History with a comical twist: Le Navet Bete in King Arthur at York Theatre Royal
COMEDY legends and Arthurian tales, Welsh rock firebrands and an Italian dance champion, a Scottish folk queen and a school talent troop have Charles Hutchinson reaching for his diary.
Legend of the week: Le Navet Bete in King Arthur, York Theatre Royal, March 21 to 23, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee
AFTER Treasure Island and Dracula: The Bloody Truth, Le Navet Bete head back to York Theatre Royal for a retelling of the Arthurian legend, King Arthur, in their inimitable comedic style. Camelot is in trouble, and Arthur knows that if he fails to turn things around, this civilisation will be forgotten and be known as nothing more than a rather dull time in British history.
When three hapless squires approach him about changing that legacy, however, a legend is born in a new comedy for the ages, suitable for the whole family. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The poster for Feeder’s Black/Red Tour 2024, playing York and Leeds
York gig of the week: Feeder, supported by Girlband!, York Barbican, March 19, 8pm
ANTHEMIC Newport rock band Feeder mark their 30th anniversary with a spring tour and the April 5 release of a new studio double album, Black/Red, on Big Teeth Music.
Accruing seven million record sales, Grant Nicholas and Take Hirose’s group chalked up 20 Top 40 hits from 1997’s High to 2008’s We Are The People, and the likes of Just The Way I’m Feeling, Buck Rogers, Feeling A Moment, Tumble And Fall, Just A Day, Fear Of Flying and Lost And Found will surely feature in their set. Leeds Brudenell Social Club awaits on April 7 at 8pm. Box office: York, yorkbarbican.co.uk; Leeds, brudenellsocialclub.co.uk.
The Talent Troop from Welburn Hall School, performing at Helmsley Arts Centre tomorrow
Community show of the week: Welburn Hall presents The Talent Troop, Helmsley Arts Centre, tomorrow (14/3/2024), 7pm
A SELECTION of students from Welburn Hall School, near York, takes to the stage once more for a variety performance. Prepare to be amazed by The Talent Troop in a fun-filled evening of music and dancing guaranteed to bring out the smiles. Look out for a fund-raising raffle and cake stall too. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.
The Pink’un: Vicky Jackson’s tribute show to an American pop icon at the Milton Rooms, Malton
Tribute show of the week: Vicky Jackson: Pink!, Milton Rooms, Malton, Friday, 8pm
VICKY Jackson has been wowing audiences with her energetic portrayal of Pink, the Grammy-winning singer and songwriter from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, for more than a decade.
In bespoke costumes and accompanied by her five-piece touring band, Jackson presents all of Pink’s major hits from her 24-year career. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.
Roll out the barrel of laughs: Al Murray, the Pub Landlord, at Grand Opera House, York
Comedy at the treble at the Grand Opera House, York: Al Murray, Guv Island, Sunday, 7.30pm; An Evening With The Fast Show, March 19, 7.30pm; Frank Skinner, 30 Years Of Dirt, March 21, 7.30pm.
STANDING up so you don’t have to take it lying it down anymore, Al Murray, the Pub Landlord, is back “to make sense of the questions you probably already had the answers to” in Guv Island.
An Evening With The Fast Show sold out suitably fast. Original cast members Simon Day, Charlie Higson, John Thomson, Paul Whitehouse, Mark Williams and Arabella Weir mark their 30th anniversary with behind-the-scenes insights into their television characters and catchphrases, recreating favourite moments too. Two nights later, Brummie comedian and TV and radio presenter Frank Skinner reflects on his own 30-year landmark. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Beneath The Layers: A work by Anne-Marie Magson from her Helmsley Arts Centre exhibition
Exhibition of the week: Anna-Marie Magson, Beneath The Layers, Helmsley Arts Centre, until May 3
FROM her home studio in York, Anna-Marie Magson creates ceramics and artworks. Trained in fine art painting at Liverpool College of Art, she worked initially with clay, exploring surface decoration and textured pattern on tiles and panels.
Latterly, she has returned her focus to two-dimensional work, expanding her practice to encompass abstract collages, printmaking and painting to reflect her long-standing love of printed textiles and quilt designs and mid-20th century art.
The poster for Leigh Francis’s debut tour, My First Time
Yorkshire comedian of the week: Leigh Francis, My First Time, York Barbican, March 20, 7.45pm
LEEDS comedian, radio presenter and Bo’ Selecta! sketch show regular Leigh Francis is the scabrous, scatological, sometimes rubber-faced humorist behind the characters Keith Lemon, The Bear, Avid Merrion and Amanda Holden’s ‘gran’, Myrtle, along with celebrity impressions of David Dickinson, Ant and Dec and Louis Theroux.
All feature in Francis’s debut venture into the live environment in a tour show that combines sketches with buckets of audience interaction. “Come see me being other people live for the first time!” he says. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Giovanni Pernice: Let him entertain you at York Barbican
Dance show of the week: Giovanni Pernice, Let Me Entertain You, York Barbican, March 21, 7.30pm
GIOVANNI Pernice, the Sicilian dancer from Strictly Come Dancing and BAFTA winner, returns to York Barbican on his 2024 tour, Let Me Entertain You.
Pernice, dancer, performer, showman and Guinness World Record holder for jive kicks and flick to boot, will be joined by fellow professional dancers and West End performers in a show of non-stop action. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Barbara Dickson: All Saints Church autumn concert with Nick Holland in Pocklington
Gig announcement of the week: Barbara Dickson & Nick Holland, All Saints Church, Pocklington, October 4, 7.30pm
IN this special acoustic performance, Scottish folk singer Barbara Dickson and her pianist Nick Holland will explore her catalogue of songs in the intimate and historic setting of All Saints Church.
The pair let the words and melodies take centre stage as they perform material drawing on Dickson’s folk roots, contemporary greats and her classic hits, Answer Me, Another Suitcase In Another Hall, Caravan and I Know Him So Well. Box office: barbaradickson.net.
In the mixer: Sophie Bullivant, Abi Carter, Holly Smith and Laura Castle in Rowntree Players’ Shakers
YORK ghost-walk host, actor, voiceover artist, filmmaker, tour guide and pantomime villain Jamie McKeller had not directed a play for 15 years when he took the reins for Teechers Leavers ’22 last March.
Among the Rowntree Players’ cast of three for former teacher John Godber’s state-of-the-nation’s-education play were Sophie Bullivant and radio presenter Laura Castle, who now return for another slice of Godber physical theatre, Shakers, this one co-written with his wife, Jane Thornton.
The sister to Godber’s northern nightclub comedy-drama Bouncers, Shakers dives head first into the worst bar in town, where everyone wants to be seen, at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, from Thursday to Saturday.
Here, Sophie’s Carol, Laura’s Mel, company newcomer Holly Smith’s Niki and Abi Carter’s Adele face the Saturday shift from hell. Lights, neon; music, loud; trainers, not allowed. Smart shoes only.
Thornton and Godber expose nightlife both sides of the sticky-floored bar, not only the cocktail-bar waitresses but the clientele too. Here come the girls, the lads, the yuppies and the luvvies, all played by Bullivant, Castle, Smith and Carter.
“I think this play is funnier than Bouncers, though I’ll still be going to Bouncers when it comes to York Theatre Royal in April,” says Jamie, who can draw on his own experiences to make his comparison.
“I’ve done Bouncers three times! I played Judd when I was 21; Les in my late-20s. They were both professional productions; then I was Ralph in my mid-30s in an amateur one at the Westwood Theatre in Scarborough.
“So the idea is, in ten to 15 years’ time, when my panto dame days are done, I’ll finally do Lucky Eric to complete the full Bouncers set!”
