York Theatre Royal, 6 March 2019

It doesn’t take long to realise why Emma Rice might have chosen to adapt Angela Carter’s last novel, Wise Children, for the debut of her new company bearing the same name. An unapologetic celebration of theatricality in all its glorious, glamorous, shady and seedy forms, it allows Rice to do what she (and Carter) does best, which is to tell stories about the very base aspects of what it is to be human in the most magical, dark and captivating ways.

Wise Children begins on the 75th birthday of identical twin sisters Dora and Nora Chance, played by Gareth Snook and Etta Murfitt respectively, and narrates the tale of their theatrical dynasty family. We follow the Chance twins from conception through their lives as showgirls in a tale that is comedic and tragic in equal measure, and explores themes of illegitimacy, fatherhood, womanhood, and the overwhelming joy but great despair and sacrifice that comes with choosing to live a life fearlessly doing what you love.

The production is an ensemble piece through and through, and when I say there isn’t a performer in the show who isn’t incredible, I truly mean it. Kneehigh regular (there are a few of them in this production and I am not complaining) Katy Owen steals the show as the nude and crude adoptive mother of the twins, Grandma Chance, and again later as one half of the rambunctious Hazard twins. Mirabelle Gremaud is enchanting as Young Nora and Pretty Kitty, as well as in several ear-tingling musical moments, and Melissa James and Omari Douglas are the embodiment of wide-eyed seductive youth as Showgirl Dora and Nora. 

There casting is as much an exercise in imagination and theatricality as the story itself. Characters are not bound by rules of gender, race or nationality, in a way that riffs on identity, gender and ageing, and harks back to theatre’s gender-bending Shakespearean past.

Vicki Mortimer’s beautifully crafted set and Malcolm Rippeth’s often spellbinding lighting design move the play seamlessly through time and place while always maintaining a sense of continuity. We see glimpses of the wings, see the actors warming up their impossibly pliable limbs before the show starts and chatting amongst themselves and the audience in the interval. After all, this is as much a story of what goes on behind the curtain as in front of it.

The production gives to its audience richly – we are flung from high brow to low brow, joy to despair in the blink of an eye, through song, dance, sex and heartbreak. Where at times the theatrical in-jokes can feel a little smug, they never linger for long enough for the feeling to stick. 

Wise Children is carnivalesque, Shakespearean and at times surreal – a fairy tale that most certainly isn’t suitable for children. For all its riotous joy, there is always a sense of darkness just beneath the surface. Rice calls Carter’s book a ‘love letter to theatre’, and I can’t see how anyone who has fallen for the theatre could not love this play.

Wise Children is at York Theatre Royal until 16 March, before continuing on tour.

By Fun in the Oven Theatre in collaboration with Teatro en Vilo

York Theatre Royal, 22 Nov 2018

Through physical theatre and contemporary sound design, Fun in the Oven and Teatro en Vilo aim to offer rare insight into the lives of the oft-forgotten heroines of the munitions workers dubbed the Canary Girls. 

Canary is a glimpse into the often overlooked but hugely culturally significant role of women in WWI, telling their stories through Anges, Anne and Betty, three completely different women who are doing their bit for the war effort working in a munitions factory.

The fantastic concept and the three performers that carry this production are its greatest strengths. Katie Tranter plays the leader of the group Agnes with stoicism and humour, Robyn Hambrook is prissy and particular as the upper class Anne, and Alys North is for me the highlight as Betty, playing the young girl with panache, perfect comedic timing and buckets of energy.

The visual design and costuming are glorious. The dirtied yellow faces and rough and ready jumpsuits are full of quirky character that verges on steampunk. It feels fun and interesting, like you’re one step away from smelling fumes and hearing the clanging of machinery.

Unfortunately, it pains me to say that’s where the positives run dry. I get more excited about physical theatre than any other type of performance, but its success relies so heavily on it being expertly executed. All too often in this production the movement just wasn’t quite tight enough, not quite precise enough. 

I loved the sound design, it was a perfect mix of early 1900s ‘keep calm and carry on’ charm and creepy dystopian propaganda, expertly voiced by Lawrence Neale. But the choreography felt like it was just short of perfect, and if the two don’t work in perfect harmony then you start to feel on edge as an audience member. I want to feel safe in the hands of the performers, and in terms of the physical side of the performance, I just didn’t.

The pacing of the piece also let it down. The focal point of the production is an air raid that shuts down the factory and leaves our three protagonists to amuse themselves through a series of games, confessions, trips (yes, I mean the drug induced kind) and conversations through which they reveal dreams of freedom, football and forbidden friendships. 

