WRITER Alexander Wright and composer Phil Grainger presented Eurydice last summer, first as part of At The Mill’s six nights of six works, then at York Theatre Royal’s Pop-Up On The Patio festival.
The sister piece to Wright and Grainger’s Orpheus had, however, been shaped on overseas duty by Serena Manteghi and Casey Jay Andrews to award-winning success at the Adelaide Fringe in 2019, and it was actor-singer Serena who headed to Stillington last week to reacquaint herself with Eurydice…and a live audience.
For her first stage appearance in a year, she was joined by pantalooned Phil, on electric guitar, occasional humorous interjections and vocals, under the shelter of At The Mill’s bar after the forecast of a deluge forced a late switch of location from the Mill’s open-air theatre.
The rain subsequently did play its part, but only for second-half cameo that complemented rather than ruined the top billing.
“It feels weird calling it a performance. It’s just us chatting,” said Serena, but she was underselling the performance’s combination of formality and informality, and the skills required to deliver its graceful ebb and flow, both in word and song in heightened moments.
In Serena’s hand throughout was a book, Alex’s book, containing both his Orpheus and Eurydice stories. Alex had performed that way too, not because he couldn’t be bothered with learning the lines, but because he loves the feel of the book in which he wrote those lines.
Serena broke off to explain the roots of her following the same performative practice – “a tradition,” she called it – and the book then became more of a comfort blanket, there for her to check a line in case she dried.
Eurydice is a spoken-word show, but one that is theatrical too, given how Serena moved around the café bar and interacted with Phil and his sympathetic, symbiotic guitar, especially when duetting instinctively on songs, whether Phil’s own compositions to Alex’s lyrics or interpretations of apposite Kate Bush and Cyndi Lauper numbers.
Wright’s story is billed as a “tale about being a daily superhero and the need to let go of the stories we think define us”, prompted by his realisation that while Orpheus’s underworld story is familiar, we never hear Eurydice’s account, not even one word from her. History, even in myths, puts the ‘his’ into history, rather than telling her story.
Wright rights that wrong, creating Eurydice as her “untold story imagined and reimagined for the modern-day and told from her perspective”. All the more so last Saturday and Sunday, now that Serena was saying those words, while Alex restricted himself to electronica and sound duties to the side of the bar.
At the outset, Eurydice becomes Leni, five years old on the first day of the rest of her life in a one-parent household, when she wants to wear her superhero costume to school. Attentive listening is then required to follow the story’s path because Wright eschews reportage in favour of storytelling language more poetic, more affecting, more rhythmic, more heart-felt, in part torn from his own torrid back-story.
The story may be ancient, but Wright’s interpretation feeds into the modern world in its detail, although it also remains timeless, such is the universality of its themes of love, cheating, flash-flood romance and finally breaking free. “Hold me in a moment made of everything,” is an image we all want to hold, because we know it can only be impermanent.
In Manteghi’s performance, with Grainger a responsive musical radar to her side, Eurydice’s tale of love and loss, a bee tattoo and a bee sting became even more moving, still cathartic for Wright, but now truly Eurydice’s story, told her way.
Playing his hand: Emilio Iannucci’s Phileas Fogg with the scoffing gentlemen of the Reform Club (as played with bristling moustaches by Dora Rubinstein, Eddie Mann, Ali Azhar and Ulrika Krishnamurti) in York Theatre Royal’s Around The World In 80 days. All pictures: Charlotte Graham
REVIEW: York Theatre Royal in Around The World In 80 Days, Copmanthorpe Primary School Playing Fields, York
NO foreign holiday this summer? Let York Theatre Royal take you there, off the back of a trailer at a school playing field, transformed into a circus.
Wednesday, 7pm, Copmanthorpe Primary School: the yellow and red striped flags are fluttering in the night air in a circular formation to denote Vernes Circus is in town. Bobbing balloons and the persistently perky sound of a fairground organ add to the atmosphere.
Rather than inside a pop-up big top, we are in the open air, wrapped up for the English weather (last Friday evening’s show at Carr Junior School had to be called off after a thunderstorm warning). Safety first too, everyone is still mindful of social distancing, maintaining gaps between fold-up chairs.
Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster has form for such theatrical enterprises, rolling out last winter’s Travelling Pantomime to 16 city wards. A case of taking theatre to the people, rather than expecting them to take themselves to the Theatre Royal, although this summer’s production will end with four days of indoor shows there after going around four York schools in 16 days.
Dora Rubinstein’s resolute, irrepressible Nellie Bly, right, with Eddie Mann, Ali Azhar and Ulrika Krishnamurti’s circus performers in Around The World In 80 Days
She also repeats the panto template of a cast of five with multiple talents, while this time adding the writer’s credit to her directorial duties, just as she did when adapting Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet for CBeebies earlier this year.
We think we know French novelist Jules Verne’s story of a somewhat prickly English Victorian gentleman, Phileas Fogg, going around the globe in a hot air balloon. Stop right there. No sooner has Ali Azhar’s Clown started to blow up a balloon than he is told no such form of transportation was used by Fogg in the book; only in the myriad screen adaptations.
Financial constraints would prevent any balloon rides here, cautions Emilio Iannucci’s snappy Ringmaster.
Clown? Ringmaster? Surely, they were not in Verne’s story either? Indeed not, but Forster frames her adaptation around circus performers telling the tale, all her company taking on two main roles and more besides.
