Wanderful: Nina Wadia’s Fairy Sugarsnap with her arty joke of an artichoke wand in York Theatre Royal’s pantomime, Jack And The Beanstalk
NINA Wadia was confused. Growing up in India and Hong Kong, pantomime was a foreign country to her.
“When I came to the UK from Honk Kong to study classical theatre at the London Theatre School in Wandsworth, I was new to this country,” recalls the EastEnders and Good Gracious Me star.
“I went for an audition for my first ever professional job in Robin Hood at Theatre Royal Stratford East, but I thought pantomime was some form of mime! I auditioned like all the other actors, and when they said, ‘have you got a song?’, I blagged it and said ‘of course’. ‘Do you dance?’. ‘Yes, I tap,’ I said, but I was thinking, ‘why do I need to do this when it’s a mime show?’, as I just didn’t know the pantomime tradition.”
Song and dance? “What kind of mime is that,” she asked. Explanation forthcoming, she was cast as Friar Tuck, and now, more than 30 years later, she will be making her York Theatre Royal tonight (8/12/2023) as the poster face of Jack And The Beanstalk, playing Fairy Sugarsnap.
In the box seating: Nina Wadia at York Theatre Royal
She is forever grateful to Theatre Royal Stratford East, in particular Philip Hedley, artistic director from 1979 to 2004, and his associate director, Jeff Teare. “It’s the most incredible theatre that opens the door for ethnic actors,” says Nina, who will turn 55 during the panto run on December 18.
“It was very hard being an ethnic actor, and if you think of pantomime, I don’t think you’d go to a brown actor in those days. I loved that it was such an open theatre to look at actors regardless of their colour and think if you have potential, they will help develop that.
“Jeff saw something in me, the kind of thing that has made my career: the kind of energy I have, but also the willingness to learn, which I still have, whereas a lot of young actors seem overly confident now.
“I really want to express that to young people coming into the business, where they can stand out at drama school and think they know it all, by I always find that by the end of playing a role I know more than when I started.”
Nina Wadia: Mother, actress, comedian, producer, presenter and charity campaigner
Nina points to her role as Zainab Masood in the BBC’s London soap opera EastEnders from 2007 to February 2013. “I never watched EastEnders before being in it,” she admits. “I signed up for six months but ended up staying on and on, and I got to knowZainab over those six and a half years – and I really liked her.
“They hired me to bring some comedy to EastEnders, and I was the first actor to win an award for best comedy performance in EastEnders. What was really interesting was I was told they wanted me to create a character like Wendy Richards’ Pauline Fowler but funny, so I watched her, and she was so grumpy that I found her funny! Anyway, I found the way to make Zainab funny was to make her very blunt.”
Nina’s gift for her comedy had marked her out from her pantomime bow as Friar Tuck, the beginning of a seven-year involvement with Theatre Royal Stratford East. “The show was brilliant and the writer Patrick Prior was the real thing. Playing Friar Tuck, I was one of the four ‘merry men’, with a pillow at the front, a pillow at the back and a skull cap put on top of my very long hair. Very glamorous!” she says.
“I had the best actresses to work with straightaway, sharing the dressing room with all the ‘merry men’, all played by women.”
Fairy versus villain: Nina Wadia’s Fairy Sugarsnap with pantomime baddie James Mackenzie’s Luke Backinanger in Jack And The Beanstalk
She loved the pantomime humour. “I laughed so much, having grown up with British humour in Hong Kong: Blackadder, Morecambe & Wise and Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. On. On the American side, there was the stand-up of Joan Rivers, Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy, so I was drawn to the combination of crazy antics and really raw, rude comedy that I wasn’t supposed to watch but I loved, especially Eddie Murphy.”
Nina’s subsequent career has embraced everything, from radio drama company regular to soap opera , BBC Asian sketch comedy in Goodness Gracious Me to 2021 Strictly Come Dancing contestant, TV roles as Aunty Noor in Citizen Khan and Mrs Hussein in Still Open All Hours to video game voiceover artist and narrator for the animated series Tweedy And Fluff on Channel 5’s Milkshake. Charity campaigner too, honoured with an OBE.
Profiling herself on social media as Mother, Actress, Producer and Presenter, Nina loves to embrace every medium, her latest addition being her online satirical political character, the Conservative councillor and constituency candidate Annie Stone. “She’s a mixture of Suella Braverman and Priti Patel: vile but believable. She’s on TikTok, Instagram and X and she now has proper followers at #VoteAnnieStone!”
From tonight, Nina will be delivering rhymes, mirth and magic as Fairy Sugarsnap in Jack And The Beanstalk. “I was expecting a silly costume. I described it to my husband [Raimond Mirza] and said they’ve dressed me as an aubergine pretending to be an artichoke,” she says. “I’ve made her more kooky than usual, given her more depth, as much as you can give her depth!”
Nina Wadia waves a wand over Jack And The Beanstalk at York Theatre Royal from today (8/12/2023) until January 7 2024. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Who’s next as the death count rises in Lucy Bailey’s production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Manuel Harlan
AND then there were thrillers, music, spoken word and comedy gigs, a cricket legend show and smooth crooner tribute for Charles Hutchinson to recommend.
Thriller of the week: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Grand Opera House, York, November 22 to 25, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees
AFTER Pick Me Up Theatre’s September staging at Theatre@41, Monkgate, here comes Lucy Bailey’s “genuinely terrifying” touring production of Agatha Christie’s best-selling 1939 crime novel, starring, among others, Andrew Lancel as William Blore, David Yelland as Judge Wargrave and Sophie Walter as Vera Claythorne.
Ten strangers – eight guests and a butler and his housekeeper wife – are lured to a solitary mansion off the coast of Devon. When a storm cuts them off from the mainland, the true reason for their presence on Soldier Island becomes horribly clear. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Spanish sarcasm of the week: Ignacio Lopez, YO1 Live Lounge, York Barbican, November 18, 8pm
SPANISH export Ignacio Lopez, from Live At The Apollo, The Now Show and Stand-Up Sesh, scrutinises his immigrant upbringing and family tree in a show about clashing cultures and never fitting in.
Sharing his biggest failures with a globe-trotting story of music, comedy and admin cock-ups, exotic outsider comedian Ignacio skewers Britain and Spain with an armada of stand-up sarcasm, silliness and songs. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Simon Brodkin: Screwed Up revelations from prankster at Grand Opera House, York
Comedy times two at Grand Opera House, York: Simon Brodkin, Screwed Up, November 18, 8pm; Lucy Beaumont, The Trouble & Strife, November 19, 8pm
THE most viewed British comedian of all time on TikTok, notorious prankster and Lee Nelson creator Simon Brodkin rips into celebrity culture, social media, the police, Putin, Prince Andrew and Jesus in his new stand-up show, Screwed Up. Nothing is off limits, from his mental health to his five arrests and his family.
An award-winning stand-up (and actress) before she met Leeds comedian and now husband Jon Richardson, Hull-born Lucy Beaumont lets slip on her rollercoaster world through a surrealist lens. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Not just cricket: Henry Blofeld discusses “flannelled fools” and much besides at York Theatre Royal
Chat show of the week: An Audience With Henry Blofeld, York Theatre Royal, November 20, 7.30pm
TEST Match Special alumnus Henry Blofeld, 84, will discuss rather more than the art of cricket commentary. “If you think you’re going to learn how to play a forward defensive, you’ll be sadly disappointed,” he forewarns.
Instead, expect his colourful life story in a tongue-in-cheek show, full of after-dinner anecdotes and meandering digressions where Blowers pokes fun at himself and his TMS gaffes and his subjects veer from intergalactic travel to horticulture to mountaineering. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
The Trials Of Cato: Twisting folk into new shapes at Pocklington Arts Centre
Folk gig of the week: The Trials Of Cato, Pocklington Arts Centre, Thursday, 8pm
2019 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winners The Trials Of Cato pay homage to the folk tradition while twisting old bones into something febrile and modern, combining stomping tunes and captivating stories.
Formed in Beirut, Lebanon, the Welsh/English band have been based in Britain since 2016, releasing the albums Hide And Hair in 2018 and Gog Magog, named after the mythical giant of Arthurian legend and a Cambridgeshire hilltop, last year. Mandolin player and vocalist Polly Bolton has joined the trio after leaving The Magpies. Support act will be Annie Dressner, once of New York City, now of Cambridgeshire. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk
Jess Gardham: On Navigators Art & Performance’s Basement Sessions bill at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York
Underground movement of the week: Navigators Art & Performance, The Basement Sessions, The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York, November 25, doors, 7pm
YORK creative hub Navigators Art & Performance launches the Basement Sessions series of Music, Spoken Word and Comedy – Live, Local and Loud! with a bill of performers from the York area and “a few surprises up the sleeve”.
