Dr Richard Shepherd: Pathologist, professor, lecturer, author, apiarist and aviator, presenting Unnatural Causes at York Theatre Royal on Thursday and Leeds City Varieties on Friday
FORENSIC pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd is unearthing Unnatural Causes on his 22-date autumn tour, visiting York Theatre Royal on Thursday and Leeds City Varieties the next night.
Already this autumn, his latest true crime television series, The Truth About My Murder, has been running on CBS Reality since September 21, wherein he revisits high-profile cases from Great Britain and the United States of America.
“I know how the living send out signals which are designed to appeal to our hearts. But the dead can only tell the unadorned truth. I listen to their stories,” he says.
Now retired, Dr Shepherd, 69, has worked for the Home Office on multiple cases and was the forensic expert for the Bloody Sunday inquiry, the Hungerford Massacre and the death of Princess Diana, also advising on the management of British fatalities following 9/11 in New York.
He has performed more than 23,000 autopsies and is a detective in his own right,solving the mysteries of countless sudden and unexplained deaths. He has faced serial killers, natural disasters, perfect murders and freak accidents.
His evidence has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent and turned open-and-shut cases on their heads. Yet all this has come at personal cost, having been diagnosed with diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after suffering flashbacks.
Heading out on tour from Wednesday (12/10/2022) to November 11 with Unnatural Causes, a title shared with his book that spent ten weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller chart, Dr Shepherdtells the stories of the cases and bodies that have both fascinated and haunted him the most.
Additionally, he will explain his admiration for the complexities of the human body and examine how he has lived a life steeped in death. This week’s York and Leeds audiences can take part in solving a real-life crime scene mystery too when he invites their involvement.
Why pick pathology as a career choice, Dr Shepherd? “Really, it’s quite simple,” he says. “It was a Damascene moment. A schoolmate’s dad was a GP and when he smuggled a book on forensic medicine into the classroom, like any curious 14-year-old boy, I thought that’s amazing and took it home,” he recalls.
“My dad was quite an ‘anorak bloke’, and instead of saying ‘that’s disgusting, you shouldn’t be interested in that’, he said, ‘you have to work hard if you’re interested in that’, and I ended up going to medical school. All because of that moment at Watford High School.”
Dr Shepherd trained as a doctor at St George’s Hospital medical school from October 1971, qualifying in 1977. It was a great place to be, at that time a very small school at Hyde Park Corner – it’s since moved to Tooting – with a very forensic component to it.
“I oscillated a bit around pathology. Bizarrely, I really liked obstetrics, but came back to qualifying in forensic pathology.”
Thirteen years later, in 1984, he was fully qualified, studies completed in Gower Street. “Most of those years, you’re being paid, remember, which makes it easier to study,” says Dr Shepherd, who took up a post at Guy’s Hospital in 1987. “It’s important to say that though I studied for 13 years, that’s the usual time for most consultants, but you do have a clear finishing point of a fellowship at the Royal College of Pathologists.”
Pathologist, author, professor and lecturer, Dr Shepherd spread his wings into television presenting (The Death Detective, Autopsy: The Last Hours Of…, Murder, Mystery And My Family) and theatre tours.
“I always did a lot of lecturing, mainly to medical student groups, but also to Rotary groups sometimes, and then did The Death Detective. It was going to be called Dr Dick, bit it was pointed out, ‘No, that might not be appropriate’!
“I wanted to not only tell the story of a case, putting the jigsaw pieces together, but also to say, ‘here is the face of forensic pathology’,” says Dr Shepherd. “I’m a nice bloke doing a terrible job with care and compassion.”
Looking back over the years, Dr Shepherd says: “I think society has changed. Often people don’t talk about ‘death’ now but about ‘passing’ and ‘passing on’, and we’re beginning to fudge the process; I suspect it’s becoming more hidden,” he says.
“I had to have my 14-year-old Jack Russell put down in my arms, and I thought it was important to feel that emotion in death, whereas now people are turning funerals into a bit of a media presentation with My Way and You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Dr Shepherd does not watch such series as Silent Witness. “Not because I dislike them, but because they are so far from what I know to be the truth, like not showing bits of a brain. The reality is not there, but then people think that what they see on TV must be close to reality, but then it happens to them and it’s not like it is on the TV, and it’s a double blow. Deaths are sanitised, even in Casualty,” he says.
“A lot of people love how the forensic pathologists looks very clever on Silent Witness, and it all looks very exciting, but the reality is I don’t go around arresting people.”
How does he transfer his forensic expertise to the theatre stage? “I can talk about how I see things in my profession, but I can also talk about more about emotions; how the body has failed; how I can detect injuries and how they’ve been caused,” says Dr Shepherd.
“I have to be very careful for it not to be like a forensic lecture that I would give to students about how they would deal with injuries. On this tour, I’ll bring an imitation ‘body’ on stage with a knife sticking out of the chest. It’s a theatrical moment, and it’s always great to hear the audience gasp, so it’s close to reality, with no fudging. It’s the truth, but not the absolute truth because that’s too hard. The reality is, it’s that thing of life and death and going from one to the other.”
You may have seen Dr Shepherd contributing to Channel 4’s documentary Investigating Diana: Death In Paris on the 25th anniversary of her death in August. “It’s one of those deaths that I can feel viscerally, as many of us do,” he says, but he does not buy into any conspiracy theories. “She should have put her seat belt on.”
This month, his forensic mind is on his Unnatural Causes tour. “It’s the starting pointy of every report I’ve written: ‘Death is not due to natural causes’. ‘Death is due to unnatural causes’. It’s a phrase I have used all my professional life.”
Dr Richard Shepherd, Unnatural Causes, York Theatre Royal, Thursday; Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, Friday, both 7.30pm. Box office: York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.co.uk .
CBS Reality’s The Truth About My Murder is available on Freeview (67), Sky (146), Virgin (148) and Freesat (135). From a state-of-the-art laboratory, with ground-breaking digital technology, viewers will hear directly from the victim as Dr Shepherd uncovers the truth behind these perplexing crimes as told through the victims’ bodies.
These victims’ narratives are often re-written, hidden, manipulated, weaponised and concealed by their evil killers. In each case, Dr Shepherd will “separate fact from fiction and ensure the truth always prevails”.
Did you know?
Dr Richard Shepherd is an apiarist (beekeeper) and aviator (with a private pilot’s licence since 2004).
Did you know too?
His latest book, The Seven Ages Of Death, explores what death can teach us about living.
Tudor girl power: Jennifer Caldwell’s Anne Boleyn in SIX The Musical. Picture: Pamela Raith
HENRY VIII’s vengeful wives are not the only show in town. Charles Hutchinson finds alternatives aplenty.
Don’t lose your head over this but…SIX The Musical has sold out at Grand Opera House, York,October 11 to 16.8pm, Tuesday to Thursday; 6pm and 8.30pm, Friday; 5pm and 8pm, Saturday; 3pm, Sunday
DIVORCED, beheaded, scuppered. Those without a ticket for York’s hottest theatre show of the autumn are too late. Not one seat, even with a restricted view, is still available for Toby Marlow and Lucy Marlow’s irreverent historical musical romp that began as a Cambridge University show at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Welcome to their Queendom where Tudor queens turn into pop princesses as the six wives of Henry VIII take to the mic to tell their tales, remixing 500 years of heartbreak into a 75-minute celebration of 21st-century girl power.
Tom Chaplin: Solo songs of midlife musings from the Keane frontman
Take your pick at York Barbican: Uriah Heep, tomorrow, 8pm; Tom Chaplin, Tuesday, 8pm; Will Young: 20 Years Tour, Thursday, 7.30pm; Boyzlife, Friday, 7.30pm
SPOILT for choice at York Barbican in a busy, busy week. British rock titans Uriah Heep’s 50th Anniversary Tour is now taking place in their 52nd year after playing 4,000 shows in 60 countries. Keane frontman Tom Chaplin showcases September’s release of his second solo album, Midpoint, exploring a part of life that everyone goes through: midlife.
On the pop front, singer, radio presenter, actor and writer Will Young marks two decades since his Pop Idol blossoming. No sooner have Boyzlife performed to 20,000 people at the Yorkshire Balloon Fiesta on Knavesmire than their Old School Tour sends the boy band duo of Boyzone’s Keith Duffy and Westlife’s Brian McFadden back to York. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Will Young: From Pop Idol young man to the polymath of today
Toasting the trailblazers: A Celebration Of Gilbert & Sullivan, Grand Opera House, York, tonight, 7.30pm
A 26-piece orchestra and soloists perform favourites from The Mikado, The Pirates Of Penzance and HMS Pinafore, complemented by less familiar gems in a glorious night at the light opera.
