As intuitive as a double act: Mark Hawkins, as The Actor, front, and Malcolm James, as Arthur Kipps, in The Woman In Black. Picture: Mark Douet
THE chill night air. Water, water, everywhere. York, the city with even more ghosts than hotel rooms, was putting on its own show for the umpteenth yet ever-welcome return of The Woman In Black, the ghost story by Susan Hill from up the road in Scarborough.
The Grand Opera House has its resident ghost, said to greet new members of staff by name on first acquaintance in the auditorium, but once more there was a rival in town: one Jennet Humphrey, the “Woman” in the title of Stephen Mallatratt’s meta-theatrical adaptation, first staged at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in December 1987 in winter ghost-story season tradition.
That said, The Woman In Black could be staged anywhere, any season, as the latest touring partnership of Malcolm James and Mark Hawkins can testify. They first teamed up as tormented lawyer Arthur Kipps and the whippersnapper-keen Actor for 11 performances in the 40-degree heat of Dubai, modern Madinat Theatre auditorium et al, in 2017.
James has his long service medal already, having appeared in the play’s 2014-2015 tour, visiting York Theatre Royal on that itinerary, and undertaking a subsequent London stretch at The Fortune in 2016.
Hawkins has played The Fortune too, and bringing that combined experience to Mallatratt’s adroit storytelling they make for a terrific partnership, as intuitive as a double act and admirably unfazed when the smog engulfing the stage sets off the smoke alarm.
Sitting next to the 13 to 16-year-olds from Stokesley, North Yorkshire, attending the opening night as part of their theatre studies, was a chance for a veteran reviewer to encounter The Woman In Black as if for the first time. Their changing reactions, as the early humour made way for the gravest, ghostly, ghastly deeds, added to the joys of this masterpiece of theatre’s unrivalled powers of imagination and invention.
As ever, Robin Herford is still directing the fright night’s scares, with Antony Eden, The Actor in the previous tour to York en route to more than 1,000 performances, as his associate director. As ever too, as billed in the programme, “the action takes place in this theatre in the early 1950s”.
Harder to imagine in Dubai, maybe, but the Grand Opera House is the perfect grand setting for the play within the play in a disused theatre within a theatre, where Michael Holt’s design, with its clever use of gauze, takes delight in gradually revealing a shadowy stairwell, dark passages, a mysteriously locked door and, spoiler alert, a children’s bedroom with toys untouched from 50 years ago.
Rod Mead’s sound design, administered on tour by Sebastian Fost, has a way of utilising all the theatre to surprise and jolt, while Kevin Sleep’s light design, now “re-lit” on tour by Alexander Hannah, is, pardon the pun, a highlight of the show, adding to the tension, constantly showing the stage in a different light that has you wondering where the Woman In Black might next appear. Not so much Sleep as sleepless, such is the disturbing presence.
As for the storytelling, James and Hawkins, as much as Mallatratt and Herford, excel in the more-is less-approach as James’s haunted, stultified Kipps seeks to exorcise the fear that has burdened his soul for so long, to end the curse on his family.
“For my health, for reason”, his story must be told, he says, and with the help of Hawkins’s Actor, on the wings of imagination, his rambling book of notes will become a play so powerful, it no longer feels like a play, but an all-consuming reality destined to play out forever.
The Actor becomes Kipps, the young solicitor sent to attend to the murky, isolated, wretched English marshland estate of the newly dead Alice Drablow, while James’s Kipps, once he sheds his stage novice reserve, takes on all manner of roles, from narrator, hotel host and taciturn pony and trap driver, to an even more haunted old solicitor and wary landowner.
All the while, Kipps is ever more traumatised by his fears rising anew, and likewise Mallatratt applies the sleight of hand of a magician as the drama within takes over from the act of making it, while simultaneously glorying in theatre, acting skills and the British love of a ghost story.
No need for high-tech special effects, The Woman In Black is old-fashioned, storytelling theatre-making, in which the terrifying theatrical re-enactment is applied with only two chairs, a stool, a trunk of papers, a hanging rail of costume props, dust sheets over the stage apron and a frayed theatre curtain.
Smoke, shrieks, horse’s hooves and the Woman In Black’s spectral face play their part too, James and Hawkins handling the reins as deftly as an Olympic equestrian yet in thrall to a story beyond their control. Theatre at its best. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
The best things in life are free…or on offer: York Residents’ Festival 2024
TWO days of York celebrating all things York lead off Charles Hutchinson’s tips for cultural fulfilment, from Eighties’ nostalgia to a monster musical, a ghost story’s return to a singing French iconoclast.
York Residents’ Festival 2024, today and tomorrow
YORK Residents’ Festival returns this weekend with free entry or offers on more than 50 York attractions, restaurants, bars and retailers.
For the weekend organised by Make It York, historical attractions such as York Minster, Jorvik Viking Centre, Clifford’s Tower, Fairfax House, Barley Hall, Merchant Adventurers’ Hall and Treasurer’s House will be opening their doors for free to residents across the weekend.
Residents can also take advantage of a free river cruise with City Cruises, free wizard golf at The Hole In Wand, in Coppergate Walk, and the first 100 visitors can visit for free at York’s Chocolate Story, King’s Square.
Offers at York eateries and restaurants include The Grand, Rio Brazilian Steakhouse York, Ambiente Tapas and Pearly Cow. Retail offers exclusive to residents are available at Avorium, York Gin, Love Cheese, Potions Cauldron and more besides.
For those preferring to explore by foot, offers and discounts apply to walking tours and outdoor activities. Mountain Goat will be taking residents off the beaten path to explore the beautiful Yorkshire countryside, while the family-friendly Wizard Walk of York promises to be spellbinding. Or why not learn to abseil and climb Brimham Rocks, at Brimham Moor Road, Summerbridge, Harrogate?
Step this way for The Wizard Walk of York
To take advantage of York Residents’ Festival offers, you must present a valid York Card, student card or identity card (e.g. driving licence or bus pass) that proves York residency by clearly stating ‘York’.
Make It York managing director Sarah Loftus says: ‘We’re delighted that we have so many York businesses providing fantastic offers for Residents’ Festival weekend. This is a great opportunity for residents to rediscover some of the brilliant attractions, retail and food offers on their doorstop.
“A huge thank-you to our Visit York members for coming together to provide so many brilliant offers; there’s something for everyone during this fun-packed weekend.”
Meanwhile, Ann Petherick is reopening Kentmere House Gallery, in Scarcroft Hill, York, for a new year of exhibitions in time to coincide with the second day of York Residents’ Festival: tomorrow, from 11am to 5pm.
On show are original works of York and Yorkshire by more than 50 professional artists, plus prints, books and cards exclusive to the gallery. The first full weekend opening in 2024 will be on February 3 and 4, 11am to 5pm. Admission is free.
For the full list of offers, and for booking information for York Residents’ Festival, visit visityork.org. Please note, some venues and activities require pre-booking.