To complement the upstanding, moustachioed Iannucci’s Ringmaster/Fogg and French-Moroccan Azhar’s Clown/servant Passepartout, here come Ulrika Krishnamurti’s Trick Rider/Indian princess Aouda, New Zealander Eddie Mann’s Knife Thrower/spiv Detective Fox and Dora Rubinstein’s Acrobat/Nellie Bly.
The circus comes to town, or more specifically to four York school playing fields, as York Theatre Royal stages Around The World In 80 Days around York in 16 days, plus four days indoors at the Theatre Royal with Ali Azhar and Ulrika Krishnamurti as part of Juliet Forster’s cast of five
Mann will work his way through London, Liverpool, Scottish and American Deep South accents; the ultra-flexible Rubinstein, through Geordie, refined American, English South West and, a particular favourite, Hull, for a blunt sea captain.
Up against the clock, everything moves at pace, whether scene or character changes, storyline or the revolving signage that denotes arrival at the next destination.
Hold that thought. Not quite everything moves so quickly. Fogg is always in too much of a rush to bother with describing where he is, but Nellie Bly is a groundbreaking American journalist whose travelogues are a joy to behold whenever Rubinstein’s resolute character settles for a restorative breather in a brilliant directorial decision by Forster .
Unlike Verne’s Fogg and his wager with his Reform Club cronies, Bly is not mere fiction. She really did traverse the world in a flight that knocked days off Fogg’s total, and yet her history-making story is not well known. Forster puts that right, interweaving the tales in a way that both compliments and complements each other.
Forster’s production brings to mind the elasticity and stage electricity, the physical and mental fun and games, the deftness and daftness, of Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps and Mischief’s The Comedy About A Bank Robbery. Like those two West End hits, the more the show the progresses, the better it is, the more impressive the cast becomes, using props in unexpected ways, whether straw bales or bicycle wheels, or circus equipment that turns into a cell for Fogg.
Holed up: Emilio Iannucci’s Phileas Fogg in one of his myriad challenging scrapes in Around The World In 80 Days
One heavy-drinking scene with Mann’s Fix and Azhar’s Passepartout trying to balance but constantly on the move on a seesaw will live long in the memory.
Not only Forster and her livewire, fun, funny international company are on top form here: so too are Sara Perks’s evocative circus set and dapper costume designs; Asha Jennings-Grant’s dashing movement direction, circus acrobatics and smart choreography, and Ed Gray’s music and especially his 360-degree sound design that adds spectacularly to the rip-roaring drama.
Still haven’t the Foggiest idea of what family show to see this summer? This is the one. Roll up! Roll up!
Tickets can be booked on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Suitable for age seven upwards.
Around The World In 80 Days performances still to come:
Copmanthorpe Primary School, tonight, 7pm.
Archbishop Holgate’s School, August 14, 7pm; August 15, 2pm and 6pm; Aug 16, 3pm and 7pm.
Joseph Rowntree School, August 18, 7pm; August 19, 3pm and 7pm; August 20, 7pm; August 21, 2pm and 6pm.
York Theatre Royal, August 25 to 28, 2pm and 7pm. Signed performance: August 26, 2pm.
Roll up! Roll up! Emilio Iannucci’s Ringmaster offers his welcome to Vernes Circus in York Theatre Royal’s Around The World In 80 Days. On stage too are circus performers Ali Azhar, Dora Rubinstein, Eddie Mann and Ulrika Krishnamurti
Window of opportunity for mayhem: Mischief in The Play That Goes Wrong
DISASTER strikes again as Mischief’s calamitous comedy The Play That Goes Wrong hits York this autumn.
The Olivier Award and Tony Award winner, now in its seventh year in the West End, will wreak havoc at the Grand Opera House, York, from September 28 to October 3 on its fourth tour.
The show began life on the London fringe when four friends from drama school set up a company under the name “Mischief” on graduating.
After enticing only four paying customers on the first night, The Play That Goes Wrong has since played to two million people worldwide, taking home an Olivier for Best New Comedy in 2015 and a Tony for its subsequent Broadway transfer.
Mischief have enjoyed further West End success with Peter Pan Goes Wrong, A Comedy About A Bank Robbery, Groan Ups, Mischief Movie Night and Magic Goes Wrong, while their debut six-part television series, The Goes Wrong Show, aired on BBC One. The 2020 commission of a Christmas special, Nativity, will be followed by a second series, now in production.
Dogged by bad luck in the play within a play: Cornley Drama Society’s ill-fated performance of The Murder At Haversham Manor in Mischief’s The Play That Goes Wrong
In The Play That Goes Wrong, the (fictional) Cornley Drama Society are putting on a 1920s’ murder mystery, The Murder At Haversham Manor, but as the title suggests, everything that can go wrong … does! The accident-prone thesps must battle against all the odds to reach their final curtain call, alas for them with ever-more humorous results.
In the 2021 touring cast will be Tom Babbage as Max; Tom Bulpett as Chris; Seán Carey as Jonathan; Leonard Cook as Robert; Edward Howells as Dennis; April Hughes as Sandra; Laura Kirman as Annie and Gabriel Paul as Trevor. Understudies will be Katie Hitchcock, Damien James, Edi De Melo and Aisha Numah.
Co-written by Mischief company members Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, the tour production is directed by Sean Turner, with set designs by Nigel Hook, costumes by Roberto Surace, lighting by Ric Mountjoy and sound design by Andrew Johnson.
The Play That Goes Wrong will be completing a hattrick of York visits after playing the Theatre Royal in April 2014 and the Grand Opera House in May 2018. Mischief’s “criminally good” A Comedy About A Bank Robbery made its York debut at the Opera House in February 2019, with soon-to-return Sean Carey as the ace scene stealer.