In the line-up are punk/post-punk/alt. rock/indie band What Fresh Hell, playing their farewell gig; pop, soul and acoustic singer-songwriter Jess Gardham; comedian John Pease; performance artist Carrieanne Vivianette, exploring the legacies of radical women through voice, movement and improvisation, and jazz-turned-punk Battle of the Bands finalists Attacker TV. Box office: bit.ly/nav-base-1 or on the door.
Stepping out of the shadow: Atila Huyesin celebrates the music of Nat King Cole at the NCEM, York
Tribute show of the week: Atila Huseyin in King For A Day: The Nat King Cole Story, National Centre for Early Music, York, November 26, 7pm
ATILA Huseyin combines live music, narration and projected archive images and footage in his concert celebration of one the 20th century’s greatest vocalists and entertainers, Nat King Cole. of the Twentieth Century: Nat King Cole.
Accompanied by world-class musicians, Huseyin performs such favourites as Nature Boy, Unforgettable and When I Fall in Love alongside stylish reworkings of his lesser-known gems. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Chris McCausland: Warming up at Selby Town Hall for a year of travels on his 2024 Yonks! tour
Looking ahead: Chris McCausland, Yonks!, Grand Opera House, York, November 10 2024
LIVERPUDLIAN comedian Chris McCausland will follow up his 140-date Speaky Blinder tour with 104 shows on his Yonks! travels in January to May and September to December 2024. Why Yonks? “I’ve been called an ‘overnight success’, even though I’ve been doing this for yonks,” he reasons after more than two decades on the stand-up circuit.
This year, McCausland, 46, has hosted his own travel series, Wonders Of The World I Can’t See, on Channel 4. His Work In Progress show at Selby Town Hall on Wednesday (8pm) has sold out. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
In Focus: Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company Autumn Theatre Festival, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, November 21 to 25
Helen ‘Bells’ Spencer: Leading the musical theatre workshop for age 16 upwards at Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company Autumn Theatre Festival
THE Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company will raise funds for the JoRo with a participatory four-day theatre festival that kicks off with Pirates Of Penzance: Come & Sing on Tuesday at 7pm and closes with a concert performance of the much loved Gilbert & Sullivan opera on Saturday at 3.30pm. This is an opportunity to throw yourself into G&S over a week of fulfilling fun.
JRTC will hold an open rehearsal for next February’s production of Kander & Ebb’s musical murder mystery Curtains on Wednesday at 7pm: a chance to sit in the stalls and peek at how a show is put together, hopefully with no spoiler of whodunit!
Musical director and actor James Robert Ball will lead the Youth Musical Theatre Workshop for seven to 15-year-olds on Thursday at 7pm, when he will look at such theatre skills as vocal technique and acting through song while working on a number that attendees will have the option of performing during the interval of the Saturday Night Musical Theatre Quiz.
JRTC principal actress Helen ‘Bells’ Spencer will oversee Friday’s 7pm Musical Theatre Workshop for age 16 plus, featuring audition skills and top tips, acting through song and vocal techniques. Again, participants can sing in the interval at Saturday’s quiz.
A Tech Demo & Backstage Tour will be held at 2pm on Saturday, when participants can venture behind the scenes and meet the tech team for demonstrations of light and sound equipment.
The festival will conclude with Saturday’s aforementioned quiz night: a chance to play for prizes and bragging rights as teams of up to four are challenged to show their musical theatre knowledge.
Tickets cost £5 per event, £12 for three or £16 for full festival access at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Tracy-Ann Oberman’s East End pawnbroker and single mother Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice 1936, set in Cable Street, London, with Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts on the march
NOTHING will stop The Merchant Of Venice being a problem play, and that’s the problem. Especially against the backdrop of the hell of the Gaza Strip. Suella Braverman’s P45. The English Defence League on the attack. Peaceful Armistice Day protests in London and beyond, demanding a ceasefire, or was that antisemitism?
Amid this tempest, Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman and director Brigid Larmour’s new adaptation of Shakespeare’s vituperative play arrives in York: a city with the darkest stain of history from the Jewish massacre at the site of Clifford’s Tower on March 16 1190, but with a new chapter opened after this autumn’s arrival of Rabbi Dr Elisheva Salamo as the spiritual leader of the York Liberal Jewish Community.
Is The Merchant Of Venice antisemitic, cursed by Shakespeare’s depiction of moneylender Shylock as English literature’s most archetypal Jewish character? “I think its legacy is antisemitic. So yes, I suppose it is an antisemitic play,” Oberman told the Guardian during rehearsals for this Watford Palace Theatre production in February.
Henry Goodman, who won an Olivier Award for his Shylock in Trevor Nunn’s 1999 National Theatre production, said in the same piece: “I think it depicts antisemitism, but is not antisemitic because it humanises.”
Abigail Graham, Jewish director of The Globe’s “radical” 2022 production, defined the play thus: “It’s not a play about antisemitism,” the Guardian quoted her. “It’s about the intersection between white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, antisemitism and racism”.
Why this preamble? You could make a case for each assessment, but ultimately the argument over whether The Merchant Of Venice is antisemitic will never be decided by any one production.
Ultimately, Graham has it right in referring to the intersection, one that now defines British or, more to the point, English discomfort at our colonial past and its continuing impact.
Let’s call The Merchant Of Venice an “uncomfortable” play, one where Shakespeare has Portia destroy Shylock in court, for the moneylender to slink away never to be heard again, only for a jocund ending to follow with fun and games over wedding rings as if we had strayed into one of his summer-lit comedies.
Unlike Shylock, Oberman and Larmour are not content to let it end there, instead adding a coda to round off the 1936 setting amid the rising tide of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascist Blackshirts, on the march through Cable Street in London’s East End on October 4 that year.
All Larmour’s cast strip off glad rags and fascist appareil to stand with Oberman’s Shylock, behind her banner They Shall Not Pass “We are stronger, prouder and safer together,” is her message, as she urges all the audience to its feet. (Well, that’s one way to ensure a standing ovation as sems to be becoming increasingly obligatory at theatre shows.)
Not everyone obliged, perhaps uneasy that the problems highlighted by this problematic play are more complicated, more nuanced, than that.
Shakespeare’s play has “always fascinated and repulsed” Oberman. “I don’t like it. I’ve never liked it,” she said. Does anyone “like it”, however? It is not Hamlet, nor King Lear, more questions than answers, but she wanted to “reclaim Shylock”, not to play Shylock for sympathy, nor shy away from the villainy, but to show why Shylock “becomes the monster that they make her” in the face of Jewish persecution.
Traditionally a male role, Oberman has taken inspiration from her great-grandmother’s hardy, dignified East London generation to depict Shylock as a Cable Street pawnbroker and single mother with an errant daughter (Grainne Dromgoole’s Jessica), played as righteous, resolute, rigorous and wronged.
This adds gender and misogyny to the degradation of the spat-upon Shylock at the hands of Raymond Coulthard’s sneering Antonio, dressed all in Mosley black, as he mocks her demand for her pound of flesh on failing to meet the terms of his bond.
Liz Cooke’s design depicts Shylock’s Cable Street home in drab, brutalist grey brick. By contrast, Portia’s film-noir high society elegance is denoted by a marble floor, a white curtain and silk dresses; Antonio’s business world by a chandelier.
Greta Zabulyte’s matching black and white video design begins with Mosley mid-speech, to be followed by fascist posters, newspaper headlines and period footage, all leading up to the Battle of Cable Street. Sarah Weltman’s sound design of smashed windows and loud, threatening voices and Erran Baron Cohen’s piano compositions shadow what is unfolding with haunting inevitability. The Star of David is highlighted on the wall, but Jew Dog is scrawled on Shylock’s door.
As mentioned earlier, one problem in The Merchant Of Venice is the contrasting tones: the chortling comedy of Portia’s hapless suitors seeking to win her hand, topped off by Gavin Fowler’s outwardly charming Bossanio, as if in a Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde comedy of manners, but the visceral, shocking hatred of Shylock, as exemplified by the thuggish excesses of Xavier Starr’s Gratiano. You can but choke on the comedy.
The transition of York-born Hannah Morrish’s Portia – my other character is a Portia too – typifies this dichotomy. Aloof but irresistibly attractive society belle, all-hours socialite, scheming aristocrat, as if she were the seventh Mitford sister, but then she becomes, as Oberman has indelicately put it, an effing bitch in her chilling courtroom humbling of Shylock.
This is a high-quality production, from design to vocal delivery, if fast-moving rather than moving, with well edited dialogue and a modernity to its theatricality and tone.
