Jamie Smelt’s Recruiting Officer, Paula Lane’s Phoebe Throssel, Aron Julius’s Captain Valentine Brown and Alex Moran’s Ensign Blades in Northern Broadsides’ Quality Street
EVERYONE has a favourite Quality Street – purple, green…orange, not so keen – but there is only one Quality Street play to bite into.
Nevertheless, Northern Broadsides artistic director Laurie Sansom gives it a new wrapper, “stirring in a good helping of Yorkshire wit” from the retired workers of Halifax’s Mackintosh factory, makers of Quality Street.
And so a work from Toffee Town heads to Chocolate City this week, much later than first planned. Sansom’s Broadsides debut had to be put back in the sweetie cupboard after only four weeks when Covid put a red line through theatre shows in March 2020.
This spring he picks up the mantle with plenty of new flavours in the cast, only two of the originals still making the selection for the revived co-production with Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre.
Here is the history bit. Quality Street is a “delicious Regency rom-com” from the 1901 pen of J M Barrie, pre-dating the better known Peter Pan but a huge hit on Broadway in its own right.
Come 1936, Mackintosh’s management hit on the idea of assembling beautifully wrapped toffees, chocolates and sweets in a tin encased in a picture of Quality Street’s principal characters, Phoebe Throssel and Captain Valentine Brown.
Cue Sansom’s idea to weave verbatim recollections from the Quality Street factory floor into Barrie’s play, the red-hatted workers serving as a Greek chorus cum collective narrator, passing comment on the play’s unfolding dramas, recalling their working days and their own romances, and reflecting on how courting has changed.
The to-and-fro format takes a while to settle, not least because the ‘Mack’ workforce open the play with their fourth wall-breaking gossip and nostalgia. They are never more than convivial commentators by comparison with the fateful scene-setting of the Witches in the thunder and lightning prologue to Macbeth and their subsequent encounters with the murderous Macbeth .
Something sweet and nutty this way comes as Barrie introduces his Regency romp with Paula Lane (once Kylie Platt in a different cobbled street, of the Coronation soap variety) in the role of Phoebe Throssel, a woman scandalised by having allowed Captain Valentine Brown (Aron Julius) to kiss her on the cheek. Ten years ago.
Aron Julius’s Captain Valentine Brown and Paula Lane’s Phoebe Throssel in Quality Street: Picture: Andrew Billington
Ten years when he has been away fighting Napoleon, while Phoebe and sister Susan (Louisa-May Parker) have had to make a living, running a school for unruly children. They look exhausted, enervated, contemplating the prospect of having to add algebra to the curriculum without any enthusiasm. Understandable caution, you might say, in spite of PM Rishi Sunak’s enthusiasm for adding more Maths to the curriculum.
At this juncture, aside from Gilly Tompkins’ blunt-speaking maid Patty, more humour has been mined from the factory workers’ chatter than Barrie’s story, as supporting cast members switch between tea-break comment and rom-com roles. But once Julius’s Captain reacts so negatively to the older-looking Phoebe, still only 30, the play finds its sweet spot.
For a lavish ball, Phoebe transforms herself into lively, vivacious, flirty, flighty Miss Livvy, her “niece”, an alter-ego that will soon require her to be in two places at once in one of comedy’s favourite devices, from Shakespeare comedies of mistaken identity to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest, chaotic Mischief capers to myriad pantomimes.
Not before Jessica Worrall’s witty design has served up the gorgeous spectacle of all the ladies in Quality Street wrapper dresses, Miss Livvy in the most popular purple, of course.
Not only Captain Brown is smitten, so too are Jamie Smelt’s Recruiting Sergeant and Alex Moran’s Ensign Blades as the comedy picks up pace and impact. Cross-dressing Jelani D’Aguilar’s Fanny Willoughby adds to the fun, and Parker’s Susan, forced to play a straight bat to keep Phoebe/Livvy one step ahead, personifies resourceful understatement.
At first you may wonder – as your reviewer did when watching a performance at Leeds Playhouse – why Quality Street made Barrie a fortune, but as should always be the case, the second half is better than the first, In particular in the all-important frank discussions between Phoebe and Captain Brown, where Barrie’s writing, suddenly more serious, goes to the heart of a woman’s woes, mistreatment and frustrations.
From the brief appearances of puppets to Ben Wright’s choreography for the ball, the design’s colour palette and the cast’s colourful northern vowels to Sansom’s beautifully judged direction, Quality Street ends up being a tin of purple and green ones.
Lane’s performance, especially when she has to have a filling of Phoebe within a chocolate coating of Miss Livvy, is top Quality too.
Northern Broadsides and New Vic Theatre present Quality Street at York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Also: Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, May 25 to 27; Hull Truck Theatre, May 31 to June 3; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, June 6 to 10; Victoria Theatre, Halifax, July 4 to 7. Box office: Sheffield, 0114 249 6000or sheffieldtheatres.co.uk; Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com; Halifax,01422 351158 or victoriatheatre.co.uk.
Jamie Smelt’s Recruiting Sergeant, Paula Lane’s Phoebe Throssel, Aron Julius’s Captain Valentine Brown and Alex Moran’s Ensign Blades in Northern Broadsides’ romp through J M Barrie’s Regency rom-com Quality Street at York Theatre Royal
LOOKING to make a list of every brilliant thing you could do? Here are Charles Hutchinson’s suggestions for the week ahead.
Play of the week: Northern Broadsides in Quality Street, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm, plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
NORTHERN Broadsides, from Halifax, the home of Quality Street chocs, heads to the chocolate city of York with this delicious J M Barrie farce, whose lead characters featured on the first tin to take the Regency rom-com’s title in 1936.
Artistic director Laurie Sansom stirs a good helping of Yorkshire wit from retired workers at the Halifax factory into Barrie’s story of determined heroine Phoebe Throssel, who runs a school for unruly children, and Captain Valentine, who needs teaching a lesson in love. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The poster for Lisa Cortés’s documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything, showing at City Screen Picturehouse
Film event of the week: Little Richard: I Am Everything, City Screen Picturehouse, York, Tuesday, 8pm
DIRECTOR Lisa Cortés’s documentary tells the story of “the black queer origins of rock’n’roll, exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman”.
Delving into Little Richard’s complicated inner world, with its switchbacks and contradictions and service to both God and music, Cortés conducts interviews with family, musicians and scholars to reveals how he created an art form for ultimate self-expression, and yet what he gave to the world he was never able to give to himself. Box office: picturehouses.com.
Park life: Alan Park enlists for performing list-making solo show Every Brilliant Thing, Shared Space’s debut production
List of the week: Shared Space presents Every Brilliant Thing, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
THEATRE@41 chair Alan Park swaps off-stage duties for on when appearing in Every Brilliant Thing, an hour-long show built around a list that spans a lifetime spent trying to prove life is beautiful, written by Duncan Macmillan with input from Jonny Donahoe.
Based on both true and untrue stories, this play about depression and the lengths we go to for those we love is staged by new York theatre company Shared Space, directed by Maggie Smales. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Morgan Wade: Making her York Barbican debut on Thursday
Country gig of the week: Morgan Wade, Crossing State Lines (And Oceans!) Acoustic Tour, York Barbican, Thursday, 8pm
MORGAN Wade, the 28-year-old country singer from Floyd, Virginia, plays York on the back of her “once-in-a-decade debut”, 2021’s Reckless, first released through Thirty Tigers and later picked up by Sony Music Nashville.
Wade wrote or co-wrote a song cycle that addressed the reality facing teens and 20-somethings, embracing raw desire, the reality of getting high and getting sober and the realm of crawling through the wreckage, with tough vulnerability and hurt in her voice. Kat Hasty supports. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk (limited availability).
Jamie Stapleton’s Cap’n Billy Bones, left, Jack McAdam’s Dirk, Lee Gemmell’s Long John Silver and Paul Toy’s Doctor Livesey in Baron Productions’ Treasure Island
Adventure of the week: Baron Productions in Treasure Island, St Mary’s Church, Bishophill Junior, York, Thursday to Saturday, 7.30pm
YORK company Baron Productions stages Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 coming-of-age adventure story of buccaneers and buried gold, wherein 12-year-old Jim Hawkins finds a treasure map that belonged to the pirate Captain Flint. On board the Hispaniola, he and his friends Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey duly set off to a faraway island.
