James Bye, left, Shvorne Marks, Natalie Casey and Grant Kilburn in Danny Robins’ 2:22 A Ghost Story, on tour at Grand Opera House, York
THE clock is ticking to see a ghostly thriller, a madcap murder mystery, a poetic book launch and an unjust trial as Charles Hutchinson sets his arts alarm.
Supernatural thriller of the week: 2:22 A Ghost Story, Grand Opera House, York, March 30 to April 4, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees
“THERE’S something in our house. I hear it every night. At the same time,” says Jenny, who believes her new home is haunted, but her husband Sam is having none of it. Whereupon they argue with their first dinner guests, old friend Lauren and new partner Ben. Can the dead really walk again? Belief and scepticism clash, but something feels strange and frightening and is moving closer. Only by staying up until 2:22 will they know the answer.
James Bye, Shvorne Marks, Natalie Casey and Grant Kilburn perform Uncanny and The Battersea Poltergeist podcaster Danny Robins’s supernatural thriller, the Best New Play winner at the 2022 WhatsOnStage Awards, on its return to York. As secrets emerge and ghosts may or may not appear, dare you discover the truth? Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
What We Could Have, by Sarah Williams, from the Other Viewpoints exhibition at Pyramid Gallery
Meet The Makers event of the week: Other Viewpoints, Lesley Williams, Sarah Williams, Peter Heaton and Adele Howitt, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, today, 11.30am to 2.30pm
YORKSHIRE artists Lesley Williams, Sarah Williams and Peter Heaton and ceramicist Adele Howitt have teamed up for Other Viewpoints, on show until May 9. Today, they will be on hand to discuss their work.
Lesley, from York, makes semi-abstract oil paintings based on rural landscape and gardens; Sarah, also from York, employs colours, textural marks and shapes in blending abstract and figurative elements; Peter, from North Yorkshire, is exhibiting landscape fine art prints, and Hornsea maker Adele’s ceramics are marked by notions of the living landscape, abstraction, pollen grains and natural pattern.
Main Street Sound: In harmony with Harmonia at the NCEM
Choral concert of the week: Choirs In Harmony, Main Street Sound & Harmonia, National Centre for Early Music, York, today, 7.30pm
CHOIRS In Harmony brings together two Yorkshire vocal groups for an evening of rich, expressive choral music. York’s only ladies’ barbershop chorus, Main Street Sound, and Malton contemporary, folk, jazz, and musical theatre ladies’ choir Harmonia join forces to showcase a vibrant mix of contemporary arrangements, close harmony and uplifting ensemble singing. Expect moments of intimacy, bursts of energy and the joy of voices uniting in a space made for resonance. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Giddy up: Country queen Twinnie rides into The Crescent tonight
Recommended but sold out already: Twinnie, The Crescent, York, tonight, 7.30pm
BORN in York and now established as the UK’s leading country-pop trailblazer on the American circuit after her West End musical theatre days and TV soap career as Porsche McQueen in Hollyoaks and ruthless boxing promoter Jade Garrick in Emmerdale, Twinnie-Lee Moore returns home on her Dirt Road Disco Tour.
Noted for her fearless honesty and storytelling truths, she blends Nashville-inspired country roots with pop hooks and her own gypsy-influenced flair in songs of empowerment, vulnerability, and unapologetic individuality. She made her Grand Ole Opry debut in November 2023 as the first British Romani Traveller to perform in the circle and featured on Rob Brydon’s Honky Tonk Road Trip documentary series on BBC Two last year.
Lucy Keirl in rehearsal for the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s madcap musical mystery Murder For Two. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
Whodunit of the week: Murder For Two, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, today to April 18, 7.30pm plus 1.30pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
JOE Kinosian and Kellen Blair’s fast-paced musical whodunit is a madcap murder mystery with a twist, performed by two actors, Tom Babbage and Lucy Keirl, who play 13 characters between them, plus the piano, as they put the laughter into manslaughter.
When famous novelist Arthur Whitney is found dead at his birthday party, it is time to call in the detectives, but they are out of town. Enter Officer Marcus Moscowicz, a neighbourhood cop who dreams of climbing the ranks. Here is his chance to prove his super sleuthing skills and solve the crime before the real detective arrives. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Stu Freestone: Launching first poetry collection at The Crescent
Book launch of the week: York Literature Festival and Say Owt present Stu Freestone, The Lights That Blur Between, The Crescent, York, March 30, 7pm to 10pm
YORK performance poet, Say Owt gobby collective associate artist and Cheese Trader cheesemonger Stu Freestone launches his debut poetry collection, The Lights That Blur Between, with two sets, one comedic, the other accompanied by guitarist Simone Focarelli, accordionist Ben Crosthwaite and drummer Joe Douglas. In support will be Grantham singer-songwriter Adam Leeson and York political satirist and performance poet Sarah Armitage.
Freestone’s poems explore the nostalgia of adolescence, relationships, loss and processing, as well as humorous themes of condiment addiction, festival trips gone wrong, cheesemonger battle raps and the perils of “after-work’ drinking in his honest portrayal of life experiences. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
Dan Poppitt, Charlie Clarke, front, and Georgina Burt in rehearsal for Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ Parade
The other American musical of the week: Black Sheep Theatre Productions in Parade, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, April 1 to 4, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
PRESENTED by York company Black Sheep Theatre Productions under the direction of Matthew Peter Clare, Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s stirring Tony Award-winning musical explores love and hope against the odds, set against a backdrop of political injustice and rising racial tension.
Leo Frank, a Brooklyn-raised Jew, is put on trial for murder in Marietta, Georgia, but when the world seems against you, receiving a fair trial might prove impossible. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Alison Moyet: Re-visiting Yazoo’s two synth-pop albums after more than 40 years at York Barbican. Picture: Naomi Davison
Gig announcement of the week: Alison Moyet, Songs Of Yazoo, the minutes and Other Tour, York Barbican, November 18
BASILDON soul, blues and pop singer-songwriter Alison Moyet will play York in one of ten new additions to her autumn tour, when she will focus on songs from Yazoo’s 1982-1983 catalogue, recorded with Vince Clarke, and a selection from her solo electronica albums, 2013’s the minutesand 2017’s Other, both co-written with producer Guy Sigsworth.
“Many years touring the same pool of songs and I am keen for a palate refresher,” says Moyet, 64. “Specifying which years I will be fishing from too, I think, is a grand way to serve pot luck for specific tastes. No bones.” Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
YORK spoken-word poet, performer and cheesemonger Stu Freestone will launch his debut poetry collection, The Lights That Blur Between, at The Crescent on March 30.
A co-founder and associate artist of Say Owt, York’s “collective of gobby northern poets” since 2014, he writes in a playful style founded in everyday moments in works that walk the line between between grit and gentleness.
Or as Barmby Moor surrealist comedian Rob Auton puts it: “There’s so much momentum in Stu’s words. The images sprint into your head and your brain is a better place for it.”
Stu Freestone’s poster design for his poem Before The Lights Go Out
Drawing from family stories, kitchen tables, pub corners and stages across the country, his poetry “celebrates ordinary lives with extraordinary care,” says Stu. “Blending conversational humour with emotional honesty, the writing explores love, loss, resilience, and the quiet lights that carry us through.”
The Lights That Blur Between has been written over more than a decade, shaped on stage and finally brought together “somewhere between a notebook, a pint and a deep breath”.
“The collection explores the nostalgia of adolescence, relationships and grief, and the ongoing work of processing life, as well as the occasional – and necessary – detours into the comedic themes of condiment addiction, festival trips gone wrong, cheesemonger battle raps and the perils of ‘after work’ drinking,” says Stu, summarising his “honest portrayal of life experiences”.
The artwork for Stu Freestone’s The Lights That Blur Between. The sea, its vastness and restorative powers, feature emotively in his writing
Freestone has performed across the UK, including multiple runs at the Edinburgh Fringe, and was shortlisted for Best Spoken Word Performer at the Saboteur Awards in 2015. He has shared stages with internationally renowned artists such as Shane Koyczan, Hollie McNish, Sage Francis, B. Dolan, Dizrael, and Harry Baker and has recorded live sessions for BBC Introducing and BBC Upload.
Now comes his debut book launch, promising an evening of powerful performance and heartfelt storytelling, including two sets from Stu, one comedic and spoken-word, the other accompanied by a band featuring guitarist (and shoemaker) Simone Focarelli, accordionist Ben Crosthwaite and drummer Joe Douglas.
Plus support slots from York performance poet and political satirist Sarah Armitage and his Grantham pal, emotive singer-songwriter Adam Leeson.
“It’s amazing really,” says Stu, reflecting on the book’s completion. “It’s been a journey since 2012-2013 to now, where I’ve always thought I should have done it before, but the writing wouldn’t be same.
Stu Freestone’s poster for Branches, from his The Lights That Blur Between collection
“I’ve had a lot more experiences to collate into my writing, so there are more meaningful tendencies to what I want to write about: whether nostalgia or re-living that nostalgia, or resilience or getting over grief: things I had not experienced back then. So it’s ‘me on a page’ on 100 pages and it’s nice to have that proof in my hand, in the book, which is very different to having it on my laptop.”
Stu’s poetry differs in print from live performance too. “There’s a massive contrast because I was very aware of how to transpose it to the page, and where it would need an edit to a make it more book-friendly,” he says.
“There are pieces that have evolved for the page or been written expressly for the page. There is therapy here, from both the reader’s perspective and mine, where I feel I’m confiding in them amid the grief of everyday life, when there are things that don’t get spoken about in the spoken-word performance environment.
Stu Freestone’s self-portrait from The Lights That Blur Between as he looks at himself in the mirror
“The book is basically saying we’re all the same in how we grow through memories, reflecting on those nostalgic moments but then contrasting that with the everyday processes of normal life: the things that others don’t see.”
The book is divided into four sections: adolescent reflection, mental health, then comedic works that “try to find the light in life” and finally, our relationship with loss, encapsulated in Before The Lights Go Out and the closing poem, title work The Lights That Blur Between.
“We try to get through loss with courage and empathy, where we can grow from our memories, but inevitably we walk through these lines between ‘breaking’ and ‘becoming’,” says Stu.
“I lost a friend, Nick, to suicide two years ago and wrote Before The Lights Go Out as an ode to our home town of Grantham and then the desperate bleakness of him no longer being there. The only thing I can take peace from is he achieved what he need to achieve, which sounds very dark, when he felt help was not an option.
