Suffering under a surfeit of chairs: Felipe Pacheco’s Gregor Samsa in Frantic Assembly’s Metamorphosis. Picture: Tristram Kenton
SHOULD Frantic Assembly transfer Franz Kafka’s absurdist novella Metamorphosis from page to stage?
Artistic director Scott Graham’s initial reaction was No, but its themes of the crushing burden of debt, subsequent dysfunctional family relations, monotonous work for low pay, fear of isolation and an unhealthy obsession with identity made it as much a story for our time as of 1912.
That surely made it ripe for a company noted for the heft of its emotional truths? Then add wave upon wave of Kakfa surrealism to bring out Frantic Assembly’s other trademark: movement. The physicality to complement all that mental turbulence.
Now Graham needed a writer, one to work in tandem with him in creating a 21st century reinvention of Metamorphosis, its world of social immobility, dashed expectations, repetitive restraints, impoverishment and exploitation, but still with the look of the early 20th century (courtesy of Jon Bauser’s design and Becky Gunstone’s period costumes).
Lemn Sissay OBE, esteemed poet, broadcaster and speaker, was his pick but again the first inclination was No. However, he too felt the tug of Kafka’s torrid tale, seeing within its desperation, a chance to depict Gregor’s transformation as the embodiment of the woes of modern capitalism.
Two forces are at play in Graham’s production, movement and language, not always in union, however.
Ruling the roost: Joe Layton’s Chief Clerk piling on the financial pressure in Frantic Assembly’s Metamorphosis as Hannah Sinclair Robinson’s Grete, left, Louise May Newberry’s Mrs Samsa and Troy Glasgow’s Mr Samsa look aghast. Far left, Felipe Pacheco’s Gregor’s day is going from bad to worse. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Movement first, the more satisfying, more successful component. Bauser’s set, with its sloping ceiling, cut-off-at-the-knees floor, silken walls and sparse furnishings, conspires with Ian William Galloway’s video designs, Helen Skiera’s soundscapes, Stefan Janik’s unnerving compositions and Simisola Majekodunmi’s all-important lighting to be disorientating for audience and Brazilian-English actor and movement practitioner Felipe Pacheco’s Gregor Samsa alike.
The Samsa house, or more precisely, Gregor’s room within it, is constantly, subtly, deceptively, on the move, as if a magician with dexterous sleight of hand is at work. The physicality of the stage in motion is as imvital here as human movement. Or insect movement, in the case of poor Gregor.
As a sidenote, the sense of a house on the move, of tectonic shifts, is more effectively portrayed than in Les Enfants Terribles’ Theatre Royal visit last month with The House With Chicken Legs.
Your reviewer recalls lighting last being used so strikingly, as a character in itself, in the Lyric Hammersmith’s Ghost Stories at the Grand Opera House in pre-Covid March 2020.
Here, in one extraordinary scene, as Pacheco’s Gregor swings on the wiring from the detached ceiling light, the light in his hand keeps switching on and off. Off, back on, and he has moved again. Again and again.
This is movement and meaning in perfect symmetry, with Pacheco as spry as a Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, but not comical, more like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.
What lies on the other side of the door? Hannah Sinclair Robinson’s Grete, left, Troy Glasgow’s Mr Samsa, Louise May Newberry’s Mrs Samsa and Joe Layton’s Chief Clerk fear the worst for the insect inside in Frantic Assembly’s Metamorphosis. Picture: Tristram Kenton
By comparison with the visual, the verbal is uneven, sometimes playful, other times earnest or abstract; sometimes snappy, other times, weighty and wordy in monologues for Troy Glasgow’s wastrel, hypocritical, hyper-critical Mr Samsa and his compliant wife (Louise Mai Newberry).
Shards of humour pierce the surrealist surface, but the overall tone is disquieting, discomfiting. For all the poetic verve and political vigour, momentum is lost, rather than gained, post-interval, when more interaction would have been beneficial (like in the scenes with Joe Layton’s Chief Clerk), rather than the fragmented, episodic structure of lone voices.
In the best decision, Gregor’s transformation to an insect is depicted not as an overnight sensation, but as a gradual consequence of his debilitating, repetitive daily routine as a clothing salesman, with all the pressures of being the sole breadwinner, That works wonderfully well across the first half, captured in Pacheco’s Groundhog Day grind, climaxing with Gregor encased in four chairs, looking not unlike a beetle for the only time.
Likewise, the metamorphosis of Gregor’s young sister, Hannah Sinclair Robinson’s Grete, takes on more prominence in Sissay’s account, wherein she hates the discipline of having to play the violin yet craves the spotlight. How very 21st century! Her face-pulling solo scene by the mirror is a stand-out, one that finds Sissay, Graham and Sinclair Robinson conveying character as one.
That scene is typical of a production with moments and ideas of theatrical brilliance rather than creative cohesion. Last autumn’s bar-room Othello was superior, but Frantic Assembly are always worth seeing, for those exciting highs, the visual fire storms, the brutal, yet beautiful physicality.
Performances: 7.30pm tonight and tomorrow; 2.30pm and 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Ian Thomson -Smith’s Macbeth and Sharon Nicholson-Skeggs’s Lady Macbeth in York Opera’s Macbeth
BY the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes to York Theatre Royal next week when York Opera stages Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth.
The 19th century Italian composer drew inspiration from Shakespeare several times with three of his greatest operas based on his work.
His first adaptation in 1847 was Macbeth, whose murderous plot offered him a wealth of opportunities, not least two controversial, anti-hero central characters and scope for chorus scenes involving witches (a full ladies’ chorus singing in three parts), courtiers, refugees and soldiers.
These components all made Macbeth a favourite choice for York Opera’s autumn production at York Theatre Royal. Sung in English, Verdi’s Macbeth stays true to the original play, complete with witches, ghosts, cut-throats and the political scheming of the Scottish court.
Ian Thomson-Smith’sMacbeth encounters the Three Witches, Anastasia Wilson, left, Kaye Twomlow and Hannah Cahill, in York Opera’s Macbeth
Central to the opera are the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, considered to be Verdi’s greatest baritone and dramatic soprano parts respectively. The infamous couple will be played by two of York Opera’s most experienced singers: Ian Thomson-Smith and Sharon Nicholson-Skeggs.
Supporting them in the other principal roles will be Adrian S Cook as Banquo; Hamish Brown, Macduff; Leon Waksberg, Malcolm; Noah Jackson, Fleance; Owen Williams, Ist Apparition; Victoria Beale, 2nd Apparition; Molly Raine, 3rd Apparition; Polina Bielova, Lady in Waiting; Steve Griffiths, Doctor, and Stephen Wilson, Cutthroat & Servant.
The stage director is John Soper, a long-established and accomplished member of York Opera, who has designed the sets too, now under construction by group members Wielding the baton in the pit will be Derek Chivers, a regular musical director for the company.
Macbeth will be performed at 7pm on October 18 and 20 and 4pm on October 21, with no performance on October 19. The running time will be three hours, including one interval. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Dr Hannah Thomas, special collections manager at the Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre, with Father Edward Oldcorne’s crucifix from the Hide & Seek: The Aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot exhibition, opening today. Picture: Frank Dwyer
AN historic crucifix, a Wolds art trail, 40th anniversaries at the quadruple and a York-made horror double bill promise a heap of interesting encounters for Charles Hutchinson and you alike.
Exhibition launch of the week:Hide & Seek: The Aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre, Blossom Street, York, today until November 16
THE only surviving item from thousands seized in raids on Catholic houses after the 1605 Gunpowder Plot goes on show in York. The late 16th/early 17th century crucifix belonged to Father Edward Oldcorne (1561-1606), who was hanged, drawn and quartered despite being innocent of involvement. His crime: he attended school in York with infamous plotter Guy Fawkes and committed the treasonous act of becoming a Catholic priest.
On display will be new research into the crucifix, more information on Oldcorne and the men he was caught alongside, and an exploration of how priest hiding holes were constructed within the fabric of buildings. Tickets: barconvent.co.uk.
Andy And The Oddsocks: Songs, slapstick and silliness from Andy Day, centre, and co at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Alex Lake
Children’s gig of the week: Andy And The Odd Socks, York Theatre Royal, today, 1pm
STRAIGHT off the telly and onto the live stage, Andy And The Odd Socks bring their madcap mix of songs, slapstick and silliness to life with a 70-minute show to entertain families of all ages.
