************************* Yellow Leaf Theatre Company make a welcome return to York Theatre Royal Studio with Vanessa Rosenthal’s ingenious new play Modelling Spitfires, where spectres stalk the stage. The play runs in the studio from 23-24 June at 7.45pm (Mattinee 24th June at 2.45pm.) At last Anita can relax a little. After years of caring for an obnoxious parent and a wayward child, surely it’s time to think of herself for a change. But brother Maurice has other ideas. He’s just been released. And he may seem like a harmless eccentric but he has the power to take over the controls of her life and crash-land it. Soon it’s not just her peace that’s threatened, but her home, and maybe even her freedom. Part family drama, part psychological thriller, Modelling Spitfires is the latest offering from Yellow Leaf Theatre , the company who brought Bill Maxted’s Most Excellent Adventure to The Studio last year. The play deals with psychological menace in a series of deepening revelations that give it the overall feel of a thriller. Each of its three characters is drawn with sympathy so that at various points the audience finds itself attracted to a particular viewpoint only to have this reaction confounded by the next revelation. It is an examination of the long-term effects of mental illness (schizophrenia) on the other members of a family. ‘We don’t do normal in this house’, one of the characters says. Maurice, sixty, is the sufferer; Anita, fifty-six, is his sister. Who is the manipulator and who is the manipulated? The line between ‘what is normal’ and ‘what is abnormal’ is not black and white but infinitely shaded in grey. Anita and Maurice in another time and in another situation are interchangeable. In a way they are two halves of one whole that make up the illness; the carer and the cared for. As Maurice says, ‘it’s not always the one who’s sick who suffers the most disease.’ Maurice, the intellectually gifted son of a nuclear physicist, might have been anything before illness struck in early adolescence. At times flashes of this brilliance surface and sit oddly alongside his obsession with model aircraft and flying in which he takes refuge, sometimes very bizarrely, when the going gets tough. Modelling Spitfires, in fact, is far from all dark and along the way there is much humour and moments of laughter. Yellow Leaf Theatre, founded in 2002, is a vibrant new company based in the North of England bringing new writing to all parts of the country. The company don’t bring a lot of set – but they do bring a lot of experience. Every Yellow Leaf Theatre performer is a seasoned professional with a wide and varied background in theatre and T.V. The founders are all professional actors of 50 Plus. The emphasis is on maturity of performance rather than hefty production values. But while they seek to celebrate the voice of experience they refuse to be exclusive. More youthful writers and performers also join the celebration. The company is committed to creating highly mobile productions of accessible new plays for small scale and rural touring. The play’s writer and actress, Vanessa Rosenthal, is one of the founder members of the company and is also a very experienced radio dramatist with a long list of credits on her CV. In the fortnight beginning June 19th at 10.45am as the Woman's Hour serial (repeated each evening at 7.45pm) the BBC are transmitting her adapation of The Paston Letters. Tickets are priced at £10 (Matinee tickets - £7.00). Tickets for Under 25s and Students are £4.00 and can be purchased at the York Theatre Royal Box Office or by calling 01904 623568. Tickets are also available online at www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. **************************