The Handlebards – From Pyrenees to Pennines

The play’s the thing

Best not go and see the Handlebards. Not if you’re hungry, anyway. Here is a theatre troupe who will drink your beer and steal your strawberries all in the name of art.

But our date with the Handlebards has been in the diary since February. Ever since I saw this witty and inventive lot at Bolton Castle last year I’ve been on their mailing list. Last year I saw the female troupe. This year we went to see the men at work. William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Sixteen characters. Four actors. No problem. Men can multi-task too.

The four Handlebards just before it all began.

And multi-task they did. The Queen’s English, broad Scots, Northern accents all had their places. Hats, jackets and gilets all stood in for the characters who wore them, but who were temporarily detained in another role. Balloons barely concealed behind an voluminous white pinny lent girth and a (sort of) female form to Maria, while sporting a little number in prettily sprigged voile enabled us to understand that the (bearded) Olivia was now on stage.

Olivia.

Maria.

Occasionally audience members were pressed into service. The cast took any opportunity to help themselves to crisps, wine and cake, legitimising the thefts by working them into the action on stage. Nobody thus deprived of their picnic minded at all. Picnic? Yes, it was a lovely summer’s evening. We’d all spread ourselves over the lawn of the Ripon Workhouse Museum, armed with blankets, garden chairs and baskets of treats. Gruel was not on the menu.

It was all a bit exhausting, even for the delighted audience. How the troupe summon up the energy to cycle off to a new venue day after day is beyond me. But that’s what they do, up and down the length of the kingdom throughout the summer season. ‘Have bike, will perform’ must be their motto. Here’s what they say:

Since 2013, the HandleBards have clocked-up over 7000 miles by cycling around the world to perform Shakespeare. Described by none other than Sir Ian McKellen as ‘uproariously funny’, we set the world on wheels with our unique brand of extremely energetic, charmingly chaotic, environmentally friendly cycle-powered theatre.

We love an adventure.

You really should go and see them after all. And take a picnic. A picnic big enough to share.

Tuesday’s Ragtag Challenge is ‘Play’. I went to the play. Here’s what I saw.

The multi-tasking Handlebards

This is the scenery near Leyburn in Wensleydale. This is Bolton Castle.

Imagine sitting in the grounds of this 14th century castle as evening draws in, a picnic beside you, to watch The Handlebards’ version of Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’. You know this will be no ordinary performance. The Handlebards are four female actors who cycle the length and breadth of the kingdom, with all they need for the tour crammed into two bicycle carriers. At each performance, they take every part in Shakespeare’s comedy of bizarre mistaken identity, family breakdown, love and lust.

So far so good. But this is England in July. We’d had two days of almost incessant rain. In a downpour, the Handlebards cycled the 26 (mainly uphill) miles from Ripon, where they’d performed at the Workhouse Museum.

The Castle has a Great Hall. Performing here rather than on a soggy greensward seemed a better idea in the circumstances. And it was. During the evening it rained. And then rained again. The audience never noticed a thing. We were too busy admiring the way four women became twenty or more people.

A simple, but infinitely adaptable stage set.

To become a man, all they had to do was don a codpiece adorned with a tennis or cricket ball. A selection of hats served to distinguish one character from another. Bicycle handlebars identified the wearers as sheep. Your character needs to disappear stage right to enter stage left as someone else? Easy. Leave the person whom you were addressing in charge of your hat, and s/he will continue to talk to it. With the flourish of a stick, a youth became faithful, ancient Adam. Orlando and his family were all twoubled by an inability to pwonounce the letter ‘r’. And so it went on, as one inventive twist or piece of slapstick followed another. Shakespeare would have loved it.

This is the only photo I have of the Handlebards, and it’s out of focus at that. They take a bow as we give them a more than enthusiastic standing ovation.

I’m now a Handlebards groupie. And the fun doesn’t end here. In other venues, having travelled there on other bicycles, a troupe of male actors is giving similarly irreverent treatment to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. We’re on the mailing list.