Review: Gerry & Sewell at Newcastle Theatre Royal
David Whetstone took his seat on the Theatre Royal terraces for the first night of Gerry & Sewell
Jonathan Tulloch’s tale of two lads on a quest for season tickets first surfaced as a novel and then became a film and a fairly straightforward play.
Now that the Theatre Royal has hoyed in the kitchen sink, it has become an all-singing, all-dancing Geordie jamboree with a display by Wor Flags, those adrenalin-pumping denizens of St James’ Park, and a recorded message (one part welcome, two parts mild threat) from – wait for it… “SHEARERRRR!!!”
And to add lustre, for first night VIPs there was an interval feast of Greggs goodies and ‘Newccy’ Brown in champagne flutes. Purely belter!
Yes, you did read that right… the Theatre Royal, the one you might have associated with ballet, opera and the Jesmond/Gosforth set.
(“Fur coat, nee knickers,” an editor of mine used to mutter darkly. He was a Toon supporter from Gatesheed, like Gerry and Sewell, wore lucky troosers to the match, kicked waste bins if his team lost and once flexed the muscle of the Fourth Estate to ban a certain player’s name from ever appearing in his newspaper again).
Jonathan Tulloch exited the scene shortly after The Season Ticket picked up the Betty Trask Award for best debut novel in 2000, just reward for his acutely observed and subtly rendered story set amid Gateshead’s bitter winds and thwarted dreams.
Read more: Wicked at Sunderland Empire
These days, as Nature Notes correspondent for The Times, he observes the rural environment rather than raggy-arsed lads scratching an existence on the urban fringe.
His story, though, remains rooted on Tyneside and has a new champion in Jamie Eastlake who set up Laurels in Whitley Bay where he makes theatre things happen.
In the programme (well, sheet of paper… largesse only extends so far) Theatre Royal chief exec Marianne Locatori commends Jamie’s “admirable perseverance” after she’d first said no to his request to put Gerry & Sewell, his adaptation of the novel, on her main stage.
Then she came to realise the North East is football daft and changed her mind.
What she says in print is that supporting Jamie “is a demonstration of our commitment to nurture and support talent development, to create opportunities and to celebrate the creativity we have right here in Newcastle and the North East”.
So Gerry & Sewell, subtlety dispensed with, is now “a Laurels Theatre, Eastlake Productions and Newcastle Theatre Royal co-production in association with Live Theatre”.
And it’s as big as its name, with a huge posse of ninja-like dancers in black balaclavas (allegedly from the Sage Academy and the resident Project A acting course) and a magnificent set comprising a Metro station complete with train, a caravan and a load of rubbish.
Well, rubbish, perhaps, to you and me. To Gerry and Sewell, it’s the route to loot and the St James’ Park seats they crave… until they’re put right about the scrap trade by one of the many characters played by Becky Clayburn whose multi-tasking role as ‘Tyneside’ surely merits way above union rates.
She also manifests as the local psychopath, on the warpath after losing the dog which has adhered itself to big soft Sewell – and she operates the puppet pooch, too, drawing “Ahhs” around the auditorium.
Dean Logan and Jack Robertson reprise their roles as the whippet-like Gerry, the brains of the duo, and the scran-loving Sewell who might be described as its digestive organs.
The endearing nature of their relationship, which has lent itself to more intimate productions, has survived the epic treatment even if a coherent narrative thread has perhaps been somewhat compromised.
Would I have known exactly what was going on all the time if I hadn’t recently re-read the book? Not sure.
But as a musical homage focused on various scenes (Sewell stuck in the mud while retrieving detritus; the unwitting pair travelling to a Mackem match as if to their doom) it has an infectious energy.
Michelle Heaton, late of Liberty X, plays Gerry’s mum and opens her account with a touching rendition of Waters of Tyne. Bill Ward, as her dastardly estranged husband, bigs up Big River in passable karaoke style.
And there’s a first professional appearance on this stage for Project A graduate Erin Mullen as Bridget, Gerry’s abused and frightened sister whose part in this story is one of its darker threads.
The setting’s been pulled forward to 2019 when the Saudi takeover was a way off and Steve Bruce was manager at the ‘cathedral on the hill’.
It doesn’t really matter. The Newcastle United soap opera rollercoasters on with fans of all eras cut from the same black and white cloth. This show should resonate with all of them.
Gerry & Sewell runs until Saturday, October 5. Tickets (you might be lucky) online via the Theatre Royal website or the box office on 0191 232 7010.
You can read David Whetstone’s interview with The Season Ticket author, Jonathan Tulloch here.