Celia Crwys Finnigan and Laura Sillett: On song for The 80’s Movie Mixtape at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York
Nostalgic gig of the week: The 80’s Movie Mixtape, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight, 7.30pm
THE 80’s Movie Mixtape is a truly independent theatre show showcasing West End singers and musicians from around London and Surrey in a new tribute to Eighties’ blockbuster movies and their electrifying soundtracks.
A band of six actor-musicians – Jamie Ross, lead vocals, keyboard; Celia Crwys Finnigan, lead vocals, keyboard, alto saxophone; Laura Sillett, lead vocals, keyboard, baritone saxophone; Dom Gee-Burch, lead guitar; Ed Hole, bass, and Luke Thornton, drums – combine songs from Footloose, Top Gun, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Dirty Dancing, Back To The Future, American Gigolo, Ghostbusters, Flashdance, Against All Odds and Electric Dreams with Eighties’ party anthems. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Percy: Performing at Navigators Art & Performance’s Basement Sessions 3 night of music, comedy, spoken word and poetry
On the move: Navigators Art & Performance, The Basement Sessions 3, The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York, February 23, 7.30pm
YORK creative collective Navigators Art & Performance is moving this weekend’s Basement Sessions 3 bill to next month. “Unfortunately, the Basement is ankle deep in flood water and we’re going to have to postpone the gig this Saturday,” says co-founder Richard Kitchen.
Taking part will be poet and actor Danae, from Mexico via York; “punk/jazz riot” Neo Borgia Trio, from the University of York Big Band; writer, poet, performer and multi-instrumentalist JT Welsch; comedian Will Glitch, from Norwich via Hull; left-field post-punk favourites Percy; acoustic duo The Jammingtons Experience and transatlantic guitar band Fat Spatula. Box office: https://bit.ly/nav-events-all.
English Teacher: Leeds band heading for York tomorrow
Independent Venue Week gig of the week: English Teacher, The Crescent, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
“LEEDS’ music scene is the best in the world,” proclaims Lily Fontaine, English Teacher’s vocalist, guitarist and synthesiser player, without a blink of hesitation. This weekend she heads to near-neighbour York with bassist Nicholas Eden, drummer Doug Frost and lead guitarist Lewis Whitling, who she first met at house parties while they all studied at Leeds College of Music (now Leeds Conservatoire).
After tinkering with projects of their own, they settled on playing together, developing their fusion of dream pop and post-punk noise. Coming next? Writing new songs “somewhere between Adele, Jockstrap and Fontaines D.C.”. Box office: for returns only, thecrescentyork.seetickets.com.
Mark Hawkins as The Actor, left, and Malcolm James as Arthur Kipps in The Woman In Black, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Mark Douet
Haunting return of the week: The Woman In Black, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm; 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees
STEPHEN Mallatratt’s stage adaptation of Scarborough author Susan Hill’s spine-chiller returns to York for the umpteenth time, directed as ever by Robin Herford. As he did at York Theatre Royal in November 2014, Malcolm James plays lawyer Arthur Kipps, who engages a sceptical young actor (Mark Hawkins) to help him tell his terrifying story and exorcise the fear that grips his soul. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Following the science: James Willstrop’s Dr Frederick Frankenstein in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Young Frankenstein. Picture: Jennifer Jones
Musical of the week: Pick Me Up Theatre in Young Frankenstein The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
WHEN the infamous Victor Frankenstein’s grandson, Dr Frederick Frankenstein (James Willstrop), inherits the family castle in Transylvania, will he be doomed to repeat the same mistakes in Mel Brooks’s musical adaptation of his 1974 monster horror-movie spoof?
Andrew Isherwood directs York company Pick Me Up Theatre as Frankenstein’s experiment yields both madcap success and monstrous consequences with the help and hindrance of hunchback henchman Igor (Jack Hooper), Scandinavian assistant Inga (Sanna Jeppsson), mysterious housekeeper Frau Blucher (Helen Spencer) and needy fiancee Elizabeth (Jennie Wogan-Wells). Box office: 01904 501395 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Guz Khan: York and Leeds gigs this winter
Comedy gig of the week: Guz Khan Live!, York Theatre Royal, Wednesday, 7.30pm
COVENTRY comedian, impressionist and actor Guz Khan is on his way to selling out York Theatre Royal after his February 25 gig at Leeds City Varieties already did so. Raised on a housing estate in Hillfields, he graduated from Coventry University and taught Humanities at Grace Academy in his home city before focusing on stand-up.
Khan, 38, is best known as the creator and star of the BBC Three comedy drama Man Like Mobeen, wherein he played a former Small Heath drug dealer now trying to live a good life as a Muslim. Box office: “Last tickets” on 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Cantona Sings Eric: Maverick footballer-turned-musician returns to Leeds for April concert. Poster picture: supplied by Academy Music Group
Most unexpected Yorkshire gig announcement of the week: Eric Cantona, Cantona Sings Eric, Leeds O2 Academy, April 16, doors, 7pm
ERIC Cantona once told Leeds United fans from the balcony of Leeds Town Hall, “why I love you, I don’t know why, but I love you” as the 1992 league champions paraded the Division One trophy. Only 207 days later, he was gone…to bitterest rivals Manchester United. Never to be forgiven.
Now 57, the avant-garde French footballer, sardine philosopher, actor, English advert regular and painter “to the rhythm of jazz” is to return to the city. Not in one of those “An Evening With” shows full of nostalgic football chat but as Eric Cantona, singer and musician, performing solo, with piano and cello for company. Box office: academymusicgroup.com/o2academyleeds/events or ticketmaster.co.uk/eric-cantona-tickets.
David Hammond: Performing works by work by Erik Satie, Brian Eno, Federico Mompou, Howard Skempton, David Power and Derek O’Connell
Piano recital of the week: Late Music presents David Hammond, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York, Friday, 1pm
DAVID Hammond performs a crossover of ambient and classical solo piano music centred on work by Erik Satie, Brian Eno, Federico Mompou and Howard Skempton, with new works by David Power and Derek O’Connell in the first Late Music recital of 2024.
The full programme will be: Erik Satie, Gnossiennes 1-3; Harold Budd/Brian Eno, The Plateaux Of Mirror; Derek O’Connell, Je mesure le son (first performance); John White, Sonata 95; David Power, Seven Paces Of Stillness (first performance); Erik Satie, Pièces Froides: No.2 Danses de travers; Federico Mompou, Cants Mágics; Howard Skempton, Well, Well Cornelius; Howard Skempton, Rumba; Howard Skempton, Quavers; Budd/Eno/Power mash-up, Remembered, and Erik Satie, Gnossiennes 4-5. Tickets: £5, latemusic.org/david-hammond-piano-2/ or on the door.
In focus: Exhibition launch of the week: Pyramid Gallery, York, from 11am today
One of Linda Combi’s 52 Postcards, painted in 2023
FOUR exhibitions are opening simultaneously today at Pyramid Gallery: Gomery & Braganza, ceramics and painting; Linda Combi’s 52 Postcards; glassmaker Jo Kenny’s What Lies Beneath and Ringleaders’ contemporary handmade rings.