Fronted by Andy Day, CBeebies regular and 2021 York Theatre Royal panto star as Dandini in Cinderella, their sock’n’roll makes for the ideal first concert for children. Andy And The Odd Socks are patrons for the Anti-Bullying Alliance, by the way. Tickets update: filling up fast; 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Michael Mears and Riko Nakazono in Essential Theatre’s The Mistake
Studio show of the week: Essential Theatre in The Mistake, York Theatre Royal Studio, tonight, 7.45pm
DIRECTED by Rosamunde Hutt, Michael Mears’s Spirit of the Fringe award-winning play explores the events surrounding the catastrophic ‘mistake’ that launched the nuclear age, followed by a post-show discussion.
1942. On a squash court in Chicago, a dazzling scientific experiment takes place, one that three years later will destroy a city and change the world forever. Two actors, one British (Mears), one Japanese (Riko Nakazono), enact the stories of a brilliant Hungarian scientist, a daring American pilot and a devoted Japanese daughter, in a fast-moving drama about the dangers that arise when humans dare to unlock the awesome power of nature. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Delta Saxophone Quartet: Playing Steve Martland and The Soft Machine works at York Late Music’s concert tonight
Season start of the week: York Late Music, Franko Bozak, 1pm; Delta Saxophone Quartet, 7.30pm, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, today
FRANKO Bozac showcases the reasons why the accordion should not be underestimated in his afternoon programme, featuring a collaboration between composer James Williamson and visual artist Romey T Brough.
Celebrating their own ruby anniversary, the Delta Saxophone Quartet mark York Late Music’s 40th year by performing Steve Martland, The Soft Machine and new works. Box office: latemusic.org or on the door.
Elijah Dsenis-Constantine, as Tony, and Rebecca Ulliott, as Maria, in Be Amazing Arts’ West Side Story at the JoRo
Musical of the week: Be Amazing Arts in West Side Story, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, today and tomorrow, 2.30pm and 7.30pm
MALTON company Be Amazing Arts present Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s musical transition of Shakesespeare’s Romeo And Juliet to modern-day New York City, where two young idealistic lovers find themselves caught between warring street gangs, the “American” Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks.
Arthur Laurents’s book remains as powerful, poignant and timely as ever, charting the lovers’ struggle to survive in a world of hate, violence and prejudice in this innovative, heart-wrenching landmark Broadway musical. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Ceramicist Gerry Grant: Taking part in Pocklington Area Open Studios 2023 at Venue 4, Fangfoss Pottery, with illustrator Sarah Relf
Art event of the weekend: Pocklington Area Open Studios 2023, today and tomorrow, 10am to 5pm
TAKING in Pocklington, villages with ten miles of the East Yorkshire market town, the Yorkshire Wolds and North Derwent Valley, Pocklington Area Open Studios 2023 features 28 artists in 14 venues.
This compact art trail features paintings, ceramics, textiles, jewellery and photography, with the chance to meet diverse painters and makers, many in their own studios, who will preview their latest works for sale, discuss their creative processes, potential commissions and upcoming workshops and courses.
Venue 1: Park Lane End Studio, Park Lane, Bishop Wilton: Colin Pollock, oils, acrylics and watercolour; Judith Pollock, printmaking and mixed media.
Venue 2: The Studio, The Old School, Skirpenbeck: Lesley Peatfield, fine art and abstract photography; Richard Gibson, sculptures.
Venue 3: Rocking Horse Studio, Rocking Horse Yard, Fangfoss: Shirley Davis Dew, painting; Sue Giles, textile art exploring Japanese Shibori techniques of dyeing; Richard Moore, handmade ceramic tiles.
Venue 4: Fangfoss Pottery, The Old School, Fangfoss,: Gerry Grant, ceramics; Sarah Relf, drawing and illustration.
Venue 5: I Woldview Road, Wilberfoss: Mo Burrows, jewellery; Bernadette Oliver, acrylic, ink and collage; Tori Foster, jewellery.
Venue 6: 4 Archibald Close, Pocklington: Peter Schoenecker, 2D and 3D art works.
Venue 7: 35 St Helens Road, Pocklington: Mary Burton, acrylics and pastels; Lee Steele, ceramics; Ingrid Barton, mixed media.
Venue 8: Newfold House Granary Studio, Newton upon Derwent: Chris Cullum, textile arts.
Venue 9: Tullyframe, Main Street, Barmby Moor: Penny De Corte, ceramic art; Avril Cheetham, jewellery.
Venue 11: Church Farm, Town Street, Hayton: Noreen Thorp, pastel, watercolour and mixed media, Lynda Heaton, watercolour and mixed media.
Venue 12: Hayton Studio, Manor Farm, Town Street, Hayton: Peter Edwards, mixed media; Harry Hodgson, mixed media.
Venue 13: Plum Tree Studio & House, Pocklington Lane, Huggate: Belinda Hazlerigg, paintings, printmaking, silk scarves and ceramics.
Venue 14: 3 Stable Court, Londesborough: Tony Wells, ceramics.
For the brochure, map and artist details, head to: pocklingtonareaopenstudios.co.uk/info.html.Free entry.
Hannah Sinclair Robinson’s Grete and a suspended Felipe Pacheco’s Gregor Samsa in Frantic Assembly’s Metamorphosis, on tour at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Touring play of the week: Frantic Assembly in Metamorphosis at York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinee
POET, author, broadcaster and speaker Lemn Sissay has adapted Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis for Frantic Assembly, visceral purveyors of theatre full of physicality, movement and emotional truths, who last toured Othello to York.
Gregor Samsa finds himself transformed from breadwinner into burden in this absurd and tragic story, wherein humans struggle within a system that crushes them under its heel in Kafka’s existential depiction of the limitations of the body and mind, imagination and aspiration. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Howard Jones: Songs old and new at York Barbican on Wednesday
Sing something synth-full: Howard Jones: Celebrating 40 Years 1983-2023, York Barbican, Wednesday, doors, 7pm
SINGER, songwriter and synth player Howard Jones, 68, is marking the 40th anniversary of his revolutionary debut single, New Song, performing in a five-piece with Kajagoogoo’s Nick Beggs on bass and Robert Boult on guitar. Expect a “sonic visual feast” of hits and fan favourites and a support spot from Blancmange.
“I think my ’80s’ work still resonates through the generations because of the positive message in the lyrics,” says Jones. “I’ve always believed that music can give the listener a boost, especially when things in life prove challenging. Things can only get better when we realise the power of our own actions and engagement.” Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Mike Scott: Leading The Waterboys for the seventh time since 2012 at York Barbican
More 40th anniversary celebrations: The Waterboys, York Barbican, Thursday, 7.30pm
MIKE Scott has made a habit of playing York Barbican, laying on his Scottish-founded folk, rock, soul and blues band’s “Big Music” in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018 and October 2021.
Since then, The Waterboys have released 15th studio album All Souls Hill in 2022; re-released 2000’s Rock In A Weary Land, 2003’s Universal Hall and 2007’s Book Of Lightning on vinyl; appeared on Sky Arts’ The Great Songwriters and announced a six-CD box set of This Is The Sea for early 2024. Joining Scott will be Memphis keyboard player “Brother” Paul Brown, British drummer Ralph Salmins and Irish bassman Aongus Ralston.
Level 42’s Living It Up tour date on Friday the 13th is unlucky for some – it has sold out – but tickets are still available for fellow Eighties’ combo The Waterboys at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The horror, the horror: Book Of Monsters and Zomblogalypse, made in York, screened in York on Friday the 13th
Spooky screening of the week: Book Of Monsters and Zomblogalypse, Spark: York, Piccadilly, York, Friday, 6pm to 11pm
YORK’S horror filmmaking community gathers this Friday The 13th for a special double screening of Dark Rift Horror’sBook Of Monsters and MilesTone Films’Zomblogalypse.
Both York-made indie films have enjoyed award-scooping film festival tours, with Dark Rift’s follow-up feature, How To Kill Monsters,now screening internationally.
Meet the filmmakers, cast and crew of each movie, including directors Stewart Sparke, Hannah Bungard, Miles Watts and Tony Hipwell and star Lyndsey Craine. Add in signings, photo opportunities with cast and props, and merchandise to buy, including both films on Blu-ray, official posters, art cards and other fun stuff. Box office: ticketpass.org/event/EGUKTC/dark-rift-double-bill. 18-plus only.
