Tag Archives: theatre

The Grand Old Dame of York: A custard bye forty years in the baking

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Well, here we all are again back for the annual rubbish at the York Theatre Royal pantomime, but with one big difference – 2018 is dame Berwick Kaler’s final year after forty years of writing, co-directing and starring in York’s most popular panto. There has always been something homely and comforting about hearing those Geordie tones cry out, “Me babbies me bairnes!” once a year – and this year the moment is delayed by a slightly over-long opening where the rest of the cast ponder what panto they will be doing and whether the script has even been written yet. Continue reading →

The Princess and the Sprout: Christmas fairy tales for the woke and bookish

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Music, magic and mistletoe sprinkle the action of Wrongsemble’s brand new family show; a trio of fairy tales with a twist of Christmas spirit. A tight, resourceful cast put their many talents on display with happy harmonies, mischievous mouth-made foley and merry musical interludes. Continue reading →

The Great Gatsby: Homecoming

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This party is anything but little. Greeted warmly with York gin and tonic and Long Island accents, the cast and crew make themselves available to you from the moment you step over the threshold of the John Cooper Studio. Enigmatic suits and skirts of the American twenties beckon you around the building, now transformed into bars, dance halls, lounges and boudoirs. No corner is untouched, no person unwelcomed. Continue reading →

Coriolanus by York Shakespeare Project: theatre review

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Number four in the countdown to completion of the York Shakespeare Project, Coriolanus serves up a simmering vision of strategic class war in ancient Rome via nineteen-eighties Britain. Images of Margaret Thatcher lurk in among bin bags and protest placards stating ‘Give Peace a Chance’ and ‘Corn not Scorn’. Plastic sheaths metal fencing upstage, veiling Frairgate’s black box space as a breeding ground for conspiracy and uprising in this effectively subtle, minimalist production. A disjointed score of upbeat eighties pop music and Thatcher’s ‘U-turn’ speech set the tone for the unsettling tale. Continue reading →

Colder Than Here: A season to grieve in

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Wildgoose continue their run of plays new to York with Laura Wade’s first published script, Colder Than Here. The text is gentle, poetic, acutely observant. It dwells on familial responsibility, what we expect and need from those closest to us, how we remember each other in ways we have forgotten our younger selves. Continue reading →

They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay!: Brexit and vegetable homebirths

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York Theatre Royal continues its most interesting and divisive season yet with this raucous radical farce that brings Dario Fo’s intense and absurd political comedy to meet The League of Gentlemen via the Jarrow March. Continue reading →

Snow Queen: A frozen heart takes time to melt

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“Don’t worry, it’ll have a happy ending!” was the whispered assurance of a front row parent to their child mid-way through tutti frutti’s latest production, The Snow Queen. And it does. But not in the way you might expect. Continue reading →

The Secret Garden: A Love Song To Nature

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Bare winter branches stand guard in front of a huge mirrored prism cutting into centre-stage with a bold but cold-shoulder presence as large as the auditorium, echoing Mr Craven’s hunched back; the manifestation of his burden of grief. A protective freeze stills the house like Maleficent’s forest of thorns, and young life is encroaching, demanding growth and freedom. A vintage sheen of rust and silver make the space sparkle before lanterns thaw the world to an Indian summer, where Mary’s (Ella Dunlop) universe is all colour, music and dancing. At least, it would be, if only she were allowed even to be seen at her parents’ lavish parties. Continue reading →

Birdsong: None’s Fair in Love and War

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Rachel Wagstaff’s adaptation of Sebastian Falks’ classic tale of tumultuous First World War romance bleeds fragility, from Victoria Spearing’s beautifully crafted landfall set to the unfaltering generosity of Tim Treloar’s Jack Firebrace. Continue reading →

Prisoners Let Loose in a Ballroom: York Shakespeare Project presents Two Noble Kinsmen

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Austen meets Sharpe in this Regency-flavoured reduction of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Two Noble Kinsmen, in which the playtime of performance gives a new lease of life to characters confined by war, law and societal expectations. Director Tom Straszewski brings considerable historical and geographical context to the chaotic happenings of the play to really make it sing. Women tamed and conquered, scorned and used and even driven beyond wit abound in this tragicomic production featuring as part of York’s Feminist Fletcher Festival. Deemed a marinated hangover of A Midsummer Night’s Dream tinged with influences of older, darker tales, Two Noble Kinsmen errs toward ambiguity and unfinished business. Folk flute and floaty dresses mingle with Macbeth-like harbingers, a modest colour palette of cream and dusty navy enhancing the mixture of oppression and vulnerability. The actors look to the audience often, as if prisoners pleading for forgiveness to save themselves from the gallows. Continue reading →