An ensemble scene in the Duluth boarding house in Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson
THERE has been a previous Bob Dylan musical: a dance one set “somewhere between awake and asleep” in a dreamy circus of clowns and contortionists, spun around a coming-of-age conflict by director-choreographer Twyla Tharp.
Would it surprise you to learn that the Broadway run of The Times They Are A-Changin’ ground to a halt after only 35 previews and 28 performances in November 2006?
Girl From The North Country just sounds more apt: written and directed by Conor McPherson, elegiac Dublin playwright of The Weir, who had been sent a box gift of 60 career-spanning Dylan CDs by Bob’s management with free rein to select songs to wrap his story around.
That story is set in Duluth, Minnesota, birthplace of one Robert Zimmerman, as The Depression weighed as heavy as stones on saint Margaret Clitherow, in the America of November 1934, a place of racism, broken businesses and abused women.
Eli James’s Reverend Marlowe works his salesman’s pitch on Ross Carswell’s Elias Burke in Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson
Nothing is glitzy about Rae Smith’s scenic staging: a boarding house of worn furniture and worn, lost souls, complemented by panoramic backdrops in black and white.
And yes, McPherson’s cast of 19 actor-musicians do dance, but, like the revolving door of stories blown in on the wind, the pace tends to be slow in Simon Hale’s orchestrations and arrangements, unhurried, some in waltz time, peppered with sporadic bursts of freewheelin’ joy and abandon.
Narrated by the local doctor, weaving his way in and out of the plot as much as the 20 Dylan songs, McPherson’s episodic drama of troubles past, present and in-bound, has the widowed, weary Dr Walker (Chris McHallem) guiding the to and fro of drifters and dreamers, scammers and schemers “trying to figure out their lives” as they pass through the welcome-all boarding house.
If one Dylan chorus were to sum up McPherson’s Eugene O’Neill-inspired story of dysfunctional families, love lost, love never found, and the dangers in strangers, it would be: “How does it feel, ah how does it feel/To be on your own, with no direction home/Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.”
Frances McNamee’s Elizabeth Laine and James Staddon’s Mr Burke. Picture: Johan Persson
There may be the hubhub of life, the constant interaction, and yet the abiding state of being is one of loneliness. On your own, even when surrounded. As sung by Elizabeth, the demented wife of exhausted, despairing, play-away proprietor Nick Laine (a tinderbox Colin Connor), Like A Rolling Stone is indeed “Dylan as you’ve never heard him sung before”, all the more so for the voice emanating from Frances McNamee, winner of the UK Theatre Award for her performance as Meg Dawson in Sting’s musical The Last Ship, as seen at York Theatre Royal in June 2018.
McNamee is even more remarkable here, drawing more tears at the finale in the hopeful Forever Young, and taking the acting honours too. Elizabeth, much more than the narrator, is the key voice of truth here, lacking a filter to tone down her thoughts. For all her madness, she is as unguarded, outspoken and eccentrically funny as a Shakespearean Fool. Her silences and juddering, impromptu dancing speak volumes too.
Significantly, to emphasise the loneliness of each character “standing at a turning point in their lives, searching for a future, hiding from the past and facing unspoken truths about the present”, each song is delivered from the front, directly to the audience, not to fellow characters.
This is particularly affecting in I Want To You, a duet where, side by side, the Laines’ writer son Gene (Gregor Milne in his outstanding professional debut) and Katherine Draper (Eve Norris) say what they could never express to each other or bring to fruition, blighted by circumstance.
Writer-director Conor McPherson in rehearsal with James Staddon and Frances McNamee for Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson
McPherson talked of his “little stories” of failing men and the women they fail being like parables in the Bible, simple, human, rather than political statements, made meaningful by Dylan’s songs. They are, it should be said, made even more meaningful by multiple excellent performances that both devastate and uplift you.
Joshua C Jackson’s Joe Scott, a wrongly imprisoned black boxer seeking a new life, and Justina Kehinde’s Marianne, the Laines’ adopted black daughter, are particularly impactful. Nichola MacEvilly understudied most ably for Keisha Amponsa Banson as Mrs Neilsen on press night, and Teddy Kempner (Mr Perry), Ross Carswell (Elias Burke) and James Staddon’s insufferable Mr Burke add much to the torrid tales.
Far removed from the glut of jukebox musicals or the glittering campery of plenty more, Girl From The North Country is more in keeping with the emotional punch, the highs and the lows, the sadness and the joy of Billy Elliot, Once or Spring Awakening.
Oh, and who can resist the sight of Rebecca Thornhill’s heavy-drinking Mrs Burke playing drums in a red dress or Carswell’s nod to Dylan in playing the mouth organ?! Not forgetting a round of applause for the band, The Howlin’ Winds, especially Ruth Elder’s violin and mandolin.
Girl From The North Country runs at York Theatre Royal until tomorrow (10/9/2022). Performances: 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm, 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.Further Yorkshire dates: Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, November 29 to December 3; Sheffield Lyceum Theatre, January 17 to 21.
Justina Kehinde’s Marianne Laine singing out front in Girl From The North Country. Picture: Johan Persson
Goole by name, ghoul by nature: Liam Brennan’s stern Inspector Goole in An Inspector Calls. Picture: Tristram Kenton, 2019
STEPHEN Daldry’s award-garlanded reimagining of J B Priestley’s haunting family drama An Inspector Calls will return to its York roots next year.
Premiered at York Theatre Royal in 1989, this time it will play the Grand Opera House for the first time from February 7 to 11 2023 on its 30th Anniversary UK and Ireland Tour: so called because the London premiere was staged in 1992 at the National Theatre.
PW Productions are mounting the 2022-23 tour that will see Liam Brennnan playing Inspector Goole, just as he did on the last visit to York when performing to sold-out audiences at the Theatre Royal in September 2018.
Writer-director Daldry’s ground-breaking production has accumulated 19 major awards, including four Tony Awards and three Olivier Awards, and played to more than five million theatregoers worldwide, en route to becoming the National Theatre’s most internationally lauded show.
Written at the end of the Second World War and set before the First, Bradford playwright Priestley’s thriller opens with the mysterious Inspector Goole calling unexpectedly on the prosperous Birling family home. Whereupon their peaceful family dinner party is shattered by his investigations into the suicide of a young, discarded, pregnant factory girl.
A scene of devastation: Brian MacNeil’s over-sized doll’s house design for An Inspector Calls, on tour at York Theatre Royal in 2018
Inside, the year is 1912; outside it is 1945 as urchins play in the rain-swept, thundering wartime streets in the year when Priestley wrote his play. A pillar-box telephone and steam radio denote the latter era, as does the Bogart raincoat of Brennan’s sternly Scottish Inspector Goole.
Under Goole’s forensic, assiduous, tongue-loosening style of questioning, the impact mirrors a wartime bombing raid as the ground buckles beneath them.
Priestley’s socialist uprising of a play dramatises the dangers of casual capitalism’s cruelty, complacency and hypocrisy. Over its 105 unbroken minutes, Daldry’s German expressionist interpretation builds a political layer, one whose resonance renews with each era.
