A scene from Gary Clarke’s Wasteland, heading for York Theatre Royal next month
THE search is on for singing pitmen to
take part in Gary Clarke’s Wasteland, a new dance event at York Theatre Royal
next month.
Four non-professional singers are being
sought to join the cast for the 7.30pm performances on March 27 and 28.
Wasteland was created to mark the 25th
anniversary of the demolition of Grimethorpe Colliery in South Yorkshire and 30
years since the rise of UK rave culture.
Now the Gary Clarke Company is seeking four singers aged over 40 with experience of singing in a group setting or community choir to play the roles of ex-coal miners.
No professional experience is necessary
but applicants should have experience of learning songs from memory and singing
in unison. The role will involve “some moving on and around the stage and
interacting with other members of the company”.
Down the mines: Another scene from Gary Clarke’s Wasteland
Singers will be supported throughout the process by musical director Steven Roberts, assistant musical director Charlie Rhodes, choreographer and artistic director Gary Clarke and company associate Alistair Goldsmith, who will work with everyone’s individual needs and abilities.
Each participant will receive a food
and travel allowance to help cover the cost of rehearsals and
performances.
For any enquiries or to register
interest, send an email to engagementgcc@gmail.com or call engagement manager Laura
Barber on 07391 621966.
Neil Abdy, who grew up in the mining
community of South Yorkshire and whose father was a miner, was one of the team
of volunteers who took part in a special preview at Cast Doncaster in
2018.
“Being given the opportunity to be part
of this excellent work was unbelievable,” he says. “Everyone made us feel
special and the friendship and camaraderie was excellent. I have a new spring
in my step. If you have the opportunity to take part, definitely give it a go.
It’s one of the best experiences you will ever have working with this wonderful
team.”
Tickets for Gary Clarke’s Wasteland are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
What if the story of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight were to be retold by the woman at its heart ? Debbie Cannon does exactly that in Green Knight
STUDIO Disoveries, a week of new
theatre chosen by the Visionari community programming group, continues tomorrow
with a brace of shows at the York Theatre Royal Studio.
Writer and performer Debbie Cannon’s
Green Knight, at 6.30pm, is a one-woman version of the medieval poem Sir Gawain
And The Green Knight.
The setting is Christmas at Camelot,
where a monstrous green warrior issues an unwinnable challenge to Arthur’s
finest knight, but what if the story were to be retold by the woman at its
heart?
Flying
Elephant’s premiere production, Picasso’s Women, delivers a unique look at Picasso’s life through the
voices of his wives, mistresses and muses at 8.30pm.
One of three of Picasso’s Women at York Theatre Royal Studio tomorrow
Written by Brian McAvera, directed by
Marcia Carr and performed by Judith Paris, Colette Redgrave and Lucy Hunt, it
takes the form of three monologues featuring French model Fernande, Russian
ballerina Olga and 17-year-old mistress Marie-Therese.
Originally produced for the National
Theatre and BBC Radio 3, the women’s stories provide an insight into the
influence these women had on Picasso’s life and art.
The full programme for Visionari’s
second Studio Discoveries season can be found at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. The
festival begins today (February 4) with Not Now Collective’s Pepper &
Honey, a new play with live Croatian pepper biscuit-baking, at 11am and 2pm. Box
office: 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the Theatre
Royal box office.
YORKSHIREMAN Simon Armitage performs in York tonight and tomorrow for
the first time since being appointed Poet Laureate last May.
The 56-year-old Huddersfield poet is presenting Seeing Stars: An Evening
With Simon Armitage at York Theatre Royal in two fundraising
shows to support the theatre’s community work.
Confirmed to be joining Armitage for the 7.30pm shows are actors Kacey Ainsworth (best known for playing Little Mo in EastEnders), Richard Bremmer, Charlotte Mills and Tom Kanji.
Curated by Scarborough-born theatre director Nick Bagnall, Seeing Stars features readings from Armitage’s works inspired by Sir Gawain And The Green Knight and The Death Of King Arthur on the tenth anniversary of Seeing Stars, his “very dramatic, very theatrical” book of dramatic monologues, allegories and absurdist tall tales.