In Focus: How York composer James Williamson, artist Romey T Brough and Croatian accordionist Franko Bozac collaborated for Late Music premiere and Blossom Street Gallery exhibition
Croatian accordionist Franko Bozac: Premiering James Williamson’s Romey Collages at York Late Music today
YORK composer James Williamson’s composition, Romey Collages, will be premiered by accordionist Franko Bozac as part of the 2023 York Late Festival season today.
The work is a collaboration between James and artist Romey T Brough that emerged from him seeing her work at Blossom Street Gallery, Blossom Street, York.
Romey, who lived and worked in York for many years, now resides at her studio in the Hertfordshire countryside. Her latest collages will be on show at Kim Oldfield’s gallery until October 29 under the exhibition title of A Collaboration in Music and Colour
“It’s a really interesting exploration of the relationship between the audible and visual,” says Kim.
Croatian accordion virtuoso Franko Bozac will be making his Late Music debut at St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel this afternoon, when Romey Collages will be showcased.
York composer James Williamson delivering Romey T Brough’s collaborative collages to Blossom Street Gallery
Composer James Williamson says: “This set of five pieces is a direct response to a set of monoprint collages by Romey. I first came across her work in 2016 in Blossom Street Gallery, where one of Romey’s collages was displayed on the wall and it immediately caught my eye.
“The collage was a vibrant display of repeated strips of colours, each strip with its own character, yet similar to the one before and after; a kind of self-similarity.”
At the time, James was working towards his PhD in composition, which drew on minimalist visual art and a fascination with the Deleuzian idea of difference and repetition and how might this apply to composing.
“To cut a long story short, I contacted Romey through the gallery to learn more about her work. We immediately connected over a coffee and thought it would be a great idea to collaborate on a project,” says James.
“Romey then created a series of five collages that drew inspiration from music, with each work having a musical title: Chaconne, Aubade, Nocturne, Pastorale and Berceuse. I then responded to these works and created a set of five pieces, each one being a musical interpretation of the works and their titles.
Chaconne Midday, mono’collage, by Romey T Brough
“Like most of my recent work, I use one or two ideas in each piece. I flesh these ideas out using repetition of singular fragments or phrases, juxtaposed by other contrasting fragments, similarly to Romey’s collages.”
Around the same time, James was contacted by Franko Bozac to commission a new piece. “I thought it would be great to tie the two projects together. I have always loved the accordion for its sound and versatility, and rather fittingly, when the bellows open up, it reminds me of collages themselves.”
In turn, Romey recalls: “I had a phone call from Kim, when I was exhibiting my monoprint collages in Blossom Street Gallery, saying that a young composer was interested in meeting me as he composed music the way I created my collages.
“I was very intrigued, and we met up for coffee outside York Theatre Royal. I hadn’t heard any of James’s compositions but was amazed by how we both could understand each other’s creative processes, and when he suggested a collaboration I was delighted to agree.”
Artist Romey T Brough at work on her mono’collages
On the bus back to her York studio, she thought of moods of the day from dawn to night. “Early the next day I travelled to Monks Cross on a very misty morning and Aubade/Dawn came to me,” she says. “The rest followed on, culminating in Nocturne/Night, inspired by the view from my studio through an established beech hedge of car headlights flashing past.
“I have since then indulged in listening to James’s compositions and created more collages inspired by his work. It’s been an exciting collaboration for me, and I hope to continue creating music-inspired images.”
Describing her modus operandi, Romey says: “My monoprints are created by painting with acrylic paint onto glass; the image is then transferred to paper. The glass is wiped clean each time a print is taken, therefore each one is unique.
“The collages are a development following on from the photographic ones I occasionally create. I am fascinated by how reorganising strips of my monoprints can bring more intensity to the colours and evoke memories and emotions.”
Berceuse Twilght, mono’collage, by Romey T Brough
DrJames Williamson: the back story
STUDIED at University of Huddersfield and Royal Academy of Music, completing PhD in Composition at University of York.
His works have been performed by: Psappha; Aurora Orchestra; Hebrides Ensemble; London Sinfonietta; CoMA London; Croatian Philharmonic Orchestra; Lunar Saxophone Quartet; Delta Saxophone Quartet; Quatuor Diotima; Ligeti String Quartet; University of York Symphony Orchestra; RAM Symphony Orchestra; Kate Ledger (piano); Anna Snow (voice); Ian Pace (piano), Franko Bozac (accordion) and Stephen Altoft (19-division trumpet).
Broadcasts include BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction and Hear And Now, Beethoven FM (Chile) and Radio 3 Beograd.
Nocturne Night, mono’collage, by Romey T Brough
Romey T. Brough: the back story
STUDIED initially at Harrow Art School in Middlesex, north of London. Awarded various certificates including national Diploma in Design.
Studied overseas in Italy in Positano, winning a scholarship. Studied with Professor Spadini at Rome Academy.
Work exhibited regularly at Royal Academy, London, and is in archives of Tate Gallery, London, and galleries and collections throughout UK, Japan, Australia and United States of America.
Frantic Assembly in Metamorphosis: “A story about a family with a big secret locked in one of its rooms”. Picture: Tristram Kenton
WHEN actor, writer and director Fraser Ayres advised Frantic Assembly artistic director Scott Graham to consider staging a version of Franz Kafka’s novella Metamorphosis, his initial response was No.
“Why would I want to go anywhere near it? It comes with so much baggage and so much expectation,” he said. “Most people only know the opening to the story when you mention the title.”
That was in 2019, but roll on to 2023 to find Frantic Assembly touring London Olympic Games poet Lemn Sissay’s adaptation from September 11 to March 2 2024. Next stop York Theatre Royal, from October 10 to 14, following up on last October’s visit with an electrifying take on Shakespeare’s Othello.
Kafka’s 1915 novella tells the horror story of Gregor Samsa, a weary travelling salesman and sole breadwinner in his debt-ridden family, who wakes up one morning to find he has been turned into a giant beetle. Confined to his room, Gregor becomes reliant on the family that once relied on him.
Its influence has spread through popular culture from video games to the Rolling Stones’ cover for their 1975, Metamorphosis, where the band members’ facial features were replaced by bug heads.
The existential, absurdist story has inspired films, operas and theatre productions too, not least Steven Berkoff’s famed 1969 physical theatre show. “If you make theatre and attempt this story, there is a worry that you are always going to be in the shadow of Berkoff,” says Graham.
Frantic Assembly artistic director Scott Graham, left, and Metamorphosis script writer Lemn Sissay. Picture: Adi Detemo
Nevertheless, the possibility of Frantic Assembly staging Metamorphosis became an itch for Graham that had to be scratched, mulling over Ayres’s reading of Kafka’s tale as a powerful story not so much about transformation as the power of perception.
Cue his change of mind. “It’s a story written with such restraint, and it contains so much fear and cruelty. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was written over 100 years ago, but it feels so timely. So now,” says Graham.
“Rather than an absurd event where someone turns into a giant beetle, we look at it as a story of gradual change, to becoming less human, and that brings it up to date as a critique of the burden of debt and how everything is designed to never be able to get out of it,” he says.
Graham had found the key that would allow him to unlock the story and open it up to exposure afresh, duly teaming up with BAFTA-nominated poet, broadcaster and speaker Lemn Sissay for the first time.
“Initially I was looking for a playwright to adapt the novella, but then I had a moment of inspiration, suggesting Lemn should do it. He’s a renowned poet, not known for adaptations, though he did adapt Benjamin Zephaniah’s teenage novel Refugee Boy [in 2013],” he says.
“I thought we could do something more than a flat theatre interpretation that could really reinvent it, and Lemn’s very personal response to the novella, and its story of a family in debt, does that.”
Graham continues: “I don’t think of it necessarily as a blooming of Lemn as a playwright because we never talked about it as a play. The freedom was there to bring ideas to each other and then create this work for the stage. That means he was not encumbered by expectations of being a playwright.
“It’s poetic – he’s brought that out – and what’s brilliant about this production is that it is a play but it’s something more immediate than that. There was always a risk if I said, ‘can you adapt if for the stage?’, it would mean he would just go off and write a play.
“Lemn’s immediate reaction was ‘No’, but it was about creating the right environment for him, so it was never just about a writer writing a play, but what could I bring to it too with movement. It was never just about the writing, so Lemn could feel like he was held in a safe place where he could explore being a playwright without being crushed by expectation.”
