15/10/2006 Still no music. A busy weekend - part two. York.

Subject	A busy weekend - part two.
PostedDate	10/15/2006
	So our Yorkshire adventure continues... After our visit to Elvington we return to York to refuel at a chip shop and look forward to quenching our thirst at the theatre bar. We arrive early at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre and are turned away as the doors have not yet opened. As we have at least half an hour to kill we ask the staff on the door where the nearest pub is? "You'll be lucky..." we are told "...this is Rowntree country!"  The theatre is opposite the Rowntrees chocolate factory - a massive site which appears to be the size of a medium sized town - even on a Sunday the strong smell of chocolate fills the air. Apparently old man Rowntree the founder and his family were Quakers - they don't believe in the evils of alcohol and basically they owned the whole area the factory was built in. The result of this is that there are no pubs whatsoever in the surrounding area!  In the time available it's not really worth travelling further afield in search of refreshment. At this point we realise that there isn't likely to be a bar in the theatre itself as is normal practice.  When we finally get into the venue we discover that not only is booze not allowed - photography isn't either. Actually, apart from those two points it is actually a very nice theatre - with seats that are comfortable and have plenty of leg (and knee) room if you are 6' tall. We are shown our way to our allotted seats and I find that I have been seated on the opposite site of the theatre to John & Gill. Wonderfull.  The reason we are there is to see our mate Biggles play guitar in  Platform 5 who he has recently joined. However, the band are taking part in a show by the York Rising Stars theatre company rather than playing in their own right. The band do have two or three sections of the show where they get to play several songs on their own but is is not the conventional 'rock' gig we are used to. We can hardly hear Biggles guitar, and the keyboards are too loud. The band only play middle of the road covers so there is nothing to get excited about. As far as the rest of the show is concerned, the acting is pretty good overall in the sketches but the writing in many of them left something to be desired - some of them seemed to just stop very suddenly leaving us waiting for the twist in the tale or the punchline - but there wasn't one. Some of the sketches no one seemed to actually get. Still, it was an interesting evening - which would have been much improved by the ability to enjoy a few drinks during the interval rather than the bottled water and ice cream on offer. Maybe if there had been a bar in the theatre then it would have been more than a quarter full - and I got the impression that even those present were virtually all friends and family of the performers. After helping Biggles get his gear back home after the show we repaired to his local boozer - no disco this time fortunately, but they had a late licence and we had quite an agreeable time in there before staggering back in the small hours.