Tickets for next month’s 7.30pm evening performances and 2.30pm Thursday, Saturday and Sunday matinees are on sale on 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
In a flap: Mischief’s The Play That Goes Wrong is heading for York for the third time
The look of a man who has just heard Graham Chalmers’ question: Ralph Fiennes in Four Quartets at York Theatre Royal
DISCOVER Charles Hutchinson’s answer in Episode 53 of Chalmers & Hutch’s arts podcast Two Big Egos In A Small Car.
Also under discussion are digging out your Harry Potter first editions; Graham’s review of a long-overdue documentary appreciation of undervalued music filmmaker Tony Palmer; Amy Winehouse, ten years gone, and dreamers versus schemers.
Emilio Iannucci, who will switch between The Ringmaster and Phileas Fogg, in rehearsal for York Theatre Royal’s circus-themed production of Around The World In 80 Days
YORK Theatre Royal is going global, visiting all four corners of York in 23 days with its summer family show Around The World In 80 Days.
Not in a hot-air balloon, but on a trailer, whose sides can be dropped down for the set to be built around, in the tradition of travelling players going from town to town.
“It’s not quite a pop-up theatre, but we can certainly taking everything around in the trailer,” says writer-director Juliet Forster.
After overseeing last winter’s debut Travelling Pantomime on its tour of 16 of York’s 21 wards, Theatre Royal creative director Juliet is taking her circus-themed adaptation of the Jules Verne novel to four York playing fields from tomorrow (August 6) to August 21. The last stop will be back at York Theatre Royal from August 25 to 28.
“Around The World In 80 Days is one of those titles that I’d had in the back of my mind, because it’s familiar, and such shows have worked well for us in the summertime,” says Juliet.
“Then, with all the disappointment of restrictions around travelling abroad still affecting plans for holidays, the story came back into my mind, possibly ironically, because we couldn’t go to all these places, but we could do so in a play.
Juggling roles: New Zealander Eddie Mann, who will play The Knife Thrower and Detective Fox in Juliet Forster’s production of Around The World In 80 Days
“Though it still took a little longer to make a final decision on it because none of the existing adaptations appealed.”
She took the matter into her hand: not only would she direct the show, but she would provide the new adaptation herself too in a “perfect opportunity for some armchair tourism – or, rather, picnic-blanket tourism”.
“I did the first draft in April, spending pretty much every day on it, and then did the second and third drafts over the next two months, in bits and pieces, when time allowed,” says Juliet, who also was at the helm of York Theatre Royal’s reopening show, Love Bites, on May 17 and 18.
She promises a “joyful, very energetic, very silly and highly acrobatic re-telling of the Verne’s adventure of Reform Club gentleman traveller Phileas Fogg, delivering the kind of experience that live theatre does best”, but that tells only half the story in the new two-hour version.
“Jules Verne’s tale is a lot of fun as the characters race against time to complete a full circuit of the Earth, but now fact and fiction go head to head as real-life investigative journalist Nellie Bly puts in an appearance,” says Juliet.
How come? “One of the things I felt with Verne’s text was that although it was a fun idea – I’d seen the film, but I’d never read the book – when I did come to read it, it didn’t sum up the atmosphere of each place as much as I’d expected, because Fogg was whizzing around the world, so it didn’t give as much detail as I would have liked.
Roll up, roll up for Ulrika Krishnamurti’s circus skills as The Trick Rider in Around The World In 80 Days
“There was a risk that a show would have a stuffy gentlemen’s club, outdated feel to because it’s a male-dominated story, so I thought, ‘how do we make it a play for today?’. That’s when I decided to put Nellie Bly’s story in there too.”
For the uninitiated, Nellie Bly was the pen name of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, an American journalist, industrialist, inventor and charity worker, who made her own record-breaking trip around the world – and did so with more alacrity than the fictional Fogg.
“When I worked with the Out Of Character company on Objects Of Terror, set in a Victorian cellar, the journalist character was based on Nellie, who had got herself committed to an asylum to blow the lid on what went on inside,” says Juliet.
“Nellie set the record for the fastest crossing of land and sea, and how ironic that we all know the fictional story of Phileas Fogg, and yet we don’t know about the real-life woman who did the same journey and did it quicker!
“So, I read her book about going around the world: a beautiful piece of travel journalism with such lovely detail, and I thought, ‘maybe we should just do her story’, but then I decided, ‘no, let’s look at finding a form for a play that fits bit both stories in’.
“Jules Verne’s story is out of copyright, so there were no complications over doing that.”
Balancing act: Ali Azhar preparing to play The Clown, as well as Passepartout, in Around The World In 80 Days
Juliet never settles for the easy option. “I can’t do a play without going, ‘why am I doing it now?’. I have to ask myself, ‘what is the relevance to today?’, and I think this adaptation brings a whole new perspective to it, but the Jules Verne story is very much still in there,” she says.
She has given the story a circus setting, a manoeuvre that frees up the imagination and removes the need for a big West End-style or silver screen budget. “It’s an opportunity to do it in an ultra-theatrical way,” says Juliet.
“We can use some of the skills we have in the cast to capture the essence of movement, as it’s story full of the joy of being on the move, so it stretches the limits of what we can do and it takes us to all these places, with sounds and music tipping our imagination into visualising each of them.”