In 1989, his wish was to send Margaret Thatcher’s Tory philosophies to the grave, to damn the pursuit of individual gain; in 2009, when playing Leeds Grand Theatre, parliamentary expense claims and duck ponds were in the headlines.
In 2018, Inspector Goole’s final speech, with its wish for collective responsibility and someone, anyone, willing to say sorry, rubbed against an age of austerity, intolerance, division and worsening working conditions.
Roll on 2022-23, a 12th year of Tory rule, as inflation rises and strikers rise up in an over-hot world but one where people can’t afford to heat themselves through the winter while oil and gas shareholders can afford to burn fivers by the barrowload.
Liam Brennan, left, and Jeffrey Harmer are all smiles as they rehearse for the latest tour of An Inspector Calls, heading for the Grand Opera House, next February
Dorset-born British theatre and film director Daldry will be at the directorial helm once more. Over the years, he has received Academy Award nominations for his films The Reader, The Hours, Billy Elliot and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, while his West End theatre work includes David Hare’s Skylight at the Wyndham’s Theatre and Peter Morgan’s The Audience at the Apollo Theatre.
His multi award-winning production of Billy Elliot The Musical ran for 11 years at the Victoria Palace, London, before embarking on a national tour. Latterly, he has directed several episodes of the Netflix hit series The Crown, taking on the producer’s role too.
Joining him in the production team will be Oscar-winning composer Stephen Warbeck (Shakespeare In Love), lighting designer Rick Fisher and designer Ian MacNeil, whose audacious original set is still extraordinary, still breath-taking: an over-sized doll’s house set on stilts to raise its smug, partying Edwardian occupants for moral examination by Priestley, the inspector and the audience alike.
Alongside Brennan’s Inspector Goole will be Christine Kavanagh as haughty, social-climbing Sybil Birling; Jeffrey Harmer as bumptious former Lord Mayor Arthur Birling; Evlyne Oyedokun as daughter Sheila Birling; Simon Cotton as her arch fiancé, Gerald Croft; George Rowlands as Sheila’s unhappy, inadequate, lush brother, Eric Birling, and Frances Campbell as parlour maid Edna, complemented by understudies Philip Stewart, Beth Tuckey, Maceo Cortezz and Rue Blenkinsop.
Tickets for An Inspector Calls at Grand Opera House, York, cost £13 upwards on 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Evlyne Oyedoken in rehearsal with Jeffery Harmer, left, and Simon Cotton for the 2022-23 tour of An Inspector Calls
Here, George Rowlands (who will play Eric Birling) and Evlyne Oyedokun (Sheila Birling) escape Inspector Goole’s forensic scrutiny to answer questions of a different kind ahead of the 2023 tour of An Inspector Calls.
An Inspector Calls is on the school curriculum, sure to attract GCSE pupils and their parents alike to next year’s tour. Did you study it at school? If so, did you enjoy it? Does your appreciation of the play differ as an adult?
George: “I did read it at school, although I can’t really remember much of it. But I did always like it. I always think at school, when you sit down and analyse every single word, it can make you go a bit crazy, and I always thought it ruined books and plays. But now that I’m an adult, or more importantly now that I’m an actor, I definitely have more of an appreciation for it.”
Evlyne: “I actually didn’t study it at school; I studied To Kill A Mockingbird. I’d heard about An Inspector Calls but I didn’t really know what it was, or really anything about it. It wasn’t until I got this audition that I actually read the play for the first time, and I still didn’t quite understand it. It took me a while to realise how many layers this play actually has.”
“It took me a while to realise how many layers this play actually has,” says Evlyne Oyedokun
What makes J B Priestley’s play so timeless and Stephen Daldry’s production so engaging?
Evlyne: “Well, the fact that is has three timelines helps. It’s set across three timelines – you’ve got 1912, which is where the play is set; then you’ve got the future, which is the Blitz, 1945, and then you’ve also got the current now, 2022.
“It’s amazing. You’re flicking through the past, present and the now constantly, and it’s so reflective on humanity, so it makes it so relevant, and people can really see themselves.”
George: At the end of the day, at its centre it’s a play about somebody in distress, and that doesn’t get old, does it? I think at different points in time, when we’ve put it on over the last 30 years, it’s been relevant. And this time around I think it’s more relevant than ever because of what’s going on in terms of the strike action and housing crisis.”
Give three characteristics of the character you will be playing?
George: “Eric is well educated because he’s been sent to public school. He enjoys a drink, probably a little bit too much. He really wants to be respected by his dad. Unfortunately, the combination results in some pretty catastrophic things.”
Evlyne: “Well, Sheila’s absolutely besotted with Gerald. She is very self-absorbed and in her own world, as she’s been brought up that way. She absolutely adores clothes.”
“Being an actor beats doing any other boring job,” says George Rowlands
What made you want to be an actor?
Evlyne: “Oh gosh! With me, I actually didn’t ever want to be an actor, it happened by accident. From a young age I was struggling with people and I never really spoke – I was pretty much mute to people I didn’t really know.
“My mum advised me to go and see a youth company at the weekends, so I did that, and I didn’t realise how natural it was to act as it is to live in the real world. I was a lot freer.
“That’s how I realised it’s the only thing I can do. Drama school taught me how to speak and acting taught me how to be more of a human than I ever was.”
George: “I think it beats doing any other boring job. I did find out quite early on in Year 6: for the end-of-school plays we did The Wizard Of Oz and I completely rewrote the script because I thought it was rubbish, and obviously made my parts the best.
“I like storytelling and I like the creative and artistic aspect of it. With this production, it has enabled that part of acting, and it’s been a really good creative process.”
Evlyne Oyedokun’s Sheila Birling and Simon Cotton’s Gerald Croft in the rehearsal room for An Inspector Calls. Picture: Mark Douet
When on tour, are there any essentials to have in your dressing room or top tips for making yourself feel at home in each city?
Evlyne: “I’m really bad at this stuff! A lot of people tend to make their dressing rooms cosy with nice blankets and things. I just bring everything that I have in my bag and that’s pretty much it.
“Some people put up fairy lights and flowers, but for me I’m very simple. With autism, as long as I’ve got really comfy clothes, a phone charger and headphones to cancel out sound, I’m all good.”
George: “I’m sharing a room with Simon [Cotton] who’s playing Gerald. I don’t know…I think a bottle of water goes a long way. A bottle of water and some Vaseline is not a terrible idea – for the lips, obviously! I get chapped lips.”
What is the most challenging part of being a performer?
Evlyne: “For me, it’s not being able to see your work or the story you’re creating because you’re so involved and living in the moment of it. You don’t really see the end result. I feel that the end result is mainly the response from the audience; if they got the story then we’ve done our job.”
George: “With other jobs, you can put a direct amount of work in, you can work more, you can do this and this, and your results will be better because of it. Like if you’re studying for an exam, the more you revise, the better the result.