Di Gomery, Loretta Braganza, Linda Combi and Jo Kenny all will be attending the 11am to 2.30pm launch. “Come along to the opening and enjoy a glass of wine or soft drink with the artists,” says gallery owner and curator Terry Brett.
Di’s studio is at South Bank Studios, Southlands Methodist Church, in Bishopthorpe Road, York. Her paintings are lyrical responses to landscape, still life and the human form, painted primarily in oil on canvas or board, often large in scale. Her approach is one of playful energy with an underlying structure and solidity.
Di, who worked in the design industry for Courtaulds (England) and Jakob Schlaepfer couture fabric design (Switzerland), has exhibited previously at Pyramid Gallery, Partisan café, in Micklegate, York, HartLaw Solicitors, in Wetherby, Dean Clough Gallery, Halifax, and the Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield.
Paintings created specifically for this Pyramid exhibition explore edges and volume, make reference to other artists, and generally play with surface and colour combinations. Her artistic influences include the work of British and American women abstract expressionists.
Loretta was born in Mumbai, India, came to Great Britain in 1965 and lives and works in York. She began her practice as a ceramicist in 1990 via a career in dance, graphic arts, textile design and sculpture, as well as teaching drawing and painting at York College.
Loretta Braganza and Di Gomery
Her distinctive style comprising taut edges, clean lines and complex mark making swiftly earned her exhibitions and commissions, as well as awards from the Crafts Council and the Arts Council.
Artist and illustrator Linda Combi, raised in a California desert, now settled in York, returns to Pyramid Gallery, this time with 52 Postcards, a series of original collage paintings, print cards and booklets that reflect on migration.
“I was inspired to create 52 postcards around the theme of displacement,” she says. “I decided to create postcards as you’d typically send them when you’re on holiday to family and friends back home, but for refugees, they can have very different connotations. It’s grounded in the concept of refugees being in another place, writing a letter to home or to their former self.
“In many of my postcards I use birds as a symbol for people forced to flee. They’re innocent, and they’re on the move.”
Linda’s postcards are mixed media, primarily hand painted and printed papers, but also incorporating coloured pencil, pen, stickers and crayon.
“Refugees and other displaced people have to endure so much,” she says. “Everyone should support refugees – not only do they enrich society, but more than anything, it’s just basic kindness and human empathy to understand how frightening it must be to be to have to flee.”
Glassmaker Jo Kenny at work in her studio
Fifty per cent of Linda’s sale proceeds will go to UNHRC, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, and the Lemon Tree Trust, an organisation that works alongside displaced people to transform refugee camps through gardening.
Glassmaker Jo Kenny creates pieces at the furnace inspired by exploring the beaches at Whitby, where she now lives. Such a simple childhood pleasure revisited, she finds a contemplative quality in the act of poking around in rock pools. “I feel the joy and excitement of discovery under each pebble,” she says.
Her What Lies Beneath series encourages the viewer to “look a little deeper and maybe feel a little of that childlike excitement making their own discoveries”.
Awarded an Arts Council England grant, Jo was able to develop the series further in collaboration with Scottish master craftsman Gordon Taylor, who completed pieces with his cutting and polishing skills.
Jo splits her time between making and teaching. Her key themes are the effect of the passage of time, erosion, entropy, persistence of image and all things pertaining to the ocean.
Di Gomery and Loretta Braganza’s exhibition runs until March 11; Linda Combi’s 52 Postcards until March 9; Jo Kenny’s glass until March 7, at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York. Gallery opening hours are:Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm; Saturdays, 10am to 5.30pm. The project can be viewed at Linda’s website, lindacombi.biz, from where purchases can be made too.
Malcolm James in the role of Arthur Kipps, the lawyer burdened with the need to tell his terrifying story and exorcise the fear that grips his soul in The Woman In Black, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, from January 30. Picture: Mark Douet
QUESTION: Which play marked the reopening of the Grand Opera House, York, after 547 days of Covid-enforced darkness on September 13 2021?
Answer: Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s ghost story The Woman In Black, first staged in a pub setting by the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, as a Christmas ghost story in 1987.
Now, 869 days later, PW Productions’ tour returns to haunt the York theatre once more, “direct from the West End”, with a cast of Malcolm James as lawyer Arthur Kipps and Mark Hawkins as The Actor.
Malcolm and Mark have previous form for presenting the tale of an elderly lawyer obsessed with a curse that he believes has been cast over his family by the spectre of a “Woman in Black” for 50 years.
“We did the show together very briefly in Dubai, for 11 performances, in 2017,” recalls Malcolm. “It might have seemed unusual doing a really ghostly story at Christmas in a modern Dubai building, but it proved very popular, though stepping outside the accommodation and theatre into 40-degree heat was a bit of a learning curve for me!”
Renewing the partnership on the 2023-2024 tour, James and Hawkins will be playing York amid the more apt winter chill, as Arthur Kipps engages a sceptical young actor to help him tell his terrifying story and exorcise the fear that grips his soul. “Mark is a wonderful young actor, very engaged and really committed to the play, bringing such intensity to it, never letting me drop from my A-game,” says Malcolm.
Mark Hawkins as The Actor, left, and Malcolm James as Arthur Kipps in The Woman In Black. Picture: Mark Douet
He first played Arthur Kipps on the 2014-2015 tour and in a subsequent West End run at the Fortune Theatre, London, in 2016, both with Matt Connor in the role of The Actor. “The show certainly changed from where we started, and that’s one of the joys of doing long runs. I keep learning, as I’ve been doing throughout my career,” says Malcolm.
“After drama school, a three-week run at Leeds Playhouse feels huge, when you’ve not done that before, but then, when you start doing tours, you find out how limiting a short run is. And because The Woman In Black is a two-hander, there’s so much more to explore, as you keep discovering new things, where suddenly a new emphasis is thrown up when one actor says a line differently.”
As ever, Robin Herford is directing the latest tour. “Working again with the same director is a joy because it’s my favourite play, my favourite part, so rewarding, as you get the initial feedback from the chills, the thrills, the mystery, but ultimately it’s a very human story of grief,” says Malcolm.
“Arthur Kipps is full of suffering, tormented by the burden of this demon that he needs to purge by telling his story. This time Robin [Herford] wanted to make it grittier, and it’s definitely become darker and richer, so as much as the audience may get caught up in the ‘jump scares’, they’re relating to the human drama too.”
Malcolm thrives on performing a play that revels in its own theatrical setting, steeped in atmosphere, illusion and horror. “It’s set up from the beginning, just two people on stage who are going to rehearse a play from Kipps’s story with basic props,” he says.
“The audience willingly slips into thinking they are watching the real thing unfold, not just watching two actors, and it absolutely shows the power of what theatre can do that no other medium does, where everyone becomes caught up in a brilliant piece of storytelling.
