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The premise of 'Keys to the Kingdom' is that York's fabric is held together by an invisible world, which is composed of different guilds for different jobs. During the drama, the audience travels to three different sites in and around the gardens, meeting the guilds who, variously, keep the buildings upright, the earth from crumbling and the sky from falling down. At times, the audience is required to join in with the acting, be it by holding the ropes that keep York together or keeping the city's precious buildings in place.
There was an obvious effort to make the play as at home in the gardens as possible, with all the names of the characters originating from places in York and frequent references to the city. The performers were all from a local youth theatre group and aged around sixteen. This gave the play an organic feel and helped you to believe that the story had not been written but discovered.
A performance as unusual as this runs the risk of becoming too pleased with itself but my favourite thing about this play was its lack of pretention. Hurford has a dry sense of humour and a light touch with characterisation. The guild who held the sky up, for example, were other-worldly without being pathetic. Equally, the earth guild were humourous and boisterous without being crude northern 'grim' types.
The writing was enhanced by the play's young actors, who delivered the simple story with enthusiasm and an obvious joy for what they were doing. Admittedly, this did mainly seem to be because they got to boss the audience around during the show's participative elements but I thought this added to the fun.
Despite the wonderful imagination of the writing and acting, the play was upstaged by the Museum Gardens, which, if beautiful by day, are stunning by night. It was a very cold evening when I went and there were puddles on the ground but neither detracted from the setting's obvious beauty, which is shown superbly by the sensitive lighting that has been rigged there.
All in all, I thoroughly recommend 'Keys to the Kingdom'. It is a simple yet beautiful production with charm and warmth by the bucketload. It even makes York's cold and dark nights seem magical. So: put on some sensible shoes, make yourself a flask of tea and head to the Museum Gardens.
Keys to the Kingdom is running twice every evening, at 7pm and 8pm, until Saturday. Tickets are £3 and are available from the York Theatre Royal Box Office, 01904 623568 or the theatre website.
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