Stu Freestone on stage at a Say Owt gig in York
“I’m 40 now, and to have lost as many people as I have in my close circle is very unlucky, so it’s an interesting place for me to try to find the perspective on that. I’ve done that through processing and writing, and I’ve written poems that aren’t in the book that are angry, but the ones in there that mean most to me are testament to trying to find positivity, for men to know that it’s OK to talk. That’s why we’ll be fund-raising for CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably charity.”
Stu’s trademark playful positivity surges through two poems in particular, Bliss, his hymn to York, his home since York St John University days in 2005, and Heed The Cheese, a nod to his other life running The Cheese Trader in Grape Lane. “I wanted to write a ‘univocalic’ poem, where every word uses only one specific vowel, so it had to be ‘E’ for cheese!” he reasons.
It strikes the only cheesy note in the book.
York Literature Festival and Say Owt present Stu Freestone, The Lights That Blur Between: book launch, The Crescent, York, March 30, doors 7pm. Box office: yorkliteraturefestival.co.uk or https://thecrescentyork.com/events/say-owt-stu-freestone-book-launch/.
Further Yorkshire performances:
13/04/26: Poetic Off-Licence, Holding Patterns, Leeds 28/04/26: ‘Goodnight D’, Crookes Social Club, Sheffield 02/05/26: The Old Courthouse, Thirsk 12/09/26: Bookmarked Festival, Thirsk
Stu is planning another York show, probably at Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb, later this year. Watch this space.
Stu Freestone on the impact of York’s spoken-word proponents Say Owt
The logo for Say Owt, York’s gobby collective of northern performance poets
SINCE being founded by Henry Raby and Stu Freestone in 2014, Say Owt has run regular poetry events in York and beyond in the form of slams, workshops, scratches, open mics and a variety of other platforms.
More than 11 years on, Say Owt is run under the artistic directorship of Nerd Punk poet laureate, Vandal Factory theatre-maker and playwright Raby in tandem with associate artists Freestone, Hannah Davies and Dave “Bram” Jarman.
“What we wanted to create with Say Owt from the start was a platform for performance poets, whether new or established and well versed,” says Stu, whose Say Owt website profile introduces him as “the cheekiest of rogues with his devilish facial hair and a penchant for Hip-Hop”.
“It also gave us a platform to put our voices out there, and it’s magnificent that Say Owt has blossomed and bloomed into such a cultural beast, fronted by four very different performers. We’re like a ‘gruesome foursome’ of artistic merit!
“Henry is the punk poet extraordinaire; Hannah’s poems are a comforting hug; Jarman is more musical, and I’ve always liked doing things with a musical backing from my open-mic nights, where if people aren’t into poetry, the music gives it an extra surface.”
Say Owt associate artists Stu Freestone and Hannah Davies
Over the years, Say Owt has held events at The Basement at City Screen Picturehouse, The Crescent, St Mary’s Church and the Edinburgh Fringe.
Coming next will be the Say Owt Scratch at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, on April 7, trying out poems for performance from 7pm to 9pm, followed by Shane Koyczan, supported by Leeds poet, dance artist, performance maker and “witch-in-progress”Izzy Brittain, at The Wardrobe, St Peter’s Square, Leeds, on April 12 (doors 7.30pm).
“Shane is a huge international artist, from Canada, who’s played Say Owt before and is one of the most globally viral poets ever,” says Stu. “He performed at the opening to the Vancouver Winter Olympics in front of 50,000 people.
“He’s a tour de force – and he was the reason I started writing . I’ve been fortunate not just to see him perform a few times, but we’ve also put him on at Say Owt and I’ve interviewed him, which was a ‘pinch me’ moment.”
In the Say Owt diary too are: April 17, Say Owt Slam, featuring Dublin-born Nigerian poet Maureen Onwunali, at The Crescent, York (7.30pm); April 29, Bad Betty Press Showcase, Bad Betty Live x Say Owt x Rise Up!, featuring Keith Jarrett, Hannah Silva, Desree, Jake Wild Hall and Chubby Northerner, Bluebird Bakery, Acomb (7.30pm); May 21, Luke Wright: Later Life Letter, Bluebird Bakery, Acomb (8.30pm, doors 7.30pm), and June 17, world poetry slam champion Henry Baker, Tender Book Tour, York Theatre Royal (7.30pm).
For booking details, head to: sayowt.co.uk.
Artistic director Henry Raby and associate artist Stu Freestone spinning words at Say Owt Slam
Stu on the impact of the sea on his writing
“I WROTE The Escape Of The Ocean when I was trying to process something particularly unpleasant and troubling in my life,” says Stu. “The poem describes standing on the beach and experiencing everything there in that moment that I’d experienced, and wanting to re-create in my writing that feeling of standing there with the wind in your hair.
“I wanted it to replicate whatever beach you may have been on, experiencing the rushing back and forth of the waves, like when I was processing what I’d been through, but it also stands on its own for the reader, where I’m putting these moments in the text that I find particularly interesting and are mood enhancing.
“The ‘escape of the ocean’ represents that openness and incomprehensible vastness of the sea, where no matter how big your problems are, it gives you a sense of perspective in that moment, whatever you’re facing.
“None of your problems are insignificant until you can clear your mind, but standing by the sea, you might think ‘this is crazy’ when the enormity of the world’s problems make yours seem insignificant.”
The front cover for Stu Freestone’s The Lights That Blur Between
Stu on supporting the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) at Monday’s gig
“WE’LL be fund-raising for this charity, who stand up for finding a way to talk about suicide. The problem of mental health is rife, and I believe that everyone is as important as each other.
“For this occasion, I want to spread the message that everyone could do with discussing mental health.
“I’m at peace with it being OK to have a self-help element to the poems, without making it too overbearing, because the book is a tapestry of life as we live it and our lived experiences.
“The title poem, The Lights That Blur Between, relates to the loss of my friend Nick and to my personal battle with mental health, which I’d not gone through before, when he passed; trying to deal with that grief but also recognising mental health within myself and realising that maybe I had an issue.”
Stu Freestone opens up in performance
Stu on his love of life in York
BORN in Grantham, Nottingham Forest fan Stu moved to York in 2005 to study at York St John University and has never left, now dividing his time between writing and performing and putting the dairy into his daily diary as a cheesemonger at The Cheese Trader in Grape Lane.
“It’s a wonderful city,” he says. “You could always change certain things about any city but there are very few things I would change in York. I love the city’s size and how York is so emboldened by its history.
“There’s something so quaint about York, even though it’s a city, whereas Nottingham, for example, is a lot more of a concrete jungle. With every breath, there is history in York, which is exemplified by, wherever you look, people are taking photos.
“Having moved here and now made it my forever home, I try not to take it for granted. There’s a piece about York in the collection called Bliss, with a huge element of positivity about being who you want to be here, but also it’s about York being a city rooted in the ghost hunters charging through the alleys and snickelways.”
Stu continues: “Without living in York, I wouldn’t have had the same get-up-go to feel inspired to write. It’s a city where the community makes the place because we have a population of only around 200,000, which makes the community so strong, with an arts scene that’s bursting at the seams. It’s just a question of taking your chance.”
Bliss, Stu Freestone’s hymn to York in The Lights That Blur Between
This is not just another city. We all need somewhere to call home, and this is where we lay our heads. This is our city. Twenty four hours, seven days a week. There are many places like it but this one is ours to keep. The buskers make up the soundtrack of our streets, whilst the artists paint the Sistine Chapel on paving slabs beneath our feet. We, are the graphite drawn from pencil tips sketching picture perfect postcards. Simply illustrated character outlines making up the mise-en-scene of our skylines.
These streets are lined with the phantoms of our fair city’s history. City walls first built with earth and wood, now stand in York stone and concrete with tall tales that flush alongside cobbled streets. Complete with tour guides armed with lanterns leading the charge through side-streets and snickelways; calling out the long lost souls struck down by the bubonic plague in 1378. Just look how far we’ve come. If education taught us anything it was how and when to use our voice. To give it purpose, to make it count and to resonate the value of our own personal choice. Every syllable that drops from our lips, every letter uttered or muttered is our own personal gift. Our own little piece of bliss. A little piece of us that never needs to be re-stitched, and it’s up to us in how we use it.
We grew wise through school systems, hand in hand with coursework and examinations. Our teachers would throw outreach schemes posing questions like, “What do you want to be?” or “What are you going to study at college?” Listing all the reasons why knowledge is important; and to not make the same mistakes they made. Well at fifteen, we just wanted to see the world and there was nothing we could write on a personal statement that was going to change that. So we studied our books and studied our reflections, searching for vital signs that bind ambition. Alongside pressures of growing up in a system that’s so focused on how we are portrayed and how we might appear. We have a fear of not looking at ourselves as something special, but the truth is we are picture perfect. This is us and here we are.
We need to do it for ourselves because if we don’t nobody is going to do it for us. We need to form an alliance; against the naysayers who decide that the “correct body image” is that plastered on billboards and TV broadcasts; in films and magazines. With all these waves of pressure, how are we meant to stop feeling so weak? It’s no wonder it’s so hard to be yourself nowadays. But through it all we always overcome. Brick by brick like the walls that were built to surround this great city. A barrier of defense and resilience so far from mediocrity. We’re all one of a kind. We’re all one of the same. A flame that burns brighter every time it believes in itself. So let’s light fires all over this city tonight; and make a bonfire of belief in the streets that we call home.
Let us follow these cobbled brick roads down memory lane, and always start as we mean go on. And if starting as we mean to go on, means restarting from the beginning then welcome it with open arms even if the outcome moves us even further from the finish. Together we make up armies of ocean so vast, we ride on the waves of impossible. Impossible is what you make it. And if you’re the only person that can say it to yourself to make you believe it, then say it. Shape the things to come and change the world for some. Brandish your language in spirited ways. Holding word wars at dawn, armed with sonnets and soliloquies. Underground cap-gun fights in low-level lights, spilling capital-letter-started sentences and firing brackets for defenses.
Every comma and semicolon makes up the chevrons on our shirts and shoulders, redefining everything our parents ever told us about chasing who we want to be. Let the ashes of our past smoulder, as we walk barefoot over the fears we once faced. Retrace steps but realise our mistakes helped get us to this point. Our polished brass buttons reflect the inner glow of adversity. Gleaming. Shimmering. Shining. Beacons of our own success. Until we find ourselves at a full stop. Where we start it all again. Fill our lungs with all the would, could, and should-have-beens; and all the things that were, we wouldn’t trade for anything.
This is not just another city. This is us. We are here.