Lemn’s script reimagines Kafka’s story as a psychological tale of a family under pressure, crushed by external economic forces to the point of crushing each other.
“Gregor is the breadwinner and the family are like parasites upon him,” says Graham. “But when he transforms, he is less valuable to them and becomes a burden and we see what happens.”
Sissay describes it as “a story about a family with a big secret locked in one of its rooms”. “The change that happens to Gregor exposes the flaws and fissures and insecurities that already exist in the family,” he says. “There are so many different tensions already in play long before Gregor wakes up as a bug.”
Comparing his Frantic Assembly collaboration to a piece of “intricate origami”, Sissay argues that everything in his script can be found in Kafka’s story. “It’s all there, I haven’t invented. I wouldn’t dream of trying to rewrite such a brilliant text,” he says.
Grete and Gregor in a scene from Frantic Assembly’s Metamorphosis. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Academics have long argued over whether Gregor’s metamorphosis is actual or metaphorical, but Graham suggests it can be both, particularly in the liminal space of the stage where the audience has a different relationship to the material than as a solo reader.
If you look very closely at the story, the clues are all there, and what happens to Gregor might be seen as a mental health crisis, says Graham. Long before Sissay began writing the script, Frantic Assembly, practitioners of physically dynamic and emotionally truthful shows, were exploring elements of the text already, particularly the fear and sense of the other or monstering that lies within it.
“I don’t think what happens to Gregor is a supernatural event. I think it’s a result of stress. The Samsa family are drowning in debt, a debt that has resulted because of the father’s bankruptcy. Like Gregor, the father has had a moment of transformation when he has gone from breadwinner to burden,” says Graham.
“Gregor is desperate to get the family out of debt and the confined life they lead. He is aspiring to something else, particularly for his sister Grete, who plays the violin and who he hopes can take it further.
“One of the elements of the story is about aspiration, and what people from different backgrounds can aspire to, and that feels really timely because of the articulation of the idea that people from backgrounds like Grete’s can’t play the violin or shouldn’t aspire to a career in the arts.”
Kafka’s Metamorphosis comes with an unforgettable opening sentence: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
Tension, ambiguity and confusion: the Samsa family under stress in Frantic Assembly’s Metamorphosis. Picture: Tristram Kenton
“It is complete genius,” says Graham, but he wonders whether it might be a red herring that immediately makes everyone think the novella’s title refers to Gregor alone.
Sissay agrees: “I think the metamorphosis that takes place is as much about Grete as it is about Gregor. She is the person in the story who experiences great change of many different kinds. She is in the process of becoming a woman. It’s all there in the text, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It is so clear.”
The pubescent Grete is the family member closest to Gregor, and while her parents recoil when he becomes a bug, she takes on the task of entering his room and bringing him food. “Feeding somebody is an extraordinary act of intimacy,” says Graham, who points to the tensions and ambiguities and confusions already present in Gregor and Grete’s relationship, as indeed there are within the whole family.
Ultimately those tensions will detonate in unexpected ways and with far-reaching consequences. “This is a story of a family under stress from without and within,” says Graham. “It looks like a normal family and operates like a normal family, but there are hidden weaknesses. When the cracks begin to appear, the structure cannot hold. It’s a tragedy.”
Frantic Assembly present Metamorphosis at York Theatre Royal, October 10 to 14, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
LEMN Sissay’s new poetry collection, Let The Light Pour In, was published by Canongate on September 21.
Cycling and recycling: Sustainable theatre at York Theatre Royal in A Play For The Living In A Time Of Extinction, starring Stephanie Hutchinson, centre. All pictures: James Drury
THE opening of this “bold experiment in eco theatre-making” coincided with the publication of the State Of Nature 2023 report into the UK’s biodiversity.
The headline news? One sixth of our species is under threat of extinction. Meanwhile, in the latest state of the nation report, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is turning the blue tide against green change: more oil fields, no 2030 deadline ojettisoning diesl and petrol cars. So much for leading the way at Cop26.
To top it all, a 16-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage in connection with the felling of the 300-year-old Sycamore Gap tree – the landmark one from Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves – at Hadrian’s Wall.
What a week to be staging the closing chapter of the groundbreaking zero-travel tour of American playwright Miranda Rose Hall’s “darkly humorous, life-affirming one-woman show” that confronts the world’s urgent ecological disaster.
It is billed as a “fiercely feminist off-grid production that is part ritual, part battle cry, in a moving exploration of what it means to be human in an era of man-made extinction”.
That tells only half the story because the concept behind the tour, mounted by Headlong and partners York Theatre Royal and the London Barbican, turns out to be more impactful than Hall’s 80-minute diatribe.
Since opening at the Barbican, the play has travelled with an original creative template by director Katie Mitchell and black-and-white design palette by Moi Tran, but neither materials, nor people have been sent to Coventry, Plymouth, Newcastle, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Prescot.
Stephanie Hutchinson: Playing a dramaturg forced into performing on stage in the absence of her company’s actors, then putting all her research into a plea for saving animals and humans from extinction
Instead, each venue has provided its own director and performer, in York’s case, Theatre Royal resident artist Mingyu Lin and Leeds actress Stephanie Hutchinson.
Stephanie delivers a monologue, but she is not alone on the boards. A sound engineer and lighting technician sit to either side and eight cyclists fill the stage, the whir of their steady, rhythmical, kinetic pedal power being turned into electricity for the sound and lighting by a mechanism to delight any scientists in the audience.
Recycling is as important as the cycling: only existing theatre stock – props and the microphone – can be used, along with clothing from charity shops; the bicycles being lent by Recycle York.
A typical main-house production uses 60,000 watts per performance for lighting, 10,000 for sound. A Play For The Living’s cyclists generated the necessary amount here; far, far less wattage in total.
All this is uplifting, and food for thought, a potential blueprint for eco-theatre touring, in the vein of Coldplay making their Music Of The Spheres world tour “as sustainable and low carbon as possible”.
All power to the sustainable concept, but Hall’s play is under-powered by comparison: bleak and apocalyptic, as to be expected in this age of the Sixth Extinction, but the “dark humour” is strained, with unnecessary swearing, and the doomsday scenario runs contrary to the claim of being life-affirming.
Apparently, the best we can seek is a “good death”, in a messianic finale that would not have been out of place delivered from a church pulpit, topped off by the York Theatre Royal Choir’s hymnal finale, delivered in funereal black, re-emphasising that message. Brecht & Weill would have loved it.
Saddling up to spark electricty: the cyclists from the cycling city of York doing their bit for “eco-theatre making”
Stephanie had talked in advance of being determined not to be preachy, but Hall’s tone ended up being exactly that. Rather than delivering a TED talk, “in a story like this, we need to care,” said Ming in her interview.
True, but we need to do more than care, amid so much dead talk. We need to act. Faced by footage of animal after animal facing extinction, it had the depressing, deadening air of futility. Not the intention surely, but where was the battle cry, the rallying call, rather than that hallelujah chorus of an incoming “good death”?
Lists can have an emotional impact – listen to Steve Earle’s mining disaster memorial It’s About Blood for proof – but the emotional elements of A Play For The Living are botched. The explanation of why Stephanie’s character, Zero Emissions Theatre Company dramaturg Naomi, is forced into being on stage for one night in an impromptu performance, after her fellow company founders are called away to a tragic emergency, is too around-the-houses.
We are here to care about extinction all around us, not a human accident. Likewise, we are not here to judge Naomi’s acting skills – or Stephanie being an actor playing someone who is not a natural actor, although she does just fine in that elaborately structured transition.
Later, Naomi talks of her dog disappearing, but again it is not the same as a creature’s extinction, so why include it here?
You will often hear that a play should not be expected to come up with answers, but what is the purpose of this one? To encourage more responsible behaviour through its sustainable touring model, definitely, but where was the positivity that mankind can and will work together to save the planet and its endangered inhabitants, from the Little Brown Bat to the Kingfisher? Its absence spoke volumes. Maybe we really are all doomed as Private Frazer forecast in Dad’s Army.
The end.
