CITY Screen, York, will play host to Tony and Richard Bracewell, producer and director of Bill (PG), on Sunday evening when they will take questions after the 6pm screening of their knockabout Shakespeare comedy.

Shot at York Minster, Skipton Castle and Selby Abbey, as well as at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, their humorous imagining of what really happened in Shakespeare’s “lost years” takes the form of a British family adventure-comedy, wherein hopeless lute player Bill Shakespeare leaves his family and home to follow his dreams.

York Press:

Matthew Baynton as Bill Shakespeare and Martha Howe-Douglas as Anne Hathaway in Bill. Picture: Nick Wall

While travelling the kingdom in search of fame and fortune, along the way Bill encounters murderous kings, spies, lost loves and a plot to blow up Queen Elizabeth I.

Former Horrible Histories co-stars Ben Willbond and Laurence Rickard have penned the screenplay and six of the Horrible Histories troupe take major parts in a film supported by funding from Screen Yorkshire and the BFI.

Matthew Baynton plays Bill Shakespeare; Simon Farnaby, the Earl of Croydon; Martha Howe-Douglas, Anne Hathaway; Jim Howick, Christopher Marlowe; Ben Willbond, King Phillip II of Spain, and Helen McCrory, Queen Elizabeth I.

Further roles go to Laurence Rickard as Sir Francis Walsingham; Damian Lewis as Sir Richard Hawkins; Rufus Jones, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Justin Edwards, Sir Francis Drake.

York Press:

York Minster welcomes Bill to the city. Picture: Nick Wall

Dave Taylor, City Screen's marketing manager, says: "It's going to be great to have both the producer and the director of Bill to speak at City Screen, and I must thank one of our best customers, Steve Jack, in arranging their visit to York to do so."

Tickets can be booked at the Coney Street cinema's box office or on 0871 902 5726 or at picturehouses.co.uk

York Press:

The Bill film crew at work at York Minster. Picture: Nick Wall