George Rowlands’ Eric Birling and Christine Kavanagh’s Mrs Birling in rehearsal. Picture: Mark Douet
“But with acting it doesn’t work like that because being good is so subjective – there’s no grade. I think that’s quite hard. Putting lots of work in and not knowing really how it will go.”
Evlyne: “One of the sayings at RADA was, ‘plan it, know it and forget it’. It’s the hardest thing to do, but it’s the most rewarding thing to do.”
If you could swap roles for a performance, would you?
Evlyne: “If I had to be someone out of all the characters, it would definitely be the inspector, because I’m obsessed with crime documentaries and serial killers, everything to do with murder, unsolved murder, unsolved mysteries, death row, all of that! I’ve pretty much seen everything and I re-watch it to go to sleep.”
George: “If I could pick any character, I’d probably pick Edna [the parlour maid]. I would love to play her. If you haven’t seen this production, there’s a special thing that Edna is part of – a little bit of magic. She’s amazing.
“My second choice would be Mrs Birling. I really like Mrs Birling; she’s got such sass and doesn’t have the insecurities that Eric is stuck with.”
Jason Battersby: Actor, dancer, singer and now York Theatre Royal pantomime star
THE actor, singer and dancer who will play the title role in All New Adventures Of Peter Pan at York Theatre Royal comes with “flight experience”, as this winter’s pantomime producer somewhat mysteriously puts it.
Jason Battersby will be taking one giant leap in his pantomime debut, but he is no stranger to the character of Peter, having appeared as the Lead Shadow last Christmas in Wendy And Peter at Leeds Playhouse, where he flew through the air as he shadowed the ever-boyish Peter.
Precisely what flights of imagination Jason will experience in the Paul Hendy-scripted Theatre Royal pantomime have yet to be revealed but definitely he will take to the air again.
Flying lessons for the Playhouse show will come in handy this winter too, although wondering if the pantomime will be working with single-line or double-line flying. Whichever system is used in York , the key to flying is the harness he must wear.
Jason Battersby, back right, playing the Lead Shadow in Wendy And Peter at Leeds Playhouse last winter
“It can be restricting,” he says. “When you rehearse you have all these ideas of what you want to do but then you put the harness on and realise you can’t do them. It can be painful too if you don’t quite put it on the right way.”
Before last winter’s appearance, Jason had neither read J M Barrie’s book nor watched the Disney film. He researched Peter and his creator Barrie for the Leeds show, in particular exploring the parallels between the character and the Scottish writer’s own life.
The Shadows were used at Leeds to represent the many facets of Peter’s complex personality: cocky, childish, curious, naïve, as Jason described the boy who never grew up. Now he is excited to be playing this fly-by-night in York.
“Pantomime is perfect for telling Peter’s story because he never stops playing,” he says. “It’s going to be wonderful to bring that to family audiences and have fun with it.”
As with Peter, there are many sides to Jason: actor, dancer, singer, songwriter and music producer, all by the age of 22. Such is the variety of his work so far that he has chalked up childhood roles in Macbeth, The Nutcracker and Waiting For Godot with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, plus numerous productions for Youth Music Theatre UK and National Youth Music Theatre, most notably performing Whistle Down The Wind in the presence of Prince Edward.
Jason Battersby in rehearsal for Wendy And Peter at Leeds Playhouse
This summer has been spent starring in the musical Crazy For You at Chichester Festival Theatre. While York Theatre Royal will mark his pantomime debut, he did appear in Santa Claus The Musical, a show with pantomime elements, when he was seven, having started ballet classes some years before.
Two years later, he was training with the Royal Ballet School and when he turned 11 he faced a difficult choice. “You have to decide at quite an early age if you want to be a ballet dancer and continue with that training,” he says. “I thought ‘yes, it’s something I enjoy’ but I’d never really wanted to focus on one specific aspect of performance.”
Ballet was duly left behind in favour of acting and musical theatre, as well as pursuing his interest in making his own music. “At school, I had a bunch of friends who did music, and I was one of the boys in my school who could sing. Then I found I appreciated watching them write music and dove into that myself,” Jason says.
“I’ve always found writing your own songs very therapeutic. I feel as if I write them for myself and if other people listen that’s fine. Music for me is quite grounding. Communication for me has always been a little bit difficult and there’s something about writing lyrics I really like. Pop songs get right down to the root of what you say. I really enjoy being producing music where I am the creative force behind it, with no outside influence.”
Shadow play: Jason Battersby, left, with fellow cast members in the Leeds Playhouse rehearsal room for Wendy And Peter
When it comes to ambitions, Jason recalls as a young performer often being asked that same question: “What’s your dream role?”. He had a “really stupid” answer he used to fall back on: “It’s anything I get paid for,” he would say.
Now he takes the question more seriously. “In this industry, it’s great to have ambitions and dreams but it’s far more important to be realistic and know that as actors we’re not constantly working,” he says.
Come November, he will be joined in the panto rehearsals by creative director Juliet Forster’s already confirmed cast members for the third collaboration between York Theatre Royal and Evolution Productions: CBeebies’ Mandie Moate in her first pantomime as feisty fairy Tinkerbell; social media sensation Jonny Weldon as Starkey; Faye Campbell as Elizabeth Darling and fellow returnees Paul Hawkyard as Captain Hook and Robin Simpson as Mrs Darling after last winter’s Ugly Sisters double act, Mardy and Manky.
All New Adventure Of Peter Pan will run at York Theatre Royal from December 2 to January 2. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The poster for All New Adventures Of Peter Pan at York Theatre Royal
Writer-director Conor McPherson, second from right, directs a rehearsal for Girl From The North Country. All pictures: Johan Persson
BEFORE Irish writer-director Conor McPherson set to work on his first musical, Bob Dylan’s management company sent him a gift box. Inside were more than 60 CDs by the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature-winning American singer-songwriter.
What ensued in summer 2017 from the Dublin playwright of The Weir and The Seafarer was Girl From The North Country, the West End and Broadway hit with Olivier and Tony awards to its name, now on its debut tour, next Stop York Theatre Royal from Tuesday.
“It was Dylan’s office that approached me, so I had no idea for a musical or even a play at that stage,” Conor recalls. “I thought, ‘oh, that’s an unusual idea, and initially I was reluctant as I had no experience of doing musicals, but then I had this idea of a doing a Eugene O’Neil-style play set in Minnesota in the 1930s before Dylan was born, so it would be outside his time frame and not directly connected to him.
“The Great Depression was happening, and I had this group of people gathered in a boarding house trying to figure out their lives. I went back to Dylan’s management; they spoke to Bob, who said he really liked it, and then it took off from there.”
McPherson duly constructed an elegiac, uplifting and universal story of family and poverty, love and loss that “boldly reimagines the legendary songs of Bob Dylan like you’ve never heard them before”.
The setting is 1934, when a group of wayward drifters and dreamers find their paths crossing in an enervated boarding house in Dylan’s hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. Standing at a turning point in their lives, they search for a future, hide from the past and face unspoken truths about the present.
