Yorkshire Theatre Newsletter: What's On This Week (Jun 18-24)
Dog days, Southern dramas and twilight in Imperial Hong Kong... Theatre critic Liz Ryan considers the best of this week's shows.
Last weekend was enlivened by a trip to Scarcroft Allotments in York to watch Mikron Theatre perform A Dog’s Tale. I wasn’t entirely without nerves. Living in the Lower Derwent Valley, just north of the Humberhead Levels, I'm rarely called upon to do either a parallel reverse park or a hill start — and I suspected that parking in Scarcroft would involve both.
It did! I managed fine but I bet I’m not the only one who’s lost driving confidence over the past year.
As for A Dog’s Tale, written by Mikron mentee Poppy Hollman — it was definitely worth lugging a cooler bag and one of my mother’s old picnic chairs down fashionable Scarcroft Road to see. It was a well-judged show, robust enough to withstand the random interventions of distant traffic, teenagers on bikes and even (briefly at the start) an electric strimmer. Yet it was presented without any kind of technical support except what the actor-musicians could achieve themselv…