Nine months into his Poet Laureateship, how would Armitage, the first
Professor of Poetry at Leeds University, define poetry? “I’ve always taken the
view that poetry is not just one thing,” he says.
“There have been recent times when people think it’s just words in a
book, but performance has always been important and that has come back into
fashion and been re-imagined too with spoken-word slams. There is room for everybody
creating the language.”
Armitage continues: “One of the roles of the Poet Laureate, as I see it,
is to promote poetry and speak up for the arts.
” I know it can have a strange effect on people when you say you’re a poet,” says Poet Laureate Simon Armitage
“My feeling is, if you’re involved with the arts, you’re more
comfortable with yourself and you bring that to the inner universe you exist
in, even if it’s only being more comfortable about language and how you think.”
At a time of cutbacks in arts funding and schools putting science before
the arts in the curriculum, Armitage says: “You stifle creativity at your peril
because, if you don’t offer an outlet, if you antagonise, it will still find a
way out.”
Where does Armitage see sitting poets sitting in the public’s perception
in 2020? As minstrels? Prophets? Commentators? Outsiders? “I know it can have a
strange effect on people when you say you’re a poet. Definitely there’s something
of the outside, the alternative, about it,” he says.
“It’s been a ‘peculiar’, not ever a mainstream, artform but I think people
have a soft spot in their heart for poetry, especially at moments in their life,
happy or sad, whether reading it or even writing it in those moments, so I still
don’t think it’s a remote artform.”
As for his aims in his ten-year tenure as Poet Laureate, Armitage says: “By
the end of those ten years, I would like to have seen my projects come to
fruition [such as the newly founded Laurel Prize for nature poems and the
establishing of a National Centre for Poetry].
“I’d also like to be judged for my writing, either myself seeking to
maintain standards, or writing in a communicative, engaging way, and my Poet
Laureate poems have to satisfy me too.”
Seeing Stars: An Evening With Simon Armitage, York Theatre
Royal, tonight and tomorrow, February 4 and 5, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568
or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
New pantomime partnership: York Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster and executive director Tom Bird with Evolution Productions producer Paul Hendy,
THE new age of pantomime at York
Theatre Royal will involve Evolution rather than revolution.
For the first panto of the post-Berwick
Kaler era, the Theatre Royal is teaming up with award-winning pantomime producers
Evolution to present Cinderella.
The show dates will be December 4 to
January 10 2021, an earlier start and finish than the December 7 to January 25
run for Sleeping Beauty, Dame Berwick’s last pantomime as co-director and writer
after a 41-year association with the Theatre Royal.
Cinderella will be directed by Theatre
Royal associate director Juliet Forster, who directed Shakespeare’s comedy A
Midsummer Night’s Dream for Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre in York in 2018 and Arthur
Miller’s A View From The Bridge in the Theatre Royal main house last September,
as well as children’s shows aplenty.
Juliet Forster, who will direct York Theatre Royal’s pantomime, Cinderella
The script will be written by Evolution
co-founder and producer Paul Hendy in tandem with York-born comedy writer and
podcaster David Reed, who has returned to his home city and will provide
additional material.
The cast is yet to be announced but
will not be a star vehicle, with variety acts and blossoming pantomime talent
and a “York flavour” likely to be to the fore instead. The set designer, not
confirmed yet, will be charged with creating magical transformations and glittering
sets to complement the “stunning songs and side-splitting laughs”.
Formed in 2005 by Paul Hendy and Emily
Wood, Evolution Productions present “bespoke pantomimes of epic spectacle and
hilarity” for the Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield; Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury; The
Hawth Theatre, Crawley; Garrick Theatre, Lichfield; Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury;
Alban Arena, St Albans; Octagon Theatre, Yeovil, and Grove Theatre, Dunstable,
now joined in a co-producing partnership by York Theatre Royal.
Juliet Forster and Theatre Royal
executive director Tom Bird were exhilarated by Evolution’s 2019-2020 pantomime
for Sheffield Theatres, starring long-running dame Damian Williams in
Cinderella at the Lyceum.
Paul Hendy’s script from that hit show will
provide an early template for Reed to set to work on giving it a York branding,
with Cinderella’s rags-to-riches story being switched to this historic city in
a “new pantomime for everyone”.