One surprise will be the lack of hot-air balloon, but wait… “There is no hot-air balloon in the book! They put one in the 1956 film, the one with David Niven as Phileas Fogg, and it’s been in every version since,” says Juliet. “It’s even on the book cover now! We’ll make a sly reference to it, so watch out!
“I think the other reason the balloon is embedded in our heads because Jules Verne’s first successful book was called Five Weeks In A Balloon.”
Fittingly for a story rooted in international travel, Juliet’s cast has an international flavour: Emilio Iannucci, who will play The Ringmaster and Phileas Fogg, is of Italian heritage; French-Moroccan actor Ali Azhar, born in Paris, will be The Clown and Passepartout; Ulrika Krishnamurti, a singer of Indian classical music, will be The Trick Rider and Aouda, and Eddie Mann, in the roles of The Knife Thrower and Detective Fox, is a New Zealander who moved over here a decade ago.
In the basket: Contortionist Dora Rubinstein fits in some practice for playing The Acrobat in Around The World In 80 Days
“Although I wanted to have an international flavour to the show, I wasn’t sure I’d get it,” reveals Juliet. “But I knew Ali had a great French accent, as well as being a good mover, from seeing him in Shakespeare Rose Theatre’s Henry V in 2019, and so he was ideal for Passepartout.
“I’d seen Ulrika in Katie Posner’s production of Made In India when it came to the Theatre Royal Studio, where she really stood out as being fun and very playful.
“With Eddie, I’d actually forgotten he was a New Zealander until we spoke on Zoom, but that’s what circus is: international. It shouldn’t just be British voices!”
York Theatre Royal in Around The World In 80 Days:
Carr Junior School, August 6, 7pm; August 7, 3pm and 7pm; August 8, 2pm and 6pm.
Copmanthorpe Primary School, August 10, 7pm; August 11 and 12, 3pm and 7pm.
Archbishop Holgate’s School, August 14, 7pm; August 15, 2pm and 6pm; Aug 16, 3pm and 7pm.
Joseph Rowntree School, August 18, 7pm; August 19, 3pm and 7pm; August 20, 7pm; August 21, 2pm and 6pm.
York Theatre Royal, August 25 to 28, 2pm and 7pm. Signed performance: August 26, 2pm.
Suitable for age 7+. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Writer-director Juliet Forster: “Delivering the kind of experience that live theatre does best”
Burgeoning talents: Nigar Yeva, left, Aimee Powell, Olisa Odele, Kate Donnachie and Corey Campbell in Pilot Theatre’s Crongton Knights at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Robert Day
YORK College and York Theatre Royal are teaming up to launch a fast-track course for aspiring stage and screen talents from September.
The BA (Hons) Acting for Stage and Screen degree has been created by York College, in conjunction with the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA), to offer students conservatoire-style professional acting training, plus month-long placements within the industry, including at the Theatre Royal.
Programme leader James Harvey, who developed the two-year course, bills the degree as being “different from anything offered before at York College”.
“There’s nothing like this anywhere in North Yorkshire or the North East,” he says. “It’s a collaboration with ALRA, one of the top drama schools in the country. It’s very much an industry-facing course and we want our students to work with professionals.
“That’s why we’ve worked a month-long placement into the course. For some students, this will mean valuable experience at York Theatre Royal, a hugely respected producing theatre.”
James hopes the course will attract students from a wide range of social backgrounds and believes the two-year duration presents “maximum value for money”.
Theatre Royal producer Thom Freeth says: “This new partnership is such a brilliant opportunity for York Theatre Royal to help support and shape training for people embarking on careers in the theatre industry.
“At a time when arts education is under threat and the industry is changing rapidly, it’s really important that creative organisations connect with training providers and that people can access high-quality training regionally, rather than having to move to London.
“We’re so excited to be working with York College, not least because this partnership will enable York Theatre Royal to make established strands of our work, such as youth theatre and new creative projects, more accessible to communities across the York.”
To complement York College’s in-house tutors, students will benefit from regular visits from industry professionals and ALRA staff. The course also offers specialist classes in improvisation, rehearsal and performance skills, voice, movement and professional development and will involve live performances at the Theatre Royal.
Kieran Sheehan, acting principal atALRA, says: “We’re delighted with the partnership and will use our pioneering approach to actor training and offer advice on integrating traditional and cutting-edge techniques for screen and live theatre.”
Detective at work: Sir David Suchet will dig up his past at York Theatre Royal in October
SUMMER panto in a maze, David Suchet on Poirot, Yorkshire Day celebrations, a SeedBed of new ideas, riverside art, a cancer charity fundraiser and comedy at the double catch Charles Hutchinson’s eye.
New signing of the week: David Suchet, Poirot And More – A Retrospective, York Theatre Royal, October 13, 3pm and 8pm
SIR David Suchet retraces his steps as a young actor in his 20-theatre tour of Poirot And More, A Retrospective, where he looks back fondly at his five-decade career, shedding a new, intimate light on his most beloved performances.
Geoffrey Wansell, journalist, broadcaster, biographer and co-author of Poirot And Me, interviews the actor behind the detective and the many characters Suchet has portrayed on stage and screen. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Joshing around: After York Theatre Royal’s Travelling Pantomime last Christmas, now Josh Benson s magic beans have created the new Crowmania Ride summer panto at York Maze
Summer pantomime on wheels? Yes, on York Maze’s Crowmania Ride until September 6. Maze opening hours: 10am to 6.30pm; last admission, 3.30pm
CORNTROLLER of Entertainment Josh Benson is the creative mind behind the new Crowmania Ride at York Maze, Elvington Lane, York.