Copyright of Stu Freestone
The last word: The back cover to Stu Freestone’s The Lights That Blur Between
Elizabeth Marsh in rehearsal for The Secret Garden The Musical at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Marc Brenner
A MAGICAL Yorkshire garden, an hotel comedy thriller, a surrealist wine bar exhibition and Pulp confessions exhibition stir Charles Hutchinson’s interest.
Musical of the week: The Secret Garden The Musical, York Theatre Royal, March 17 to April 4
TONY Award-winning director John Doyle, artistic director of York Theatre Royal from 1993 to 1997, returns to pastures past in more ways than one to present his actor-musician staging of Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman’s Broadway musical account of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s story of love, loss, healing and hope, set on Yorkshire moorland in 1906.
Newly orphaned, Mary Lennox is sent to live with her widowed uncle at the secluded Misselthwaite Manor, a house in habited by memories and spirits from the past. On discovering her Aunt Lily’s neglected garden, she vows to breathe new life into its mysterious stasis as she learns the restorative magic of nature. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Leeds abstract surrealist Nicolas Dixon, front, spotted at Thursday’s launch of his RARE v WET exhibition with WET proprietors James Wall and Ella Williams and RARE Collective organiser Sharon McDonagh, right
Exhibition of the week: Nicolas Dixon, RARE v WET, at WET, Micklegate, York, until April 22
YORK artist and event organiser Sharon McDonagh and DJ/artist Sola launch their RARE v WET series of solo exhibitions in aid of York charity SASH (Safe and Sound Homes) at WET, James Wall and Ella Williams’ indie wine bar and restaurant, with Nicolas Dixon first up.
Leeds abstract surrealist Dixon’s murals and artworks have become landmarks in Leeds, including at Kirkgate Market, Trinity Shopping Centre and the University of Leeds, as well as Leeds United tributes to the 1972 FA Cup Winners at Elland Road and the iconic Bielsa the Redeemer in Wortley. On show is a mixture of new and older work, both prints and originals.
Stephen Joseph Theatre favourite Bill Champion as American billionaire Theodore Racksole in Claybody Theatre’s The Grand Babylon Hotel, on tour at the SJT next week. Picture: Andrew Billington
Thriller of the week: Claybody Theatre in The Grand Babylon Hotel, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, March 18 to 21, 7.30pm plus 1.30pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
CONRAD Nelson directs an ensemble cast of multiple flamboyant characters in a rollicking comedy thriller of rapid-fire character changes, sharp humour and theatrical fun, presented in association with the New Vic Theatre.
In Deborah McAndrew’s adaptation of Arnold Bennett’s novel, Nella Racksole discovers steak and beer are not on the menu for her birthday treat at the exclusive Grand Babylon Hotel, prompting her American millionaire father to buy the chef, the kitchen, the entire hotel. Cue kidnapping and murder. Have Theodore and Nella bitten off more than they can chew? Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Baroque Alchemy’s Lyndy Mayle and Piers Adams: Playing NCEM tonight
Classical-electronic concert of the week: Baroque Alchemy, National Centre for Early Music, York, tonight, 7.30pm
ANCIENT and modern meet in a spectacular musical fusion in Baroque Alchemy, the realisation of recorder virtuoso Piers Adams and keyboard player Lyndy Mayle’s long-held dream. Ever since the rise of synth-led bands and New Age music in the 1980s, Red Priest frontman Adams has nurtured a vision to combine the drama of baroque music with the expansive sound-world of the electronic era. Now Baroque Alchemy turn the traditional early music recital on its head for the 21st century. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Dominic Halpin & The Hurricanes: Evoking the Grand Ole Opry in A Country Night In Nashville at the Grand Opera House
Tribute gig of the week: A Country Night In Nashville, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday, 7.30pm
A COUNTRY Night In Nashville re-creates the scene of a buzzing Honky Tonk in downtown Nashville, capturing the energy and atmosphere of a night in the home of country music in a journey through the history of its biggest stars past and present. Hits from Johnny Cash to Alan Jackson, Dolly Parton to The Chicks, Willie Nelson to Kacey Musgraves are showcased by Dominic Halpin & The Hurricanes. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
The book cover for Mark Webber’s I’m With Pulp, Are You?, under discussion by the author and guitarist at York Literature Festival
Book event of the week: York Literature Festival, I’m With Pulp, Are You?, An Evening With Mark Webber, The Crescent, York, March 17, 7pm
PULP guitarist and avant-garde film curator Mark Webber discusses I’m With Pulp, Are You?, his visually rich chronicle of the Sheffield band’s history from the perspective of a fan-turned-manager-turned-guitarist.
In his music memoir, 40 years of archived material comes to life as Chesterfield-born Webber recalls his fascination with David Bowie, The Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol and counterculture, writing fanzines and organising concerts from the age of 15, joining Pulp in 1995 and playing on Different Class, This Is Hardcore, We Love Life and More, 2025’s recording renaissance after a 24-year hiatus. Box office: 01904 623568, yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or yorkliteraturefestival.co.uk.
Bluey’s Big Play: Australian fun and games for children at the Grand Opera House
Children’s show of the week: Windmill Theatre Co in Bluey’s Big Play, Grand Opera House, York, March 19 to 22, 10am, Thursday and Friday; 10am, 1pm and 4pm, Saturday and Sunday
COMBINING puppets and original voices from Ludo Studios’ Emmy Award-winning Australian children’s television series, including Dave McCormack and Melanie Zanetti as Dad and Mum, this theatrical adaptation is based on an original story by Bluey creator Joe Brumm, featuring music by series composer Joff Bush. When Dad wants a bean bag time-out, Bluey and Bingo have other plans as they pull out all the games and cleverness at their disposal. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Scouting For Girls: Re-visiting Everybody Wants To Be On TV at York Barbican
York Barbican gigs of the week: Scouting For Girls, Everybody (Still) Wants To Be On TV Tour 2026, March 17, doors 7pm; The Brand New Heavies, March 19
AS Scouting For Girls’ vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Roy Stride puts it: “I can’t believe we’re already celebrating the 15th anniversary of our second album [Everybody Wants To Be On TV], and I’m beyond excited to get back on the road in 2026! The shows are going to be immense: a massive nostalgic Scouting singalong every night.” Expect further hits to feature too.
Ealing Acid Jazz pioneers The Brand New Heavies – Simon Bartholomew, vocals and guitar, Andrew Levy, bass and keyboards, and Angela Ricci, vocals – mark their 35th anniversary with a 12-date tour that takes in York Barbican as their only Yorkshire destination. Expect joy, funk, love and fancy clothes. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The Brand New Heavies: Acid Jazz joy, funk, love and fancy clothes at York Barbican
Comedy classic of the week: Rowntree Players in The Importance Of Being Earnest, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, March 19 to 21, 7.30pm plus 2pm Saturday matinee
ROWNTREE Players bring Oscar Wilde’s cherished 1895 farcical comedy of manners to the York stage in the original four-act version reconstructed by Vyvyan Holland, under the direction of Hannah Shaw.
Lizzie Lawton’s John Worthing and Jorja Cartwright’s Algernon Moncrieff lead double lives under the false name of “Ernest” to escape social obligations, leading to romantic entanglements and comedic misunderstandings, played out by a cast featuring Jeanette Hambridge’s Lady Bracknell, Bethan Olliver’s Gwendolen Fairfax, Katie Shaw’s Cecily Cardew, Wayne Osguthorpe’s Reverend Canon Chasuble, Rebecca Thomson’s Miss Prism and Max Palmer’s Lane/Merriman. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
A collage from the rehearsal photo-shoot for Rowntree Players’ production of The Importance Of Being Earnest
Comedy gig of the week: Rob Rouse, Funny Bones, Helmsley Arts Centre, March 20, 8pm; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, March 21, 7.45pm
FRESH from being picked as the Comics’ Comic Best Act of the Year 2025, Rob Rouse is touring Funny Bones: a daft whirlwind of craftily spun tall tales, a bucketful of manic energy, canny stagecraft, eerily convincing characters and a barrage of one-liners.
“Warning: this show has been meticulously assembled to make you laugh as much as possible,” says Rouse. “However, you will not learn anything from it. You may even come out stupider than when you came in.” Box office: Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Super scooper: Funny Bones comedian Rob Rouse and his skeleton dog on tour at Helmsley and Scarborough
Punch Porteous writer Robert Powell and creative practitioner Ben Pugh
WRITER Robert Powell and creative practitioner Ben Pugh are reviving Punch Porteous – Lost In Time! at Friargate Theatre, York, from tomorrow to Saturday as part of York Literature Festival.
Originally commissioned by All Saints North Street for its October 2023 premiere with support from York Theatre Royal, Powell’s poetic multi-media experience depicts Punch Porteous, a mysterious and ordinary man with an extraordinary predicament, lost in time in York, where he is catapulted unpredictably into different eras from c.70 to c.2025 while the city shape-shifts around him.
“He keeps waking up at various points of the city’s past, dazed and confused, but also with a disturbing knowledge that he’s been there before,” says Canadian-born Robert.
Punch seems to remember Romans, Vikings, Saxons, seeing Henry VIII and meeting Dick Turpin. Now a prophecy says he is to appear at the site of an ancient Friary to find his lost wife Eve – and tell all in Powell and Pugh’s imaginative journey in words, music, film and sound featuring the recorded, “disembodied” voice of York poet Kitty Greenbrown, as well as Powell as Narrator, Nicholas Naidu as Alistair and Imogen Wood as Beatrice.
Nicholas Naidu, as Alistair, and Imogen Wood, as Beatrice, in Punch Porteous – Lost In Time! Picture: Ben Pugh
Inspired by the history of York, Robert first recounted a story of Punch in his poem Punch Porteous Goes To York Races, with further poetic stories in his 2023 commission for York Civic Trust, Time Town, Some Poems Of York.
“We’re totally delighted to be bringing Punch back,” says Robert. “I thought Punch had some more breath left in him after All Saints and we had the sense that there was more of an audience to see it.
“Friargate Theatre is an artistic asset to York with new management, and what better place could we find to stage it: a theatre space, rather than a church, though it was the church [All Saints North Street] that commissioned it, and the church provided a rich, deeply resonant space.
Kitty Greenbrown: Lending her voice to this week’s performances of Punch Porteous – Lost In Time!
“We’re also delighted to be taking part in York Literature Festival, which I was part of for a long time. We talked to Friargate Theatre first, absolutely the right place for it, and then approached the festival about featuring a piece based on poetry, and they responded very positively, especially when you consider they don’t usually have plays.”