Whereas Jamie decided to present Godber’s updated 2022 version of Teechers, he will stick with 1987 vintage Shakers, not the 2022 remix, Shakers: Under New Management!.
“Initially we were looking at doing the final version of Bouncers, quite a grotesque version,” he recalls. “But once I read Shakers, I really wanted to do it, and do the earlier version, which even after more than 30 years still hits hard, when things aren’t necessarily better now…”
… “Things are just different,” says Laura. “This version of the play is a bit more spicy, and I like that!”
She is enjoying renewing her stage partnership with Sophie and teaming up with Abi and Holly too after they were picked from Jamie’s auditions. “Me and Sophie – and Sara [Howlett] – created quite bond in Teechers, and having done Godber before and Godber under Jamie’s direction before, that’s made it slightly easier for the whole cast in rehearsals,” says Laura.
“That gave us a head start as to just how pacy it is. Abi and Holly are super-talented and picked up the style very quickly. They’ve learned things from us, we’ve learned things from them, which has worked out really well.”
Jamie has been struck by Shakers’ abiding relevance, its stark message, for all its humour. “That humour is grotesque and amplified. The piece changes gear very rapidly, but it’s all grounded in the four monologues, one for each of them, that are staged with naturalism, with each speech becoming more serious,” he says.
“Shakers stands up and makes its stand. As a bloke, you find yourself thinking, ‘how do I feel about this?’, and it’s been very interesting to draw on the cast’s own experiences.”
Jamie will restrict the capacity to 100 per performance to lend his production a studio atmosphere in keeping with the play’s roots. “It will help to have the audience close up,” says Laura. “With everyone packed into the front, it will feel busy.” Like in a bar on a Saturday night.
Staging will be minimalist too, in Bouncers tradition, with four mini-bars on wheels on a neon and chrome set. “We’ve made the decision to mime most of the props, apart from a huge blow-up phone, but with little signifiers for the different characters we play, like shades or jackets, or a change of voice. We’ve chosen everything to make an impact.”
This complements the tone of Thornton and Godber’s play. “You won’t feel like you’ve bene lectured! What works is the contrast between being grotesque and comedic one moment, and then we hit you with real truths and that makes Shakers’ impact all the greater,” says Laura.
“Both this play and Teechers end on a downer, but that’s the harsh reality of life. We want you to have a good time but to leave thinking about the message we’ve put across in 80 minutes.”
Rowntree Players in Shakers, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, March 14 to 16, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee.Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
2023 Strictly champ Ellie Leach’s Miss Scarlett, front right, with her fellow colourful characters in the new whodunit comedy Cluedo 2, on tour at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Alastair Muir
A WHODUNIT comedy, mischievous theatre as a team game, a wicked return, cocktail-bar tales, political satire and one-liners and a very muddy pig are Charles Hutchinson’s clues to the best upcoming shows.
Whodunit, with what and where, of the week: Cluedo 2, York Theatre Royal, March 12 to 16, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
STRICTLY Come Dancing 2023 champion and Coronation Street star Ellie Leach is making her stage acting debut as Miss Scarlett in the world premiere British tour of Cluedo 2, marking the 75th anniversary of the Hasbro boardgame. Next stop, York.
This follow-up to the original play (based on Jonathan Lynn’s 1985 film Clue) is an original comedy whodunit, set in the Swinging Sixties, with a script by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran (Birds Of A Feather, Goodnight Sweetheart and Dreamboats And Petticoats) and direction by Mark Bell (Mischief Theatre’s The Play That Goes Wrong). Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Ash Hunter’s Macbeth and Jessica Baglow’s Lady Macbeth in Amy Leach’s revival of Macbeth at Leeds Playhouse. Picture: Kirsten McTernan
Something wicked this way comes…again: Macbeth, Leeds Playhouse, until March 23
AMY Leach reactivates her 2022 Leeds Playhouse production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth with a wickedly good cast, now led by Ash Hunter, who returns to Yorkshire after his terrific Heathcliff in Emma Rice’s Wuthering Heights at York Theatre Royal.
“Macbeth investigates the nature of belief, love, ambition and desire, asking us to root for two humans who drive each other to do utterly terrible things,” says Leach. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Let the games begin: Gemma Curry, left, Claire Morley and Becky Lennon in Hoglets Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Mischief at York Theatre Royal Studio
Shakespeare shake-up of the week: Hoglets Theatre in A Midsummer Night’s Mischief, York Theatre Royal Studio, March 9, 10.30am
EVERYTHING is kicking off as the fairies in the forest start a fight, but which side will you be on? Team Titania or Team Oberon? York company Hoglets Theatre presents an interactive, fun, larger-than-life production for young children, based on Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Expect wild characters, raucous singalong songs, puppets, stunts and some frankly ridiculous disco dancing from director/writer Gemma Curry and fellow cast members Claire Morley and Becky Lennon. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Comedian Matt Green: “Trying to make sense of the world”. Picture: Karla Gowlett
Political satire of the week: Matt Green: That Guy, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, March 10, 8pm
THE debut national tour by That Guy (@mattgreencomedy) is a stand-up show full of jokes both political and non-political after he achieved millions of views for his online satirical videos launched in lockdown.
Green is touring his first show “since the madness of Covid/Johnson/Truss/Lord-knows-what-else began”, trying to make sense of the world in another year of elections and culture wars. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Jake Bugg: Playing our city on his Your Town Tour
Singer-songwriter of the week: Jake Bugg, Your Town Tour 2024, York Barbican, Tuesday, doors 7pm
ON his 15-date tour, Nottingham singer-songwriter Jake Bugg is performing two sets per night, first acoustic, then electric, as he rattles through his biggest hits, plus songs from 2021’s top three-charting Saturday Night Sunday Morning.
Two nights earlier, founder member Graham Gouldman leads art pop and soft rock innovators 10cc on their Ultimate Ultimate Greatest Hits Tour 2024 at 7.30pm. Ticket availability is limited. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Peppa Pig’s Fun Day Out: Songs, muddy puddles and snorts at the Grand Opera House
Children’s show of the week: Peppa Pig’s Fun Day Out, Grand Opera House, York, Wednesday, 1pm and 4pm, and Thursday, 10am and 1pm
PEPPA Pig is joined by her family and friends as they head to the zoo and the beach for a special party, with the promise of a fun-packed day. Prepare to sing with colourful scarecrows, feed the penguins, build big sandcastles and even swim in the sea in a show packed with songs, dancing, muddy puddles, giggles and snorts. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Facing the shift from hell in the worst bar in town: Sophie Bullivant, Abi Carter, Holly Smith and Laura Castle in Rowntree Players’ Shakers
Comedy play of the week: Rowntree Players in Shakers, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, March 14 to 16, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee
WELCOME to Shakers, the worst bar in town where everyone wants to be seen. Carol, Adele, Niki and Mel face the shift from hell. The lights are neon, the music is loud, and shoes must be smart. No trainers.
Jane Thornton and John Godber’s 1984 comedy exposes the sticky-floored world behind the bar on a busy Saturday night. Here come the girls, the lads, the yuppies and the luvvies, all played by Sophie Bullivant, Laura Castle, Abi Carter and Holly Smith under the direction of Jamie McKeller, who worked previously with Bullivant and Castle on Godber’s Teechers in 2023. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Rebecca Vaughan in Dyad Productions’ Austen’s Women: Lady Susan, scheming at Theatre@41 for two days
Solo show of the week: Dyad Productions in Austen’s Women: Lady Susan, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, March 15, 7.30pm and March 16, 2.30pm
FROM the creators of I, Elizabeth, Female Gothic, Christmas Gothic and A Room Of One’s Own comes a new Austen’s Women show, based on Jane Austen’s first full-length work from 1794, performed by Rebecca Vaughan.