Performances: 2.30pm and 7.30pm tomorrow (30/9/2023). Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Pedal power: Cyclists at York Theatre Royal with the mechanism that turns their kinetic energy into electricity for the lighting and sound in A Play For The Living In A Time Of Extinction. Picture: James Drury
A PLAY For The Living In A Time Of Extinction is a darkly humorous, life-affirming one-woman show, written by American playwright Miranda Rose Hall and powered at each performance by cyclists.
Undertaking a “life-changing journey to confront the urgent ecological disaster unfolding around us”, this fiercely feminist off-grid production is part ritual, part battle cry in a moving exploration of what it means to be human in an era of man-made extinction.
Billed as a “bold experiment in eco theatre-making” on a groundbreaking zero-travel tour, Hall’s witty, ambitious 80-minute play has toured across the country under Headlong’s banner while the people and materials involved have not.
After London, Coventry, Plymouth, Newcastle, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Prescot,the last stop is York Theatre Royal, where resident artist Mingyu Lin follows up co-directing the 100-strong company in the Theatre Royal’s summer community production of Sovereign by directing a cast of only one, Leeds actress Stephanie Hutchinson, in the role of Naomi from tonight to Saturday.
Stephanie will not be alone, however. Not only will she be accompanied by the York Theatre Royal Choir, last heard in Sovereign at King’s Manor, but also by eight cyclists, pedalling on specially adapted bikes that will power the lighting and sound.
“What’s been done is to find a way to be both sustainable and tour,” says Ming. “The concept of the play never changes but the talent working on it changes at each venue. Cyclists are recruited at each venue to power the show. The only thing that’s moved physically is the technology which transforms kinetic energy into electricity – and that all comes in one big box.”
In keeping with York’s status as a cycling city, more than 50 people have applied to be volunteer cyclists, including community cast members from Sovereign, members of York Theatre Royal’s Access All Areas Youth Theatre strand and participants celebrating International Day of Older People. Consequently, a different set of cyclists will saddle up at each of the five performances, with a maximum of eight putting in a shift each show, by comparison with a maximum of four elsewhere.
Coinciding with the start of rehearsals, York Theatre Royal has begun an environmental campaign encouraging staff and community members to pledge to do better for the environment in a manner that they choose.
“We are definitely at a turning point,” says Stephanie Hutchinson, who plays Naomi in A Play For The Living In A Time Of Extinction at York Theatre Royal. Picture: James Drury
This includes an opportunity for all to share their pledges with the chance to be featured in the digital programme for A Play For The Living. Pledges can be made on social media with the hashtag #IPledgeWithYTR or through a display in the York Theatre Royal foyer.
Sharing learning from Europe and Katie Mitchell, director of a version of the play in Switzerland, Headlong’s innovative touring model is the first of its kind in Great Britain. The Barbican, in London, played host to the beginning of this journey, since when a blueprint of the show has been brought to life by a different team of theatre makers in each venue as part of an international experiment in reimagining theatre in a climate crisis.
“There’s been a little bit of serendipity for me to be directing the York leg,” says former University of York Eng. Lit student Ming. “When I was working on programming for Headlong, when I was still living in London, during the pandemic we were looking at plays to put on after Covid, and I came across A Play For The Living because it was on the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize shortlist, an international playwriting prize with UK funding,” she recalls.
“On the short list were five plays and we really wanted a play by a female writer with a strong theme. All at Headlong decided they liked this one, and we had a meeting on Zoom with the writer, Miranda Rose Hall, who was very, very passionate about the risk of extinction and climate change, and you can really feel that in the play.
“We got an email from Katie Mitchell, who’d directed a smaller-scale production with two cyclists, and we decided we wanted the ethos of the production to reflect the ethos and energy of the play by having more cyclists.”
Ming knew she would be moving to York Theatre Royal as resident artist by the time the tour was put in place. “One of the reasons I wanted to leave London is that I really want plays to come out of London, and I thought you could have local directors and actors for each tour venue, but also not spend loads of money on the set, with only the mechanism for converting pedal power into electricity and a LED neon flex lighting system going from venue to venue,” she says.
“Working from an original design and black-and-grey colour palette by Moi Tran, each theatre must provide the staging, the microphones, the bicycles and the cyclists, and the theatre is not allowed to use anything new. Everything has to be from the Theatre Royal’s existing stock or charity shops for costumes. The Recycle York shop is lending us the bikes.”
Reflecting on the tour’s zero-travel policy, Ming says: “It really makes you aware of the cost of touring theatre in terms of sustainability and the use of electricity in your artistic vision, but I think those challenges turn into opportunities. Too much freedom can make you lazy.”
Leeds actress Stephanie Hutchinson
Stephanie Hutchinson will be performing in a one-woman show for the first time. “The amount you have to learn is crazy,” she says. “I had to find a sense of what the play is about, and there’s a video by the writer, explaining the show and why she wanted to write it, that’s been really useful.
“I would say that rehearsals have been interesting and challenging but very positive and working with Ming has been nothing but positive. It’s a different experience because I’ve never done a monologue before, especially as it’s one this long and it’s just me speaking on stage.”
Stephanie’s character Naomi is “part of a theatre company that has made a play especially for you, those living through extinction, but the actors have not shown up yet. In the meantime, Naomi has a plan.”
“I keep thinking throughout, ‘I really want to get the audience thinking and talking about extinction’,” says Stephanie. “Naomi is asked if she’s read The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, a book by Elizabeth Kolbert [the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, university visiting fellow and environmental journalist for the New Yorker], because we’re going through the Sixth Extinction right now” …
…“We’re losing creatures at a quicker rate now than in the days of the dinosaurs,” points out Ming.
Hall’s play posits that “the difference between death and extinction is this: death is to cease to exist. Extinction is to extinguish. I think of death as individual. Extinction is collective”.
“We are definitely at a turning point,” says Stephanie. “Naomi is thinking, ‘we need to do something on this, a play, but she’s a dramaturg, not an actor, but when the actors who’d normally be doing it have an emergency, she has to go on stage. So it’s set up as a sort of improvised ‘gotta make a show’.”
Ming says: “It’s interesting for an actor to be playing someone who’s not an actor and wouldn’t normally be on stage, so that’s been fun.”
“It shouldn’t be preachy, and Naomi isn’t going to be preachy, but maybe provoke conversations,” says Stephanie. Picture: James Drury
Stephanie says: “I like how it’s educational, with Naomi learning as well as the audience, taking it in as if she’s learning it for the first time as she tells you all these facts.”
As Ming puts it, the playwright has created a story and character with emotional stakes at play, “not a TED talk”. “It stays engaging because there are parts that are so personal, so it to-and-fros between Naomi’s story and the wider story,” says Stephanie.
“In a story like this, you need to care,” says Ming. “The stakes must be there from almost the top of a play, and that’s something that really works with this play, where you get to care about it and you invest in the conceit of the dramaturg telling it.”
Stephanie adds: “I find it easier to express that in the moments when Naomi is feeling vulnerable, and you can definitely play with the emotion there.”
Last question: why should we see A Play For The Living in this time of extinction? “I don’t think a pedal-powered production on this scale has been done before, and a tour of this type has never been done,” says Ming.
“It’s definitely life affirming because, yes, ‘extinction’ is in the title, but so is ‘living’ and the sustenance of life is worth fighting for.”
For Stephanie, “it’s something new, something I’ve never come across before. It shouldn’t be preachy, and Naomi isn’t going to be preachy, but maybe provoke conversations,” she says. “She won’t have the answers, but we’re all going through this, and we must all go through it together.”
A Play For The Living In A Time Of Extinctionruns on pedal power at York Theatre Royal from tonight (27/9/2023) until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Tom Chambers’ Danny Sierra in Murder In The Dark. Picture: Pamela Raith
AFTER a five-and-a-half-hour slog from Norfolk that felt like one long detour, your reviewer took to his Upper Circle seat last night just in time to be greeted by the sound of a car. A cruel joke, but one in keeping with the tone of Torben Betts’s ghost story.
“It’s fair to say that Murder In The Dark is something of a departure for me as regards genre,” says Betts in his programme notes. “If I am known for anything as a playwright, it’s for dark comedies of social embarrassment with a bit of political commentary thrown in.”
What is Murder In The Dark? Despite its title, this is not a modern twist on an Agatha Christie whodunit, thereby offering an immediate contrast with Original Theatre’s last Theatre Royal visit with The Mirror Crack’d last October. An immediate contrast too for Susie Blake, swapping Miss Marple for farmer’s wife/religious zealot Mrs Bateman.