Robert has re-written his drama to take in the history of the Friargate Theatre site as a friary. “We now have Punch ‘predicting’ that it was friarage from the tenth century up until Henry VIII’s boys tore it apart, leaving only the wall along the river. We will now be reopening the Friarage, with Punch determined to get there from Baile Hill.”
How will the audience experience differ from the All Saints premiere? “I think that being in a theatre space, rather than a church, the audience will need to use their imagination more, and we will need to work their imagination more to imagine the historic buildings of York, whereas previously we had the incredible prop of the church building,” says Robert.
Robert Powell in his role as Narrator for Punch Porteous – Lost In Time! Picture: Ben Pugh
“Now we have to use our ‘prop’ box to bring to life this semi-visible everyman who had bumped into some famous people but mainly lived among the ordinary people of York, creating that sense of Punch being grounded and having a working man’s sensibilities.”
Describing Punch’s character, Robert says: “He’s comic but serious; he gets drunk but is very philosophical. He’s seen a lot and suffered a lot, as the people of York have.
“With Dick Turpin, for example, what happens is that he becomes like a fairytale figure, but in Punch Porteous, Punch remembers attending Turpin’s public execution, seeing the horror of his feet turning in the air, so I’ve tried to bring the harsh reality to folk tales. Turpin’s death would have been horrendous.
“In Punch Porteous, I’m conveying the friction between the heritage myth and the darker reality that people have had to live with in York over the centuries.
The poster for Punch Porteous – Lost In Time at Friargate Theatre, York
“It’s a story told in a somewhat different way from the historical, heritage way that the story of the city is so often told. So, in a sense, without being too heavy about it, I wanted to disrupt that norm, to think about history from the ‘ordinary’ perspective that most of us experience it from.
“Writers can bring an understanding of history where I think there’s a role for the imagination that runs parallel with the facts. It’s not enough to have the testimonies and the photographs. You need your imagination to bear witness. Hilary Mantel thought a lot about this, about the role of fiction to engage with people, as opposed to documentary evidence. Where documentary leaves off, the imagination takes over, but rooted in experience.”
Robert loves the experience of walking through York, “passing through veils, where one minute you are in the 21st century, and then in the past”. “As a Canadian boy, from an early age, I had a hunger for what York offered,” he says. “Here I am, this little kid in Ottawa, digging in the fields next door, hoping to find Roman remains, so I had to come to York to do that. It’s been a very personal journey for me, and York gives you that in a very intense way.
“What is a Canadian doing fooling around with York’s precious history? To me, from that perspective, as a writer, it’s a heavenly place to be, and as a writer, I’m fascinated by time. Punch Porteous is a great opportunity to have someone who slips and slides through York and time, and so though I’m not originally from York, I hope it has resonance for true Yorkists.”
The cover to Robert Powell’s latest poetry collection, Time Town, Some Poems of York
Punch Porteous may have further life beyond this week’s performances. “I’ve had this niggling thought that might bring a further bit of spark to the exercise,” says Robert. “Was Punch Porteous a real person?
“Since my tales of Punch were inspired by a story told to me about an actual York man called Punch Porteous in the 1920s, who won a small fortune at York Races, it would be fun to ask The Press readers if they’ve ever heard of such a person. I would love to hear from you and I can be reached at https://www.rjpowell.org/.
“I would love Punch Porteous to become one of the urban myths of York and hopefully we are moving in that direction.”
York Literature Festival presents Punch Porteous – Lost In Time!, Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, tomorrow until Saturday, 7pm plus 2pm Saturday matinee. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk.
Robert Powell: Writer, curator and cultural consultant with background in the arts, place-making, photography and journalism. Picture: Owen Powell
Robert Powell: the back story
WRITER, curator, and cultural consultant with more than 40 years’ experience in the arts, built environment, community engagement and media in England, Scotland and his native Canada.
Director of Stills Gallery of Photography in Edinburgh from 1986 to 1989. Worked for Canada Council for the Arts from 1989 to 1997.
Director of Beam, arts, architecture and education charity in Wakefield, from 1997 to 2015, working with many leading artists, architects, and urban designers.
Established Wakefield Lit Fest, festival of reading & writing, in 2012. Made Honorary Fellow of RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) in 2017.
Robert’s creative writing has been published widely in Canada and UK. Since 2007, produced five poetry collections, plus performances and film-poems inspired by buildings, rivers and other places.
In 2018, artist in residence with Kone Foundation at Saari, Finland. In 2019, undertook community-based artistic project on Irish border during Brexit negotiations.
In 2023-24, writer in residence with York Civic Trust. Wrote and performed in Punch Porteous – Lost In Time!, poetic drama inspired by history of York, at All Saints North Street.
Resident in York for ten years, based in South Bank. Latest publication, Time Town, Some Poems of York, features poetry about a Georgian museum and a man lost in time from his York Civic Trust residency.
The first knock-out Punch poem by Robert Powell: Punch Porteous Goes to York Races
ONE Saturday afternoon, in summer 1930, at York Races, Punch won a fortune, £17, tramped back into town, bought a tin hip bath and took it to the Red Lion, where Uncle John’s wife Rose was publican and the boatmen-gypsies supped; required of John to fill it full with drink, then helped him and two others lurch it, slopping on cobbles in the early evening light, to the tram stop, calling on all and sundry Come take wine with me! though in truth it was ale; and cupping its contents for free to drivers, passengers, passers-by; and the bath, once emptied, by a drunken Punch tossed into the Foss. Gaze down from the bridge, they say, in certain light, on certain days, in the shallows, in the depths, you can still see it, among the vagrant shopping carts, the swans.
The poster for Brain Play, to be staged by 1812 Youth Theatre as part of National Theatre Connections at Helmsley Arts Centre and York Theatre Royal
LIKE Tom Stade’s comedy show, tipping winners is a Risky Business, but Charles Hutchinson is confident his recommendations will be triumphant.
Ryedale play of the week: 1812 Youth Theatre & National Theatre Connections, Brain Play, Helmsley Arts Centre, today to Friday, 7.30pm
UNDER the National Theatre Connections banner, Helmsley company 1812 Youth Theatre presents Chloe Lawrence-Taylor and Paul Sirett’s Brain Play, first in Helmsley and later at York Theatre Royal on March 21 at 7.30pm.
When Mia’s dad suffers a traumatic brain injury and struggles to leave the house, she makes it her mission to find the cure for his symptoms. Delving deeper and deeper into the world of neuroscience, Mia is desperate to make him better, but first she must contend with her own brain. Box office: Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk; York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
John Shuttleworth: 40 years of bonhomie, bon mots and persistently, perkily mundane yet profound songs at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall and Hull Truck Theatre. Picture: Tony Briggs
Comedy positivity of the week: John Shuttleworth, Raise The Oof, Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm; Hull Truck Theatre, April 2,7.30pm
JOHN Shuttleworth, the good-natured Sheffield sage and perky Yamaha organ purveyor of charmingly mundane songs fashioned by actor Graham Fellows, celebrates his 40th anniversary on his Raise The Oof tour, full of nostalgia and new stories.
Here come tales of his early days with neighbour Ken Worthington, the humorous realities of married life with miserable wife Mary, and John’s hopes for a late-career breakthrough. Box office: Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com; Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk.
Becca Drake: Guest poet at York Literature Festival’s Howl Owt night at The Blue Boar
York Literature Festival gig of the week: Howl Owt, The Blue Boar, Castlegate, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
JOIN Chloe Hanks and Stephanie Roberts from Howlers Open Mic and Henry Raby from Say Owt for an evening of performances by York poets and writers, bolstered by a special guest.
This time, their roles will be reversed with the Say Owt crew taking over the open mic and the Howlers welcoming the guest, Becca Drake, York poet, Little Hirundine printmaker and researcher. Performers can sign up for three-minute open-mic spots on arrival. Admission is free.
Neil Foster’s Cosme McMoon, left, Jackie Cox’s Florence Foster Jenkins and Mike Hickman’s St Clair in Rowntree Players’ Glorious!
York play of the week: Rowntree Players in Glorious!, The True Story Of Florence Foster Jenkins, The Worst Singer In The World, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tomorrow to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
COVER your ears! Here comes Glorious! The True Story Of Florence Foster Jenkins, The Worst Singer In The World, as told by Peter Quilter in his joyous and heart-warming comedy with music, based on the life of an eccentric 1940s’ New York socialite with a passion for singing but a voice for disaster.
Enthusiastic but tonally erratic soprano Florence (played by Jackie Cox) gave private recitals, sang at extravagant balls, made bizarre recordings and revelled in a triumphant sold-out final performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall at 76. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Mike + The Mechanics: Mike Rutherford, centre, re-living 40 years at York Barbicanwith Andrew Roachford, left, and Tim Howar
40th anniversary celebration of the week: Mike + The Mechanics, Looking Back – The Living Years, York Barbican, Friday, 7.30pm
AFTER opening their Refueled! tour at York Barbican in April 2023, Mike + The Mechanics return next Friday on their Looking Back – Living The Years 40th anniversary travels. Expect the set list to combine Over My Shoulder, The Living Years and All I Need Is A Miracle with selections from their nine albums and a “drift into some of Genesis’s much loved classic tracks”. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
David John Pike: Baritone soloist for York Musical Society’s concert at York Minster
Classical concert of the week: York Musical Society, Bach Mass in B minor, York Minster, Saturday, 7.30pm
DAVID Pipe conducts York Musical Society’s singers and orchestra in Bach’s epic choral work, replete with magnificent choruses, resplendent fugues, moving arias and soloists Zoe Brookshaw and Philippa Boyle (both soprano), Tom Lilburn (countertenor), Nicholas Watts (tenor) and Canadian/British/Luxembourger David John Pike (baritone), who returned to music after initially training and working as a chartered accountant. Tickets: available from York Minster or on the door.
Tom Stade: Risk-taking comedy at Helmsley Arts Centre
Comedy minefield of the week: Tom Stade: Risky Business, Helmsley Arts Centre, Saturday, 8pm
TOM Stade’s sense of ‘funny’ and today’s ‘funny’ do not always see eye to eye, bur that’s cool; it’s not his way to follow the herd, he says. The Vancouver-born, Scottish-based humorist much prefers to take the path less travelled, a path that brings this independent spirit and irrepressible force of nature to Helmsley to airdrop his unflinching comedy into an ever-changing minefield. Navigating the tightrope of today’s divisive times may be a risky business but Stade reasons that without risk there can be no reward. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.
