Gerry & Sewell at the Royal
They’re back in their eternal quest for season tickets. David Whetstone reports on the promotion of Gerry & Sewell to the theatre premier league
In the lounge at Newcastle Labour Club, theatre mover and shaker Jamie Eastlake is whipping up some lunchtime atmosphere among folk who dutifully holler and trade banter at the bar.
There are promotional photos to be taken and some filming to be done too. Actors, friends and family are gathered, including a tot in a pushchair and a bemused spaniel with a bow.
It’s the beginning of the latest chapter of a story that has run and run – and will see a play that began life in one of Tyneside’s tiniest theatres open in its largest and grandest.
Gerry & Sewell, Jamie’s adaptation of Jonathan Tulloch’s novel, The Season Ticket, was a resounding hit at Laurels in Whitley Bay (a Premiership football squad might just squeeze in at a pinch) and then transferred to Live Theatre, bastion of new writing on Newcastle Quayside.
It was a runaway success there, too, this homegrown tale of two skint Gateshead teenagers who yearn for the seemingly unattainable, season tickets to St James’ Park to see their Newcastle United heroes play.
Actually, Gerry (the small one – “like a lean, trotting, urban fox”, according to the Tulloch novel) and Sewell (the big one – “like an overgrown tortoise” in his zipped up jacket) do more than yearn.
To raise the money they don’t have, they embark on a succession of misadventures.
Tulloch, living in Gateshead when The Season Ticket was published in 2000, scored with a novel which nailed life in a borough where ‘haves’ are way outnumbered by ‘have nots’.
It quickly became a film, Purely Belter, the title echoing the lads’ supreme expression of appreciation, and in 2016 there was a play version that opened as The Season Ticket at Northern Stage.
Now there’s Gerry & Sewell, Jamie’s successful take on a tale that’s Tyneside to its core – and has been subtly updated from the Alan Shearer/Bobby Robson era to catch the current mood.
Having graduated to the big stage, the cast has been expanded, meaning Dean Logan (Gerry), Jack Robertson (Sewell) and the versatile Becky Clayburn, who originally played everyone else but now doesn’t have to, are joined by others.
Gerry’s estranged parents, Mr and Mrs Macarten, are to be played by Bill Ward and Michelle Heaton, performers who are back on their old stamping ground after making long journeys from their homes in Bristol and Hertfordshire respectively.
At the Labour Club they’re meeting for the first time and laughing and joking together.
“I think the barriers have been broken straight away,” smiles Michelle, best known as a member of Brit Award-winning pop group Liberty X and for various celebrity TV appearances..
“If you can get some kind of chemistry going in the first 10 or 15 minutes then you’re winning. You don’t always get that but I feel we’ve got it already, so I’m really excited to read the script and see where our characters go together.”
Bill, who accurately describes Mr Macarten as “not an altogether pleasant piece of work”, will not therefore be entirely out of his comfort zone, having played some unlovely characters on TV, notably the abusive Charlie Stubbs in Coronation Street.
He’s cheerful today, though, caught up in the Gerry & Sewell bonhomie.
“I first came across this 18 month ago,” he says.
“I was doing a workshop for Jamie on Chorus of a Nation, a brand new musical he’s working on, which is brilliant and great fun, and he sent through Gerry & Sewell which he’d done at Laurels.
“I remember saying, ‘That is brilliant. What are you going to do with that?’ So 18 months later, to be part of it at the Theatre Royal… I’m chuffed to bits.”
Bill, who was born in Newcastle, has performed at the Theatre Royal before, most recently in The Full Monty.
Michelle says this will be her first time and something of a dream come true.
“With Liberty X, I performed at the City Hall and the Arena, and when I was studying drama I was in a few Shakespeare plays at the Tyne Theatre, but never anything on this stage.
“The Theatre Royal panto was the first thing I saw on stage and that was 40 years ago. Now I get to perform there. It’s quite an achievement and I’m proper proud.
“All I wanted to do as soon as I saw that panto when I was five years old was to be on stage. I always told my friends that’s what I was going to do and so I couldn’t be happier, and my mam is beyond excited.”
Michelle says her career could have taken a different turn if Popstar auditions hadn’t been held in the North East.
“Had it been a London thing, I wouldn’t have been able to go. Now I’m hoping to show people what else I’ve got to offer.”
Also thrilled to be included is cast member Erin Mullen who was one of the first students signed up to Project A, the Theatre Royal’s actor training course. She makes her first professional appearance there as Bridget Macarten.
For Dean Logan, who has played Gerry from the start, it’s clearly no hardship to be back.
“It has been a brilliant experience, being part of such a cult thing and embodying that character.
“The cast has doubled in size which helps to keep things fresh. It’ll be a challenge moving to the bigger stage but we’re all looking forward to it.”
Dean, a Newcastle fan who grew up in Wallsend, well understands the appeal of Gerry & Sewell.
“They’re very relatable characters if you grew up in a working class area in the North East. I went to school with people like this and Gerry is me to an extent.
“Lots of people face the struggles that he does in his daily life and they deal with them in different ways.
“A season ticket has always been out of reach for many people and now, of course, you’ve got people clamouring for them again. I think one of the things about Gerry & Sewell is it shows there’s always hope.”
Dean has performed at the Theatre Royal before, coincidentally in another football-related play called Alf Ramsey Knew My Grandfather which was staged there in 2010.
“To come back after so many years and play a lead role is very, very exciting and I feel like a kid in a sweet shop.”
As for Jamie, Olivier Award-winning son of Blyth, he says: “Opportunities don’t come much bigger and better than this - the chance to recreate a true Tyneside tale at one of the leading theatres in the country.
“The reaction to the lads’ story has been unbelievable and we can’t wait to share their tale once again.”
Marianne Locatori, chief executive of the Theatre Royal, which is co-producing with Jamie and Laurels, says: “Our region is rich in storytelling with an abundance of incredible creative talent.
“Ensuring that these local narratives are represented in our programme and performed on our stage is incredibly important.”
Gerry & Sewell runs at Newcastle Theatre Royal from Wednesday, October 2 to Saturday, October 5. Tickets from the box office.
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