Tyne for another hit

11:21am Thursday 14th August 2008

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Viv Hardwick discovers that The Likely Lads play is destined to tour next year, as Durham’s Gala Theatre aims to put Tyneside’s iconic bridge on stage.

SELL-OUT success with The Likely Lads in June has Durham’s Gala Theatre buzzing with excitement about plans for a UK tour and the iconic backdrop of the Tyne Bridge featuring in another new North- East play, Get Off At Gateshead (GOAG).

The September 18-26 run of GOAG is a first regional commission from Gala’s artistic director Simon Stallworthy for Chester-le- Street’s Ian Skelton, who scored a hit last year with mining comedy-drama Beamish Boy.

Stallworthy says: “Beamish Boy was Ian Skelton’s first play. I was sitting in the bar with him on the last Saturday and said ‘this has gone down fabulously, why don’t you think about writing something else?’. So that was the start of it and he drafted a treatment where he tried out different ideas and characters and we kept re-working it before it was written. That was similar to the way we worked on Coronation Street before we turned something into a script.

“With the key events decided, when you come to write it you know your characters and it tends to be a lot easier to flesh it out.”

After a lot of this style of creativity, the script of GOAG came together and Stallworthy feels one final polish will produce another Gala Theatre in-house production which will draw in a good audience. There is now around a nucleus of 2,000 theatre-goers who are keen to see more of the Gala’s own plays.

“I like to think that over the seven or eight productions we’ve done that we’ve built an audience that trusts us and knows that we do put on work that is worth a ticket and dragging yourself away from EastEnders to come and see.

“Where it did surprise me was where Ian had gone above and beyond what he said he’d write and scenes which we’d hoped would have good, strong dramatic hearts to them were better than expected,” he says of a process that has worked well. “This is something that was made for us, made in Durham for our stage.”

Skelton created the play with veteran North-East actor Donald McBride in mind after the success that the pair had with Beamish Boy in which McBride played a retired miner.

“Many people said ‘wow what a great performance Donald gave’ and Ian felt the same. There was a little touch and go moment while we checked with his agent and luckily he was available,” adds Stallworthy.

The Tyne Bridge backdrop is a deliberate choice by Stallworthy and Skelton as they put together a project with a plot of a man with an elderly father and a woman with an ailing mother meeting again 20 years after they loved and lost.

The inclusion of Washington-based Peter Peverley in the cast was another ambitious move for the Gala director who had looked at the actor several times for plays. “We were just waiting for the right part – and here he’s the perfect age and perfect build for the part he plays of a 40-year-old man who set out to be a rock star 20 years ago but his path goes in a different direction. “ The Likely Lads earning rave reviews has led the Gala to open negotiations about creating a UK tour. Now Stallworthy must find the time to expand Ian la Frenais and Dick Clement’s latest work to a full-blown UK tour. But this is almost certain to involve recasting the Bob and Terry roles, played so enthusiastically at Durham by David Nellist and Scott Frazer.

Stallworth says: “We’re in London next weekend seeing various people. I can’t even name names, but we are seeing people you would recognise if you bumped into them in the street with a view to touring in 2009. It’s quite a hard play to cast because the characters are North-East essentially.

“People we are talking to are not necessarily from the North-East and that’s about as much as I can say at the moment.

However radical you try to be and say the star is The Likely Lads, at the end of the day the tour venues do want a name.

“It’s not something the Gala has ever done before and I’m well aware that this is a road that needs treading very carefully. We’ve got to be careful not to over-commit the Gala in terms of time, resources and cash. The touring market involves people with deep pockets and the Gala doesn’t have deep pockets. We’re taking it a stage at a time and the first stage is to see if there are actors who want to tour and are interested in The Likely Lads as a show. We’ll piece the jigsaw together and hopefully at some stage it will continue moving forward.”

Meanwhile, Stallworthy is busy writing the Gala’s pantomime, Aladdin, and jokes that he hasn’t got much further than the first act.

“It’s a little hard to be witty and full of festive fare at 7am in the morning when you’re trying to crack on with writing before you go to work. I know I’ve got a great cast waiting and they all know what they’re doing. They are all very experienced and as long as I can give them a framework. I’m just slightly aware that we haven’t got a great deal of rehearsal time.

“Donald (McBride) is in this as well, making his debut as a Les Dawson-style panto dame. He seems to have become resident actor here and is a joy to have around the building.

When you’ve got people like that on your doorstep then you use them. There is a relatively limited pool of actors in the North- East. It’s a great pool and a growing pool but we’re not sitting in London, so there is a finite pool.”

Peter Peverley has agreed to do panto and Neil Armstrong is also joining the cast as Abanazar.

“They’re great local actors who I’m pleased to see are getting more and more involved,”

says Stallworthy, who is promising himself a holiday in the sun around January 7 next year.

He’s determined to create a panto with a strong local flavour in Durham which will give the area’s audience an alternative to the big commercial offerings at nearby Sunderland Empire and Newcastle Theatre Royal.

■ Get Off At Gateshead, also starring Jackie Fielding and Rosalind Bailey, runs September 18- 26.

■ Aladdin runs from December 2 to January 3. Box Office: 0191-332-4041 www.galadurham.co.uk