Daniel Wilmot’s thoroughly dashing cast includes Lee Gemmell’s Long John Silver, Paul Toy’s Doctor Livesey, Ellie Guffick’s Dick Johnson, Jamie Stapleton’s Cap’n Billy Bones, Molly Barton-Howe’s Morgan and Jack McAdam’s Dirk. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk/baron-productions.
The agony and the Ecstasy: Octopus Dream in I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die at York Theatre Royal Studio
Studio show of the week: Octopus Dream in I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die, York Theatre Royal Studio, Friday, 7.45pm, and Saturday, 4pm and 7.45pm
MARK Wheeller’s fast-moving, emotionally charged play tells the true story of the tragic death of Dan, a cool, creative and talented South London schoolboy, who took a lethal dose of Ecstasy at an illegal rave.
At 16, he had plans, plenty of them, but losing his life was not one of them. Directed by Elliot Montgomery, Cobie Scott-Ward, Amy Zoldan, Alex Colley and Sean Radford use Dan’s own words to describe the choices he made and the impact on his family and friends in a journey from tragedy to redemption. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Nicholas Wright: Violin soloist at York Guildhall Orchestra concert at York Barbican
Classical concert of the week: York Guildhall Orchestra, Bernstein, Korngold & Rachmaninoff, York Barbican, May 20, 7.30pm
VIOLINIST Nicholas Wright heads back to York from his Vancouver home to play Hollywood film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D with the York Guildhall Orchestra.
Conducted by Simon Wright, the orchestra’s final concert of the 2022-2023 season also features Bernstein’s Overture to Candide and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No 2, written nine years after his first. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Sarabeth Tucek: Re-emerging as SBT at STH, as in Selby Town Hall
Long-awaited return of the week: Sarabeth Tucek, Selby Town Hall, May 20, 8pm
AMERICAN singer-songwriter Sarabeth Tucek has re-emerged from a decade in hibernation – or more precisely “concentrating on other creative endeavours” – with a May 19 double album, Joan Of All, and a new moniker, SBT, her long-time nickname.
On her first British itinerary since 2011, she will be joined by her band for 18 dates. Support slots go to Kiran Leonard and dbh. Box office: 01757 708449 or selbytownhall.co.uk.
In Focus: Ben Fogle: Wild, York Barbican, May 19, 7pm and Harrogate Royal Hall, May 21, 7.30pm
Ben Fogle: Helping to find “the ocean of possibility” in his Wild show
BROADCASTER and adventurer Ben Fogle’s latest walk on the wild side is a 22-date tour full of hair-raising and uplifting stories from a life of amazing encounters.
Taking in Yorkshire trips to York and Harrogate next week, the Animal Park, Lost Worlds and New Lives In The Wild presenter will be sharing stories of hope, possibility and positivity and offering tips on “finding your ocean of possibility”.
Lessons learned from a career that has taken the 49-year-old Londoner to some of the most extreme locations in the world, whether filming for documentaries or tackling some of mankind’s greatest physical challenges.
A former Reservist in the Royal Navy, Ben embarked on the BBC’s ground-breaking Castaway series in 2000, when 36 adventurous souls ditched the rat race for a year-long social experiment, marooned on the remote Scottish island of Taransay in the Outer Hebrides.
“I think it’s all luck, but you make a bit of that yourself,” he says, reflecting on the past 23 years. “I have always loved travel, nature, the outdoors – that’s why I did Castaway. But it was a much more intense experience than anything I could have had under normal circumstances.
“I get asked about Castaway a lot and will be talking about it on the tour, as it’s a big part of me and relative to so much of what I do and have done.”
“Y2K” was “a definitive time”, Ben says. “It was pre-mobile phones, social media didn’t exist, so many things were very, very different. Now things have changed so profoundly, it would be difficult to go back to that innocence and simplicity.
“A [television] channel might try it again one day but no one has replicated it so far. Partly due to the fact nothing like it existed at that time, and people went for very pure and innocent reasons. The landscape has changed, people go on TV now for fame and fortune and that naturally changes the dynamic.
“Heading off to spend a year on an island with a load of strangers gave me a real grounding and a foundation of what it takes to make a simple, off-grid life.”
Those foundations allowed Ben to build his career and stood him in perfect stead for his many varied TV projects. Perhaps none more so than the 12 years of global travel for New Lives In The Wild, wherein he meets people living extreme, off-grid lives in a world now dominated by ease of communication and all too often dictated by being on-grid.
“Castaway definitely gave me the qualifications to be able to do a series like New Lives – to spend time with people living their whole life the way I did for 12 months,” he says. “I have a better understanding of the trials and tribulations, the highs and lows, the benefits and sacrifices they make.
“The more people I have spent time with over 12 years of making that show, the more I understand what goes into making a sustainable, off-grid life like that. A lot of these people are quite reserved, not anti-social necessarily, but they perhaps don’t enjoy being round other people. But as I have experienced it, they can open up with me – there’s almost a mutual respect between us.”
Ben’s experience of meeting those who live in some of the world’s most diverse environments forms the basis of his Wild tour as he takes audiences on a journey to relive inspiring and uplifting tales he has encountered on his travels to the wilderness of northern Sweden, the jungles of Honduras, the hostility of Chernobyl and the mountains of Nepal.
Having previously filmed in Chernobyl, when he met those who returned to live there as it continues to recover from the 1986 nuclear disaster, Ben made a private visit in September after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Early in the conflict, Russian armed forces seized the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – and soldiers were later reported to have radiation poisoning following their operations in the highly contaminated area.
More than a year after the invasion, he does not foresee the conflict ending soon. “I fear this is in for the long run, decades and decades of unrest in that part of the world,” he says. “I can’t see a quick resolution unfortunately.
“It’s another thing the tour will look at: the effects that war and disaster can have on places, not just the landscape but the people too. It seems harsh to say, but war is part of what happens in a world where seven billion people live. It’s another way that man destroys the environment around us, but can also provide examples of how a place can bounce back.”
Ben’s love of the great outdoors reaches back to his own childhood, where his time was divided between rural Dorset and central London, complemented by extended school holiday trips to the Canadian wilderness to visit his paternal grandparents.
Could he ever step fully out of modern life and would he take his family, wife Marina and children Ludo and Iona, along for the adventure?
“I’m incredibly lucky that I get to straddle two worlds, being in the urban world with all it offers, then going off to the wilderness – and that gives me perspective, which is so important in life,” he says.
“There’s definitely something about that kind of life that appeals to me, but not right now. Ludo and Iona are 14 and 12 this year and are very much involved in urban living.
“They are very well travelled. They have spent time in the jungle, in remote islands, wood cabins, the Norwegian wilderness. But then they go to school and are very much engaged with ‘normal’ society, and love researching on computers, having pizza or going to the cinema.”
Ben’s family lives outside London now. “That helps,” he says. “We ride horses, go wild swimming, long dog walks. But it’s balance; I want them to be street savvy as well as being able in bush craft skills. I want my children to be able to wire a plug and start a fire, to make a bed and to put up a tent. They’re all skills for life and don’t need to be exclusive.
“It’s one of the biggest lessons I think I’ve learnt from meeting hundreds of people all over the world – that too many people follow a prescription for life and don’t think about how you can change that.
“Yes, on one hand I live a prescriptive life with two children, a couple of dogs, paying taxes, being very much part of society. But on the other hand, I have a pretty alternative life, spending the majority of the year away from home because of what I do for a living.
“People ask why I’m not living in a cabin in the woods, but there are sacrifices to make for that life – and I love those great cultural events, arts, cinema, books, so what I have realised is that the search for a perfect balance is what is more important.
“My life is not something everyone could have, not everyone could do it. But I hope that after joining me on the Wild tour, people will consider what kind of things they can do in their own life, the small changes to make to find that balance.”
“Too many people follow a prescription for life and don’t think about how you can change that,” says Ben Fogle
Ben Fogle: the back story
FORMER Royal Navy Reservist Ben appeared on the BBC series Castaway in 2000, marooned on an island in the Outer Hebrides for a year.
He has since presented Animal Park, Countryfile, Wild In Africa, Wild On The West Coast, Crufts, One Man And His Dog, Country Tracks Extreme Dreams, A Year Of Adventures, Storm City, Harbour Lives, Countrywise, Trawlermen’s Lives and New Lives In The Wild.
Hehas made documentaries on Prince William in Africa, disease in Ethiopia, Captain Scott in Antarctica and crocodiles in Botswana.