Evolution producer Paul Hendy: co-writer of Cinderella at York Theatre Royal
Executive
director Bird says: “We are
over the moon to be creating a spectacular new pantomime for the people of York:
one that’s tailor-made for the whole family, while honouring the pantomime
traditions that our audiences love so much.
“Our recipe includes two of the most
exciting voices in our city, David Reed and Juliet Forster, together with Emily
Wood and Paul Hendy, the finest makers of pantomime in the country – a
fairytale combination.”
Bird continues: “This phenomenal team
will give the York Theatre Royal pantomime a new lease of life with a fresh,
family friendly, fun-filled approach to the story of Cinderella. It’s a
pantomime for the new decade, set with pride in our amazing city.”
Evolution Productions has built a
reputation for superior, bespoke pantomimes with the emphasis on high-quality
production values, strong casting and funny scripts, twice winning Pantomime of
the Year at the Great British Pantomime Awards.
Producer and writer Hendy says: “Emily
and I are absolutely thrilled to be working with York Theatre Royal on this
year’s pantomime. We are huge fans of the theatre and we’re looking forward to
collaborating with Tom and his brilliant team to produce a wonderful, family-friendly
pantomime with spectacular production values, a superbly talented cast,
and a genuinely funny script.”
Ticket prices will remain the same as
for 2019-2020. Family tickets and Sunday shows are being introduced, as well as
schools and groups discounts so that “everyone can go to the ball”.
Theatre Royal members’ ten-day priority booking opened today; members’ five-day priority booking on February 8; 9am in person at the box office, 10am online and phone booking. General booking opens on February 13; same times as above. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Meanwhile, Berwick Kaler’s first pantomime
at his new York home, the Grand Opera House, will be Dick Turpin Rides Again, with
writer, director and revived dame Kaler being joined by regular cohorts Martin
Barrass, David Leonard, Suzy Cooper and AJ Powell for Qdos Entertainment’s
panto partnership with the Ambassador Theatre Group.
Pepper & Honey: Not Now Collective’s play with live baking opens Visionari’s Studio Discoveries festival at the York Theatre Royal Studio
WHAT happens when the audience selects
the shows? Find out at York Theatre Royal from tomorrow in the Studio
Discoveries festival of theatre chosen by the Visionari community programming
group.
The first of six picks in Visionari’s
second season really takes the biscuit when Not Now Collective’s new play of
love, loss, heritage and new beginnings, Pepper & Honey,is told through the
baking of Croatian pepper biscuits.
Known as paprenjaci, they will be baked
live in front of the 11am and 2pm audiences as the story of Ana’s preparations
to start a new life in the UK unfolds. Babes-in-arms are welcome at the 11am
and 2pm shows – and biscuits are included.
So, what is “home”, ask Not
Now Collective. Now that the era of post-Brexit Britain is under way, that
question has never been more pertinent, in this case for Ana, a
young Croatian woman, as she settles in the UK.
Determined to make it home, she focuses
on life in this new land, but she is haunted by the voice of her Grandma,
calling for her to stay true to national identity and yearning for Ana
to come home.
Grandma bakes her traditional Croatian
pepper biscuits – believed to bring
a loved one back home – but will this be enough to be reunited with her
granddaughter? What is “home” to Ana now?
Written by a Croatian playwright and performed by a Croatian actor, Pepper & Honey is a poignant, subtle and timely play about the journey of change, cultural differences, trying not to feel like a foreigner in your adopted country, and the conflict between upholding the traditions of the “old country” and embracing those of the new.
As trailered
earlier, Pepper & Honey will be “timed to perfection
to deliver a perfect Croatian pepper biscuit, baked live with the help
of the audience”. Tickets for all the Visionari Studio Discoveries plays are on
sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. The price is £10 per show or
£8 when two or more Studio Discoveries shows
are booked.
Re-cycling a familiar French adventure: Le Navet Bete in The Three Musketeers. Picture: Mark Dawson
AFTER Dracula: The Bloody Truth and
Dick Tracy, travelling players Le Navet Bete come armed only with a baguette and
a questionable steed on their latest adventure.
The award-winning Essex physical comedy
troupe ride into York Theatre Royal on February 7 and 8 with The Three
Musketeers: A Comedy Adventure.