Does Obeman “reclaim Shylock” in what she calls her legacy heritage project? The play, the central character, Shakespeare’s motives, will still divide opinion, and new horrors will always inform them, but what Oberman and Larmour highlight is how unlikeable everyone is in The Merchant Of Venice. Until that unifying coda, but when will such a coda head over the horizon? Not any time soon.
Watford Palace Theatre in The Merchant Of Venice 1936, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly plus Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Cable Street pawnbroker and single mother Shylock in the 1936 East End with fascism on the rise. Picture: Mark Senior
POLITICAL dramas, a heap of big comedy names, a newly revived Eighties’ band and a belated American debut will keep Charles Hutchinson out and about.
Controversial play of the week: The Merchant Of Venice 1936, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm, plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
WATFORD Palace Theatre’s ground-breaking touring production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice has been adapted and directed by Brigid Larmour from an original idea by co-creator and actress Tracy-Ann Oberman.
As the tide of fascism swells in 1936, Oberman’s Shylock is a strong-willed single mother who runs a pawnbroking business from her house in Cable Street, where Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts will soon march. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Ross Noble: Geordie surrealist in his natural habitat in Jibber Jabber Jamboree at Grand Opera House, York
Comedy at the treble at Grand Opera House, York: Dave Gorman, Monday, 7.30pm; Ross Noble, Wednesday, 8pm; Paul Smith, 7.30pm
DAVE Gorman’s Powerpoint To The People show aims to demonstrate that a powerpoint presentation need not involve a man in a grey suit standing behind a lectern and saying “next slide please”. Far more important things demand analysis, he urges.
Geordie surrealist Ross Noble returns to York on his 21st tour, Jibber Jabber Jamboree, for another journey into inspired, improvised nonsensical comedy with detours galore. Paul Smith’s Joker gig, full of audience interaction and everyday true stories, has sold out. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Fame Hasn’t Changed Me, by Susan Bower, from Kentmere House Gallery’s winter exhibition
Exhibition launch of the week: Not Black Friday But Colour Friday!, Kentmere House Gallery, Scarcroft Hill, York, until December 22
ORIGINAL art by more than 70 artists features in the Christmas exhibition at Kentmere House Gallery. “Among them is Jonathan Hooper, a Leeds painter deservedly becoming recognised, winning awards and now showing in London and at the Millenium Gallery in Sheffield,” says gallery owner and curator Ann Petherick.
“Then there’s Susan Bower, a Marmite painter – most love her, a few don’t! Look out for Andrew Morris’s delightful view of Knaresborough’s marketplace. We have new work arriving all the time.” Open any day, 11am to 5pm; ring 01904 656507 or 07801 810825 or take pot luck.
Kirkgate, Leeds, by Jonathan Hooper, from Kentmere House Gallery’s winter show
Tribute show of the week: The Chicago Blues Brothers, Cruisin’ For A Bluesin’ Tour, Grand Opera House, York, November 12, 7.30pm
JOIN Jake and Elwood, The Sweet Soul Sisters and the amazing CBB Band for a hand-clapping, foot-stomping, hard-hitting night of soul, rhythm & blues, country and Motown. Expect exuberant spirit, irresistible energy and even a few surprises. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Raqhael Harte as Sophie Goodman, Mick Liversidge as Phil Goodman and Ian Giles as Ratko Ilich in Lumar Productions’ premiere of Sea Stones. Picture: Chris Mackins
Premiere of the week: Lumar Productions in Sea Stones, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
AFTER eight novels and a regular column in The York Press, Tim Murgatroyd has written his debut play, an emotional, suspenseful night of the soul when four people are brought together in a lonely house by the sea.
Two fathers. Two daughters. Each confronted with the consequences of the past as a high tide is turning and tests to their relationships are escalating. Tests that might cost them not only their dearest hopes and loves, but their very lives. “The truth can set you free. Or drown you,” says Murgatroyd. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Phil Grainger, left, and Alexander Flanagan Wright: Performing Orpheus at Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb
Double act of the week:Wright & Grainger in Orpheus, Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb, York, Wednesday, 7pm to 9pm
ALEXANDER Flanagan Wright and Phil Grainger’s Greek myth adaptation in spoken word and song heads to Rise after Adelaide Fringe award-winning success in Australia and at the Edinburgh Fringe, as well as back home at Stillington Mill.
Dave is turning 30. Eurydice is a tree nymph. Bruce Springsteen is on the karaoke. Cue a tale of dive bars, side streets, ancient gods and how far you would go for love. Box office: bluebirdbakery.co.uk/rise.
Long time coming: Ben Folds will stride into the Grand Opera House for his overdue York debut on Thusday
Gig of the week: Ben Folds, What Matters Most Tour, Grand Opera House, York, Thursday,7.30pm
AT 57, North Carolina pianist, songwriter, author and podcast host Ben Folds plays his debut York show in support of What Matters Most, his first studio album since 2015.
At the only Yorkshire gig of his nine-date British and Irish tour, Folds will be combining his new material with songs from his 35-year career. Guitarist and singer Lau Noah, from Catalonia via New York, is the support act. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Snake Davis: Sax to the max at Pocklington Arts Centre
Jazz gig of the week: Snake Davis & Friends, Pocklington Arts Centre, Thursday, 8pm
JAZZ At PAC presents Snake Davis, saxophonist to the stars, from Paul McCartney, James Brown, Tina Turner and Eurythmics to Take That, Amy Winehouse, M-People and Lisa Stansfield.
First making his mark in York band Zoot & The Roots, Davis plays not only the saxophone family, but flutes, whistles and an ancient Japanese wind instrument, the Shakuhachi, too. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Haircut 100: Wearing their favourite shirts at York Barbican on Friday
Fantastic day to see: Haircut 100, York Barbican, Friday, 8pm
NICK Heyward’s short-lived Brit-funk band Haircut 100 are back together after more than 40 years, following up May’s Pelican West 40th anniversary shows in London and Oxford with the 15-date Haircut 100% Live tour that ends in York, their only Yorkshire location.
“We are coming back with a tour to beat all tours this autumn,” says Beckenham-born Heyward, now 62. “All the hits that you love [Favourite Shirts (Boys And Girls), Love Plus One, Fantastic Day et al] and new tracks that we are bursting to share with you.” The support act will be Brighton band of brothers Barbara. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The tour poster for Only Fools And Horses The Musical, bound for York next year
Lovely jubbly look-ahead: Only Fools And Horses The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, November 5 to 9 2024
DIRECT from a four-year sold-out West End run, Only Fools And Horses The Musical is heading to York in Paul Whitehouse and Jim Sullivan’s show, based on John Sullivan’s record-breaking 1980s’ BBC comedy.
Directed by Caroline Jay Ranger, it features a script and original score by John’s son and Whitehouse, bringing Peckham rogues Del Boy, Rodney, Grandad, Cassandra, Raquel, Boycie, Marlene, Trigger, Denzil, Mickey Pearce, Mike the Barman and the Driscoll Brothers to the stage with wide-boy humour and 20 songs. Bonnet de douche! Box office: atgtickets.co.uk.
Sarah Millican: Fully booked run at York Barbican
Recommended but sold out already
THREE nights, three sell-outs for South Shields humorist Sarah Millican at York Barbican from November 14 to 16 on her Late Bloomer tour, where she discusses Sarah then and now, dinners and lady gardens at 8pm nightly. Come along, laugh at her, with her, beside her, reads the invitation.
Zeus: Once the ancient Greek god of the sky, lightning, thunder, law and order; now a champion dog with a lead role in York Theatre Royal’s pantomime Jack And The Beanstalk
In Focus: Best dog in show: Zeus the collie collars role in Jack And The Beanstalk
YOUNG Kennel Club Crufts trophy winner Zeus has won a lead role in this winter’s pantomime at York Theatre Royal.
The six-year-old Border Collie, from York, will make his stage debut alongside EastEnders star Nina Wadia, returnee panto dame Robin Simpson and CBBC’s Raven star James Mackenzie in Jack And The Beanstalk from December 8 to January 7 2024.
A theatre spokesperson says: “Zeus’s amazing audition gave us all paws for thought. He’s a natural stage performer whose dogged determination to win the role was a real tail-wagging moment.”
Already Zeus is a winner on the canine stage with three Young Kennel Club Crufts trophies to his credit. Those closest to him say he is very agile and loves to play but has an “off switch”and likes to wind down too.
Pantomime director Juliet Forster was delighted to hear that Zeus is “very eager to please, playful and up for learning” as she will be training him for his acting debut.
Zeus loves cream cheese, squeezy cheese too, and sometimes has carrots for breakfast. He eats at the table and even has his own chair. His favourite toys are balls and he has a collection of soft toys.
