Costume drama

They talk to Steve Pratt about dressing up for their art.

JON Adamson is beginning to worry what his young daughter will say when people ask her what her daddy does for a living. Embarrassingly, she might say he wears frocks.

A previous appearance at a Yorkshire theatre – the Theatre Royal in York – found him dragged up as Lady Brockhurst in the musical, The Boy Friend. “That was good fun,” he recalls between rehearsals for his latest dressing up role, Ugly Sister Diptheria, in Harrogate Theatre’s traditional pantomime, Cinderella.

He’s been a dame of sorts three times, relishing the prospect of being booed every time he and fellow Ugly Sister, Salmonella step out on stage.

“I’m the slightly stupider of the two sisters. Dippy for short,” he says. “The directors calls her blowsy and foolish.

The pairing is like tall and skinny, and I’m always the big wide one.”

Even wider this year because of the spectacular costumes. “One costume is so big it won’t fit through the dressing room door. So it has to be flown in at the side of the stage for me to put on in the wings,” he says. “And there’s one the shape of a champagne bottle where I can’t see my feet.”

Cinderella marks Adamson’s debut on the Harrogate stage and he’s loving working locally as he lives in Beverley.

“I have a young family and it’s nice to get back to see them,” he says.

“I was born there, travelled and lived all over the country while I’ve been working as an actor. Now I’ve gravitated back to Yorkshire.”

He began acting with the youth theatre at Hull Truck, where the person in charge noted his talent and said if he went away to get trained, he’d give him a job when he came back. So that’s what he did, after a spell training at the JAMU Academy of Arts in the Czech Republic. He went over on an exchange programme from Dartington College and managed to get into their theatre school.

Audiences may recognise the man beneath the make-up, wigs and frocks as the chap talking to a dog in a series of ads for an insurance company that feature weather presenter Sian Lloyd.

“That was strange,” says Adamson.

“When they saw Sian Lloyd, someone asked if it was me in drag.”

THE last time Sean Jones toured in the musical Blood Brothers to York, he spent the week sitting in the dressing room without ever going on stage.

He was understudying the role of Mickey, one of the brothers of the title, in Willy Russell’s awardwinning musical.

This week, he’s back at the Grand Opera House and will be on stage this time as one of the leading cast members that continues an association with the show dating back to 1991 when he first saw it as a drama student.

The musical follows twins separated at birth who lead quite different lives until their love for the same girl leads to the tragic finale.

Jones says he doesn’t want to sound pretentious but one attraction of doing the show is the character of Mickey himself. “It’s me,” he says. “A lot of the aspects of the story relate to my life. I was expelled from school, was on the dole at 17 in the mid-80s, and there’s Mickey’s cheekiness.

There’s a lot of that I can actually associate with myself, although I’ve never been involved in a major crime as he has.”

Jones has returned to Blood Brothers for the current tour, which has been playing in theatres around the country for the past year.

“Touring is a strain, but you get used to the lifestyle and, funnily, I do miss it when it’s not there. If you’re in a place for too long, in a peculiar way you miss living out of your suitcase,” he says.

“When the call came for Blood Brothers this time, I hadn’t toured for three years and my feet were getting itchy to get back on the road.”

The year-long tour has seen many changes in his on-stage family situation with cast changes meaning he’s had two wives, two brothers and three mothers (the current one is Marti Webb). He also takes Mickey from the age of seven – he wears short trousers – into his 20s.

The York date means he can commute to his home in Bradford, where he and actress wife, Tracey, moved three years ago.

“I lived in London after drama college and thought I loved London. It’s a great place when you’re young but not when you want to start settling down and raising a family,” he says.

“We looked around and I’m not really sure why we settled on Yorkshire, although we always stayed in Saltaire when we were touring. We found a little stone cottage in Bradford.

“We didn’t know anyone in the area, but the beauty of Yorkshire is that everyone is so friendly. As soon as we arrived, our neighbour left a bottle of wine on the doorstep.

“Having Yorkshire Television on the doorstep is helpful with my career in terms of getting little TV things like The Chase. And Manchester is only just down the road.”

■ Blood Brothers: York Grand Opera House from today until December 6. Tickets 0844-8472322 or online grandopera houseyork.org.uk Cinderella: Harrogate Theatre until January 11.

Tickets 01423-502116.