The main-house stage transforms into
the French countryside as hot-headed D’Artagnan travels to Paris full of
childish excitement and misplaced bravado to become a Musketeer. Will things go to plan? Unlikely, but at least this
chaotic caper will be in the hands of four actors wholly assured in taking on
more than 30 character portrayals.
“Sorry, I’m tied up for February 7 and 8 already. I’ll be at York Theatre Royal”. Picture: Matt Austin
Billed as their biggest and most
riotous show to date, The Three Musketeers: A Comedy Adventure is the sixth
time Le Navet Bete have worked with comedy director John Nicholson, co-artistic
director of Peepolykus and regular comedy writer for television and radio.
“This time we’ve collaborated on a
comedy version of Alexander Dumas’s classic French tale, turning it on its head,”
say Le Navet Bete, who have worked on the show with choreographer Lea Anderson
and set designer Ti Green too. “Expect all the main characters from the book,
but in ways you wouldn’t expect to see them,” they tease.
Le Navet Bete and Exeter Northcott Theatre present The Three Musketeers: A Comedy Adventure, York Theatre Royal, February 7 and 8, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Suitable for age seven upwards.
YORK’S
grand old dame, Berwick Kaler, is back in panto. Oh yes, he is.
At York
Theatre Royal, his “beloved home” for 41 years? Oh, no he isn’t.
Dame
Berwick is switching to the other side, the Grand Opera House, to become the
Grand’s old dame. What’s more, he will be bringing the rest of the Not Famous
But Famous In York Five along for the ride in Dick Turpin Rides Again: villain
David Leonard; sidekick stooge Martin Barrass; ageless principal girl Suzy
Cooper and luverly Brummie A J Powell.
Tickets for the December 12 to January 10 run will go on general sale on February 14, Valentine’s Day, when fans can have a love-in with Dame Berwick in the box office, when he sells the first tickets at 10am.
A delighted Kaler
says: “Qdos Entertainment have come to the rescue of the most lauded pantomime
in the country, having found us a new home at the Grand Opera House in our
beloved City of York.
“To make this a success we need
you – the most articulate and loyal audience in the entire country. We can go
forth with a management that believes we have enhanced the reputation of a
local pantomime that has caught the imagination of young and old, from all
walks of life.”
Qdos Entertainment’s managing director Michael Harrison enthuses: “We are absolutely delighted to be embarking on an all-new pantomime partnership with our colleagues at the Ambassador Theatre Group, Grand Opera House and, of course, Berwick and the gang.
“Berwick is an undeniable master in the world of pantomime, with his own inimitable style and approach and we are delighted to be working closely with him and the cast to bring back the magic for which they are best known.”
Kaler, 73, retired from playing the Theatre Royal’s dame after 40 years last February, but has signed a three-year contract with Qdos Entertainment, the pantomime powerhouse of British theatre, who are taking over the Grand Opera House panto from Three Bears Productions from Winter 2020.
Dame
Berwick will write and direct the show, as well as pulling on his trademark big
boots, unruly wig and spectacular frocks again, after regretting his decision
to retire, breaking his run as Britain’s longest-running dame, from the moment
he announced it.
Fully
recovered from his double heart bypass in the summer of 2018, It was a
sentiment he repeated regularly, not least on the last night of The Grand Old Dame
Of York on February 2 last year, saying he “would be back like a shot” if
asked.
Now the veteran dame does return, but across the city, where he has chosen Dick Turpin Rides Again for his first Grand Opera House pantomime, revisiting a show that brought him his highest ever audience figures at the Theatre Royal: 54,000 for Dick Turpin in 2008-2009.
He last appeared on the Opera House stage as fey drag artist Captain Terri Dennis in Peter Nichols’ Privates On Parade in 1996.
Kaler made
an emotional, provocative speech at the finale to last Saturday’s final night
of Sleeping Beauty, the troubled Theatre Royal pantomime he had written and
co-directed this winter, but whose progress was jolted by executive director
Tom Bird’s confirmation, with a fortnight still to run, that Dame Berwick would
not be back, as writer or director, let alone as dame.