Zeus enjoys rounding up horses but not, as you might expect from a Border Collie, rounding up sheep. He is, however, best friends with two sheep, Maisie Midnight Fluffington and Wallace.
Pull the udder one: Anna Soden goes solo as Dave the Cow in Jack And The Beanstalk
He is yet to meet cows but will have his first close encounter with the bovine world in the rehearsal room as one of his co-stars will be Dave the Cow.
Dave is a rare breed of pantomime cow. “You’d almost think Dave is human,” says York actor and musician Anna Soden, who will inhabit the role on her own, rather than the usual two people squeezed uncomfortably into a cow costume.
Writer Paul Hendy, director of York Theatre Royal’s producing partner Evolution Productions, says: “In 19 years of writing and producing pantomimes, we’ve never had a human cow before. We wanted to do something different and director Juliet Forster was very open to that. It makes more opportunities in the show for the cow. It’s a much bigger part than usual. Dave is very much one of the gang.
“Our company is called Evolution for a reason: we are constantly evolving. One of the reasons pantomime has survived for 150 years or more is that it changes. There has to be a formula but within that you have to be original.”
Evolution is producing three Jack And The Beanstalk pantomimes around the country this winter. York has Dave; the shows at The Grove, Dunstable (starring EastEnders’ Steve McFadden, by the way), and Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury, will have a more traditional cow.
Meanwhile, the Theatre Royal’s legendary pantomime cow Patrica is heading for pastures new this Christmas with a role in Bridlington Spa Theatre’s pantomime, Beauty And The Beast.
Patricia’s career has taken in television appearances in The Crystal Maze with pantomime stalwart Christopher Biggins and Bargain Hunt, as well as starring in her own series of moo-vies on You Tube.
York Theatre Royal presents Jack And The Beanstalk, December 8 to January 7 2024. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice 1936, on tour at York Theatre Royal . Picture: Mark Senior
EASTENDERS, Doctor Who and Friday Night Dinner star Tracy-Ann Oberman will play Shylock in a ground-breaking version of Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice on tour at York Theatre Royal from November 14 to 18.
Developed in association with HOME Manchester and with support from the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Merchant Of Venice 1936 has been adapted and directed by Brigid Larmour from an idea by co-creator Oberman.
Their thought-provoking and timely reimagining relocates the action to an electrifying new setting: London in 1936.
“It has a been a lifelong dream of mine to bring this play to the stage in a new way, reimagining Shylock as one of the tough, no-nonsense Jewish matriarchs I grew up around in Brent,” says London-born actress, playwright and narrator Oberman, 57, as she “takes this important, sharp, sexy and heartfelt production around the country”.
“I’m delighted this project is finally happening and look forward to sparking debate and enlightening people about a pivotal but largely forgotten part of British history – just how close the establishment were to Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists.”
In Watford Palace Theatre’s touring production, the capital city is on the brink of political unrest, fascism is sweeping across Europe and Mosley’s fascists are threatening a paramilitary march through the Jewish East End. Strong-willed single mother Shylock, Shakespeare’s anti-hero, runs a pawnbroking business from her house in Cable Street, where Mosley will march.
The poster for Watford Palace Theatre’s touring production of The Merchant Of Venice, starring Tracy-Ann Oberman as Shylock
When charismatic, anti-Semitic aristocrat Antonio comes to her for a loan, a high-stakes deal is struck. Will Shylock take her revenge? Who will pay the ultimate price?
“The women in my family were as tough as nails,” says Tracy-Ann, recalling her great-grandmother and aunts, women with nicknames such as Machine-Gun Molly and Sarah Portugal, who arrived in London from anti-Semitic eastern Europe at the turn of the last century to build a life and make a living against the odds.
Oberman’s family history helped her to unlock Shakespeare’s most controversial play. Her relatives survived the Battle of Cable Street in London’s East End in 1936, when the Jewish community was targeted by Mosley’s Blackshirts, only to be confounded when the non-Jewish community stood by their Jewish neighbours.
In The Merchant Of Venice 1936, Oswald Mosley inspires Antonio (Raymond Coulthard), the sneering merchant who takes a loan from Shylock, while heiress Portia (Hannah Morrish) becomes “a beautiful glacial Mitford type – awful”, whose “quality of mercy” courtroom speech bears the mark of hypocrisy, not humanity.
Oberman’s single mother Shylock is fiercely committed, both to her independence and to her daughter. “I have one daughter,” she says. “It’s an intense relationship!”
The Merchant Of Venice had always fascinated and repulsed her, and this production duly sat in her head for years as she researched, planned and waited for lockdowns to pass.
Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Shylock: “A woman backed into a corner by all these men, with the palpable hatred and misogyny”. Picture: Mark Senior
Now that her female Shylock has come face to face with audiences at last, she says: “The thing that surprised me most was the court case. Just how powerful it was to see this woman backed into a corner by all these men, with the palpable hatred and misogyny. It was electric. You could cut the atmosphere in the auditorium with a knife. That was a revelation.”
Playing Shylock as a woman does not soften the character, emphasises Oberman. “I didn’t want to make her a victim or change her role in the story,” she says, before adding: “Maybe I underestimated the impact of a female Shylock. There are a couple of very shocking moments that really upset audiences.
“In an early scene, Antonio comes to borrow money, and Shylock describes him spitting on her and kicking her like a dog. When that behaviour is directed at a woman, it heightens the anti-Semitism.
“I think people also see a woman with her rage and anger. She loses her daughter, her money – she loses everything. And when you tell somebody that they’re a monster for long enough, they become that monster.”
The play speaks as much to the present as of the past. “At a time when we are looking at Britain’s involvement in colonialism and the slave trade, I think we also have to look at Britain’s flirtation with fascism,” says Tracy-Ann.
“Oswald Mosley and King Edward VIII, both great friends of Hitler, came close to power – we dodged a bullet. The great message of the play is about the pulling together of all communities. We’re better together, we’re stronger together, especially at times of huge financial and political insecurity. The past shows us what happens when we look inwards: we become very nationalistic and try to pit minorities against each other. We have to be vigilant.”
“We’re better together, we’re stronger together, especially at times of huge financial and political insecurity,” says Tracy-Ann Oberman as she tours the country in The Merchant Of Venice 1936. Picture: Mark Senior
Oberman dreams of the Battle of Cable Street being taught as part of the British civil rights movement. “Mosley had been sending his Blackshirts down into Cable Street, smashing doors, breaking windows, attacking synagogues and people on the streets, putting up the most horrific leaflets straight out of Hitler’s playbook,” she says,
“But my great grandmother always reminded me that their neighbours – their Irish neighbours, the Afro-Caribbean community, the dockers, the working classes – all stood together. That was a beautiful moment.”
Oberman acknowledges how personal this project is to her but audience reactions testify to common ground. “What has been very moving is how many people want to stay and talk at the end,” she says.
“A lot of people talk about their own family’s immigrant experience. Young political people want to talk about the Battle of Cable Street, and people who’d never seen a Shakespeare play about why they’d found it so accessible.
“One man came in with about 20 fascist newspapers from the 1930s that he’d found in his father’s loft, which we’ve used as part of our graphics. There were big conversations: is the play anti-Semitic? Was Shakespeare? Lots of really interesting conversations.”
One factor behind Oberman’s wish to stage The Merchant of Venice 1936 was teachers telling her of their anxiety over discussing this contentious play in their classrooms. This has led to the touring production being accompanied by educational work, mounted in tandem with the activist group Stand Up To Racism.
“At a time when we are looking at Britain’s involvement in colonialism and the slave trade, we also have to look at Britain’s flirtation with fascim,” says Tracy-Ann Oberman
The education team has not only visited schools and prepared a pack to support teachers, but “we’ve also created an online world which people can look at before or after seeing the play,” says Tracy-Ann. “It’s an incredible resource talking about the play, the 1930s, the history of anti-Semitism and racism, Oswald Mosley, everything you could want.”
After a diverse career on stage, taking in the RSC and National Theatre, iconic soap status as Dirty Den’s nemesis, Chrissie Watts, in EastEnders and TV comedy roles as Auntie Val in Friday Night Dinner and Mrs Purchase in Toast Of London, Oberman stands centre stage as the distaff Shylock.
“I can honestly say that when I went into this, it was never with an ego about playing Shylock, it was about wanting to tell the story. I just put my soul into it,” she says. “Every single bit of it has been a complete joy. It’s been more than a piece of theatre – for me, it’s been a mission. And it’s lived up to all my expectations.”
Audience tears and standing ovations have greeted The Merchant Of Venice 1936. “While they might not have liked my Shylock, they certainly understood why she wants that ‘pound of flesh’,” says Tracy-Ann.
“She stands in the courtroom with her handbag, with everything stacked against her. A lot of people know that feeling, believing the law is on their side, but discovering it’s only on the side of people that have power.”
