SELBY Town Hall's season of spoken word and theatre shows, to complement the music and comedy line-ups, will bring pain, loss and violence in its first show on September 26.
The Other Half links together "the lifeblood of crime fiction and the dark seam that runs through the very best country music", wherein writer Mark Billingham and country duo My Darling Clementine combine in a night of story and song built around Marcia, a former Las Vegas showgirl.
She works double shifts in a rundown Memphis bar, living vicariously through her customers and the everyday tragedies of people falling in and out of love. Serving beer and burgers as their very different stories unfold, Marcia reflects on her single, doomed shot at happiness, but one day she receives a phone call that changes everything "The Other Half is an original story written and told by Crime Thriller Hall of Fame inductee Mark Billingham, author of the best-selling Tom Thorne crime novel series," says Chris Jones, Selby Town Council's arts officer.
"It's soundtracked by the powerful and poignant songs of internationally acclaimed Americana duo My Darling Clementine, comprised of former Good Sons singer Michael Weston King and Elvis Costello collaborator Lou Dalgleish."
After a West End run of their hit show The Trials Of Oscar Wilde, the European Arts Company return with an adaptation of Wilde’s only novel, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, that will visit Selby on October 29 with its combination of drawing-room comedy and Gothic horror.
The setting is the decadent world of Victorian London, where a beautiful, narcissistic young man becomes infatuated by the exquisite portrait that Basil Hallward has painted of him, whereupon he makes a Faustian pact that he will remain forever young while the picture grows old.
Peter Craze's production marks the 125th anniversary of the story's publication in Lippincott's Magazine in 1890 in a stage adaptation by Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, and John O'Connor, who collaborated on The Trials Of Oscar Wilde last year.
Arletty Theatre in Swan Canaries
In Swan Canaries, on December 5, Arletty Theatre will depict the camaraderie between women from a small village working together for the good of the country during the First World War.
In June 1918, Polly Barton starts shifts in shell-filling factory number six. Her fiancé, Jacky, is on the frontline as she works with his mother, the rambunctious Rose Hill, and her sister Liza under the supervision of Polly’s old Sunday school teacher, Mary Maguire. It is as if their tiny village community has been uprooted to labour in the biggest munitions factory in England; the work is exhausting, the hours long, but they are paid only 30 shillings a week.
Sing-songs and sports keep up their morale as these four women find a new sense of purpose as the Chilwell Canary Girls, despite the horrors in far-off fields, until the terrible day the war comes to Chilwell.
Imogen Joyce, Ria Ashcroft, Hannah Stone and Angela Warren perform a moving and uplifting play that won the Best Theatre Production award at the 2014 Buxton Fringe. Based on real events, complete with comedy and songs from the era, Swan Canaries is at turns humorous, thought provoking and harrowing.
Doors open at 7.30pm for each 8pm show. Tickets are on sale on 01757 708449 or at selbytownhall.co.uk
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