth will out on its path forward in due course.

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Alan Ayckbourn’s 84th play Truth Will Out mothballed as SJT takes Coronavirus measures for summer season

Sir Alan Ayckbourn: Summer 2020 premiere and revival cancelled at the SJT, Scarborough. Picture: Tony Bartholomew

THE world premiere of Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s 84th full-length play, Truth Will Out, will not go ahead this summer at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough.

Nor will his revival of his 1976 garage-and-garden dark comedy of four birthdays, Just Between Ourselves, both productions scuppered by the Coronavirus crisis that has led to the SJT being closed.

Booked into the summer repertory season to run between August 20 and October 3, Truth Will Out was written by 80-year-old Ayckbourn in late-2019 as a satire on family, relationships, politics and the state of the nation.

“Everyone has secrets,” says the tantalising synopsis in the SJT summer-season brochure. “Certainly, former shop steward George, his right-wing MP daughter Janet, investigative journalist Peggy, and senior civil servant Sefton, do.

Stephen Joseph Theatre artistic director and joint chief executive Paul Robinson

“All it’s going to take is one tech-savvy teenager with a mind of his own and time on his hands to bring their worlds tumbling down – and maybe everyone else’s along with them. A storm is brewing.”

When that storm will now break cannot be forecast. Alan Ayckbourn’s Official Website states: “It is not known what the future holds for Truth Will Out…”, but the truth will out on its path forward in due course.

Ayckbourn’s website also reveals he had written another play, Just Mercy, earlier in 2019 for his 2020 premiere before turning his attention to Truth Will Out instead. He still hopes Just Mercy “will be produced at some point in the future”.

As the Covid-19 pandemic sweeps the world, joint chief executives Caroline Routh and Paul Robinson said today: “Like everyone else, we are in uncharted territory, but our current plans are based on probably being closed for most of the planned summer season, which means we’ll no longer be presenting Just Between Ourselves, The Ladykillers or Truth Will Out this year.”

Matthew Wilson and Nicola Stephenson in Hull Truck Theatre and the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s co-production of Two, directed by Hull Truck artistic director Mark Babych

Artistic director Robinson’s production of Father Ted and Black Books writer Graham Linehan’s  stage adaptation of the 1955 Ealing comedy The Ladykillers would have run from July 9 to August 15, with its story of the sweetest of sweet little old ladies, alone at home but for a parrot with a mystery illness, at the mercy of a ruthless gang of criminal misfits.

The SJT is making plans to be “up and running again as quickly as possible once it’s able to”.

“We are already thinking about what might be possible should restrictions start to lift earlier than expected,” say Routh and Robinson. “We are extremely lucky in that we have a couple of shows which are ready, or almost ready, to go.

“Jim Cartwright’s Two, our co-production with Hull Truck Theatre, had already opened there, so can be on our stage at relatively short notice, while Little Red Riding Hood, which was due to fill our Easter slot for families next month, is cast and the set is nearly complete – we just need a couple of weeks’ rehearsal.”

Charlotte Brooke: one of the cast members for the SJT OutReach production of Little Red Riding Hood

Adapted by Saviour Pirotta, Cheryl Govan’s SJT OutReach production of this fabled story of not judging a book by its cover, or a wolf by its teeth, features a cast of Charlotte Brooke, Marcquelle Ward, Nicola Holliday and Charlotte Oliver, who were to have taken to The McCarthy stage from April 7 to 11.

Routh and Robinson continue: “While we couldn’t, of course, see an instant return to normal, we could start up our film programme again, schedule some pieces of visiting theatre, or stage a rehearsed reading or two, all of which will bring our building back to life quite quickly.”

The SJT’s box-office team is being kept busy, working remotely to contact those who have booked tickets for the upcoming spring and summer seasons.

Routh and Robinson say: “We’ve already contacted all those who’d booked tickets for shows and films during our initial week-long closure, and we were amazed by how many of them refused a refund, preferring instead to donate the cost of their tickets or credit their account.

The new message on the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s former Odeon cinema frontage after the Coronavirus shutdown

“It’s so touching to see how many people are showing faith in our future and are keen to support us – our heartfelt thanks to all of them.

“We aim to remain an essential part of the wider community in the borough of Scarborough throughout this period, and really look forward to welcoming you all back when our doors re-open.”

The SJT is closed to the public, but until further notice the box office will be accepting phone and email enquiries from noon to 6pm, Mondays to Fridays, on 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com.

The SJT will be posting regular updates on its website and social media channels: @thesjt.