York Maze reopened for the first time since 2019 on July 17, with York actor, magician, comedy turn and pantomime star Benson and his team of actors taking the redeveloped Crowmania attraction “to a new level” on a trailer towed by a tractor every 20 to 30 minutes from 11am to 5pm. “The scariest thing is the bad puns!” promises director of operations David Leon.
In a 20-minute pantomime on wheels, Crowmania’s loose plot involves The Greatest Crowman encouraging the crows to eat farmer Tom’s corn, while his villainy stretches to creating genetically modified corn-based creatures too. Expect theatrical set-pieces, multitudinous curious animatronics and special effects.
Erika Noda: Reflecting on her dual heritage on tonight’s SeedBed bill at At The Mill, Stillington
“Fantastic nights of artistic creation”: SeedBed at At The Mill, Stillington, near York, tonight until Saturday, 7pm to 10pm nightly
BILLED as “New Work. Good Food. Big Conversations”, the first ever SeedBed promises three nights, three different line-ups, three opportunities to see new ideas on their first outings, each hosted by Polly from Jolly Allotment, who will cook a nutritious supper each evening and discuss nourishment.
Tonight features At The Mill’s resident artists, plus Paula Clark’s class-and-disadvantage monologue Girl, Jack Fielding’s stilt act in Deus and Erika Noda’s Ai, examining growing up dual heritage in predominantly white York.
Tomorrow combines Robert Douglas Finch’s Songs Of Sea And Sky; Jessa Liversidge’s Looping Around set of folk tunes, original songs and layered looping and Henry Bird’s combo of classical poetry extracts and his own words.
Saturday offers The Blow-Ins’ A Gentle Breeze, an acoustic Celtic harp and guitar set, to be experienced in silence; Gong Bath, a session of bathing in the sound of gongs, and Jessa Liversidge’s second Looping Around (Your Chance To Sing) session.
Papillon, by Adele Karmazyn, who is taking part in Saturday’s York River Art Market
York River Art Market, Dame Judi Dench Walk, by Lendal Bridge, York, Saturday and Sunday, 10.30am to 5.30pm
MORE than 30 artists and makers will take part in days five and six of this summer’s riverside weekend art markets, organised by York abstract painter and jewellery designer Charlotte Dawson.
Given the busy traffic across both days last weekend, Charlotte is considering doing more full weekends next year rather than the present emphasis on Saturdays.
Among Saturday’s artists will be York digital photomontage artist and 2021 YRAM poster designer Adele Karmazyn and Kwatz, the small indie fashion label directed by Amanda Roseveare.
On Sunday, look out for York College graphics tutor Monica Gabb’s Twenty Birds range of screen prints, tea towels, mugs, cards, bags and hanging decorations; York artist Linda Combi’s illustrations and Louise Taylor Designs, travelling over from Lancashire with her floral-patterned textile designs for cushions, tea towels, oven gloves and more besides.
Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie: Headlining Meadowfest
Festival of the week: Meadowfest, Malton, Saturday, 10am to 10pm
MALTON, alias “Yorkshire’s food capital”, plays host to the Meadowfest boutique summer music and street fodder festival this weekend in the riverside meadows and gardens of the Talbot Hotel.
On the bill, spread over two stages, will be headliners Lightning Seeds, Arthur “The God of Hellfire” Brown, York party band Huge, Ben Beattie’s After Midnight Band, Flatcap Carnival, Hyde Family Jam, Gary Stewart, Penny Whispers, The Tengu Taiku Drummers and more besides.
“Expect a relaxed festival of uplifting sunshine bands, all-day feasting and dancing like no-one’s watching,” says the organisers. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/visitmalton/
Forge Zine and Hallmark Theatre present Yorkshire Day: Night Of Arts! at The Crescent community venue in York on Sunday
Marking God’s Own Country’s wonderfulness: Yorkshire Day: Night Of Arts!, The Crescent, York, Sunday, 8pm
FORGE Zine and Hallmark Theatre band together for a Yorkshire Day night of creativity, fun and varied entertainment, replete with actors, musicians, writers and artists.
Expect spoken word, visual art, live music, scene extracts and comedy on a pleasant, relaxed, wholly Yorkshire evening, bolstered by the chance to buy artworks and books. Box office: thecrescentyork.seetickets.com.
Steve Cassidy: Joining up with friends for the Songs And Stories For York Against Cancer fundraiser
Fundraiser of the week: Songs And Stories For York Against Cancer, with Steve Cassidy Band and friends, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Sunday, 7.30pm
A NIGHT of songs and stories by some of York’s best-known performers, who “celebrate a return to normality” by supporting a charity that helps others still on the road to recovery.
Taking part will be Steve Cassidy, Mick Hull, John Lewis, Billy Leonard, Graham Hodge, Graham Metcalf, Geoff Earp and Ken Sanderson. Box office: josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Sara Barron: Playing York, Leeds and Selby on her debut British tour of Enemies Closer
Barron nights: Sara Barron on autumn tour in Yorkshire in Enemies Closer
AMERICAN comedian Sara Barron examines kindness, meanness, ex-boyfriends, current husbands, all four remaining friends and two of her 12 enemies in Enemies Closer at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, on October 9.
Further Yorkshire gigs on Barron’s debut British tour will be at Sheaf St, Leeds, on October 20 and Selby Town Hall on September 29.
“Touring this show is truly the fulfilment of a dream,” says Barron. “Come if you dig an artful rant. Stay at home if think you’re ‘a positive person’.” Box office: York, at tickets.41monkgate.co.uk; Leeds and Selby, via berksnest.com/sara.
