This will be interesting… Wonder how involved the audience will get? Will they sit in ‘our side’ ‘your side’ groups created by themselves. Go along and see:

People Like us, written by acclaimed writers and journalists Julie Burchill and Jane Robins will be premiered at the Union Theatre this October.

Set in a North London book club, People Like Us follows five friends as they find themselves discussing the unavoidable topic of Brexit.  In the two years since the vote to leave, endless discussion has all but eradicated any middle ground. What remains is opposing views and the arguments which have strained relationships – can we only ever really be friends with people like us?

 Although written in support of the Leave campaign, People Like Us will uniquely provide an argument for both sides of the debate.  With theatre and the arts predominantly representing a single view of Brexit, this nuanced look presents the politics and views of both sides.

People Like Us looks at how politics and Brexit have invaded conversations, Burchill and Robins ask the question – can we only ever really be friends with people like us? And how far would you go to save your closest friendships from being pulled apart by political beliefs?  This is the question these friends must answer as the fight for the future of Europe.

People Like Us: Union Theatre, 204 Union Street, London SE1 0LX

Tuesday 2nd October – Saturday 20th October 2018, 7.30pm Press Night: Thursday 4th October 2018, 7.30pm

Performance Dates Tuesday 2nd – Saturday 20th October 2018, 7.30pm    Saturday matinees, 2.30pm

Running time  2 hours including interval tbc

Age recommendation  Ages 14+

Location  Union Theatre, Old Union Yard Arches, 229 Union Street, London SE1 0LX www.uniontheatre.biz    How to get there The nearest underground stations are Southwark (on the Jubilee line) or London Bridge (on the Jubilee line and Northern line). The nearest rail station is Waterloo or London Bridge.  Parking is available on Union Street after 6.30pm on weekdays and all day on weekends.

Twitter @TheUnionTheatre

Box Office Tickets are available from the Union Theatre Box Office and www.uniontheatre.biz or 020 7261 9876 from £22.50.

at Gray’s Inn Hall, London

“This production has managed to create a hilarious Dogberry!”

Last year I praised Antic Disposition’s production of Richard III at The Temple Church in London. This year’s tour is the comedy Much Ado About Nothing – on paper an easier affair, perhaps, yet this play has always had three factors that can make or break the show: the chemistry between Beatrice and Benedick; the gulling scene; and Dogberry and his troop.

Co-directors Ben Horslen and John Risebero have set the piece in the village square of Messina, in rural France. WW2 has just finished and there is a joyous atmosphere. British troops are passing through and all seems well in the world. This however creates the potential for accents: the locals are French, after all. Much of Dogberry’s speeches are French gibberish and set the tone perfectly.

Beatrice (played by Chiraz Aïch) and Benedick (Nicholas Osmond) are a striking pair and as the action proceeds they warm into their roles. Aïch, for me, sadly preferring angry passion to diction near the climax, but they make a fine and believable couple.

The gulling scenes are inventive, using the cafe scenario for their staging, but did not fulfill their promise. They could, I am sure, have pushed the comic potential a little further. Still funny, though.

This production has managed to create a hilarious Dogberry! So many versions don’t quite know how to portray the clowns. To make Dogberry (brilliantly played by Louis Bernard) as the cafe owner who is basically there throughout, actually manages to give Dogberry a genuine and truthful setting which he so often lacks. His assistants, who are just as stupid as he, are a joy to behold. Accordion-playing Verges (Scott Brooks) has great fun being the deadpan accomplice. Bernard’s inspiration is Jacques Tati and it works a treat.

The whole company are a tightly-knit ensemble are take us through a cleverly edited version of the play. Antic Disposition are in their comfort zone here: Shakespeare in an unusual historic venue. The audience delight in their antics and the whole performance has a light touch. Praiseworthy indeed.

Photographer  Scott Rylander

Producer         Antic Disposition

Directors         Ben Hoslen and John Risebero

Designer         John Risebero

Composer       Nick Barstow

Venue             Gray’s Inn Hall, London WC1R 5ET

Performances Until September 1st

Times              7.30pm Tuesday to Saturday – Saturday Matinees at 3pm

Tickets            £30-£45 (under 26s £10 off)

Box Office       www.much-ado.co.uk and 0333 666 3366

Running Time 2hrs 10, including an interval

Twitter             @anticdispo

Instagram       @anticdispo

Facebook        /anticdisposition

The winner of the ADHD Foundation Partnership Award in 2017, Art with Heart returns with a brand new tour of Declaration, a comic and candid look at Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.

Developed in consultation with medical professionals and mental health support groups, Declaration challenges the stereotypes of mental health and gender in the 21^st century.

Declaration is a vibrant and daring adventure of school day survival tactics, super-hero alter-egos and the stumbling blocks to self-acceptance.  Filled with great tunes, dancing and humour, Declaration is an upbeat autobiographical piece about the challenges Sarah Emmott faced as she sought diagnosis in her 30s.

