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Evolution, not revolution, heralds new age of pantomime at York Theatre Royal

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.

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Pepper & Honey show about home takes the biscuit as Visionari festival opens

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.

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Here come one baguette, one dodgy steed, Three Musketeers… and four bicycles

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.

What’s in a name?

La Navet Bete means “the daft turnip”.

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BERWICK’S BACK! York’s grand old dame to ride again but you won’t believe where!

Berwick’s back: dame for a laugh once more

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.

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Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, Yorkshireman, sherry drinker and York Theatre Royal performer

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

Copyright of The Press, York

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Wig, beard, green coat, Rory Mulvihill is ready to steal the show again as Fagin

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.

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“I don’t want to be political or anything,” says Dame Berwick as he takes to the stage again at York Theatre Royal. Who did he give the Bird last night?

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.

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Visionari pick six of the best for Studio Discoveries week at York Theatre Royal

Pepper & Honey: opening Visionari’s Studio Discoveries season on February 4

WHAT happens if the audience selects the shows? Find out when York Theatre Royal presents a week of theatre in the Studio chosen by the Visionari community programming group. 

This will be Visionari’s second such season of Studio Discoveries, this one featuring six shows from February 4 to 8.

“What if the story was retold by the woman at its heart? ” asks Debbie Cannon in her version of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight

Pepper & Honey, on February 4 at 11am and 2pm, is a new play from Not Now Collective, told through the baking of Croatian pepper biscuits – known as paprenjaci – that will be baked live in front of the Studio audience as the story of Ana’s preparations to start a new life in the UK unfolds. Babes-in-arms are welcome and biscuits are included.

Debbie Cannon is both writer and performer of Green Knight, on February 5 at 6.30pm, a one-woman version of the medieval poem Sir Gawain And The Green Knight. “It’s Christmas at Camelot and a monstrous green warrior issues an unwinnable challenge to Arthur’s finest knight. But what if the story was retold by the woman at its heart?” asks Debbie.

One of Picasso’s women in Picasso’s Women on February 5

Picasso’s Women, on February 5 at 8.30pm, looks at Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s life through the voices of his wives, mistresses and muses. The three monologues feature 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.

Nathaniel Hall in First Time: humorous but heart-breaking

After last summer’s Edinburgh Fringe debut, HIV+ theatre-maker and activist Nathaniel Hall is on tour, presenting a humorous but heart-breaking show about growing up with HIV in First Time on February 6 at 7.45pm.

The show is based on Nathaniel’s personal experience of living with HIV after contracting the virus from his first sexual encounter aged only 16. First Time accompanies Hall’s on-going activism to break down the stigma associated with the disease through talks, participatory projects, education and outreach.

York company Cosmic Collective Theatre in Heaven’s Gate

Inspired by true events, Heaven’s Gate, on February 7 at 7.45pm, is an intergalactic new show from Cosmic Collective Theatre that imagines the final hour of four members of a real-life religious UFO group.

The excitement is palpable as they prepare for their graduation into the Kingdom of Heaven but soon the cracks begin to appear. “Whatever you do, don’t say the C-word – ‘Cult’,” says writer, director and performer Joe Feeney, a York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre alumnus, along with fellow cast member Anna Soden.

Preacherman in One Foot In The Rave, the closing show of Visionari’s Studio Discoveries programme

Visionari’s final choice is One Foot In The Rave, on February 8 at 7.45pm. Written and performed by Alexander Rhodes, it follows a disillusioned Jehovah’s Witness as he breaks free from the cult and lands on the ecstasy-fuelled floors of 1990s’ clubland. Shunned by everyone he knows, he is not prepared for what lies ahead.

Looking forward to the season ahead, York Theatre Royal producer Thom Freeth says: “It’s been amazing working with Visionari over the past few months to select and bring together a really impressive line-up of unique Studio shows. The group have chosen shows that will undoubtedly appeal to regular theatregoers and new audiences alike. 

