A stirring drama based on the misadventures of two young football fans, which first appeared in a small youth club before moving to the West End, stars Corrie and Emmerdale are treading the boards.
Gerry & Sewell, a tragicomedy about two hard-up, reprobate football fans in Gateshead hoping to score season tickets for their favourite team, Newcastle United, sees two veritable soap legends join forces on the London stage.
Katherine Dow Blyton, famed for playing vicar Harriet Fincher in the Dales until 2022, plays Gerry’s long-suffering mum, Mrs McCarten, while Bill Fellows, known for his recent three-year stint as Stu Carpenter in Corrie, as well as Ted Lasso, takes on the role of his troubled and abusive father.
The play, which has a limited run until this Sunday in London before heading to Newcastle in June, is no walk in the park. Yet as one of its stars, North Shields-born Blyton – currently appearing in Sheffield-based boxing biopic Giant with Bond star Piers Brosnan, tells the Mirror, it’s one that will no doubt stay with audiences longer after they’ve left the theatre.
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At the end of the day, she says, “It’s not really a story about the footie, is it?” When all hope seems lost, it’s about holding onto it and the bonds of family, struggle, shame, love.
The play simply has “so much heart,” I love it. And of course, as a person from the north east myself, I can attest how much of the characters’ spirit, how they speak, and how they handle the challenges that life throws their way, can be attributed to.
The stage production, which is based on the movie Purely Belter, fuses comedy, song, dance, and family drama.
Arousing football chant that the audience joined in with last Thursday night’s gala performance was the opening act, which was carried out in their seats, with black and white flags flying in their faces. It’s a high-energy start to a journey that “won’t let the audience down,” according to Blyton.
And there were Geordie accents everywhere, including proud Vera star Brenda Blethyn who also attended to watch the show’s London debut.
This play has its own incredible rags-to-riches story just like its two lead characters, who are brilliantly played by Dean Logan (Gerry) and Jack Robertson (Sewell) dredge the Tyne, meet some vibrant local characters and happily beg, steal, and borrow in their quest for those crucial season tickets to see the “Black and White Army.”
Its subtle yet powerful criticism of the politics and social austerity of the region that so many suffer from has now taken a run in the bright lights of the West End, where it first appeared in a modest 60-seat social club in north Tyneside in 2022.
The humour, the music, and the heart, which are a guiding thread throughout this stirring production, make the themes manageable even when they can be difficult to swallow.
It is quite wonderful to see such a proudly regional story told in the heart of London’s West End. May it be the first of many more…
At Aldwych theatre, London, until 24 January. Then at Newcastle Theatre Royal, 9-13 June
Source: Mirror
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