Instinctive, curious, bold and bouncy, Sarah is a mighty proud square peg – which wouldn’t be such a problem if the hole wasn’t so damn round.  Her childhood doctor thought it was sugar.  Her current doctor thinks its ADHD. Sarah still feels different, so what will a label do? Declaration is a vibrant and daring adventure of school day survival tactics, super-hero alteregos and the stumbling blocks to self-acceptance.

Performance Dates  Tuesday 12th October – Thursday 22nd November 2018

Running Time   70 minutes   Box Office Tickets are available from individual theatre box office. See www.artwithheart.org.uk 

Twitter  @artwith_heart, #ADHDeclaration

With the A level results just in, a poem to enlighten, or perhaps warn, all  ‘packhorses’ (and indeed lecturers) as they help deliver their off-spring to their halls or residence: by Milly Adams, author of The Waterway Girls series (Arrow)

In the Corridor of a College Lodgings by Milly Adams

‘Who’s this?’ the lecturer asked my daughter.

She said, all bare midriff with tattoo peeping,

‘Only Mum. She’s carrying my plants,

Helping to move me in.’

‘Hello, Mum,’ he said, not looking, just

Brushing

The leaves of the ornamental fig as he passed.

A plant, my daughter felt, would make her room

Look familiar, lived in. ‘Like you,’ she’d joked.

At her doorway I placed it in her arms,

But it was his bustling back I watched

As he turned this way and that

Distributing greetings to other beasts of

Burden.

Not waiting for their replies, either.

I called, too loud perhaps, ‘My name is

Rosemary.

I usually wear stiletto shoes, and pink jackets.

When not camouflaged as a removal man

I have cycled the Alps for charity. If you’d

Looked

You’d have seen highlights in my hair.

I belly dance and have a name.

My name, again, is Rosemary.’

‘Way to go, Mum,’ my daughter whooped,

And up and down the corridor’s length and

Breadth

Plants. laptops and kindles were handed

Over.

Students were kissed with love. And left.

‘Yes, we have names,’ we all said.

As thoughts of achievements big and small

Lent wings to trainers. ‘And places to go. And

Lives to live.

Fashion statements to make, and parameters

To break.’

Goodbye, Lecturer,’ we smiled, as we passed by.

Hope on the Waterways, the final in the Waterway Girls series, is published on 20th September.

The Waterway Girls, and Love on the Waterways are available now. 

.

Frost Magazine’s has learned with great pleasure that the Words for the Wounded’s recent winner of the Young Adult Fiction Georgina Hawtrey-Woore Award, Oliver Eade (with The Kelpie’s Eyes) has done it again. He has won the Segora one-act Play Competition 2018 with The Other Cat.

Fiona Frazer was placed second with Gloop.

The judge, Gordon Simms says: It has been such a pleasure to read this year’s entries, including as they did a wide range of themes and styles. Radio and television plays as well as some that would lend themselves to film came in alongside stage plays to make an intriguing mix.

Gordon Simms has been a Head of English, Head of Performing Arts and a Drama Advisor. He has written several full-length and one-act plays. His ten-minute play Zero Contract was presented in August 2017 at theCharroux Literary Festival where he led a workshop on writing ten-minute plays. He goes on to say:  I was struck by the quality of dialogue in many entries. If substance was a little short in some examples, at least the dialogue was entertaining and convincing.

So close was my decision that I felt I could not ‘abandon’ either, so rather than share first prize I have introduced a second. This addition also reflects the largest number of entries yet received in this section of our competitions.
Once again the judging experience has been informative and uplifting, and I thank again all those who entered to make it so.

Oliver Eade: The Kelpie’s Eyes. 

Words for the Wounded

Rob Keeley is the 2nd place winner in the WforW Georgina Hawtrey-Woore Award for Independent Authors: Fiction for Young Adults Category with his sharp and evocative novel High Spirits.

No one ever thinks I have a real job.  One thing I’m asked all the time as an author – even by friends – is what I do all day.  I list everything that goes into writing, producing and promoting a book, and tell them I’m always at my desk by nine (earlier if possible) and there until five.  They never believe me.

For the last four years much of my working life has centred on the ghostly time-travelling adventures of Ellie, the main character in my Spirits novels.  Having written books based around the Victorian, Georgian and medieval eras, with High Spirits I wanted to explore modern history.  I was keen to advance Ellie from upper primary age to teenager, and to show how her life had moved on since her accidental altering of history in The Sword of the Spirit.  She is now a young adult herself, with a crush on a young man called Luke, and her family situation has been turned on its head.

High Spirits could have told a very different story.  I always planned to send Ellie back to Inchwood Manor (where the series began in Childish Spirits), but I was originally going to set the book in the Second World War, with Ellie time-travelling to 1940.  There, she would have become mixed up with the evacuees mentioned in Childish Spirits, while being haunted by the ghost of an RAF officer who had been billeted at Inchwood.

