Writer and Director: Jamie Eastlake
Jonathan Tulloch’s slice of coming-of-age social realism, The Season Ticket, published 26 years ago, has had a peripatetic journey worthy of a much-travelled footballer. The novel was adapted into the bittersweet film Purely Belter shortly after publication, and in 2016, a well-reviewed kitchen-sink stage version by Lee Mattison ran at Northern Stage in Newcastle.
Jamie Eastlake’s highly stylised 2022 take, Gerry & Sewell, which updates the story to the run-up to the pandemic, began life as an hour-long piece in a 60-seat pub theatre in North Tyneside. A fleshed-out version, which mashes up the architecture of an urban fairy tale with hints of magical realism, music, and puppet dogs, transferred to the Newcastle Theatre Royal in 2024. The piece finally arrives in London, decked out in West End production values and bursting with a first half full of flag-waving and furiously likeable energy. The transition to a much darker tone in the folksier second half delivers a rather less satisfying ride.
Down at heels and more or less penniless, chancer Gerry (Dean Logan) and his dim-witted best friend Sewell (Jack Robertson) have precious little in their Gateshead lives beyond a shared tendency towards “if you can’t beat them then nick off them” petty crime and a passion for Newcastle United. In search of a way to make their lives special, the underdogs set out to snag season tickets for their beloved football team.
The problem is that the tickets cost £800 each, an impossible ask for lads whose main source of income is selling scrap and stolen goods to a dodgy caravan-dwelling fence. Can the duo escape crashing poverty and a track record of failure to find a sense of hope and a feeling of belonging in football? As someone says, “everything in Gateshead rots in the rain”, so success will be a tough ask. The boys take inspiration from the banner a fellow fan carries to matches: “We don’t demand a team that wins, we demand a team that tries”. Anticipate shoplifting, burglary, car theft, and more on the journey.
Opposing forces appear in the form of Gerry’s estranged, violent, alcoholic father, Mr McCarten (Bill Fellows), who lurks in the background like a predatory big bad wolf, and an array of institutional villains. The latter includes a snarling former schoolteacher, an unsympathetic social worker, and government indifference embodied by a passive-aggressive jobsworth at the local Job Centre (bearing a striking similarity to Pauline from TV’s The League of Gentlemen and described as “more of a bastard than in any Ken Loach film”).
In their own ways, Gerry’s family, living in a series of homes that are “cold and full of pain”, are also seeking a way out. Beleaguered Mum (Katherine Dow Blyton) has tried suicide. Older sister and single parent Claire (Chelsea Halfpenny) dreams of writing fan songs and becoming a female Sam Fender. Younger sister Bridget (Erin Mullen), the victim of her father’s worst abuses, flees into drugs and a dicey existence on the streets of Tyneside. Overseeing events in a variety of guises is the Greek Chorus-style narrator and supernatural catalyst, Tyneside (Becky Clayburn plays the part with the malign mischievousness of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s Puck), who prowls the set, offering caustic verse commentary on ongoing events.
Eastlake intercuts scenes of pathos with broad fourth-wall-breaking humour, Northern songs, and dance routines from a cast of 18 clad in black track suits and balaclavas. Movement directors Lucy Marie Curry and Sean Moon deliver a choreography highlight in the form of a sequin-clad burlesque parody from high-kicking football fans. The tonal shifts are broadly effective in the jollier first half, but can be harder to take in the second. Jokes about fish and chips and drowning dogs sit alongside a heart-wrenching scene between a homeless Bridget and a visibly distraught Gerry.
Robertson plays Sewell as a permanently hungry Commedia dell ‘Arte-style harlequin, whose idea of a successful day is nicking and necking an entire family’s McDonald’s meal. With woefully underwritten subplots involving Claire (Halfpenny has little to do but sings beautifully) and Bridget, this leaves Logan’s Gerry to do most of the play’s emotional heavy lifting. His is a great performance, but there are times Eastlake’s direction threatens to sacrifice narrative momentum to stylistic conceit. It is as if the director has not quite figured out what to do with the extra 50-minutes he gives himself in this transfer. Still, the piece never loses respect for its protagonists and ultimately brims with hope.
Runs until 24 January 2026
