Just a quickie with … Dick Turpin: The Celebrity Highwayman, a new verdict from new York company Off Kilter Theatre

IN a summer break from drama school, York actors Chris Lakin, Sam McAvoy and Pip Barclay are to perform a 50-minute piece at the Richard III Museum, Monk Bar. It looks at the different Dick Turpins: the mythological version, created 100 years after his death, and the actual Richard Turpin, who turns out to be very different.

Chris, 20, and Sam, 19, fresh from their second year at LAMDA, and Birmingham School of Acting student Pip, 19, have devised the play with 22-year-old York writer Annie Hodson, who graduated in American Studies from Birmingham University this summer and now works in the Theatre Royal café.

Through storytelling, music by McAvoy, swordplay and “endearingly terrible horse impressions”, the show will seek out the truth behind the legend and examine Turpin through the prism of today’s celebrity-obsessed society.

Dashing hero or violent thug, the dandy Dick met his end in York on April 19 1739, hanged on the Tyburn, leaping to his death in the hangman’s noose dressed in a white suit. Now Off Kilter Theatre dig up his old bones once more, as Charles Hutchinson learns from Chris Lakin and Annie Hodson.

What was your starting point, Annie?

“Turpin is shown as this romantic figure by William Harrison Ainsworth in the books from 100 years after his death, which immortalised the ride from London to York in one night on Black Bess, though even if it’s true, that ride was by Swift Nick, not Turpin.

“So we’ve been looking at how un-heroic most of Turpin’s life was.”

And just how un-heroic was he, Chris?

“When we first started talking about what sort of show we wanted to do, my first image came from Black Adder with all that romanticism, which wasn’t at all scary, but in reality Richard Turpin started in the Essex Gang, which was very brutal, and after they got split up, he became a highwayman who would torture people to get information out of them.”

How quickly has this show come together, given that you have all had college and university commitments, Chris?

“We did all our research before, so we could get on our feet straightaway for the script, and we started by looking at themes that interested us like the concept of superheroes and a child’s concept of child’s play, which then becomes serious when they poke someone’s eye out.

“We then devised the show with Annie, in which Sam will play one version of Dick Turpin, who pretended to be John Palmer once he came to Yorkshire.”

What form does the show take, Chris?

“It’s quite a physical piece of storytelling; rather than having a set and costumes it’s a more abstract representation of his life story, where we play with what’s true and what’s merely legend. It starts with two people, played by me and Pip, at a séance where the spirit of Dick Turpin is raised, and they then question him and taunt him and re-enact his life.

“Between us, we play various characters from Turpin’s life as well these two figures interrogating him.”

In looking at fame and the modern parallels to be drawn, what do you conclude, Annie?

“I think fame was the curse of its time back then too. It’s interesting that it was the more negative people who were glamorised at that time, like Turpin was in pamphlets.

“Essentially Turpin was a violent thug, just like any common criminal, and yet he has taken on this romantic status and that’s because people want glamour and excitement in whatever form.”

Stick the knife in, Chris…

“The truth is Turpin was very pock-marked and only 5ft 9, which was quite tall for his time, but you imagine him as this 6ft tall, handsome figure, yet in fact he was something of a coward, who had this alias where he didn’t even take much care over his back story.”

• Off Kilter Theatre presents Dick Turpin: The Celebrity Highwayman at Richard III Museum, Monk Bar, York, from August 16 to 24 at 8pm and 9.15pm. Tickets are available on 01904 623568, online at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk and on the door from 30 minutes before each show.

• See Off Kilter Theatre’s Facebook page where rehearsal footage, interviews and progress reports are uploaded regularly.