ONCE UPON A TIME IN WIGAN. To 22 March.
Tour
ONCE UPON A TIME IN WIGAN
by Mick Martin
2003: Contact Theatre Manchester To 1 March then West Yorkshire Playhouse (Courtyard Theatre) Leeds
11-22 March 2003
Mon-Sat 8pm Sat Mat 3pm (Contact)
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm (Courtyard)
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 0161 274 0600 (Contact)
0113 213 7700
www.wyp.org.uk (Courtyard)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 February
Touring in new/revived production to 3 April 2004 - schedule below
Interesting material and characters, but never striking out into dramatic individuality.
For some, it'll be history; for others, their history. Some, it might have passed by; others again will recall the sensation if not the event. Music, dancing - back-flips and Dervish-speed whirls (but none of the handclapping here) - and nostalgia. Given these, how important is the play?
Between September 1973 and December 1981 the old Empress Ballroom in Wigan became Wigan Casino, famous throughout the North for its all-nighter discos featuring Northern Soul music. Mick Martin's characters travel from Bolton and Burnley each Saturday, and if they're lucky don't reach home till Sunday night.
It was a mating-room, of course: as it is for Sally Corman's smart Maxine, always an intellectual step ahead, if she falls into an emotional hole with meat-man Eugene. And a palace of would-be dreaming for laundrette assistant Suzanne, who dances OK but can't get outside her distancing humour to melt into a relationship.
Then there's Danny, maturest of all. Though no man or woman will come between him and Northern, he's no sad case. He realises the weekend high's part of a rhythm needing the all-week routine of his maintenance work.
These people (the women certainly) start as end-of-teenage, but the sudden jump to the Casino's final nights doesn't allow much for their development. Yet Martin's aware of the social souring around this end of an era. Jobs go, the spliffs Danny started sharing with Eugene are changed for the pills his friend sells him.
Drugs are coming on the scene in a new, hard way. What was recreational is the only new enterprise as work-cultures collapse. People are tested by their ability to move with the world around them. Danny, champion of the Soul world, once made Eugene sell his 'chair' (aka scooter) because non-Soul neo-mods were using them. Now he has to sell his prize collection of rare Soul singles.
(To get the extremity of this: real-life Wigan Casino-owner Gerry Marshall used to carry the night's considerable cash-takings disguised in a singles box. One night a keen Soul lad grabbed it - handing it back in disappointment when he found it only held money).
Martin writes quick, witty,strong-flavoured dialogue. He knows what he's on about. But there's a limited dynamic to the play, which Paul Sadot's generally efficient production doesn't hide. Plenty of screen inserts pitch-up the action (and post-1981 screen biogs of the characters - one unfortunately satirical - give a final kick, giving us a sense of contact with these likeable people).
But the live action's often made up of characters standing around having yet another desultory conversation. Scenes have a televisual brevity,preventing characters' full development (it can be done but needs more crafty patterning) and putting the sense of structure at risk.
As a result, Martin's quartet don't have the room to breathe that the well-chosen actors could evidently give. A shame, when he has such a good subject, is aware of its social context and offers so many comic and touching moments.
Maxine: Sally Corman
Suzanne: Christine Roberts
Eugene: Richard Oldham
Danny: Steven Hillman
Director: Paul Sadot
Designers: Giuseppe Belli, Emma Barrington-Binns
Film Designer: Matt Smith
Lighting: David Martin
Sound: Neil Morse
2003-02-23 18:47:14