He has travelled extensively in South and Central America and has toured the world for various broadcasting assignments to more than 200 places including Tristan Da Cunha, Pitcairn, St Helena, East Timor, Nepal, Namibia, Kenya, the Arctic Circle, Zambia, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, Libya, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Tahiti, Maldives, Tanzania and Morocco.
He has worked as a special correspondent for NBC News and has published more than 15 books, including The Teatime Islands, Offshore, The Crossing, Race To The Pole, The Accidental Adventurer, The Accidental Naturalist, Labrador, Land Rover and English.
He has run the Marathon Des Sables, swum from Alcatraz to San Francisco, and is a keen sailor, marathon runner, boxer and cyclist.
Ben married Marina in 2006 after meeting her in the park while walking their dogs, Inca and Maggi. They have two children, Ludo and Iona.
For Wild tickets: York, yorkbarbican.co.uk; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk.
The elephant in the room: Around The World In 80 Days at Hull Truck Theatre
REVIEW: Hull Truck Theatre/Theatre By The Lake, Hull Truck Theatre, until May 20 ***
AROUND The World In 80 Days is a race against time, a race that involves cramming in so much that ironically Laura Eason’s play runs the risk of feeling like it is taking too long.
Such a challenge faces both American writer Eason and director Hal Chambers, although designer Louie Whitemore definitely has the right idea in utilising a revolving stage to build the sensation of constant movement.
Whitemore’s basic set is bare: a set of the imagination on which anything can happen, anything can arrive: an elephant, a sledge, a train, a trading vessel, even a circus to start the second half.
Naomi Oppenheim’s puppetry, Jess Williams’s movement direction and Claire Llewellyn’s fight direction all add to the visual spectacle in a production rooted in physical theatre and dextrous feats as much as symbols of English Victoriana and colonialism.
French novelist Jules Verne’s story finds eccentric Victorian English gent Phileas Fogg (Stefan Adegbola) placing a wager with his stuffy Reform Club cronies that he can traverse the globe in 80 days. His entire fortune is at risk.
Adegbola’s immaculate, precise, tea-drinking, unflappable but not-always scrupulous Fogg takes on his challenge with the help, sometimes hindrance, of French valet Passepartout ( a clowning, Chaplinesque little tramp of a comic turn from Miriam O’Brien).
On his trail and on his tail is Dyfrig Morris’s Inspector Fix, who has convinced himself Fogg is a thief and will go to the ends of the world to prove it. He plays the buffooning fall guy in comic tradition.
As Fogg races from Italy to India, skips ship in Hong Kong and heads into dustbowl America, into the story are woven Tricia Adele-Turner’s Captain Speedy, Purvi Parmar’s Captain Blossom, Nicholas Prasad’s Mr Naidu and Niall Ransome’s scene-stealing, all-American Colonel Stamp Proctor when Chambers’ production hits its stride in the more inventive, more thrilling second half.
The danger rises and suddenly romance is in the air. Saba Shiraz’s Mrs Aouda, joining the protective Fogg from India onwards, has the measure of the Englishman, challenging him in a discussion on Britain’s colonial acquisitions, not least because Adegbola’s Fogg carries himself with an air of arrogant assumption of superiority.
Amid the chaotic humour, the playful music, the crazy commotions reminiscent of a Mischief caper, and the celebration of Britain’s age of invention, that more serious note gives Eason’s script a topical resonance.
Gilly Tompkins’ Patty, left, and Paula Lane’s Phoebe in Quality Street, on tour at York Theatre Royal next week
QUALITY Street, Laurie Sansom’s “sweet and slightly nutty confection” of a debut production as Northern Broadsides’ artistic director, had to be put back on the shelf after only four weeks in 2020. Covid and all that. “Heartbreaking,” he said.
Definitely not past its sell-by debut, the Halifax company’s co-production with Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre is being revived this spring with only two of the original cast members, playing York Theatre Royal from next Tuesday.
Among the seven newcomers is Gilly Tompkins, a face familiar to Northern Broadsides and Yorkshire audiences at large, who is delighted to renew acquaintances with Sansom after the “very strange experience of ‘audition by Zoom’, not knowing how many people were watching”!
“I was in Ayckbourn’s farce Absurd Person Singular – the one set in three kitchens – in Laurie’s first production at the Watford Palace Theatre: his first job after leaving Cambridge University,” she recalls. “That was in September 1997. He’s 51 now, I’m 59, and he’s always a delight to work with.
“He’s very playful in the rehearsal room, really up for a laugh, like starting a rehearsal with a game. He’s so intelligent, always enthusiastic and loves the job of directing.”
Quality Street is billed as a “delicious Regency rom-com” from the writer of Peter Pan (first staged in 1904 and transformed into the novel Peter And Wendy in 1911).
Premiered at the Knickerbocker Theater on Broadway, New York, on November 11 1901, it made J M Barrie a millionaire, says Gilly. “To think he hadn’t even written Peter Pan at that point, it’s just an amazing success story, and it was so popular that that’s how the Quality Street boxes and tins of chocolates came about in 1936,” she notes.
Gilly Tompkins’ Patty in a scene from Northern Broadsides and the New Vic Theatre’s tour of J M Barrie’s Quality Street
“Because the play was so successful, the Mackintosh confectioners in Halifax thought, what if we put all the favourite chocolates, toffees and sweets in colourful wrappings in a tin with a scene from the play on the tin?”
That scene featured central characters Phoebe Throssel and Captain Valentine Brown from Barrie’s drama. Phoebe (played by Paula Lane, latterly Kylie Platt in a different street, Coronation Street) and her sisterSarah run a school for unruly children on Quality Street. Ten years after a tearful goodbye, her old flame returns from fighting Napoleon, but the look of disappointment on Captain Brown’s face when he greets an older, less glamorous Phoebe spurs the determined heroine to action.
She duly becomes the wild and sparkling Miss Livvy, a younger alter-ego who soon beguiles the clueless Captain.
Gilly plays Patty, the maid to the Throssel sisters. “She’s so rude, so belligerent, though she loves Phoebe really” she says. “But she’s no respecter of status. She’s even ruder than they are!”
Sansom’s version “stirs in a good helping of Yorkshire wit from the retired workers of Halifax’s Quality Street factory”. Among them is Barbara, Gilly’s second character. “She was one of the women Laurie interviewed about their factory life and their thoughts on love, along with women from the Knit and Natter groups in Calderdale, and I’m going to meet her when we play Halifax,” she says, looking forward to their encounter during the July 4 to 7 run at the Victoria Theatre. “Barbara is such a sweet lady. I can’t wait.
“They’re like Shakespeare’s ‘Rude Mechanicals’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, commenting on what they’re watching and sharing their memories of the factory, which feature as verbatim monologues in the show.
“The second half opens with me as Barbara, giving out sweets and doing her monologue, and I’m allowed to improvise while the actors stay in character around me doing a Regency dance.
Quality Street: Regency rom-com bound for York Theatre Royal
“One night in Stoke [Newcastle-under-Lyme, to be precise], the music wouldn’t start, so I kept improvising because, if you give out sweets, people will talk! All the actors left the stage, and I ended up doing ten minutes on my own with people calling out, ‘hey, Barbara, can I have a sweet?’!”
Ironically, Gilly had been “a bit scared in rehearsals about doing a monologue and handing out sweets, but I’ve loved it and so have the audiences,” she says.
“We keep coming on to pass comment and the audience soon gets used to it. At one point, you’ll see two of the former factory workers peel off their factory costumes to become characters in the play.”
Gilly describes her participation in Quality Street” as “blink and you miss it”. “But I took it on because we’ve been in lockdown and I thought, ‘I might never work again, let’s do it’,” she says.
“It’s been my ‘social tour’, a chance to see friends around Yorkshire, and to work with Laurie and Northern Broadsides again. It’s been so brave of Laurie to take up Barrie Rutter’s mantle as artistic director and to completely reinvent Broadsides.”
One final question, Gilly. Which is your favourite Quality Street chocolate? “It’s the one that when I give out sweets, 90 times out of 100, people say they want: the purple one, because you’ve got that beautiful colour for the wrapping, the chocolate, and then that nut in the middle,” she says.
“But it must be the most people I’ve ever worked with that like the orange and strawberry ones. Not for me! Quality Street is like Marmite that way!”