Created entirely from letters, this one features the devil-may-care Lady Susan, the coquettish, scheming black widow, hunting down not one, but two, fortunes. Then add oppressed, rebellious daughter Frederica; long-suffering sister-in-law Catherine; family matriarch Mrs De Courcy and insouciant best friend Alicia in this darkly comic tale of Georgian society and the women trapped within it. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Shock in shirts: Comedian Milton Jones will be displaying his sartorial eloquence in his Ha!Milton tour show
Gig announcement of the week: Milton Jones, Ha!Milton, Grand Opera House, York, September 7; Sheffield, City Hall, December 4; King’s Hall, Ilkley, December 8
MILTON Jones, the shock-haired master of the one-liner, will take his 2024 tour, Ha!Milton, on the road from September 3 to December 15. “This is not a musical,” says Jones, in a nod to the title.
“I am tone deaf and have no sense of rhythm, but at least I don’t make a song and dance about it. This is a whole new show of daftness. You know it makes sense.” Topics will include giraffes…“and there’s a bit about tomatoes”. Box office: miltonjones.com; York, atgtickets.com/york; Sheffield, sheffieldcityhall.co.uk; Ilkley, bradford-theatres.co.uk.
In Focus: Navigators Art & Performance, GUNA: Views and Voices of Women, City Screen Picturehouse, York
Collaborative banner by Navigators Art workshop group, including first-time artists, for York International Women’s Week 2024
YORK collective Navigators Art & Performance presents GUNA: Views and Voices of Women, at City Screen Picturehouse, Coney Street, York, from March 10 to April 5.
Run in association with York International Women’s Week 2024, this exhibition explores and celebrates the creativity of women and non-binary artists.
On show in the cafe and the upstairs gallery is an array of paintings, textiles, collages, photographs and more by 20 emerging and established York makers, curated by York artist Katie Lewis.
Navigators Art & Performance’s poster for GUNA: Views and Voices of Women
“Women have used textiles as an art form to tell their stories and express views for centuries,” says Katie. “Many of the artists are using recycled fabrics that give further meaning to their work.”
The official launch night event on March 11 offers the chance to meet the artists over a complimentary drink from 6pm. All are welcome, with no need to book; more details at https://www.facebook.com/events/6804352783003925
The exhibition is free to enter every day during cinema hours. City Screen is fully accessible.
Suffragette City, by Katie Lewis
NAVIGATORS Art & Performance will co-host GUNA: An Evening of Music, Spoken Word, Performance Art and Comedy to complement the exhibition and further celebrate the creativity of women and non-binary artists in The Basement at City Screen on March 23 from 7pm to 10.45pm.
GUNA is a version of the ancient Greek word for ‘woman’, leading to a line-up of 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 the multi-faceted singer, author and artist Heather Findlay.
“The venue is small and our shows often sell out, so book soon,” advises Navigators’ organiser, Richard Kitchen. Full details and TicketSource booking are available at https://bit.ly/nav-guna
Ellie Leach, front right, as interior designer Annabel Scarlett with fellow cast members Hannah Boyce, Jack Bennett, Edward Howells and Jason Durr in Cluedo 2, on tour at York Theatre Royal fromTuesday to Saturday. Picture: Alastair Muir
WHAT did 2023 Strictly Come Dancing champion Ellie Leach do next?
The answer: Make her stage acting debut as Miss Scarlett in the world-premiere British tour of the comedy whodunit Cluedo 2, marking the 75th anniversary of the Hasbro boardgame.
Next stop, York Theatre Royal, from March 12 to 16, a run that will coincide with Manchester-born Ellie’s 23rd birthday next Friday.
She replaced Helen Flanagan in the five-month tour after her fellow former Coronation Street star was advised to withdraw for medical reasons. “It all happened very quickly,” says Ellie. “I went into rehearsals while I was doing the last week of the Strictly tour. They were already in their second week when I joined.
“It was very hectic, but as soon as I arrived, everyone made me feel so welcome. I’ve been having lots of fun!”
She jumped at the chance to take to the stage in her first role since playing Faye Windass in the ITV soap from 2011 and 2023.
Scarlett fervour: After Coronation Street and Strictly Come Dancing, Ellie Leach is enjoying the new challenge of her stage theatre debut in Cluedo 2. Picture: Alastair Muir
“Cluedo is such an iconic board game, isn’t it. Everyone enjoys playing it,” says Ellie. “I read the script and I loved it. The writers have an amazing track record.”
Those writers are the BAFTA Award-winning stage and screen-writing duo Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, of Birds Of A Feather, Goodnight Sweetheart and Dreamboats And Petticoats fame no less. Then add a director with comedy clout too: Mark Bell, who directed Mischief Theatre’s alarmingly funny catastrophic capers in The Play That Goes Wrong and The Comedy About A Bank Robbery. “The team behind this show is incredible,” says Ellie. “Who wouldn’t want to work on it?! I feel very lucky to be part of the show’s journey.”
Cluedo 2 – The Next Chapter, the follow-up to the play based on Jonathan Lynn’s 1985 film Clue, is an original comedy whodunit, set in the Swinging Sixties. Cue new house, new bodies, new suspects, in a tale of murder, mystery and secret passageways.
What happens? Fading rock’n’roll legend Rick Black (Liam Horrigan) is broke, desperate for cash to run his expensive new home, Graveny Manor, and prepared to do anything to regain his fame and fortune.
Excited to reveal his long-awaited comeback album, Black has assembled his supermodel wife, the Honourable Emerald Peacock (Hannah Boyce); his manager, Colonel Eugene Mustard (Jason Durr, from Heartbeat and Casualty); long-time roadie “Professor” Alex Plum (Edward Howells), trusted interior designer Annabel Scarlett(Leach) and housekeeper Mrs White (Dawn Buckland), who came with house and who knows all its secrets.
However, someone is missing: Black’s former song-writing partner “The Reverend” Hal Green (Gabriel Paul), who disappeared mysteriously at the same time that Black’s career went downhill. What’s more, where did that butler, Wadsworth (Jack Bennett) come from?
First meeting:Jason Durr’s Colonel Eugene Mustard introduces himself to Ellie Leach’s Annabel Scarlett in the comedy whodunit Cluedo 2. Picture: Alastair Muir
As the bodies start to pile up, the ever-colourful characters move from room to room trying to escape the murderer and survive the night, while PC Silver (Tiwai Muza) and audience alike look for the clues to unravel the secrets, seeking to work out whodunit, with what, and where!
“What’s really fun is playing a character that’s evolved from a board game,” says Ellie. “You can do a lot with it, and there’s so much that’s different about Miss Scarlett from the first play.
“Every Cluedo character is iconic but you can put your own stamp on it; there’s lots of layers to each one and it’s been interesting to delve into them: how they are when they’re together; how they are when they’re on their own.”
Miss Scarlett by name, but is she scarlet by nature? “People may have that perception of her, but she has more to her than that,” says Ellie, as the company continues rehearsals under Bell after opening the tour in Richmond, Surrey, on February 29. “There’s hints of scarlet, but other things too!”
Ellie is “so excited to join the cast of Cluedo 2 after an incredible year”, the year when she waltzed her way to winning Strictly Come Dancing with Italian dancer Vito Coppola last December. “It was an absolute dream come true to take part but for us to lift the Glitterball Trophy with Vito was something I will cherish for the rest of my life,” she says. “I treasure that feeling of joy at the public voting for us each week.”
