Midge and Lenny’s past, a G & S favourite, lifetime friendships, Rozi’s journeys, Bronte poems, a little whale, a satirical train journey, a cabaret fundraiser and a piano lunch fill CHARLES HUTCHINSON’s diary

Eighties revival of the week

Midge Ure & Band Electronica, The 1980 Tour, Vienna & Visage, Grand Opera House, York, Monday, 8pm

FOR the first time in four decades, Ultravox’s 1980 album, Vienna, will be performed in its entirety by frontman Midge Ure and Band Electronica, complemented by highlights from Visage’s debut album, as Ure recalls the year when he co-wrote, recorded and produced the two future-sounding records.

Opera of the week

York Opera in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Gondoliers, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday

YORK Opera stage G&S’s The Gondoliers for the third time, after a Joseph Rowntree Theatre production in 1979 and Theatre Royal show in 2006.

Musical director Alasdair Jamieson and stage director Pauline Marshall are at the helm again, working with a happy mix of youth and experience, led by John Soper as the Duke of Plaza Toro, Rebecca Smith as his Duchess and soprano Alexandra Mather as their daughter Casilda.

Knight of the week

An Evening With Lenny Henry: Who Am I, Again?, York Barbican, Tuesday, 7.30pm

COINCIDING with his autobiography, Sir Lenny takes his audience through a jam session of funny and sad memories and stories about growing up in the Black Country, puberty, school, friendship, family secrets and unashamed racism.

Post-interval, he will be interviewed by friend, broadcaster and author Jon Canter for further insights into his life and career, followed by a question-and-answer session.

Friendship of the week

Box Of Tricks in Under Three Moons, York Theatre Royal Studio, Tuesday, 7.45pm

SPANNING half a lifetime, Daniel Kanaber’s Under Three Moons takes place on three nights across three decades as two friends drink, smoke, crack jokes and kill time.

From a school trip to France as teenagers, to a surf shack in their twenties, to Christmas in their thirties, Michael (Kyle Rowe) and Paul (Darren Kuppan) go from boyhood to manhood to fatherhood in a new play about how men relate to each other today; who we are and how we live... and the spaces between.

Travel show of the week

Rozi Plain, The Crescent, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm

ON her return to The Crescent, off-kilter Clapton singer-songwriter Rozi Plain showcases her experimental, beguiling latest album, What A Boost.

The songs were inspired and informed by travel, movement and motion, encountering differing people and different places and the joy of journeying as she toured the world for a year playing bass for This Is The Kit.

Children’s show of the week

The Storm Whale, Pocklington Arts Centre, Wednesday, 6pm

LITTLE Angel, York Theatre Royal and Engine House present a show for four year olds and upwards based on Benji Davies’s The Storm Whale and The Storm Whale In Winter.

Noi lives with his dad and six cats by the sea. One summer’s day, with his dad busy at work, Noi rescues a beached little whale, and so begins a life-changing friendship.

Bronte celebration of the week

The Unthanks, National Centre for Early Music, York, Wednesday,7.30pm

PREMIERED at Leeds Town Hall last December, The Emily Bronte Song Cycle is being toured by The Unthanks this autumn as North Eastern sisters Rachel and Becky and Yorkshire-born composer Adrian McNally delve into Emily’s darkly passionate world in folk settings of ten poems to mark her 200th birthday.

The Unthanks’ recordings on Emily’s cabinet piano at The Parsonage in Haworth completed their Lines trilogy of records inspired by female writers. Songs from the first two will feature too.

Crime scene of the week

LipService in Strangers On A Train Set, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Wednesday, 7.30pm; Thursday, 1.30pm, 7.30pm

SUBLIMELY silly satirical duo Lip Service, alias York’s Maggie Fox and Lancashire’s Sue Ryding, go off the rails in their 21st show, replete with projections and train sets.

Irene Sparrow, inventor of the left-handed crochet hook, finds herself under suspicion of murder after she challenges a youth to turn his music down and the train emerges from a tunnel with the young man dead. This is no ordinary train, however. Each passenger is reading a book, and each book is a portal into a parallel universe of train-related crime fiction.

Comedy fundraiser of the week

The Crescent Cabaret, The Crescent, York, Thursday, doors, 6.45pm; turns from 7.30pm

FROM the team behind West Yorkshire’s Cabaret Saltaire, agent to the stars Squinty McGinty presents an evening of musical comedy variety in a working men’s club style in aid of St Leonard’s Hospice

On the bill will be Maynard Flip Flap’s visual comedy stunts; apocalyptic songstress Precious Cleaver; mind reader Harrison Richards; punk-folk accordionist with issues Hattie Hatstar; disco-dancing uke band Ukulele Sunshine Revival; “speed artist” BishBash Bosch; semi-retired song-and-dance man Billy Button and jumping, jiving spinning troupe York Lindy.

Lunch recital of the week

Adam Heron, York Unitarians’ Last Fridays Lunchtime Concert, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, Friday, 12.30pm

HOW fitting that pianist Adam Heron, who opened the 2019 lunchtime concert season with duet partner Aida Lahlou, should be closing the series with a solo performance of Mozart, Bach and Brahms works.

Born in Hong Kong of Nigerian-Filipino descent, Heron was a keyboard category finalist in the 2018 BBC Young Musician competition and is now studying at the Royal Academy of Music on a full scholarship.