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CORONAVIRUS: Stephen Joseph Theatre suspends all activities this week

Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough

THE Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, has shut down with immediate effect in response to the Coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement released today, joint chief executive Caroline Routh said: “Further to current government advice, which stipulates that people should avoid public buildings including theatres to help slow the spread of Coronavirus, our extended management group, including our trustees, has agreed that we will suspend all activities up to and including Sunday (March 22).”

The SJT box office remains open to manage cancellations and will be in touch with customers with bookings that are affected.

“This is a fast-developing situation, and we will be making further announcements over the next few days as things become clearer,” the SJT statement  said. “Please take care of yourself and all those around you.”

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REVIEW: Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table does not add up to riotous comedy, alas

Robert Daws’ committee chairman Ray, left, and Mark Curry’s pedantic Councillor Donald Evans in Ten Times Table. Pictures: Pamela Raith

REVIEW: Alan Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table, The Classic Comedy Theatre Company, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york

IMPRESARIO and prolific producer Bill Kenwright has his name on multiple shows that frequent the Grand Opera House, from musicals to the Agatha Christie, Classic Thriller and Classic Screen To Stage companies.

Now add The Classic Comedy Theatre Company to that list, making their debut tour either side of Christmas with Ten Times Table, Alan Ayckbourn’s “calamitous comedy by committee” from 1977, the year when committees popped up everywhere to mark HM The Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

Those stellar names of British theatre, Kenwright and Ayckbourn, are complemented by a third: Robin Herford, perennial director of The Woman In Black and much else, not least past productions of Ayckbourn’s Just Between Ourselves at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and Relatively Speaking, Confusions, Bedroom Farce and Season’s Greetings elsewhere.

What’s more, Ayckbourn cast him as pedantic, punctilious, punctuation and procedure-obsessed Councillor Donald Evans in his SJT premiere of Ten Times Table in January 1977.

Everything sounded so promising for Herford’s touring production, not least a cast starring Robert Daws, Robert Duncan, Mark Curry and Deborah Grant. Certainly, more promising than the gloomy forecast that the River Ouse floodwaters could be seeping beneath the Grand Opera House doors by 6am, prompting senior management to stay on watchful guard through the night.

Thankfully, such concerns turned out to be a false dawn. Alas, Ten Times Table proved to be a damp squib too: that rare occasion when an Ayckbourn play just isn’t very funny any more.

Maybe we are spoilt by Sir Alan’s revivals of his classics at the Stephen Joseph Theatre each summer season; maybe they better suit the bear-pit setting of the SJT’s theatre in the round: more intimate, more inclusive, more apt for the combative nature of his vintage comedies. Maybe it is significant that Ten Times Table has never been among those revivals.

Misfiring: Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy Ten Times Table fires blanks in Robin Herford’s touring production

Here in York, on a proscenium-arch stage, as with the body of a giraffe, Ten Times Table feels like the work of a committee. Or the work of a committee like the one we are watching as they assemble maybe ten times around the table (although your reviewer lost count).

Welcome to the “miscellaneous assemblage” of the Pendon Folk Festival committee, gathering beneath the erratic lights of the faded grand ballroom of the Swan Hotel, as Seventies as hotel grey gravy and over-boiled veg and as tired as the comedy in Michael Holt’s design.

The pathway to the Pendon Pageant will be a bumpy one, all the more so for the irascible, over-excitable disposition of chairman Ray (Robert Daws), who bores everyone, audience included unfortunately, as he recounts Pendon’s most dramatic news story of the past.

Now the 18th century army massacre of the radical Pendon Twelve agricultural agitators is to be re-enacted on pageant day. Ayckbourn duly sets up matching class warfare: middle-class conservatism on one side, represented by smug Ray; his constantly peeved, overbearing wife Helen (Deborah Grant); a mad, revolver-toting military dog-breeder, Tim (Harry Gostelow), and ineffectual dullard Councillor Evans (Mark Curry).

Always accompanying Evans is his octogenarian mum Audrey (Elizabeth Power), the minute-taking but pretty much deaf committee secretary who never delivers the minutes, dithering dottily except when a drink or the chance to play the piano comes her way.

On the other side, representing the agitators, is the truculent Marxist martyr, comprehensive schoolteacher Eric (Craig Gazey), and his acolytes, the ever-underwhelming Sophie (Gemma Oaten), even a disappointment to herself, and the almost impossibly quietly spoken costume maker Philippa (Rhiannon Handy).

No idea where he is, the sozzled Laurence (Robert Duncan) stumbles from marital crisis to the next marital crisis.

Ayckbourn depicts the minutiae of committee conduct with trademark mischief making but somehow this Ten Times Table does not add up amid the personality and ideological clashes. The power-driven Ray is as irritating as the banging on the floor above; plenty of others follow suit, and, especially in the long first half, the comedy feels too slow, too forced, the timing……..off.

