Heartwarming Christmas show Present returns from the past
Not every Christmas show’s a panto. With Ali Pritchard’s hit about a homeless man being brought back to the stage at Live Theatre, he tells David Whetstone how he came to write the piece
Panto posters are everywhere this time of year but there should always be room for an alternative and that tends to be Live Theatre’s cue.
This year’s seasonal fare at Newcastle’s new writing venue includes Present, billed as “a festive fable”, and, for little ones and reindeer fans, Blitzen on Tyne.
The latter jolly tale, about a “wonky, funky” reindeer blown off course, was written by Danielle Slade and local primary schoolchildren.
The former, though, is another heartening example of a small North East theatre’s hit show being scaled up by a bigger one.
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Neither Live Theatre nor Alphabetti are big but Live has twice the seating capacity of the latter - and a 50-year track record.
Alphabetti, although it punches above its weight, is essentially a DIY creation fashioned by founding artistic director Ali Pritchard and a bunch of handy helpers.
It was Ali who wrote and directed Present which was first performed at Newcastle’s Alphabetti in 2019. The critic for The Stage considered it “packed with humour and heart”.
It’s the story of Dave, a man to whom life has dealt a duff hand. On December 23 he is preparing “to party like it’s 1994”, according to his own boozy Christmas tradition, when he gets a message.
Given the chance to meet his six-year-old grandson for the first time, he vows to give the lad a very special present.
In 2019, recalls Ali at his kitchen table in Fenham, he was working with Crisis Skylight Newcastle, the homeless charity, as their creative writing facilitator.
“Other organisations get people off the streets but what Crisis are brilliant at doing is stopping people becoming homeless again,” he says.
“They offer mental health and other types of support and generally help with social skills.
“I worked with them on their own projects but all the time I was saying I wanted to write a show involving the homeless community. It was just a question of what it should be about.”
The answer arose from his discussions with people he met through Crisis Skylight, although the name Dave (a good one, I contend) recalls a homeless man he met in a park.
“We became friends through our dogs and would go for walks.
“He’d had issues with substance abuse and there had been run-ins with the police, petty crime, but we had a lot of chats and essentially he was a kind-hearted human being.
“A few months ago he came into Alphabetti. I wasn’t in but he spoke to staff and said, ‘Can you tell Ali I’ve got a home and a job? I’ve turned my life around’.
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“With this piece I wanted to make a strong nod to Dave and the struggles he went through. Crisis Skylight say together we can end homelessness and I believe it.”
So Present, staged the other side of the Covid pandemic, was a hit.
“It sold out and we realised it was something quite special,” recalls Ali.
“Since then I’ve been touting it to others but producers have tended to go, ‘Oh, that doesn’t sound an easy sell at Christmas’.
“It’s not. But I think it’s an important piece of work. I think a society should be judged on what happens for people who need the most help rather than on those doing the best.
“And I do think it’s a very funny play.”
Finally he found someone who agreed and was prepared to make the hard sell. Jack McNamara, Live Theatre’s artistic director, promised to stage it if he could make it a bit longer – which Ali did with the help of dramaturg Tamsin Rees.
Scottish actor Malcolm Shields, seen at Live Theatre recently in prison play One Off (another hit), was available to play the part of Dave again.
And there will be live music from Ceitidh (pronounced Katy) Mac, alt. folk singer and cellist, born in Wales but based on Tyneside.
Ali hints at rearrangements of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas and also Dazed and Confused by Led Zeppelin.
The set design, you could say, is being kept ‘in house’. Ali’s partner Molly Barrett is designing Present and also Blitzen on Tyne. Lighting design is credited to Drummond Orr.
Life can present many unexpected twists.
Ali, for instance, tells me he came to Newcastle to study drama and scriptwriting at Northumbria University. There was no family connection. He could have gone anywhere from the Surrey village where he grew up, so tiny that the nearest ‘metropolis’ was another village.
But one day when he was little, his dad was nursing a hangover while watching a random football match on TV. It involved the Newcastle of the famous ‘Entertainers’ era (Shearer, Beardsley and the rest).
Not up for chatting, Pritchard senior told his son to watch TV and offered a bite of his Peperami stick. The way Ali tells it, the shocking spiciness of it made the moment indelible. He became a Newcastle United fan on the spot.
More seriously, he reiterates what Crisis Skylight always say – that any of us (except perhaps Elon Musk) are only ever two pay cheques away from homelessness.
And for himself, diagnosed relatively late in life with ADHD and a dyslexic, he says if it hadn’t been for family support, he could have ended up like Dave.
Having relinquished the reins at Alphabetti in a bid to recalibrate his work/life balance, Ali is directing Present as a freelancer for Alphabetti Theatre in association with Live Theatre and Crisis Skylight.
And he’s delighted that a Live initiative called Presents for Present, part of Crisis Skylight’s Wishlist Scheme, asks audience members to bring a gift to be distributed by the charity to people less fortunate.
You can do this whether seeing Present, Blitzen on Tyne or, indeed, the ‘mini-play’, Santa at Live Theatre, which is to be performed for small groups of pre-schoolers.
Information about suitable donations can be found at www.crisis.org.uk/get-involved
Present runs at Live Theatre from December 3 to 21 (Blitzen on Tyne: December 7 to 22; Santa at Live Theatre: December 14 to 22). Tickets from the website or call 0191 232 1232.