Cluedo 2 runs at York Theatre Royal, March 12 to 16, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
In the red: Ellie Leach’s Miss Scarlett looks alarmed in Cluedo 2. Picture: Dave Hogan
Tristan Sturrock’s Blue Beard versus Katy Owen’s Mother Superior in Wise Children’s Blue Beard
PRESS night for Wise Children’s Blue Beard coincided with Thursday’s release of the findings of Lady Elish Angiolini’s inquiry into the murder of York-born Sarah Everard by Met Police officer Wayne Couzens.
That murder was among the triggers for Wise Children writer-director Emma Rice deciding to write her version of the fairy tale Blue Beard, a gruesome tale of controlling women that she had previously avoided and never liked, “not wanting to add to the number of dead women scattered throughout our literature and media”.
Haunted by “the regular and painful chime of murdered woman in the news”, Rice woke one morning with the story knocking powerfully at her dreams. She duly wrote what she calls a wonder tale of vibrant, flawed, joyful living women, working together to turn the tables on the violent aggressor, “taking down the ones who threaten us” in a revenge story of female friendship, intellect and survival that is both defiant and hopeful.
The review to this point is quoting in depth from Rice’s interview, outlining her need, brought on by anger, to use her craft, platform and experience to make a small difference. Her motive was not to understand or excuse Blue Beard but to breathe life into the women he sought to control, celebrating them in “all their wild and surprising glory”, saying “enough is enough; we will not be afraid anymore.”
Emma Rice: The snap, crackle and pop of modern theatre
“It certainly won’t be boring,” she promised. Boring? Has any Emma Rice production, whether for the pioneering Kneehigh Theatre or now Wise Children, ever been boring, whether Brief Encounter, Malory Towers or Wuthering Heights?!
Blue Beard, her fifth supernova of a Wise Children show, is everything modern theatre should be: intelligent, topical, provocative, surprising; full of music, politics, “tender truths”, mirror balls and dazzling costumery; comedy as much as tragedy; actors as skilled at musicianship as acting and dancing to boot; embracing the Greek, Shakespearean, cabaret, kitchen sink and multi-media ages of theatre.
Seamless scene changing too by designer Vicki Mortimer, with a combination of furniture on wheels, doors centre stage, and curtains being closed and opened to conceal and reveal as if by magic. That’s how to stage a show. Then add Rice’s Blue Beard (Tristan Sturrock) now being a magician. Cue knife-throwing with a real point to it.
Emma Rice makes audacious theatre, full of mischievous imagination and stylish innovation in her vow to “entertain, move and transport”. She does so with a bravura flourish that means broad comedy and terror, a potty-mouthed nun and a filmic slow-motion climactic fight, a dig at Jamie Oliver cookbooks and CCTV film footage of the lead-up to a murder can collide and elide in one play, replete with gutteral physicality and grace.
Welcome to the Convent of the Fearful, the F****d and the Furious, where the nuns all wear shades and the terrific Katy Owen’s blue-bearded Mother Superior rules with waspish wit, fearless frankness, frightening zeal and a shrill referee’s whistle.
Revenger’s tragicomedy: Patrycja Kujawska’s Treasure wreaks vengeance on Tristan Sturrock’s Blue Beardin Wise Children’s Blue Beard
Into Rice’s overlapping stories are woven the young, modern-day Adam Mirsky’s Lost Brother and Mirabelle Grimaud’s guitar-playing Lost Sister, and the timeless triumvirate of sisters Lucky (Robyn Sinclair), Trouble (Stephanie Hockley) and their mother, Treasure (Patrycja Kujawska), reminiscent of the Witches in Macbeth. Enter Blue Beard, whom Trouble will marry – and if he’s looking for Trouble, he’s in the right place, as he meets his match.
All the while, be beguiled by the playing of Stu Barker’s Sister Susie of the Dulcimer and the superb movement direction and choreography of Etta Murfitt.
In the words of Rice: “Using music, dance, and storytelling, I want the production to seduce with high comedy, tragedy, magic, romance and just a sprinkle of spine-tingling horror. It’s a blockbusting rollercoaster!”
Couldn’t put it better! Rice’s Blue Beard is bloody funny, but shocking; violent, furious, dark yet enlightening; as romantic and joyful as it is fearful; empowering in its feminism, pulling reality from fantasy, haunting yet hopeful at the last. Remarkable, breathtaking theatre for today yet rooted in the ages, demanding a better tomorrow. You MUST see Blue Beard. It’s certainly not boring, Emma.
Wise Children presents Blue Beard at York Theatre Royal until March 9, except Sunday and Monday. Performances: 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 7.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Berwick Kaler’s dame Dotty Dullaly in his last pantomime, Robinson Crusoe And The Pirates Of The River Ouse at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
BERWICK Kaler, Britain’s longest-running pantomime dame, is “bowing out gracefully after 47 years of getting away with complete nonsense” on the York stage, but there could yet be one final show.
“It has crossed my mind to maybe do a one-off performance as a thank-you, a show of appreciation to the staunch fans of our pantomime,” says Berwick.
Most likely it would be held at the Grand Opera House, host to the Kaler panto for the past three winters.
“I don’t want to say too much but the farewell has been handled wrongly,” says Berwick. “I’ll be 78 later this year [October 31], I’m ready to retire, but I would like to have made the decision in a better way.”
A seven-minute standing ovation had concluded the final night of Robinson Crusoe And The Pirates Of The River Ouse – written and directed by and starring the dowager dame as ever – but ticket sales for the December 9 to January 6 run had been underwhelming, even prompting a discounted price campaign.
“All those panto companies in the business, they need to make money,” acknowledges Berwick. “But I just thought, after the reception from the audience to that last show, which was totally amazing…
“…I’ve always said that every show I’ve done was ‘rubbish’, but that standing ovation, I don’t know if they knew something that night.
“I know it can’t go on forever. It can’t. I’ve not spoken anyone apart from [UK Productions managing director] Martin Dodds, who rang to let me know, so I’ve kept it to myself for a week.
“What I don’t want is for us to continue and for me to find that my energy levels – which were as good as ever for Robinson Crusoe – were suddenly not there. I smoke, I drink, I’m lucky to have got to the age I have!”
The last gang show: Martin Barrass, left, dame Berwick Kaler, Suzy Cooper, David Leonard and AJ Powell promoting Robinson Crusoe And The Pirates Of The River Ouseoutside the Grand Opera House, York.Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
That thought would seem to rule out any suggestion of a move for Kaler and co to the Joseph Rowntree Theatre for winter 2024, in favour of a farewell one-nighter.
“I’ve had a pacemaker for eight years,” says Berwick, who also had a double heart bypass operation in July 2017. “I wanted to get out of hospital the day after the pacemaker was fitted. They said ‘No’, but I did leave the next day!
“I’m just sorry that I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to our most wonderful audiences, to say ‘thank you’ on my part and everyone in the panto gang’s part too. Now it’s about just getting used to looking after my two dogs on my own in Acomb.”
And now, the end is here, the final curtain falling after panto producers UK Productions decided not to retain the services of veteran dame Berwick, who had transferred across the city after 40 years at York Theatre Royal to stage Dick Turpin Rides Again and subsequently Old Granny Goose and Robinson Crusoe And The Pirates Of The River Ouse.
“I would love to thank everyone in York for giving me a career that would not have gone on this length of time without their support, because every minute I’ve been on stage I’ve just bounced off the audience’s energy, and I’m so grateful for that,” says Berwick.
“When we went to the Grand Opera House, it continued to be ‘the York pantomime’, and that’s a reputation I hope will go on.”
Exiting panto stage left too will be Kaler’s “loyal gang”: long-serving comic stooge Martin Barrass, vainglorious villain David Leonard, principal golden gal Suzy Cooper and “luverly Brummie” A J Powell after their three-year run at the Cumberland Street theatre.
