Review – Do I Love You? John Godber Company at the Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 14th November 2023

Do I Love YouJohn Godber’s Do I Love You?, currently touring until early next year, is primarily a love letter to Northern Soul. Confession time: I don’t know much (anything, really) about Northern Soul. I can’t say it ever permeated to the Chiltern village where I was brought up. I knew Skiing in the Snow by Wigan’s Ovation and Footsee by Wigan’s Chosen Few, but that’s it; unless you count The Goodies’ Black Pudding Bertha (she’s the queen of Northern Soul) – but I don’t think you can. It’s a musical subculture that is clearly deeply loved, and maybe its general secretiveness is a major part of its appeal. Certainly, the very full audience at the Royal last night was packed with Northern Soul admirers who swung along to the various tracks that are scattered through the show.

DILYIt’s a deceptively simple play; three twenty-somethings who all grew up together in Hull find their chosen career paths halted by Covid and end up all working at the same fast food drive-through. Sally and Kyle have been besties since playschool, and Nat joined them not much later. One night, they chanced upon a club – the Beachcomber – Cleethorpes for an all-nighter of Northern Soul music, only £3 to get in, where they were amazed to find they were the youngest people there. In a beautiful realisation of the arrogance of youth, they ask themselves how the heck did all these old people learn these dance routines? Their aim is to take their Northern Soul dance act to the Tower Ballroom Blackpool, but only if Sally thinks they’re good enough; it’s as though she’s her own Craig Revel-Horwood. I had no idea that Northern Soul had its own dance style by the way, apparently a kind of sliding gliding that relies on talc and balance.

DILYAt the interval, I was feeling this was a modest, underachieving little play. It has a very in-house feel about it, being the John Godber Company production of a John Godber play, directed by John Godber and with John Godber’s daughter among the cast of three. Rather than using a Paul Mathew style pantechnicon, you can imagine them transporting the set and props from venue to venue using a local man with a van. There was no programme – at least not at last night’s performance – so I can’t name and shame whoever was responsible for the totally inadequate lighting, with members of the cast performing in shadow during some scenes.

I was also underwhelmed by the script which I found repetitive, rather dull and lacking that usual John Godber wit. There should be a legal limit on the number of times the phrase do you want fries with that can be repeated in a play. Yes, we get the drift that it’s designed to show that their jobs were repetitive and dull but is it fair to subject the audience to the same level of repetition with such diligence?!

DILYHowever, the scene just before the interval started to show some promise. Our trio have discovered the Cleethorpes club and have felt its vigour and emotion coursing through their veins for the first time. And it was also the first time that the characters truly came to life. And after the interval, the drive and power of the play continued to burst through the writing. Despite the rather heavy-handed speech by an old-timer (67 years old) at the club about the tradition, heritage, and true meaning of Northern Soul, you begin to realise that this is a celebration of the purity of one’s art. Sally is caught up in an artistic stasis – she can’t dance to it, she can’t sing along, all she can do is watch in awe at the effect the music has on her and others. She realises this thing is bigger than any of them.

DILYThe play also takes on other social issues; not only the devastation caused by Covid, but the general austerity and lack of opportunity in the north that determines one’s complete lifetime. It highlights a problem that’s rarely considered – what happens when a younger person lives with an older person as their carer, and then they die. In an affluent society that means they inherit the property. But in Sally’s world that renders you homeless.

DILYThe three likeable young actors are all superb in their roles and work together as a brilliant ensemble. Chloe Mcdonald accurately portrays Nat, that character who is the third member of a group of three, knowing she can never quite achieve the same bond as the other two. Emilio Encinoso-Gil has an excellent sense for the comedy in some of the best lines as wannabe musical theatre performer Kyle, whose lofty ambitions led to two years dressed as a crocodile. But it is Martha Godber’s Sally who is the lynchpin, and through whom we see the progress of the trio; funny, bossy, caring but also at times completely unreasonable, she gives a terrific performance of a very credible and well-rounded personality.

DILYI was at times reminded of the Victoria Wood sketch where Jim Broadbent is the long-suffering playwright who lives and breathes the pain and misery of the north and is motivated to create his epics to reflect the douleur of the dockers, the railway workers and the steel workers – but lives comfortably in Chiswick. I’m not saying Mr Godber is that person, but the play does have a huge I love the north and all its pain atmosphere about it. Its romanticised and sentimental view of the affection for Northern Soul and its roots is both its strength and its weakness. Mrs Chrisparkle thought they missed a trick by not including a whippet. Clearly she has no heart.

The Northampton audience – mainly made up of people of a certain age who could easily have been at that Cleethorpes club – absolutely loved it. If you’re an aficionado of Northern Soul, you will too. As for the rest of us, there is plenty to admire, but also a little to be cynical about.

Production photos by Ian Hodgson3-starsThree-sy Does It!