The way this played out was through a series of what almost felt like stand-alone vignettes, little self contained stories that would begin with light hearted fun, build up to an emotional moment and end with an awkward silence. This played out several times in a row, which interrupted the natural pacing of how I feel a narrative should develop and often made the emotional impact of the stories feel stilted. I didn’t feel any build up in the piece as a whole, or get a sense of the evolution of these women’s relationships. I was left feeling that where I should have felt moved I felt cold, because I had no concept of a narrative arc or any attachment to these characters.

I don’t usually speak with this kind of candor about productions that I have a less positive response to. However, I feel like I want to in this instance because Canary has such potential. The actors are fantastic, the concept is beautiful and the stories that are layered into this piece are bursting to be told. For me, the production feels underdeveloped – it feels as if its on the precipice of tipping over into greatness but just needs to be tightened up. These are clearly a hugely talented company with great ideas and vision, and I hope they continue to grow and live up to their potential in future shows. I’ll be watching with interest!

by Charlotte Keatley

London Classic Theatre

York Theatre Royal, 20 November

Charlotte Keatley’s My Mother Said I Never Should is an important play for me. When I was 17 my wonderful drama teacher chose it as our A Level performance piece; we studied it, rehearsed it, spoke about it and our own experiences of being women. I can’t say I loved it at every moment during that period – cutting a play to smithereens to accommodate just two actors, a limited timeframe and the arbitrary requirements of a travelling examiner doesn’t generally make for a thorough appreciation of a play – but I can’t say it didn’t have a lasting impact on me.

A lot has changed for me personally since then; I’ve gone to university (in Manchester no less, which is partiuclarly relevant to this play), had jobs, learned to small talk, been unbelievably sad and unbelievably happy, got myself a Dan and known all sorts of people. It’s also been enough time to get some perspective on some of the more difficult family stuff I was in the midst of when I was a teenager. Safe to say this production was a lovely reminder of how much we change and learn without even realising it, as well as a reminder of how important relationships are seldom easy.

The play follows four generations of women from the same family across several decades of their lives, centring around Jackie’s decision to give her infant daughter Rosie to her mother to raise. It examines their relationships with one another, and how they are shaped by their expectations of each other and themselves, exploring the cost of freedom and change. It is very much a play of its time, (something that is shouted loud and clear by the fantastic costuming in LCT’s production – I’m looking at you purple jumpsuit), but that is by no means to suggest it is not still blisteringly relevant.

Part of the allure of this play to a young Sarah who had grown up reading, watching, and largely admiring solely male protagonists (to the detriment of my self image) was its placing the female experience, and therefore female actors, front and centre. The four actors in LCT’s production are fantastic. Carole Dance as Doris, Connie Walker as Margaret, Kathryn Ritchie as Jackie and Felicity Houlbrooke as Rosie are all completely distinct characters and yet strikingly familial.

The portrayal of the complexity of their relationships and the subtlety of the traits and anxieties that have been passed down through generations is not only a testament to Keatley’s writing, but to the emotional dexterity of these actors. To portray the push and pull of love, resentment and the desire for independence that feels pretty universal to the female experience is no easy feat, and the performances felt steeped in personal experience.

The realism in the dialogue and performances is all the more important in contrast to the abstract nature of the set – in this case a haunting and surprisingly versatile junkyard designed by Bek Palmer. I was easily transported from 1940s living room to 1980s office without having to stretch my imagination through the strength of the performances.

I have always struggled with the parts of this play involving the actors playing children, but I will say Dance and Walker in particular managed to pull these difficult segments off with surprising innocence and charm. Whilst I don’t think I’ll ever be completely comfortable with it – and I don’t think we’re necessarily meant to be – I got much more of a sense of the importance of those sections seeing them brought to life by such accomplished actors.

I was struck by so many things that had never occurred to me before I had the chance to see this play as it is meant to be seen. There is a sense of energy and urgency amongst the women that I found strangely moving, probably because it reminded me so strongly of so many of my favourite women. I also realised how incredibly keenly observed much of the dialogue is; I feel like every other line I was thinking it was like listening to my mum, or my sister, or Dan’s gran.

I was surprised by how much My Mother Said spoke to me, and in such a different way to when I was a teenager. I suspect that I will respond to it completely differently in another 10 years time and that is a rare thing for a piece of writing or performance to accomplish. I could go on and on. The bottom line is that I am hugely grateful to LCT for taking this production around the country and I feel very lucky that they stopped in York. I’ve very much hijacked this review to talk about my feelings but hear me when I say this was a beautifully put together and acted production. They have taken Keatley’s script and brought it to its full potential, and it’s something I think any person who is, or loves, or knows women should see.

York is the last stop on LCT’s tour so there’s not much time left, but see My Mother Said I Never Should at York Theatre Royal until this Saturday 24 November.

By Gecko

17th October, York Theatre Royal 

After an international tour and a run at the wonderful Battersea Arts Centre during which their set was destroyed by a fire and incredibly rebuilt in just eight days, York has the privilege of hosting physical theatre company Gecko’s Missing. Despite, or perhaps precisely because of, the rich life this production has already had, it is brimming with all the energy and electricity of a show on opening night.