In need of a reviving cuppa: Omid Djalili has just had to change his Pocklington plans for a second time
Third time lucky: Omid Djalili moves Pocklington gigs again, this time to 2022
OMID Djalili’s brace of shows on July 22 at Pocklington Arts Centre (PAC) have been moved to May 18 and 19 next spring.
British-Iranian comedian, actor, television producer, presenter, voice actor and writer Djalili, 55, originally had been booked for this month’s cancelled Platform Festival at the Old Station, Pocklington.
He subsequently agreed to do two shows in one night at PAC to ensure all those who had purchased tickets for his festival gig would not miss out. The uncertainty brought on by the Government’s delay to Step 4 scuppered those plans. Tickets remain valid for the new dates.
Retrospective: Sir David Suchet will reflect on 52 years on stage and screen at York Theatre Royal this autumn
SIR David Suchet will retrace his steps as a young actor when he visits 20 theatres with Poirot And More, A Retrospective, playing York Theatre Royal twice on October 13.
After touring the show to Australia and New Zealand in early 2020, the autumn tour will mark his return to the British stage.
Suchet says: “Regional theatre has always been very close to my heart as it’s where my career started and was nurtured. To visit so many places that have meant so much to me during my 52-year career is wonderful.
“This show is my way of connecting and saying hello to people across the country after this terrible period and welcoming them back into the theatre. I am looking forward to sharing my memories, stories and favourite moments.”
“I am looking forward to sharing my memories, stories and favourite moments,” says Sir David Suchet
In Poirot And More, A Retrospective, 75-year-old Suchet looks back fondly on his illustrious five-decade career, shedding new, intimate light on his most beloved performances in conversation with Geoffrey Wansell, journalist, broadcaster, biographer and co-author of Poirot And Me, as they discuss the actor behind the detective and the many characters Suchet has portrayed on stage and screen
For more than 25 years, Suchet has captivated millions worldwide as Agatha Christie’s dapper Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Elsewhere, he has graced the world’s stages performing Shakespeare, Wilde, Albee and Miller and is celebrated for his portrayals of iconic roles such as Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest, Cardinal Benelli in The Last Confession, Joe Keller in All My Sons and Gregory Solomon in The Price.
Suchet spent 13 years in the Royal Shakespeare Company and remains an associate artist. He is an Emmy award winner and seven-time Olivier Award nominee (for The Merchant Of Venice, Separation, Oleanna, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Amadeus, All My Sons and The Price). In 2020, he was knighted for services to drama and charity.
Tickets for Suchet’s 3pm and 8pm shows on October 13 are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Ralph Fiennes in his world premiere: “He did not merely declaim or recite. Instead, Four Quartets became poetry in often slow, mellifluous motion”
REVIEW: Ralph Fiennes in TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 8pm nightly. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
THIS was always the “event” moment of the reopening Love Season at York Theatre Royal.
So much so, there had even been 16 days of darkness since the closing night of A Splinter Of Ice: a dramatic pause of anticipation worthy of a Harold Pinter play, a pause lengthened all the more by the gap between Ralph Fiennes’s unannounced arrival on stage and his opening word from T S Eliot’s epic poem cycle. Like a pianist composing himself for the first note.
In the interim since July 10 had come the Government’s rubber-stamping of Step 4 and the return to full-capacity audiences, making Fiennes’s York debut at 58 even more of an event.
Mask-wearing was still advised, a softly-softly policy that was met largely with compliance, although temperature checks and the taking of names and phone numbers have gone.
Sitting close together in an almost full theatre for the first time since mid-March 2020 was a suck-it-see experience: any loud cough was met a tad nervously, and the Theatre Royal felt uncomfortably warm. Hopefully, that can be adjusted. Please.
Anyway, on with the one-man show, a London-bound touring tour de force presented in its world premiere by the Royal & Derngate, Northampton, and the Theatre Royal, Bath, directed and performed by the esteemed Mr Fiennes, whose solemn entry was as low key as his autumnal colours of brown jacket and grey shirt hanging loosely outside dark trousers.
Ralph Fiennes in Four Quartets: “His feet were bare, maybe to ground himself, as if connecting with the earth below when the world around was in such a whirl”
His feet were bare, maybe still from that day’s yoga session, or maybe to ground himself, as if connecting with the earth below when the world around was in such a whirl.
He had the air of an intellectual lecturer, wrapped in intense thought, but needing to express himself, to communicate, hence the sporadic breaking of the fourth wall for direct address from the stage apron. Never dry, but conversational.
Fiennes did not merely declaim or recite. Instead, Four Quartets became poetry in often slow, mellifluous motion, a dramatic monologue with choreographed movement and lighting to suit the moment, the mood, the scene.
Fiennes had started with the lights still up and would bring them again sporadically, but at one point too, he plunged the stage into darkness, before a single light picked out a grey, almost ghostly countenance. Fire suddenly burned brightly, almost blindingly.
Every detail, every nuance, mattered, as with Eliot’s text, whether the placement of the two chairs and the table with a glass of water and a wartime studio microphone, used only once as if for addressing the nation.
The removal of the jacket and later putting it on again, wrapping it closely around his lean frame, signified the change of seasons, and all the while, Fiennes would break the moment, but not momentum, by moving two rotating slabs into different positions. It was an act of toil, but one to present new palettes, new shapes, new reliefs, as if in a painting, rather than the endless turmoil of Sisyphus being forced by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity.