Thanking his co-stars for “putting up with me for so many years”, Berwick says: “I don’t know why UK Productions, even if they didn’t want me anymore, wouldn’t want to keep David, the best villain in the country, the amazing Suzy, Martin and AJ.”
Born in Sunderland, Berwick moved to London in his teenage years to be a painter and decorator, but the acting bug bit. Initially, in pantomime Berwick took to the dark side as a villain but 1977 found him donning his wig as Ugly Sister Philomena in Cinderella at the Theatre Royal after playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that summer.
This would be the last time: Berwick Kaler’s dame Dotty Dullaly in familiar rudimentary wig and workman’s boots with contrasting laces in Robinson Crusoe And The Pirates Of The River Ouse. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
He would go on to play dame, write the script, ignore conventional plot lines, ad lib ad nauseam and direct “the rubbish”, year after year, bringing him the Freedom of the City, an honorary doctorate from the University of York and a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Great British Pantomime Awards.
“I came to York, not known to the Theatre Royal audience, but the thing is, they take a comic actor to their heart and that was case with me,” he says.
He retired once… “Don’t forget, when I announced my retirement from the Theatre Royal, I was ready to retire. It was that thing of marking 40 years.”
He soon regretted that decision, even more so after writing, co-directing and appearing on screen in the 2019 panto, Sleeping Beauty, and particularly so after the Theatre Royal decided to part with the Kaler gang to make way for a new partnership with Evolution Pantomimes.
The invitation to take up a three-year contract at the Grand Opera House brought about his comeback in 2021, but his finale to his last interview with The Press turned out to be prescient.
“I’m not going to announce my retirement. I’ll just go quietly, whenever. I’ve had my big send-off already [after 40 years at the Theatre Royal],” he mused last December.
“When they announce the next Grand Opera House pantomime, it will either be with us or without us.”
The reality is, “without us”, but with a new “star casting” instead for Beauty And The Beast’s run from December 7 to January 5 2025, with tickets on sale from Monday, March 11 at 4pm at atgtickets.com/york.
As for that Berwick Kaler farewell show, watch this space.
Wise Children “open the bloody door” to Emma Rice’s beguiling but disturbing Blue Beard at York Theatre Royal from Tuesday. Picture: Steve Tanner
PANTO dame tales and a comedian’s first-time memories, a classic thriller and a feminist fairytale, a community choir festival and a prog-rock legend make Charles Hutchinson’s list of upcoming cultural highlights.
Play of the week: Wise Children in Emma Rice’s Blue Beard, York Theatre Royal, February 27 to March 9, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
BLUE Beard meets his match when his young bride discovers his dark and murderous secret. She summons all her rage, all her smarts and all her sisters to bring the curtain down on his tyrannous reign as writer-director Emma Rice brings her own brand of theatrical wonder to this beguiling, disturbing tale.
Applying Rice’s signature sleight of hand, Blue Beard explores curiosity and consent, violence and vengeance, all through an intoxicating lens of music, wit and tender truth. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Rick Wakeman: Last return of the Caped Crusader at York Barbican
Catch him while you can: Rick Wakeman, Return Of The Caped Crusader, York Barbican, tonight (24/02/2024), 7.30pm
PROG-ROCK icon and Yes keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman, 76, is to call time on his one-man shows to concentrate on composing, recording and collaborating, but not before playing York. “I always planned to stop touring by my 77th birthday,” he says. “For those of you who wish to send me a card, it’s 18th May!”
Saturday’s show opens with Wakeman’s new arrangements of Yes material for band and vocalists, followed after the interval by his epic work Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. Box office for returns only: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Robin Simpson on dame duty in York Theatre Royal’s All New Adventures Of Peter Pan
Pantomime revelations of the week: Robin Simpson: There Ain’t Nothing Like A Dame, Rise, Bluebird Bakery, Acomb Road, Acomb, York, tomorrow, 6.30pm
ALREADY confirmed for his return for Aladdin from December 3 to January 5 2025, York Theatre Royal’s resident dame, Robin Simpson, takes a peak behind the wigs into the glitz and glamour of life as a pantomime dame.
Simpson provides an insight into the origins of the character, backstage antics and classic cheeky panto humour as he reveals “what it’s really like to frock up and tread the boards”. Expect cheesy gags, naughty nonsense and even a silly sing-song.
“I’ve run this event before and it was mostly for slightly older children and adults. Ages 7/8 and above really,” says Robin. “The show includes stories, song-sheet sing-alongs and silly poems. It’s not at all serious!
“It’s fun to approach storytelling from the perspective of the dame. It’s a little more anarchic. I also start with a brief history of the pantomime, from Roman times to the modern day.
“I do this while getting dressed and made up into the dame with the idea that, by the time I’m talking about Dan Leno and the Victorian dame, I’m completely changed. There’s room for questions and chat too about being in a panto and what happens on stage and backstage. Like I say, it’s for KS2 and adults really.”
Earlier in the day, at 4.30pm, in an interactive one-hour event for children aged three to six, Robin and Susanna Meese will be spinning the Storywheel to reveal much-loved nursery tales. “It’s a wheel of fortune-style story generator where random fairytales are told and there’s lots of dressing-up, musical instruments, songs, props, puppets and play,” says Robin.
Afterwards, children can delve into story bags full of goodies and stay and play with the hosts, who will have everything needed for the children to tell the tales, including puppets, props, and costumes. Box office: bluebirdbakery.co.uk/rise
Maura Jackson: Public speaker, charity boss and now comedian, playing Theatre@41 tomorrow
Storyteller of the week: Maura Jackson: More O’ Me, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
AT 53 Maura Jackson cannot decide if she is a keynote speaker, charity CEO or comedian. Thanks to “the recklessness of menopause”, she is all three.
After living a life and a half and taking up stand-up in 2022 on a whim, storyteller Jackson takes tomorrow’s audience on a humorous rollercoaster of life-defining moments, good or bad. Despite her professed aversion to drama, she is surrounded by it. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Neil McDermott, left, and Todd Boyce in Sleuth, “the thriller about thrillers”, at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Jack Merriman
Thriller of the week: Sleuth, Grand Opera House, York, Monday to Saturday, 7.30pm; 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday
TODD Boyce, best known for playing Coronation Street’s notorious baddie Stephen Reid, will be joined by EastEnders soap star Neil McDermott in Anthony Shaffer’s dark psychological thriller about thrillers, directed by Rachel Kavanaugh.
What happens? A young man arrives at the impressive home of a famous mystery writer, only to be unwittingly drawn into a tangled web of intrigue and gamesmanship, where nothing is quite as it seems. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Rob Auton: Star of The Rob Auton Show, full of firsts, from memories to girlfriends to jobs
Comedy gig(s) of the week: Rob Auton, The Rob Auton Show, Burning Duck Comedy Club, The Crescent, York, February 28, 7.30pm; Mortimer Suite, Hull City Hall, February 29, 7.30pm; The Wardrobe, Leeds, March 1, 7.30pm
ROB Auton, Pocklington-raised stand-up comedian, writer, podcaster, actor, illustrator and former Glastonbury festival poet-in-residence, returns north from London with his self-titled tenth themed solo show.
After the colour yellow, the sky, faces, water, sleep, hair, talking, time and crowds, Auton turns the spotlight on himself, exploring the memories and feelings that create his life on a daily basis. Box office: York, thecrescentyork.seetickets.com; Hull, hulltheatres.co.uk; Leeds, brudenellsocialclub.seetickets.com.