An ensemble scene from Girl From The North Country
Interwoven into that story are more than 20 of Dylan’s songs. “I was firing into the dark. I’d seen some musicals but it wasn’t something I’d sought to do, but I’m a huge music fan, so using music on stage felt natural to me,” says Conor, who set about listening all 60 of those Dylan albums and was given free rein by Dylan to select songs.
“I knew a good body of Dylan’s work just from having some albums myself. They ranged from the albums of the Sixties to the Seventies, but I hadn’t really listened to much of his album work since then, so I’d listen to them on my walks by the sea, and if something struck me instinctively, if it spoke to me, I’d note it and then made a list of the songs I liked.”
Conor had no preconceptions about what made a song suitable for the musical format. Instead, he evaluated Dylan’s distinctive songwriting. “The thing about Dylan is that the majority of his songs are subjective, providing poetic images but leaving it to the listener to bring meaning and sense to them,” he says.
“That makes him more akin to a literary writer than a pop writer, and the advantage, to me, is that it allows songs to be very malleable as you can put them anywhere and they still mean something to somebody, so in this musical, they reflect each of the characters in different ways.” Perfect for a musical, as it turns out!
In a nutshell, Dylan’s songs have the ring of universality. “He manages to distil his subjective experience into something people relate to. It has the strange, odd contrariness of people’s real thoughts and it’s a language which allows us to transcend our normal way of thinking,” says Conor.
Whereas jukebox musicals are essentially a vehicle for the songs, Conor took a different approach: “We try and wrap our story around his music. Often, I think of them as parables from the Bible in a way, all the little stories that are in the show,” he says. “They are on a simple, human level, rather than being big political statements. It’s Dylan’s artistry that transforms it all into something meaningful.”
Girl From The North Country: “Searching for a future, hiding from the past and facing unspoken truths about the present”
When Girl From The North Country opened at the Old Vic, in London, in 2017, artistic director Matthew Warchus told Conor: ‘You’ve really ripped up the musical rule book’. I told him I didn’t know there was one! I wish someone had told me there was,” says Conor.
Such “innocence” worked to his advantage, however. “It’s a bit of a trap to think, ‘let’s do something that’s sure to be a big success’. If it were that easy, there’d just be a sound you’d recognise: ‘oh, that’s a Broadway musical’, but I just had to instinctively follow my nose and just do what felt right,” he says.
Conor’s story is as important to Girl From The North Country as Dylan’s songs, not least because the Great Depression resonates with our era of Covid strictures and now the cost-of-living crisis. “We all wonder how we would cope when the chips are down, because that’s who we really are,” he says.
“When all the distractions of modern life are stripped away, people think, ‘How strong am I?’ The truth is that humans are very resilient and we don’t need a lot of what we think we need. That’s a good thing to know.”
Dylan, by the way, has seen the show “a few times”. His verdict? “To be associated with Conor is one of the highlights of my professional life,” he said. “It goes without saying the man is a genius for putting this thing together and I’m thrilled to be a part of the experience. My songs couldn’t be in better hands.”
Girl From The North Country runs at York Theatre Royal from September 6 to 10, 7.30pm plus 2pm, Thursday, and 2.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
A MUSICAL with Bob Dylan songs, Wilde wit with chart toppers, heavenly disco and Sunday fairytales promise intrigue and variety in Charles Hutchinson’s diary.
Boarding house tales: Girl From The North Country, the musical with Bob Dylan songs at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Johan Persson
Musical of the week: Girl From The North Country, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday
WRITTEN and directed by Irish playwright Conor McPherson,with music and lyrics by Bob Dylan, Girl From The North Country is an uplifting and universal story of family and love that boldly reimagines Dylan’s songs “like you’ve never heard them before”.
In 1934, in an American heartland in the grip of the Great Depression, a group of wayward souls cross paths in a time-weathered guesthouse in Duluth, Minnesota. Standing at a turning point in their lives, they realise nothing is what it seems as they search for a future, hide from the past and find themselves facing unspoken truths about the present. Box office: 01904 623 568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Story Craft Theatre: A giant leap for storytelling in Once Upon A Fairytale at Stillington Mill
Children’s show of the week: Once Upon A Fairytale, At The Mill, Stillington, near York, Sunday, 10am to 12 noon
IN York company Story Craft Theatre’s new show for children aged two to eight, Sunday’s audience will travel through a host of favourite fairytales and meet familiar faces along the way: Little Red Riding Hood, The Gingerbread Man and some hungry Bears to name but a few.
Storytellers Janet-Emily Bruce and Cassie Vallance say: “You’re welcome to arrive any time from 10am as we’ll be running craft activities until 10.45am. The interactive adventure will begin at 11am under the cover of our outdoor theatre, and there’ll be colouring-in sheets and a scavenger hunt you can do too.” Box office: atthemill.org.
From drag queen to society dragon: Daniel Jacob, alias Vinegar Strokes, rehearses for his role as Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest at Leeds Playhouse. Picture: Sharron Wallace
A walk on the Wilde side to a different beat: The Importance Of Being Earnest, Leeds Playhouse, Monday to September 17
DANIEL Jacob swaps his drag queen alter ego Vinegar Strokes for the iconic Lady Bracknell at the heart of Denzel Westley-Sanderson’s Black Victorian revamp of Oscar Wilde’s sharpest and most outrageous comedy of manners.
Premiering in Leeds before a UK tour, this Leeds Playhouse, ETT and Rose Theatre co-production “melds wit with chart-toppers, shade and contemporary references in a sassy insight into Wilde’s satire on dysfunctional families, class, gender and sexuality”. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Tavares: Close harmonies and disco classics revisited at York Barbican
Disco nostalgia of the week: Tavares, Greatest Hits Tour 2022, York Barbican, Wednesday, 7.30pm
GRAMMY Award-winning, close harmony-singing R&B brothers Chubby, Tiny and Butch Tavares, from Providence, Rhode Island, bring their Greatest Hits Tour to York.
At their Seventies peak, accompanied by their Cape Verdean brothers Ralph and Pooch, they filled disco floors with It Only Takes A Minute Girl, Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel, She’s Gone and More Than A Woman, from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Every witch way: The poster for Northumberland Theatre Company’s all-female Macbeth, heading to North Yorkshire
Something wicked this way comes: Northumberland Theatre Company in Macbeth, Stillington Village Hall, near York, Thursday; Pocklington Arts Centre, September 29, both 7.30pm
YORK actor Claire Morley stars in Chris Connaughton’s all-female, three-hander version of Shakespeare’s “very gruesome” tragedy Macbeth, directed by Northumberland Theatre Company associate director Alice Byrne for this autumn’s tour to theatres, community venues, village halls and schools.