Taking part will be singers from Opera North, English National Opera, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, Carl Rosa and D’Oyly Carte, such as Alexander Robin Baker, Rebecca Bottone, Barry Clark, Siân Dicker, Yvonne Howard, Judith Le Breuilly, Timothy Nelson and Matthew Siveter. Box office: 0844 8717615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Bongo’s Bingo: A rave new world for a British classic at York Barbican
House music but not as you know it: Bongo’s Bingo, York Barbican, tonight; doors, 6pm; last entry, 7:30pm; first game of bingo, 8pm
MAKING its York debut only a stone’s throw from the demolished Mecca Bingo, Bongo’s Bingo “rejuvenates a quintessentially quaint British pastime with an immersive live show featuring rave rounds, nostalgia-soaked revelry, dance-offs, audience participation and crazy prizes in a night of pure and unadulterated escapism”.
Looking for a full house, promoter Jonny Bongo promises magic and music, mischief and mayhem in a bingo rave experience. Box office: bongosbingo.co.uk or yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Sayaka Ichikawa in Ballet Black’s Black Sun at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Bill Cooper
Dance pioneers of the week: Ballet Black, Say It Loud & Black Sun, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday, 7.30pm
CELEBRATING their 20th anniversary, Black Ballet present two new works on tour. Choreographed and directed by founder and artistic director Cassa Pancho and company artists, Say It Loud charts this pioneering company’s progress, from the uncomfortable reasons behind its existence to the frenetic, creative energy that makes it such a necessary part of the British ballet industry.
South African choreographer Gregory Maqoma’s Black Sun, danced to an original score by Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante, extracts energy from the sun and the moon giving rise to descendants of ancestors. These forces only meet to blacken, allowing us to draw from their powers as we prepare for life after life. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Dr Richard Shepherd: Pathologist, professor, lecturer, author, television presenter, apiarist and aviator, whose Unnatural Causes theatre tour will York and Leeds
Bringing death to life: Dr Richard Shepherd, Unnatural Causes theatre tour, York Theatre Royal, Thursday; Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, Friday, both 7.30pm
MEET Dr Richard Shepherd, a forensic pathologist who has solved the mystery of sudden and unexplained deaths aplenty, performed 23,000 autopsies and handled such cases the Hungerford Massacre, the Princess Diana inquiry and 9/11.
In Unnatural Causes, he not only tells the story of the cases and bodies that have haunted him the most, but also reflects on how to live a life steeped in death. Box office: York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.co.uk
Make It Better: The theme for Day One of York Design Week
Festival of the week: Kaizen Arts Agency, United by Design and Dogeatcog unite for York Design Week 2022, Make It Work, October 13 to 17
YORK Design Week turns the spotlight on projects, organisations and people who are breaking and bending rules to create a fairer society, inviting you to explore how we can come together to “Make It Work”. “Let’s find creative and practical solutions to complex problems through collaboration, performance, and play,” say the organisers.
“The idea is to positively shift conversation and behaviour around what design means and how it can offer innovative solutions to knotty problems. Our approach is open, accessible, and seeks to provide space for participants to experience unexpected perspectives and express their own voice.” Full details can be found at: yorkdesignweek.com.
Make It Grow: The green theme for Day Four of York Design Week
120 years and still going strong: York Musical Theatre Company in A Musical Celebration, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Thursday and Friday, 7,30pm
YORK Musical Theatre Company’s 120th anniversary will be marked with two evenings of songs from past productions such as West Side Story, Oklahoma, Guys & Dolls, Annie, Acorn Antiques, Jekyll & Hyde, Jesus Christ Superstar and The Pirates Of Penzance, the company’s first show in April 1903.
Company members combine with guest solo artists in a celebratory production directed by John Atkin. Founded in 1902 as York Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society, York’s longest established amateur theatre company changed its name in its centenary year. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Ellen Carnazza, Andrew Purcell and Zach Atkinson in Badapple Theatre’s revival of The Frozen Roman, on tour this autumn. Picture: Karl Andre
What did the Romans ever do for us? Badapple Theatre in The Frozen Roman, on tour until November 13
GREEN Hammerton’s theatre-on-your-doorstep proponents Badapple Theatre take to the road this autumn with three actors new to the company: Zach Atkinson, Andrew Purcell and Ellen Carnazza.
In this revival of Kate Bramley’s play, they came, they saw, they built a wall, they went away again….or did they? When hapless villagers try to prevent a housing development being built in their midst, could the discovery of a burial site throw them a lifeline? Expect twists, turns and Latin puns as the situation in the village goes “ballisticus maximus”. For tour details, go to: badappletheatre.co.uk.
Ocean travel: Billy Ocean heads for Harrogate and Sheffield in 2023
Looking ahead: Billy Ocean, The Very Best Of Billy Ocean Tour, Harrogate Convention Centre, March 31 2023
BILLY Ocean will perform a hand-picked set of greatest hits and fan favourites on his 21-date tour next spring.
The Trinidad and Tobago-born British R&B singer, 72, has notched 30 million worldwide record sales and top ten singles on both sides of the Atlantic, such as Love Really Hurts Without You, Red Light Spells Danger, Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run), When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going, There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry) and Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car. The tour also takes in Sheffield City Hall on April 6. Box office: harrogatetheatre.co.uk; sheffieldcityhall.co.uk.
Graham Norton: Forever Home and first ever away day in York
MAKE that An Entire Evening With Graham Norton and part of an evening with Konnie Huq that should have been the first half but became the second at this novel event of the week.
The first clue was the change of start time to 7.45pm and the accompanying note, “We Apologise For Any Inconvenience”.
The inconvenience, it turned out, had been caused to chatterbox Graham, BBC broadcaster, Virgin Radio presenter, own label wine & gin dispenser, agony uncle and novelist, and the late-arriving Konnie, TV and radio presenter, screenwriter and children’s author, once of Blue Peter (1997 to 2008).
Train delays. A problem on the track. Exit Graham from King’s Cross, taking the car to York, for his first ever visit. “What a lovely city,” he said, dashing hopes of a more waspish critique in the manner of his quizzical Eurovision quips.
Konnie would be taking a later train, he explained. From Peterborough. “Not going well,” he stage-whispered. Once a stand-up, always at ease on stage, and if part one should have been Graham in conversation with Konnie about his fourth novel, Forever Home, newly published by Coronet, instead it became Graham in conversation with the full house, roaming back and forth in a suit that tricked the eye at first. Not stains, surely, dapper Graham? No, some far trendier detailing!
Ask away. “Did you get the book we left for you in reception, Graham?”. Come on, York. Ah, here comes the excitable woman in the front row, the one in a group all (bar one) wearing T-shirts emblazoned with cherry-topped buns. Buns, geddit. “Did you get the cakes we left for you, Graham?”. Come on, York, you really can do better than such distractions, handled knowingly by gracious Graham.
York did thankfully do much better than that, mainly asking about his TV shows, the big interviews, one about his wines, another about the beard – should it stay or should it go? – but not the books, leaving that to Konnie.
Favourite guests? The list kept growing. Worst guest? Very definitely, Harvey Weinstein, accompanied by an anecdote that revealed much about the jailed film producer’s sense of entitlement. Most wanted guests yet to appear? Brad Pitt. Julia Roberts. William & Kate.
Does he ever watch back old episodes? No, he said, the question prompting Graham to imagine himself sitting there thinking, “aren’t I marvellous”. Eurovision popped up too, reflections on Sam Ryder and Ukraine, and no, he couldn’t say where 2023’s jamboree would be held, Liverpool or Glasgow, until Friday. Liverpool, for the record.
Part stand-up, part Q&A, he held back his own excruciating Red Chair revelation to the last, ever the comedian with timing. In a nutshell. Gentleman caller. Departs. Next morning, stretchy item gone missing. Dog. Morning walk in the park. What’s that protruding from pet Bailey’s posterior? Graham stretched the story to the max. Just look at his face.
Time for a break, then Graham reading an excerpt from his new book on the screen, and… here’s Konnie. She’d arrived halfway through act one, watching from the wings, laughing as much as the rest of us. Time to discuss Forever Home, its themes, characters, locations, set in a small Irish town, where divorced teacher Carol’s second chance of love brings her unexpected connection, a shared home and a sense of belonging in a darkly comic story of coping with life’s extraordinary challenges.
Darkly comic. Why darkly comic, Graham? Small rural Irish communities, where they live outside rather than inside the villages, have that darkness to them, that mystery, that something to hide, even if everyone thinks they know everything but everyone else. That side comes out in Graham’s novels, rooted in his experiences of growing up (as Graham William Walker) at 48, St Brigid’s Road, Clondalkin, County Dublin, and leaving at 20, first for America, then London.