Skylights: Lighting up York Barbican in November
Gig announcement of the week: Skylights, York Barbican, November 2
YORK band Skylights will play their biggest home-city show yet this autumn, with tickets newly on sale at ticketmaster.co.uk in a week when latest release Time To Let Things Go has risen to number two in the Official Vinyl Singles Chart.
Guitarist Turnbull Smith says: ‘We’re absolutely over the moon to be headlining the biggest venue in our home city of York, the Barbican. It’s always been a dream of ours to play here, so to headline will be the perfect way to finish what’s going to be a great year. Thanks to everyone for the support. It means the world and we’ll see you all there.”
In Focus: York Community Choir Festival 2024
Jessa Liversidge: Directing Easingwold Community Singers’ performance at the York Community Choir Festival
York Community Choir Festival 2024, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, February 25, 6pm; February 26 to March 1, 7.30pm; March 2, 2.30pm and 7.30pm
THE 8th York Community Choir Festival spreads 31 choirs across eight concerts over six days at the JoRo. On the opening evening, Easingwold Community Singers will be premiering director Jessa Liversidge’s arrangement of The Secret Of Happiness from the American musical Daddy Long Legs, with permission of composer and lyricist Paul Gordon.
“Festival organiser Graham Mitchell wanted a choir to perform this song,” says Jessa. “I bought the music but couldn’t find a choral arrangement, so I chanced my arm on contacting the composer to ask if there were any arrangements or could I do one, and he said, ‘yes, you can’.
“It’s a lovely gentle song. Hopefully it will go well, and I can then send Paul a recording.”
Choirs range from York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir to The Rolling Tones, Sounds Fun Singers to York Military Wives Choir, Selby Youth Choir to Track 29 Ladies Close Harmony Chorus. Six choirs from Huntington School perform next Friday, taking up all the first-half programme. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
York Community Choir Festival: the programme
Sunday, 6pm
Selby Youth Choir, Bishopthorpe Community Choir, Eboraca, Easingwold Community Singers.
Monday, 7.30pm
Community Chorus, York Celebration Singers, Euphonics, York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir.
Tuesday, 7.30pm
Jubilate, Some Voices York, Sounds Fun Singers, Abbey Belles Chorus.
Wednesday, 7.30pm
Stagecoach Youth Junior Choir, The Garrowby Singers, In Harmony, Stamford Bridge Community Choir.
Thursday, 7.30pm
York Military Wives Choir, Harmonia, Spirit of Harmony Barbershop Chorus, Heworth Community Choir.
Friday, 7.30pm
Huntington School Choirs, Vivace! Aviva York Choir, Main Street Sound Ladies, Barbershop Chorus
Pilot Theatre’s Jonathan Iceton, left, Beth Crame, Olivia Onyehara, Grace Long and Amonik Melaco in A Song For Ella Grey
NEWCASTLE. Shopping for vintage clothes. Nights on the toon. Bamburgh Beach. Camping out. Beach parties. Cheap supermarket plonk. Best friends for life. First tingle of love.
Such is the teenage stuff of David Almond’s novel for young readers, and the stuff too of Pilot Theatre artistic director Esther Richardson’s days of growing up in the North East. Been there, done that, bought the book, the first one she read after taking up her post with the York company.
Eight years later, Richardson is directing Pilot’s touring co-production in partnership with York Theatre Royal and Northern Stage, in Newcastle, where rehearsals and the first peformances took place.
Almond has adapted past works for the stage, but this time Pilot commissioned Zoe Cooper, a playwright and dramaturg who has an M Phil in playwriting from the University of Birmingham and cut her teeth on the Royal Court Young Writers programme. Both her script and Almond’s book are on sale alongside the brownies and chai lattes at the café counter.
Working in tandem, Richardson and Cooper have pitched this particular theatrical tent on the cornerstones of storytelling, music, sound and vision to seek to capture the elusive nature of Orpheus, the “man-god” (as Richardson calls him). I say ‘him’, but this Orpheus is called ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’, at various points, depending on who is speaking.
Pilot’s primary target audience is teenage, studying Eng Lit, maybe theatre, and indeed schoolchildren were clustered in the dress circle at Thursday’s matinee, but peppered around the stalls were Theatre Royal matinee regulars.
Overhearing one in the interval and chatting with them afterwards, they praised the performances but had reservations over the storytelling. More specifically, the clarity of what we were watching. In a nutshell, not only was Orpheus elusive, so too was the story.
Your reviewer wholeheartedly agreed about the uniformly excellent cast, but did find himself drawn into the mysteries and murk of Almond’s modern-day re-telling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, one that carried this contents notice in the foyer: References to death of a young person, bereavement/loss and adoption.
Already, on stage in York, at Stillington Mill, in Australia too, Wright & Grainger have explored the myth in a trilogy of exhilarating spoken-word and music shows, Orpheus, Eurydice and The Gods The Gods The Gods, billed as “stories from Greek mythology, told as if they were happening today”.
What Pilot Theatre’s production shares is both modernity and rich imagination in the storytelling, in this case the story of Ella Grey (Grace Long), who was adopted at the age of two and dreams of Orpheus singing to her in the company of her biological parents.
Ella prefers to spend her days and nights with Claire (Olivia Onyehara), her intense best friend since she was four, and Claire’s more open parents, with their baked aubergine suppers and ultra-comfy, tweedy sofas from a Scottish cottage industry. They understand her better, she protests.
Studying Eng Lit etc at A-level, they hook up regularly by the Northumbrian coast with Sam (Amonik Melaco), with his perfectly manicured eyebrows and far from perfect attitude towards young women; the more sensitive birdwatcher Jay (good name for a birdwatcher, Jonathan Iceton) and the ever-curious-to-experiment Angeline (Beth Crame, outstanding).
Craving a feeling of belonging, Ella is ever more drawn to Orpheus, represented here by a silhouetted figure with a crown of twigs behind white curtaining, by distant song and music too. Only she hears the voice at first, but gradually…well, that would be telling.
The content warning serves as a spoiler alert of her death, represented at the sea’s edge by her vintage dress, leaving so many questions to be answered for her friends, audience and Orpheus alike in Act Two.
Designer Verity Quinn switches the colour scheme for the two circular mounds that serve as beds and rocks on the beach from white to funereal black, accompanied by the squawk of a murder of crows and even a crow in the twig head gear worn by Claire.
All the while, Adam P McCready’s all-pervasive sound design (water, water everywhere), Chris Davey’s lighting and especially Si Cole’s video designs on the white backdrop give the atmosphere psychological depths.
Most evocative of all are the compositions of Emily Levy, whose programme note talks of her starting points of “voice (spoken and sung), folk song, and the crossover point where naturally occurring sound morphs into music”. Her songs “pass through and between the performers”, beautifully, spellbindingly so, and they evoke the mystical North East as much as The Unthanks do.
The links with the Orpheus and Eurydice of yore grow ever clearer in song and storytelling alike, as the tragedy and pain of human fallibility, the impossibility of immortality, heighten once in the underworld, but come the finale, Almond and Cooper still allow teenage dreams to be so hard to beat as new worlds beckon for Ella’s friends.
Musician Zak Younger Banks rightly joins the cast on stage to take a bow: thoroughly deserved for his vital contribution.
Performances: York Theatre Royal, tonight, 7.30pm; tomorrow, 2.30pm, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.Hull Truck Theatre, March 5 to 9, 7.30pm; 2pm Wednesday & Saturday matinees.Box office: 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk.
Wise Children artistic director Emma Rice. Picture: Carmel King
WISE Children director Emma Rice has an admission to make ahead of Blue Beard’s arrival at York Theatre Royal on Tuesday.
“I love fairy tales, but I’ve actually never liked the story of Blue Beard,” she says. “Not wanting to add to the number of dead women scattered throughout our literature and media, I have always avoided the gruesome tale.