BERWICKXIT: Berwick Kaler playing the dame in his last York Theatre Royal pantomime, The Grand Old Dame Of York, last winter. Picture: Anthony Robling
Suzy Cooper
and Kaler in The Press splash had called for the dame to return, David Leonard
later backed that campaign, while Martin Barrass addressed the audience at each
show post-announcement to say “this cast and this band” would not be returning.
A public petition was launched too.
“I’m b****y
furious,” said the dame, back on his old stamping ground, in a highly charged Saturday
atmosphere, full of cheers for Kaler and boos for new panto villain Bird.
Kaler could
not reveal “the truth”, but said Bird – or “one man” as he called him throughout
without naming him once – was “wrong” in his decision to move on to a new
creative team when the Theatre Royal pantomime “didn’t need fixing”.
“I’ll give them three days,” he said in a cryptic ultimatum that set tongues wagging that Kaler must have something up his sleeve, while Barrass rubbed his hands when reading out a letter in the shout-outs that suggested the Panto Five should move to “the Grand”.
Those three days passed, but now Dame Berwick rises again, linking up with Qdos Entertainment, whose production facilities are based in Scarborough and Beverley, 100,000 costumes et al. Billed as “the world’s biggest pantomime producer”, with 37 years behind them, they present such big-hitting pantos as the London Palladium and Newcastle Theatre Royal shows, as well as, closer to York, Hull New Theatre.
Welcoming the new partnership of Qdos and the Kaler crew, Grand Opera House theatre director Rachel Crocombe-Lane says: “Qdos bring both world-class expertise and also a Yorkshire heart, being based in Scarborough; the perfect combination together with this talented cast.
“As a venue team, pantomime is our favourite time of year because of the friendship with the company and also the joy and devotion of our audience. We are proud of these new partnerships, excited for the future of our pantomime and will be ready altogether to really blow your Christmas socks off!’
Qdos Entertainment chairman, Nick Thomas, from Scarborough, is excited too. “I am thrilled to welcome Berwick, a true Yorkshire theatre legend, to the Qdos family. Qdos Entertainment has had a long association with Yorkshire, it is my home county, and with our production and wardrobe teams based in Scarborough and Beverley, forming this new relationship with Berwick and the Grand Opera House is especially exciting.”
Meanwhile, York Theatre Royal will be launching its 2020-2021 pantomime on Monday at high noon. Rather than declaring a pantomime civil war in York, executive director Bird says: “We wish the Grand Opera House the very best of luck. As we’ve always said, we’ll be announcing our new pantomime on Monday”.
On Tuesday
this week, Bird told a City of York Council meeting that no performance of Sleeping
Beauty had sold out, save for the traditional last night pandemonium,
compounding a decline in attendances that had started 11 years ago.
He said the
Theatre Royal would “build a new pantomime for the city that to some extent doesn’t
rely on you having been to the pantomime for 30 years in order to get it”.
“I know how much affection there is
for our pantomime in the city. What’s prompted us to make this change is that
that affection isn’t necessarily translating into popularity,” he added. “It’s
with a very heavy heart that we make changes but it’s not something we can
leave.”
Tickets for Dick Turpin Rides Again will be on general sale from February 14 on 0844 871 3024, at atgtickets.com/york and in person from the Cumberland Street theatre’s box office.ATG Theatre Card holders can buy from February 11.
Lips’ ink: Poet Laureate Simon Armitage with a pen for his thoughts
SIMON Armitage is the fourth Yorkshireman to be appointed Poet Laureate, in the wake of Laurence Eusden, Alfred Austin and the rather better-known Ted Hughes.
“I know bits and pieces of the other two,” says the 56-year-old Huddersfield poet, who succeeded Carol Ann Duffy as the 21st incumbent of the prestigious ten-year post last May.
Next Tuesday and Wednesday (February 4 and 5), he will be performing in York for the first time since his appointment, presenting Seeing Stars: An Evening With Simon Armitage at York Theatre Royal in two fundraising shows to support the theatre’s community work.
“But I don’t see myself as someone who speaks for the county,” says Simon, “Though I’m obviously from here and speak with the voice I grew up with, the noises and dialect I grew up with, and I certainly use Yorkshire in my poetry.”
Historically, the payment for the laureateship was a gift of wine until Henry Pye chanced his arm by asking for a salary in 1790 in the reign of George III. That all changed again when Ted Hughes became Poet Laureate, whereupon Graham Hines, director of the Sherry Institute of Spain, invited him to Jerez in 1986, and the traditional gift was re-constituted.