The Merchant Of Venice 1936, York Theatre Royal, November 14 to 18; 7.30pm; 2pm, Thursday, 2.30pm,Saturday.Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Tous Love Me, directed by Victor Claramunt, showing at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2023
FIVE days of short films lead off a week long on Latin pop and school rock musicals, plus science and sticks, dance moves and festive designs, as Charles Hutchinson reports.
Festival of the week: Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York city centre, November 8 to 12
THE 13th edition of York’s Aesthetica Short Film Festival combines 300 films and 15 venues in a five-day showcase of worldwide independent film that champions emerging creative talent.
Guest programmes explore the climate crisis, Black British cinema and LGBTQ+ experiences. Look out too for the Aesthetica Games Lab, in celebration of video game culture, plus multiple masterclasses, networking sessions, kids’ workshops, AI workshops and the VR Lab’s selection of 360 (degree) and immersive film experiences. York residents can save 50 per cent each day with the York Days Discount. Full programme and tickets: asff.co.uk.
Shower After Swimming, linocut by Anita Klein, from the Comfort And Joy exhibition at Pyramid Gallery, York
Exhibition launch of the week: Comfort And Joy, Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, November 4, 11am to 3pm, until mid-January 2024
PYRAMID Gallery’s Christmas show, Comfort And Joy, combines paintings, prints, ceramics, sculpture and glass. Look out for needlepoint by Dinny Pocock, jewellery by Joy McMillan and sculpture by Paul Smith, Lynn Muir, Helen Martino, Peter Hayes, Eva Mileusnic, Gwen Vaughan, Fidelma Massey and Louise Connell, among others.
On show too will be paintings and original prints by Sarah Williams, Anita Klein, Lesley Birch, Eliza Southwood, Emma Whitelock, Trevor Price, Mychael Barratt and Hilke Macintyre, porcelain origami by Kate Buckley, plus glass by Keith Cummings, E&M Glass, Hannah Gibson, Tracey Knowles, Will Shakspeare, Morag Reekie, Jo Kenny and more besides. Attending today’s launch will be Smith, Birch, McMillan, Whitelock and Knowles.
York illustrator Elliot Harrison
Inspired event: York Artists & Designer Makers’ Annual Christmas Show, York Cemetery Chapel, Cemetery Road, York, November 4 and 5, 10am to 5pm
YORK artists and designers return to York Cemetery Chapel this weekend for their Inspired festive showcase. Adrienne French will be exhibiting paintings; Jo Bagshaw and Richard Whitelegg, jewellery; Elliot Harrison, illustrations; Catherine Boyne-Whitelegg, pottery; John Watts and Wilf Williams, furniture; Petra Bradley, textiles; Sally Clarke, prints, and Simon Palmour, photography.
Safia Bartley’s Filomina in Tutti Frutti and One Tenth Human’s The Lightbulb Princess at York Theatre Royal
Science show of the week: Tutti Frutti and One Tenth Human in The Lightbulb Princess, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, November 5, 2pm
LEEDS company Tutti Frutti Productions and Lancaster’s One Tenth Human team up for a magical, fun-filled 50-minute extravaganza for children aged four and upwards that explores the science behind electricity.
Kai’s sister Ray is determined that Mum will enjoy a perfect Christmas. It may be way too early, but already she has Kai and Ali hunting everywhere for decorations. When they find tree-top sparkly fairy Filomina, an unexpected adventure begins, one where they will need your help in a show full of electrifying storytelling and original songs. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Anton Du Beke: Chat and cha cha cha at York Theatre Royal
Song and dance of the week: An Evening With Anton Du Beke And Friends, York Theatre Royal, November 6, 7.30pm
STRICTLY Come Dancing legend and judge Anton Du Beke sashays into York with his live band, guest singer Lance Ellington and dancers for a fab-u-lous evening of song, dance and laughter. The ballroom king will be combining songs and dances that have inspired him with behind-the-scenes stories from his many years on Strictly. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
La Bamba! leaps into the air at Grand Opera House, York, from Tuesday. Picture: Pamela Raith
New musical of the week: La Bamba!, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm; Wednesday and Saturday, 2.30pm
NOT to be confused with the 1987 film of the same name or Richie Valens’ teenage hit from 1958, La Bamba! is a new musical fiesta of passion, pride and Latin pop anthems starring Strictly Come Dancing champion Pasha Kovalev, The Wanted’s Siva Kaneswaran and rising star Inês Fernandez, choreographed by Strictly’s Graziano Di Prima.
Follow young Los Angeles dreamer Sofia as she takes her first steps toward stardom and witnesses the power of music to unite communities. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Stick Man: Freckle Productions head to York Theatre Royal with Julia Donaldson’s story
Children’s show of the week: Freckle Productions in Stick Man, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday, 4.30pm; Wednesday, 10.30am, 1.30pm and 4.30pm
WHAT begins as a morning jog becomes a misadventure for Stick Man: a dog wants to play Fetch, a swan builds a nest with him, and he even ends up atop a fire. How will Stick Man return to the family tree in time for Christmas?
Adapting Julia Donaldson’s book, Freckle Productions combine puppetry, songs, live music and funky moves in the 55-minute performance. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Emma Dickinson and Jonny Holbek rehearsing with the York Light Youth ensemble for the York amateur premiere of School Of Rock
Are you ready to rock?York Light Youth in School Of Rock, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee
YORK Light Youth’s tenth anniversary show is the York premiere of the technically and musically challenging musical School Of Rock, combining young performers aged ten to 17 and York Light Opera Company adults.
Based on the 2003 film, the storyline follows Jonny Holbek’s Dewey Finn, a failed wannabe rock star, who vows to turn his clueless prep school students into a rock band to enter Battle of the Bands. Along the way, Dewey finds romance, self-worth, a proper job, while initiating the children and their parents in the beauty of rock. Box office: josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Recommended but fully booked
QUEEN of British soul Beverley Knight’s York Barbican concert on Thursday has sold out, as has indie pop trio Scouting For Girls’ gig there the next night.
In Focus:Gigs of the week: Teenage Fanclub on tour in Leeds and Sheffield with new album Nothing Lasts Forever in tow
Teenage Fanclub: Heading for Leeds and Sheffield on tour. Picture: Donald Milne
GLASGOW indie legends Teenage Fanclub follow up September’s release of 11th full-length studio album Nothing Lasts Forever with a 12-date November tour, taking in Yorkshire gigs in Leeds on Wednesday (sold out) and Sheffield on November 12
On songs looking for positives while faced with the grim realities of the 21st century, songwriters and guitarists Raymond McGinley and Norman Blake are joined by Francis Macdonald on drums, Dave McGowan on bass and Euros Childs on keyboards.
Light is a recurring theme, both as a metaphor for hope and as an ultimate destination further down the road. That said, although McGinley and Blake found themselves covering similar ground, it was pure coincidence.
McGinley says:“We never talk about what we’re going to do before we start making a record. We don’t plan much other than the nuts and bolts of where we’re going to record and when.
“That thing about light was completely accidental; we didn’t realise that until we’d finished half the songs. The record feels reflective, and I think the more we do this thing, the more we become comfortable with going to that place of melancholy, feeling and expressing those feelings.”
Blake reflects: “These songs are definitely personal. You’re getting older, you’re going into the cupboard getting the black suit out more often. Thoughts of mortality and the idea of the light must have been playing on our minds a lot.
“The songs on the last record were influenced by the break-up of my marriage. It was cathartic to write those songs. These new songs are reflective of how I’m feeling now, coming out of that period.
“They’re fairly optimistic, there’s an acceptance of a situation and all of the experience that comes with that acceptance. When we write, it’s a reflection of our lives, which are pretty ordinary.
“We’re not extraordinary people, and normal people get older. There’s a lot to write about in the mundane. I love reading Raymond Carver. Very often there’s not a lot that happens in those stories, but they speak to lived experience.”
While the vocals and finishing touches on Nothing Lasts Forever were added at McGinley’s place in Glasgow, the music was recorded in an intense ten-day period in the bucolic Welsh countryside at Rockfield Studios, near Monmouth, in late August.
This environment led to a record full of soft breezes, wide skies, beauty and space. “We like to get something out of where we go, and you can definitely hear a stamp of Rockfield on the record,” says McGinley.
“We recorded our album Howdy there in the late ’90s. Prior to that, I’d been a bit reluctant to go as everyone seemed to record there, especially if you were signed to Creation, but I thought I’d go and have a look at the place. “
McGinley continues: “When I went down there, I loved the fact that there’s no memorabilia about anyone who’s ever been in the studio. The only visual musical reference is a picture of [pioneering space age record producer} Joe Meek on their office wall.
