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Articles
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2004 - Theatre in York and LeedsJ. D. Atkinson looks back.Dateline: 11th January, 2005Loyalty compels me to begin with my local theatre. 2004 was a good year for York's Theatre Royal, with strong main house productions including a new adaptation of Northanger Abbey, Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane and a typically lavish panto, Sleeping Beauty. The Studio offered two interesting new plays, Steve Trafford's A Cloud in Trousers and Patricia Cleveland Peck's The Cello and the Nightingale. Visiting productions included English Touring Theatre's unusually dark Twelfth Night, Oxford Stage Company's excellent revivals of Behan's shamefully neglected The Quare Fellow and David Storey's Home, and Asian Theatre School's thought-provoking Silent Cry by Madani Younis. Other productions in York included Actors of Dionysus' Hippolytus (I hope this admirable company will emerge from its "restructuring" intact) and Apricot Theatre's very striking cross-dressed Duchess of Malfi. In Leeds the West Yorkshire Playhouse hosted two memorable shows by Kneehigh Theatre, The Wooden Frock and an adaptation of The Bacchae (the latter being one of my picks of the year). Other visitors provided an object lesson in the art of adapting George Orwell for the theatre; Northern Stage Ensemble's physical theatre version of Animal Farm was a triumph, Homage to Catalonia an unmitigated stinker. Northern Broadsides' instantly forgettable Merchant of Venice fell far short of the company's usually high Shakespearian standards, but Richard Cameron's The Glee Club was a marvellous evocation of life in a 1960s mining town. Unfortunately I was unable to see many of last year's in-house productions at the WYP, but The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe failed to live up to expectations. Also in Leeds, Opera North served up a tasty dish of eight one-act works and a handsome new Cosi Fan Tutte. Their production of Orfeo ed Eurycide went down like a lead balloon at the Edinburgh Festival but Peter Lathan found much to admire in it at Newcastle. Northern Ballet Theatre's Dangerous Liaisons was a critical and popular success despite its reliance on a narrator to tell the complicated story, and the same company's Peter Pan was an enjoyable (if not altogether successful) dance version of J M Barrie's classic. All in all, 2004 was not a vintage year for the theatre. Few productions earned my four star rating, but on the other hand only one got the dreaded "Nul points" - yes, it was Homage to Catalonia! 2005 looks much more promising, at least on paper. I'm particularly looking forward to Ian Brown's production of A Doll's House at the WYP, Damian Cruden's new Macbeth at the Theatre Royal and Northern Broadsides' double bill of The Comedy of Errors and Sweet William, Alan Plater's new play about Shakespeare and his drinking companions. The prolific NBT will be back with a new dance version of La Traviata, and Opera North will be fielding Don Giovanni (set during the Spanish Civil War) and a semi-staged Duke Bluebeard's Castle. And let's not forget the Theatre Royal's Hobson's Choice, starring Berwick Kaler in a frock-free role!
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