Malcolm James, left, and Matt Connor on the 2014-2015 tour of The Woman In Black that visited York Theatre Royal in November 2014. Picture: Tristram Kenton
“Stephen Mallatratt is absolutely faithful to the novel and to the language of the period, and he’s brilliant at building up the story, where each time he goes back into the drama, he does it for longer, with comedy and anticipation at first, until the story becomes relentless to the point where most of the second half is set in the [haunted] house.”
The 2014-205 tour brought Malcolm to York Theatre Royal in November 2014. “I haven’t played the Grand Opera House before, and that’s another joy of touring because playing different theatres helps to keep it fresh,” he says.
“In London, we played it in a 1920s’ theatre, The Fortune, which was perfect as it was small and close up, but on tour it’s a challenge every week, such as dealing with the differing acoustics.
“If you’re playing a theatre that’s seen better days, in a play with an old theatre setting, that’s fantastic, and I love working in proscenium-arch theatres for that reason, but it still works in a modern theatre, a big wooden barn, where you’re asking for an extra level of suspension of disbelief.”
First Matt Connor, now Mark Hawkins, Malcolm has enjoyed the chemistry of both partnerships, so vital to the play’s impact. “I’ve been very lucky with both Matt and Mark,” he says. “It’s great if there’s a personal rapport as well as a professional one, and I’ve had that each time, making the relationship work on stage, having a pint together afterwards.”
The Woman In Black spooks Grand Opera House, York, January 30 to February 3, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york
Copyright of The Press, York
Favourite play, favourite role: Malcolm James’s verdict on playing Arthur Kipps in The Woman In Black
Double act: Niall Ransome’s Dr Watson and Jake Ferretti’s Sherlock Holmes shake up The Hound Of The Baskervilles
MYSTERY and murk have abounded in York Theatre Royal’s hit and mist Haunted Season.
That mist descends once more, over a desolate Dartmoor of spectral trees and a grand house, looming in the distance, where the lights seem to twitch nervously. Except, this time, the foggy haze is emanating from Sir Charles Baskerville’s newly lit cigar in the country air, his face matching the contentment of a bygone Hamlet advert.
A bewhiskered, elegantly dressed Serena Manteghi has entered David Woodhead’s nocturnal set in the first guise of a hatful of such roles – putting the ‘Man’ into Manteghi as it were – on a fright-night when she will be playing men only.
Just as we are appreciating her miming – with immaculate timing to the sound-effect accompaniment of the opening and closing of gates and striking of a match – suddenly a ghastly howl quickens the heart.
Taking on 20 roles? Bring it on, say Niall Ransome, Jake Ferretti and Serena Manteghi
A look of terror, a futile attempt to escape, and Sir Charles and his cigar have snuffed it.
So far, so scary, albeit in the exaggerated manner of a silent film, in a startling start where the titular hound is but a sound. Spooky, melodramatic, beyond immediate explanation: this is the perfect Conan Doyle recipe for the arrival of Holmes and Watson.
On bound Jake Ferretti’s superior Sherlock and Niall Ransome’s hearty doctor, promptly shattering theatre’s fourth wall as they demand applause for Serena’s miming, then introduce themselves and how the show will work.
Here comes the “howlarious” version of The Hound Of The Baskervilles penned in 2007 for comedy clowns Peepolykus by John Nicholson and Steven Canny and now, 150 productions down the line, picked up by Bolton Octagon Theatre artistic director Lotte Wakeham and the Original Theatre Company.
In the frame: Jake Ferretti, Niall Ransome and Serena Manteghi in The Hound Of The Baskervilles
It still carries its original health warning for “anyone suffering from a heart condition, a nervous disorder, low self-esteem or a general inability to tell fact from fiction”. In truth, the cast and indeed the characters are most at risk. The audience, by comparison, needs only sit back, laugh loudly and burst regularly into applause.
The facts are that Ferretti, Ransome and Manteghi must play 20 characters between them, multifarious accents et al. Isn’t the heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, supposed to be Canadian, Serena is asked. “Yes, but I can’t do that accent,” she replies.
In the original, the cast of three were all men and Holmes suddenly turned Spanish in the handsome form of Javier Marzan. Such is the strength yet flexibility of Canny and Nicholson’s format that we now have the added pleasure of watching Serena Manteghi as she deepens her voice, mirrors male movements and tropes, breaks out of character under emotional duress at the first act’s finale, and once more confirms what an outstanding talent this former University of York student is.
This time it is Ferretti’s Costa Rican Miss Stapleton who brings an Hispanic flourish to the production, directed crisply and crunchily for the tour by Tim Jackson.
Funny business: Niall Ransome’s Dr Watson, Serena Manteghi’s Sir Henry Baskerville and Jake Ferretti’s Sherlock Holmes make light of tackling the mystery
Comedy, yes, but send-up or spoof, no. Canny and Nicholson are true to Conan Doyle’s story, re-imagining scenes rather than inventing new ones, but always with the fourth wall in danger of needing new bricks again.
“We wanted to be as faithful as possible to the drama and intrigue of Conan Doyle’s masterpiece, while setting about discovering how to use a company of three actors to tell the story as inventively as we could,” said the writers.
“It became clear very quickly that simple props, rapid costume and scene changes, precision comic timing and a determined commitment to stupidity were going to play a significant part in our version.”
Think of the works of Lip Service’s Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding, Nobby Dimon’s North Country Theatre and Mikron Theatre, or Patrick Barlow’s “touching up” of John Buchan’s The 39 Steps, or Mischief’s The Play That Goes Wrong, as Ferretti, Ransome and Manteghi keep veering off the straight and narrow but somehow still reach their intended destination.
Niall Ransome’s Dr Watson has a blast in The Hound Of The Baskervilles
In this case, this is the art of making a drama out of staff-shortage crisis – how very 2021 – but not needing to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear because the source material is from the top drawer.
Canny and Nicholson have it right in saying the “determined commitment to stupidity” is crucial too: a characteristic that benefits from Ferretti’s Holmes, in particular, taking everything so seriously, or the pathos in Ransome’s even straighter-faced Watson having a propensity to draw his pistol on anyone and anything, especially woodland animals.
This peaks at the outset of the second act after a Tweet “complaint” from an audience member – it was a letter in the original! – about Holmes’s lack of commitment to solving the crime prompts Ferretti to demand the right to re-enact the entire first half. A breathless snapshot replay ensues.
Someone so bright acting so dumb and supercilious is but one of the delights of seeing the Holmes and Watson partnership being poked out of its comfort zone, a shift as rewarding in its comedic interplay as Morecambe and Wise’s jousting.
The Hound Of The Baskervilles goes barking mad in this amiably daft comedy, at the cost of Woman In Black or Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s Ghost Stories scares, but that sacrifice of bite is a price well worth paying. Howlarious indeed.
Performances: 7.30pm, plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Billie Marten: Ripon singer-songwriter in full bloom on third album Flora Fauna and at secret Harrogate gig with a full band. PIcture: Katie Silvester
WHAT else do culture vultures Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson cram into Episode 57 of Two Big Egis In A Small Car?
How about Blade Runner and where next for billionaires in space?
What’s going on with Covid passports and arts venues?