Not until three decades later did he reconnect, both physically and in his novels that he began writing as a new challenge on turning 50. His mother’s habits, the butt of his humour, but in affectionate way rather than the mother-in-law jokes of Les Dawson, feed into one of the characters in Forever Home. He has given her a copy, but not told her about the resemblance. No doubt he will delight audiences with an update as and when.
Graham, newly married in West Cork in July, turns 60 next April. A new decade, another new venture? To beard or not to beard? These are the questions. Can’t wait for the answers.
Doing her research: Susie Blake’s Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack’d, on tour at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Ali Wright
THIS is Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, but it is Rachel Wagstaff’s play.
For the stage, she has adapted Sebastian Faulks’s novel Birdsong and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (whose 2022 tour was cut short before its Grand Opera House run in York) and co-adapted Paula Hawkins’ The Girl On The Train too.
An earlier version of her take on Christie’s 1962 mystery The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side toured the UK in 2019. Now comes another crack at it for the Original Theatre Company, one that has modern sensibilities to shake up its outwardly old-fashioned mien.
Self-harm, repressed homosexuality and child loss burst through the surface in Wagstaff’s multi-layered drama rooted in the turbulence of fracturing mental health. The thunderbolt is Jane Marple’s explanation of why she has remained unmarried, still consumed by grief at her young love being shot for cowardice when serving in the First World War.
Philip Franks’s production is stylish, sharply dressed, light on its feet, played out in rooms with almost an excess of glass, in reference to the mirror of the title, reflective but also see-through. There may be plenty to hide but it can’t be hidden from view.
Adrian Linford’s open-plan, rotating setting is two-fold, serving as the grand English manor house newly acquired by an unsettling presence, American film star Marina Gregg (Sophie Ward), and her film director sixth husband of eight years, Jason Rudd (Joe McFadden), and as the home of “spinster sleuth” Jane Marple (Susie Blake) too.
Housebound and frustrated by a sprained ankle, she either sits with her knitting or takes to crutches or a walking stick, ever restless both physically and mentally.
A third, unseen setting plays its part, a new housing estate that “alarms the villagers as much as it intrigues them”. Miss Marple’s home help, Cherry Baker (Mara Allen), has moved in there, and there is more to her than first meets the eye. It was ever thus in Christie’s world.
The price of love? Joe McFadden’s Jason Rudd and Sophie Ward’s Marina Gregg in The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
Marina and hubby are making her first film in 12 years at the manor house, bringing an entourage that includes loyal servant Giuseppe Renzo (Lorenzo Martelli) and production assistant Ella Zielensky (Sarah Lowrie). Young co-star Lola Brewster (Christine Symone) is acting even more oddly than they are, as the plot thickens.
The story unfolds in flashbacks as Oliver Boot’s Inspector Craddock, sorry Chief Inspector, as he keeps correcting, conducts a murder investigation. Blake’s Miss Marple nudges her way into the case, asking the better questions, frustrating Craddock, who delightfully refers to her as his aunt.
Putting her oar in too is Dolly Bantry, former owner of the manor house, exquisitely played by character actress supreme Veronica Roberts, a superb piece of casting by Ellie Collyer-Bristow, who happened to be watching Wednesday’s performance in the next seat.
Miss Marple’s relationships with both Boot’s exasperated Craddock and Roberts’s dabbling Dolly, forever calling by, are suffused with humour in Blake’s performance, but there is intelligence, a seriousness of purpose, to her marvellous Marple. Kindness, sadness, wit and wits about her too.
McFadden’s Rudd is fiery, protective, deeply concerned for Marina’s mental wellbeing, but what is his motive? Ward’s Marina is damaged, graceful, charming when the moment takes her, but capricious, cold, dismissive…and mysterious. Ice and fire, guilt and regret, where will it lead?
Franks’s direction skilfully balances the humour, the double-act to-and fro of both Marple & Dolly and Marple and Craddock, with the darkness of Marina’s troubles. The smoothly interjected yet jolting flashbacks intensify the intrigue, bringing super-fan Heather Leigh (Jules Melvin) into the plot, although Craddock keeps on blocking the attempts of her husband Cyril (David Partridge) to do likewise in a well-worked running gag.
Why do theatres – as well as TV – keep doing whodunits? A midweek packed auditorium would tell you why: we love a mystery to solve, trying to work it out before the sleuth, and when that story is told as adeptly as it is by Wagstaff with direction and performances to match, then crack on with The Mirror Crack’d.
Original Theatre Company in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, York Theatre Royal, Saturday, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Joe McFadden’s Jason Rudd and Sophie Ward’s Marina Gregg in the Original Theatre Company’s production of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
2017 Strictly champion Joe McFadden is appearing in his first Agatha Christie mystery, The Mirror Crack’d, on tour at York Theatre Royal all this week in the role of Jason Rudd.
Joining Glasgow-born Joe, 46, in Rachel Wagstaff’s stage adaptation of Christie’s 1962 psychological thriller will be Susie Blake’s Miss Marple and Sophie Ward’s Hollywood star Marina Gregg for a story of revenge and the dark secrets that we all hide, presented by the Original Theatre Company.
In the sleepy village of St Mary Mead, a new housing estate is making villagers curious and fearful. Even stranger, a rich American film star [Gregg] has bought the Manor House. Cue a vicious murder; cue Jane Marple defying a sprained ankle to unravel a web of lies, tragedy and danger.
Here Joe answers questions, but not those posed by Miss Marple.
Who is Jason Rudd?
“He’s a film director who put his career on the back burner because his wife, Hollywood star Marina Gregg, is going through a hard time. Now he’s going to make a film about Henry Vlll and his wives with Marina as Catherine Aragon.
“He manages to tempt her back with a script that he’s been working on for quite a long time. You’re suspicious of his motives. There are so many people circling around Marina, this Hollywood star from a bygone era and you ask yourself: why are they so interested in her? What are they getting out of it?”
Cast an eye over your CV…theatre, TV, Strictly…
“I feel very lucky that I get to do musicals and to do plays – and to do the odd bit of telly now and again. It’s really an actor’s dream in that I’m not stuck doing the one thing. The usual thing is that you either do plays or you do musicals or you do TV, and it becomes hard to break into the others. I feel very fortunate I get to do all of them.”
Joe McFadden in the role of film director Jason Rudd in The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
What have been your favourite roles?
“I couldn’t pick a favourite, honestly. It’s brilliant doing a play because you get a lot of time to sit down, as we have during The Mirror Crack’d rehearsals, and talk about the story. Working on something like Agatha Christie, it’s absolutely necessary because it’s so textured, so layered and there’s so much in there. On the face of it, it seems a simple whodunit but they’re all such complex characters. Nobody is really what they first appear to be.”
What’s the enduring appeal of Agatha Christie stories?
“They’re so rich, there’s so much in there and it really keeps you guessing. It’s not so much a whodunnit as a social commentary. The Mirror Crack’d is, as I’ve discovered, about mental health. At the time it was written, Agatha Christie was very much ahead of the curve.
“It’s a real examination of this movie star, Marina, and how, when you get to a certain age, you’re not in the running for the parts and you’re cast aside. It’s about the tragedy and unfairness of that. My character adores Marina and will do anything to protect her.
“We discover he’s been there for her in the past but you’re not sure what his motives are and, as is the way with Christie, discover he’s not all he seems to be by the end of the evening. So, it’s really great charting how much you show to an audience and who the red herrings are. Quite exhausting mentally”.
Have you gone back to the book, the TV versions or the film?
“I haven’t really read the book because some details have changed. Rachel Wagstaff has done a wonderful adaptation. It’s kind of confusing for me because I’ve watched the Julia McKenzie TV version and the Rock Hudson/Elizabeth Taylor film version and they’re all slightly different.
“What you do get from them is a feel for the period, the style and the characters. It’s difficult when you’re so familiar with the other source material because you’re torn between what you’re doing and what they’re doing.
“I feel like I don’t need to read the book or watch the films again. Not at the moment. Perhaps when we’re all finished I will.”
2017 Strictly champion Joe McFadden in a waltz with Sophie Ward in The Mirror Crack’d. “I’m trying to dredge up from the corner of my mind how to do it,” he says. Picture: Ali Wright
You are appearing in your first Agatha Christie thriller…
“Absolutely my first. My mother was a massive mystery fan. She loved a sleuth, Murder She Wrote, Poirot, all the detective shows, so I was brought up watching these films and TV shows. I do have a real fondness for them because they get you involved.
“You’re not passive when watching, you’re actually trying to work out whodunit. And while you’re working it out, you’re being entertained and getting a real insight into these human beings and their particular circumstances.”
