Review: Everything is Possible - The York Suffragettes, York Theatre Royal

The cast of Everything is Possible take to the streets of York.

York has a bit of a thing for staging big open air productions with large community casts and anyone who saw Blood and Chocolate, which led the audience through the streets as it brought to life the Rowntree factory workers in the First World War, will know that done well these can be stunning pieces of theatre.

Everything is Possible is less ambitious in its staging if not its subject matter. It opens, slightly chaotically, in front of the Minster as a 21st century march for women’s rights collides with the suffragettes’ protests of a hundred years earlier.

They call it the prologue, but by the time every one has been led back to the theatre and taken their seats, the best part of an hour has gone and it doesn’t feel like much has been achieved. Still, there is much to be enjoyed in the production itself, inspired by the York suffragettes, in particular, Annie Seymour Pearson played by Barbara Marten, best known for her role in Casualty.

Playwright Bridget Foreman has managed to inject some much needed humour into a piece whose foundation is injustice, politics and violence, but there is a lot going on. Too much perhaps.

ROMANCE: Lesley Manville as Fiona and Diane Keaton as Emily Walters. Picture: PA Photo/Nick Wall/Entertainment One.

Nevertheless, Marten is a brilliant anchor and while there is the occasional flat delivery from the odd member of the community cast, most hold their own. Special mention here to the choir who sweat it out backstage. They are absolutely note perfect and create much of the production’s atmosphere. Mixing footage and photographs from the original suffragette protests, there is some clever staging and the finale delivers a genuine emotional punch as past and present meet again. The fight, as they say, goes on.

To July 1.