The Gifting: An Unreview
How Bad Weather Can Defeat Even The Most Determined Theatre-Goer
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a medical emergency. This year the drama was supplied by my tough-guy brother, who is never happier than when camping alone in the Arctic Circle or sailing his home-made dinghy around the Norfolk Broads in the company of some intrepid floozie strong enough to paddle.
But just before Christmas he noticed a rapidly growing lump on his upper arm. Of course I understood that, despite the ‘urgent’ doctor’s referral, it was unlikely to be anything serious. But the remaining doubt was terrifying and so the hunt was on, over the festive season, to get him in for a diagnostic ultrasound scan as soon as possible.
I’m not breaking any medical confidences here because after his appointment he announced cheerfully to all the people in the waiting room: “It’s okay, Liz. The doctor says it’s just a fatty lump. Kind of like a smooth globule.”
But the damage had been done. I’d taken my eye off the ball and, in my haste to reschedule The Gifting because of my brother’s appointment, I’d neglected to check on the weather.
The Gifting
And this was important because The Gifting, the grand finale in a year-long series of cultural happenings called Leeds 2023, was happening not in the centre of town but in some film studios on a South Leeds industrial estate. And my new tickets were for a date when the shuttle bus was not running.
But I was in a lipoma-not-sarcoma celebratory mood and happy to drag my brother into the Big Smoke for lunch and a show. So, the day after his reprieve from the jaws of death, we caught an early train (because the trains in the UK are unreliable) into Leeds from our home town on the flood plain and stared out of the window at the sheets of rainwater laying on the fields.
It was raining even harder when we got to the city. The mighty River Aire, which flows in canalised form directly under Leeds railway station, was in full (and deafening) spate. The industrial Gothic splendour of the Dark Arches, as always, was very much off-message for a hi-tech city with thriving a legal and financial sector. One could imagine staging a Dracula or a Frankenstein here.
When we emerged, two hours later, from our good lunch (there are some nice Italian places in the canal basin), it was still teeming. We are both advocates of the ‘correct clothing’ theory of bad weather. But this rain was of the type even outdoors people loathe — cold, blustery and into your face. And by now, it was getting dark.
But still I did not heed the writing on the wall. It was not the weather to pick our way on foot to the Versa Studios, so we dutifully took our place in the taxi queue outside the station.
And standing there we contemplated — our damp clothes, our wet socks, the preciptation bouncing off the roofs of the gleaming cabs, the wait outside the venue to be admitted, the long walk back into the centre of town and the likelihood of further train disruption due to flooding…
“Shall we bail?” I asked my brother, veteran of wild camping in the Tundra.
“Yes,” he said. “I think we should.”
Cosi Fan Tutte: FREE ticket
I had hoped to attend the upcoming press night of Opera North’s revival of Tim Albery’s classic 2004 production in the company of professional pianist Amy Butler. (Amy co-founded the Howdenshire Music Project with tenor Steve Goulden in the halcyon days before the pandemic when she and I were both working at the Press Association.)
But she has a gig that night. And now I have a spare ticket for Mozart’s preposterous comic opera on Friday February 2 at 7pm. The 2024 cast features Alexandra Lowe as Fiordiligi and Heather Lowe as Dorabella, with Anthony Gregory and Henry Neill as their duplicitous lovers Ferrando and Guglielmo. Clemens Schuldt and Chloe Rooke conduct.
If you’d like to come along instead of Amy, drop me a line — first-come-first-served. But, please, do bear in mind that a) there’s going to be rail travel disruption that weekend, and b) there’s likely to be more rain.
Cosi Fan Tutte is in repertoire at Leeds Grand Theatre Feb 2-23 (£16.50-£80.50) before travelling to Nottingham, Newcastle, Salford and Hull.
What’s On Feb 4-10
Breaking The Mould: The Story Of Alice Gostick
In the days before being an “influencer” meant showing off on the Internet, there was — Miss Gostick, a teacher at Castleford Secondary School. An astonishing number of notable artists came under her sway including pupils Henry Moore and Albert Wainwright. Who was Miss Gostick? Why was she so impactful? Empath Action Cic tell her story in Breaking The Mould: The Story of Alice Gostick at The Cluntergate Centre, Feb 10 & 11, Queen’s Mill, Feb 17 & 18, £5. Tickets via Wakefield Theatre Royal’s website.
