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More Things To Do in and around York as pioneering dating show is game for laughs and love. List No. 57, courtesy of The Press

Seasick Steve: Just him, his home-made guitar and you at York Barbican tonight

CHARLES Hutchinson recommends veteran blues at the double, quilts, a dating show, chaotic Hitchcockian comedy capers, a Brahms Requiem and a Geordie comic out to dazzle.

Solo show of the week: Seasick Steve, Just Steve, A Guitar And Your Tour, York Barbican, tonight, 8pm

LAST year, American DIY blues veteran Seasick Steve released two albums, July’s Love & Peace and November’s Blues In Mono, his tribute to trad acoustic country blues recorded with a microphone from the 1940s as Steve performed the songs direct to an old tape machine. 

Now, York-bound Steve says: “I‘m lookin’ forward to coming and playing for y’all. Just gonna be me, you and my guitar. A few songs and a few stories, kinda like we just hangin’ out together! Gonna be fun. See ya there.” Tickets update: limited availability at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Sanna Buck, Stephen Wright and Aran MacRae look on as a prone Daniel Boyle takes centre stage in rehearsal for York Settlement Community Players’ The 39 Steps. Picture: John Saunders

Play of the week: York Settlement Community Players in The 39 Steps, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight until Sunday

PATRICK Barlow’s riotous West End comedy hit marks the Settlement Players’ return to live performance for the first time since March 2020.

Harri Marshall’s cast of eight takes on the challenge of combining John Buchan’s 1915 novel with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film scenes in a blend of virtuoso performance and wildly inventive stagecraft, playing 150 characters between them as the mysterious 39 Steps chase Aran MacRae’s Richard Hannay’s on a nationwide manhunt. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Hey, it’s The Manfreds: Playing the Grand Opera House, York, tonight

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be? It’s even better at Maximum Rhythm N’ Blues with The Manfreds and Georgie Fame, Grand Opera House, York, tonight, 7.30pm

THE Manfreds and Georgie Fame team up for a celebration of Sixties rhythm & blues in an all-star line-up with hits galore to match.

Original Manfred Mann members Paul Jones, Mike Hugg and Tom McGuinness are joined by Family’s Rob Townsend on drums, Marcus Cliffe on bass and Simon Currie on saxophone and flute, plus former member Mike D’Abo to share lead vocals, and Blue Flames leader Fame on keyboards. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Ready to dazzle: Sarah Millican kicks off a three-night run at York Barbican tomorrow

Three-night run of the week: Sarah Millican: Bobby Dazzler Tour, York Barbican, tomorrow to Sunday, 8pm

SOUTH Shields humorist Sarah Millican’s new show, Bobby Dazzler, is doing the rounds on her sixth international tour.

“You’ll learn about what happens when your mouth seals shut, trying to lose weight but only losing the tip of your finger, a surprisingly funny smear test, and how truly awful a floatation tank can actually be,” says Millican, who has “spent the last year writing jokes and growing her backside”. Tickets update: limited availability at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Masks, of the non-Covid protection variety, will be worn by participants in ventriloquist Nina Conti’s dating show. Picture: Matt Crockett

Game show of the week: Nina Conti: The Dating Show, Grand Opera House, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm

FAST-TALKING, faster-thinking ventriloquist Nina Conti and her cheeky Monkey host a pioneering new dating show for participants picked from the York audience.

What’s in store for the chosen ones? Apparently “she’ll be like Cilla Black with masks. Derailed. Not so much a Blind Date as a re-voiced one.” In a nutshell, they wear masks, she/Monkey talks, with no promise that true love will be found. Box office: atgtickets.com/york. 

Matthew Miller’s Golden Bird quilt from his Cloth & Colour installation at York Theatre Royal from Saturday

Exhibition launch of the week: Matthew Miller’s Cloth & Colour quilts, York Theatre Royal foyer, from Saturday to November 30

BASED in London, but from York, multi-media artist Matthew Miller launches his debut quilt installation in the first Beyond The Gallery Walls pop-up project to be mounted by Lotte Inch Gallery.

Artist Matthew and curator Lotte will be hosting the launch from 11.30am to 1.30pm on Saturday, happy to discuss his Cloth & Colour quilt designs. Interested in the ecological use of fabric in quilting, Matthew has used end-of-roll and pre-worn fabrics throughout his series of vibrant collages in cloth.

Alex Ashworth: Baritone soloist for Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem at Saturday’s concert by the Chapter House Choir. Picture: Debbie Scanlan

Classical choral concert of the week: Chapter House Choir, York Minster, Saturday, 7.30pm

THE Chapter House Choir performs Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem at York Minster in a rare opportunity to hear Brahms’s own arrangement written for piano – more intimate and transparent – with baritone Alex Ashworth, soprano Susan Young and pianists Eleanor Kornas and Polly Sharpe as the soloists.

This will be complemented by the world premiere of Lillie Harris’s Comfort, specially commissioned for Saturday’s concert. Box office: 01904 557200 or at yorkminster.org.