Northern Broadsides and New Vic Theatre present Quality Street at York Theatre Royal, May 16 to 20, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Also: Leeds Playhouse, all this week, until Saturday; Hull Truck Theatre, May 31 to June 3; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, June 6 to 10. Box office: Leeds, 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk; Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Not always seeing eye to eye: Nuno Queimado’s May and Emma Thornett’s Fly in one version of Gus Gowland’s Mayflies at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Sam Taylor
OH, the app-hazard nature of modern love under Covid’s black cloud.
You shadow box tenderly, tentatively, expectantly, for two years online after dating app initiations, then finally meet for one fateful night in a seaside hotel, shedding skins as much as clothes, a knockout blow that turns the morning after into the mourning after. The chatter, then the shatter.
All this mirrors gone-in-24-hours life of the mayfly (the insect here making an appearance on the cover of May’s jigsaw, Mayfly On River, Germany).
What a brief breath of life in flight, after up to two years spent twiddling thumbs and knotting scarves in gestation underwater, only to crash and burn on impact.
York Theatre Royal artist-in-residence Gus Gowland’s musical world premiere has followed a similar path of anticipation. Already an award winner for Pieces Of String (Mercury Theatre, Colchester, 2018), he had tantalised York audiences with five-minute showcase contributions to Love Bites in 2021 and Green Shoots in 2022, and now the wait is over.
Be assured, Mayflies will not die after one day (or three if you choose to see all three configurations of Tania Azevedo’s flexible casting). An afterlife is deserved by Gowland’s concept, book and songs alike.
Gowland eschews burdening his putative lovers with defined gender, race, sexual orientation or age, further extending its potential shelf life.
For +Juliet director Azevedo’s premiere, two from three will perform in any show. It could be Nuno Queimado’s May with Emma Thornett’s Fly; Rumi Sutton’s Fly with Queimado’s May or Sutton’s May in a gay coupling with Thornett’s Fly. Clear so far?
Raising a glass: Rumi Sutton’s May and Emma Thornett’s Fly in a second configuration of Mayflies. Picture: Sam Taylor
It is not essential to see all three combinations, but the potential of both Gowland’s book and in particular his songs are better revealed the more pairings you meet, rather than only one match of the day. Both the idealistic Fly’s restless urges in Looking Back and realist May’s pile of relationship debris in Running On Empty will fly, whoever sings them. Queimado’s account of that heartrending ballad is especially affecting.
As much as the mayfly is Gowland’s motif for a love affair’s arc from joy to sorrow, matched by the mayfly hanging lamps’ choreographed movements in TK Hay’s design, equally significant is May’s love of jigsaw puzzles, one of the quirky revelations that builds a picture of a character.
The audience is invited to piece the jigsaw together, not without a picture, but with the extra challenge of Gowland detailing the relationship in both flashbacks and flashforwards.
As with jigsaw pieces, some scenes have jagged edges, others are rounded, and gradually the full picture emerges before the pieces are put back in the box for reassembling in different hands (as the magician’s flourish of a finale portends).
Just as the casting presents differing versions of the coupling, so Gowland highlights how we present differing versions of ourselves depending on the circumstances. Which is the truthful version: the one played out online, at a distance, or in the compression, the intensity, the heat of the moment, in that hotel hothouse?
Does May not want children, as is revealed at the hotel, or want them, as had been indicated in passing conversation online? Preferences on custard creams or shortbread, pizza consumption and more besides provoke doubts on what may have been said and whether it matters whose recollection is right.
Where goofy awkwardness has never blighted them behind the online shield, once May and Fly are together, in that room, wondering what to do next – whether and when to make a move, watch TV, eat a biscuit, order pizza – the sheer ordinariness of it all has the tea cup stain of familiarity that elicits both humour from cringy own goals and vulnerable deeper emotions in Gowland’s dialogue as he walks the tightrope between warm-hearted romcom and angsty kitchen-sink drama.
The best speech – and the longest – goes to Fly, an epistle to love, to connection, to being a “defining feature in someone else’s story”, that signals the death knell to May and Fly and has you thinking, not for the first time, “Shut up, please shut up, you’re blowing this”, but also recognising the truths within the compulsive behaviour.
The juddering rhythms of the staccato scenes, a fusillade of snapshots that go to the heart, are countered by beautiful, choreographed scene changes where May and Fly entwine, flit flirtatiously or throw a prop from one to the other as if living their best life.
In the heat of the long-awaited moment: Nuno Queimado’s May and Rumi Sutton’s Fly in the third pairing of Mayflies. Picture: Sam Taylor
The songs, closer to Sondheim and Willy Russell than Lloyd Webber, contain wit, authorial wisdom and sometimes withering truths, ranging in content from conversational to confessionally dramatic, from playful, wishful or jousting duets to hopeful or wistful internal monologues.
Gowland doesn’t write OTT chart bangers, but consistently his storytelling songs – intelligent, incisive, funny or poignant – have an impact. Tellingly, Queimado, Sutton and Thornett find full expression in their nuances.
Azevedo’s direction is both musical and lyrical, orchestrating scenes as much as directing them, complemented by musical director’s Joseph Church’s lean, clean arrangements for his piano and Joel Benedict’s guitar.
This intricate but never ornate production is full of work of the highest standard, not only from the performances that can switch from charming to charmless, funny to foot in mouth, thoughtful to thoughtless in both characters, but also in Chris Whybrow’s sound designs and David Howe’s lighting, in turn transforming from warm to chill to match the ever-changing moods.
T K Hay’s breath-taking set design for Nick Payne’s multiverse in Constellations last November at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre whetted the appetite for his creativity for Mayflies. The profusion of ever-moving mayfly lamps delights, while he cleverly wraps a standard-fare hotel room inside multi-levelled building blocks, with a staircase leading to a balcony/kitchenette above.
This enhances the contrast between their online ‘connectivity’ in separate spaces – using the Theatre Royal stage to the full – and the sudden sardine-tin claustrophobia of the hotel.
Previously Gowland played with time, setting Pieces Of String simultaneously in the 1940s and present day (just as Alan Ayckbourn did in The Girl Next Door in 2021). Now he joins Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years and University of York alumnus Payne’s Constellations in giving differing perspectives on the path and fragile nature of love, the greater truths emerging from the writer rather than his players on life’s stage. How wonderful if Mayflies could match their success.
What’s more, just as Fly says there is a difference between running and knowing when to leave, so Gowland judges his running time spot on at 90 minutes of longing, loss and love in its all ridiculous yet enriching madness.
Mayflies, York Theatre Royal, tonight, 7.30pm (Emma & Rumi); Thursday, 2pm (Nuno & Emma) and 7.30pm (Rumi & Nuno); Friday, 7.30pm (Emma & Rumi); Saturday, 2.30pm (Nuno & Emma) and 7.30pm (Rumi & Nuno). Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
Mayflies composer, lyricist and writer Gus Gowland, seated, with cast members Emma Thornett, left, Rumi Sutton and Nuno Queimado
Paul Burbridge: Artistic director of Riding Lights Theatre Company for more than 40 years
A SERVICE of thanksgiving and celebration for the life of Riding Lights Theatre Company artistic director Paul Burbridge (1953-2023) will be held at St Michael le Belfrey, High Petergate, York, on June 10 at 2pm. All are welcome.
Paul, who ran the Christian theatre company and Friargate Theatre artistic programme in Lower Friargate, York, died on April 19 after a short illness.
A statement from the board and staff on the Riding Lights website reads: “Paul, along with Nigel Forde and Murray Watts, founded Riding Lights in 1977, and led the company for over 40 years with unwavering vision and extraordinary creativity.
“His commitment to the company and to all who encountered it in any way was inspiring and infectious, as were his kindness, warmth and humour.
“He was an encourager, guide, mentor and friend to many, whose faith and faithfulness to God flowed into the lives of others. Riding Lights was his life’s work, his calling, and a source of deep joy to him.
“We know that this will come as a great shock and sadness to many, and that you may wish to be in touch with the company. Any messages can be sent to info@rltc.org , and we will do our best to respond in due course.”
The statement concludes: “There will be an opportunity to make donations to Riding Lights in memory of Paul, in order to continue the work he loved. In the meantime, we value your prayers of thanksgiving for Paul’s life, for all of us at Riding Lights, and most of all for Bernadette [Paul’s wife], Patrick, Caitlin and Erin, that they may be comforted and surrounded by the love of God.”