Teenage Fanclub’s artwork for their 11th studio album, Nothing Lasts Forever
“Anyway, over 20 years after our first visit, we decided to go back. When you’re there, it feels like your place. We’re really rubbish at trying to find words to describe how our music sounds, but maybe because we recorded in Rockfield in late summer, there’s something pastoral about the record.”
Blake, McGinley, Macdonald, McGowan and Childs arrived at the residential studio without a fixed plan. Their confidence and ease with working together meant the record came together quickly.
McGinley says: “When we got offered ten days in Rockfield, we weren’t ready in our minds but then we just thought, ‘**** it’ and went for it. If you’re sitting around waiting for the stars to align, you can end up never doing anything. We turned up and worked our way through ideas, and came up with some while we were there.
“The song Foreign Land was born in the studio. If we hadn’t gone there at that point through happenstance, that song wouldn’t exist. We like to let things happen. As people, we find a deadline inspiring. We like to put ourselves on the spot and see what happens. We usually get away with it. This record is the cliche of the blank canvas, which thankfully we managed to fill.”
Blake adds:“We’ve all been playing together for such a long time. In the past, whoever had written the song would have been the director. ‘This is how I’m hearing the drums, if you could play the bass like this’…We don’t do that now.
“Raymond or myself would just bring in the idea and people would listen and play what works with it. We’d play for a couple of hours and that would be the arrangement. There’s a trust that comes from knowing each other such a long time, a kind of telepathy. Everyone knows where they fit in the puzzle.”
The seven-minute acoustic closing track, I Will Love You, looks to a point beyond the fury and polarisation of our modern discourse, to a time when“the bigots are gone/after they apologise/for all the harm that they’ve done”.
McGinley says: “In many ways, us-and-them-ism has taken over the world. I Will Love You is looking for positivity but it’s being totally fatalistic at the same time. This s**t will exist forever, what are you going to do about it?
“I came up with the line ‘I will love you/until the flags are put down/and the exceptionalists are buried under the ground’ while I was playing the guitar. I started wondering what that was all about and where it might go. It’s looking for positives within a fatalistic, negative view of human nature.”
The full track listing is: Foreign Land; Tired Of Being Alone; I Left A Light On; See The Light; It’s Alright; Falling Into The Sun; Self-Sedation; Middle Of My Mind; Back To The Light and I Will Love You.
Teenage Fanclub play Leeds Brudenell Social Club, Wednesday, doors 7.30pm, sold out; Leadmill, Sheffield, November 12, 7.30pm. Support comes from Sweet Baboo. Box office for Sheffield: leadmill.co.uk.
Special screening: Zomblogalypse, South Bank Community Cinema, Clements Hall, Nunthorpe Road, York, November 17, 8pm
The poster for November 17’s screening of Milestone Films’ Zomblogalypse at South Bank Community Cinema
MANY Zomblogalypse cast and crew members will be in attendance to introduce the screening and discuss the York-made zombie comedy in a Q&A afterwards, following its release by Dark Rift Films, the York film company behind festival crowd-pleaser How To Kill Monsters.
Zomblogalypse co-director Miles Watts says: “We love screening Zomblog with an audience because it’s got that trashy late-night Rocky Horror vibe. Usually it’s a bit tough to watch your own films with a crowd of people because all you see is the mistakes.
“But Zomblog is a different beast because this year marks the 15th anniversary of the original web series that launched this whole thing, and we’ve always had an appreciative and supportive fanbase.”
The cast includes Watts and his Milestone Films co-directors Hannah Bungard and Tony Hipwell, as well as seasoned York actors Victoria Delaney, Andrina Carroll and Dinnerladies’ Andrew Dunn.
Look out for a flash sale of film merchandise including posters and blu-rays of the film, with details of special discounts on the Zomblogalypse Facebook page. Tickets cost £4 on the door from 7:30pm.
Double trouble: Daniel Rainford’s Tim Allgood and Matthew Kelly’s Selsdon Mowbray in Noises Off, on tour at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Pamela Raith
THIS revival of Michael Frayn’s beloved fractious farce arrives in York in the wake of Mischief’s Magic Goes Wrong, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery and, twice, The Play That Goes Wrong.
If you loved the madcap malarky of those Mischief-making feats of furiously fast physical theatre, take a step back in time to savour the abiding joys of Frayn’s 1982 comedy, now an avuncular forerunner that still brings the house -and stage – down in 2023, 23 years after being elected one of 100 best plays of the 20th century in the National Theatre’s Millennial retrospective.
Frayn, Guardian feature writer-turned playwright, has tweaked his script for the 40th anniversary tour, now on its second leg with only Matthew Kelly reprising his role from last year’s travels.
He may be spotted off-stage with a walking stick, nursing an injured knee from his exertions on two new hips, but once the performance starts, he “feels like a gazelle” at 73, his burglar character leaping through a broken window again and again.
Frayn revels in taking the Michael out of the fallibility, frailties, foibles and luvvie excesses of the acting profession – sometimes accused of taking itself too seriously – but been-there, done that actors love it. Felicity Kendal was in last year’s company; now Kelly’s old thespian lush, Selsdon Mowbray, is joined by such touring campaign veterans as Liza Goddard, Simon Coates, Lucy Robinson and Dan Fredenburgh (although Mark Middleton is ably deputising for him all week as the increasingly vexed Garry Lejeune).
Frayn puts the worst traditions of touring theatre to the sword, from flings and fallouts to coarse acting and stage calamities, over three acts of a farcically bad play within his very good one. The “bad” is Nothing On, a very British trouser-dropping farce with jokes cornier than a cob and doors galore – seven in all – but no escape from the hapless, hopeless show or tour contract as it hobbles from fraught, fractured rehearsals to a last night from hell after 12 weeks for its cast of has-beens, never-beens and desperate newcomers.
As a pleasingly full house looks on, we join the cast of Nothing On at a technical rehearsal so behind schedule there will be no dress rehearsal, everyone playing catch-up from the off. Oxbridge-educated director Lloyd Dallas (Simon Shepherd, all in black with a splenetic mood to match) is already dreaming of his next engagement (Shakespeare’s Richard III in Wales).
In the meantime, he has trapped himself between the affections of fallow assistant stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor (Nikhita Lesler) and his new catch, the eager but dim Brooke Ashton (Lisa Ambalavanar). Watch out for her exaggerated arm movements, a show in themselves,
What could possibly go wrong? Anticlockwise, from top, Matthew Kelly, Lucy Robinson, Dan Fredenburgh, Liza Goddard, Daniel Rainford and Lisa Ambalavanar in Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. Picture: Pamela Raith
The tour-funding veteran trouper, scatty Dotty Otley (Liza Goddard, such lovely comic timing throughout), has already seduced self-appointed leading man Garry Lejeune (Mark Middleton).
Lucy Robinson’s eternally bubbly and unflappable Belinda Blair supplies the backstage gossip and tea and sympathy. Simon Coates’s forgetful, flaky luvvie Frederick Fellowes, Kelly’s old soak Selsdon Mowbray and Daniel Rainford ‘s quietly scene-stealing, overstretched stage manager Tim Allgood are in need of the director’s reassurance, another drink and sleep respectively.
Act One, on Simon Higlett’s typical touring stage, is all sweetness and light and mutual support, save for the barbed tongue of the exasperated director. By Act Two, one month into the tour, relationships are strained, gloves off, and now witnessed backstage, the side you never normally see.
Picking up the pace, Posner’s cast applies manic energy, humorous physicality and expressive comedy skills to the clashing company’s skirmishes as vendettas and alcohol abuse infect the performance. Silence – necessary backstage – is golden in Frayn’s hands as Nothing On staggers on and Ruth Cooper-Brown’s movement and fight direction comes to the sublime fore.
Then, suddenly, a technical hitch for real, as chance would have it in a play full of them, that required the dinner-jacketed stage manager to make an announcement.
Thankfully, the tabs’ malfunction was not the final curtain, and Act Three could proceed. War is waged on all fronts on the company’s last night in Stockton-on-Tees, the end of the line in every way as Nothing On – seen from the stage again after a round of applause for the rotating stage manoeuvres – becomes a mere side-show to the vituperative settling of scores.
If you have never seen the comic potential in sardines, plates and plates of them, they are yet another reason to savour Noises Off, amid the glorious shenanigans of actors acting up.
Performances: 7.30pm nightly, plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Matthew Kelly: Defying an injured knee on tour in Noises Off. All pictures: Pamela Raith
MATTHEW Kelly is performing “like a gazelle” in the 40th anniversary tour of Michael Frayn’s riotous farce Noises Off, despite a knee injury.
