INTERVIEW: Walk Like a Man

There’s something surreal about sitting in Gateshead pub Azure Blue on a Sunday morning, watching UFOs: The Lost Evidence on the TV. A day of rest turning into a breakfast pint and a ponder. Like ‘how did I get here?’, ‘could this be re-imagined as an alternative to purgatory (or similar post-death scene) in the high-concept vision of an indie filmmaker?’ and ‘why is the bar cash only’? How appropriate then, that this should be the meeting place for a chat with the creators of the thoroughly grounded, true to life – and pub centred – Walk Like A Man.

A year on from it’s brilliantly received debut run at Gosforth Civic Theatre, WLAM is heel-strutting its way back for an extended run. The play follows Jack (newly cast Jonny Larman), a younger brother recruited/press-ganged into the family plumbing business. Overlooked by his philistine Dad Mick (Steven Lowes) and tormented by his older brother Michael (Craig Pearson), Jack has a secret longing, and with the guidance of Uncle Derek (newly cast Gary Abraham) he goes about trying to satisfy it.

A key reason behind the success of the first run was in the realism and relatability of the characters, and on chatting to writer Steven Lowes it became clearer why. “There’s a lot of Mick based on my Dad… he was very much a man’s man and there’s snippets of dialogue that are phrases my Dad would use, like if he’d said something that would upset anybody, he’d say ‘whey, far better hear that than be deaf.’” Steven and his co-star Lynn Huntley (playing Jack’s Auntie Sue) shared that the realism expressed in the writing even extends down to the actors themselves, revealing that Heather Dowey (playing Jack’s Mam Michelle) was a first-time actress: “We went through three auditions to get the right people and people came up who work with London agents for the auditions, and they didn’t cut it, they weren’t believable.”

Walk Like A Man is theatre for people who don’t think that they’re theatre people, it’s everyday tales told by everyday people

The new venue for the family home and local boozer The Queen’s Head is Laurels at Whitley Bay, an admittedly cosier venue than Gosforth Civic Theatre: “Width-wise I think the stage at Gosforth was 8 metres, the stage at Laurels is 5.8 metres… It will be tight, we’ve set the capacity to 56 per show, but we’re literally measuring down to ‘50mm here’, ‘50mm further back’, that’s how tight it is”. The new dimensions sadly means that audience members can no longer expect a conga line to sweep through them, yet the proximity between audience and stage promises to bring a whole new level of engagement: “At Gosforth on the first show, we’d rehearsed it to death, but we still wanted it to look spontaneous, so when I came in for a scene I’d looked at Craig and Craig had tears running down his face, so I was genuinely taken aback, but probably only the people on the very front cabaret tables would have seen that. But at Laurels, you are going to see everything, it’s going to bring a whole new dimension to it.”

A further addition to WLAM #2 are four original songs composed by Steven, along with choreographed dance routines created and enforced by Lynn (“What the fuck is marking” being a choice rehearsal quote from an anonymous and perhaps less dancey cast member). It promises to continue the theme of professional execution on top of fundamentally real stories. “I think people first time around thought ‘is it going to be am-dram?’ A lot of people just didn’t realise how professional it was going to be or how well set it was going to be.”

Originating as a nine-page micro-short, lost for years in a pile of papers, the ambition behind the production is sky high; a Christmas sequel is on the way, typically written at a Mexican beach bar in 35-degree summer heat, and there are plans to convert WLAM into a full musical next year.

In the concluding words of Steven: “There’s people who I know, who’ve been around the world, who don’t think that theatre’s their realm… WLAM is theatre for people who don’t think that they’re theatre people, it’s everyday tales told by everyday people.”

The cast and production crew, complimented by Ray the Barman (James Craister) and Eddie the Mackem (Colin Coombs), promise to bring a show that is theatre true to life. Hopefully then, they’ll remember to have a TV playing stuff about UFOs.

Walk Like A Man runs at Laurels, Whitley Bay from Tuesday 9^th–Saturday 20^th September.