Here CharlesHutchPress reflects on Paul Burbridge’s contribution to York’s theatre world with Damian Cruden, artistic director of York Theatre Royal from 1997 to 2019.
“WHEN I started, we met up, and right from the word go, Paul was one of those people who was always very welcoming and very easy to have a conversation with and always very constructive too,” remembers Damian, now CEO and artistic director of Alnwick Playhouse in Northumberland.
“The first major piece we did together was the Riding Lights/Theatre Royal collaboration on African Snow [Murray Watts’s play about slave ship captain John Newton, of Amazing Grace fame], directed by Paul in 2007. We then did Three Men In A Boat, directed by Paul at the Theatre Royal in April 2008.”
Paul had first adapted Jerome K Jerome’s late-Victorian tale of a trip up the Thames 18 years earlier for Riding Lights, reuniting with his original designer, Sean Cavanagh, for his Theatre Royal version of Jerome’s riparian mishaps and ineptitudes.
A community production of Anthony Minghella’s Two Planks And A Passion, co-directed by Paul and Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster in the round at the Theatre Royal in July 2011, was to be the precursor to the zenith of the Theatre Royal and Riding Lights creative partnership: the 2012 York Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens.
“Paul was just very easy to work with because he always gave space,” says Damian, his co-director for that unforgettable open-air production. “He didn’t have an ego about himself. Instead, his artistic ego connected with the work of the community that he inspired. Above all, he was just really good fun to be with.
“For years, around the time of the opening of the panto, we cooked a Christmas dinner in two sittings, one for the panto cast in the afternoon and then everyone else from the two companies in the evening, with the executives of the Theatre Royal and Riding Lights doing all the cooking.
“Afterwards, Paul would usually arrange a cabaret of some sort, with music and Paul doing some sketches as he was very amusing. Very Pythonesque, with a real sense of the absurdity of the world.”
Damian recalls how Paul’s faith was his bedrock. “We talked about it in depth when we were doing the Mystery Plays together; Paul as someone of faith, me as someone not of faith, wondering whether that would be difficult, and what it would mean in terms of creating the work, which I saw primarily as a big story, but for him it had a very different resonance,” he says.
“It was very important to have that mix, people who have faith, people who were agnostic, with me and Mike [writer Mike Kenny] as non-believers, Paul and Sean (designer Sean Cavanagh) as believers. It never got in the way at all. It was always very much about focusing on the telling of the story, and I think that faith was an important aspect in how we discussed it.
“I don’t think the production would have been as meaningful without that balance. The community cast that told that story was of a similar diversity of belief and non-belief, who discovered respect for each other’s position, and that was testament to Paul’s ability as an artist and leader to be magnanimous, to allow space, to be so highly inspirational in that way.
“He always wore his faith lightly but with an incredible depth of belief. I would say his faith was unshakeable, and his perception of the world found him working with faith groups in Palestine, stretching across faiths and the barriers that had been created.”
Paul was instrumental in Riding Lights establishing its headquarters in Lower Friargate in May 2000, taking over the 19th century building that previously had housed the Friargate Wax Museum until its closure in 1996.
Aptly, the opening production in the 100-seat studio theatre was Ben Jonson’s satire, The Alchemist, Paul having converted the base metals of a redundant museum into the universal elixir of theatrical gold.
“He was a very good leader, very intelligent, very knowledgeable, very talented,” says Damian. “He wasn’t self-obsessed and always knew why he was doing what he was.
“Riding Lights has been very successful in terms of its shows but also in terms of fulfilling its purpose. It’s a really important venue in York with a really strong commitment to youth theatre and a very clear sense of the community around it, which all theatres need to have.
“While its mission revolves around faith, you don’t feel like you’re going to have a religious diatribe when you go to a show. In many ways, Paul’s work has been superbly humanist, focusing on humanity. Very grounded, very connected.”
Reflecting further on Pauls’ leadership prowess, Damian says: “He would be one of the first people to say Riding Lights wasn’t just about him. He chose people around him that were good at what they did and that let Riding Lights become a potent organisation.”
Assessing Paul’s legacy, Damian starts by saying: “If you just think about the number of people who got up and strutted their stuff because Paul made it possible: whether through the youth theatre, summer projects, presenting work by community theatre companies and welcoming touring performers, on top of putting on all those Riding Lights productions.
“He made all that possible within York, and I can’t imagine how many people he’s influenced. All those people who started out at Riding Lights, it’s a huge list, all inspired by Paul and what the company stands for.”
Looking at Paul’s wider legacy, Damian says. “I hope that York continues to be a place that is absolutely engaged in presenting work that is there for the community and the creativity of that community, and that it remains something that is valued and given proper support.
“In a way, that’s the thing that would most upset Paul: if community creativity were left to wither on the vine. Community theatre, and the broad spectrum it covers, requires constant nurturing: the way Paul did it.
“He was a theatre gardener, knowing how to make sure the garden of theatre could survive in straitened time and be rich and productive in good times.”
God bless you, Paul, and thank you, guiding light of Riding Lights and Friargate Theatre.
Entwined: Rumi Sutton’s May and Emma Thornett’s Fly in a scene from Gus Gowland’s musical Mayflies, in rehearsal at the Central Methodist Church, York. Picture: Sam Taylor
THE world premiere of York Theatre Royal resident artist Gus Gowland’s new musical, Mayflies, opens tomorrow with a cast of Nuno Queimado, Rumi Sutton and Emma Thornett.
Except that you will not see all three of them on stage that night (28/4/2023), nor indeed at any performance in the run until May 13.
To explain, Mayflies tells the story of a romantic relationship between May and Fly, who match up on a dating app and begin a tentative conversation, whereupon their romance grows into something real. Then they meet.
Same story each show, but Gowland uses a rotating cast whereby any performance could feature a configuration of Nuno (May), Emma (Fly) or Rumi (“the super-talented one” because she can play either May or Fly).
“Come on three nights and you will see all three configurations,” advises director Tania Azevedo, a specialist in bringing new musicals to the stage, with credits for the award-winning But I’m a Cheerleader (Turbine Theatre) and as resident director for & Juliet in the West End.
Nuno Queimado’s May and Emma Thornett’s Fly in a touching moment in Mayflies. Picture: Sam Taylor
“Gus has specifically written what to our knowledge is the only musical able to be played by anyone of any age, gender, sexuality or race. May and Fly don’t come from anywhere specific; they have no identity whatsoever, which feels really special because it’s such a joy to watch, whether it’s Nuno and Rumi, Rumi and Emma or Nuno and Emma: we’re making a show that is universal. You get to experience the bravery to fall in love, whether you’re straight, gay, young or old.”
Composer, lyricist and writer Gowland, director Azevedo and musical director Joseph Church ran a full week of auditions, seeing more than 300 actors. “There had to be some decisions made at the beginning,” says Tania. “We could have had just two actors but settled on three, which allows us to really show how flexible the script is.
“Within that, we wanted to select people from different backgrounds and with differing vocal qualities, not just your average musical theatre performers. We also needed playful actors, able to cope with changes, as this show will be as fresh as it can be, with the latest re-write finished only a few weeks ago.
“They need to be playful to discover the juice within it. It will always have their imprint on it, stretching the concept as far as possible.”
Portuguese-born Nuno, who played the alternate Alexander Hamilton in the West End run of Hamilton, says: “Gus hasn’t written specifically drawn characters but doesn’t shy away from very specific themes, but the device he uses to change the configurations is what’s so special. That’s the juice that sets it apart from other shows.
“Then they meet”: Nuno Queimado’s May and Rumi Sutton’s Fly in Mayflies. Picture: Sam Taylor
“What’s great in the rehearsal period is being able to carve out the characters in 3D, finding out what’s different in each of our characterisations.”
To aid that journey, mood boards have been steadily filled with ideas and notes in the rehearsal room at the Central Methodist Church in St Saviouragte.
Tania rejoins: “What’s been really interesting is how generous they’ve been to each other, truly working as an ensemble with a collective understanding of the story while searching for the differing nuances of each pairing, so we’re developing the individuality of each character. Even with the same blocking, each pairing will feel really different.”
Emma, whose credits include War Horse, says: “To get that distinction between the different combinations, Tania has allowed us to develop why my Fly is different from Rumi’s.
“Having two people playing the same character at different performances brings a different dynamic to each scene, which will end up with it feeling like it’s a different show.