The Mirror Crack’d brings together three regulars from ITV’s Yorkshire series Heartbeat: you, Sophie Ward and director Philip Franks. Plenty of conversation points, no doubt?
“We’re having a great time reminiscing and comparing experiences. I’ve done a number of long-running series and there’s something to be said for knowing the other actors and knowing the crew. It’s nice with a job like Heartbeat or Holby City, where you have a shorthand with people and a relationship with people. Those were particularly lovely jobs to do.
“I was happy to do them for as long as I did: two years of doing Heartbeat and five years in Holby. I’m sure every job is not as happy as those but I was very happy to do them for so long.”
What made you sign up for Strictly Come Dancing in 2017?
“I did agonise over the decision to do it because back in the day, 20 years ago, actors didn’t really do reality TV shows. It was a new thing. I thought long and hard about it and took advice from various people, friends in the industry, but ultimately my reason for doing it was I wanted to learn how to dance. I wanted to have this world champion teach me to dance. That opportunity only comes along once in a lifetime. I felt it would be silly not to grab it with both hands.”
It could not have worked out better: you won!
“I’m so glad I did it, not because I won but because it was such a brilliant experience. It was about saying yes to things and not being afraid of the unknown. As human beings we like the familiar, the same thing, and that’s a dangerous place for an artist to be because you want to challenge yourself and challenge people’s perceptions of you. Strictly was good for that.”
Champion Joe McFadden’s advice to this year’s Strictly Come Dancing contestants: “Get as much sleep as you possibly can because the tiredness is like nothing you will have experienced in your life”
What was the hardest part of doing Strictly?
“Being myself on screen, which I hadn’t really done before. The most daunting thing was all the speaking and the live television but even that stuff ended up being massively enjoyable. Talking to Zoe Ball on It Takes Two became one of my favourite parts of the week because she made it so lovely. The fans are so appreciative and so warm that you feel the love everyone has for that show, something I perhaps wasn’t aware of going into it.”
What’s your advice to celebrities taking part in the new series of Strictly?
“Just to enjoy every moment, because you never know when it’s going to end, and get as much sleep as you possibly can because the tiredness is like nothing you will have experienced in your life. Just enjoy it because it will be over in a flash. It goes so quickly. Don’t take it too seriously, throw yourself into it and do exactly as your partner tells you.”
Will there be any dancing in The Mirror Crack’d?
“We do a bit of a waltz. I’m trying to dredge up from the corner of my mind how to do it.”
How do you feel about touring?
“I toured with Priscilla Queen Of The Desert for seven months and toured with two different Ghost Stories before that. I love touring. As an actor, you either love it or hate it. I try to get out to see places and not stay in my digs all the time.
“The great thing for Priscilla is that I didn’t drink for the whole time I did the show, which meant I got up in the morning, went to the beach, did the museums. I love how we get to go to these places that you never would at any other time.”
Joe McFadden fact file
Television credits include: Raffaello Di Lucca in Holby City from 2014 to 2020; Alistair in Casualty in 2009; PC Joe Mason in Heartbeat, 2007 to 2009; Jack Marshland in Cranford; Dallas in Sex, Chips & Rock’n’roll; Prentice McHoan in The Crow Road and Gary McDonald in The High Road.
Theatre includes: Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical; Torch Song Trilogy (Menier Chocolate Factory); She Loves Me (Chichester Festival Theatre); Rainbow Kiss (Royal Court Theatre); How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (Chichester Festival Theatre); Aladdin (Old Vic Theatre) and Rent (Shaftesbury Theatre, London).
Joe won BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing glitter ball with partner Katya Jones in 2017.
Sophie Ward: Cast as Hollywood star Marina Gregg in The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
Questions for Sophie Ward, an actor playing an actor in The Mirror Crack’d
SOPHIE Ward returns to the York stage this week for the first time since playing the lead role of Eunice in the Classic Thriller Theatre Company’s staging of Ruth Rendell’s tale of murder, A Judgement In Stone, at the Grand Opera House in October 2017.
In the Original Theatre Company touring production of The Mirror Crack’d at York Theatre Royal, Sophie, 57, is cast as Hollywood star Marina Gregg.
Is The Mirror Crack’d your first experience of performing an Agatha Christie story?
“No, I did a television version of A Caribbean Mystery with Joan Hickson as Miss Marple and also Go Back For Murder, which was a play by Agatha Christie.
Is Marina Gregg based on anyone in the movie world?
“There was a star called Gene Tierney who was the inspiration for this character, and quite famously Elizabeth Taylor played the character in a film, when Angela Lansbury was Miss Marple. Marina is entering a new chapter in her life, a bit more peaceful. She’s doing films she likes with her husband and finding some respite in buying this big house in an English country village. It’s a new start for her.”
Marina is an actor, as are you, do you identify with her in any way?
“There are lots of things that I understand and I’ve worked in a lot of productions from that period. So, it’s a world I know a little bit about but I hope it’s not too close to my own life.”
Did you experience Hollywood when you were commuting between England and America?
“I did quite a lot of television in various shows but not films in the US. I met my wife [Rena Brennan] in Los Angeles so we like to spend time there. I’d like to get over there more, but my mother-in-law lives in Florida, my mother is in London, and I have grandchildren in England. With work and family, it’s not been easy to get over there in the past few years. A small matter of the pandemic.”
Sophie Ward’s Marina Gregg and Susie Blake’s Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack’d. Picture Ali Wright
Have you and The Mirror Crack’d co-star Joe McFadden comparrd experiences working on Heartbeat?
“Joe was in the series after my era on Heartbeat, but we have that in common, which is really nice to be able to talk about. I was on the show for two years, quite a big chunk of time to do one job when you’re an actor. We’ve been catching up on our time in Heartbeat.”
How was lockdown for you?
“When we had our first lockdown, I was quite happy doing a lot of gardening for a while. But I think we all had thoughts of a reassessment of life and of what we were doing. I had time to ask myself, ‘Am I going to carry on with acting when this situation finishes’.
“As it turns out, I do want to carry on and I did miss it during lockdown, but it was really great to have that time to think about things. You’re on a wheel, which you get on and keep going round and round. It was good to think ‘I’m choosing to do this and not just carrying on’.”
Where does Marina Gregg fit into the kind of roles you play these days?
“I’ve had the opportunity to do lots of different parts. Marina is very much a movie star with all the charm and challenges that can bring. I’m thrilled to be playing her.”
What are the strengths of Rachel Wagstaff’s new adaptation of The Mirror Crack’d?
“This is one of Christie’s later books and things are changing in society and in St Mary Mead. Rachel’s version shows that they’re quite conscious of that in the village. The characters aren’t stock characters; they are all interesting, three-dimensional people and Rachel has managed to include all their stories.
“As an audience we need to care about them. You want to understand people and not just see another character murdered. Every character is valuable to the story.”
Sophie Ward in the role of misfit Eunice in Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement In Stone at the Grand Opera House, York, in October 2017. Picture: Geraint Lewis
Have you returned to the book or film and TV versions?
“Obviously what we’re doing is our version. Rachel has done an amazing job so that’s what we work on and that’s where my imaginative world is: in Rachel’s world. But I’m really interested to see other versions and find out more about that world. Then you have to focus on Rachel’s version.”
You have written two novels, the first one, Love And Other Thought Experiments, being longlisted for the Booker Prize. Is a third book on the horizon?
“My second book [The Schoolhouse] came out in May and I’m hard at work on the third one. It takes me about five years to write a book.”
What prompted you to ‘go back to school’?
“First I did an undergraduate degree part time, then I did an MA, and I’ve just finished my doctorate at Goldsmiths. There’s a lot of waiting around in our job and I left school after my A-levels, didn’t go to university, just carried on working.
“I really wanted to go back to school. I knew my children would be coming up to that age soon and wanted to be able to talk with them about going to uni, what it meant and what it was. I studied, it took me about 15 years, and out of that came the idea for my first novel, which was a mixture of the things I’d been studying.”
You are an advocate for gay and lesbian rights…
“I try to be supportive and feel open about my life. I did write about equal marriage for the Guardian. I felt very strongly about it, about everyone being able to have that option to get married. I am involved to that extent but there are people whose whole careers are seriously applied to gaining our rights. I’m a very small part of that.
“There have been a lot of changes, changes in the law and people’s attitudes, which has been amazing to see and experience. But I never take it for granted because, as we see in other countries, either things don’t progress in the same way or they’re going backwards. You can’t be complacent.”
Sophie Ward: Actor, gay rights advocate and novelist
What’s coming next for you after The Mirror Crack’d tour?
“I have a research trip for my next book.”
Somewhere exotic?
“I can’t really say as I’m still developing the ideas and immersing myself in a new world. Let’s just say ‘travelling’!”