Betts’s challenge from Original Theatre artistic director Alastair Whatley was to “write something that would, hopefully, both disturb and entertain”. The result is still a dark comedy of social embarrassment, but with a bit of moralising about the price of fame thrown in, in a supernatural psychological thriller cum dysfunctional family drama.
Rather than clever twists and turns, in the sleight-of-hand manner of The Woman In Black, thudding bumps in the road are administered in the style of a horror movie with a relish for shlock humour.
Betts enjoys pulling the rug from under your presumptions from the off, even setting up a routine thriller opening where washed-up pop star Danny Sierra (Tom Chambers) and his young girlfriend Sarah (Laura White) are led into a dingy, creepy rural cottage by the strange, eerie Mrs Bateman and her scary dog (heard but never seen) after a car crash .
It is New Year’s Eve: the nearest shop is 20 miles away, but the hostile weather means they are cut off anyway; the electricity is on the blink; the television keeps sparking into life with Three Blind Mice; there is no wi-fi connection; the loo and the shower are in a shed outside.
Car crash? Rescued by a frankly weird woman? How very Kathy Bates and Misery. Susie Blake will go on to give this chameleon play’s most enjoyable performance as someone who knows more from the past than she is letting on.
Tom Chambers, by contrast, has to wade through the quagmire of playing the deeply unlovable but once adored Danny Sierra (real name Nigel Carmichael,before pop stardom came his way with Dance Party Five and their chart-topping Murder In The Dark).
Danny is a self-pitying alcoholic, and one by one, family members from the crash arrive at the cottage to paint the full picture, the day after his mother’s funeral. His more talented, songwriter brother William (Owen Oakeshott), discarded in pursuit of fame. His ex-wife Rebecca (Rebecca Charles), discarded (but he still loves her, he protests). His songwriter son Jake (Jonny Green), neglected, drifting, resentful.
In truth, they are all unappealing, not great company on stage, the general nastiness turning scenes rancid, but not aiding Betts’s pursuit of comedy, which keeps changing its tack too, briefly farce at the start of the second half, but more often clunky.
Did Jake and later Danny see a young woman in a ballerina dancer’s costume or were they imagining it? Not telling!
Perhaps this supernatural undercurrent prompted director Philip Franks to say “we’ll see whether my more adult theory – that horror often puts its finger on what worries us most as a society at any given time – will also hold true” in Betts’s play. Hence Betts’s moralistic tone.
Horror story, nightmare, fever dream, sometimes hammy comedy thriller, suffused with ugly family politics, Murder In The Dark never settles on one path, to the detriment of being as unsettling as it needs to be. What’s more, too clever by half in its trickery, it makes less sense the more the plot thickens but unravels as logic takes a hike.
Murder In The Dark? Left in the dark, more like. Definitely not a whodunit, it ultimately has you asking Betts, “whydunit?”.
Mark Simmonds, left, Martyn Hunter and Ian Giles rehearsing Pick Me Up Theatre’s And Then There Were None at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York
AND then there were ten as Charles Hutchinson picks his cultural highlights, from Christie mystery to prints aplenty, Wax words to science explosions, extinction fears to singers’ farewells.
Thriller of the week: Pick Me Up Theatre in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, running until September 30, 7.30pm (except tomorrow and Monday); 2.30pm, today, tomorrow and next Saturday
TEN strangers are summoned to a remote island. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they are unwilling to reveal and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder.
As the weather turns and the group is cut off from the mainland, the bloodbath begins and one by one they are brutally murdered in accordance with the lines of a sinister nursery rhyme in Agatha Christie’s murder mystery, directed for York company Pick Me Up Theatre by Andrew Isherwood, who will play retired Inspector William Blore too. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Michelle Hughes’s Kilburn White Horse, on show at York Printmakers Autumn Fair
Print deadline: York Printmakers Autumn Fair, York Cemetery Chapel and Harriet Room, today and tomorrow, 10am to 5pm
IN its sixth year, the York Printmakers Autumn Fair features work by 26 members exhibiting and selling hand-printed original prints, including Russell Hughes, Rachel Holborow, Michelle Hughes, Harriette Rymer and Jo Rodwell.
On display will be a variety of printmaking techniques, such as linocut, collagraphs, woodcut, screen printing, stencilling and etching. Artists will be on hand to discuss their working methods and to show the blocks, plates and tools they use.
Pulling a face: Comedian Phil Wang returns to York on his Wang In There, Baby! tour
Seriously silly: Phil Wang, Wang In There, Baby!, York Barbican, tonight, 7.30pm
AFTER his Netflix special, David Letterman appearance, role in Life & Beth with Amy Schumer and debut book Sidesplitter, PhilWang discusses race, family, nipples and everything else going on in his Philly little life in his latest stand-up show, Wang In There, Baby! Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Cinder Well: Songs of mystery at The Band Room, Low Mill. Picture: Georgia Zeavin
Gig of the week outside York: Cinder Well, The Band Room, Low Mill, Farndale, North York Moors, tonight, 7.30pm
CINDER Well, multi-instrumentalist Amelia Baker’s experimental American roots project, showcases her mysterious April 2023 album, Cadence.
The title refers to the cycles of our turbulent lives, to the uncertain tides that push us forward and back, as Cadence drifts between two far-flung seas: the hazy California coast where Baker grew up and the wind-torn swells of County Clare, western Ireland, that she has come to love. Box office: thebandroom.co.uk.
Ministry of Science Live: Lighting the flame for experiments in Science Saved The World at Grand Opera House, York
Explosive children’s show of the week: Ministry of Science Live in Science Saved The World, Grand Opera House, York, tomorrow, 12.30pm and 4pm
MINISTRY of Science take an anarchic approach to science communication, looking at the scientists, engineers and inventors who have shaped the modern world, while proving that each and every one of us has the ability to change our world for the better.
Expect 20ft liquid nitrogen clouds, exploding oxygen and hydrogen balloons, fire tornados, hydrogen bottle rockets, ignitedmethaneand even a self-built Hovercraft. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Confronting ecological disaster: Stephanie Hutchinson in A Play For The Living In A Time Of Extinction at York Theatre Royal. Picture: James Drury
Play of the week: A Play For The Living In A Time Of Extinction, York Theatre Royal, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee
DIRECTED for York Theatre Royal by Mingyu Lin, Miranda Rose Hall’s play heads out on a life-changing journey to confront the urgent ecological disaster unfolding around us. Part ritual, part battle cry, this “fiercely feminist off-grid” one-woman show offers a moving evaluation of what it means to be human in an era of man-made extinction.
Leeds actress Stephanie Hutchinson will be joined at each performance by eight cyclists, who will ride specially adapted bicycles to power the electricity required for lighting and sound. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Ruby Wax: A search to find meaning on a series of life-changing journeys
Waxing lyrical: Ruby Wax: I’m Not As Well As I Thought, York Alive festival, Grand Opera House, York, Thursday, 7.30pm
IN 2022, American-British actress, comedian, writer, television personality and mental health campaigner Ruby Wax, 70, began a search to find meaning, booking a series of potentially life-changing journeys. Even greater change marked her inner journey, as charted in her book I’m Not As Well As I Thought and now in her “rawest, darkest, funniest show yet”. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
The Manfreds: Last tour together for singers Paul Jones and Mike D’Abo on 60th anniversary itinerary
Nostalgia of the week…for the last time: Maximum Rhythm’n’Blues with The Manfreds, Grand Opera House, York, Friday
JOIN legendary pioneers of Sixties’ British rhythm & blues The Manfreds as they celebrate 60 years in the business. Vocalists Paul Jones, 81, and Mike D’Abo, 79, are touring together for the final time, alongside long-standing members Tom McGuinness, Rob Townsend, Marcus Cliffe and Simon Currie, to rejoice in Do Wah Diddy Diddy, If You Gotta Go, Go Now, Pretty Flamingo, My Name Is Jack and Mighty Quinn. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Daniel Martinez Flamenco Company: Three performances in one day at the NCEM
Dance at the treble: Daniel Martinez Flamenco Company, Art Of Believing Special Edition, National Centre for Early Music, York, October 1, 3.30pm, 6pm and 8.30pm
LAST at the NCEM in November 2022, the Daniel Martinez Flamenco Company returns to York for three performances in one day of Art Of Believing, a 90-minute show suffused with emotion, passion and grit.