What can the arts expect from novel Tory Culture supremo Nadine Dorries?
What is the future for album covers?
What was CH’s verdict on Tonderai Munyevu’s Mugabe, My Dad And Me at York Theatre Royal, The Woman In Black at the reopened Grand Opera House, York, and the pie-laden Waitress at Leeds Grand Theatre?
How does it feel to face up to the questions for the revived People We Love exhibition, soon to return to York Minster.
Pony and trapped: Robert Goodale, left, and Antony Eden in a scene from The Woman In Black. Picture: Tristram Kenton
AFTER 547 barren nights, the Grand Opera House, York, reopened on Monday as a ghost story blew away the cobwebs of pandemic-enforced closure at last.
Jennet Humphrey, the “Woman” in the title of The Woman In Black, has a habit of returning to this already crowded city of ghosts on regular occasions, such is the abiding popularity of Stephen Mallatratt’s stage adaptation that began life at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in novelist Susan Hill’s home town of Scarborough in December 1987.
From that premiere, Robin Herford is still directing the award-garlanded fright-night and Michael Holt’s brilliantly atmospheric set is still adding to the chill factor with its clever use of gauze, a shadowy stairwell, passages, a mysteriously locked door and the faded grandeur of a disused theatre.
No matter how often you see the show, Rod Mead’s original sound design, now realised on tour by Sebastian Frost, unfailingly will tantalise, taunt, tease and terrify you. Every time!
Likewise, cast members Robert Goodale and Antony Eden are back in Black, albeit working in partnership for the first time on this revived tour of Mallatratt’s two-hander. Goodale was in the company for the last York visit, in November 2019, at the Theatre Royal, one of myriad old haunts for Eden too, who played there in February-March 2013 en route to notching up more than 1,000 performances.
Familiar faces were in the dress circle too. Not the Grand Opera House’s resident ghost, but the ghosts of Theatre Royal pantomimes past, now first-night guests in their new home, as Berwick Kaler, David Leonard, Martin Barrass, Suzy Cooper and AJ Powell gathered ahead of this winter’s Dick Turpin Rides Again.
Robert Goodale, with Antony Eden in the shadows, in The Woman In Black. Picture: Tristram Kenton
First, however, it was time for The Woman In Black’s pony and trap to be ridden again. I say ‘pony and trap’, but it is in fact a wicker trunk. Goodale’s Arthur Kipps, the haunted old solicitor seeking to exorcise the fear that has filled his soul for more than 50 years, looks puzzled.
Use your imagination, advises Eden’s now not-so-young Actor, employed by Kipps to help him turn his rambling book of notes into…well, don’t call it a performance, he says. “I’m not Olivier.”
However, “for my health, for reason”, his story must be told. “I cannot bear the burden any longer,” he says desperate to put his stultifying obsession to bed, to find a peace of mind at last, to end the curse on his family.
At this point, as Kipps and the Actor meet in a dusty old theatre, the tone is lightly humorous, Kipps’ lack of acting talent and sense of drama amusingly apparent; the Actor, sceptical and cocky.
And yet, as if the stage were made of quicksand, we are drawn into what becomes a celebration of the possibilities of theatre and the craft of acting, as much as a superbly executed, drip-drip telling of a ghost story.
In Mallatratt’s play within a play, the drama within takes over from the act of making it. Gradually, by now taking Kipps gravely seriously, Eden’s Actor becomes the young Kipps; Goodale’s stage novice Kipps becomes everyone else, from a convivial hotel manager to a taciturn pony-and-trap driver and an old lawyer, hollowed out by past encounters with the spectral woman in a black cape with a wasted face.
Antony Eden: Adding to his 1,000-plus performances as the Actor in The Woman In Black this week at the reopened Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Tristram Kenton
All the while, in his narrator’s role, old Kipps grows ever more paralysed by resurgent fears as the story unfolds of his ill-fated errand as a young solicitor to the haunted Eel Marsh House: an isolated place forever at odds with its wretched self.
The Woman In Black is old-fashioned, storytelling theatre-making, where not only Kipps, but we too, must engage our imaginations, as Herford eschews high-tech special effects. For example, Spider, a dog, is conjured simply with a click of a finger, a push of a stick, a hand stroke in mid-air, with no need for the distracting presence of a real mutt or puppet.
The terrifying theatrical re-enactment is rendered with only two chairs, a trunk of papers, a hanging rail of costume props, dust sheets over the stage apron and a frayed theatre curtain.
Then add smoke to create a disorientating murk that spreads over the auditorium, transforming the stalls into the eerie marshlands, allied to the restless, intrusive sound effects that thrive on surprise and sudden bursts of noise, from horse’s hooves to piercing screams. All the while, in Kevin Sleep’s lighting design, shadows and darkness wrestle with light for dominance, guaranteeing a sleepless night.
After month after month of silence, the Grand Opera House was being reawakened from its slumber with gasps, shrieks and nervous audience laughter, and we loved it. Goodale and Eden, wonderfully in control of delivering a storyline that is spinning beyond control, maybe forever, clearly love it too.
The Woman In Black will not be vanishing any time soon; the empty rocking chair will keep on rocking to big audiences, newcomers and veteran devotees alike.
Getting Away With Murder(s) documentary filmmaker David Wilkinson at the gate of Auschwitz 1
AS the Grand Opera House reopens, diaries are starting to fill to pre-pandemic levels, much to the delight of a post self-isolating Charles Hutchinson.
Film world premiere of the week: Getting Away With Murder(s); Everyman York, Blossom Street, York, tonight, 6.30pm to 10.30pm
IT has taken 18 years for Yorkshire filmmaker David Wilkinson to bring his documentary, Getting Away With Murder(s), to the big screen.
Exploring an overlooked aspect of the Holocaust, he reveals that “almost one million people in 22 countries willingly carried out the unprovoked murder of 11 million innocent men, women and children but 99 per cent of those responsible were never prosecuted”.
Wilkinson, who examines the reasons behind the disregard for justice, will take part in a post-screening Q&A. Box office: everymancinema.com.
Fisherman’s Friends: Hooked on sea songs at York Barbican
They inspired a film and now they are back: Fisherman’s Friends: Unlocked & Unleashed, York Barbican, tomorrow, 7pm
CORNISH “buoy band” Fisherman’s Friends – combined aged 401 – re-emerge from lockdown for their Unlocked & Unleashed tour.
As celebrated in the film that shares their name, for 40 years they have met on the Platt of Port Isaac’s harbour to sing the songs of the sea.
In the line-up are lobster fisherman Jeremy Brown; writer, shopkeeper and master of ceremonies Jon Cleave; smallholder and engineer John ‘Lefty’ Lethbridge; Yorkshire-born builder John McDonnell; Padstow fisherman Jason Nicholas; filmmaker Toby Lobb and the new boy, former ambulance driver Pete Hicks. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
One Night In Dublin: One night in York for Irish songs aplenty at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre
Irish gig/jig of the week: One Night In Dublin, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Saturday, 7.30pm
SATURDAY night is the chance to spend One Night In Dublin – in York – when “Murphy’s Irish Pub” opens its doors at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre.