Nicola Mills: Songs and stories at Milton Rooms, Malton
Taking the “posh” out of opera: Nicola Mills, Opera For The People, Milton Rooms, Malton, Saturday, 7.30pm
VICTORIA Woods meets Pavarotti in Nicola Mills’s funny and inspiring show, wherein she combines her down-to- earth Northern roots with operatic singing and telling tales of working-class life, from performing in some of Europe’s finest opera houses to taking opera to the streets.
Expect not only opera on a night when the audience will choose songs from Mills’s Song Menu, spanning Mozart to musicals to Elvis Presley. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.
Tayla Kenyon in her solo play Fluff at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York on Sunday. Picture: Patrick Murray
Fringe play of the week: Teepee Productions and Joe Brown present Fluff, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Sunday, 7.30pm
NOW is the time for Fluff to do the ultimate puzzle: her life. Fluff hates puzzles, however, especially word searches. She can never find the words, nor understand why there is a half-eaten birthday cake and a woman who keeps visiting her room. As she navigates her way through her most treasured and darkest memories, Fluff desperately needs to piece together her life, story by story, person by person.
Tayla Kenyon performs solo in her darkly comedic 75-minutre play, co written with James Piercy, as she explores memories and the choices we make, using a non-linear plot line to enable the audience to feel, first hand, the devastating effects of dementia. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Jason Donovan: Doin’ fine in 2025 at York Barbican
PAY attention to Charles Hutchinson’s recommendations and, like Jason Donovan, you will be doin’ fine.
Good Neighbour of the week: Jason Donovan: Doin’ Fine 25, York Barbican, tonight, 7.30pm
LAST seen in York in fishnets and face paint as Dr Frank N Further in The Rocky Horror Show at the Grand Opera House last October, Australian singer and actor Jason Donovan now takes an “incredible ride” through 35 years in music, theatre, film and television.
His long-awaited sequel to Doin’ Fine 90 features Donovan’s most beloved songs from his stage shows, Joseph, Priscilla, Rocky Horror and Grease, alongside nods to his TV times in Neighbours and Strictly Come Dancing and his biggest pop hits, Especially For You, Too Many Broken Hearts, Any Dream Will Do and Sealed With A Kiss. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Gary Stewart: Rise and shine at Bluebird Bakery in Acomb
Singer-songwriter gig of the week: Gary Stewart, Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb, York, tonight, doors, 7.30pm for 8pm start
PERTHSHIRE-BORN singer-songwriter Gary Stewart, now living in Easingwold after 15 years on the Leeds music scene, writes songs in the folk/pop vein, influenced by the Sixties and Seventies’ songbooks of Paul Simon, James Taylor, The Eagles, Joni Mitchell and Carole King.
The left-handed multi-instrumentalist has released four albums, the latest being June 2021’s self-recorded Lost, Now Found, penned in lockdown. Stewart also plays drums for Leeds band Hope & Social, bass for Fleetwood Mac tribute band Weetwood Mac and fronts his seven-piece re-working Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland. Box office: bluebirdbakery.co.uk/rise.
Levellers: Performing in Collective acoustic mode at York Barbican
Acoustic re-boot of the week: Levellers Collective, York Barbican, tomorrow, doors, 6.30pm
LEVELLERS firstdecided to “do something a bit different with their extensive back catalogue” in 2018, teaming up with fellow Brighton group The Moulettes to record two albums that radically reworked their folk rock and anarcho-punk songs, first with producer John Leckie on We The Collective, then with Sean Lakeman on 2023’s Together All The Way.
Now, their 17-date 2025 spring tour coincides with this week’s release of their Levellers Collective/Live CD and DVD, recorded in 2023 at London’s Hackney Empire. Tomorrow’s support act at Levellers’ only Yorkshire date will be Amelia Coburn. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Jon Culshaw: Out to impress at Grand Opera House
Making a good impression: Jon Culshaw: Imposter Syndrome, Grand Opera House, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
AFTER more than 30 years on the circuit, impressionist Jon Culshaw, the chameleon voice of BBC Radio 4’s Dead Ringers, BBC One’s The Impressions Show and Channel 4’s Partygate, debuted his one-man show, Imposter Syndrome, at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, (when he also appeared as Hughie Green in Lena, the year after his solo performance in Les Dawson: Flying High).
Now Culshaw is on a 28-date tour, combining comedy and music as he conjures an array of personalities from the worlds of entertainment, politics and beyond, from Liam Gallagher to a gangster-rapping Gordon Brown. Meanwhile, Candace Bushnell’s True Tales Of Sex, Success And Sex In The City tour date in York on March 11 has been cancelled. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
John Shuttleworth: 40 years of bonhomie, bon mots and persistently, perkily mundane yet quirkily profound songs at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall. Picture: Tony Briggs
Comedy positivity of the week: John Shuttleworth, Raise The Oof, Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, March 12 and 13, 7.30pm
JOHN Shuttleworth, the good-natured Sheffield sage and perky Yamaha organ purveyor of charmingly mundane songs fashioned by actor Graham Fellows, celebrates his 40th anniversary on his Raise The Oof tour, full of nostalgia and new stories.
Here come tales of his early days with neighbour and clarinettist Ken Worthington, the humorous realities of married life with miserable wife Mary, and John’s relentless determination to mail off his cassette demos to today’s cutting-edge acts – Chris Rea and the Lighthouse Family, he says – hoping for a late-career breakthrough. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.
Becca Drake: Guest poet at York Literature Festival’s Howl Owt night at The Blue Boar
York Literature Festival gig of the week: Howl Owt, The Blue Boar, Castlegate, York, March 13, 7.30pm
FOR the second year running, two forces of the York poetry scene team up for the ultimate spoken-word showcase. Join Chloe Hanks and Stephanie Roberts from Howlers Open Mic and Henry Raby from Say Owt for an evening of performances by York poets and writers, bolstered by a special guest.
This time, their roles will be reversed with the Say Owt crew taking over the open mic and the Howlers welcoming the guest, Becca Drake, York poet, Little Hirundine printmaker and researcher with a PhD in late-medieval English. Performers can sign up for three-minute open-mic spots on arrival. Admission is free.
Neil Foster’s Cosme McMoon, left, Jackie Cox’s Florence Foster Jenkins and Mike Hickman’s St Clair in Rowntree Players’ Glorious!
Play of the week: Rowntree Players in Glorious!, The True Story Of Florence Foster Jenkins, The Worst Singer In The World, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, March 13 to 15, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
COVER your ears! Here comes Glorious! The True Story Of Florence Foster Jenkins, The Worst Singer In The World, as told by Peter Quilter in his joyous and heart-warming comedy with music, based on the life of an eccentric 1940s’ New York socialite with a passion for singing but a voice for disaster.
Enthusiastic but tonally erratic soprano Florence (played by Jackie Cox) gave private recitals for charity, sang at extravagant balls, made bizarre recordings and revelled in a triumphant sold-out final performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall at 76. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Mike + The Mechanics: Re-living 40 years at York Barbican on March 14
40th anniversary celebration of the week: Mike + The Mechanics, Looking Back – The Living Years, York Barbican, March 14, 7.30pm
AFTER opening their Refueled! tour at York Barbican in April 2023, Mike + The Mechanics return next Friday on their Looking Back – Living The Years 40th anniversary travels. Expect the set list to combine Over My Shoulder, The Living Years and All I Need Is A Miracle with selections from their nine albums and a“drift into some of Genesis’s much loved classic tracks”.
Guitarist and founder Mike Rutherford will be joined in the band line-up by lead vocalist Andrew Roachford and Canadian-born vocalist Tim Howar. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
In Focus: Navigators Art, YO Underground, The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York, March 15, 7.30pm
Performance artist Carrieanne Vivianette
YORK arts collective Navigators Art hosts a “slightly different forthcoming event”, YO Underground, in The Basement next weekend.
The first in a new series of performance showcases will present Say Owt Slam winner Cooper Robson, performance artist and writer Carrieanne Vivianette, inspiring young poet Oliver Lewis, champion beatboxer Cast, genre-crossing musical duo Gorgo and internationally renowned singer Loré Lixenberg.
Say Owt Slam winner Cooper Robson
“The YO Underground title is apt, not only because our venue is The Basement at City Screen Picturehouse,” says Navigators Art co-founder Richard Kitchen. “The format will be familiar from the group’s popular Basement Sessions but will feature original music, spoken word and comedy with a more experimental edge than usual.
“It will be a platform for local and regional performers whose work may wander off the beaten track but definitely deserves an audience. New and emerging artists will have equal billing with more established names.”
Advance tickets cost £8. For full details and booking, visit TicketSource via https://bit.ly/nav-events.
Mezzo-soprano and physical theatre, comedy and free improv performer Loré Lixenberg
The second in the series is planned for Sunday, April 27 and will showcase Wire Worms, the Leeds Doom Folk five-piece, whose folk-rooted but boundary-stretching debut album, The First To Come In, explores weird, supernatural and experimental notions, inspired by the traditions of Mumming and Guising found throughout the British Isles.
“Navigators Art encourages innovation, improvisation and collaboration, as well as excellence, and would like to hear from performers in any medium who might suit future events,” says Richard. Email navigatorsart@gmail.com or follow @navigatorsart on Facebook and Instagram.
Navigators Art’s poster for the inaugural YO Underground event at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse
Adam Kay: If laughter is the best medicine, head to the Grand Opera House
SHORT plays, doctor’s tales, pop memories, life 11,000 years ago, women in word and song, egg hunts and a Sondheim celebration put the spring into Charles Hutchinson’s step as a new season arrives.
Doctor in the House: Adam Kay: Undoctored, Grand Opera House, York, March 23, 7.30pm
BILLING himself as “the nation’s twelfth-favourite doctor”, This Is Going To Hurt author Adam Kay follows a record-breaking Edinburgh Fringe run and West End season with a tour of tales from his life on and off the wards.
Expect Kay’s ‘degloving’ story to feature “because people ask for refunds if they don’t hear it”. Post-show, he will be signing books. Last few tickets: atgtickets.com/york.
Navigators Art & Performance’s poster for GUNA: Views and Voices of Women at The Basement
Navigators Art & Performance presents: GUNA: Live!, Views and Voices of Women, The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York, March 23, 7pm
TO complement Navigators Art & Performance’s City Screen exhibition for International Women’s Week, the York arts collective hosts an inspiring evening of music, spoken word and comedy that explores, celebrates and promotes the creativity of women and non-binary artists.
The line-up of mostly York-based performers features poets Danae, Olivia Mulligan and Rose Drew; performance artist Carrieanne Vivianette; global songs and percussion from Soundsphere; original music from Suzy Bradley; comedy from Aimee Moon and a rousing appearance by multi-faceted York musician and artist Heather Findlay. Box office: bit.ly/nav-guna.