Works from Martinez’s Herald Angel Award-winning production Art Of Believing will be complemented by previously unseen pieces performed by musicians, singers and dancer Gabriela Pouso. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Kenny Thomas: Rediscovered songs and big hits on the Him Tour 2024 at Grand Opera House, York
Looking ahead: Kenny Thomas, Him 2024 Tour, Grand Opera House, York, May 19 2024
ISLINGTON soul singer-songwriter Kenny Thomas will front his all-star band in York on his nine-leg British tour next spring, showcasing songs from his “lost” third album, the never-commercially-released Him, alongside his greatest hits.
“Over three decades on from when I first started out, this tour demonstrates that soul music is here to stay,” says Thomas, 55, whose Best Of compilation will be out on November 3. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
In Focus: Stephanie Hutchinson on starring in a one-woman show for the first time in A Play For The Living In A Time Of Extinction
Stephanie Hutchinson: Starring in one-woman, whole-world drama A Play For The Living In A Time Of Extinction at York Theatre Royal
STEPHANIE Hutchinson had never imagined she would do a one-woman show.
Come Wednesday, however, the Leeds actress will be giving her solo turn for five performances in “a bold experiment in eco theatre-making” and a “fiercely feminist off-grid production” at York Theatre Royal.
The title, A Play For The Living In A Time Of Extinction, is an indication that this Headlong, London Barbican and York Theatre Royal co-production will be unlike anything you have seen before.
Hands up anyone who has witnessed a stage production powered by bicycles. Only The HandleBards on their open-air Shakespeare travels come to mind.
Strictly speaking, Stephanie will not be on her own. Eight cyclists per performance will be pedalling away to power lights and microphones, while the York Theatre Royal Choir will be participating too.
After a Barbican run, Miranda Rose Hall’s play is on a zero-travel tour using an eco-friendly blueprint. The rest of the production, from local actor to cyclists, is provided by the theatre hosting the show, culminating in York next week.
“I don’t want the audience to feel they’re just being talked at,” says Stephanie. Picture: James Drury
Stephanie sees it as a co-operative production, not only a one-woman show. “I’ve not seen A Play For The Living but heard a lot about it,” she says.
Her character, a dramaturg called Naomi, pressed into impromptu service as an actress, is fearful of death but is determined to confront fears about an impending ecological disaster.
“What caught my eye was just how sustainable the production is,” she says. “Naomi is described as a woman in her 20s who is scared of dying. She’s already had to go on stage and act in front of people. She’s confronted that fear. Now she’s facing her fear of dying and wants to have a conversation about it.
“I like how interactive it is. It’s not just me, not just a verbal splurge. She wants to know what others are thinking. I don’t want the audience to feel they’re just being talked at.”
Despite the subject, A Play For The Living is not all gloom and doom, emphasies Stephanie. There are funny moments. Gloomy and funny is her hope for the experience.
Stephanie Hutchinson in Badapple Theatre’s production of Elephant Rock, part of the TakeOver festival at York Theatre Royal in May last year
“I don’t think it’s just a message play,” she says. “Naomi’s having a conversation, making the audience aware of what she’s found during her research. It’s also like an ode to the Earth as well because the Earth has given us so much but in return we’re not treating it back very well. It’s almost like she’s blessing the Earth and thanking it. But we do need to be careful – if we keep going the way we’re going, future generations might not have it.”
Stephanie was last seen on York Theatre Royal’s main stage in Green Hammerton company Badapple Theatre’s Elephant Rock during the TakeOver season in May 2022. Her other credits include Shake The City, based around the clothworkers’ strike in Leeds in 1970, staged at both Leeds Playhouse and Jermyn Street Theatre in London.
All this is something of a surprise for Stephanie who did not nurse acting ambitions from a young age. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I was a teenager. Then when I was 15, 16, I was going to theatre classes where you’d do singing, dancing, acting and I was like, ‘I quite actually like this – can I do it at uni or go to a drama school?’.
“So, at 18, I went to Salford University and graduated with a BA (Hons) Performing Arts. I’ve managed to carry it on, although I’m not quite sure how I’ve done that. My ambition is just to keep on going because I can’t really see myself doing anything else. Even in my day job, I do role play and that’s acting on the side. Acting is getting paid for doing what I love.
“I thought I would never do a one-person show. I am feeling very happy where I am at the moment. Very happy.”
Dawn French: Frank confessions of a comedian at York Barbican
FRENCH comedy, a very English murder thriller, state-of-the-nation politics and police procedures stir Charles Hutchinson into action for the week ahead.
Comedy gigs of the week: Dawn French Is A Huge Twat, York Barbican, tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm
HER show is so named because, unfortunately, it is horribly accurate, says self-mocking comedian and actress Dawn French. “There have been far too many times I have made stupid mistakes or misunderstood something vital or jumped the gun in a spectacular display of twattery,” she explains.
“I thought I might tell some of these buttock-clenching embarrassing stories to give the audience a peek behind the scenes of my work life.” Tickets update: Limited availability at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Tonight, meanwhile, Sarah Millican plays a Work In Progress gig at Pocklington Arts Centre at 8pm. Sold out already alas.
A scene from Original Theatre Company’s touring production of Torben Betts’s new play, Murder In The Dark, starring Tom Chambers and Susie Blake. Picture: Pamela Raith
Thriller of the week: Original Theatre Company in Murder In The Dark, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
TOM Chambers and Susie Blake star in Torben Betts’s new ghost story chiller cum psychological thriller, set on New Year’s Eve, when a crash on a deserted road brings washed-up singer Danny Sierra and his dysfunctional family to an isolated holiday cottage in rural England.
From the moment they arrive, inexplicable events begin to occur…and then the lights go out, whereupon deeply buried secrets come to light. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Robin Simpson: Pantomime dame and storyteller, bringing Magic, Monsters and Mayhem to York tomorrow afternoon. Picture: Joel Rowbottom
Children’s show of the week: Magic, Monsters and Mayhem with Robin Simpson, Bluebird Bakery, Acomb Road, Acomb, tomorrow, 4.30pm
YORK Theatre Royal pantomime dame Robin Simpson – he will be playing Dame Trott in Jack And The Beanstalk this winter – switches to storyteller mode to journey back to magic school on Sunday afternoon.
He will be telling stories of wonderful creatures, exciting adventures and “more magic than you can wave a wand” as he places the audience in charge of an interactive show ideal for Harry Potter fans. Suitable for Key Stage 2, but smaller siblings are welcome too, along with Potter-potty grown-ups. Box office: bluebirdbakery.co.uk.
Hannah Baker, left, Harvey Badger, Eddie Ahrens and Rachel Hammond in Mikron Theatre’s A Force To Be Reckoned With. Picture: Anthony Robling
Police spotted operating in the vicinity: Mikron Theatre in A Force To Be Reckoned With, Clements Hall, Nunthorpe Road, York, tomorrow, 4pm
IN Amanda Whittington’s new play for Marsden travelling players Mikron Theatre, fresh from police training school, WPC Iris Armstrong is ready for whatever the mean streets of a 1950s’ northern market town can throw at her.
Joining forces with fellow WPC Ruby Weston, they make an unlikely partnership, a two-woman department, called to any case involving women and children, from troublesome teens to fraudulent fortune tellers. Box office: 07974 867301 or 01904 466086, or in person from Pextons, Bishopthorpe Road, York.
Kathryn Williams and Polly Paulusma: Songwriters at the double at Pocklington Arts Centre
Songwriting bond of the week: Kathryn Williams & Polly Paulusma: The Big Sky Tour, Pocklington Arts Centre, Tuesday, 8pm
AS label buddies on One Little Independent Records, Kathryn Williams and Polly Paulusma met on a song-writing retreat. They wrote songs together and tutored courses at Arvon Foundation and as their friendship developed and strengthened, they supported each other over lockdown.
It seemed a foregone conclusion that they would tour together at some point. Finally, those Thelma and Louise dreams – hopefully without the killing or the cliff finale – come true on a month-long itinerary, playing solo sets and uniting for a few songs. Box office: pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Mike Skinner: The Streets’ composer-turned-filmmaker discusses his debut film in Q&A appearances at Everyman Leeds and Everyman York
Streets ahead: Mike Skinner’s film The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light and Q&A, Everyman Leeds, September 21, 8pm; Everyman York, September 25, 7pm
THE Streets’ Mike Skinner presents his debut feature film, the “neo-noir” clubland thriller The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light, in an exclusive Q&A tour to Everyman cinemas.