“They invited me over to Spain last year, and I did my tasting, educating my palate and getting to choose my sherry, and then effectively they send over a barrel every year.”
Do you like sherry, Simon? “I do now!” he says.
Meanwhile, let’s raise a glass to his shows in York next week when Simon will be joined by “well-known actors” for the Seeing Stars poetry readings. “The performance is devised around the shows we did at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse [at Shakespeare’s Globe in London], maybe four years ago, when Tom Bird [now York Theatre Royal’s executive director] was at the Glob,” says Simon.
“In fact, the first performance was just when Dominic Dromgoole was leaving the artistic director’s post, and we did Sir Gawain And The Green Knight and The Death Of King Arthur poems, and it will be something along those lines with four actors in York.”
As the show’s title indicates, Seeing Stars will feature selections from Armitage’s book of dramatic monologues, allegories and absurdist tall tales of that title. “That book is ten years old this year: it’s very dramatic, very theatrical,” he says.
The York show is being curated by Scarborough-born theatre director Nick Bagnall, with the actors involved yet to be confirmed at the time of going to press.
“I first met Nick when he was playing a monkey trapped in a bathroom in Huddersfield!” Simon reveals. What? “It was a promenade event in a house in Huddersfield in an area called The Yards that was being knocked down,” he explains.
“I’ve since done a couple of my plays with him directing them: first my dramatisation of Homer’s The Iliad, The Last Days Of Troy, at Manchester’s Royal Exchange and Shakespeare’s Globe.
“There are no rules really, no written spec, so it’s a question for each incumbent to decide how they will interpret it,” says Simon Armitage of his post as Poet Laureate
“Then the Liverpool Everyman did The Odyssey: Missing Presumed Dead, which ended up at the Globe.”
Looking beyond next week to Simon’s decade-long tenure as Poet Laureate, what does the role entail?
“There are no rules really, no written spec, so it’s a question for each incumbent to decide how they will interpret it,” he says.
“I’ve decided to do several projects: one of them will be The Laurel Prize: a prize for poems on the theme of the environment and nature and all that goes with that.
“It’s very prevalent in poetry now, and I’m delighted that the Yorkshire Sculpture Park [near Wakefield] will host the prize ceremony in May.
“I’m also making tours of public libraries this year,[The Laureate’s Library Tour], doing a week of eight readings from March 16 to 21 of A and B places: Aberdeen, Belfast, the British Library, Bacup, and several others.” A tour of C and D locations will follow in the autumn.
“This is to give some support to the pretty beleaguered library service because I believe it to be a really important institution,” says Simon.
His greatest wish is to introduce a National Centre of Poetry. “Not in London,” he says. “Poetry is one of our proudest traditions, and hopefully a national centre can be a place of writing, reading, research and residencies.
“It’s a huge capital funding project, a kind of legacy idea, not a one-year pop-up space but something that becomes part of the landscape.”
You may not know, but “there is no writing obligation associated with the role of Poet Laureate,” says Simon. “Wordsworth never wrote one poem in the post!”
The ever-prolific Simon, however, will be writing as prolifically as ever, having been appointed Poet Laureate by Her Majesty The Queen and the Prime Minister.
“The call came from Theresa May a week before she resigned,” recalls Simon. What did that involve? “It was a private call.”
What did the Prime Minister say? “It was a private call!” Simon says again.
Seeing Stars: An Evening With Simon Armitage, York Theatre Royal, February 4 and 5, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
Rory Mulvihill, donning beard, wig and iconic green coat, to play Fagin for a second time. Pictures: Anthony Robling
YORK Light Opera Company mark
60 consecutive years of performing at York Theatre Royal by presenting Lionel
Bart’s Oliver!, 60 years after the musical’s West End debut.
Running from February 12 to 22 in a revival directed by Martyn Knight, with musical direction by John Atkin, the show is based on Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist and revels in such songs as Food, Glorious Food, Oom-Pah-Pah, Consider Yourself and You’ve Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two.