Charles Hutchinson

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The Red Barn Murder as it has never been told before…from the victim’s viewpoint

The Ballad Of Maria Marten playwright Beth Flintoff

GOODBYE Polstead, say hello to The Ballad Of Maria Marten, the new name for
Beth Flintoff’s captivating drama that first toured in 2018.

Directed by Hal Chambers in tandem with Ivan Cutting, an all-female cast
will embark on a spring tour from Tuesday at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph
Theatre, led by Elizabeth Crarer, who returns to the title role for Flintoff’s
re-telling of a real-life Suffolk murder mystery in Summer 1827.

In a red barn, Maria Marten awaits her lover. A year later, her body is
found under the floor of the barn in a grain sack, barely identifiable, and the
manhunt begins.

Maria’s story sent shock waves throughout the country. The Red Barn Murder,
as it became known, was national news, inspiring writers and filmmakers down
the ages.

Here was the sort of gruesome tale that had all the hallmarks of a classic
crime drama: a missing body, a country location, a disreputable squire and a
village stuck in its age-old traditions.

However, amid all the hysteria, Maria’s own story has become lost – until this
play. Chambers and Flintoff’s spine-tingling rediscovery of her tale brings it
back to vivid, urgent life.

Flintoff, a freelance playwright and theatre director from Hampshire, was asked
by co-director Cutting to write the play.

She was immediately intrigued, not only because she had never heard of the
murder, but also because she then learnt how the story previously had been
told.

“Ivan approached me after seeing another play that I’d written, which was
set in the early 12th century,” she recalls. “We met in Polstead,
Suffolk, to walk through the village, and I was fascinated. In particular, Ivan
wanted the story to focus on Maria because so many versions of this tale are
centred around William Corder.” 

Beth continues: “From the moment of the trial, the focus was on the
murderer, not Maria. No-one seemed to be looking carefully at the intricacies
of her life, beyond the basics. So, I wanted to tell the story entirely from
her point of view.

“We are often presented with stories of women as ‘victims’, rather than as
interesting, complicated people who had hopes and dreams, friends and lives of
their own.”

For her research, Flintoff stayed in Ipswich for a while and walked around Polstead
to gain a sense of how she lived her life. “I visited all the locations of
Maria’s life that I thought would be mentioned in the play: Layham, Sudbury,
Hadleigh. I went to the Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds, which has
relics relating to the murder, and the Records Office in Ipswich to look at
newspaper reports,” she says.

“I talked to local people to try and understand what everyone thinks now
(the answer: everyone that knows of it has a different version!). Then I spent
a lot of time in libraries: the University of Sussex Library, the British
Library in London and the Bodleian in Oxford.” 

Flintoff notes that amid the profusion of accounts of the story, whether from the time of the murder or much more recent, they are all very different. “Some are truly horrible about Maria, others make her out to be an angelic village maiden, and some offer some pretty bizarre theories about Ann,” she says.

“One offered ‘hints to the ladies’ on how to avoid marrying a murderer in
the future. Several anxiously urged women not to be so promiscuous, to avoid
being murdered themselves. None suggested that men stop murdering. Needless to
say, I could not find any contemporary accounts written by a woman. 

“Then I put all the research aside and tried to think about Maria as a person.
Who does she love, what do they talk about, what does she do when she’s having
fun? I didn’t want her to be a victim any more. Maria emerged as intelligent,
brave and wryly funny, just like the survivors I had met.” 

What does Flintoff anticipate this week’s SJT audience will take away from The Ballad Of Maria Marten? “First of all, I hope they enjoy
themselves! That’s my number one job really. It’s not a laugh-a-minute sort of
play but you can still enjoy a story, even if it’s full of sadness.

“But also I hope they enjoy watching these actresses, as I have, working
together to tell this story about a woman who has somehow got lost in the
retelling of her own murder.” 

Secondly, she hopes they feel the story is still relevant. “On average, two
women are killed every week by their partner or ex-partner in this country,”
Beth says. “I feel increasingly that this story is not about the past but the
present: how are we going to let women speak for themselves when there is so
much history of being ignored?

“I feel very optimistic for the future. I think things are going to change,
and it’s wonderful to be living in that change, but it’s going to take work.”

The Ballad Of Maria Marten will run in the Round at the Stephen
Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, from Tuesday,February 11 to 15 at 7.30pm nightly,
plus matinees at 1.30pm on February 13 and 2.30pm on February 15. Tickets,
priced from £10, are on sale on 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: VERY  SORRY THE TEXT IS MISBEHAVING. NO IDEA WHY IT IS, BUT HOPEFULLY THIS DOES NOT SPOIL ANY ENJOYMENT OF READING THE STORY. CH