Loosely, Missing takes the audience on a journey into the psyche of Lily (played by Katie Lusby), a woman who has all the things we are told to want – a successful career, friends, a husband – but finds that something is still missing. Through an incredible spectacle of movement, sound, memory and even puppetry, we are witness to her experience of reconnecting with her roots and reshaping her own identity.

From the very start Missing crackles with emotion. We are thrown into Lily’s fast–paced world with a flurry of perfectly executed choreography that’s fluid one second but sharp and angular the next; painting a picture of a life that’s all smiles on the surface but disturbed underneath. The performers breathe, shout and whisper in time with their movements while music and multilingual recorded sound create a vibrant soundscape.

There are a host of visually stunning moments, from a chaotic work environment created with swirling lit screens and coffee cups, to the hazy screens held in front of performers to create a window into Lily’s memories. A more evocative portrayal of memory on stage I have never seen; Lily remembers impressions of events as the screens hover on hands, legs and clothing. Voices are loud and confused, with snippets of coherence. The emotion attached to a memory permeates every aspect of it as it replays and rewinds before our eyes.

Each performer in the small company of five is perfectly cast and masterful in their performance. Lusby portrays a palpable sense of quiet desperation as Lily; Gecko’s creative director Amit Lahav is mesmerising as a charming but mystical drifter, whispering sweetly in Italian as he draws Lily out of herself; Lucia Chocarro is the embodiment of feminine passion and cool allure as Lily’s Spanish mother.

The immense skill behind how they manipulate their bodies is almost easy to overlook because it appears so natural. In one striking memory Chocarro twists herself back and forth as the scene rewinds itself, to incredible effect. At times they flit from one emotion to another, one movement to another, in perfect time with striking sounds. They perform from beginning to end with a frenetic energy that is difficult to look away from, creating a visual landscape that is both dreamlike and acutely relatable.

Physical theatre is the reason I fell in love (sop alert, sorry about it) with theatre, because I think it has limitless potential for creativity. In Missing, Gecko have proved this and then some. By combining movement, sound, storytelling and visual art they have created a piece which is deeply emotive in a way that transcends language. It beautifully captures the visceral power of childhood memories and their lasting impact on the way we relate to ourselves.

If you don’t trust me, take it from DanMan – he, who has been with me for 90% of all the theatre I have seen over the past six years, turned to me at the end and said ‘that was the best thing I have ever seen’. I could go on for a very long time about the incredible amount of detail that has gone into this production, but if I were to list every highlight I would end up writing a play by play of every moment of this thoroughly enchanting piece. So the only alternative I have is to implore you: go and see this show.

Missing is at York Theatre Royal until 20 Oct, before playing Nottingham and Southampton early next year.

By Metta Theatre

4th April, York Theatre Royal

A circus-inspired retelling of the classic Hans Cristian Andersen tale, Metta Theatre’s new adaptation of The Little Mermaid promised impressive acrobatics, a haunting original soundtrack and a story to captivate all ages. What it delivers doesn’t quite reach those lofty goals, but is an enjoyable production with moments of brilliance nonetheless.

To get the less than great parts out of the way; many of the acrobatics felt a little clumsy, or you didn’t feel completely confident that the performer was going to pull whatever they were attempting off. What should have been seamless, flowing movement (these are meant to be mermaids, remember!) unfortunately sometimes felt quite shaky and clunky. The music, whilst original and not without its excellent moments, was a little repetitive and the mix of live and recorded didn’t sit right with me.

However, there are some great elements to this production. The parts of the story which took place on land tended to be stronger, with some excellent slapstick comedy that had the kids laughing, and moments of innovative costuming with exposed boning on the ladies’ dresses that made for some striking images and added a modern fairy-tale feel that the rest of the visuals were somewhat lacking. Some of the circus sequences were fantastic, with swirling aerial hoop routines and Roo Jenkins-Jones’ magic on the cyr wheel (or, ‘big twirly hoop thing’ as I was calling it before a crafty Google). There were a few ‘aaah’ moments from the audience as cast members stacked themselves three people tall or leapt into each other’s arms from impressive heights.

For me the absolute star of the show was the actress who played both oldest sister Careful and the Tailor, Rosalind Ford – what a talent. She provided the standout moment of the production as the OTT Tailor, pinching, prodding and operatically warbling (at one point whilst in a split, no less) her way into my heart. Her vocals were incredible and her ability to sing whilst playing the cello so beautifully (also to seemingly hold up said cello with only her mind – seriously, how was she holding it up? How?!) had me captivated.