Lush stories: Miki Berenyi’s book, Fingers Crossed, under discussion at York Literature Festival
Book of the week: Miki Berenyi In Conversation: Fingers Crossed, York Literature Festival, The Crescent, York, March 24, 3pm
MIKI Berenyi, former lead singer, rhythm guitarist and founder member of London shoegaze/dream pop band Lush discusses her memoir, Fingers Crossed, and her career, recounting her experiences as a trailblazing woman fronting a seminal late-1980s group. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Livy Potter: Performing in Paul Birch’s Running Up That Hill in Yorkshire Trios at York Theatre Royal
York theatre event of the week: Yorkshire Trios, York Theatre Royal Studio, Tuesday and Wednesday, 7.45pm, both sold out
YORK company Next Door But One brings together York actors, writers and directors to produce original, short pieces of theatre, five to 15 minutes in length, on the theme of Top Of The Hill. Cue tales of motherhood, grief, love, war and even Kate Bush.
Badapple Theatre’s Kate Bramley and Connie Peel direct Nicola Holliday in Sarah Rumfitt’s Toast; Livy Potter performs Paul Birch’s Running Up That Hill under Harri Marshall’s direction; Jacob Ward directs Claire Morley in Yixia Jiang’s Outliving and Bailey Dowler appears in Jules Risingham’s Anorak, directed by Tempest Wisdom. Box office for returns only: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Curators Andrew Woods, left, Adam Parker and Emily North with Mesolithic remains of a wooden platform and materials used for fire-making in the Yorkshire Museum’s Star Carr exhibition. Picture: Anthony Chappel-Ross
Exhibition opening of the week: Star Carr: Life After The Ice, Yorkshire Museum, York; open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm
EXCAVATED in the Vale of Pickering, the Star Carr archaeological site provides the first evidence in Great Britain of the beginnings of home, a place where people settled and built places to live.
The Yorkshire Museum’s interactive exhibition brings together artefacts from “the Mesolithic equivalent of Stonehenge” to give an insight into human life 11,000 years ago, a few hundred years after the last Ice Age, such as how they made fires. On display are objects from the Yorkshire Museum Collection, from antler headdresses and a decorated stone pendant to the world’s oldest complete hunting bow and the earliest evidence of carpentry from Europe. To book tickets, go to: yorkshiremuseum.org.uk.
Sam Hird: Singing Sondheim with Pick Me Up Theatre
Musical revue of the week: Pick Me Up Theatre in Sondheim We Remember, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, March 27 to 30, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
ROYAL College of Music student Sam Hird returns home to York to join his father Mark Hird in the Pick Me Up Theatre company for Sondheim We Remember’s selection of music from Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway shows, film scores and television specials.
Taking part too in this celebration of the New York composer and lyricist will be show director Helen ‘Bells’ Spencer, Susannah Baines, Emma Louise Dickinson, Alexandra Mather, Florence Poskitt, Andrew Roberts, Nick Sephton, Catherine Foster and Matthew Warry. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
The National Trust’s guide to Easter activties, egg hunts et al, at Nunnington Hall
Easter Egg Hunt of the fortnight: Nunnington Hall, Nunnington, near Helmsley, today until April 7, 10.30am to 5pm; last entry, 4.15pm.
FAMILIES can enjoy a fun-packed visit to the National Trust property of Nunnington Hall throughout the Easter school holiday, when children can take part in an Easter egg hunt trail around the freshly mown garden, with activities to be completed such as an egg and spoon race, archery and boules, before receiving their egg.
Children can enjoy drawing and painting in the creative hub; take part in seed planting in the cutting garden; explore the Lion’s Den play area, with its obstacle course, rope bridge and climbing frame; learn about composting and spend time in the bird-watching area. On March 31 and April 1, additional garden activities include races on the main lawn and bird-feeder making. Tickets: nationaltrust.org.uk/nunnington-hall.
Wet Wet Wet and special guest Heather Small: Teaming up at York Barbican in 2025
York gig announcement of the week: Wet Wet Wet & Heather Small, York Barbican, October 13 2025
WHEN Wet Wet Wet headlined a festival in Dubai, who should they bump into but Heather Small, the big voice of M People. She duly accepted their invitation to be the special guest at all dates on their 2025 tour.
Wet Wet Wet will be returning to York Barbican after their January 31 2024 double bill with Go West on the Best Of Both Worlds Tour. In the line-up will be founding member and bassist Graeme Clark, long-standing guitarist Graeme Duffin and singer Kevin Simm, The Voice UK winner and former Liberty X member, who joined the Scottish group in 2018. Tickets: axs.com.york.
In Focus: Children’s show, Millennium Entertainment International in There’s A Monster In Your Show, York Theatre Royal, March 26 to 28, 1.30pm and 4pm
There’s A Monster In Your Show composerTom Fletcher with his children, Buzz, Buddy and Max, and a monster puppet
THE Easter holiday festivities at York Theatre Royal kick off with Tom Fletcher’s new family musical There’s A Monster In Your Show.
Based on Fletcher and Greg Abbot’s Who’s In Your Book? picture-book series for Puffin, the 50-minute performance for three-year-olds and upwards is billed as an “interactive, high-energy adventure for big imaginations” that leaps from page to stage with the aid of lively original music
Adapted for the stage by Zoe Bourn and directed by Miranda Larson, the show features new music by McFly band member Fletcher and Barry Bignold. Expect playful fun aplenty for your littlest ones as their favourite characters come to life in a performance packed with interactive moments to enjoy together.
In the story, performers are preparing to start their show but quickly discover they are not alone on stage. Little Monster wants to be part of the fun too, promptly extending an invitation to his friends Dragon, Alien and Unicorn to join him. Cue comedy and chaos as they help to create a magical show, learning about the joy of books and friendship along the way.
Fletcher says: “I’m so excited to see There’s A Monster In Your Book come to life on stage. The whole journey is incredibly exciting. Theatre is such an important way to introduce children to the arts and There’s A Monster In Your Show is the perfect first theatre trip for pre-schoolers and their families. I’m so looking forward to seeing their reactions first hand.”
The 1.30pm show on March 28 will be a Relaxed Performance that aims to reduce anxiety around theatre visits to help everyone have an enjoyable time. All are welcome, but especially people with sensory or communication difficulties or a learning disability. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Exhibition launch of the week: Anita Bowerman, Newby Hall and Gardens and Other Yorkshire Scenes, Newby Hall, Skelton-on-Ure, from March 28
Anita Bowerman painting in the Newby Hall Gardens. Picture: Simon Dewhurst
HARROGATE artist Anita Bowerman’s exhibition Newby Hall and Gardens and Other Yorkshire Scenes is running at Newby Hall, Skelton-on-Ure, near Ripon, from March 28 to the end of June.
Taking inspiration from these magnificent North Yorkshire gardens, Anita has created a series of garden views for a solo exhibition in the Grantham Room, sited in the gardens.
She was invited to paint at Newby Hall after co-owner Lucinda Compton saw her as she painted the main border and house outside at the Autumn Harrogate Flower Show.
Newby Hall From The Gardens, by Anita Bowerman
“It all started when I was asked to paint the Newby Hall Gardens at the Autumn Harrogate Flower Show,” says Anita. “I painted the stunning, award-winning borders and the house. Crowds of people gathered around to watch me.
“I was in my element painting the entire border in my signature style, just using leaves, twigs and moss dipped into acrylic paint. I then added bees, butterflies and birds, such as the robin and heron, and the picture-perfect 17th Century house, with a brush.”
Anita was at Newby Hall in her capacity as artist-in-residence for the Human Gardeners, where founders Sarah Owen-Hughes, head gardener at Rudding Park, and Faith Douglas, curator at Thorpe Perrow, interview people on stage about “all things nature and the people in the plant world” at both of the twice-yearly Harrogate Flower Shows. Anita speaks on stage and paints in the gardens at these events.
“It was an amazing privilege as I painted outside with just the birds, bees and birds and butterflies for company,” says Harrogate artist Anita Bowerman. Picture: Simon Dewhurst
Over the winter months, when Newby Hall and Gardens was closed to the public, she created a series of paintings that offers garden lovers a secret glimpse of the gardens’ seasonal life.
“It was an amazing privilege as I painted outside with just the birds, bees and birds and butterflies for company,” says Anita, who chose to paint iconic, well-known views of the gardens.
“I’ve created five original paintings for this Newby Hall Collection: Newby Hall From The Borders; The Rock Garden; The Autumn Garden; The Prunus Cherry Plum Trees and Wild Narcissi. Over the summer, I’ll be painting here to add to the collection.”
The Rock Garden, Newby Hall, by Anita Bowerman
Each painting tells a story, says Anita. “I painted all these artworks outside on canvas, absorbing the atmosphere, colours, seeing and hearing wildlife. Sometimes sunny, sometimes rainy – it all adds to each painting.
“I love using bright colours, stemming from a career in fashion working for brands such as Liberty London as a buyer. The paintings I create are impressionistic.”
“Sometimes sunny, sometimes rainy – it all adds to each painting,” says Anita Bowerman. Picture: Simon Dewhurst
Anita continues: “Head gardener Lawrence Wright guided me around the gardens showing hidden locations to paint. I loved every minute of this and feel proud of the work I have produced. Catch me painting in the gardens this year.”
Original paintings from the exhibition, limited-edition prints and cards are available to buy from the Newby Hall shop. Alternatively, visit Anita’s online shop at anitabowerman.co.uk, where all her artwork can be seen, or visit her Dove Tree Art Gallery, in Back Granville Road, Harrogate, by appointment on 07760 157046.
Tuck into An Audience with Grace Dent, the Guardian food writer, columnist, author and presenter, at the Grand Opera House, York, on March 30 (7pm) as part of York Literature Festival
LITERATURE festivities, psychological bunny puppetry, sci-fi theatre, paranormal investigations and explosive dance promise out-of-this-world cultural experiences, reckons Charles Hutchinson.
Festival of the month: York Literature Festival, ends April 4
YORK Literature Festival is under way with events spread between St Peter’s School; York St John University; York Explore Library; Theatre@41; The Mount School; The Basement at City Screen; York Museum Gardens; York Medical Society, Stonegate; The Crescent; the Grand Opera House and The Blue Boar, Castlegate.