Birmingham multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Skinner funded, wrote, directed, filmed, edited and scored his cinematic account of the seemingly mundane life of a DJ whose journey through London’s nightclubs turns into a tripped-out modern-day murder mystery. Each screening will be followed by a live question-and-answer session with Skinner, giving an insight into the music and story behind the film. Box office: thestreets.co.uk.
Mark Thomas: Comedian stars in Ed Edwards’s one-man play England And Son at York Theatre Royal Studio
Political drama of the week: Mark Thomas in England And Son, York Theatre Royal Studio, September 22, 7.45pm; September 23, 2pm and 7.45pm
POLITICAL comedian Mark Thomas stars in this one-man play, set when The Great Devouring comes home: the first he has performed not written by the polemicist himself but by playwright Ed Edwards.
Edinburgh Fringe award winner England And Son has emerged from characters Thomas knew in his childhood and from Edwards’s lived experience in jail. Promising deep, dark laughs and deep, dark love, Thomas undertakes a kaleidoscopic odyssey where disaster capitalism, Thatcherite politics and stolen wealth merge into the simple tale of a working-class boy who just wants his dad to smile at him. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Rowntree Park, by Jo Rodwell, one of 26 printmakers taking part in the York Printmakers Autumn Fair
Print deadline: York Printmakers Autumn Fair, York Cemetery Chapel and Harriet Room, September 23 and 24, 10am to 5pm
IN its sixth year, the York Printmakers Autumn Fair features work by 26 members, exhibiting and selling hand-printed original prints, including Russell Hughes, Rachel Holborow, Michelle Hughes, Harriette Rymer and Jo Rodwell.
On display will be a variety of printmaking techniques, such as linocut, collagraphs, woodcut, screen printing, stencilling and etching. Artists will be on hand to discuss their working methods and to show the blocks, plates and tools they use.
Sir Alan Ayckbourn: The truth will out when he takes to the SJT stage tomorrow afternoon. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
In Focus:Theatre event of the week: Alan Ayckbourn’s Truth Will Out, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, tomorrow, 2.30pm
IN a rare stage appearance, Sir Alan Ayckbourn plays Jim in a rehearsed reading of his Covic-crocked 2020 SJT premiere Truth Will Out, joined by John Branwell, Frances Marshall and the cast of his 89th play, Constant Companions.
Truth Will Out is an up-to-the-minute satire on family, relationships, politics and the state of the nation, wherein everyone has secrets. Certainly former shop steward George, his right-wing MP daughter Janet, investigative journalist Peggy and senior civil servant Sefton do.
Enter a tech-savvy, chippy teenager with a mind of his own and time on his hands to bring their worlds tumbling down, and maybe everyone else’s along with them, in Ayckbourn’s own “virus” storyline, written before Coronavirus stopped play.
“It’s ‘the one that got away’, with most of the cast in place, and we even did a season launch,” says Sir Alan. “The play was one of my ‘What ifs’: what if a teenager invented a virus that brought the whole thing down. A ‘virus’ play, like Covid, with the virus escaping and the play ending in the dark, waiting till dawn.”
Racism, trade unionism and infidelity all play their part in Truth Will Out too. “It’s a melting pot of wrongdoings,” says Sir Alan. Tickets update: limited availability on 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Tom Chambers’ troubled pop star Danny Sierra in a scene from Murder In The Dark. Picture: Pamela Raith
TORBEN Betts first made his mark at a North Yorkshire theatre when Alan Ayckbourn talent-spotted the fledgling playwright and gave him a residency at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1999.
That year, the Scarborough theatre presented the premiere of his debut play, A Listening Heaven. Now, Betts’s new thriller, the ghost story Murder In The Dark, is heading to York Theatre Royal from September 19 to 23 on Original Theatre Company’s tour, directed by Philip Franks.
“Horror films have been my guilty pleasure since I was a morbid child,” says Philip, who was at the helm of Original Theatre’s touring production of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d at the Theatre Royal last October too.
“Now is the time to find out whether many years’ worth of jump scares and terrible nightmares can be put to good use. We’ll also see whether my more adult theory – that horror often puts its finger on what worries us most as a society at any given time – will also hold true.”
Betts’s setting is a modern-day New Year’s Eve, when a car crash on a lonely road brings famous but troubled singer Danny Sierra and his extended family to an isolated holiday cottage in rural England. From the moment they arrive, a sequence of inexplicable events begins to occur…and then the lights go out!
Susie Blake, Miss Marple in last year’s visit, will play farmer’s wife Mrs Bateman alongside 2008 Strictly Come Dancing champion, Top Hat leading man and Holby City, Waterloo Road and Father Brown star Tom Chambers as Danny, Rebecca Charles as Rebecca, Jonny Green as Jake, Owen Oakeshott as William and Laura White as Sarah.
Tom Chambers: “One of these flattering moments,” he says, of Torben Betts writing the role of Danny Sierra expressly for him
When the Covid19 pandemic shut down his tour in Dial M For Murder overnight, Tom appeared in Original Theatre’s remotely recorded lockdown film of Torben Betts’s Apollo 13: The Dark Side Of The Moon and subsequently in Original Theatre artistic director Alastair Whatley’s online piece Into The Night.
“About a year later, out of the blue I got a text from Alastair saying he’d commissioned Torben to write a ghost story with me in mind for the lead role,” he recalls. “It was one of those flattering moments you dream of!”
Ten pages arrived, then the full draft, and now here Tom is, two weeks into the tour. “The Dark Side Of The Moon was only 50 minutes. This [rather longer] new play has been really fascinating but also extremely challenging because Torben has written it like machine gunfire, firing off in all directions, so you think ‘who’s line is it next?’!”
Working on the play in rehearsals and now in its early weeks on stage, 46-year-old Tom says: “It’s one of those pieces where, as we’ve gone along, we’ve all thought on our feet, with none of us quite sure at first what it was.
“With its dysfunctional family at odds in a psychological thriller, I knew it was an emotional piece, with all the humour in there too, but you don’t know what you’re dealing with, because it is scary, funny and emotional at the same time, and so you’re not sure how the audience will take it!
“On stage, it’s become more like a dark comedy, and it’s been really interesting listening to the audience reactions and realising they’re laughing from very early on. But there are really scary moments too and a couple of twists that we’re asking people not to give away afterwards.”
Learning his lines has found Tom thinking: “Torben is like Marmite! I sort of love him and hate him at the same time. His script is very interesting, very exciting and an absolute pig to learn.
Tom Chambers, seated, shares a lighthearted moment with director Philip Franks in the rehearsal room for Torben Betts’s thriller Murder In The Dark. Picture: Pamela Raith
“I haven’t talked to him about the part, though he did sit quietly in the corner at rehearsals on a few occasions, typing away, but not interfering. Torben has allowed Philip to shave, trim and manipulate the script, letting the production grow under his directorship.”
In turn, “Philip is one of the best directors I’ve worked with, always very patient” says Tom. “He’s an actor as well as a director, and so he really lets you play with it at first, and then he very carefully re-shapes it, inspiring you with his ideas. He’s like a wonderful conductor working with an orchestra, a fantastic maestro.”
Tom describes his lead role, Danny Sierra, as a “washed-up pop star from 20 years ago”. “To play his character, to be aware of his body language, I approach him as someone who’s been in the limelight, which I’ve experienced: the shiny bits, the pitfalls, the facades, the truth and reality of how jaded he is,” he says.
“I just try to make him human. Like all of us, he tries to justify the reasons things have happened in his life. He’s made mistakes, but he does have a heart, he’s not soulless, not completely selfish.”
Danny has headed to the isolated cottage for a family funeral and must communicate with his brother for the first time in years. “Everything unravels in this old farm cottage, which is like a deserted island with very few creature comforts. That initially turns the play into a comedy, but then it becomes twisted, warped, deranged and strange, so it’s very intriguing!” says Tom.
As for the ghost story…wait and see.
Original Theatre Company in Murder In The Dark, York Theatre Royal, September 19 to 23, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Age guidance: 14+.
“Torben’s script is very interesting, very exciting and an absolute pig to learn,” says lead actor Tom Chambers. Picture: Pamela Raith