Sophie Ward fact file
Her first acting role was at the age of ten.
Now playing Rachel Johnson, opposite Kenneth Branagh’s Boris Johnson, in This Scepred Isle on Sky Atlantic/Now TV.
Appeared opposite Claire Foy and Paul Bettany in A Very British Scandal (BBC); starred in Troubled Blood (BBC/HBO), an adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s novel.
For the past four years, Sophie has hosted the European Diversity Awards and she works closely alongside Stonewall.
Original Theatre Company in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly; 2pm, Thursday; 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
Richard Digby Day: Theatre director, professor and lecturer
RICHARD Digby Day, artistic director of York Theatre Royal from 1971 to 1976, will talk about his life and work in the theatre world at a fundraising event there tonight at 7pm.
Now 80, this esteemed stage director, international professor and lecturer in Britain and the United States is credited with discovering actors Hugh Grant and Ralph Fiennes in a career where he served as artistic director of Bournemouth Theatre Company, New Shakespeare Company at Regents Park Open Air Theatre, Welsh National Theatre Company, Nottingham Playhouse and Northcott Theatre, Exeter.
He is well-known for his work in classical theatre, notably the plays of William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. He is vice president of the Shaw Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has staged more productions of Shaw’s work than any other living director.
Richard is noted for his productions of Stephen Sondheim musicals too, and his work has been seen in the West End and on tour extensively throughout the UK, Canada, Denmark and Ireland.
He has worked with many of the theatre greats, not least bringing Dame Judi Dench to the Theatre Royal stage, and he is a contemporary of Sir Ian McKellen, the two having begun their professional careers working on many of the same productions with Digby Day serving as assistant director.
He came back to York three times to direct waggon plays from the York Mystery Plays with the York Settlement Community Players for the Merchant Adventurers’ Guild, presenting The Last Judgement in 1998, 2002 and 2006. “The last one was the most modern, and I wouldn’t have done it twice more after the first time if it wasn’t so rewarding,” he says.
“There was a great stock of actors, like Ruth Ford, who was not just a wonderful actor but a wonderful person.”
Now Richard returns to the city for 50 Years On: Richard Digby Day In Conversation in the Theatre Royal Studio tonight when creative director Juliet Forster will host the event to raise funds to support ongoing work at the St Leonard’s Place theatre.
“I look back on my days as York Theatre Royal as a time of great excitement, a very good time,” says Richard. “What those days meant to my career and showed to other people was that I could run a theatre, because I was not just the artistic director but also director of the whole thing. I really had the final say in relation to whatever the board wanted.
“I was thinking about this, how the Sixties and Seventies were a wonderful time for the theatre in a way that has not been replicated since. I was in the right place at the right time, as I was at Exeter too. I’d just finished working for the Welsh National Theatre Company at the Casson Studio, in a very rough street in Cardiff: Ruby Street in Splott. I’d founded the company and started it but couldn’t cope with the Welsh politics, so I left.”
What happened next? “There was as an advertisement in The Stage saying York Theatre Royal was looking for a new artistic director, when Donald Bodley was leaving, having made that wonderful addition to the building [the foyer],” Richard recalls.
“I was interviewed in September 1971 and all the candidates were told to hang around…and then it was announced that I’d got the job, in front of all these disappointed-looking other people.”
Richard can reel off the productions that came thick and fast under his artistic direction: “We did The Circle, by Somerset Maugham, starring Jessie Matthews, who appeared twice in the first year. In York Minster was Murder In The Cathedral by T S Eliot, and because there was no studio at the Theatre Royal at that time, we did two plays at York Arts Centre [in Micklegate], Tiny Alice by Edward Albee and Old Times by Harold Pinter. There was an extraordinary range of performances going on,” he says.
“That’s the difference when you compare it with today’s theatre. That time was the flowering of theatre, whereas today money is short and very rarely do actors stay together for more than one play.”
More work comes to Richard’s mind. “We did some work at the University of York; two plays in the De Grey Rooms and a whole series of poetry readings at York Art Gallery,” he says.
He settled in quickly. “York Theatre Royal was well set up: long before I arrived there, it was a working regional theatre with its wardrobe and carpentry departments, and York always tended to have actors that stayed for more than one production,” he says.
“For the second season in Spring 1973, Phyllis Calvert [the English film actress], who’d been in the company before the Second World War, began a long association with me directing her in five plays. The first Shakespeare I did here was The Tempest, in association with the New Shakespeare Company at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre, in London, where I was artistic director for a long time.
“A city without the arts will never be a complete place,” says Richard Digby Day
“We had Michael Dennison playing Prospero, and the production began in York, went on a little tour, then played Regents Park.”
Judi Dench would return to her home city with Michael Williams to appear in a new play, Content To Whisper, adapted by television writer Alan Melville from a French work. “I can tell you this now, because Judi and I often laugh about it: we knew on the first day of rehearsals that we shouldn’t be doing it, but we did the best we could with it and it packed the theatre! I don’t know if people liked it or not, but they were just content to see Judi back home,” says Richard.
“Looking back, I was able to do a lot of interesting productions and the seasons were a lot more classically based than they are now: Strindberg, Ibsen, Chekhov, but a lot of modern plays too, like the first out-of-London production of Peter Shaffer’s Equus. The National Theatre offered us the rights for it, so we said yes, and then followed it with Hamlet, starring the Scarborough-born Frank Barrie as Hamlet.
“That was the third time I’d directed Hamlet and the nearest one I felt to getting it right. Frank’s father died in the middle of the run and he had to keep going, with all that connection with Hamlet’s father dying.”
Just as Damian Cruden would do later during his 22-year tenure as artistic director, Richard enjoyed using the theatre space in different ways. “We had all the seats taken out and did a promenade production of The Two Noble Kinsmen [Shakespeare’s play co-written with John Fletcher]: the first time it had been done for many years, for York Festival in 1973,” he says.
“In my last season, we had seven plays by Samuel Beckett to celebrate his 70th birthday and we did them on the stage with the safety curtain down and the audience seated on the stage too, and we did this in a repertory season where we closed the main-house auditorium one night a week for the Beckett plays.”
Typical of Richard enjoying the challenge of “making theatre in places that aren’t necessarily theatres” was his production of Ibsen’s Little Eyolf in the Assembly Rooms, “I had the belief that wherever there was an audience, wherever there were actors, that could be a theatre,” he says.
As he heads back to York once more, where he once lived on Tadcaster Road in a “dear little cottage and courtyard” overlooking the racecourse, Richard says: “The city has provided many memories, 50 years of history, but it’s not the place I came to in 1971. I don’t say it in an entirely negative way but any city that has its manufacturing heart taken away can never be as interesting as it was.
“I used to get up at six in the morning and walk down to the shop to buy a paper, and you would see all these workers bicycling to work. You could smell that work. I find what’s happened to Britain so sad, though of course York has so many attractions that it’s made an industry out of tourism.
“There were always tourists but it was completely a working, industrial city, where under all that history was the industry that was supporting it.”
From 1980 to 1984, Richard was at the helm of Nottingham Playhouse. “That was not a happy time,” he says. “I would have to say that Mrs Thatcher interfered in the arts. In particular, William Rees Mogg wrote a ghastly report on the arts when he was made chairman of the Arts Council: a most unsuitable person for the post.
“It was not an easy period and eventually I thought, ‘I just don’t want to go on running a theatre’, so I left and I’ve never really run a theatre since then, but I’ve done lots of other things, like being the director of the National Theatre Institute, in Waterford, in Connecticut, for eight years.”
Richard directed plays aplenty at the Lyric in Belfast. “It was at the height of the troubles, which was a very interesting experience,” he says. “Where I was staying, one night the windows were shattered by an explosion nearby, but on the whole, you learned to get on with things and not be distracted by the divisions.”
Richard has directed star names in one-person shows, from Edward Fox to Eileen Atkins, Margaret Wolfit to Geraldine McEwan. “Most recently, Eileen Atkins put me in touch with Dame Joan Plowright for a show where I interviewed her: it was a wonderful opportunity to get to know a wonderful person, doing the shows at the National Theatre and Chichester,” he says.
Reflecting on the contrast between now and 50 years ago, Richard says: “Theatre is not funded properly, with very few exceptions. The most worrying thing is the lack of performances of classic plays, and often when they’re done now, they’re very badly spoken, even at places where there’s no excuse, like the Royal Shakespeare Company.
“By comparison with Peter Hall’s days, what the National Theatre is doing now is not what it should be. So, I am concerned. I say this as an old man, but one who tries try not to have too many set ideas, but if you look at the list of what was playing in the West End 30 years ago and what’s on there now, I’m deeply concerned.”