Among the highlights are today’s (2/3/2024) Folk Horror Day; food writers Nina Mingya Powles and Ella Risbridger on Thursday and Grace Dent on March 30; Nicholas Royle David Boiwe, Enid Blyton and The Sun Machine, March 12; journalist and broadcaster Steve Richards on Turning Points in modern Britain, March 16; Lush founder and lead singer Mike Berenyi, discussing her memoir Fingers Crossed, March 24, and poet and broadcaster Lemn Sissay’s morning poems, March 30. For the full programme and bookings, visit yorkliteraturefestival.co.uk.
Lemn Sissay: British-Ethiopian poet will perform morning poems from Let The Light Pour In at York Literature Festival on March 30 (2pm). Picture: Hamish Brown
When Tuesday is on a Saturday: 1812 Youth Theatre in Tuesday, Helmsley Arts Centre, tonight (2/3/2024), 2.30pm, 7.30pm
AN ordinary Tuesday turns really, really weird when the sky over the school playground suddenly rips open in Alison Carr’s funny and playful play Tuesday. Pupils and teachers are sucked up to a parallel universe as a new set of people rain down from above. ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ must come together to work out what is going on and how to return things to how they were.
Carr combines “a little bit of sci-fi and a lot of big themes”: friendship, family, identity, grief, responsibility – and what happens when an unexpected event turns the world upside down. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.
Exploring psychological damage: George Green in Foxglove Theatre’s Rabbit at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York
New play of the week: Foxglove Theatre in Rabbit, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tonight (2/3/2024), 7.30pm
YORK company Foxglove Theatre identified a need for weirder, more experimental theatre in the city, focusing on “psychological exploration through innovative visual storytelling”. Here comes their debut new work, Rabbit, wherein a brave bunny wakes up lost in a murky forest determined to find her way home to Mumma.
Blending puppetry and visual effects, George Green’s performance explores the psychological damage that develops from even the smallest mishandlings of our childhood selves. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Back on the Chain Gang: Miles Salter, second left, and his York band make a second visit to Ampleforth Village Hall tonight
Village gig of the week: Miles and The Chain Gang, Ampleforth Village Hall, near Helmsley, tonight (2/3/2024), 7.30pm
YORK band Miles and The Chain Gang return to Ampleforth Village Hall by popular demand after a first outing there last summer. Expect rock’n’roll, acoustic songs, new wave, soul and country, plus Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash covers.
Their latest digital single, the country-tinged Raining Cats And Dogs, is sure to feature in the set by Miles Salter, guitar and vocals, Mat Watt, bass, Steve Purton, drums, and Charlie Daykin, keyboards. Tickets: 07549 775971.
Yvette Fielding: Leading the paranormal investigations at the Grand Opera House, in the haunted city of York, in a Sunday fright night
Paranormal show of the week: Most Haunted: The Stage Show, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday (3/3/2024), 7.30pm
YVETTE Fielding, “the first lady of the paranormal”, joins Karl Beattie, producer and director of the Most Haunted television series, in the investigative team to take Sunday’s audience on “the darkest, most terrifying journey of your life”, followed by a question-and-answer session.
In a city bursting at the seams with ghost stories and walks, Fielding and Beattie present Most Haunted’s All-Time Top Ten Scares, complete with unseen video footage from haunted castles, manor houses, hospitals and prisons. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Excellent entertainment? Phil Ellis reckons so at Theatre@41 on Tuesday
Comedy gig of the week: Phil Ellis’s Excellent Comedy Show, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Tuesday, 8pm
DO you like comedy? Do you like shows? What are your thoughts on excellence? “If you like all three, then the award-winning Phil Ellis’s Excellent Comedy Show is the excellent comedy show for you,” advises Ellis, who promises an hour of stand-up and fun from “the North West’s most punctual working-class comedian”. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Diversity: Dancing around the Supernova at the Grand Opera House, York, for two nights. Harrogate and Hull to follow
Dance show of the week: Diversity in Supernova, Grand Opera House, York, March 7 and 8, 7.45pm; Harrogate Convention Centre, March 9, 3.30pm; Hull Connexin Live, April 7, 2.30pm
2009 Britain’s Got Talent winners Diversity return to York on their biggest tour yet to stage Supernova, devised by founder Ashley Banjo. More than 120,000 tickets have sold for more than 90 dates in 40 cities and towns through 2023 and 2024, with both Grand Opera House performances down to the last few tickets.
Diversity will be supporting the Trussell Trust, the anti-poverty charity, inviting audience members to bring food donations to place in collection points. Cash donations in buckets are welcome too. Box office: York, atgtickets.com/york; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; Hull, connexinlivehull.com.
Suzi Quatro: Using this iconic image from her first photographic session with Gered Mankowitz in 1973 to promote her 60th anniversary tour. York Barbican awaits
Gig announcement of the week: Suzi Quatro, York Barbican, November 15
SUZI Quatro will mark the 60th year of her reign as “the Queen of Rock’n’Roll” by embarking on a five-date autumn tour, taking in York Barbican as the only Yorkshire venue.
Born in Michigan, Quatro flew to England in 1971 to work with songwriting duo Chinn and Chapman, chalking up chart toppers with Can The Can and Devil Gate Drive and further hits with 48 Crash, Daytona Demon, The Wild One, If You Can’t Give Me Love and She’s In Love With You, as well as co-writing Babbies & Bairns with dame Berwick Kaler in his York Theatre Royal panto pomp. Box office: ticketmaster.co.uk/event/360060579D80156E.
In Focus: Two Houses, One Story: York ‘s Forgotten Women at Bar Convent and Fairfax House
Special collections manager Dr Hannah Thomas studies a reproduction of Lady Hungate’s unofficial will alongside items left to the Bar ConventLiving Heritage Centre
TWO Houses, One Story: York’s Forgotten Women, a collaboration between the Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre and Fairfax House, opens today, marking International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month.
Running until April 27, the project explores the long intertwining histories of these illegal Catholic houses with an exhibition at each house that enhances the other.
Two of York’s most iconic historic houses, they share a history of strong Catholic women. One was founded as a secret convent, operating a pioneering school for girls, in Blossom Street; the other was constructed as the winter townhouse of Charles, 9th Viscount Fairfax of Emley, gifted to his daughter, the Hon Anne Fairfax, with its richly decorated interiors and stucco ceilings in a masterpiece of Georgian design and architecture in Castlegate.
Dr Hannah Thomas, the Bar Convent’s special collections manager, says: “The histories of the Bar Convent and Fairfax House are so closely intertwined that a joint exhibition such as this makes perfect sense.
The welcome to the Two Houses, One Story exhibition at Fairfax House
“Not many people are aware of the links between the houses but both Anne and Mary Fairfax attended the school here and Lady Hungate lived here with the sisters for 29 years.
“This exhibition gives us a fantastic opportunity to explore and share this exciting little-known narrative with the public and to work with the incredible team at Fairfax House.”
Sarah Burnage, curator at Fairfax House, says: “We are delighted to be working with our friends at the Bar Convent on this joint venture. The exhibition tells the story of women living in York in the 18th century and offers a fascinating glimpse into the little-known world of Catholicism in York”.
Two Houses: One Story features recently discovered documents, beautiful portraits and intriguing artefacts that give new insight into the day-to-day lives of these exceptional Yorkshire women.
Original 18th century account books referencing Lady Hungate, on display for the first time at the Bar Convent
The exhibitions explore how they navigated their faith during an era of persecution and suspicion, and how some were linked to dangerous underground activity that ultimately aided the survival of the Catholic faith in York and beyond.
At the Bar Convent, discover the early years of the Fairfax daughters who attended the school, how and why their grandmother, Lady Hungate, lived at the house for 29 years and the significance and legacy of this alliance.
At Fairfax House, learn more about the limited life choices that woman, like Anne Fairfax, faced in the 18th century. Also discover more about the Catholic networks in the city and how this clandestine community supported each other.
Each exhibition complements the other, and visitors to one house receive a 30 per cent discount on admission to the other with proof of receipt. The Bar Convent is open 10am to 5pm (last entry 4pm), Monday to Saturday; Fairfax House, from 10am to 4pm daily (Fridays: guided tours at 10am, 12pm and 3pm). Tickets: Bar Convent, barconvent.co.uk or 01904 643238; Fairfax House, fairfaxhouse.co.uk or 01904 655543.
Discover what Lady Hungate left to the Bar Convent in her unofficial will, on show at the Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre
Rick Broadbent: Exiled Yorkshireman, The Times journalist and author
IT began inauspiciously in the library of the old Yorkshire Evening Press building in Coney Street, York.
Rick Broadbent was 16/17, living in Tadcaster, twixt York and Leeds, and was on work experience. His first taste of journalism, in the mid-1980s.
“I certainly made an impression because I remember writing an obituary of someone who hadn’t died. Can’t remember the guy’s name, but relatively obscure. Jeremiah…”
Deep in the labyrinth of cuttings files, he found a Jeremiah, but the wrong one as it turned out. “It was clearly a baptism of ineptitude,” says the award-winning author and journalist for The Times for more than 20 years, recalling his cub reporter howler.
Rick would leave Yorkshire at 18 to study at Reading University – one of three northerners at a southern university, alongside a Scouser and a Geordie – but Yorkshire has never left him. So much so, his latest book is Now Then: A Biography Of Yorkshire, whose publication today is accompanied by a Meet The Author tour that visits St Peter’s School Memorial Hall, York, tomorrow, as well as South Cave, Malton, Ilkley, Sheffield, Farsley and Ripon.
As he writes in the book’s final words: “I live in Dorset, but Yorkshire is where I’m from and, more often than not, where I’m at. It’s a state of its own and a state of mind. That’ll do.”
He depicts a “remarkable county, swathed in world-stopping beauty and practical magic, stunning in positive and negative ways, but it’s like the Hotel California – you can check out, but you can never leave”.
The Leeds-born “exiled Yorkshireman” has written a humorously honest, unsparing, celebratory biographical mosaic, not a hagiography. “I loved the place but had sometimes loathed it too”, writes the outsider with the insider’s knowledge.
Broadbent acknowledges the tropes, the ee bah gums, the Stereotykes, as one chapter is headed – Boycott’s batting, ferret-leggers and folk singers without flat caps on Ilkley Moor – as he seeks the true soul of the Texas of England and ponders whether “Yorkshireness” even matters in a shrinking world.
Social history, memoir and reportage, high hills and flat vowels, are woven into the mosaic of Yorkshire now and Yorkshire then, ordinary Yorkshire and its extraordinary lives. “What I didn’t want to do was do a chronological history,” he says of his task of representing a Yorkshire “so large, multifarious and unmanageable”.
Hence the diversity of interviews, from rock stars (Richard Hawley) to rhubarb growers, ramblers to William Wilberforce’s descendants, William and Dan, the Archbishop of York, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, to Barnsley bard Ian McMillan.