This streamlined, fast-paced, extremely physical production with original music will be told largely from the witches’ perspective, exploring ideas of manipulation through the media and other external forces. Expect grim, gory grisliness to the Mac max in two action-packed 40-minute halves. Box office: Stillington, 01347 811 544 or on the door; Pocklington, 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Jess Steel: Soulful leading light of A Night To Remember. Picture: Duncan Lomax
Charity concert of the week: A Night To Remember, York Barbican, Thursday, 7.30pm
BIG Ian Donaghy’s charity fundraiser returns 922 days after he last hosted this fast-moving assembly of diverse York singers and musicians.
Taking part will be members of York party band Huge; Jess Steel; Heather Findlay; Beth McCarthy; Simon Snaize; Gary Stewart; Graham Hodge; The Y Street Band; Boss Caine; Las Vegas Ken; Kieran O’Malley and young musicians from York Music Forum, all led by George Hall and Ian Chalk.
Singer and choir director Jessa Liversidge presents her inclusive singing group, Singing For All, too. Proceeds will go to St Leonard’s Hospice, Bereaved Children Support York and Accessible Arts and Media. Tickets update: still available at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Glass work by Crispian Heath: Selected for the Contemporary Glass Society’s Bedazzled show at Pyramid Gallery, York
Exhibition launch of the week: Contemporary Glass Society, Bedazzled, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, September 10 to October 30
THE Contemporary Glass Society will celebrate its 25th anniversary of exhibiting at Pyramid Gallery with a show featuring 60 works by 25 glass artists, chosen by gallery owner Terry Brett and the society’s selectors.
For this landmark exhibition in Pyramid’s 40th anniversary year, the society wanted a theme and title that suggested celebratory glitz for its silver anniversary. Cue Bedazzled.
The styles and techniques span engraving, blowing, fusing, slumping, casting, cane and murine work, flame working, cutting, polishing, brush painting and metal leaf decoration. A second show, Razzle Dazzle, will include small pieces that measure no more than five by five inches by 60 makers.
KT Tunstall: New album, new tour
Gig announcement of the week: KT Tunstall, York Barbican, February 24 2023
SCOTTISH singer-songwriter KT Tunstall will return to York for the first time since she lit up the Barbican on Bonfire Night in 2016 on next year’s 16-date tour.
The BRIT Award winner and Grammy nominee from Edinburgh will showcase songs from her imminent seventh studio album, Nut, set for release next Friday on EMI. Box office: kttunstall.com and yorkbarbican.co.uk.
James Pearson: Artistic director of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club and musical director The Ronnie Scott’s All Stars…with a pantomime past in York
JAMES Pearson leads The Ronnie Scott’s All Stars on his return to York Theatre Royal tonight.
Artistic director at London’s legendary Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, where his trio are the house band, he has worked with Paul McCartney, Dame Cleo Laine, Maria Ewing, Jeff Beck, Petula Clark, Wynton Marsalis, Dave Stewart, Buddy Greco, Richard Rodney Bennett, Ray Davies, Nigel Kennedy, Robbie Williams, Rufus Wainwright, Gregory Porter, Imelda May and…York pantomime dame Berwick Kaler.
“I’d left the Guildhall School of Music & Drama when Mick Foster, who was the York panto’s saxophone player, from Harrogate, and was at college with me, got me the chance to play keyboards for Mother Goose,” says pianist and composer James.
Subsequently he was the musical director for Aladdin in 1997-1998 and Beauty & The Beast the next winter. “I did enjoy Berwick’s ‘Me babbies, me bairns’ and the Wagon Wheel throwing,” he says. “The atmosphere was a riot! A lot of the music was scored, but you always had to have your wits about you because Berwick would go off-piste.
“The reason a lot of jazz musicians do panto is that you have to improvise. Like if someone walks across in a funny manner, it’s highlighted by the drummer doing a flip-flop sound.
“I particularly enjoyed it as I got to spend ten weeks in York each year. I’m from Hertfordshire but I know York well because my sister, Kate, lives in Sheriff Hutton, and went to the University of York, where she met her husband, Daniel. Now they both teach music there. I must have been coming to York on and off for 30 years.”
James began working at Ronnie Scott’s club in 2006, becoming the artistic director the following year. “I’m largely responsible for its output both in and out of the club,” he says.
Tonight, he is at the piano for The Ronnie Scott’s Story, whose two 45-minute sets by The Ronnie Scott’s All Stars combines live jazz, narration and rare archive photos of Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis and video footage from the 1960s and ’70s. “Putting the series of pictures and footage together really helps it become an accessible show,” says James.
Set among the dive bars and jazz jook joints of London’s Soho, the show recalls the desperate hand-to-mouth finances of the early years and the frequent police raids.
You will hear how Ronnie Scott’s became neutral ground within rife gang territory and their scrapes with gangsters, not least the Krays, who were rumoured to have taken Ronnie and Pete “for a little drive”.
James Pearson, left, performing with The Ronnie Scott’s All Stars
“The Krays tried to take over the club in 1965 when they were looking to get a London venue before they became The Krays as we came to know them. They went to Earl’s Court instead and then tried to get a foothold in the West End. There was always a strange relationship with gangs with their links with the jazz world.”
Life at Ronnie Scott’s is reimagined through tales of the club’s past visitors, from pop stars, film stars and politicians to comedians and royalty, but above all, the musicians.
“The thing about Ronnie Scott’s is, firstly, its history and legacy. Even though no-one has smoked there for years, it still feels smoky.
“Then there’s the intimacy, where the audience are so close to the stage, three feet from Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder…Lady Gaga…Prince.
“When Stevie Wonder came, he was just in the audience and then got on stage to play with the house band. Sting has done that too. That’s one of the great things about jazz: it’s free style.
“After Lady Gaga’s second London show with Tony Bennett had to be cancelled, because she absolutely loves performing, she asked if there was any way she could play here.
“She parked her gold Rolls Royce outside the club, and because you can’t really do a Lady Gaga gig secretly, the press were there waiting for her.”
Tonight’s show is built around music from the jazz greats who have performed at Ronnie Scott’s over its 60 years and more, complemented by stories of old Soho and miscreant musicians.
Look out, in particular, for Natalie Williams performing the songs of Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald and saxophone player Alex Garnett, who likes to tell old Ronnie Scott jokes as the boss was famous for his humour.
James is delighted to be performing in York once more. “We loved doing the Ronnie Scott’s shows in the Parliament Street spiegeltent at the Great Yorkshire Fringe,” he says. “It was such a lovely festival and it’s sad it’s gone.”
The Ronnie Scott’s Story, York Theatre Royal, tonight at 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The poster for The Ronnie Scott’s All Stars, featuring vocalist Natalie Williams and saxophonist Alex Garnett
Jonny Weldon: York Theatre Royal pantomime debut as Starkey in All New Adventures Of Peter Pan
“SOCIAL media sensation” Jonny Weldon is the latest addition to York Theatre Royal’s pantomime cast for All New Adventures Of Peter Pan.
Although he would if he could, he can’t say too much about his character other than his name – Starkey – because writer Paul Hendy is working on the script.
“I know Paul quite well and have worked with him before,” says Jonny. “I don’t doubt we’ll sit down soon and work out the character.”