His passion for theatre, his conviction in its importance, remains unbowed, however. “A city without the arts will never be a complete place,” he says.
50 Years On: Richard Digby Day In Conversation, York Theatre Royal Studio, tonight at 7pm. Tickets cost £20 plus an optional additional donation to York Theatre Royal. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Paul French’s Prospero, right, with Effie Warboys’ Miranda and Jacob Ward’s Ferdinand in York Shakespeare Project’s The Tempest. Picture: John Saunders
PAUL French first performed in a Shakespeare play in his York Shakespeare Project debut in All’s Well That Ends Well in 2014.
By 2016, he was playing Lear in King Lear and now is the lead once more, cast as Prospero in The Tempest, in YSP’s climax to performing all 37 Shakespeare plays in 20 years, concluding at York Theatre Royal tonight.
“I’d never done any Shakespeare until 2014, so it was an amazing development for me,” he says. “I didn’t start acting until my early forties, then I moved up here, and I had no idea I would like doing Shakespeare until I did it.
“I had a family and job but now I’ve retired, though it’s been a slow process with doing theatre, after doing a job that gave me the flexibility to do the York Mystery Plays [in York Minster] in 2016, and it just so happened that Ben Prusiner, from that production, was directing Lear, and then I did Volpone with Ben’s own company [Re:Verse Theatre].
Paul French’s Lear and Charlotte Wood’s Cordelia in Ben Prusiner’s King Lear in 2016. Picture John Saunders
“It’s all been pretty fortuitous. None of it was planned. My wife is now asking, ‘is this going to be your last Shakespeare?’, and I say, ‘I don’t know’, because I didn’t know I’d ever do one, but I love it, especially the rehearsals.”
Over the past few years, Paul has attended acting classes to develop his skills further and done films to diversify his craft too. Everything helps towards playing such a demanding role as Prospero.
“I remember when I did All’s Well That Ends Well, playing the king, which is not a huge part, saying to a fellow actor, ‘I’d love to do Lear and I’d love to do Prospero’, and you think, ‘how will that work out, with all the people who can do it?’, and yet here we are now, with all these blessed words to get out of my head!” says Paul.
He has enjoyed that experience. “It’s been very interesting to develop Prospero from having first read the play and having ideas of what he’s about and then exploring it. It’s a pleasure working with the other actors, starting with the huge scene with Miranda [Effie Warboys], setting up the story,” he says.
Paul French’s Prospero and Effie Warboys’ Miranda in rehearsal for Philip Parr’s production of The Tempest. Picture: John Saunders
“It’s fascinating how it all develops, and I now think Prospero is more like me than I first thought he was.”
Director Philip Parr chips in: “That’s sort of how it should work. The part should become greater than the actor by an alchemical process.”
Assessing the art of acting, Paul goes on to say: “Acting is reacting; acting is listening; acting is being in the moment.” Philip chips in again: “Acting is not acting!”
“I think it won’t happen with this cast, but with actors who are not experienced, there’s a tendency to not know how to react if the performance is suddenly different on one night,” says Paul. “But here, for The Tempest, we want it to be different, to just see what happens!”
York Shakespeare Project in The Tempest, York Theatre Royal, tonight (1/10/2022), 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
On the case: Susie Blake’s bandaged Miss Marple and Oliver Boot’s Detective Inspector Craddock in the Original Theatre Company’s production of The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
COINCIDING with Miss Marple’s arrival, Charles Hutchinson applies his investigative skills to to pick out the best prospects to see, whether usual or unusual.
Mystery of the week: Original Theatre Company in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm; 2pm, Thursday; 2.30pm, Saturday
SUSIE Blake’s Miss Marple, Sophie Ward and Joe McFadden lead the cast in Rachel Wagstaff’s stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1962 psychological thriller, a story of revenge and the dark secrets that we all hide.
In the sleepy village of St Mary Mead, a new housing estate is making villagers curious and fearful. Even stranger, a rich American film star has bought the Manor House. Cue a vicious murder; cue Jane Marple defying a sprained ankle to unravel a web of lies, tragedy and danger. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
On the move: Dance time for the Barbara Taylor School of Dancing at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre
Every body dance: It’s Dance Time 2022, Barbara Taylor School of Dancing, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, today, 2.30pm and 7.30pm
IT’S Dance Time is “a festival arrangement of dance, infused together to arrange a variety of dance styles”, featuring the whole Barbara Taylor School of Dancing intake.
From tiny toes to fully grown, this song-and- dance parade through the years takes in Commercial Ballet, Tap, and Freestyle Jazz, finishing off with excerpts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Bingham String Quartet: Playing the first Saturday evening concert of the new York Late Music season
Season launch of the week: York Late Music presents Jakob Fichert, today, 1pm, and Bingham String Quartet, today, 7.30pm, St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York
ON the first weekend of its 2022-2023 season, York Late Music returns with its regular format of a lunchtime and evening concert. First up, pianist Jakob Fichert marks the 75th birthday of American composer John Adams by performing his works China Gates and American Berserk.
Later, the Bingham String Quartet play string quartets by Beethoven, Schnittke, LeFanu and Tippett, preceded by a talk at 6.45pm by Steve Bingham with a complimentary glass of wine or juice. Tickets: latemusic.org or on the door.
Graham Norton: Discussing his darkly comic new novel, Forever Home, at York Theatre Royal
Novel event of the week: An Evening With Graham Norton, York Theatre Royal, Monday, 7.30pm
BBC broadcaster, Virgin Radio presenter and novelist Graham Norton is on a promotional tour for his new book, Forever Home, published this week by Coronet. Set in a small Irish town, it revolves around divorced teacher Carol, whose second chance of love brings her unexpected connection, a shared home and a sense of belonging in a darkly comic story of coping with life’s extraordinary challenges.
In conversation with author and presenter Konnie Huq, Norton will discuss the novel’s themes and how he creates his characters and atmospheric locations, share tales from his career and reveal what inspired him to pick up a pen and start writing, with room for audience questions too. Tickets update: sold out; for returns only, check yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Sax to the max: Jean Toussaint leads his quintet at the NCEM
Jazz gig of the week: Jean Toussaint Quintet, National Centre for Early Music, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm
SAXOPHONIST Jean Toussaint, who came to prominence in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1982, after his Berklee College of Music studies in Boston, has released 12 albums since moving to London in 1987.
His latest, Songs For Sisters Brothers And Others, reflects on the turbulent Covid-19 years. “The pandemic caused me to focus on the fragility of life and the fact we’re here one moment and gone the next,” he says of penning songs as a “tribute to my wonderful siblings while they were still around to enjoy it”.
Joining him in York will be Freddie Gavita, trumpet, Jonathan Gee, piano, Conor Murray, bass, and Shane Forbes, drums. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Feel like dancing? Leo Sayer steps out at York Barbican on Friday
The rearranged show must go on: Leo Sayer, York Barbican, Friday, 7.30pm
DELAYED by the pandemic, Leo Sayer’s York show now forms part of a 2022 tour to mark his 50th anniversary in pop.
Sayer, 74, who lives in Australia, is back on home soil with his not-so-one-man band to perform a setlist sure to feature One Man Band, Thunder In My Heart, Moonlighting, I Can’t Stop Loving You, More Than I Can Say, Have You Ever Been In Love, When I Need You, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and, yes, The Show Must Go On. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Buzzing: Maisie Adam heads home for Harrogate Theatre gig. Picture: Matt Crockett
Homecoming of the week: Maisie Adam: Buzzed, Harrogate Theatre, October 8, 8pm
BORN in Pannal and former head girl at St Aidan’s in Harrogate, anecdotal stand-up Maisie Adam heads home next Saturday on her first full-scale British tour to discuss relationships, house plants, her footballing aplomb, hopefully her beloved Leeds United and that haircut, the one to rival David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane for multiple choices across one barnet.
Adam played her first gig at the Ilkley Literature Festival in 2016 and won the nationwide So You Think You’re Funny? Competition in 2017. Now she pops up on Mock The Week and Have I Got News and co-hosts the podcast That’s A First. She also plays Leeds City Varieties on Friday. Box office: Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or leedsheritagetheatres.com.
Digging the digital: The poster for Foto/Grafic’s Human After All digital-media exhibition at Fossgate Social and Micklegate Social
One exhibition, two locations: Foto/Grafic, Human After All, at Micklegate Social and Fossgate Social, York, today until November 27.
TWO sister bars that “show a bit of art every now and then championing local and innovative creativity” present Foto/Grafic’s group show from this weekend.
Human After All features digital-media artwork by young and early-career artists in celebration of their “leap from physical earthbound creations to the stratosphere of the unlimited digital toolbox”.
