Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
Ahoy theatre-goers! Here's the low-down on the pre-Christmas theatrical treats in store for you before the h- holidays... (Does that word make you as wishful as it makes me at the moment?!). Don't miss out!
Week 6 - The Pitchfork Disney by Philip Ridley
Premiered at the Bush Theatre in London in 1991, Philip Ridley’s The Pitchfork Disney was a controversial hit, a play regarded by many as the herald of a new generation of writers to the theatre. The play focuses on the characters Presley and Haley, who lead a childish existence living mainly off of chocolate. This idyll is shattered, however, with the arrival of two showmen, the cockroach-eating Cosmo Disney and his sidekick, the mute Pitchfork Cavalier. Produced by Belt-Up and described as ‘Willy Wonka on acid’, The Pitchfork Disney promises, in Belt-Up tradition, to be, in the best possible way, positively mental.
Week 7 - What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton
Orton’s classic farce is a sex comedy set within the consulting rooms of a dubious psychiatrist, Dr. Prentice, whose interest in his female patients is far from clinical. When this physician, his wife, his secretary, a medical inspector, a policeman and a hotel porter collide, skeletons tumble out of the closet and cases of mistaken identity and multiple personalities pile up at break neck-speed. Teaming dry British humour, profanity and surrealism in one, What the Butler Saw offers all the excitement of ‘naked men running in all directions’.
Week 8 - Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
Pirandello’s most famous and celebrated play, Six Characters in Search of an Author was first performed in 1921 in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of ‘Madhouse!’. A family of fictional characters, abandoned by their author, interrupt a rehearsal to convince a perplexed director to discard his current production and present their story instead. As the director learns more about the horrors of the characters’ story, fiction and reality come to blows with devastating force. Absurd, deeply philosophical and startlingly original, Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author is a classic of the Modernist period.
Week 9 - Instinct by Jamie Wilkes
‘A dystopic vision of our past, present and future… with clowns’. So promises Jamie Wilkes’s Instinct. The play plunges us into a new world, charting the beginnings of mankind from its lightest to its darkest times up until the present day. An immersive comedy, Instinct seems set to consolidate the high standard of student written drama at York.
Doors open at 7.30 and tickets (£3.50/£4.50; members/non-members) are available on the door. Arrive early to avoid disappointment.
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