He can reveal little about his imminent television role too. “It’s very frustrating. I’m not allowed to tweet about it,” explains the actor and sketch humorist, whose videos went viral on Twitter.
He does confirm he will be appearing in the highly anticipated Game Of Thrones spin-off House Of The Dragon, but the series is being kept a closely guarded secret in the run-up to the first episode premiering on August 22 on Sky.
Jonny has “a little part” in the series but that is all he is saying. Even his character is a mystery, although rumoured to be called Samwell.
This summer, he can be found playing one half of Cruella de Ville’s comic henchman double act Casper and Jasper in a musical version of 101 Dalmatians at Regents Park Open Air Theatre in London.
July’s record-temperature heatwave took its toll on performers acting outdoors under the sun. “It was far too hot!” says Jonny. “We were doing shows with heat spaces for ice packs and dressers throwing cold water over us to cool us down.”
Jonny Weldon: Actor, sketch humorist and pantomime star
Nevertheless, doing the show has been “interesting but fun”. “I’ve never worked before at Regents Park, which is just down the road from where I live. It’s nice to work near where you live. It’s a big family show and that kind of theatre is great to do,” he says.
Jonny, who has 16 years in the business to his name, owes his entry into performing to his parents. Not that he had a stereotypical pushy stage mother. “I was a terrible show-off and my mum decided to see if she could harness my need to show off,” he recalls. “She took me to a big national audition – and I got the part.”
At the age of 11, Jonny had landed the role of Michael Banks, one of the children under the care of a flying nanny in the stage musical version of Mary Poppins.
Another West End musical role followed: Gavroche, the boy who dies on the barricade in Les Miserables. Next stop was the National Theatre for Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner’s musical, Caroline, Or Change. Soon a place at the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School, in Marble Arch, was his.
His local paper wrote a story championing his acting success with the headline Well Done, Weldon! “I loved doing Mary Poppins. I found school boring and it meant I didn’t have to go into school,” Jonny says.
“At that point, I didn’t really have a real understanding of what I was doing. It was just play and fun. I got to die on the barricade [in Les Miserables] – what kid doesn’t like a gory death?
“At no point have I found what I’m doing strange or lost my enthusiasm for performing. I’ve always enjoyed it. There are ups and downs but I’ve never found myself wanting to do anything else.”
Jonny has done theatre aplenty but the past two years have seen him branch out into television with roles in Stephen Merchant’s BBC One series The Outlaws, Channel 4’s Stath Lets Flats and now House Of The Dragon.
Jonny Weldon in the latest poster for York Theatre Royal’s All New Adventures Of Peter Pan
Along the way, he has become, more by accident than design, a “social media sensation”, on account of a succession of viral videos on Twitter. “As with every actor, I was bored and fed up in the lockdowns and decided to create my own sketches about the uphill battle of the life of an actor,” says Jonny.
“I didn’t do much on social before but decided to put it on Twitter. 100,000 people watched and shared and laughed.
“This week I put one out about the Edinburgh Fringe. There are always things like that – an actor has an audition, an actor gets cut from a TV programme or an actor tries to socialise.
“I started to film ones on Zoom with celebrities coming in to play themselves. The likes of Russell Tovey, Tracy-Ann Oberman, the cast of Ted Lasso. It’s just been a very fun and unexpected thing.”
Jonny will carry on making videos but, given that he is busy with work, he will do it “as and when I want to”. Long term, he hopes to work on “something bigger than just social media”, explaining: “I want to try and create my own stuff and a vehicle for myself in television. I write relentlessly and am constantly trying to make bigger work for myself and having meetings about that.”
After 101 Dalmatians concludes, he will film a TV show, and once more he has to be hush-hush over what lies in store. “I’ll probably be in trouble if I say anything as I don’t think the show is going out until next year,” he reasons.
Come November, Jonny will start rehearsals for creative director Juliet Forster’s third York Theatre Royal pantomime, All New Adventures Of Peter Pan, joining the already confirmed Maddie Moate, from CBeebies, and three returnees Faye Campbell, Robin Simpson and Paul Hawkyard. The actor playing Peter Pan will be announced next.
Playing Starkey will be Jonny’s latest panto credit after such roles as Will Scarlett in Robin Hood, Jack in Jack And The Beanstalk and Muddles in Snow White twice. Add to that a week in Canterbury in the comic role after an asbestos-related problem forced his show at St Albans Arena to close mid-season. But that’s another story.
Jonny Weldon will star in All New Adventures Of Peter Pan at York Theatre Royal from December 2 to January 2 2023. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Follow Jonny on Twitter: @jonnyyweldon
The Noughts & Crosses cast for Pilot Theatre’s 2022-2023 tour
YORK company Pilot Theatre’s casting is complete for the revival of their award-winning production of Noughts & Crosses.
First staged in 2019, Sabrina Mahfouz’s adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s young adult novel of first love in a dangerous fictional dystopia will be on tour from autumn to spring 2023 under the direction once more of artistic director Esther Richardson.
Noughts & Crosses will open on home turf at York Theatre Royal from September 16 to 24, having first played there in April 2019.
In Blackman’s Romeo & Juliet story for our times, Sephy is a Cross and Callum is a Nought. Between Noughts and Crosses come racial and social divides as a segregated society teeters on a volatile knife edge.
When violence breaks out, Sephy and Callum draw closer, but this is a romance that will lead them into terrible danger.
Told from the perspectives of two teenagers, Noughts & Crosses explores the powerful themes of love, revolution and what it means to grow up in a divided world.
In 2019, the premiere formed the inaugural co-production between Pilot Theatre, York Theatre Royal, Derby Theatre, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, and Mercury Theatre, Colchester, who had formed a new partnership in 2018 to develop, produce and present theatre for younger audiences.
Pilot’s premiere – launched before the BBC television adaptation – was seen by more than 30,000 people on tour, 40 per cent of them being aged under 20, en route winning the award for excellence in touring at the 2019 UK Theatre Awards.
Pilot Theatre artistic director Esther Richardson
The Noughts & Crosses cast will be fronted by Effie Ansah (The Maladies, Almeida Theatre) and James Arden in their first leading roles as Sephy and Callum.
Emma Keele (East Is East, Birmingham Rep and National Theatre and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, UK tour) will play Meggie; Nathanial McClosky (Macbeth, Box Clever Theatre), Jude; Amie Buhari (Flowers, Channel 4), Jasmine.
Steph Asamoah (Billy Eliot, Curve Theatre) will be Minerva; Chris Jack (Brighton Rock, Pilot Theatre and York Theatre Royal and Our Town, Royal Exchange Manchester), Kamal; Daniel Copeland (Invincible, Orange Tree Theatre and The Jungle Book, Leeds Playhouse), Ryan, and newcomer Tom Coleman, Nought Man, Andrew Dorn and understudy to Callum and Jude.
Daniel Norford (Small Island and The Welkin, National Theatre and The Lion King, UK tour) will join the cast next spring in the role of Kamal. All actors will play ensemble roles too.