Director Tania Azevedo and musical director Joseph Church overseeing a rehearsal for Mayflies. Picture: Sam Taylor
“This is so rare in musical theatre because it usually has a prescribed time and place and specific type of acting, with freedom being somewhat restricted, but here it’s unique for allowing the true actor’s craft to be infused into the songs.”
Nuno says: “Tania, as the director, will go back to what’s important to squeeze as much juice as we can from each scene, whether we have to be busy or relaxed or open to being vulnerable, but always sticking to what the scene needs. Keep asking what each character needs: that way it doesn’t ever let the oven of creativity get cold.”
Another dimension to the show is representing the world of online dating. “What’s fascinating is that for a third of the play they can’t see each other as they’re connecting through online dating, which has had such an impact, especially since the pandemic when it was the only way to connect and find a new partner,” says Tania.
“No longer do people meet in a bar if you’re looking for love now. Chances are they will meet online. It’s interesting to see how the relationships changes when they’re in the same room [at an hotel], reading texts, talking on the phone or voice noting…”
…”And whether they react and how they react or not, in each situation,” says Rumi, who is making her York Theatre Royal debut after appearing in Hex and Heathers The Musical.
Mayflies composer, lyricist and writer Gus Gowland, seated, with York Theatre Royal cast members Emma Thornett, left, Rumi Sutton and Nuno Queimado
“The impact on when they’re in the room together face to face is pretty extreme,” says Tania.
To add another ingredient, Mayflies does not plough the straight furrow from the relationship’s beginning to finale. “It’s not chronological!” says Nuno. “It keeps jumping between online and offline and we keep jumping backwards and forwards too!”
Those worlds have to be represented in the designs of TK Hay, who so thrilled audiences with his innovative geometric carapace of one and a half miles of fibre-optic cable lighting for the multiverse story world of University of York alumnus Nick Payne’s Constellation at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, last autumn.
“The main thing I told him is that it’s a musical with only two people but we need to make it exciting on a big, big stage,” says Tania. “People have an expectation of how opera will look and we have to find a way to present things in a new style.”
Gus Gowland’s Mayflies runs at York Theatre Royal from tomorrow to May 13, 7.30pm; 2pm, May 4 and 11; 2.30pm, May 6 and 13. In a special deal, you can see all three casting configurations for the discounted price of £15. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Kevin Clifton’s Scott Hastings and Faye Brookes’s Fran in Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom The Musical
Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom The Musical plays Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm, Wednesday and Saturday. Box office: atgtickets.com/york. Also Leeds Grand Theatre, July 3 to 8, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.
NOT to be confused with the glitterball dazzle of the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, the 2023 tour of Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom nevertheless has Strictly royalty at its core, like writing running through a stick of rock.
Australian-born judge Craig Revel Horwood both directs Luhrmann and Craig Pearce’s musical and reactivates his Aussie roots for the voiceover introduction, delivered with camp exaggeration and frank humour.
2018 Strictly champ Kevin Clifton is “thrilled to finally be fulfilling a lifelong ambition to play Scott Hastings”, donning the golden matador-dandy jacket for the ten-month tour.
“When I was ten years old, I first watched the movie that would become my favourite film of all time. This is my dream role,” he enthused – and boy, does it show in his every move, back leading the cast after missing a couple of shows with a foot injury.
We knew he could dance, not only from his seven seasons in Strictly, but when blazing a trail across the Grand Opera House stage in Burn The Floor. Should you have seen him in Dirty Dancing The Musical in London, or on tour as Cosmo Brown in Singin’ In The Rain, Stacee Jaxx in Rock Of Ages or The Artillery Man in The War Of The Worlds, you will know he can sing too.
Now comes a corking Aussie accent as Kevin from Grimsby becomes Scott Hastings, the ballroom wild card from a dance family (like Clifton himself), who falls foul of the Australian Federation with his radical, rebellious moves.
The Open champion-in-waiting instead finds himself dancing with Fran (Faye Brookes, so pink and perky and perfect in her previous York visit in Legally Blonde The Musical). At the outset, Fran is handier with the cleaning regime than as a Bambi novice on the dancefloor, but she is plucky beneath the reserved, bespectacled surface, and step by step, the unlikely pair inspire each other to defy both family expectation and ballroom convention, casting specs and fear alike aside.
Set in 1990, Luhrmann’s funny yet furious, glitzy but gritty, sometimes silly and often highly camp work is a gorgeous romantic comedy, Cinderella tale and rebel with a cause story rolled into a dance drama of the kind beloved by Bollywood. In Revel Horwood’s hands it revels in that campery, being fruitier than Drew McOnie’s 2016 British premiere at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, putting you as much in mind of The Rocky Horror Show or Rock Of Ages.
Clifton’s Scott is on the edge, his dancing so electric, to the point where if you touched him you would receive a shock, such is his frustration with the strictures of his obsessive mother Shirley (Nikki Belsher).
A grotesque diva of a ballroom teacher with a shark’s smile, her ruthlessness has shrunk husband Doug (a rather too young-looking James McHugh on press night, understudying Mark Sangster) to taciturn timidity.
Amid the battle of Hastings, rule-breaker Scott is also determined to defy the bent judging of Barry Fife (Benjamin Harrold, understudying Gary Davis as more of a reprobate young spiv than a seedy old stickler).
Scott must follow his heart, answer to his true calling and find true love. Out of the shadows steps Coronation Street star and Dancing On Ice runner-up Brookes’s Fran in a typically terrific demonstration of her triple threat skills as singer, dancer and actor. Her duet of Beautiful Surprise with Clifton is a second-half high point.
Shirley and Barry are not their only barriers, so too are Danielle Cato’s aptly named dancer Tina Sparkle and, at first, Fran’s protective Hispanic dad, Rico (Stylianos Thomadakis, the best of the first-night understudies, again for an older-looking Jose Agudo).
From disdain to guiding light, he shows Scott how the paso doble should be danced, leading into a wonderful, pedal-to-the-floor ensemble finale to the first half. This turns into the show’s best routine, shot through with machismo but leavened by humour and ultimately glee, under the spell of Revel Horwood and Jason Gilkison’s witty, swish, elegant, sleek and fun choreography.
As with fellow very Australian musical movie The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, Strictly Ballroom is rampantly ripe to bear full fruit on the musical theatre stage.
It does so by bolstering the film’s hit songs, such as Time After Time, a swoon of an Hispanic take on Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps by Karen Mann’s Abuela, and the climactic Love Is In The Air, with new musical numbers by David Foster, Sia Furler, Mozzela Neff-U, Linda Thompson and Luhrmann himself.
Mark Walters, best remembered in York for his set on the tracks for Berwick Kaler’s Dick Whittington (And His Meerkat) at the National Railway Museum in 2015, excels here too, both in set design and costumes.
Beautifully lit by fellow York Theatre Royal alumnus Richard G Jones, the domed set evokes the glamour of the ballroom dancefloor, while the clever insertion of boards that pull out enables swift changes of scene to bars, homes and a dance studio.
Barry Fife’s boudoir cameos are an amusing pop-up too and a screen backdrop is put to good use in depicting Australian skies, townscapes and landscapes.
In a week shadowed by the death of Australia’s greatest comic export, Barry Humphries, whose The Man Behind The Mask tour opened at this very theatre last April, Luhrmann and Revel Horwood combine to put an Aussie smile on the face once more with razzle dazzle aplenty, aided by Clifton and Brookes, as lovable as Fred and Ginger.
Mayflies lyricist, composer and writer Gus Gowland, seated with cast members Emma Thornett, left, Rumi Sutton and Nuno Queimado
DO not confuse York Theatre Royal resident artist Gus Gowland’s musical premiere, Mayflies, with Peter Mackie Burns’s 2022 television drama of the same name.
“That series was based on an Andrew O’Hagan’s novel that came out in 2017, but my title is taken from an insect that’s been around since before humanity!” says Gus, whose musical tracks the romantic relationship of May and Fly from first flourish to final goodbye.
“When I started this musical, I didn’t know that the TV series would be coming out when it did, but I did then read the synopsis – and it’s very different from mine! I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d been asked to change the title as the whole point was matching the characteristics of the mayfly,” says Gus.
“It is true that predominantly mayflies live for only 24 hours but they have a gestation period that can last for two years, and that felt like a good metaphor for meeting online, then meeting in person for one night, and then the morning after.
“What happens in Mayflies is that after swiping right, left, up and down across the dating apps, May and Fly begin a tentative conversation. Over time, their romance grows into something real, something special. Then they meet!”