Ralph Fiennes: “Made Eliot’s language dance, sing, sting, ebb and flow, spark and turn to embers”
Fiennes’s voice, so familiar from the screen, is a thing of beauty in the flesh, weighted yet airy, his diction enunciated to the last ‘t’ that could blow out a candle. He made Eliot’s language dance, sing, sting, flow, spark and turn to embers in the series of symphonic meditations.
Conceived in lockdown, when Fiennes decided to set himself the task of learning Four Quartets, his performance could be termed a labour of love, but it is too transcendent to be burdened with a sense of labour.
Eliot’s final masterpiece, published in wartime 1943, brought together Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages and Little Giddings, each announced by Fiennes in an unbroken performance with resonance anew in our pandemic age of seeking survival amid a national (and international) crisis.
For all the turbulence and dissonance of war, Eliot’s tone is reflective, but never nostalgic, as he and in turn Fiennes addresses what Fiennes called “the perennial questions, the big, big ideas”: the passing of time and feeling trapped; the link between past, present and future; identity; existence; faith, the soul and spiritual yearning; the elements and the environment; the futility of war.
A chill wrapped itself around the Theatre Royal heat, as mortality, human frailty, the fire and the rose, signified the end. The rest was silence, Fiennes’s head bowed, as if to honour the passing of Eliot’s gilded, questing, mysterious words.
“Four Quartets deals with such endless essential perennial questions of time, the spirit, the soul, the journey of the soul in life – big, big ideas,” says Ralph Fiennes. Picture: Matt Humphreys
RALPH Fiennes’s week-long run of his world premiere of T S Eliot’s Four Quartets will mark the return to full-capacity audiences at York Theatre Royal from Monday.
Good news for those who had missed out on tickets when the most in-demand production of the reopening Love Season was first put on sale with social distancing in place. This week’s unlocking of Step 4 has freed up the sudden availability of seats aplenty.
Please note that under the still-cautious Theatre Royal’s Covid-safety practices: “We strongly recommend that you wear a face covering out of respect for fellow audience members,” the management advises.
Star of stage and screen Fiennes is directing and performing in the world premiere of T S Eliot’s final masterpiece in his York Theatre Royal debut as the zenith of the Love Season after premiering the Royal & Derngate, Northampton and Theatre Royal, Bath co-production in Bath from May 25 to June 5.
After this summer’s regional tour, he will transfer Four Quartets to the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, for 36 performances from November 18 to December 18.
Fiennes’s solo theatre adaptation features Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages and Little Giddings, published together in 1943 in a quartet of four interwoven, symphonic meditations that ranges across themes of time, nature and the elements, faith and the quest for spiritual enlightenment and war and mortality.
Mostly written during the Second World War, when the closure of London playhouses during the Blitz interrupted Eliot’s work in theatre, his epic poem cycle contains “some of the most exquisite and unforgettable reflections on surviving periods of national crisis”, apt for our pandemic times.
Here, Fiennes answers a series of questions on Four Quartets, verse, versatility and villains
Where did the idea for doing Four Quartets come from?
“I’ve known it since I was quite young – we had the TS Eliot recording – so it’s something that’s been floating in and out of my awareness over the years. In the first lockdown last year I gave myself little things to engage my mind and memory, and I thought I’d learn Four Quartets.
Ralph Fiennes in rehearsal for Four Quartets
“And then various things I thought I’d do the early part of this year went away – films and so on – and it sort of transitioned.
“Could it not be put in a context where it was not just recited in a suit or something, but given a kind of gently, appropriately judged theatrical context?”
What happened next?
“I was daunted and excited in equal measure by what it might be, but with the help of my agent Simon Beresford, [creative producer] James Dacre got behind it and liked the idea.
“Then the Eliot estate got behind it and then a lot of very talented people in theatre production were available – like Hildegard Bechtler, Chris Shutt and Tim Lutkin, all brilliant in their field.
“I’m a great believer in the energies of things signalling whether they’re meant to happen or not, so it seemed that the cumulative gathering of people being available and wanting to be part of it sent me a sign that this had some viability.”
Why does Four Quartets appeal to you?
“I think it deals with such endless essential perennial questions of time, the spirit, the soul, the journey of the soul in life – big, big ideas. In the end you could say the takeaway is ‘Live in the present’ but Eliot goes deeply into how we’re trapped in notions of sequential time.
“But it’s a very human quest by a man who I think has been through the wringer internally himself – questioning his existence, very unhappy marriage, sense of identity – and then the war crystallising this sense of quest. So it’s endlessly mysterious, but I think there are also ways of speaking it that are conversational and accessible.”
“One of the key and most common responses was: ‘My God, it’s so modern; my God, it’s all about now’,” says Fiennes of Four Quartets’ resonance in lockdown times.
How much is Eliot’s voice in your head?
“Not much at all. I said to the team on our first day of rehearsal back in February that I thought we should all listen to Eliot’s recording – the master’s voice – but we all came away with a very strong sense that this was not helpful for us if we want to make this accessible.
“It’s an old-school delivery with a certain kind of refined English intellectual speaking: it has its own kind of beauty and it’s wonderful to hear his voice, but the dynamic of its communicative ability more for younger people today I think is questionable, because it feels from another time. I want the poem to communicate to younger minds; I want it to be active.”
Four Quartets was written in the 1930s and 1940s, when the world was in crisis. How strong is the resonance with today?
