Ilkley Playhouse

In the week that the Tour de Yorkshire visits Ilkley, the town's Playhouse brings you another Yorkshire Tour: this one a tour de force of Yorkshire theatrical talent.

First, there are still a few seats remaining for the last couple of nights of Getting On. This early work by Yorkshireman Alan Bennett takes audiences back to the early 1970s to spend six months in the life of George Oliver MP, his family and friends.

It’s a feast of nostalgia, regret, angst, knick-knacks, bon mots and facial hair.

Following that, for five nights from Tuesday, May 9 the Playhouse presents Two by Jim Cartwright.

Cartwright is a northern playwright who you may have come across as the author of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (which was adapted into the successful film Little Voice, starring Jane Horrocks, Ewan McGregor and Michael Caine).

In Two, the eponymous pair of actors play no fewer than fourteen characters across the course of an evening in a northern English pub.

These range from the genial (or are they?) publicans themselves to an array of colourful personalities who pull up a stool.

The landlord and landlady listen to locals’ tales that range from comic to tragic, all the while keeping a dark, unspoken secret that threatens to tear their relationship apart.

Sometimes funny, often poignant, it features dextrous acting as the tiny cast constantly shift gears and costumes between characters.