Narc. Magazine Online
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Jacob Easton enjoys a reprisal of the funny and moving production
Why do two teenagers, growing up in poverty, surrounded by social deprivation and dealing with serious personal trauma, want to get season tickets for Newcastle United? Hope. It’s a theme every Newcastle fan, football fan or maybe even a golf fan can resonate with and it’s at the beating heart of Gerry & Sewell once again.
Returning to Tyneside following its West End run, Gerry & Sewell are back and the show is now bigger than ever. Based on Jonathan Tullochs novel The Season Ticket and following in the footsteps of the 2000 film Purely Belter, Gerry & Sewell has been something of a sensation. Beginning at the 60-seater Laurels in Whitley Bay, bouncing over to Live Theatre in Newcastle and then onto the West End, the play has been a rags to riches tale, one that the protagonists would dearly love to emulate as we follow their questionable efforts to scrape together enough money to buy season tickets for Newcastle United.
Dean Logan (Gerry) and Jack Robertson (Sewell) once again do excellent jobs with their title roles and their partnership is authentic and natural, so natural in fact, that it can cover over even the most off beat of moments, such as when a chicken nugget almost caused the first ever on-stage death in Theatre Royal history.
Not everything good has been retained, it was a little disappointing to see how some supporting characters – eccentric in past renditions – have been exaggerated, such as the now nappy wearing, incontinent, junkyard dealer Ginga. It gave those scenes a slight sense that everyone was competing for the next laugh.
But whilst bigger and bolder might not always better, the plays fundamental theme of hope and perseverance through adversity remains alive. More than that, it subtly showed how systemic poverty and answers to questions of ‘who gets what’ and ‘who makes it’ are not black and white.
Funny, moving and full of heart, Gerry & Sewell is a proudly Geordie production, with a universal appeal.
Gerry & Sewell is at Theatre Royal, Newcastle until Saturday 13th June.