“Very strong. We’re trapped in our houses, we’re denied all these norms of social interaction, assumptions about life and work and travel are all taken away, and so I sense we’re left with: what are we, who am I, what is of value in my life, in our shared lives?
“It continues to be a crisis of what we don’t know, where this thing is going. And Eliot references a sense of where we have to embrace not knowing: ‘And what you do not know is the only thing you know’.
“Doing it for colleagues and friends in rehearsal, one of the key and most common responses was: ‘My God, it’s so modern; my God, it’s all about now’. And that was a very frequent response to it.”
What do you hope this interpretation will achieve?
“I want to enable the poem to be heard. Eliot has not been a focus in the theatre for a while. In his writing there is a religiosity, or questions of faith, which perhaps is unfashionable.
T S Eliot: Writer of Four Quartets
“I love Eliot’s poetry: I think it continues to communicate and I think often great writers suffer from the zeitgeist or the vogue of the moment and get relegated and forgotten about.
“I have a belief that the poem can work and I think it does chime with the big questions or the existential questions that I think we are asking about who we are – and I think that’s thrown into focus by the Covid crisis.”
Why have you decided to take the performance to regional theatres?
“That was part of the proposition. First of all I just said, ‘Can we do this?’. Then Simon and James said, ‘What about doing it as a regional tour, to offer it to regional theatres who may be excited to be able to open their theatres with this?’.
“And that appealed to me. It appealed to me to not do it in London, just purely to have the experience of going to different cities. That excited me because it’s different – I’ve not done it and I’m very aware that there are committed theatre audiences all over the country, so it was a bit of a no-brainer. I love the idea of being on the road: it’s rather romantic.”
Why have you chosen theatres such as York Theatre Royal?
“I was very protective of the sense of intimacy. In some theatres we’re not selling the very top circle because I wanted to keep the sense of intimacy and didn’t want to have to go into the level of projected voice, where there are certain nuances and delicacies that often get diluted.
“The poem has to feel like a conversation. I remember going on stage and doing a bit and saying, ‘Can you hear? Is it working?’. It was just putting my toe in the water as to how it felt in the theatre because it’s all very well walking the paths of Suffolk, where I am, doing it to the sheep, but the thing is, how will it land?
You have enjoyed huge success in both film and theatre. Do you have a preference?
“I love the very simple thing that you walk on to a space, either a monologue in this case, or with other actors, and you start something and you create immediately.
“I want to enable the poem to be heard,” says Fiennes. “Eliot has not been a focus in the theatre for a while”
“Even as I get older, the simple essential magic or possibility of that is endlessly fascinating – so simple and so profound at the same time.
“Film is full of huge potential thrills in terms of what the end experience can be for an audience but the process of film-making is not actor-friendly really. But then you might say, surely in front of a theatre audience you don’t have the chance to do it again?
“No, you don’t, but there is a dynamic of contact with an audience so you’re in a dialogue with the people receiving it. I suppose the short answer to the question is, I think I’m more at home in the process of theatre.”
Your career has covered everything from the Bard to Bond. Do those jobs feel different in your head, or is it all just acting?
“It is a sort of truism that good writing is always attractive, whether it’s classical or modern writing. You can just feel the crackle. I think I’ve got any actor’s hunger as to what’s a good part where there’s human complexity, there’s dramatic impact. We all like to be challenged and stretched.”
Is it true that villains are more fun to play?
“In a kind of basic way. They’re not fun if they haven’t got any complexity to them. Actually, one of the challenges of Voldemort is that he was mostly just sheer, distilled evil – the point of Voldemort [in the Harry Potter films] is that he doesn’t have a conscience – and that was quite a challenge because there was no doubt or inner contradiction.
“What puts the full stop on Richard III being a great part is his sense of regret or fear about what’s he’s done, and suddenly you have this other colour – doubt – and then he puts the lid on it. So that stuff is great. If there’s endless degrees of grey, I think that’s really human.”
Ralph Fiennes in TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, York Theatre Royal, July 26 to 31, 8pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
“I think I’ve got any actor’s hunger as to what’s a good part where there’s human complexity, there’s dramatic impact,” says Fiennes
Back story
BORN in Ipswich on December 22 1962 , Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes has appeared in such films as Schindler’s List; The English Patient; The Grand Budapest Hotel; The Constant Gardner; Skyfall; In Bruges; The Dig and The Harry Potter series.
Winner of a Tony Award for playing Hamlet, Fiennes has performed many of theatre’s most iconic roles. London theatre credits include Shakespeare’s Anthony And Cleopatra (National Theatre) and Richard III (Almeida) and Ibsen’s The Master Builder (Old Vic).
York Theatre Royal’s full statement on its Covid-safety protocol after all legal restrictions were lifted on July 19 under Step 4 of the “Roadmap to Recovery”, restoring full-capacity audiences:
“We are proud to be See It Safely-approved by the Society Of London Theatre and UK Theatre, so you can feel confident and safe knowing that we are following the latest Government and performing arts guidelines.
“We’ve outlined more about what to expect from a visit to the theatre below:
* Multiple hand sanitation points around the building, including on entry.
* Increased cleaning regime before and after performances.
* Face coverings worn by all staff and volunteers working in public areas.
* Windows and doors open, whenever possible, to allow fresh air to circulate.
“We strongly recommend that you wear a face covering out of respect for fellow audience members and our companies when coming into the theatre.
“As the situation is constantly changing, we shall continue to adapt our approach in line with any new guidance and your feedback.
Find out more by visiting the website at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/show/four-quartets/
York Theatre Royal: Returning to full capacity from Monday