“However, haunted by the regular and painful chime of murdered woman in the news, I woke one morning with the story knocking powerfully at my dreams. I pulled my copy from the shelves and, with some trepidation, unlocked the door of Blue Beard’s castle.”
Emma thought Blue Beard was a story of controlling women, telling them off for asking questions and being curious. “But something changed a couple of years ago, and the story started to nag at me,” she says.
“What I found hidden in those pages was a story not about dead women but about vibrant, flawed, joyful living ones. Here was a story about female friendship, intellect and survival. It’s also a story in which, by working together, the aggressor is vanquished.
“And this is precisely why I want to tell Blue Beard now. In my middle years I want to join forces with those I love and take down the ones who threaten us. I, for one, have had enough, and for Zara Aleena, Jack Taylor, Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman, Daniel Whitworth, Sarah Everard and the thousands and thousands of others who have died at the hands of violent men – Blue Beard is my defiant and hopeful answer.”
Emma had become more and more haunted by “the regular chime of women being attacked, murdered and abused”. “Sarah Everard’s shocking murder and the ensuing chaos of her vigil captured the public’s imagination,” she says. “However, for me, it was the murder of Zara Aleena that really brought home my anger and made me think about adapting Blue Beard.
“She was just walking home. A week later, her family, friends, and people she would never know, met at the spot where she was killed and walked her memory home. This was the moment that I knew I wanted to walk Blue Beard’s victim’s home. I wanted to use my craft, my platform, and my experience to make a small difference.”
“I want the production to seduce with high comedy, tragedy, magic, romance and just a sprinkle of spine-tingling horror,” says director Emma Rice. Picture: Steve Tanner
Emma realised she wanted to tell this story, not to understand or excuse Blue Beard, but to breathe life into the women he tried to control. “I wanted to express not just the rage, grief and heartbreak so many of us feel at lives cut short, but also to celebrate brilliant living women in all their wild and surprising glory,” she says.
“So, my version of Blue Beard is very definitely about the women, about celebrating women and about saying enough is enough! We will not be afraid anymore.”
Adapted for the stage by Emma, Blue Beard carries the weight and power of a classic drama, she contends. “It’s almost Shakespearean and most definitely Greek in structure; I hope audiences will feel entertained, moved and transported.
“We found the subject matter very powerful in rehearsals and there have been lots of laughter and tears. I hope audiences will share the joy, the darkness, the fury and the hope. It certainly won’t be boring!”
Blue Beard, Emma’s fifth show for Wise Children, finds her returning to her roots at Cornwall’s now disbanded Kneehigh Theatre, where she specialised in folk tales before her brief encounter as the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe.
“After the shared trauma of lockdown and, in its wake, the long haul of getting back into the world, it felt like the right time to go back to my roots. ‘Wonder tales’ (as I like to call them) are an enduring source of inspiration for me,” she says.
“Magical and universal, they are ripe for re-interpretation and reinvention. They challenge and delight in equal measure and allow me to explore complex and important themes without having to be literal or naturalistic. They lend themselves to music and movement and I love them! With Blue Beard, I am back in my theatrical element.”
Given the themes of male violence and control, can York audiences expect a challenging evening? “Well, yes – in some way,” says Emma. “Our production does not shy away from violence and its devasting effect, but it is also hopeful and empowering.
Wise Children in a scene from Emma Rice’s Blue Beard, heading to York Theatre Royal from Tuesday. Picture: Steve Tanner
“I don’t think audiences will come away thinking everything’s awful and it’s never going to change. Instead, I want people to look these issues squarely in the eye and think: ‘right, that’s it. The world does not have to be like this, and I feel inspired to do something about it’.
“It’s also worth saying that I’m not a ‘naturalistic’ director. We use lots of different storytelling techniques to give the subject layers and nuance. This means a violent act could feature on stage as a dance, or a song. It won’t be graphic and unpleasant. Sometimes violence is suggested, sometimes it is shown in a metaphorical way and, at the end, we have a huge, bloody real life struggle.”
Although the underlying themes are urgent and dark, Emma’s show is not all darkness by any means. Blue Beard pulses with stylish theatricality, gritty reality and genuine emotion,” she says. There’s also comedy. Katy Owen, an actor I’ve worked with for many years, is one of the most brilliant comic actors working today, and she plays a nun at the Convent of the Fearful, F****d and Furious – so you can imagine where that goes!
“Using music, dance, and storytelling, I want the production to seduce with high comedy, tragedy, magic, romance and just a sprinkle of spine-tingling horror. It’s a blockbusting rollercoaster!”
As a practitioner of ‘devised theatre’, Emma likes to work closely with a composer throughout the rehearsal process, shaping, refining and reworking the music as the production develops.
“Music is shot through this magical tale,” she says. “I’m working with my longtime friend and collaborator Stu Barker, who I also worked with on Brief Encounter, Tristan & Yseult, and many, many more.
“Stu is a composing genius, who knows just when a song, a sting or an underscore is needed. I’m particularly loving working on this show because almost all my actors are also musicians. This means the music comes straight out of the heart of the show: it’s all performed live by this incredibly talented ensemble of actor-musicians.
“They jump seamlessly between playing and acting, and I marvel at their talent. The songs are dynamite, and I go to sleep with them running through my head and wake up singing them.”
“This is certainly the most ambitious piece of writing I have ever done,” says Emma Rice of her script for Blue Beard. Picture: Steve Tanner
In Emma’s account of the fairytale, Blue Beard is a magician, requiring actor Tristan Sturrock, Emma’s long-term collaborator, to work with several magicians in preparation for the show.
“He can now make coins vanish and cards appear, cut ladies in half and throw knives. It has been brilliant fun and creates fantastic ‘old school’ entertainment,” she says.
“I decided to make my Blue Beard a magician because it felt like a funny and surprising way to explore themes of lies, control and violence. The glamour of the magician’s assistant, mixed with the casual misogyny of these enduring acts, creates a heady cocktail which is the perfect match for Blue Beard.”
After adapting three novels, Angela Carter’s Wise Children, Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights for Wise Children productions, Emma has created her own version of Blue Beard.
“The piece has taken shape slowly, as I’ve been working on this project for over two years, and it has been a joyful and surprising path to this place,” she says. “But it’s certainly no less complicated than adapting, because, although I could have chosen to write about anything, I seem to have chosen something quite complex!
“We have three narratives running through the piece: the magical world of Blue Beard, a modern world where we hear the story of the Lost Brother and Sister, and then there’s a framing narrative, set in the extraordinary world of the Convent of the Fearful, F****d and Furious.”
Workshops have allowed Emma to explore these three worlds with her actors and musicians. “The narrative threads intertwine to bring meaning and perspective to the Blue Beard legend. It’s a tricky structure but one that pays great dividends,” she says.
“I’ve relished taking charge of the material and this is certainly the most ambitious piece of writing I have ever done. It feels great to be pushing myself artistically – and yet still allowing myself to be just a little bit silly.”
Blue Beard’s tour takes in Theatre Royal Bath, HOME Manchester, the Lyceum in Edinburgh, Birmingham Rep and Battersea Arts Centre, as well as York Theatre Royal. “I love touring!” says Emma.
“With Blue Beard, I am back in my theatrical element,” says writer-director Emma Rice of Wise Children’s premiere. Picture: Steve Tanner
“I look forward to the food and architecture in Bath, the cool shops in Manchester, the museums in York, the magnificent natural beauty of Edinburgh, the Bullring in Birmingham and the fabulous moody and smoke-damaged Grand Hall at Battersea Arts Centre.