Cyberdog in One Foot In The Rave

“We’re pleased to be showing award-winning work as part of the week, alongside work by an exciting new York company, Cosmic Collective Theatre. Whether you’re out to sample the intensity of Nineties’ clubland, gain an insight into the life of Picasso or just enjoy a complimentary Croatian biscuit, we think you’ll have a fantastic experience in our intimate Studio theatre.”

Tickets for Studio Discoveries shows are on sale on 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the box office. The price is £10 per show or £8 each if booking for two or more shows.

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York Theatre Royal to co-produce world premiere of Alone In Berlin

Denis Otway, as Otto, Charlotte Emmerson, as Anna, and Joseph Marcell, as Inspector Escherich, in York Theatre Royal and Royal & Derngate Northampton’s Alone In Berlin. Picture: Geraint Lewis

REHEARSALS are under way for the York Theatre Royal and Royal & Derngate Northampton co-production of the world premiere of Alone In Berlin.

Charlotte Emmerson, Denis Conway and Joseph Marcell will lead an ensemble cast, directed by the Royal & Derngate artistic director, James Dacre, and rehearsed in Northampton, where the play will open next month before its York run from March 3 to 21.

Hans Fallada’s novel has been translated and adapted for the stage by Alistair Beaton. Furthermore, the premiere will feature illustrations 25 years in the making by graphic novelist Jason Lutes – from his book Berlin – who collaborates with designer Jonathan Fensom,video designerNina Dunn and lighting designer Charles Balfour. 

Cabaret singer Jessica Walker will perform original songs composed by Orlando Gough, complemented by composition and sound design by Donato Wharton.

Set in 1940, Alone In Berlin portrays life in wartime Berlin in a vividly theatrical study of how paranoia can warp a society gripped by the fear of the night-time knock on the door.

Based on true events, the storyline follows a quietly courageous couple who stand up to the brutal reality of the Nazi regime. Through the smallest of acts, they defy Hitler’s rule, facing the gravest of consequences. 

This timely story of the moral power of personal resistance tracks Otto and Anna as they negotiate the insidious effects of absolute power on every aspect of daily life. When they decide to make a stand in their unique way, the Gestapo launch a terrifying hunt for the perpetrators.

Otto and Anna find themselves players in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the forces of the state: a game that will eventually lead them down through ever-narrowing circles of totalitarian hell.

Described by Italian Jewish chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi as “the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis”, Alone In Berlin re-entered the bestseller list three years ago – almost unheard of for a 20th century literary classic – as its themes began to resonate across the world once more.

Although regularly adapted for stage productions across Europe, this York and Northampton co-production, presented in association with the Oxford Playhouse, will be the first time Fallada’s masterpiece has been seen on a British stage.

Dacre’s cast will be led by Denis Conway and Charlotte Emmerson as Otto and Anna Quangel and Joseph Marcell as Inspector Escherich. Conway played opposite Poldark leading man Aidan Turner in Michael Grandage’s The Lieutenant Of Inishmore and is known for his extensive work at Dublin’s Gate Theatre and on screen in Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes The Barley, John Crowley’sBrooklyn and Oliver Stone’s Alexander.

Emmerson’s many credits include title roles in Marianne Elliot’s Therese Raquin (National Theatre) and Laurie Sansom’s The Duchess Of Malfi (Royal & Derngate) and leads in Chekhov’s major plays in productions directed by Peter Stein, Lucy Bailey and Trevor Nunn.

Best known for playing Geoffrey Butler, the butler, in the 1990s’  television series The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, British actor and comedian Marcell was last seen at Royal & Derngate in King John, while his numerous credits for Shakespeare’s Globe include the title role in King Lear.

York Theatre Royal and Royal & Derngate Northampton co-produced Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge last year, directed by Theatre Royal associate director Juliet Forster.

Tickets for the York run of Alone In Berlin are on sale on 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the Theatre Royal box office.