Join in the craic as the lively Irish tribute band covers such Irish staples as Galway Girl, Tell Me Ma, Dirty Old Town, Irish Rover, Seven Drunken Nights and Whiskey In The Jar. Box office: josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Gary Meikle: Scottish comedian in Surreal mode at York Barbican
This experience really is “Surreal”: Gary Meikle: Surreal, York Barbican, Sunday, 8pm
DELAYED from April 8 to this weekend, playfully dark cheeky-chappie Scottish comedian and “viral sensation” Gary Meikel presents his second tour show in York.
Looking to “get away with talking about anything that will have you laughing at things you probably shouldn’t be”, punchy storyteller Meikle draws material from his own experiences, not least his unique family dynamic.
New show Surreal covers such topics as evolution, social media, how to deal with burglars, single mums, bee sex and small-man syndrome. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Exploration of family, myth and memory loss: Second Body’s Max Barton and Jethro Cooke in Styx at Theatre At The Mill
Residency of the week: Second Body in Styx, Theatre At The Mill, Stillington, near York, Sunday and Tuesday, 8pm
SECOND Body duo Max Barton and Jethro Cooke present their theatre-concert exploration of family, myth, memory loss and Max’s grandma, now with remixed music and bearing wounds wrought by 18 months of disrupted human connectivity.
“What does it mean to lose the memories that make us who we are?” they ask. “How can we continue to be ourselves when we are separated from our loved ones.” Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill.
Back in Black: Robert Goodale and Antony Eden in the ghost story The Woman In Black, haunting the Grand Opera House, York, from Monday. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Re-opening of the week: Grand Opera House, York, for The Woman In Black, Monday to Saturday
AFTER 547 days, the Grand Opera House, York, steps out of the darkness and into The Woman In Black from Monday.
In PW Productions’ latest tour of Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s ghost story, Robert Goodale plays Arthur Kipps, an elderly lawyer obsessed with a curse that he believes has been cast over his family by the spectre of a “Woman in Black” for 50 years now.
Antony Eden is the young Actor he engages to help him tell that story and exorcise his fears, but soon reality begins to blur and the flesh begins to creep. Box office: atgtickets.com/york
Bird song: Henry Bird, pictured in his Vampires Rock days, will be the special guest for You Can’t Stop The Beat
Community concert of the week: You Can’t Stop The Beat, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm
GENERATION Groove and Community Chorus are joined by special guest Henry Bird, the well-travelled York singer and guitarist for Tuesday’s fundraiser.
“Concerts and performances have been on hold for well over a year and we’re all delighted to be back getting you singing and even dancing and raising money to help the wonderful Joseph Rowntree Theatre go from strength to strength,” say the organisers. Box office: josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Waitress: Serving up a slice of musical pie at Leeds Grand Theatre from Tuesday
Musical of the week outside York: Waitress, Leeds Grand Theatre, September 14 to 18
MEET Jenna, a waitress and expert pie-maker who dreams of some joy in her life. When a hot new doctor arrives in town, life turns more complicated and challenging, but with the support of her workmates Becky and Dawn, she finds that laughter, love and friendship can provide the perfect recipe for happiness.
Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson’s comedy musical stars Lucie Jones as Jenna, Emmerdale’s Sandra Marvin as Becky, Evelyn Hoskins as Dawn and Busted’s Matt Willis as Dr Pomatter. For tickets: 0113 243 0808 or at leedsheritagetheatres.com.
Destiny calling: Kirk Brandon’s Spear Of Destiny are heading to The Crescent in York
Cult band you really should see: Spear Of Destiny, The Crescent, York, September 19
LEADING Spear Of Destiny for 38 years now, Kirk Brandon heads out on their Worldservice@35 tour on the back of releasing last November’s lockdown album.
Brandon’s post-punk band – featuring Adrian Portas (New Model Army/Sex Gang Children), Craig Adams (Sisters Of Mercy/The Cult /The Mission), Phil Martini (Jim Jones And The Righteous Mind) and saxophonist Clive Osborne – re-recorded 1985’s WorldService album during 2020.
The WorldService@35 tour features the album and B-sides in full plus an extended career-spanning encore at three Yorkshire shows: York, then Leeds Brudenell Social Club on September 21 and The Welly, Hull, September 25.
Pie thrower: Jonathan Pie will vent his anger at the truth vacuum at the Grand Opera House, York
Angriest man of the month award: Jonathan Pie, Fake News (The Corona Remix), Grand Opera House, York, September 19, 7.30pm
JONATHAN Pie, the no-holds-barred fictitious political broadcaster alter-ego of Tom Walker, is resuming his Fake News tour that began in 2019 and had to twiddle its agitated thumbs through lockdown.
In that hiatus, Walker continued to post Jonathan Pie content to his social-media channels, whether commenting on the global reaction to the 2020 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement or woke culture.
Now he unleashes his righteous rage once more on stage. Tickets for the York slice of Pie are on sale at atgtickets.com/york.
“You could say, I’m a bit of an old hand! I actually first did The Woman In Black when I was 14,” says Antony Eden, who has returned to the role of The Actor. Picture: Tristram Kenton
AFTER 547 days, the Grand Opera House, York, will step out of the darkness and into The Woman In Black from September 13.
Robert Goodale will play lawyer Arthur Kipps opposite Antony Eden as The Actor in PW Productions’ latest tour of Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s ghost story.
Neither is a stranger to performing the torrid tale of an elderly lawyer obsessed with a curse that he believes has been cast over his family by the spectre of a “Woman in Black” for 50 years now.
“That is true,” says Antony. “You could say, I’m a bit of an old hand! I actually first did it when I was 14 after I saw it in the West End. I was already acting, and we wrote to PW Productions , director Robin Herford and Susan Hill to ask if we could put it on in the school theatre at Winchester.”
The answer was affirmative. “James Orr was my co-star…and in fact he came to see me in the show in Cambridge this summer with his son. I’d played The Actor when I was 14, and when we met up afterwards, I said, ‘I’m still playing the same part I was at 14, so I haven’t progressed much’!”
Robert Goodale as Arthur Kipps and Antony Eden as The Actor in The Woman In Black, haunting the Grand Opera House, York, from September 13 to 18. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Antony first performed in Robert Herford’s West End production in 2010, followed by a couple of tours, visiting York Theatre Royal in February 2013, a return to the West End in 2016 and a tour of Asia and Singapore. Now both he and The Woman In Black are back on the road again.
Such is his perennial association with PW Productions’ production that he has become associate director Of The Woman In Black. “I’ve worked with Robert Goodale before because, when he and Danny Easton were doing the last tour, part of my job was to go and see them every six weeks or so,” he says.
That tour spooked out York Theatre Royal in November 2019, but after the lockdown hiatus, Easton has gone west. “He decided not to come back into the tour. He does a running podcast now,” says Antony.