“I’m already doing it on two new hips, and off stage I have to walk with a stick,” says the erstwhile Stars In Their Eyes presenter, now 73, who takes to the York Theatre Royal stage from tonight.
“I twisted my knee on the set about a year ago on the first tour run. I thought, ‘I’m not going to have any more surgery; I’ll treat it with physiotherapy’, and that’s what I’ve done. It gets me a seat on the Tube every time!
“The knee’s getting better and I’ve kind of got used it, having had to use sticks when I was getting the hips done.”
Matthew takes the role of Selsdon Mowbray, an old actor with a drink problem, “for which I’ve done a lot of research”, he jokes.
“The play’s been going for 42 years, and I was up for the first takeover 40 years ago, when I was invited to follow Nicky Henson in the lead role in the original production.”
Watching Henson’s supreme performance, however, Matthew decided against taking up the invitation. When the chance came to play Selsdon Mowbray, four decades later, this time he jumped at it, new hips and all.
“What makes it work, and the only way it can work, is for the company to be really close, really bonded, and absolutely in tune with each other, which we are,” says Matthew Kelly
On the first itinerary, he played opposite Felicity Kendal; now he is joined by fellow 73-year-old Liza Goddard in Theatre Royal Bath’s touring revival, directed by Lindsay Posner, who staged Richard III and Romeo And Juliet in York’s first season of Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre productions in 2018.
Structured as a play within a play over three acts, Frayn’s chaotic comedy follows the on and off-stage antics of a hapless touring theatre company stumbling its way through the fictional farce, Nothing On, from shambolic final rehearsal to a disastrous matinee, seen silently from backstage, before their catastrophic last performance in Stockton-on-Tees.
If you have enjoyed Mischief’s visits to York with The Play That Goes Wrong and Magic Goes Wrong in recent years, they echo Frayn’s forerunner, a comedy rooted in calamities, pratfalls and slapstick as a cast at war with each other strives desperately to keep a performance on track amid the mayhem.
“What makes it work, and the only way it can work, is for the company to be really close, really bonded, and absolutely in tune with each other, which we are,” says Matthew. “If you get one thing wrong, it can throw the whole play out of kilter.
“I always have good times with companies, but this company is an absolute delight to work with. Having to do three matinees a week, it’s absolutely killing us. There’s no-one having an affair as we’re too knackered!”
Michael Frayn has supported the 40th anniversary tour at every opportunity, as well as tweaking the script. “He’s now 90, and he’s been with us since the start, coming to the opening night when I first did the show with Felicity last year, opening at Bath, and then when we went into the West End,” says Matthew.
“He’s told us it’s the best ever production of the play, though he probably always says that. He’s kind and encouraging, and you just know he’s like that with every company.”
Matthew Kelly in his role as drunken old actor Selsdon Mowbray. “I’ve done a lot of research,” he says
The revival of Noises Off is perfectly timed after the pandemic sent theatres into cold storage. “It’s a love letter to theatre that really lifts the spirit. You hear people rolling around with laughter throughout the show,” says Matthew.
This is the reward for the cast’s meticulously timed comedic performances. “We only had three weeks’ rehearsal for the second tour, and I was the only original member of the cast still in the show. So when we opened in Birmingham, we were still rehearsing during the day as well as performing at night.”
In keeping with the play, things can go wrong. “At one show, one of the girls accidentally left a bunch of flowers on stage, on the upper level, and the next thing that happened was the play began to fall to bits – and the whole place went nuts!” recalls Matthew.
“It wasn’t funny, it was terrifying, but somehow, we got back on track. After the show, I saw a friend, and when I told them it had all gone wrong, they said they’d never noticed! But when things go wrong, they’re only funny to the people who are there watching the show.”
Mind you, actors can play jokes on each other too, like when Matthew was performing Arnold Ridley’s The Ghost Train with Julie Walters and Bill Nighy in Aberystwyth. “When we’re locked in the waiting room, everyone changes place in the dark. Each show we’d have scuffles, where everyone would try to shove each other off stage!” he reveals.
“One Wednesday matinee, when the lights came back on, there was only me on stage, and the rest of the cast were sitting in the front row, arms folded, all looking at me.”
Don’t take it too seriously, Matthew advises himself and those around him in the acting world. “Honestly, no-one cares! We’re only playing in the dressing -up box,” he says.
“It’s a love letter to theatre that really lifts the spirit,” says Matthew Kelly of Michael Frayn’s frenetic farce Noise Off, on tour at York Theatre Royal from tonight
That said, he would love to play King Lear, the third age role that veteran Yorkshire Shakespearean actor Barrie Rutter has said “you should do twice: once when you can do it, and once when you have to do it”.
Kelly’s Lear will surely happen one day. In the meantime, next up, once the Noises Off tour ends in January, will be the world premiere of Jim Cartwright’s The Gap, a two-hander with Denise Welch, running at Hope Mil Theatre, Manchester, from February 9 to March 9.
“It’s about two teenagers running away to London in the Sixties and reuniting much later,” says Matthew. “I first did it as a one-act play about seven years ago, then made a film of it with Sue Johnston during the pandemic, and now Jim has expanded it into a full play.”
The Gap follows the audacious adventures of Walter and Corral. “He’s back up north, she’s still down south,” the theatre website says. “They haven’t seen each other for 50 years, not since their Soho days, back in the swinging ’60s. A chance phone call reunites them for one magical night and in next-to-no time, they’re back to their old tricks.”
What is “the gap”, Matthew? “Cultural? Geographical? I tell you what it is,” he says. “It is the gap of flesh between stocking top and knicker ridge that drives men wild!”
Noises Off, York Theatre Royal, tonight (31/10/2023) until Saturday, 7.30pmnightlyplus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Did you know?
MATTHEW Kelly appeared previously at York Theatre Royal in two Alan Bennett plays: Kafka’s Dick, with his son Matthew Rixon, in 2001 and The Habit Of Art, a fictional meeting between York-born poet W H Auden and composer Benjamin Britten, exploring friendship, rivalry, heartache and the joy, pain and emotional cost of creativity, in 2018.
Eleanor McLoughlin’s Doctor Victoria Frankenstein and Cameron Robertson’s The Creature in Tilted Wig’s Frankenstein
AFTER their liaison with York Theatre Royal for a tour of Juliet Forster’s production of Around The World In 80 Days earlier this year, Tilted Wig make a welcome return north with Frankenstein. In Halloween season, as chance would have it, in a tour running from September 14 to November 25.
Forget Halloween. This is not Frankenstein’s monster of six Hammer horror films or Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein. This is Frankenstein reimagined by Séan Aydon after Mary Shelley, as the cover to Tilted Wig’s elegantly designed programme denotes.
An earnest, deadly serious, deeply humanitarian Frankenstein with only one shard of humour and two significant changes: scientist Doctor Victor Frankenstein has become Doctor Victoria Frankenstein (Eleanor McLoughlin), and the gothic sci-fi novel’s 1818 setting has moved to wartime 1943 in Poland.
Neither the Nazis, nor the Second World War in name is mentioned, but the shadow of eugenics, and indirectly the creation of a master race, an Aryan nirvana, casts a dark shadow over Doctor Frankenstein’s experiments and the ruthless university philosophy of Basienka Blake’s Richter.
Aydon’s production opens in a dry ice fog in a wooden hut, the spartan emergency home of Blake’s first character, Captain. A frantic knock on the door: McLoughlin’s exhausted Victoria Frankenstein is seeking shelter and sustenance.
Here are two women “hiding from their past at what feels like the very end of the world”. One of them, Frankenstein, has a terrifying story to tell; the other has a gun in her hand, demanding that she tell it.
Whereupon Nicky Bunch’s set peels back to reveal Frankenstein’s laboratory, where a storm is brewing on the perfect night for sufficient electricity to spark her creation, made from body parts, into life.
In Bunch’s design, the profusion of laboratory jars lights up,like beacons, as if in response to Doctor Frankenstein’s excitement at this golden opportunity for scientific progress. She will share her exact plans with Francine (Annette Hannah in her impressive professional theatre debut), but not with husband Henry (Dale Mathurin), and nor with her sister Elizabeth. On her first visit in six months, with no letters home in that time, Victoria is too preoccupied to have dinner with her.
The Creature’s sudden surge into life as the storm crackles is an electrifying piece of theatre in every way, visually, aurally, musically: the peak of Eamonn O’Dwyer’s sound designs in a scree of discordant strings. Horrifying, remarkable, breathtaking, amid the rusted operating equipment.
Aydon has created a thriller as much as a horror story, one with a sense of moral responsibility that suits its wartime setting but resonates anew in our new age of artificial intelligence and robotics and our fears over the route this AI is taking.