Watching a documentary on riverbanks triggered the musical. “I love rivers for some reason,” says composer, lyricist, songwriter and playwright Gus, who moved to York in 2019 after his partner was appointed chief executive officer of Rural Arts in Thirsk.
“Anyway, there was a section on mayflies and that’s what piqued my interest. That incubation period, which I didn’t know about before then, struck me as really interesting when we only know about the mayfly’s fleeting life, but nothing about that earlier period. I watched it last summer, so the musical has been incredibly quick in arriving.
“It would be nice if I could invest Mayflies with a longer life than a mayfly has, and it’s been brilliant for me that York Theatre Royal has had faith in me to stage this premiere as it’s so important to support new work.”
Running at the Theatre Royal from April 28 to May 13 under the direction of Tania Azevedo, the world premiere of Mayflies will feature alternating configurations of three actors performing the two roles in each performance: Nuno Queimado playing May, Emma Thornett, Fly, and Rumi Sutton either May or Fly.
Another production could have a different gender balance, but however it plays, each pairing is designed to give a different perspective on the relationships within this contemporary love story.
“I was really excited by the challenge of writing something that could be played by pretty much anyone, regardless of age, race, gender, sexuality,” says Gus.
“As an audience, we bring so much of ourselves and our understanding of the world to the things we see, so I wanted to explore what happens when we see the exact same love story told by different people – how would the dynamics change? Which moments would hit harder in each telling?
Mayflies designer T K Hay, left, musical director Joseph Church, cast members Nuno Queimado, Emma Thornett and Rumi Sutton, director Tania Azevedo and composer Gus Gowland at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
“I know how much an actor brings to a role too and so I wanted to create people that the actors cast would be able to really imbue with their own sense of identity. We’ve seen some rotating casts before, but I really wanted to write the flexibility of casting into the material, rather than just have it as a production idea layered on top.”
Gus continues: “It’s a real challenge to avoid signifiers of characteristics, like age and gender, but I’ve adored finding ways to create rounded specific characters without those to lean back on. One way I’ve done that is to write the parts in different time signatures, which makes them musically very distinct.
“I’m over the moon with the extraordinary cast of actors we have for this first ever production of Mayfliesand am so excited to see what they each bring to the characters.”
Gus, who lectures on the post-graduate musical theatre course at Leeds Conservatoire, has a two-year residency at York Theatre Royal, where his songs have been heard already in showcases for professional York talent.
For 2021’s Love Bites, he wrote a song for diarist Anne Lister (alias Gentleman Jack), performed by Dora Rubinstein, and for 2022’s Green Shoots, he used James Herriot quotes for I’ll Go T’Other, a song about the vet and his relationship with North Yorkshire, performed by Joe Douglass.
Settled into the city – he and his partner have bought a house here – Gus is aware of York’s love of musicals, whether staged by York companies or brought to the city on tour. “Mayflies’ Theatre Royal run is sandwiched between Strictly Ballroom and Heathers at the Grand Opera House: there is so much musical theatre staged here, so for me to have the opportunity to start a new musical’s life here is wonderful.
“So many people want to make their life is musical theatre, and it’s good for them to see that they don’t always have to go to London to be involved. There are theatres making musical theatre elsewhere.”
Brought up on watching Disney hits and classical musicals such as Kiss Me Kate, Gus had a love of musical theatre from the age of five, becoming obsessed with it, he says, whether Les Miserables or hearing the voices of Ruthie Henshall, Lea Salonga and Michael Ball.
“I just think it’s the best way to tell a story, though I know it’s certainly more complicated to get musical shows on because there are definitely more moving parts. They take more time to put on, which is the main challenge,” he says.
As with Gus’s Pieces Of String, winner of the 2018 StageDebut Award for Best Composer or Lyricist and the UK Theatre Award for Best Musical Production for its Mercury Theatre, Colchester premiere, Mayflies has a book, lyrics and music by Gowland, a self-taught musician who composes on the piano.
“What’s rare is that both my main-house shows have been completely original, coming out of my brain and heart, rather than being an adaptation, where I’m more likely to be collaborative,” he says.
Gus had trained to be a classical actor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. “I didn’t do many musicals there, but I did write two songs for a new show called Spoon River that we did as our third-year show based on a book of poems from the late 1800s, where every poem told a person’s life story,” he recalls.
Mayflies composer Gus Gowland and director Tania Azevedo
“I did quite a lot of concert singing but I didn’t look after my voice, which I would have needed to do for musical theatre.”
Gus duly decided to focus on musical theatre writing after focusing initially on acting, going on to study for an MA in musical theatre writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and latterly a PhD in musical theatre, specifically looking at gay representation in the artform, using Pieces Of String as part of his studies.
As for his style of musicals, Gus says: “Being an actor, I’m familiar with text and though I love sung-through musicals, like Rent or Les Miserables, I consider myself more of a dramatist or storyteller. I like songs to be ‘real moments’ and I like them to be moments of transition in the story, with ten songs in all in Mayflies.”
He divides Mayflies into three stages, matching the life arc of the mayfly: Nymph online, Dun for the night together in a hotel room and Spinner for the morning after, but be warned, the story’s path is not chronological.
“We jump from one to another at a moment’s notice, with a lighting change or a sound effect. What’s interesting is people being different versions of themselves at different times, when the safety net of separate spaces is taken away in moving from online to in-person,” says Gus.
“We are contrary creatures, so we’ll say things that are the opposite of what we said before; sometimes that’s intentional, sometimes it’s because you’ve forgotten what you said, but for the other person it might have been memorable.
“In Pieces Of String I had two time frames, and now what I get to do in Mayflies is show whether someone said something or not and whether they meant it or not, and by being really free in the casting, over gender, age and race, I let audiences play with their own assumptions, because we assume things when we see people of a certain age or sexuality.
“The dynamics between each pairing can be totally different in its compact with a song taking on a different meaning, depending on who is singing it. Using different time registers for each character, which I’ve never done before, it’s interesting to see how different it makes them sound too. It’s all part of what I want to do, to really push myself as a writer.”
Gus is picking up Pieces Of String once more this year with a view to its further development. “I started writing it in 2011 as part of my MA and then developed it over many years before premiering it at Colchester in 2018 after the Mercury Theatre came to one of the workshops and decided to take it on.
“Now it’s being optioned by Global Music, who produced SIX The Musical, and by Alchemation in America, so I’ve done a new draft, making changes from the premiere. It could have happened sooner but for finishing my PhD and the pandemic, but we’ve now done a reading of it at the Vaudeville Theatre [in London] in January.”
How long is Pieces Of String’s future? Wait and see!
York Theatre Royal presents Gus Gowland’s Mayflies, April 28 to May 13, 7.30pm, plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Boundary breakers: Kevin Clifton’s Scott Hastings and Faye Brookes’s Fran in Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom The Musical, on tour at Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Pamela Raith
SHAKESPEARE all shook up, a trio of musicals, a singular Magic Number, orchestral Potter and Tolkien and rocking Goths put Charles Hutchinson’s week ahead in good shape.
Dance show of the week: Strictly Ballroom The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, Monday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees
STRICTLY Come Dancing champ Kevin Clifton is joined by Dancing On ice runner-up and Coronation Street soap star Faye Brookes in Baz Luhrmann’s Australian romantic comedy musical.
Directed by Strictly’s Aussie-born judge Craig Revel Horwood, it follows rebellious ballroom dancer Scott Hastings (Clifton) as he falls out with the Australian Federation and finds himself dancing with Fran (Brookes), a beginner with no moves at all. Inspired by one another, this unlikely pairing gathers the courage to defy both convention and families. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
From Ukraine, with love: Kyiv National Academic Molodyy Theatre, from Ukraine, will perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream at York International Shakespeare Festival on April 28. Picture: Oleksii Tovpyha
Festival of the week and beyond: York International Shakespeare Festival, various venues, running until May 1
THIS festival’s fifth edition combines more than 40 live events with others online, taking in international, national and York-made performances, talks, workshops, exhibitions and discussions.
Look out for the Kyiv National Academic Molodyy Theatre, from Ukraine, performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream (April 28); Flabbergast Theatre’s The Tragedy Of Macbeth (April 26); artists from Poland, Croatia and Romania and Tim Crouch’s exploration of King Lear in a post-pandemic world, virtual-reality head set et al, in Truth’s A Dog Must To Kennel (April 29). For the full programme and tickets, go to: yorkshakes.co.uk.