And so, while Danny keeps on running, Antony has resumed the role of The Actor from June 21 at Cambridge Arts Theatre, once more under the direction of the ubiquitous Herford, who directed the premiere of Mallatratt’s splendidly theatrical stage adaptation when it began life as a bonus Christmas show at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1987 in novelist Susan Hill’s hometown of Scarborough.
Gripping moment: Antony Eden as The Actor with Julian Forsyth as Arthur Kipps at York Theatre Royal in February 2013
“We started working together for The Woman In Black and have done many things together since,” says Antony. “I think we have a shared philosophy of theatre, rooted in that Stephen Joseph Theatre, Alan Ayckbourn, Robin Herford mould. I love that small-scale way of making theatre.
“I’ve been a theatre fan since I was nine and I have to say that The Woman In Black is my favourite play. This piece is all about the audience, just as it is for Alan Ayckbourn, who sees the writing as only part of the process: the blueprint for the performance.”
Antony had the joy of performing in writer-director Ayckbourn’s company for the SJT premiere of A Brief History Of Women and revival of Taking Steps in summer 2018. “I was doing a tour of Relatively Speaking with Liza Goddard and Robert Powell that Alan came to see, and then did Kay Mellor’s A Passionate Woman with Liza and Russell Dixon, one of Alan’s regulars, at Cheltenham,” he recalls.
“When it then came to working with Alan, I’d already got a fair way along that path, as I was in that mindset from working with Robin and I’m naturally inclined to that style of theatre.
Antony Eden as Anthony Spates, Frances Marshall as Lady Caroline Kirkbridge, left, and Louise Shuttleworth as Mrs Reginald ffluke in Alan Ayckbourn’s A Brief History Of Women. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
“Alan would apply the philosophy of painting to setting scenes, with the most details for the central character and then the others would fill in the background. My favourite piece of advice from him was: ‘Do as little as you can and then do even less’.”
“Less is more” applies equally to The Woman In Black, where a cast of only two must do everything and yet Mallatratt’s play and Herford’s direction are rich in detail, drawing in the audience hook by hook.
“You really feel they are connected: the performers and the audience,” says Antony. “This play is a drama, a mystery, a whodunit, even a comedy at times; there’s so much to it and it plays to theatre’s strengths.
“To me, what’s important and fun about theatre is that it’s all about empathy the actors have for each other and the audience, and likewise the audience have for the actors. That’s what makes it special. This circle of empathy is what theatre specialises in; there’s no other artform like it for empathy.”
“I’ve been a theatre fan since I was nine and I have to say that The Woman In Black is my favourite play,” says Antony Eden, right. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Antony had been playing Ron in Harry Potter And The Cursed Child in the West End when Covid shutdown theatres, with 12 weeks still to go on his contract at the Palace Theatre.
“It’s a totally different experience from doing A Woman In Black. You have a staff director re-creating John Tiffany’s original direction, whereas Robin Herford is still directing The Woman In Black, and that’s why actors really want to do it because it’s a different partnership each time, two actors, one script, that’s all.
“Harry Potter And The Cursed Child is 50 actors, a script, pyrotechnics, special effects. It’s filmic in its scope, and that’s different from the theatricality that The Woman In Black is all about.
“I’ve done this play more than 1,000 times now and I’ve never once got bored with it.”
The Woman In Black, Grand Opera House, York, September 13 to 18, 7.30pm; 2.30pm, Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york
There’s a ghost in the House: Robert Goodale as lawyer Arthur Kipps and Antony Eden as The Actor in The Woman In Black, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, next month. Picture: Tristram Kenton
AFTER 547 days, the Grand Opera House, York, will step out of the darkness and into The Woman In Black from September 13.
Robert Goodale will star as lawyer Arthur Kipps and Antony Eden as The Actor in PW Productions’ tour of Stephen Mallatratt’s 1987 adaptation of Susan Hill’s ghost story.
The Woman In Black tells the tale of an elderly lawyer obsessed with a curse that he believes has been cast over his family by the spectre of a “Woman in Black” for 50 years now.
“For my health, my reason,” he says, “The story must be told. I cannot bear the burden any longer.”
Robert Goodale: Returning to the role of Arthur Kipps in The Woman In Black. Picture: Tristram Kenton
He duly engages a young actor to help him tell that story and exorcise the fear that grips his soul, but although it begins innocently enough, the deeper they delve into his darkest memories, the more the borders between make-believe and reality begin to blur and the flesh starts to creep.
The Woman In Black last spooked York audiences at the Theatre Royal in November 2019, after earlier runs there in February 2013 and November 2014. Hill’s ghost is no stranger to the Grand Opera House’s boards either.
Mallatratt’s splendidly theatrical stage adaptation had begun life as a bonus Christmas show at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1987 in novelist Susan Hill’s hometown of Scarborough, and this latest touring production still retains its original director and designer, Robin Herford and Michael Holt. Well, if it ain’t broke, etc etc.
Likewise, Goodale is returning to the role he played at the Theatre Royal in 2019 for a tour that takes in Bath, Guilford, Oxford, Malvern, Shrewsbury, Manchester, Brighton, Glasgow, York, Blackpool, Stoke and Edinburgh.
Robert Goodale, left, and Antony Eden in a scene from The Woman In Black. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Tickets for the Grand Opera House’s September 13 to 18 run are on sale at atgtickets.com/venues/grand-opera-house-york.
One final thought: as much as The Woman In Black is a ghost story first and foremost, in Mallatratt’s hands, it is also a celebration of the craft of acting, the power of storytelling and the role of the imagination. All the more reason to welcome the reopening of the Grand Opera House, a theatre with a ghost of its own.
Did you know?
THE show that ran the week before darkness descended on the Grand Opera House under the Covid cloud was…Ghost Stories, Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s “supernatural sensation”, from March 10 to 14 2020.
The Caretaker in Ghost Stories at the Grand Opera House, York, in March 2020
Alan Ayckbourn in his garden at his Scarborough home in May 2020. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
GHOST stories are as much a part of Christmas as pantomime dames.
What a delight, then, that Alan Ayckbourn is revisiting his 1994 play Haunting Julia in a brand-new audio recording that will feature the voice of the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s director emeritus.
Or, rather, the three voices of Ayckbourn, 81, who will be playing all three parts in the online version, available exclusively on the SJT website, sjt.uk.com, from December 1 to January 5.
Directed by Ayckbourn, the “comic but scary” Haunting Julia was recorded at his Scarborough home studio, where he and his wife, Heather Stoney, had made his first ever audio play, his 84th premiere Anno Domino, in the first lockdown.
Released by the SJT in May, Ayckbourn’s tale of marital breakdown and toxic politics drew a worldwide audience. “We enjoyed the experience,” says Alan. “I think it went pretty well and the response was good, very positive.
“Although we did jump in at the deep end a bit, as we hadn’t acted on stage for years, Heather even more so than me.
The Stephen Joseph Theatre poster for the 1994 premiere of Haunting Julia, described by Alan Ayckbourn as “a second Woman In Black”
“The only time I would act is when doing a new play and I would act it out at the first reading.”