Open on Saturday: Carolyn Coles’s studio at South Bank Studios

Christmas shopping? Present opportunity at South Bank Studios’ Art & Craft Winter Fair, Southlands Methodist Church, Bishopthorpe Road, York, Saturday, 10am to 5pm

THE South Bank Studios artists’ group open their doors and studios to the public this weekend, when 28 artists will be exhibiting jewellery, ceramics, lino prints, textile art and fine art paintings and prints, all available to buy, just in time for Christmas. Entry is free.

Among those taking part are Carolyn Coles, Caroline Utterson, Jane Dignum, Lincoln Lightfoot, Richard Whitelegg, Mandi Grant and Fiona Lane. York Music Centre’s Senior Concert Band, Guitar Ensemble, Senior Folkestra and Big Band will be playing, and the icing on the cake will be the church team’s homemade refreshments.

Voila! C’est La Voix

Most glamorous show of the weekend: La Voix, Grand Opera House, York, Saturday, 7.30pm

FEISTY, flame-haired Royal Family favourite La Voix – the drag artiste creation of Chris Dennis – takes on the big divas and makes them her own in her Grand Opera House debut in The UK’s Funniest Redhead.

Billed as her “most glamorous show yet”, the 2014 Britain’s Got Talent semi-finalist will be combining stellar songs and saucy gags, high energy and diva impersonations, glamour and gowns – eight of them – as she switches between the vocal tropes of Tina Turner, Shirley Bassey, Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland and Cher at the click of a finger. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Millie Manders and The Shutup: Definitely not shutting up at the Fulford Arms on Sunday night

Gig with attitude of the week: Millie Manders & The Shutup, Fulford Arms, York, Sunday, 8pm

MILLIE Manders & The Shutup spark up cross-genre punk with a lyricism that pokes fun, draws you in or leaves you questioning social norms, teamed to vocal dexterity, grinding guitars, irresistible horn hooks and a pumping rhythm section.

The Londoners will be airing songs from October 2020’s debut album, Telling Truths, Breaking Ties. Box office: seetickets.com/event/millie-manders.

Willy Mason: Nine-year gap after he made a record called Carry On, but carry on he does at last with Already Dead album and tour date in York. Picture: Ebru Wildiz

Overdue return of the week: Willy Mason, supported by Voka Gentle, The Crescent, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm; standing show

NEW York singer-songwriter and lovely chap Willy Mason returns with Already Dead, his fourth album of characterful, sharp left-field pop, folk and Americana but his first since 2012’s Carry On.

“Magic, miracles, ghosts, world leaders; these days it seems there’s little left to believe in,” says Mason. “Lies outweigh truth and even truth can be dangerous. 

“Already Dead explores honesty and deception, anonymity in the digital age, good intentions with unexpected consequences, freedom, colonialism, love, God and purpose, because now is the time to restore some much-needed faith.” Box office: thecrescentyork.seetickets.com/event/willy-mason.

Soft Cell: 40th anniversary home-coming concert in Leeds. Picture: Andrew Whitton

Oh, and amid all these York events, here is the gig of the week outside the city walls: Soft Cell, Leeds 02 Academy, Saturday, doors, 6pm

IN 1981, Leeds synth-pop pioneers Soft Cell topped the charts with their Northern Soul cover, Tainted Love. This weekend, they play a 40th anniversary home-coming gig with an early start, kicking off with a DJ from 6pm.

LGBTQ icon Marc Almond and producer/instrumentalist Dave Ball will play two sets: the first from 7pm embracing songs from their back catalogue and previewing their first album in 20 years, Happiness Not Included, out on BMG on February 25 2022.

In the second, from 8.20pm, they will perform 1981 debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret in full for the first time. Cue Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, Bedsitter, Memorabilia et al. Box office: myticket.co.uk/artists/soft-cell

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Monkeying around for love and laughs with Nina Conti and masks in The Dating Show

Masks of the non-Covid kind will be worn in the theatre when Nina Conti hosts The Dating Show at the Grand Opera House, York, next month

NO sooner has removing masks become the norm than Nina Conti wants you to put them back on, all in the cause of her pioneering new dating game.

After a four-year hiatus since her In Your Face travels, the London ventriloquist-comedian will be embarking on The Dating Show tour on October 31, visiting the Grand Opera House, York, on November 12 with 14 robust masks made by a fellow ventriloquist in the Philippines.

“She’ll be like Cilla Black with masks. Derailed. Not so much a Blind Date as a re-voiced one,” promises the show spiel.

“Before this Armageddon hit, I was developing a dating show where I would connive for audience members to fall in love wearing masks,” says Nina. “Post-Covid, I can’t think of anything more fitting. I think we all need to get in a room together and laugh our heads off, and if the subject can be love, so much the better.”

There you have it: a comedy show for 2021 with elaborate latex masks, Nina’s cheeky monkey sidekick Monkey, a return to human connection and the possibility of romance in the air.

As it happens, the matchmaking format of The Dating Show has emerged through happenstance from In Your Face’s earlier use of masks. “When I did masks before with an audience, I often ended up with love matches,” Nina recalls.

“The audience members often took it there with their body language. They could be a bit friendly and a bit flirty, and I remember thinking, ‘I have to stop things going like this or people will think I’m a sex maniac! What’s the matter with me!?’