After the York Theatre Royal home run, Noughts & Crosses will tour: Richmond Theatre, London (September 27 to October 1; Exeter Northcott (October 4 to 8); Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford (October 11 to 15); Northern Stage, Newcastle (October 18 to 22); Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield (November 1 to 5); New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich (November 8 to 12); The Alexandra, Birmingham (November 9 to 15) and Liverpool Playhouse (November 22 to 26).
The tour will resume in 2023 at: The Lowry, Salford (January 17 to 21); Belgrade Theatre, Coventry (January 24 to 28); Rose Theatre, Kingston (January 31 to February 11); Theatre Royal, Brighton (February 21 to 25); Oldham Coliseum (March 14 to 18); Poole Lighthouse (March 21 to 25) and Curve Theatre, Leicester (March 28 to April 1).
Esther is joined in the production team by designer Simon Kenny; 2022 lighting designer Ben Cowens; original lighting designer Joshua Drualus Pharo and composer Arun Ghosh.
Tickets for the York run are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Class act: Heather Agyepong as Sephy and Billy Harris as Callum in Pilot Theatre’s 2019 premiere of Noughts And Crosses at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Robert Day
“It’s been a long time coming,” say Fladam, as York musical comedy act make their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut this summer
FLADAM, the York musical comedy duo of Florence Poskitt and Adam Sowter, are making their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut all this month.
At 4pm each day until August 29 – except August 16 – they will be performing A Musical Comedy Hootenanny! at The Pleasance at The EICC [Edinburgh International Conference Centre].
Followers of York’s musical theatre and theatre scene will be familiar with Florence, wide-eyed northern character actress, comic performer, singer, dancer and multi-instrumentalist, and Adam, face-pulling character actor, comic performer, pianist, harmonica and ukulele player, singer, composer, comedy songwriter and cartoonist.
A couple both on and off stage, they have branched out into presenting their own heartfelt, humorous songs and sketches, tackling the topical with witty wordplay, uplifting melodies, a dash of the Carry On! comic spirit, admiration for the craft of Morecambe & Wise, Bernard Cribbins and Victoria Wood, and an old-school sense of charity-shop comedic fashion.
You may have heard them in their regular slot on Harry Whittaker’s Saturday show on BBC Radio York; or seen an early taster of A Musical Comedy Hootenanny! in Fladam & Friends at Theatre@41, Monkgate, last November, or spotted them among the five-minute showcases at York Theatre Royal’s Love Bites in May 2021 and Green Shoots in June this year.
Topical yet nostalgic: York musical comedy duo Florence Poskitt and Adam Sowter. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
Now comes the giant leap: heading to the Scottish capital to be among more than 3,000 shows at the 75th anniversary Fringe on its return from Covid hibernation.
“It’s been a long time coming,” says Adam. “We’d planned to perform there in 2020, before Covid struck. We were going to do a small-scale show at a venue we knew, Greenside, but now we’ve ended up at one of the Pleasance venues this year: a cabaret spot they’ve opened at the EICC called the Lammermuir Theatre.”
The two-year delay has worked out well. “Our plan was to go back to Greenside, but then we saw that a bursary scheme was available through York Theatre Royal in association with the Pleasance,” says Adam.
“We had an interview with Juliet [Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster], and though we weren’t selected, they said, ‘we really like you’, and the Pleasance offered us a slot.”
Better still, York Theatre Royal paid for Fladam’s Fringe registration and the Pleasance waivered a deposit. “We’ve been extremely lucky because from the first ticket onwards that we sell, we take 50 per cent,” says Florence.
Fladam’s official poster for the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Artwork design: Steph Pyne
“We’ve also had support from friends in York and we’ve received £400 from the Pleasance Debut Fund scheme to support debutant performers playing for more than a week in venues with fewer than 150 seats.”
Fladam’s Edinburgh bow is an introductory show that captures the spirit of their topical yet somehow nostalgic songs. “Our humour isn’t racy, but there’s a little hint of Carry On to it,” says Adam. “Well, there’s a dabbling of ‘racy’ in there,” interjects Florence.
“It’s sort of ‘Greatest Hits of Fladam’,” continues Adam. “We’re exploring different styles of performance, making sure it’s a varied hour, where we play lots of different characters, present familiar things in a new way and add new things.
“Like how we’ve re-written a country song that didn’t work as a country song. It now has new lyrics, which we’ll have to remember for a new version for the finale!
“I’m sure that the show we finish with on August 29 will be completely different from the first one as we’re still an evolving act and we’ll continue to evolve.”
Expect puppetry: Fladam add another dimension to their musical comedy act. Picture: Charlie Kirkpatrick
Fladam have progressed from bedroom beginnings to the stage. “We’ve gone from recording videos of songs on phones from the corner of our bedroom in lockdown to doing it live, first with one number at Love Bites and then last November’s show with friends, when we had to rehearse in the kitchen,” says Adam. “Now we’re developing again.
“Having a long run at the Fringe, we can try things out, playing to totally different audiences over so many performances – and with our shows being topical we may well have to update and re-write things. We’ve already adjusted our Boris Johnson song after what’s happened to him.”
Florence is relishing the Fringe experience. “What’s great is that so many people want to see musical comedy shows,” she says. “One of the joys of being here is that you never know who you might meet for future collaborations, which was one of the lovely things about doing Love Bites and Green Shoots at the Theatre Royal.”
Fladam will benefit from spreading their wings from York. “This is our first time playing to a ‘cold audience’ after playing mainly to our friends in York,” says Florence. “The advice from [York theatre director and actor] Maggie Smales was to talk to the audience to establish a connection with them, and I’ll be handing out biscuits and Adam will be playing the piano before we start.”
Spending a month in Edinburgh will be a learning curve for Adam and Florence. “We’re not producers, so we have to do our own publicity, organise the posters, build our props, do everything ourselves, and that’s where the Theatre Royal and the Pleasance have been really supportive when we’ve dropped them an email asking for their advice,” says Adam.
Whisking up gentle comedy: the comic craft of Florence Poskitt and Adam Sowter
“That’s all helped us to mount an Edinburgh show for the first time, when you know you’re going to make mistakes and it’s not just an easy home run.”
What definitely has worked is their Fringe poster with its combination of photography by Charlie Kirkpatrick and a design by Steph Pyne. “It’s a bit retro, a bit Morecambe & Wise,” says Adam. “The first design played too much on being like a Seventies’ tribute, so we’ve dialled that down to still be a little nostalgic but above all quirky and colourful.”
Florence is chuffed. “We’ve had do many people tell us, ‘that really captures you and what you’re all about’,” she says. “Our style of humour is gentle, like Morecambe & Wise’s humour was so warm and lovely. We like to do songs that are clever and make you smile at the same time.”
Fladam: A Musical Comedy Hootenanny, Lammermuir Theatre, The Pleasance at Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EIFF),Venue 150, 4pm daily, until August 29, except August 16. Box office: 0113 556 6550 or pleasanceco.uk.