After the Coronavirus pandemic put paid to this summer’s Ayckbourn’s stage premiere of Truth Will Out, he turned his attention to Anno Domino instead. “That kept my hand in, when the lockdown was announced and we thought, ‘what the hell are we going to do?’,” he recalls.
“My new play was kicked into touch, along with everything else, but then I got the taste for the audio play and we ended up rather enjoying it – though Heather has had enough after one play! So, I thought I’d do my only all-male play.”
Ayckbourn, who played characters ranging in age from teenage to septuagenarian in Anno Domino, will now take the parts of Julia’s father, Joe, her former boyfriend, Andy, and psychic Ken in Haunting Julia, wherein “other voices” – previously off stage – are provided by Naomi Petersen.
Haunting Julia is set 12 years after the suicide of musical prodigy Julia Lukin. Her father Joe, still struggling with her death, meets with her boyfriend and a psychic to seek out the truth, but some questions are better left unanswered.
“Over the years, I have always enjoyed creating off-stage characters almost as much as on-stage ones. They serve to provide, at their simplest, a depth and perspective to an overall stage picture,” says Alan.
“I consider Julia Lukin to be among the most complex and intriguing of my characters never physically to appear. Although a male three-hander, the play definitely belongs to her.”
The Stephen Joseph Theatre artwork for the 2020 audio version of Haunting Julia, performed and directed by Alan Ayckbourn
Haunting Julia was premiered at the SJT in its former home at Westwood in 1994 and its ghostly presence has haunted many theatres since then, not least in two revivals at the SJT.
“I started it as a response to the phenomenal success of The Woman In Black, the most successful play we ever did, thinking ‘oh, there’s gold in them thar hills’.”
Seven years would pass between the SJT premiere of Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s novella and Ayckbourn’s birth of Haunting Julia, his first ghost play, as he strove to settle on a distinctive, winning format.
“You have to build up the audience’s confidence in the story first, and then scare them, which is not that different from a farce, where you’re trying to make them laugh by surprising them,” he says.
“The first thing I discarded was the supernatural. Instead, I wanted to explore these three men, with the girl, Julia, being a very strong off-stage character, having an enormous influence on them.
“I became interested in writing a séance, where the three men see her from different angles, creating her as a hologram where the audience will know her better than the three men.
“It was an exploration that took me on another journey, rather than pursuing the P D James thriller style, but it still has a spooky element to it, though the aim was not to make people jump from horror shocks.”
Alan Ayckbourn with his cast for the 1994 premiere of Haunting Julia. Picture: Copyright of Scarborough News
Dealing with pressure became the driving force of the play. “I wanted to set up a story where the parents had a gifted child and the obvious gift you could give them was a musical talent,” says Alan.
“Children rarely write a novel at three or four, but they do create elemental music, so I wrote about an ordinary couple who gave birth, quite by chance, to a musical prodigy, and then show their bewilderment, yet pride, thinking ‘it’s not our music, we listen to pop music’, whereas she becomes a serious Radio 3 composer.
“Then, because of the mounting pressure that ends her life, it was fascinating for me to explore what that meant to the people left behind. Suicide is tragic and awful, but what about those people left, who ask ‘what did we do wrong?’. The questions they ask themselves are just as awful as the suicide itself.”
Analysing how being gifted, be it musical, sporting or whatever, can be isolating, even to the point of someone contemplating suicide, Alan says: “It’s always interesting reading about people you admire, and you read the section where they say they ‘got so depressed, they felt they were going nowhere’.
“You think, ‘why did they lose confidence in their special gift?’. On the other hand, is it something they don’t quite understand or treat in the way they should? I don’t think I solved that question.”
As with Anno Domino, Alan faced the prospect of recording differing, distinguishable voices for the audio play. “Joe is much older than the other two, and they are all well-defined,” he says. “Joe is a bluff, successful northern businessman; Andy was a contemporary of Julia, being her boyfriend, and his accent is more southern RP [Received Pronunciation].
“Ken, I had to find another voice for, and he comes into my stock range of little men that started with Sidney Hopcroft [a small-time tradesman] in Absurd Person Singular in 1972, so I’ve given Ken my own native Cockney.”
The Stephen Joseph Theatre’s 1999 revival of Haunting Julia
The age range “wasn’t that challenging,” reveals Alan. “I would do Joe in the morning, when my voice was rougher, and Joe and Ken in the afternoon.”
Important to the recording too is Ayckbourn’s prowess with soundscapes, or “sound effects as they used to be called”. “When I do a new play, I always do the soundscapes,” says Alan, who honed his skills when working for five years at the BBC Sound Studios in Leeds.
“For years, back in the Sixties, I was dubbing stuff on reel-to-reel recordings, tapes, then mini-discs. Now it’s all computers and it’s become increasingly sophisticated, where I can mix in all sorts of effects.
“When doing a production at the SJT, the main scenic elements, apart from the set, are sound and lighting, so the soundscapes can be even more crucial to an audio play – though Haunting Julia doesn’t call for huge soundscapes, except at the end.” You will have to listen to find out what that ending involves.
Rather than recording a new work, Alan settled on exhuming Haunting Julia for the SJT’s winter season. “I could see a time-frame, once I’d finished Anno Domino, that if we started another recording, we wouldn’t be finished much before autumn, which would be good for the Christmas programme, and Paul [artistic director Paul Robinson] jumped at it,” he says.
“With the second lockdown now happening, thankfully we got it in the can in good time. It’s opportune timing for a ghost story; I don’t think I could have launched it on Midsummer’s Day, but now, with the light drawing in for winter, if you’re going to tell a story around a fire, then a ghost story is ideal.”
Alan Ayckbourn and his wife, actress Heather Stoney, in their garden in the spring when they recorded his debut audio play, Anno Domino. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
At 81, prolific writer-director Alan is at an age where the greatest care must be taken in the face of Covid-19; likewise, Heather has turned 80.
“I’m still optimistic for the future of theatre, but not so optimistic for myself. We’re in the vulnerable bracket,” he says. “Days of jumping into rehearsals with a lot of actors breathing all over each other is not a good idea, so I’m not going to be doing that.
“The other thing is, how long will I keep going? The only dispiriting feeling is thinking, ‘Are my new plays going to get done?’. There are four or five now. Normally, a play is written and then it’s performed and that’s wonderful encouragement, but for me, until a play is done, has run the gamut of rehearsals, performances, audience response and post-mortem, I’m marking time, but the plays keep coming.”
Tickets for Haunting Julia can be booked any time up to and including January 5 2021, either via https://www.sjt.uk.com/event/1078/haunting_julia or from the box office, initially by phone only from 10am to noon, Monday to Friday, on 01723 370541 until December 2. Opening times for booking in person will be announced as soon as possible.
Once a £12 ticket has been bought, the buyer can access the audio show as often as they want between December 1 and January 5, and as many people as are in their household or social bubble can listen in. Go to the website for more details.
Naomi Petersen: Voices from beyond in Haunting Julia