December Morning, by Judy Burnett
Exhibition launch of the week outside York: Judy Burnett, Time And Tide, Morten Gallery, High Street, Old Town, Bridlington, today until November 13; open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm
YORK artist Judy Burnett’s latest show of paintings and collages at Morten Gallery winds its way across the Wolds from the River Ouse in York to the sea.
Over time, water in all its forms has created the East Yorkshire landscape, firstly as a melting glacier at the end of the Ice Age, gouging out deep valleys and folds on its way down to the Vale of York.
The River Ouse then connects with other Yorkshire waterways to spill out into the North Sea at the mouth of the Humber and return on the tide to crash onto the cliffs of the Wolds coastline.
Judy lives by the Ouse in York, with a view from her studio window directly onto the riverbank, leading to the changing effects of light on moving water being an inspiration for her work. The colours and rhythms of the water alter with the weather, the time of day, the seasons and the frequent floods.
This interest in the luminosity and movement of water is also reflected in Judy’s many paintings of the Yorkshire coast, most particularly at Flamborough Head and Bridlington.
During the past year, she has made many trips across the Wolds, observing the rich tapestry of the countryside that links the river to the sea.
Her sketches are completed on-site in varying weather conditions. Back in the studio, they are developed in a range of media, utilising hand-printed collage paper and paint. The aim is to keep all the mark-making fresh and spontaneous, to echo the power of the elements at the time of observation.
A Meet The Artist event will be held on October 22, from 1pm to 3pm, when “you are welcome to join us for a glass of wine and to enjoy the 30 pieces of work, together with Judy’s sketchbooks on display,” says gallery owner Jenny Morten.
Susie Blake’s Miss Marple in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, a play where she is on a chair, on crutches and on a stick. Picture: Ali Wright
SUSIE Blake returns to York Theatre Royal to play Agatha Christie’s spinster sleuth Miss Marple in The Original Theatre Company’s touring production of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d.
She last appeared there in February 2017 in the premiere of Murder, Margaret And Me, cast as Margaret Rutherford, such a memorable Miss Marple on the big screen, as recalled in a Philip Meeks drama that explored the relationship between the actress and queen of crime writers.
Now she stars in Rachel Wagstaff’s new adaptation of Christie’s 1962 novel The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side that aims to bring emotional depth and psychological insight to a story of secrets, loss and revenge, performing in a company with strong Yorkshire links.
Co-stars Sophie Ward and Joe McFadden had regular roles in the moorland series Heartbeat, as did director Philip Franks, last seen in York as the devilishly disdainful Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show at the Grand Opera House in March.
Susie Blake with The Mirror Crack’d co-star Sophie Ward. Picture: Ali Wright
“I’ve always wanted to play Miss Marple, since the 1960s when I saw Margaret Rutherford playing her. Her character performance immediately drew you in,” says Susie, who follows in the footsteps of Angela Lansbury in the 1980 film of The Mirror Crack’d and Joan Hickson and Julia McKenzie in television adaptations in 1992 and 2011 respectively.
“I loved her Lady Bracknell in [Oscar Wilde’s] The Importance Of Being Earnest, her Madame Arcati in [Noel Coward’s] Blithe Spirit. I loved her so much. I know she’s not fashionable any more as Miss Marple but I was drawn in as a child, seeing her as this safe, cuddly lady who would work things out for you.
“I thought ‘that’s what I want to do with my life’ – to tell stories and be part of mysteries because every play is a mystery, isn’t it? You don’t know what’s going to happen until the end.”
Playing Rutherford in Murder, Margaret And Me has “not really” influenced Susie’s own performance as Miss Marple. “Philip, our director, said, ‘This is your interpretation now, Susie, no-one else’s. We’ve got to find your interpretation’.
Susie Blake’s Miss Marple, on the phone and on her stick in a scene from The Original Theatre Company’s The Mirror Crack’d. Picture: Ali Wright
“Miss Marple is from a certain period. Her boyfriend, whom she talks about, was in the First World War, so she goes back quite a long way. My mum was born in 1917, and she and her friends were, you know, ‘good eggs’. They had a certain turn of phrase. So, I met some quite useful people growing up.”
Revisiting Christie’s books has helped Susie to put her stamp on a beloved fictional character. “I’ve been re-reading Pocketful Of Rye and there are some very good descriptions of her in there. I go back to that rather than watching other people playing her to find out what makes Miss Marple tick.
“I’m absolutely loving re-reading the books. The people are so clearly drawn. Reading them all together, like I’m doing, you think: these are a multitude of people that she’s observed. Agatha Christie is a Miss Marple herself in order to work these intricate stories through.”
Asked to summarise Miss Marple’s character, Susie says: “She’s fascinated by people, she’s obsessed with finding out the truth and she’ll go on nitpicking until she gets it. She hates evil and injustice, and she hunts it down. She’s relentless in her pursuit of the truth and will go on digging away and digging away.
Susie Blake’s Miss Marple in her “rather lovely suit” and string of pearls. Picture: Michael Wharley
“Rachel Wagstaff has written a very good script and she’s made Miss Marple a much clearer character: someone who wants to find out the truth. Not in an unkind way but she will go on at somebody, go on delving until she gets what she wants.
“Rachel is a wonderful writer, like how she gives Miss Marple a bit of history, so you get to know why she’s alone. This is her first Christie adaptation; she’s very in with the family and I hope she does more of them.”
In Christie’s story, a wind of change is blowing through 1960s’ England, even reaching the sleepy village of St Mary Mead, where a new housing estate is alarming the villagers as much as it intrigues them. Still more unsettling, a rich American film star has bought the manor house. Jane Marple, confined to a chair after an accident, is wondering if life has passed her by, but a shocking murder demands she must unravel a web of lies, danger and tragedy.
“Rachel’s adaptation is not what you’re expecting. It worried me at first: are people expecting an old-fashioned Agatha Christie repertory production? But it’s not like that at all! Philip has really brought out the characters, with 12 actors on stage. That’s a lot to deal with and he’s made them very likeable and individual and you kind of don’t want any of them to have done the crime.”
Susie Blake’s Miss Marple sharing a sofa with Oliver Boot’s Detective Inspector Craddock. “It’s like a very good granny and grandson relationship: we bicker!” says Susie. “She’s sitting at home feeling very alone, and then in comes Craddock with this murder. Up she steps, much to his dissatisfaction!” Picture: Ali Wright
Susie’s Miss Marple will spend much of The Mirror Crack’d walking on crutches. “She’s sprained her ankle, right at the top of the show,” she reveals. “I start in a chair, then crutches, then finally a stick. They’re not easy to use, these old wooden crutches – I think they might be museum pieces, beautifully shaped – so I’ve had to learn how to use them.
“I must try not to limp because at my age [72] that could be disastrous. But being on crutches is a good ruse for slowing things down to allow her to work things out!”
Over a long career, “I’ve been very lucky that I haven’t ever had a theatre injury,” reflects Susie. Keeping herself fit, during the tour’s Eastbourne run, she went swimming in the sea each day, chatting with the regulars at the beach huts. Next week, she heads to York, sketch book by her side. “That way you get a good memory of a town,” she reasons.
Susie is working with director Philip Franks for a second time. “We did [Alan Bennett’s play] Kafka’s Dick at Nottingham Playhouse in 1998 with Alistair McGowan in the cast,” she recalls.
“For The Mirror Crack’d, he said, ‘I’ll bring the education, you bring the talent!’, as I’m not well read but I went to [Elmhurst] ballet school, Arts Educational and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art,” says Londoner Susie.
The Mirror Crack’d director Philip Franks: “This is your interpretation now, Susie, no-one else’s,” he advised. “We’ve got to find your interpretation”
“He’s so lovely with actors. He’s given me free rein but made suggestions like, ‘what about if she was at Bletchley Park, doing de-coding in the war, and so she’s intrinsically interested in wanting to work things out, being fascinated in solving things, rather than being ghoulish?’.”
Rather than woolly jumpers and pince-nez, her Jane Marple will be wearing a “rather lovely suit”. “Quite a nice look, with a big collar, a white blouse underneath, a string of pearls, sensible shoes obviously, and no hat because the play moves too fast for me to wear one – and nobody’s missed the hat,” says Susie. “She’s my age, in her seventies rather than in her eighties, in our production.”
Why does Miss Marple’s popularity show no signs of diminishing, Susie? “Almost everything on the telly is a mystery, whatever you’re watching. You want to be taken by the hand knowing that Miss Marple or Poirot will help you work it out,” she says.
“It’s like having a pal, going into a situation with someone by your side. With most shows, you don’t know whose side to be on, but with her you have a familiar friend. And you can read the books again and again and watch the stories again and again and always enjoy them.”