“Four of our tour venues – Manchester, York, Edinburgh and Birmingham – are co-producers on the show, meaning not only have they helped to finance it, but, more importantly, they have brought all their skills and experiences to the creation of the show, helping us to make something more wonderful, and better resourced, than we could have done alone.
“It’s such a hard time for theatres, but these particular venues have all been superstars, backing us, believing in us, and making it possible for us to bring this show to their audiences.”
Emma has celebrated five years of Wise Children by opening a new venue, The Lucky Chance, in Frome, Somerset, renovating and transforming the early 20th century Methodist Chapel into the company’s creation space and base for their training programmes.
“It’s been wonderful. In the true sense of the word,” she says, after the move from Bristol. “I begin to realise that this has always been my dream: to create a home for the work and the people that make it. The Lucky Chance is a place to create, to party, to take shelter in and to return to.
“It gives Wise Children roots and a beautiful space to welcome our diverse community of friends, audiences, neighbours and students alike. I couldn’t be prouder or happier. It’s called The Lucky Chance because that is exactly what it is.”
Wise Children presents Blue Beard, York Theatre Royal, February 27 to March 9, except next Sunday and Monday; 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 7.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Wise Children’s Blue Beard: the back story
BLUE Beard the Magician makes hearts flutter and pupils dilate. With a wink, a stroke and a flick, things just seem to vanish. Cards, coins, scarves…and women. When someone tells you not to look, open the bloody door, advises Wise Children’s world premiere, adapted and directed by artistic director Emma Rice.
Emma brings her brand of theatrical wonder to this beguiling, disturbing tale with her signature sleight of hand to explore curiosity and consent, violence and vengeance, all through an intoxicating lens of music, wit and tender truth.
Artistic director Emma Rice outside Wise Children’s new venue, The Lucky Chance, in a former Methodist Chapel at Frome, Somerset. Picture: Carmel King
Deaf comedian Steve Day: Playing on the Hilarity Bites bill at Milton Rooms, Malton
A DEAF comedian and history-charting musicians, a classic thriller and a feminist fairytale, a community choir festival and a prog-rock legend make Charles Hutchinson’s list of upcoming cultural highlights.
Ryedale comedy gig of the week: Hilarity Bites Comedy Club, Steve Day, Ashley Frieze and Carl Jones, Milton Rooms, Malton, Friday (23/02/2024), 8pm
THE first Hilarity Bites bill of 2024 will be headlined by Steve Day, who describes himself as “Britain’s only deaf comedian and if there are any others he hasn’t heard them”! Actually, a couple of others have started since he wrote that joke, but it is only a joke after all.
On the bill too are guitar-toting funny man Ashley Frieze, with his charming, daft and warm brand of music-infused stand-up, and Midlands storytelling comedian Carl Jones, a football fanatic who interviews comedy cohorts for his Premier League nostalgia podcast When Football Began Again. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.
Chris Green and Sophie Matthews: 600 years of music crammed into 90 minutes at Pocklington Arts Centre
Musical tour of the week: Green Matthews: A Brief History Of Music, Pocklington Arts Centre, Friday, 8pm
STRING player Chris Green and woodwind player Sophie Matthews take in 600 years of musical history in 90 minutes, spanning the Middle Ages to the 20th century in a whistle-stop tour of Western music.
Featuring long-forgotten songs, tunes and jokes too, Green and Matthews paint a vibrant and vivid picture of our musical DNA, mixing the familiar and the obscure, the raucous and the reflective and the courtly and the commonplace. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Skylights: Lighting up York Barbican in November
Gig announcement of the week: Skylights, York Barbican, November 2
YORK band Skylights will play their biggest home-city show yet this autumn, with tickets going on sale on Friday at 10am at ticketmaster.co.uk in a week when latest release Time To Let Things Go has risen to number two in the Official Vinyl Singles Chart.
Guitarist Turnbull Smith says: ‘We’re absolutely over the moon to be headlining the biggest venue in our home city of York, the Barbican. It’s always been a dream of ours to play here, so to headline will be the perfect way to finish what’s going to be a great year. Thanks to everyone for the support. It means the world and we’ll see you all there.”
Rick Wakeman: Return Of The Caped Crusader at York Barbican
Catch him while you can: Rick Wakeman, Return Of The Caped Crusader, York Barbican, Saturday, 7.30pm
PROG-ROCK icon and Yes keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman, 76, is to call time on his one-man shows to concentrate on composing, recording and collaborating, but not before playing York. “I always planned to stop touring by my 77th birthday,” he says. “For those of you who wish to send me a card, it’s 18th May!”
Saturday’s show opens with Wakeman’s new arrangements of Yes material for band and vocalists, followed after the interval by his epic work Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. Box office for returns only: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Jessa Liversidge: Directing Easingwold Community Singers’ performance at the York Community Choir Festival
Choirs galore: York Community Choir Festival 2024, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, February 25, 6pm; February 26 to March 1, 7.30pm; March 2, 2.30pm and 7.30pm
THE 8th York Community Choir Festival spreads 31 choirs across eight concerts over six days at the JoRo. On the opening evening, Easingwold Community Singers will be premiering director Jessa Liversidge’s arrangement of The Secret Of Happiness from the American musical Daddy Long Legs, with permission of composer and lyricist Paul Gordon.
Choirs range from York Philharmonic Male Voice Choir to The Rolling Tones, Sounds Fun Singers to York Military Wives Choir, Selby Youth Choir to Track 29 Ladies Close Harmony Chorus. Six choirs from Huntington School perform next Friday, taking up all the first-half programme. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Todd Boyce, left, and Neil McDermott in Sleuth, on tour at Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Jack Merriman
Thriller of the week: Sleuth, Grand Opera House, York, Monday to Saturday, 7.30pm; 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday
TODD Boyce, best known for playing Coronation Street’s notorious baddie Stephen Reid, will be joined by EastEnders soap star Neil McDermott in Anthony Shaffer’s dark psychological thriller about thrillers, directed by Rachel Kavanaugh.
What happens? A young man arrives at the impressive home of a famous mystery writer, only to be unwittingly drawn into a tangled web of intrigue and gamesmanship, where nothing is quite as it seems. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Emma Rice: Writer-director of Wise Children’s Blue Beard, playing York Theatre Royal from next Tuesday
Play of the week: Wise Children in Emma Rice’s Blue Beard, York Theatre Royal, February 27 to March 9, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
BLUE Beard meets his match when his young bride discovers his dark and murderous secret. She summons all her rage, all her smarts and all her sisters to bring the curtain down on his tyrannous reign as writer-director Emma Rice brings her own brand of theatrical wonder to this beguiling, disturbing tale.
Applying Rice’s signature sleight of hand, Blue Beard explores curiosity and consent, violence and vengeance, all through an intoxicating lens of music, wit and tender truth. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Rob Auton: Star of The Rob Auton Show, full of firsts, from memories to girlfriends to jobs
Comedy gig(s) of the week: Rob Auton, The Rob Auton Show, Burning Duck Comedy Club, The Crescent, York, February 28, 7.30pm; Mortimer Suite, Hull City Hall, February 29, 7.30pm; The Wardrobe, Leeds, March 1, 7.30pm
ROB Auton, Pocklington-raised stand-up comedian, writer, podcaster, actor, illustrator and former Glastonbury festival poet-in-residence, returns north from London with his self-titled tenth themed solo show.
After the colour yellow, the sky, faces, water, sleep, hair, talking, time and crowds, Auton turns the spotlight on himself, exploring the memories and feelings that create his life on a daily basis. Box office: York, thecrescentyork.seetickets.com; Hull, hulltheatres.co.uk; Leeds, brudenellsocialclub.seetickets.com.