Leading the cast of 40 will be Rory
Mulvihill, a veteran of the York theatre scene, who will be playing Fagin after
a career with York Light that does not quite stretch back 60 years but does run
to 35. “I started in 1985 with the summer show Songs From The Shows, which was
a cabaret-style show, where I remember I was part of Three Wheels On My Wagon
as a cowboy,” he says.
Reflecting on his subsequent myriad York Light roles, he says: “I’ve enjoyed all of them, but the one I’m most proud of is Barnum. It was a tremendous show. Every member of the cast had to learn a circus skill and perform it to full houses. I spent four months going to a circus school three days a week learning how to tight rope walk.”
Rory Mulvihill in the rehearsal room for York Light Opera Company’s production of Oliver!
Rory is playing Fagin for the
second time, so he is well qualified to analyse the musical’s portrait of the
trickster who runs a den of nimble young thieves in Victorian London’s murky
underworld.
“The character is written very
differently in the musical from the novel, in a way that makes you feel for
him. You know fundamentally he’s a bad person but there’s always something that
redeems him,” he says.
“If I had to describe him in
three words, I remember there was an advert for creme cakes about 40 years ago
and the slogan was ‘naughty but nice’, so I’m going to go with that one.
“I don’t do anything specific to get into character. Someone once
said their character builds as they dress up as them and that certainly applies
to Fagin as I’ll be having a beard, wig and the iconic long green coat. It
certainly helps wearing the costumes to get into character.”
Rory Mulvihille’s Fagin with his two Artful Dodgers, Jack Hambleton and Sam Piercy
Picking out the differences between the first and second times he has portrayed Fagin, Rory says: “The children involved give Oliver! its dynamic. It’s a different set of kids and crew of course.
“We only have one set of kids this time instead of two. Having done it once, I’m not starting again, I’m building on what I’ve done before. Hopefully I’ll not stumble over the lines and give a better performance.”
A key part of his role is leading the young cast around him. “Whenever you work with kids, it’s difficult to begin with because they’re scoping you out to see what they can/can’t get away with, but once you get over that, it’s a joy.
Jonny Holbek as Bill Sikes with Roy as Bullseye in York Light Opera Company’s Oliver!
“They’re now quite relaxed in the company of the adult cast and I’m getting to know them – maybe a bit too cheeky at times. Theatre is the best gift you can give a kid to carry through their life.”
That sentiment takes him back to
Leeds-born Rory’s first steps in theatre. “Funnily enough Oliver! was the very
first show I was ever in. I played the Artful Dodger in a school production at
St Michael’s in Leeds in 1968. It was just by accident really. I was just asked
to do the part by the director. That was my introduction to theatre and I’ve
been doing it ever since. Now I’ve come full circle with Oliver!”
Rory, who has lived in York since
the mid-1980s, worked as a lawyer for more than 30 years, at Spencer Ewin
Mulvihill and latterly Richardson Mulvihill in Harrogate, before retraining as
a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, but he has always found time for a
parallel stage career.
In doing so, he has been not only a leading man in multiple musicals but also has played both Jesus and Satan in the York Mystery Plays; York lawyer and railway protagonist George Leeman in In Fog And Falling Snow at the National Railway Museum, and lately Sergeant Wilson in Dad’s Army and the outrageous Captain Terri Dennis in Peter Nichols’s Privates On Parade for Pick Me Up Theatre.
Rory Mulvihill, centre, as the flamboyant Captain Terri Dennis in Privates On Parade
Last summer, he set up a new York
company, Stephenson & Leema Productions, with fellow actor and tutor Ian
Giles, making their June debut with Harold Pinter’s ticklishly difficult 1975 play
No Man’s Land.
Now his focus is on Oliver!, performing alongside Alex Edmondson and Matthew Warry as Oliver; Jack Hambleton and Sam Piercy as the Artful Dodger; Emma-Louise Dickinson as Nancy and Jonny Holbeck as the villainous Bill Sikes.
Rory looks forward particularly to singing the climactic Reviewing The Situation. “It’s a tour de force,” he reasons. “You can’t really go wrong with it. It’s a fantastically written song with a beautiful tune, comedy and pathos.
“Please sir, I want some more…and more”: Matthew Warry and Alex Edmondson, sharing the role of Oliver in York Light Opera Company’s Oliver!