Susie Blake’s Miss Marple in an early publicity picture for The Mirror Crack’d. The hat has since gone. “The play moves too fast for me to wear one – and nobody’s missed the hat,” she says
Best known for her comedy break in Russ Abbot’s Madhouse, her Continuity Announcer in Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV and her regular roles as Bev Unwin in Coronation Street and Hillary Nicholson in Mrs Brown’s Boys, Susie has latterly appeared in series one and two of Kate & Koji (ITV), Not Going Out (BBC One) and The Real Marigold Hotel (BBC One).
Have her roles become more interesting as she has grown older, leading to Miss Marple? “Yes, I think they have – and I’ve probably got better too,” decides Susie. “I’ve never wanted to be a frontliner or a film star. That was never on the cards. Only when you look back, you think, ‘I’ve been busy in my career’. Splendid looks can be quite difficult when you have to do the changeover to middle age. For me, it’s gone seamlessly from girl next door to wives and mothers to grandmothers.”
As for the future, “I’d love to be the next Miss Marple on telly. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
The Original Theatre Company in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, York Theatre Royal, October 4 to 8, 7.30pm; 2pm, Thursday and 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
“I’ve never wanted to be a frontliner or a film star,” says Susie Blake. “That was never on the cards”
Did you know?
The Original Theatre Company’s past productions at York Theatre Royal: Alan Bennett’s Auden-Britten encounter The Habit Of Art, Rachel Wagstaff’s adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’s novel Birdsong and Ben Brown’s Cold War political drama A Splinter Of Ice.
Did you know too?
Susie Blake was born into famous acting stock. Her cousins are the actresses Juliet and Hayley Mills; her great-uncle was the late film star Sir John Mills, and her maternal grandmother was Annette Mills, who fronted the BBC TV children’s series Muffin The Mule from 1946 to 1955.
Just one other thing…
How do you think Miss Marple compares to Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, Susie?
“They are so different. They both have the same interrogating mind, but her methods are very much to do with the fact that she’s a little old lady. She gets chatting to people and shows her vulnerability, all the better to hook into what she needs to know.
“It’s the knife edge quality of her mind whereas Poirot never shows any weakness. She, on the other hand, will knock on someone’s door and say, ‘ooh I feel a bit faint; can I sit down?’.”
The Ariel Collective confronts Stuart Lindsay’s Sebastian in York Shakespeare Project’s The Tempest at Thorganby Village Hall. All pictures: John Saunders
YORK Shakespeare Project (YSP) is completing its 20-year mission to perform all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays with its 35th production and first tour.
Only 35 productions? Twice, plays were amalgamated into a unified presentation. Whatever path was taken, however, The Tempest was always to be the finale, concluding in an “icing on the cake” staging at York Theatre Royal this weekend.
The tour opened at Thorganby Village Hall last Friday and then headed to Strensall and Towthorpe Village Hall for two Saturday performances.
Tonight comes Helmsley Arts Centre; tomorrow, Selby Town Hall; Thursday, The Junction, Goole; Friday, Acomb Parish Church Hall; Saturday, the York climax, to be followed by a Sunday party.
Paul French’s Prospero laying down the lore to suitor Ferdinand (Jacob Ward) and daughter Miranda (Effie Warboys)
Each venue presents different challenges: some have lighting, others do not; some have stage exits,others not so. This has led to one-size-fits-all halls design: Richard Hampton’s stage cloth with a tree daubed on it, along with a brace of monkeys on the branches, and a Pride/rainbow-coloured band, sand and sea around the edge. On that perimeter are placed wooden boxes and chests, swept ashore from the storm.
Thorganby Village Hall’s interior is cream coloured and equipped with most welcoming facilities for serving tea and biscuits. Paul French’s Prospero takes a seat by the door as everyone enters, overseeing proceedings even before the start.
The lighting is of the harsh, stripped variety, beloved of such village halls since the Seventies. Director Philip Parr (of Parrabbola and York International Shakespeare Festival) had talked of touring with a rig for Ian Frampton’s lighting design but decided on keeping the Thorganby hall lights on. Not ideal, but them are the breaks, as a departing Prime Minister quaffed only the other week.
On first night, that denied The Tempest of one of its primary elements in a play as rooted in nature as Macbeth is. In its absence, sound and spectacle became more important, indeed the crux of Parr’s interpretation. Maybe lighting can further add to the atmosphere elsewhere.
Tom Jennings’s Stefano happens across Andrew Isherwood’s Caliban and Jodie Fletcher’s Trincula (covered) with the offer of a reviving stiff drink
One key asset of community productions is the potential for a large cast without the professional companies’ burden of having to pay actors. This manifests itself in the role of Ariel, the freedom-craving spirit. Make that 17, yes, seventeen Ariels: any one of the 350 actors who had appeared in a YSP play had an open invitation from Parr to be part of The Ariel Collective.
Good call! These restless Ariels are everywhere, seated on the boxes, or suddenly springing up to assault the reckless shipwrecked; sometimes speaking separately, sometimes together; scoffing at Caliban’s claim to own the island; mocking anyone with pretensions. Not only shape-shifting sprites, but voice-shifting too, they speak for the island, as much as they answer to Prospero.
In the two decades of YSP, this is one of the very best directorial innovations, rivalling Maggie Smales’s all-female Henry V. A round of applause too, please, for Blacksmith Shop Crafts, in Foggathorpe, and cast members who conjured the Ariel costumes, as decorative as an African wedding.
Head of wardrobe Judith Ireland has overseen The Tempest’s array of costumery, whether dandy for Jacob Ward’s Ferdinand or elegant for French’s waistcoated Prospero or free-floating for Effie Warboys’ Miranda.
Young lovers: Jacob Ward’s Ferdinand and Effie Warboys’ Miranda
The all-important storm scene is drowned in sound, the multitude of Ariels kicking up a right swell of noise, through which Harry Summers’ Boatswain and Lara Stafford’s Gonzala must strive to be heard as they cling to the mast. Yes, words are lost, but they would be in a tempest.
Having already played Lear for YSP, now Paul French takes on Shakespeare’s other veteran role. He has no book of spells, no rod, he must craft his own magic, and his Prospero, the wronged, exiled Duke of Milan, is a man no longer wild with anger, but sanguine and aware of his fading powers in pursuance of revenge.
He prefers calm control, a quiet word, whether in proudly coaching young daughter Miranda (full of wonderment in Warboys’ turn) or seeking to tame Andrew Isherwood’s enslaved monster, Caliban, before administering forgiveness in a radiant glow.
Often too, French will pause for thought before delivering both sentence and his next sentence, always choosing the mellifluous when greater variation of tone could be explored.
In his Northern Broadside actor-manager days, Barrie Rutter decried the convention of Shakespeare’s swansong play being very dark in hue, bringing in blues and yellows and jettisoning the black thunder and rough magic.
Swept ashore: Tony Froud’s prone Alonso and Lara Stafford’s Gonzala, attended to by Andrea Mitchell’s Antonia and Stuart Lindsay’s Sebastian
Parr has retained the thunder but matched Rutter, not only in the bright garb of the Ariel Collective, but also in the humour to be found in those Ariels and Ward’s love-struck Ferdinand, working up a sweat in the interval as he keeps moving the Ariels’ boxes, only for them to move them back (in a representation of collecting wood for Miranda).
Not for the first time in YSP colours, Jodie Fletcher mines the comedy to broadest effect in her Trincula, matched by Tom Jennings’s vainglorious, preening butler Stefano.
Nick Jones, with a dozen YSP productions to his name, combines Ariel duties with composer and musical director credits. He favours Early Music instrumentation and delivers one of the highlights of Parr’s production, the Masque, where Emma Scott and Nell Frampton, last seen as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, reveal pure singing voices as Ceres and Iris, joined by Tracey Rea, always a belting-good singer.
Like the play itself – the prog-rock final flourish to Shakespeare’s gilded career – YSP’s The Tempest is good in parts, underwhelming in others, but that Ariel Collective will live long in the memory.
What next for YSP? Apparently, they will be starting all over again, adding plays by the Bard’s contemporaries too. This represents a chance to shake, rattle and roll out Shakespeare in disparate ways, reflecting changing times through the years ahead and the changing character – and characters – of York too.
The first steps will be taken at YSP’s annual general meeting on October 26 at the Black Swan Inn when the “shadow” committee will table its proposals for the next phase and a and a new chair will be elected.
Box office: yorkshakespeareproject.org; Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk; Selby, 01757 708449 or selbytownhall.co.uk; Goole, 01405 763652 or junctiongoole.co.uk; Acomb, eventbrite.com/e/the-tempest-tickets-400909710737; York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