Fladam also will do six 20-minute street-busking spots at St Andrew’s Square and Cathedral Square from August 19.
Fladam: Making their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with backing from York Theatre Royal and the Pleasance
Radiant: Kate Hampson’s Coppergate Woman sees the light in The Coppergate Woman. Picture: : Jane Hobson
THIS is the first York Theatre Royal community play in five years and, more significantly, the first since pandemic restrictions were lifted, although the cloud of Covic hangs all too heavy over Maureen Lennon’s storytelling drama.
There is a sense of relief that we can gather again, perform together, build plays from scratch with faces old and new, but The Coppergate Woman is not a drama suffused with joy until its finale’s promise of a post-apocalyptic green new world.
Such a vision is ushered in with composer and musical director Nicolas Lewis’s most upbeat song, hand claps and all, but given all that is going around us, from higher and higher temperatures to higher and higher living costs and fuel prices, it is sung on a wing and a prayer.
The harsh realities of these times have seen cast members pull out through not being able to afford the travel costs or having to commit to working extra shifts to make ends meet, and therefore no longer being available for the heavy rota of rehearsals.
Ancient meets modern in The Coppergate Woman at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Jane Hobson
That said, community spirit bursts out of the 90 performers and plentiful choir members, as they build on the legacy of Blood + Chocolate (on York’s streets in 2013), In Fog And Falling Snow (at the National Railway Museum in 2015) and Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes (by the Minster and at the Theatre Royal in 2017 ).
All three were rooted in York history, and so, to an extent, is The Coppergate Woman, albeit she is as much a woman of mystery as Viking history. Her bones were found in a shallow grave in an excavation by the River Foss and she has since lain encased in glass at Jorvik Viking Centre.
Research revealed she had moved to Jorvik (York) from either South-West Norway or northernmost Scotland, was robustly built, had a pronounced limp from a degenerative joint disorder, consumed a heap of herring in her lifetime and died at 46.
Hull playwright Maureen Lennon’s number one haunt as a child was Jorvik, where she was drawn to those bones and to the model of that woman in blue. Now she puts flesh on those bones, and after the choir, ensemble and assorted principals set the play in motion on Sara Perks’s open-plan, uncluttered set with a backdrop of David Callanan’s audio-visual designs, professional actor Kate Hampson’s Coppergate Woman emerges in her glass case in that familiar blue.
Breakout moment: Kate Hampson’s Coppergate Woman emerges in her glass case. Picture: Jane Hobson
She duly smashes the case – as denoted by the sound of breaking glass and accompanying visuals – and sets about smashing the scientific facts as she re-awakes in modern-day York, charged with uncovering the answers as to why we are where we are.
She was 44, she corrects with a smile, probably a weaver, and now certainly a weaver of stories. Now let’s get down to business. She will be the conduit between past and present in Lennon’s world of myth and modern reality, but first she sets the scene, with a humorous observant eye, one that made your reviewer crave for rather more of this then-and-now contrasting York detail.
Coppergate Woman comments with amusement on Jorvik Viking Centre’s infamous stinking smell, but then sniffs 2022 York air for the first time. It smells of metal, she says, chemicals and cleaned surfaces: a triple-whammy discomfiting reminder of pollution, climate change and Covid.
Later, reference is made to King’s Square now being the place of buskers: another wry observation that plays well to the home crowd filling the Theatre Royal auditorium.
Sigyn (Catherine Edge) catches venom to protect her imprisoned husband Loki (Edward Hammond). Picture: Jane Hobson
Past and present constantly interweave in Lennon’s dense construction as she asks: “In an ever-changing world, how do we hang on to who we are when the grounds are shifting beneath our feet? How do we look forward and rebuild, when the End Times feel ever more real?”
Coppergate Woman sheds the rudimentary clothing to be revealed as a Valkyrie, a shepherd of the dead and dying, a servant of Odin, whose duty is to guide lost souls to the halls of Valhalla. Why? Because Ragnarok is coming, “when the gods will perish, fire will triumph, and only then will the world will rise again, made anew”.
In other words, Hell on Earth is nothing new, as Lennon mirrors four stories of ghastly, grim, abominable Norse legend with torrid tales of toiling, struggling people in York today.
As old gods do battle with new, Lennon favours an epic scale for the past, the world of Odin (Paul Mayo Mason), Frigg (Jessica Murray), Baldr (Andy Williams), thunderous Thor (Andrew Isherwood), cunning Loki (Edward Hammond), wife Sigyn (Catherine Edge) and Fenrir, the wolf (portrayed by a swaying sextet of bodies, superbly choreographed by movement director Xolani Crabtree).
York Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster, left, and playwright Maureen Lennon with the model of the Coppergate Woman at Jorvik Viking Centre
Modern York’s stories are more in keeping with soap opera or kitchen-sink drama: from Nicola Wild’s Sarah to Val Burgess’s Nana, Joanne Rule’s Fern to community play debutant Darren Barrott, constantly kicking out in frustration.
The voice of the future, the herald of hope, is young Liv (Hannah Simpson on Wednesday, sharing the role with Ilya Cuthell), driven by her predilection for painting in the rain (and if she didn’t start off with watercolours, they would be by the end).
Lennon does not shy away from the blood and guts of Norse legend, for example Loki being bound in chains made from the stretched entrails of his son. Those entrails are red, a virulent colour motif that runs throughout the play, used to powerful effect both by designer Perks and movement director Lewis.
Hampson, in her belated Theatre Royal debut in the city where she has lived for three decades, leads with a performance that glows: she can be gravely serious, frustrated, questing, comforting, resolute, but also delights in shards of humour and a narrator’s permission to step outside the action.
Hammer to the Thor: Andrew Isherwood enjoys delivering another blow in The Coppergate Woman. Picture: Jane Hobson
Isherwood’s Thor, hair extensions et al, has something of the Marvel comic-book about him; Barrott and Hammond stand out too, but this is a team show, from ensemble to choir, musicians to a multitude of costume makers and the hair and make-up crew.
Hazel Jupp’s costume designs are worthy of a carnival, and praise too for Craig Kilmartin’s lighting and Mike Redley’ sound (making light of having so many voices on stage).
Nicolas Lewis’s largely earnest compositions would benefit from more oomph and greater contrast, characteristics essential to community singing that demands rather more fun and coloratura. Too much had to weigh on that last number.
Directors Juliet Forster and John R Wilkinson pull the strings of such a large-scale enterprise with a passion for community theatre writ large, spectacle aplenty and more than a nod to in-vogue gig theatre. The joy here, however, rests more in that return after five years than in a troubling play for the End of Days that feels a bit of a drag when we need an uplift.
The Coppergate Woman, York Theatre Royal, 7.30pm tonight until Saturday; 2.30pm matinees, Saturday and Sunday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
The end: Composer and musical director Nicolas Lewis, centre, leading the finale to The Coppergate Woman. Picture: Jane Hobson