Drop The Dead Donkey
Dated now, but very much on the button during the 1990s, Drop The Dead Donkey: The Reawakening! stops by briefly in Sheffield this week with original cast members. The show satirised 24-hour TV news, which back then people actually watched. For ageing aficionados only, but in the day we were legion. Lyceum, Feb 6-10, £15-£45, Grand Theatre, Leeds, Apr 9-13, £25-£75 plus nationally
Feel Me
What also makes me feel old is The Paper Birds. I remember them in the Noughties when they were just out of drama school. Now they’re “the UK’s leading devising verbatim theatre company”.
People are divided in their views of mass immigration. I take the unfashionable line that it is a destructive symptom of hyper-mobile global capitalism, and that no-one who genuinely cares about the lives of the vulnerable should be in favour of it. No matter. Feel Me’s real subject is empathy — why we feel it, why we don’t. Using live performance, film, projection, dance and interactive elements, the show checks in with audience members’ empathy levels at different stages in the performance via their phones. The Paper Birds (Jemma McDonnell and Kylie Perry) say one of their aims is to “start conversations” — so let’s do it. Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, Feb 7 & 8, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, February 27 & 28, plus nationally.
Beyond Caring
Alexander Zeldin’s devised play, originally staged in 2014 at London’s Yard Theatre, makes an interesting juxtoposition with Feel Me. It tells the story of cleaners in a meat factory working on zero hours contracts. Both The Guardian and the Financial Times called it “quietly devastating”. Hm. You can find it at theatre@41 Monkgate, York, Feb 6-10, £14
Boorish Trumpson
Meanwhile, over at Theatre Deli in Sheffield, LeCoq-trained Claire Perry puts clowning to good use in her intriguing solo show Boorish Trumpson. With a script composed partly of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson quotes, and some loaned-out musical instruments, she explores the part that physical humour — i.e. clowning — has played in their political careers. This is an acute observation and I’m impressed. Feb 8, £10 & £12, free to carers
Separate Tables
Terence Rattigan was, in today’s language, a cancelled writer. Up until the mid-1950s he was recognised as a great playwright. But then came the Angry Young Men like John Osborne, with their aggressively working-class kitchen-sink dramas, and he was perceived as outdated. His finely written Separate Tables, a tale of love and loss set in a shabby seaside hotel, is in the capable hands of York Settlement Community Players. Feb 8-17, £10 & £15.
And in the Main House, the York Light Opera Company is doing Alan Menken’s musical Disney: The Little Mermaid. Personally, I think Disney Corporation has a lot to answer for, but if you can stomach Disney princesses, there it is. Feb 7-17, £15 & £20
News
And finally, some interesting bits and pieces of Yorkshire drama-related news:
Sheffield Theatres claim a record audience of 53,000 people enjoyed 2023-24’s pantomime Beauty and the Beast, a co-production with Evolution Productions — and that 29,000 are already booked in for this year’s panto Snow White, opening on Friday 6 December 2024, with almost 50% of the tickets already sold. Anybody claiming that, post-Covid, theatre no longer has a popular audience should take a look at their own programming issues, because it clearly does have a popular audience.
Standing At The Sky’s Edge, Chris Bush’s musical drama set on Sheffield’s Park Hill Estate, opens in London’s West End on Feb 8. The show had its successful world premiere at Sheffield Crucible in 2019, and subsequently won Best New Musical at the 2023 Olivier Awards with Sheffield singer-songwriter, Richard Hawley and Tom Deering also winning Best Original Score and New Orchestrations. Previously it won the 2020 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Theatre and Best Musical Production at the 2019 UK Theatre Awards.
And, above all, congratulations to Gwyneth Hughes, the Tadcaster lass whose latest TV drama, Mr Bates Vs. The Post Office, has exploded like a bomb onto the UK political scene. Broadcast by ITV in four episodes, it tells the true story of the greatest miscarriage of justice in British history. Expected to run a more conventional thriller a poor second in the ratings game, this brilliantly written four-part serial has now been watched by at least 14.8 million furiously engaged people.
And that’s it for this week, folks. It’s great to be back and best wishes for 2024!
Liz x