Yorkshire Theatre Newsletter: What's On This Week (Jul 16-22)
Freedom Day... an anticlimax? Plus distance running in York, scandal sheets in Harrogate, a round-up of children's shows and the cautionary tale of a multi-coloured monkey...
A couple of days ago, Kwame Amoah Mensah from ITV News dropped me an email to ask if I would chat about the next stage of theatre’s reopening on July 19th.
This set me aflutter, wondering what I could possibly add to the thoughts of someone like, say, Henry Filloux-Bennett, artistic director at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield; or a practitioner like choreographer Lucy Hind at Slung Low.
Then I realised I did have something to offer: overview. I’m across a lot of venues, a lot of different types of theatre, and I have been for a long time.
Which set me to wondering: what would I tell ITV News about the mood of Yorkshire theatre now?
The answer, I think, is wary. There’s more stuff on - every week my ‘long list’ of shows to include in the Newsletter becomes more robust. The larger producing houses are all open in some fashion, even if they’re throwing their resources into open air or online options, but only the megaliths have chanced a big, indoor, summer, musical show.
I’m not …