Review – September in the Rain, White Cobra Productions, Playhouse, Northampton, 29th September 2015

September in the RainHaving discovered White Cobra Productions back in April when we saw their jolly Shakespeare Revue, I was keen to see what other tricks they had up their sleeve. For their current show, September in the Rain, they have left behind the world of song and dance and gone for a traditional two-hander play, written by John Godber. It was first produced back in 1983, and is largely drawn on and inspired by his own grandparents’ lives, and their annual sojourn to Blackpool for their holidays. I usually associate John Godber with more rough and ready settings, like Bouncers or Up ‘n’ Under, so to discover this rather gentle and Alan Bennett-esque play was a very pleasant surprise.

White CobraWe meet Liz and Jack, an elderly Yorkshire couple, preparing to go on their week’s trip to Blackpool, and, as they reminisce about previous holidays, the play takes us back to their younger days so that we can relive many of their experiences with them. The play becomes an amalgamation of several holidays, which, whilst there are occasional sunny days, mainly reflect several Septembers in the rain (hence the title). We see their fondness for particular guest houses; fish and chip suppers (mainly takeaway, occasionally the treat of an eat-in), dealing with the donkeys on the beach; memories of their children doing daft things; and it’s all interlaced with an elaborate sequence of bickering that acts as a cement to their entire relationship.

Blackpool TowerThis is one of those plays which triggers your mind and memory into recollections of events in your own childhood. We never used to go to Blackpool as a kid (far too Northern for the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle’s liking) but we would go to Devon, or Bournemouth, or Ramsgate; and, as Liz and Jack encourage their kids to be the first to spot the Blackpool tower from the car, we always had the race to see who could be first to spot the sea. I remember the long walks along the beaches; my dad in a deckchair barely taking off his tie; tickets for the end of the pier show; sharing tables with other holidaymakers (sometimes nice, sometimes tedious); staying up late to watch Match of the Day in the guest house’s TV lounge – televisions in your room were just unheard of! Just as Liz and Jack’s daughter Pam sings at a seaside talent show, I remember being entered for the Butlins Bognor Picture of Health contest, amongst dozens of others equally bored children. I didn’t win. I also remember being forced to wear those ghastly pacamacs that Liz and Jack sport because of the inevitable downpours associated with the English summertime. I quake with embarrassment at the memory of being caught out in the rain on the Isle of Wight one year with no rain hat (shock horror) and the only alternative the Dowager could find for me in the local shops was…. a tea cosy. I spent the afternoon with this ****ing tea cosy on my head in case I caught a cold. I should have phoned Childline.

Kate BillinghamI don’t think Liz and Jack would have been that cruel to their kids – instead they would have saved their verbal cruelty for each other. I doubt if there would be anyone who’d been on a family holiday as a kid who hadn’t witnessed their parents rip each other to shreds like Liz and Jack do. Because that generation worked really hard, and laboriously, and probably only had one week off a year, the pressure to enjoy themselves on the annual summer holiday was really intense. There’d be months and months of happy expectation, and then it would be all over in a flash. And of course holidays are never that perfect, and travel plans always go amiss somewhere along the line. So while Jack takes a relaxed and practical view of the travel plans, Liz is frantic with packing, traffic, the weather, the destination, and every minutiae in between. Once they reached Blackpool, it would be Jack’s turn to get agitated when things go wrong – the room too small, the waiter too handsome, the donkey too flea-ridden. Hs method of complaining would be virtual fisticuffs, much to the embarrassment of Liz who would far sooner see it out in silence – until she got Jack on her own, that is.

Richard JordanIt’s a very funny, charming and nostalgic play, and you feel Kate Billingham and Richard Jordan get right to the heart of their characters. There’s something of the Olivia Colman in Kate Billingham’s portrayal of a woman who normally manages to stay just on the safe side of high anxiety but will erupt when pushed. We both loved how you could see how one little word or action would slowly but inexorably turn her from Seaside Sunshine to Tyrantosaurus Rex. I also really enjoyed her voice and characterisation for their dining companion, all toothily smirking and snaffling the last biscuit. Richard Jordan too was perfect as the taciturn Jack, in his old age rarely needing to add more to a conversation than a considered “aye” or a risky “nay”, grimacing at the world going by, not miserably, just elderly. There were some lovely exchanges between the two – for example, an excruciatingly funny scene in the deckchairs when Liz kept on insisting that Jack took various clothes off to enjoy the sun whilst he was perfectly happy minding his own business fully clad – she would have tried the legendary patience of a saint. There’s another great scene where Liz’s travel anxiety causes a car accident – I’m pretty sure Mrs Chrisparkle recognised something from her own childhood there; a memorable moment where Jack gets his own back at Liz from the top of the Blackpool Tower; and their final scene where they go back into the pub for one last drink is very heart-warming.

DonkeyIt’s all neatly and simply staged, with just a few chairs, props and sound effects to awaken, in the audience’s mind, their own childhood holiday memories, both affectionate and otherwise. The backdrop slides that revealed different aspects of and locations around Blackpool weren’t really necessary as our imagination did all that work for us – although I did like the image of the Ford Popular. A very charming and funny performance of a very moving and endearing play, it’s on at the cosy and intimate Playhouse theatre in Northampton until Saturday 3rd October, and then has some touring dates later in October and November which you can find here. Definitely worth catching!