Ventriloquist-comedian Nina Conti and masks for The Dating Show. Picture: Matt Crockett

“But then I thought that maybe it’s not me forcing it because it’s simply happening every time, so why resist? And why not do something called The Dating Show?”

After Nina experimented with the new show in trial runs pre-pandemic at London’s Soho Theatre, lockdown has allowed her to settle on the best way forward. “To avoid it becoming this hetero-normative thing, you want to get everyone involved,” she has decided.

“In the Soho shows, I opened with Monkey interviewing a bunch of people in the audience, and whoever elicited the most warmth was the person I went with. I’m not after eccentrics, just likeability. Hopefully those we get up could be any kind of person and not just the Cilla Black demographic.”

What happens next? “I just get a feel for it from the banter, to put two people together up there on stage, put masks on them, then have a low-key chat about their past relationships and what they’re looking for next.

“Let’s see who bonds and where it goes. It might even be two straight men trying to work it out.  As long as it’s funny, great. I just want it to be funny.”

CharlesHutchPress spoke to Nina on September 27, two weeks ahead of her starting her test run for the autumn tour. “All my shows are unscripted, so really what I’m searching for is to put the scaffolding and structure in place.

“What I’ll definitely do is return to the audience with Monkey after each stage encounter and one person might stay on stage for the next encounter,” she says.

The poster for Nina Conti’s 2021 tour, The Dating Show

“It’s just a comedy show! It’s kind of nonsense, getting people on stage and asking them to ‘sing a musical number to each other’, or they might ‘go skiing’ or ‘go up in a hot air balloon’! Each vignette will be something crazy.

“They won’t have a grand script or anything. I put masks on them, covering them from below their eyes to their jaw line, then I speak for them, turning them into puppets, where I respond to their body language in the moment.”

Nina, 47, loves interacting with audience members on stage. “I find people very loveable when they’re up there. It’s a mixture of celebration and their own bafflement. They feel safe because I don’t ask awkward questions and it’s liberating for them with the mask on because they don’t feel like themselves,” she says.

“Maybe someone’s shyness is the real self but sometimes the mask frees them up. Most people wear a mask of some kind anyway: I know I do, being different in different contexts, but Monkey is great for me because he says things where I don’t need to antagonise!”

There’s the rub! Monkey is free to be the quick-thinking agent provocateur in the partnership between ventriloquist and dummy: the one with the smart mouth. “Yes, absolutely! The dummy is the ‘bright one’ in the ventriloquist act!” says Nina, who was approached originally by her old mentor, Ken Campbell, to try out the ventriloquist’s art, one that pretty much had been consigned to the suitcase in comedy’s attic.

“I’m lucky to have found it, because I never thought that ventriloquism was a skill worth having,” she admits. “I would never have gone to a ventriloquism show, and when it was suggested to me by Ken I was so uninterested in it. I thought he was mad!

“I don’t know if I’ve enhanced it for nostalgia, but there was a definite lightbulb moment. I had been practising with those awful mannequins, and it was so end-of-the-pier and saucy: I didn’t like it. But then I remembered this monkey puppet that I stole off a mate, but I didn’t know if his mouth could operate. He was more like Sooty; your hand isn’t meant to go in his head.

“The dummy is the ‘bright one’ in the ventriloquist act!” says Nina Conti. Picture: Matt Crockett

“But like all things that end up fitting and going well, most creativity doesn’t work like you expect Once I had taken the squeak and some stuffing out, I found that his mouth could work!

“I’d done a bit of ventriloquism already, but thought it was bit spooky, but when I put my hand into his face, as soon as he started to talk, I thought, ‘Woah! Everything you’re saying is coming from a wider place than my own head’.

“He has such gravitas.” Monkey, gravitas, Nina? Really?! “He wouldn’t agree! He’d say, ‘Get over it, you’re delusional’, but then he’d say, ‘Who’s to say who’s being delusional here?’. I say things that surprise me through him, and I try to keep myself out of it when I’m speaking as him, thinking, ‘I’ll have to get out of this situation later, but for now we’ll just let Monkey say what he says’.”

Where does Nina keep Monkey when not performing? “He’s sort of kept about the house. I travel lightly with him in my handbag, and I just toss him to one side when I need to put something in there. Like something you’re familiar with, you stop treating him with reverence, but I would never do that on stage,” she says.

In fact, Nina has more than one Monkey. “It’s like The Matrix, growing those embryos! I’ve got loads, and I tend to use them for a period of time. Maybe six Monkeys in 20 years. Each new one, I have to scrub his face because I need him to look a bit worn. I’ve just started a new Monkey in the last few months, using hair putty to dampen him to age him!” she reveals.

For the record, Nina is not seeking to be the new Cilla with The Dating Show . “I’m not really match-making,” she says. “Anything that then happens off-stage afterwards is beyond my control!”

Nina Conti, The Dating Show, Grand Opera House, York, November 12, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/york

“We all need to get in a room together and laugh our heads off, and if the subject can be love, so much the better,” says Nina. Picture: Idil Sukan