So whilst I wish that more of the production had been elevated to the level we caught glimpses of here and there, perhaps with more humour and more commitment to providing the enchanting magic we expect from a modern fairy-tale, the most important thing I took from this show was that it’s great for children. There was laughter, gasping and even at one dramatic moment an expertly timed, ‘she can’t give up!’ from a little girl behind us, which told me that the swathes of kids around us were having a good time. And not just for little mermaids – there was a great message about all the different ways men can be strong that all the little mermen out there should hear too.

Metta Theatre’s Little Mermaid is on at York Theatre Royal from the 4^th– 7^th April (so you’ve got a couple of shows left!).

Summary: A fairy-tale adaptation that doesn’t quite reach its full potential but delivers some standout moments, and is great for little’uns.

By Kieran Hurley

Thursday 22nd February, York Theatre Royal

There’s always a moment of hesitation for me before going to watch a one man/woman show. Can just one person hold a room for an hour? Can just one person provide enough variety to keep me engaged? And every time I’ve come out of a one person show, I’ve left assured that the answer to those questions is, resoundingly, yes. Kieran Hurley’s Heads Up was no different.

With only a table, a candle and two soundboards in front of him, Hurley tells the story of the moments preceding the end of the world from the perspective of four different characters; Mercy, a highly-strung office worker with a knack for predicting futures; Ash, a 12-year-old girl hiding from the fallout of her ex sending private pictures of her around the school; Leon, a narcissistic, coke-snorting pop star; and Abdullah, a shift-worker coping with his place as a reluctant cog-in-the-capitalist-machine with spliffs and painkillers.

The play is very much an exercise in story-telling as opposed to a typically acted-out piece – which is not to say it is lacking in atmosphere or drama. Hurley sits for most of the production, with two front lights silhouetting his torso dramatically in the background and the soundboard providing Michael John McCarthy’s jarring, starkly atmospheric, soundscape. He brings each character to life with subtle but distinct changes to voice, diction and physicality, his lilting Scottish accent switching from comforting to vulnerable to deranged with each change in character and setting.

The script is a tour de force of storytelling which is truly given an opportunity to shine in this production, the deftness of Hurley’s writing spinning a tale that is engaging and darkly funny in equal measure. Punctuated with gripping dramatic moments that shake you awake and lift it from a theatrical reading to a piece of real drama, the show confronts us with questions about our place in the world and the nature of the world as we know it. It’s an examination of human connection (or our lack thereof), and where our current state of disengagement and self-destruction might lead us.

I’m certainly not the first to say it – Head’s Up won a Scotsman Fringe First award at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe and Hurley has been getting some pretty stellar praise for a few years now – but this is a show that stands out from the crowd for both its format and content, and Hurley is certainly a talent to watch.

Summary: A blistering but lyrical monologue that will have you on the edge of your seat and leaving the theatre with a pervasive feeling of existential dread – in the very best way.

By The Human Zoo

Saturday 16^th July, York Theatre Royal

I’ve been wanting to get back on the theatre-watching-bandwagon-train for a long time now, and when I spotted this show on York Theatre Royal’s website I knew it would be right up my street. It would also be the first ‘proper’ (as in, not panto) play ManDan had ever seen and a few friends ended up coming along on my recommendation so the pressure was on. Suffice to say no one was disappointed!

Performing in the Royal’s small studio theatre, the wonderful ensemble cast (dressed in what I can only describe as shabby-chic-mime costumes) took us through several short tales, play-within-a-play style, each as charming and hilarious as the last. Every cast member had a shining moment and Nick Gilbert (‘Clive’) in particular had some brilliant comedic moments and responded to the audience to great effect, which is a difficult but necessary skill when performing in such an intimate setting. The live music was fun and evocative all at once and for me, really brought the kind of magic the piece needed to make it truly immersive – if there was a soundtrack available I’d have it on right now.

The look of the thing was a tasty visual delight. There were glittering fairy lights strung out and in boxes, a giant head (my personal favourite) and miniature exploding bird people. They took us from the woods to Hollywood, from the Underground to the sky. We saw the mundane and the unusual. It was…great.

These are clearly a young company with a style and a fervor for the possibilities that theatre holds. Their style may not be absolutely original – taking from the Tim Burton school of quirkiness (I’m sorry, I know, I hate that word too) and companies such as Les Enfants Terribles – but what really is? If it’s executed to near perfection, which it was, with moments that take you by surprise, which it has, then what more can you really ask for? Not much, I say.

It was a rare treat in York to see theatre of this type and I’m hoping to see more of it now York Theatre Royal’s refurbishment is complete; at the very least, I hope the Human Zoo make a return with future productions – I’ll be the first to buy a ticket.

Summary: A riotous and enchanting melding of poetry, puppetry, song, movement and music with some ingenious staging and props chucked in for good measure, I (and everyone I was with) absolutely loved this performance. Can’t wait to see them again.