March - Issue 43
Busy month ahead at New plays break the ice of mental health the YMCA Theatre
by Dave Barry
SCARBOROUGH’S YMCA Theatre is going to be busy over the next month. Coming up are two dance shows, Robert Schmuck as Billy Joel, an American musical and Irish country music artist Derek Ryan. The Benson Stage Academy will present Junior Showbusiness 2017 at the YMCA tonight and tomorrow (3/4 March), at 7.15pm. It’s in aid of the NSPCC. Rowlies Academy of Dance present the YMCA’s next show, at 2pm on 19 March. Local singer and musician Robert Schmuck is producing One Night of Billy Joel, on 25 March at 7.30pm. Robert will perform Joel’s hits including Uptown Girl, Piano Man, Just the Way You Are, River of Dreams, She’s Always a Woman, The Longest Time and We Didn’t Start the Fire. He will be backed by a band comprised of
Robert Schmuck
local musicians Ralph Alder on sax, Andy Crofts on drums, Mark Gordon on keyboards, Dan Robinson on lead guitar, Alastair James on guitar and percussion and Chris Lea on bass guitar. The Jukes are planning “a landmark allAmerican musical stage show” called Down at the Diner on 31 March, at 7.30pm. The Jukes are described as four “highly accomplished” and “immaculately turned out” vocalists. The show is set in Britain in the late 1960s, when four working lads discover a shared passion for rock ‘n’ roll and dream about making it big in the USA. Derek Ryan, at the YM at 8pm on 1 April, is billed as “one of country music’s leading entertainers”. He performs self-penned material and a sprinkling of country classics. Derek has had “two Irish number-one albums, sell-out shows at home and abroad and fistfuls of music awards to his name including entertainer of the year, album of the year and best live performer”, according to his promoter. “But he is perhaps proudest of the awardwinning recognition for his songwriting abilities at the Sunday World and Irish country music awards”. n Tickets can be booked online at tiny.cc/ ymcatheatre and by ringing 506750.
by Dave Barry
PUBLIC perceptions of mental health are being challenged in a project called Breaking the Ice. Scarborough’s Beach Hut Theatre is putting on seven new plays examining the everyday problems of people living with depression, anxiety and other emotional difficulties. SnOwQuEeN, an urban fantasy musical, will reinterpret Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen at the old parcels office at the railway station. It’s about a young man from Leeds who is on the run. But he can’t run from himself and now, in Scarborough, he’s at the end of the line and meets some quirky characters. Co-written by John Pattison and Alison Watt, and designed by Michael Roberts, it considers the social isolation caused by depression in young adults. On 22 April, SuDdEn ThAwS, six short plays by local writers, can be seen for free in the library’s main lending area. Under the direction and dramaturge of Alison Watt, the mood-boosting stories touch upon social phobias, insomnia, self-harming in young people, eating disorders, dementia and general anxiety disorder in moving and comic ways. Designed by artist Helen Birmingham, the plays will run repeatedly between 10am
and 2pm. Alison said: “This project seeks to break the ice and get conversations started around the common mental health conditions that can have an impact on us all. “In SuDdEn ThAwS, we have a wonderful mix of stories which have been carefully researched by a group of talented local writers. “Take the time to meet the fridge whose sole ambition in life is to help others chill out, or calm yourself in a forest of stories with a good friend, or maybe follow the adventures of someone just trying to get a good night’s sleep”. SnOwQuEeN runs from 29 March to 1 April at 7pm daily plus 1.30pm matinee on the Saturday. Tickets cost £8 (concession £6) and can be purchased at Woodend, on the door and by ringing 384500. As part of this site-specific theatre performance, the audience are invited to wear winter clothes and take a blanket to stay warm and become part of the experience. Breaking the Ice is a partnership between Beach Hut Theatre and the library, co-funded by Arts Council England and Stronger Communities. It draws on the Reading Agency’s Reading Well scheme on common mental health conditions.
The cast of SnOwQuEeN
Beach Hut Theatre rehearse in the library
Derek Ryan
Choir prepares for church concert
Crime writer tells secrets of her poisoned pen Words and photo by Dave Barry
Most of the choir, pictured with conductor Bill Scott at South Cliff Methodist Church, where they rehearse on Wednesday evenings (to order photos ring 353597)
Words and photo by Dave Barry SCARBOROUGH Community Choir’s annual concert with the 40-piece Sandside Orchestra is at Westborough Methodist Church tomorrow (Saturday 4 March). Entitled Stage and Screen, it will follow a similar format to last year’s Trial by Jury / Rhapsody in Blue collaboration, but with music from the cinema and theatre. Frank James will perform the first movement of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto, featured in the movie Brief Encounter. The 100-voice choir will perform the haunting melody If I Fell from the Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night and music by Rodgers & Hammerstein and Andrew Lloyd-Webber. The second half of the show will feature Sandside Players’ abridged version of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado, which was performed at the library and in Wykeham in November. Set in a seaside town, it has been written by Chris Gray, who will reprise his role as Pish Tush. Tim Tubbs, reviving his role as Ko Ko, will
perform the List song, topically revised by Dave Blaker as close to the performance time as possible. The tuneful score is packed with popular songs including The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring, Tit-Willow, A More Humane Mikado, The Sun Whose Rays and A Wand’ring Minstrel. The cast includes many well-known local performers: Lesley Machen as Yum-Yum, Hilary Watts as Nanki-Poo, Tony Kirby as the Mikado, Kathryn Irwin as Katisha and Dave Blaker as Pooh-Bah, along with Chris Gray, Kate Boddy, Damon Hotchin, Monica Hindle, Helen Dent and Louise Stanway. Mr Scott says: “After last’s years concert and performance of Trial by Jury, we have had many requests to perform more Gilbert & Sullivan music in its true orchestral form. I hope this version will contrast with our pocket November production but still retain all its humour and style”. The concert is due to begin at 7pm. Tickets cost £5.
SCARBOROUGH crime writer Kate Evans is to give a talk at Derwent Valley Bridge Community Library in West Ayton on Thursday 9 March, at 7pm. Kate, a writer for over 30 years, will describe the key elements which make up a crime novel and trace the growth of the genre, from the earliest crime novels through its golden age to modern times. Her interactive talk will be illustrated with recorded extracts from various novels.
“Kate excels at character driven crime novels that vividly evoke their windswept Scarborough setting”, according to fellow author Jaq Kate Evans Hazell. n Tickets cost £3, including refreshments, and can be bought at the library. Booking is advisable – ring 863052.
Conservative societies loom large in films
by Dave Barry
CATE BLANCHETT and Rooney Mara give riveting performances in Carol, which Scarborough Film Society is screening tonight (3 Mar). Their characters’ love is forbidden by the strait-jacketed society they inhabit, 1950s USA. Blanchett plays an elegant divorcing woman who falls for a doe-eyed shop assistant. The society’s next offering, the Oscar-nominated Mustang (17 Mar), is about five teenage sisters who start to test their sexuality, in a conservative community in Turkey. Their elders want to marry them off and imprison them until marriage deals are brokered. Films are
shown at the library, starting at 7.30pm. The society’s season continues with The Brand New Testament (7 Apr), Our Little Sister (21 Apr), Macbeth (5 May) and Victoria (19 May).
Mustang