“Tragicomic social realism captured by the beautiful game entwined with the Tyne”
Naturally, this isn’t actually a play about football at all. A season ticket to Newcastle United is merely the mechanism to show our two protagonists struggle through the bleak reality of being Geordie.
Gerry (played by Dean Logan) and his best mate Sewell (played by Jack Robertson) are the perfect counterfoils for each other in this tale that starts out with some wishful thinking and ends up bittersweet and melancholic. Gerry is the level-headed of the pair, coming up with ever more elaborate and criminal schemes to make the money needed for said golden tickets. Sewell is the joker, the wise-cracker whose dramatic turns full of self-referential fourth-wall breaking is genuinely entertaining and well timed. But it’s only Gerry’s family that we see represented throughout- the domestic trials and tribulations of his awful father (played by Bill Fellows), his despondent and depressed mother (played by Kathryn Dow Blyton), troubled runaway sister Bridget (played by Erin Mullen) and aspiring singer sister Claire (played by Chelsea Halfpenny). Although the script reduces them to their respective singular familial attribute, there are brilliant moments of acting, both as part of their homely dynamic and when they are given monologues to ponder their circumstances further. I would have liked to see characters developed, but they are squished between the protagonists’ Sisyphean ticket quest, and physical movement and poetry often carried out by balaclava-clad hooligans who look very formulaic in their loutish behaviour and suspiciously clean matching black trackies. Their scenes are performed so slickly that it comes across as unnatural. It resembles a police training scenario where one half has to play the thugs but they’ve all got short back and sides. It’s oddly jarring to go from realistic poverty to conceptual puppetry vignettes- perhaps the use of the abstract scenes could represent the character’s emotional realm, a form of introspection and escape similar to that used in Chicago.
In stretching out the cast and bloating the runtime for this coveted West End slot the cracks really do show in the script and it’s very difficult to pin down what it wants to be. The scene transactions are often clunky, never allowing any one theme to properly settle. Switching between topics such as suicide, domestic abuse, drug misuse, alcoholism and regional abandonment by consecutive governments, the grittier moments are frequently undermined by swift scene cuts into silly sketches and abstract anachronistic vignettes. They’ve thrown everything into this kitchen sink drama, but in this instance the kitchen sink is quite genuinely a stolen toilet mudlarked out of the River Tyne. It really wants you to know the North is still a festering hellscape of depravity (as if Croydon and Slough don’t exist!). As a northerner myself, this trope can feel tired but I understand that truth and representation matters across what often feel like a theatrical mélange of escapist mediocrity.
I also appreciated how the city of Newcastle itself became a character of its own throughout. Ultimately, I enjoyed this show – however, my friend enjoyed this show so much he booked more tickets during the interval. The humour landed perfectly and the drama poignantly acted. The scaffold set design was clever and the soundtrack pumping; individually the production values were excellent but collectively it lets itself down by being afraid to let anything establish itself before being snatched away. Either lean fully into its uncomfortably intimate gritty feel like a Jim Cartwright play or go whole hog into the footy spectacle and community like a FIFA video game. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I actually wanted more football. Up the Toon.