“I thought, you have to pool all this information, draw these disparate places and stories into themes and sections.” In a nutshell, Outsiders. Workers. Writers. Miners. Minstrels. Artists. Yorkists. Stereotykes. Champions. Ramblers. Chefs. Pioneers. Legends. Seasiders. Now. Then.
As a starting point, he dug up his own past, before turning to Britain’s largest county at large. Excavating his father’s remains from a Tadcaster graveyard in 2011, gathered in a coffee jar, to be scattered at sea in accordance with his wishes at Lamorna Cove, in Cornwall, where the Broadbents had always holidayed and family members had since gravitated south. “It was not so much scattering ashes as throwing rocks at seagulls,” he recalls with typical Broadbent humour.
Cornwall and Yorkshire share common ground: a belief that devolution and self-sufficiency from such natural riches would suit each county. “From that moment I started to think about the Yorkshire we had known. It felt like a severing of roots, and leaving again made me reconsider,” Rick writes. “Basically, I wanted to know if we had made a mistake by chucking Dad off the Cornish coast.”
Explaining the choice of a Yorkshire greeting with a nod to past and present for the title, he says: “It just seemed a natural title to me. Evocative of Yorkshire. If you live there, you have every right to gripe, but when you move from Yorkshire, your pride grows in exile; like the further away you are, your affection for the Knaresborough Bed Race grows in direct proportion to the likelihood of you never having to attend it.
“One of the key goals of the book is getting away from the stereotypes. Some of it is because of Yorkshire’s size; some of it is down to the stereotype Yorkshire personality. In that chapter, I mention the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but the best ones are by Harry Enfield and Hale & Pace.”
Stephen Millership’s cover illustration for Rick Broadbent’s Now Then: A Biography Of Yorkshire
That “’ear all, see all, say nowt”, stiff-necked stereotyping means Yorkshire has a defined image like no other county. Hence the tea towels, the Ey Ups, the Nora Battys.
“But when people talk of Yorkshire as ‘God’s Own Country’, they’re not talking about inner-city Sheffield, but the dales and moors and All Creatures Great And Small,” says Rick. “It’s a badge of honour, a badge of pride.”
Stephen Millership’s cover illustration depicts York Minster on fire (“I asked for the fire to be on there,” says Rick); a band stand, but with Jarvis Cocker, arms aloft, rather than a brass band; Kes’s kestrel, but no ferrets; colliery and cricket; White Rose flag and dry stone wall; farmer and sheepdog; viaduct and verdant pastures. “The ferret is mentioned but only to show how people reduce this huge county to two or three tropes,” says Rick.
Battles of distant days, Towton and Marston Moor, feature as does the battle of Orgreave in the Miners’ Strike. “I wanted to look at Yorkshire’s industrial heritage: when [Margaret] Thatcher was doing that to the mining communities, wrecking them with no after-plan. Or talking about the Grimethorpe Brass Band story, the Brassed Off story, but also the steel industry and shipbuilding,” says Rick.
“Looking at common themes, one of them is of Yorkshire being abandoned, now with HS2, and that feeds into the desire for devolution. Going back to being victimised in the Harrowing of the North [in William the Conqueror’s reign); the purging of the dales under Elizabeth I.
“These things come down to being abandoned and neglected, and I wanted to reflect that, rather than have some ee-bah-gum fun with the book. Johnny Giles said ‘being Leeds United [the “Dirty Leeds of Don Revie’s 1960s-’70s], we just had to defend ourselves’, and it’s the same with Yorkshire.”
Relegation-bound Leeds United were “a constant drain” on lifelong fan Broadbent’s enthusiasm throughout his writing project and feature as they “disappoint their fans week after week” in “the most controversial poem ever written”, Tony Harrison’s V, a Leeds work full of verses and versus and verbal V signs that strikes a chord with Broadbent’s own sentiments.
“I was a kid when it came out and I remember we giggled at the swear words at school. All those complaints came in when it was on TV. But reading it again, it’s all so relevant, with all that class division.”
You can allus tell a Yorkshireman, but tha’ can’t tell him much, as the saying goes, but Now Then will tell Yorkshiremen and outsiders alike plenty, from stories of industrial neglect and forgotten tragedies to the Bronte Sisters and Marks & Spencer, a lost albatross to a stuffed crocodile.
“I’m fascinated by that phrase, ‘it’s where you’re from and where you’re at’. For me it means taking your roots with you, though others say it’s where your mind’s at. But I read it differently: you can take Yorkshire with you wherever you are. Doing this book, as the outsider from inside, that feeling is stronger than ever.”
Now Then: A Biography Of York, by Rick Broadbent, published in hardback by Allen & Unwin/Atlantic Books on October 5.
York Literature Festival presents Rick Broadbent in conversation on Now Then: A Biography Of Yorkshire, St Peter’s School, Clifton, York, tomorrow, 7pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Rick’s Meet The Author tour of Yorkshire also takes in Festival of Words, South Cave Library, near Hull, Saturday, 1.30pm, sold out, with Yorkshire Tea and Cake. St Michael’s Church, Malton, Saturday, 7.30pm, presented by Kemps Books; box office, kempsgeneralstoreco.uk/pages/events.
Ilkley Literature Festival, Ilkley Grammar School, Hall B, Sunday, 3.45pm; ilkleyliteraturefestival-tickets.ticketsolve.com. In Conversation at La Biblioteka, Eyre Lane, Sheffield, Tuesday, 6.30pm; labiblioteka.co.
Farsley Literature Festival, Truman Books, Town Street, Farsley, near Leeds, Wednesday, 6.30pm; trumanbooks.co.uk. An Evening with Rick Broadbent, Ripon Arts Hub, Allhallowgate, Ripon, presented by The Little Ripon Bookshop, Thursday, 7pm; littleriponbookshop.co.uk/events.
Each event will be a talk, followed by a question-and-answer session and a book signing.
Miles Salter: Director of the new York Alive festival
THE inaugural York Alive festival of comedy, spoken word and music will be held in late-September and October in the city’s theatres, music venues and pubs.
Director Miles Salter and his team are working with venues throughout York to deliver an “exciting and dynamic” programme of events this autumn.
Ending a seven-year itch, York Alive marks Miles’s return to co-ordinating festivals in York, where he programmed York Literature Festival from 2008 to 2016.
“I learned a huge amount running York Literature Festival: how to put on engaging events, how to make sure people heard about it, and I’m still driven by the same desire, wanting to see York have an exciting, inspiring, great arts festival,” says the York published poet, storyteller, York Calling podcaster, broadcaster and songwriting frontman of Miles And The Chain Gang.
“We have so much to offer. Badging things together helps to raise awareness of the fantastic arts scene in York.”
Helen Mort: Poet and novelist, performing at York Alive on October 10 at the Victoria Vaults, York
Under the York Alive banner, the festival acts will perform at venues across York, including York Barbican, the Grand Opera House, National Centre for Early Music and Victoria Vaults pub.
Among the contributing acts will be musicians Howard Jones, Paul Carrack and Gabrielle; comedian, author and presenter Ruby Wax; poet Helen Mort, spoken word performer Luke Wright and Miles himself in myriad guises.
For blues lovers, York band DC Blues, American guitar wizard Toby Walker and fast-emerging Belfast guitarist Dom Martin will be in action at the Victoria Vaults, in Nunnery Lane, where Miles is the gig programmer.
“The team behind this new festival live and work in the city,” says Miles. “Friendly and intimate, York is one of the best places to live and work in the UK. Visitors love coming to our historic city, but York is more than Romans and Vikings.
“Today, it’s home to so many talented writers, artists, actors, comedians, filmmakers, musicians and dancers. That’s why we want York Alive to celebrate this talent, as well as our great venues and fantastic city, by showcasing some of the best art and culture that’s happening in York this October.
Paul Winn of York band DC Blues: Booked for York Alive on October 6
“There’ll be a brilliant mixture of music, comedy and spoken word, and we’re delighted to include some events run by other venues and promoters in York.”
Miles has one regret. “Stopping my involvement in York Literature Festival in 2016 was a mistake really,” he says. “It was a bit like when Berwick Kaler said he was retiring from the Theatre Royal pantomime, but then wanted to go back to playing the dame again.
“I wish I hadn’t made the decision but I was in a bad place at the time, but my ambition was always to broaden it out to include other things: some theatre, comedy and music, some cross-artform combinations, like when we put on folk musician Martin Carthy with crime writer Peter Robinson at the NCEM. Now we can do that with York Alive.”
Miles has not sought any funding. “My passion is just to see a really good arts festival running in York. Why haven’t we got one already?” he says. “I thought what happened when Martin Witts’s Great Yorkshire Fringe came to an end in 2019 was an awful loss to the city.
“I must be crazy to try, but I hope that York Alive can become a regular yearly event.”
Ruby Wax: Opening show under the York Alive banner, presenting I’m Not As Well As I Thought I Was at Grand Opera House, York, on September 28
York Alive:Calendar of Events
September 28, 7.30pm, Ruby Wax: I’m Not As Well As I Thought I Was, Grand Opera House. October 2, 7pm, Toby Walker, guitar virtuoso, Victoria Vaults. October 4, 8pm Luke Wright, spoken word, Victoria Vaults. October 6, 7pm DC Blues, Victoria Vaults. October 8, 7.30pm, neo-classical Gifts From Crows Trio, National Centre for Early Music.
October 10, 8pm, Helen Mort and Miles Salter, poetry, Victoria Vaults. October 11, 7pm, Howard Jones: Celebrating 40 Years 1983 – 2023, York Barbican. October 12, 7.30pm, The Waterboys, York Barbican. October 14, 10.30am, Stories with Miles (Salter), children’s show for ages 6 to 10, The White Horse, The Green, Upper Poppleton, York.
October 15, 4pm, Miles And The Chain Gang, Victoria Vaults, free entry. October 19, 6pm to 7:30pm Dylan Thomas: 70 Years On, York Stanza’s Professor John Goodby in conversation with Miles Salter, Marriott Room. October 19, 7.30pm, Paul Carrack, York Barbican.
October 21, 7pm, Gabrielle: 30 Years Of Dreaming Tour, York Barbican. October 21, 7pm, The Very Grimm Brothers (poet Adrian Mealing and guitarist John Denton), plus Miles Salter, Victoria Vaults. October 24, 7pm, Samantha Fish & Jesse Drayton, American blues and rock, York Barbican. October 27, 8pm, Dom Martin, Buried In The Hail Tour, Victoria Vaults.