Aydon’s exploration of “the very fabric of what makes us human and the ultimate cost of chasing ‘perfection’” puts both McLoughlin’s Frankenstein and Cameron Robertson’s Creature under the spotlight.
She is thrilled anew at the possibility of creating a partner for The Creature, at his demand, until she is challenged by Hannah’s Francine over her own status, as a dwarf. Where does that fit in with this pursuit of “perfection”?
A shattering moment, indeed, one that confronts all human experimentation and scientific exploration, just as in Michael Mann’s film Oppenheimer this summer.
Robertson’s Creature is never given a name by Doctor Frankenstein. He calls her “Mother” when they finally meet after his escape on that first night through a broken window. Another deeply impactful moment that makes Aydon’s production so powerful in its transition from Shelley’s series of letters to theatre of the imagination, a ghost story of the haunted Frankenstein.
The Creature, left to fend for himself, teaches himself how to talk, to learn Shakespeare too. That will make for an extraordinarily moving finale when The Creature reprises Hamlet’s final speech: What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.“
“The rest is silence,” he concludes, just as Hamlet did. Silence does indeed fall across the Theatre Royal auditorium, but then explosive applause follows, and the conversations begin.
A Frankenstein for today, a cautionary tale with a fearful message for tomorrow, Tilted Wig’s reinvention demands to be seen.
Tilted Wig in Frankenstein, York Theatre Royal, today at 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Not suitable for under 12s.
Noises Off: Michael Frayn’s on-stage and off-stage comedy on York Theatre Royal’s main stage from Tuesday. Picture: Pamela Raith
HALLOWEEN films and double bills, classic comedy and a time-travelling York legend, a Disney deep freeze and a punk/jazz collision help Charles Hutchinson leave behind October for November frights and delights.
Play of the week: Noises Off, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees
MATTHEW Kelly, Liza Goddard and Simon Shepherd lead the cast in Theatre Royal Bath’s touring revival of Michael Frayn’s riotous Noises Off, directed by Lindsay Posner, who staged Richard III and Romeo And Juliet for York’s first season of Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre productions in 2018.
Structured as a play within a play, this cherished 1982 farce follows the on and off-stage antics of a touring theatre company stumbling its way through the fictional farce Nothing On, from shambolic final rehearsals to a disastrous matinee, seen silently from backstage, before the catastrophic final performance. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Nick Naidu and Imogen Wood in Punch Porteous – Lost In Time at All Saints North Street
York legend of the week: Punch Porteous – Lost In Time, All Saints North Street, York, tonight, 7pm.
HAVE you heard or indeed seen the eccentric, evasive York legend Punch Porteous: soldier, philosopher, worker (when absolutely unavoidable), husbandman, connoisseur of ale and now the subject of poet Robert Powell, creative practitioner Ben Pugh and producer John Beecroft’s “multi-media drama experience”?
York Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster directs Powell, Nick Naidu and Imogen Wood in Powell’s story of an ordinary man with an extraordinary predicament, lost in time in York. While the city shape-shifts around him, he is catapulted unpredictably into different eras of its history from c.70 to c.2023. Box office: yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/show/punch-porteous-lost-in-time/.
The poster for Navigators Art & Performance’s Punk/Jazz explorations at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York
Music, poetry and comedy bill of the week: Navigation Art & Performance present Punk Jazz: A Halloween Special, The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York, tonight, 7.30pm
COMPLEMENTING the ongoing Punk/Jazz: Contrasts and Connections exhibition at Micklegate & Fossgate Socials, Navigators Art & Performance bring together energetic York punk band The Bricks; intense improvisers Teleost; the Neo Borgia Trio, formed for the occasion from a University of York big band; grunge-influenced Mike Ambler and the experimental Things Found And Made.
Taking part too will be firebrand polemical poet Rose Drew and comedians Isobel Wilson and Saeth Wheeler. Box office: https://bit.ly/nav-punkjazz.
The Gildas Quartet: Presenting the String! concerts at the NCEM
Children’s concerts of the week: MishMash presents String!, National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York, tomorrow, 11.30am and 2pm
THE Gildas Quartet lead tomorrow’s double celebration of the string quartet in informal 40-minute performances featuring a diverse programme from Haydn to Jessie Montgomery, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges to Dvorak, and everything in between.
Staged creatively to bring the audience into the music, these fun concerts are suitable for ages seven to 11 and their families. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Community film event of the week: The Witches (PG), Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tomorrow, 2.30pm
MAKE It York and The Groves Community Centre team up for a Halloween screening of Robert Zemeckis’s visually innovative 2020 film The Witches. Based on Roald Dahl’s novel, it tells the darkly humorous, heartwarming tale of an orphaned boy who goes to live with his loving Grandma in late-1967 in the rural Alabama town of Demopolis, where they have an run-in with the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway). Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Emily Portman & Rob Harbron: Delving into folk traditions to emerge with a fresh sound
Folk concert of the week: Emily Portman & Rob Harbron, National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm
EMILY Portman, from The Furrow Collective, and Rob Harbron, who performs with Leveret, Fay Hield and Jon Boden, have formed an inspired collaboration to delve into English folk traditions with an intricately woven contemporary sound.
Portman (voice, banjo and piano) and fellow composer Harbron (concertina, guitar and voice) released their debut album, Time Was Away, last November, comprising eight English folk songs and two 20th century poems set to music. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Chris Green accompanying FW Murnau’s Nosferatu
Halloween screaming/screening of the week: Nosferatu: Live Silent Cinema, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm
CHRIS Green’s score was commissioned by English Heritage for an outdoor screening of FW Murnau’s 1922 German Expressionist vampire film at Dracula’s spiritual home of Whitby Abbey. Now the composer plays his haunting blend of electronic and acoustic instruments for the first time in York to accompany the first cinematic interpretation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, one that gave birth to the horror movie. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Please Please You’s poster for Steve Gunn’s Rise solo concert
Double bill of the week: Please Please You presents Steve Gunn & Brigid Mae Power, Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb, York, Wednesday, doors 7.30pm
EXPERIMENTAL Brooklyn guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn’s “forward-thinking” songwriting draws on the blues, folk, ecstatic free jazz and psychedelia, suffused with a raga influence. His website says he is “currently somewhere working on new music”, although York will be the first of 12 solo gigs in Britian, Spain and Poland in November.
Wednesday’s gig will be opened by Irish singer-songwriter Brigid Mae Power, whose latest folk-tinged dreampop album, Dream From The Deep Well, arrived in March. Box office: seetickets.com/event/steve-gunn/rise-bluebird/.
Meet York Stage’s young princesses in Disney’s Frozen Jr
Musical of the week: York Stage in Disney’s Frozen Jr, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee
IN a story of true love and acceptance between sisters, Disney’s Frozen Jr follows the journey of Princesses Anna and Elsa, based on the 2018 Broadway and West End musical set in the magical land of Arendelle, with all the Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez songs from the animated film.
Producer Nik Briggs directs a cast led by Megan Pickard, Bea Charlton, Matilda Park and Esther de la Pena as the princesses. Malachi Collins plays the Duke of Weselton, Lottie Marshall, Bulda, and Oliver Lawery, King Agnarr. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
In Focus: Say Owt Slam, with special guest Polarbear, The Crescent, tonight, 7.45pm
Spoken word artist and writer Polarbear: Making an apperance at tonight’s Say Owt Slam at The Crescent, York
SAY Owt, York’s loveably gobby gang of performance poets, take over The Crescent community venue twice a year for a raucous night of spoken word and poetry in the form of a stellar slam.
Fast, frantic and fun, a slam gives each poet three minutes to wow the audience. Regular host Henry Raby enthuses: “We love doing Say Owt on a Saturday night, because it’s a party! A poetry party!
“Although one poet will be crowned a Say Owt Slam Champion, this isn’t a bitter battle. It’s a celebration as poets bring a variety of styles and forms. In the past, we’ve had tender personal reflections, hilarious laugh-out-loud comedy poems and fiery political tirades.”
Special guest at tonight’s Say Owt Slam in York will be Polarbear. “The last time he graced our city, Polarbear (a.k.a Steven Camden) was supporting Scroobius Pip and Kae Tempest,” says Henry. “He’s an internationally acclaimed spoken word artist and award-winning writer from Birmingham, whose poetry drips with gorgeous storytelling.
“He talks about people and places with a unique ear for language: celebrating the tiny human characteristics.”
Since first stepping on stage in 2004, Polarbear has performed his work and led creative projects from Manchester to Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur to California, as well as featuring on BBC Radio1, 3 and 6Music, attracting 155,000 views on YouTube and releasing a live album on Scroobius Pip’s Speech Development record label.
A few surprises might be in store tonight too. Box office: thecrescentyork.com/events/say-owt-slam-featuring-polarbear/ or on the door.