A rethink was needed.  I realised there had already been many books for young people about evacuees, and I felt there weren’t many ways to make this into a ghost story.  Instead I turned to researching the abdication crisis of 1936, and the lives of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.  I decided we would not actually meet them, but two shaping-changing ghosts impersonating them sounded like a lot of fun, offering potential for drama as well as humour and social commentary.  I felt it would be unusual and original to revisit this period in a YA novel, and since it saw a rise in racism, anti-Semitism and right-wing activity, it seemed a worryingly appropriate subject for today.  Young people are taught in schools that the British were the automatic good guys in World War Two, and may not realise how many people in this country in the 1930s supported Hitler.  It was a good time to open their eyes.

I kept the RAF officer and made him a ghost from the future, warning of the coming war.  Add in Ellie, the other regular characters and Viewpoint, the government’s ghostly watchdog, and we had a story!  The threat of a Nazi Britain could also be continued into the final book in the series, The Coming of the Spirits, and it’s here we’ll pick up with Ellie when that book is published.

I’d like to thank the judges of the Georgina Hawtrey-Woore Award, and I hope that children, young adults and older adults will enjoy my book.

Rob’s books are available from www.amazon.co.uk 

Learn more about Rob on his website: www.robkeeley.co.uk 
Twitter: @RobKeeleyAuthor 

 http://www.authorhotline.com/robkeeley

www.wordsforthewounded.co.uk 

Images used with the permission of Robert Keeley

“A wonderful evening’s entertainment”

Ingredients: use a famous storyline, employ seven actors, put into an unusual location. Mix them together, adding a handful of joie de vivre with a splash of sword-fighting and a pinch of pantomime. Et Voilà! A wonderful evening’s entertainment.

This is the third time I have seen Iris Theatre this year. The brilliant new musical H.R.Haitch was followed by the disappointing production of The Tempest. But Daniel Winder’s company are back on form with this 17th Century romp.

The play has eight scenes and it is a promenade performance – so the audience are shuffled around the gardens and into the church, but director Paul-Ryan Carberry’s brilliant ensemble of actors keep the pace up to such a high degree that the play whizzes by, even though it is of Shakespearean length, coming in at over two and a half hours.

The story we think we know is given a contemporary twist: d’Artagnan is a woman in disguise and, along with the baddie of the piece, Milady de Winter, the two ladies present opposite sides of the same coin – both struggling as strong women in a crazy male world. Jenny Horsthuis plays d’Artagnan, Ailsa Joy plays Milady. The rest of the strong and energetic cast play a range of parts with the ebullient Stephen Boyce playing four characters.

Albert de Jongh, Elliot Liburd and Matt Stubbs play the Musketeers and also double up as Lord Buckingham, the King of France and Cardinal Richelieu respectively. This sumptuous dish was then topped off by Bethan Rose Young playing Constance and the Queen of France – as well as a joyous variety of pub landladies!

It ticks all the boxes, sadly let down by the acoustics in the final scene: the denouement slightly lost as, amidst the sword fighting, the characters’ speeches are simultaneously fighting against the church’s cavernous interior.

This is certainly a piece of theatre that the children in the audience enjoyed as much as the adults. A young boy, standing on a bench, exclaiming ‘Will someone tell me what’s going on?’ during a battle scene, did not diminish his, or our, enjoyment…

Photography:  Nick Rutter

Producer:        Iris Theatre

Director:          Paul-Ryan Carberry

Composer:      Nick Hart

Designer:        Abby&Alice

Venue:            St Paul’s Church, Bedford Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9ED

Dates:             Running until Sunday 2nd September 2018

Times:             2.30pm and 7.30pm – check booking website for exact performance schedule

Booking:          www.iristheatre.com

Tickets:           £20 (children under 16 are £14)

The White Rose Book Cafe have their hands full as August cools and September and October hove into sight.

The Art of Reading by Damon Young is a celebratory tribute to the power of one of our must undervalued skills – an ideal gift for the avid reader. ‘An engaging enquiry into the transformative power of reading: Melissa Harrison, author of Rain.

Tel: 01845 524353 to reserve a signed copy of the book. A Free Event.

Ripon Festival in September

White Rose BookCafe is delighted to host a couple of events in association with Ripon International Festival.

Tickets are available at the bookshop.

Kate Atkinson: 14th September. Tickets £10 each (student £5) – £5 off the purchase of the book ‘Transcription’

Salley Vickers – 9th September at 2.30  Tickets £7 each

Tickets also from the Festival website where further details can be obtained.

http:www.riponinternationalfestival.com

Books can be reserved at the bookshop

And also, – a roll of drums if you please, maestro – two of my favourite ‘lads’:

The stars of Channel 5’s The Yorkshire Vet will be talking about their books. I’ve read and loved Julian’s so am thrilled to see a third, and having listened to Peter’s whimsical humour it’ll be a good one – who can forget him cornering the cat, I was on the floor laughing, just as much as he was, on the floor I mean, not  laughing.

Julian you can meet in September, date to be advised, and Peter’s book is launched in October, and the party will be at – roll of drums… White Rose BookCafe 18th  October.Author  Milly Adams aka author  Margaret Graham, who will be a new resident of Thirsk by then, will be there, notebook in hand to report on it for the international Frost Magazine.

(Images courtesy of White Rose BookCafe)

Milly Adams is the author of The Waterway Girls series (Arrow)