“Lionel Bart clearly thought ‘I’m
just going to take the audience’s emotions and put them through the ringer’.
So, at the end, they don’t know whether to laugh or cry. A wonderful piece of
work.”
As the first night looms on the horizon, will Rory experience first-night nerves, even after all these years? “For me, rehearsals can be more worrisome than being on stage,” he says.
“Performing in front of your peers, certainly for the first time, can be very nerve racking, and it’s getting over that that prepares you for being on stage. By the time you get on stage, you have butterflies of course, but you know you can do it.”
York Light Opera Company present Lionel Bart’s Oliver!, York Theatre Royal, February 12 to 22, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm matinee on both Saturdays. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Berwick Kaler, playing the dame in his last York Theatre Royal pantomime, The Grand Old Dame Of York, last winter. Picture: Anthony Robling
IT ended, as it only could, with the dame’s return to the
stage. In civvies, this final time, but not in civil mood as he wouldn’t let it
rest on the final night of Sleeping Beauty.
More like civil war. Us and them. Pantomime’s version of
Brexit, except with a different result, the majority, if not all, in the house,
wanting them to remain, not leave, when “one man” and “the board” have decided
it is time to move on. Get panto done, differently, with a new 2020 vision.
Dame Berwick didn’t name the “one man” who went to mow them
down, but he was referring to York Theatre Royal executive director Tom Bird,
newly cast as the panto villain. “I’ll give them three days” [to change their
minds], the grand dame vowed in a tone harking back to the Scargill and Red
Robbo days of union versus management.
“I don’t want to do him any harm…but he’s wrong”, said Mr
Kaler, surrounded by “the family”, the rest of the Panto Five, Martin, Suzy,
David and AJ, their fellow cast members and the crew, buoyed at each unscripted
but barbed line by an adoring home crowd, who cheered and booed his rallying
speech like they had throughout the show.
He even kissed the wall to express how much he loved this
theatre, getting down on his knees at one point too, arms outstretched, in appreciation
of his loyal subjects.
“A house does not make a home. A family does,” read one
letter read out earlier by the panto Queen, Martin Barrass, in his Bile Beans
can regalia in the shout-outs. “Please, Mr Bird, reconsider. Save our panto,”
pleaded a second, and there were plenty more.
“Yah boo to York Theatre Royal. We won’t be back,” hissed
one, read by the luverly Brummie AJ Powell.
Emotions were running high, as they had been for Martin Barrass, breaking down theatre’s fourth wall to speak from the heart at every performance since news broke a fortnight ago that Berwick Kaler, already retired from playing the dame, would not be asked to co-direct or write the 2020 show. “This cast and this band” would not be back either, said Barrass. “A decision that is nothing to do with us. If it was, we would be back each year until we drop.”
Martin Barrass in his role as Queen Ariadne in Sleeping Beauty at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Anthony Robling
Back to Dame Berwick, who found himself feeling “more emotional” now, in this house of York winter of discontent, than in his valedictory speech at The Grand Old Dame Of York last February. Not for himself, he said, but for all those on stage with him who had given so many years – “some for half their lives” – to the Theatre Royal.
“I’ve been told I can’t tell you the truth, so I can’t say
the truth…but I want to because…I’m b****y furious,” he said. “I don’t want to
be political or anything…but someone tell the management that this wonderful,
wonderful theatre has been a repertory theatre for 275 years.
“It’s a repertory theatre and that means we put on our own
shows for the local population. It’s York’s theatre.”
After reading a letter of support sent that morning to “Berwick
Kaler, Acomb”, he resumed: “I just can’t understand that someone can do this to
something that does not need fixing…
…We have made money for this theatre for years. How can one man do this to us? I don’t understand it.”
“Anyway, they’ve got three days,” he repeated, before leading
company and audience through “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know
when, but I know we’ll meet again some sunny
day.”
The final curtain fell, as it always must, but where and when might that sunny day reunion take place? What will happen to Dame Berwick’s three-day deadline? Will he rise again on the third day, and if so, to say or do what amid this collateral dame-age? Watch this space, as newspapers are wont to say.
As for that “one man”, Tom
Bird, he and the York Theatre Royal management will announce next winter’s show
on February 3. The end and the new beginning all in one.
