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Aldwych Theatre, London
Until January 24
Writer/Director: Jamie Eastlake, based on Jonathan Tulloch’s novel “The Season Ticket”
Cast: Katherine Dow Blyton, Carly Burns, Helen Chong, Becky Clayburn, Dylan Duffy, Bill Fellows, Chelsea Halfpenny, Rusty Hill, Dean Logan, Alicia Meehan, Eric Mullen, Matty Renton, Kyle Potter, Jack Robertson
Producer: Newcastle Theatre Royal
Running time: Approximately two hours, including interval
Gerry and Sewell are two friends who have little beyond their loyalty to each other and to their team: Newcastle United. Their one dream is to have the money to buy a season ticket.
It’s a very local story of deprivation. The challenge of writer/director Jamie Eastlake is “to upscale it”, to use his own phrase, from an old social club to the West End, while retaining the “black and white heart” and its political anger.
In a play of two halves, I could not have been the only southerner initially bewildered and deterred by some of the basic, unsubtle humour, even though from the outset, the two leads command our sympathy.
Dean Logan, as Gerry, and Jack Robertson, as Sewell, are a classic double act – one smaller, thinner, edgier and taking the lead as they embark on the next hopeless quest for money; the other slower, mellower and never missing a chance to eat whatever junk food is lying around.
We forgive their petty crimes because they harm only themselves and, in a world of evil and cruelty, they are kind.
To prove the point and to tug at their and our heartstrings, the cast includes Rusty the puppet dog, deftly handled by Rusty Hill.
The great social injustices begin with Bill Fellows as Mr McCarten, Gerry’s drunken abusive father.
The women of the household are smart but damaged.
“Get out fast or stay forever” is the heartfelt refrain of Gerry’s sister Claire McCarten (Chelsea Halfpenny), who is determined to get out.
Their mother (Katherine Dow Blyton), meanwhile, is one of the machines who eventually break, as she puts it, under the ruthless exploitation of the system.
She urges her bright daughters to keep “the oil topped up” in one of the many flashbacks that grow on the audience as they reinforce the pain as hope dies.
Hope belongs to a time when National Trust hospitals did not have corridors full of patients waiting on trolleys and the Sycamore Gap had a tree growing in it.
Without giving too much away, the show is at its most poignant in the story Gerry tells of what was supposedly his first football match combined with its retelling by Sewell.
It reinforces the tragedy that we need to confront and is in danger of being is drowned out by comedy, that for some of Newcastle United’s most devoted fans, even a modest dream is out of reach.
The triumph is that this West End transfer has happened to try to make the other side try to understand.
Gerry & Sewell,
Aldwych Theatre, London
Until January 24
Writer/Director: Jamie Eastlake, based on Jonathan Tulloch’s novel “The Season Ticket”
Cast: Katherine Dow Blyton, Carly Burns, Helen Chong, Becky Clayburn, Dylan Duffy, Bill Fellows, Chelsea Halfpenny, Rusty Hill, Dean Logan, Alicia Meehan, Eric Mullen, Matty Renton, Kyle Potter, Jack Robertson
Producer: Newcastle Theatre Royal
Running time: Approximately two hours, including interval
Gerry and Sewell are two friends who have little beyond their loyalty to each other and to their team: Newcastle United. Their one dream is to have the money to buy a season ticket.
It’s a very local story of deprivation. The challenge of writer/director Jamie Eastlake is “to upscale it”, to use his own phrase, from an old social club to the West End, while retaining the “black and white heart” and its political anger.
In a play of two halves, I could not have been the only southerner initially bewildered and deterred by some of the basic, unsubtle humour, even though from the outset, the two leads command our sympathy.
Dean Logan, as Gerry, and Jack Robertson, as Sewell, are a classic double act – one smaller, thinner, edgier and taking the lead as they embark on the next hopeless quest for money; the other slower, mellower and never missing a chance to eat whatever junk food is lying around.
We forgive their petty crimes because they harm only themselves and, in a world of evil and cruelty, they are kind.
To prove the point and to tug at their and our heartstrings, the cast includes Rusty the puppet dog, deftly handled by Rusty Hill.
The great social injustices begin with Bill Fellows as Mr McCarten, Gerry’s drunken abusive father.
The women of the household are smart but damaged.
“Get out fast or stay forever” is the heartfelt refrain of Gerry’s sister Claire McCarten (Chelsea Halfpenny), who is determined to get out.
Their mother (Katherine Dow Blyton), meanwhile, is one of the machines who eventually break, as she puts it, under the ruthless exploitation of the system.
She urges her bright daughters to keep “the oil topped up” in one of the many flashbacks that grow on the audience as they reinforce the pain as hope dies.
Hope belongs to a time when National Trust hospitals did not have corridors full of patients waiting on trolleys and the Sycamore Gap had a tree growing in it.
Without giving too much away, the show is at its most poignant in the story Gerry tells of what was supposedly his first football match combined with its retelling by Sewell.
It reinforces the tragedy that we need to confront and is in danger of being is drowned out by comedy, that for some of Newcastle United’s most devoted fans, even a modest dream is out of reach.
The triumph is that this West End transfer has happened to try to make the other side try to understand.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, plays, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre