Billy Shakes – Wonderboy!: weaning onto the bard

Leeds-based company Wrongsemble turn their trademark aesthetic panache to the imagined creative awakening of William Shakespeare, on a pop-up stage in the groundlings pit of Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre in York. The formidable collective of Director Elvi Piper, Designer Antony Jones, Musical Director Rosie Fox and Costumier Julie Ashworth makes for another rich, eye-catching set piece and, for the most part, the story holds the attention of their dutiful audience of very mixed ages, who have ventured out despite the ominously changeable weather. Continue reading

Swallows & Amazons: conquering heroes

Setting the course for a generous canon of children’s adventure stories, Arthur Ransome’s beloved 1930 tale is faithfully adapted by Helen Edmundson and co-directed by fresh swabbie John R. Wilkinson and seasoned seadog Damian Cruden, with a beautiful score by Neil Hannon and masterful musical direction from Kieran Buckeridge. Continue reading

Testament of Yootha: Jolie Laide

Writer-performer Caroline Burns Cooke’s meticulous sixty-minute one-woman show investigates the life and work of the actress Yootha Joyce, most famous for her role as Mildred in seventies sitcom Man About The House. Despite a comparatively short and late-blooming career, Joyce’s prolific contribution to television and her untimely death had a great impact on many people. Continue reading

It Just So Happened: an alternative history show

The audience at 41 Monkgate are excited for the show, and there’s a decent mix – parents with teenagers, couples on dates, and a few flying solo. They all give a hearty cheer as Richard Pulsworth and his crew of comedians take to the stage for this Great Yorkshire Fringe debut. Continue reading

Great Yorkshire Fringe – The New Comedian of the Year Final: review

On the final Saturday of the Great Yorkshire Fringe, a crowd begins to shuffle into the Grand Opera House. Their clothes might be damp from the torrential rain, but their spirits are decidedly not as they take their seats for the final of The New Comedian of the Year. Continue reading

Sh!t-faced Shakespeare® – Macbeth: classics for the disenfranchised

Sh!tfaced Shakespeare is exactly as billed; classically trained actors performing a serious Shakespeare play, while one of them is seriously drunk. “With one cast member selected at random and given four hours to drink before every show, we present to you classical theatre as it was always meant to be seen.” With a firm belief in making the Bard accessible again after centuries of dry, stiff performances, Magnificent Bastard Productions proudly delight in resurrecting the hen-night-stag-do chaos inherent in some of the plays’ dirtier passages. Continue reading

Alasdair Beckett-King: The Interdimensional ABK

Alasdair Beckett-King (or The Interdimensional ABK as he likes to go by over the course of his show) brings his Edinburgh Preview Show to the Great Yorkshire Fringe, and this timeline is all the better for it. Alasdair hails from the A timeline and he has come to the B timeline, where we poor mortals reside, to share what he has learned. Continue reading

Something Else: (“and now for ______ entirely different”)

Open Barn Productions present Renae Mae Miller’s sharp new absurdist play Something Else at the John Cooper Studio @ 41 Monkgate as part of the Great Yorkshire Fringe. This striking and vehement fifty-minute script serves an enigmatic cocktail of paracetamol fever dreams, indiscernible package beach holidays and age-old hurts. Continue reading

Eliott Simpson: (a)sexy and I Know It

Comedian Eliott Simpson brings his show (a)sexy and I Know It to the Great Yorkshire Fringe prior to a run at the Edinburgh Fringe next month. The (a) is aptly placed, as Simpson’s show centres around his asexuality, and society’s response to this oft forgotten and misunderstood minority. Continue reading