Virtual reality meets King Lear: Tim Crouch in Truth’s A Dog Must To Kennel at the York International Shakespeare Festival. Picture: Stuart Armitt
Soundtracks of the week: The Music Of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit and The Rings Of Power In Concert, York Barbican, Monday, 4pm; The Magical Music Of Harry Potter Live In Concert, Monday, 8pm
THIS brace of concerts has been rearranged from April 6 to 24, both featuring a symphonic orchestra, choir, star soloists and an original actor. The first, a two-hour matinee celebrating the music inspired by the work of J R R Tolkien, spans the threatening sounds of Mordor, the shrill attack of the black riders and the beautiful lyrical melodies of the elves.
The second showcases the Harry Potter film soundtracks by John Williams, Patrick Doyle, Nicholas Hooper and Alexandre Desplat, complemented by music from the Harry Potter And The Cursed Child stage show. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Crowning gory: Harry Summers’ Richard, seated, becomes king in a York Shakespeare Project rehearsal for Richard III. Picture: John Saunders
“Petty, narcissistic and vengeful psychopath” of the week: York Shakespeare Project in Richard III, Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
PHASE Two of York Shakespeare Project, projected to run for 25 years, is launched with former British diplomat Daniel Roy Connolly’s modern-day account of “the York play”, Richard III, set amid the frenetic, calculating and brutal politicking of the House of Commons.
“Telling Shakespeare through what is comfortably the most corrupt institution in the country, the play explores the cut and thrust of power’s crucible, with laws ignored and lies sown,” he says. Harry Summers leads the cast. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk/ridinglights.
Romeo Stodart: Solo night at the Fulford Arms for the Magic Numbers singer
Low-key gig of the week: An Evening With Romeo Of The Magic Numbers, Fulford Arms, York, Sunday, 7.30pm
O ROMEO, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo Stodart on Sunday night? The lead vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter of indie rockers The Magic Numbers will be in lonesome mode at the Fulford Arms. Expect Magic Numbers gems and equally magic numbers from 2011 solo album The Moon And You. Box office: thecrescentyork.seetickets.com.
Steve Tearle: Director, Narrator and Mystery Man in NE’s Into The Woods
Bewitching show of the week: NE in Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee
STEPHEN Sondheim’s darkly witty musical is a grown-up twist on the classic fairytales of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Jack And The Beanstalk, here narrated by NE director Steve Tearle.
After the curse of a once-beautiful witch (Pascha Turnbull) leaves a baker (Chris Hagyard) and his wife (Perri-Ann Barley) childless, they venture into the woods to find the ingredients needed to reverse the spell. Encounters with all manner of fairytale favourites ensue, each on a quest to fulfil a wish. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Mayflies writer-composer Gus Gowland, seated with cast members Emma Thornett, left, Rumi Sutton and Nuno Queimado
Musical premiere of the week: Gus Gowland’s Mayflies, York Theatre Royal, April 28 to May 13, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
THREE into two will go when York Theatre Royal stages the world premiere of resident artist Gus Gowland’s musical Mayflies, wherein he explores how people present different versions of themselves in relationships and how it can then all come crashing down.
Three actors, Nuno Queimado (May), Rumi Sutton (May/Fly) and Emma Thornett (Fly), will alternate the roles, with each pairing offering a different perspective on the relationships within this contemporary love story, traced by Gowland from first flourish on a dating app to the last goodbye in person. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Cold Cave: Headlining the Friday bill at the Tomorrow’s Ghosts Festival in Whitby
Goth gathering of the week: Tomorrow’s Ghosts Festival Spring Gathering 2023, Whitby Pavilion, Whitby, April 28 and 29
BACK in black in the home of Dracula, Whitby’s premier gothic music and alternative arts festival returns with headline appearances by Cold Cave (April 28) and New Model Army (April 29) and a Friday club night into the early hours by Leeds living legends Carpe Noctum.
The Friday bill features a rare performance from American goth rock special guests Christian Death, alongside sets by The Rose Of Avalanche and Siberia. Saturday features special guests Lebanon Hanover, Ist Ist and The Nosferatu. Box office: ticketweb.uk.
Shaken and stirred: Robert Daws’s P G Wodehouse mixes a cocktail in Wodehouse In Wonderland , a play with a splash of revelations
Cahoots Theatre Company presents Robert Daws in Wodehouse In Wonderland, York Theatre Royal
WE know Jeeves And Wooster, Gussie Fink-Nottle and Blandings Castle, but how well do we know their creator, the comic novelist Pelham Grenville Wodehouse? Not as well, on the evidence of William Humble’s fascinating, funny yet forthright play.
Plum, as he was known in a conflation of his first name’s two syllables, is found in 1950s’ exile, at his typewriter as ever, in his New York State home on Long Island, the flowers in full bloom beyond his study window.
He has never returned to England since the end of the war and, to his sadness, will never do so after his besmirching as a “traitor” for his Berlin broadcasts when interred in 1941. He, along with fellow vilified exile Charlie Chaplin, would be knighted in the 1975 New Year’s Honours List at the age of 93, dying a month later.
As the Guardian reported, both humorists were “unexpectedly and very bemusedly involved in unpleasant political controversy at the height of their fame”.
At peace with his pipe: Robert Daws’s P G Wodehouse finding the musicality of language in the keys of his typewriter as he pens Jeeves and Wooster’s latest comic tale
Humble’s play goes into forensic detail in Act Two of what Wodehouse called his “great shaming”, but this is a beautifully balanced play with many, many ups, in the manner of those exquisitely written novels so full of English character, counterbalanced by stories of his “Empire orphan” childhood, his daughter Leonora (“Snorkles”), and those bitter attacks by the wartime media.
Played by the debonair Robert Daws, in his Plum job as a Wodehouse devotee from his RADA days, later cast as Tubby Glossop in four series of Fry and Laurie’s Jeeves & Wooster, Plum is working on his latest jaunty Jeeves instalment as Humble’s play opens.
Humble will track Wodehouse’s daily routine of writing, taking breakfast to his wife Ethel, walking the Pekingese dogs Wonder and Squeaky, lunch, more writing, savouring cocktails and enjoying American soap operas (better than their British counterparts, reckons Plum).
His day’s progress, the tip-tap rhythms of the typewriter, will be interrupted by his wife, his daughter, the dogs’ barking and now a would-be biographer, who appears to have had a humour bypass.
His meetings and phonecalls, however, trigger Plum into discussing those light-hearted radio broadcasts that met with the opprobrium of wartime Minister of Information Duff Cooper despite being devoid of both propaganda and politics. Only Evelyn Waugh, fellow observer of English ways, caught Plum’s tone as it was intended, seeking to be be funny as comedians are wont to do.
Spring in his step: Robert Daws’s P G Wodehouse espousing the virtue of humour
Interwoven into the routines of a man at happiest when left alone to write, are Wodehouse’s stories of first “meeting” the sanguine Jeeves and his younger days as a lyricist working with Guy Bolton, Ivor Novello, Jerome Kern et al, leading to Daws showing off his singing chops with jovial aplomb on several occasions.
Featuring too are Plum’s reflections on writing his books “like musical comedies without music”; the English characteristic of needing to knock down those who find success, and the consequences of seeing his overseas parents only twice from the age of two in 15 years, his time divided between a contented education at Dulwich School and in the care of his aunts, 15 of them no less, hence their profusion in his novels, where they are subject to his mischievous streak.
Under the immaculate direction of Robin (Woman In Black) Herford, Daws’s performance captures both light and dark, with an ear for accents, a song in his heart, a mastery of emotion in a devastating revelation in Act Two, and an omnipresent love of Wodehouse and his literary wonderland. Praise too for Lee Newby’s set and costume design, evoking both the Fifties’ American setting and its English occupant and the earlier times of which Wodehouse wrote.
For all his vilification in the war years and its knock-on effect, Humble’s Wodehouse bears no bitterness, believing that life will always be better for humour. As Daws steps forward at the finale, Plum ponders, wouldn’t it be nice if we could just be nice to each other, like Lord Emsworth feeding Empress, his beloved black Berkshire sow. He has a point.
Take a PG tip: on such a wet day, look on the bright side by heading indoors to be enlightened and enchanted alike by Wodehouse, Humble and Daws, a terrific triumvirate in Cahoots’ eloquent one-man drama.
