They like a bit of drama in Newcastle, although Kevin Keegan famously missed that point by declaring: "When people have worked all week, they want to be entertained. It's like people down south going to a theatre."
After Keegan's second departure as Newcastle manager in September last year, the best theatre in Newcastle has been behind the scenes at St James's Park. Full marks, then, to Live Theatre for commissioning a play from father-and-son team Michael and Tom Chaplin, who as long-suffering season-ticket holders are part of an army of angry, bewildered Toon fans who simply want to know what on earth is going on.
You Couldn't Make It Up is not a full-scale production. It's a cross between a fans' forum and a documentary drama compiled from verbatim reports by journalists, former players, ex-managers and one or two anonymous St James insiders. The actors are still holding scripts as they perform, but that's a small price to pay for remaining bang up-to-date. How else would anyone have been able to include the bizarre denouement, in which Keegan's temporary replacement, Joe Kinnear, required heart surgery this month, leaving the club with caretaker coaches filling in?
Before discussing the play itself, I ought to make an important disclosure: I am – whisper it – a Sunderland fan and therefore really ought not to be here at all. Newcastle-Sunderland enmity dates much earlier than football: it goes back to Sunderland parliamentarians facing royalist geordies at Boldon Hill in 1644, which elevates each meeting of the sides in the Tyne-Wear derby into a vicious reenactment of the English Civil War. Still, as there is nothing a Mackem loves better than laughing at the long-running farce going on at Sid James Park, as Sunderland fans call it, it's hard to resist.
There is no doubt that the writers have all the ingredients for a splendid pantomime. First there's the owner Mike Ashley, who presented himself as a fairy godmother, then suddenly became Baron Hardup when he realised the extent of the club's debts. Then there's Dame Kevin, loved by all but hapless and temperamental, although he keeps coming back for more. And of course every good pantomime needs a villain; in this case, Dennis Wise, the first mention of whom causes such a collective intake of breath among the audience that it sounds like a hiss in reverse. And the plot is sensational: everyone is waiting for a knight in shining armour (Alan Shearer) to come riding to the rescue when over the hill lollops Joe Kinnear on his pantomime horse.
To its credit, the play attempts not to be too partisan. The best scene imaginatively reconstructs a meeting between Mike Ashley and Kevin Keegan a few days after Keegan left the club for good. Mark Benton (instantly recognisable as the "new customers only" bank manager from the Nationwide adverts) plays Ashley as an intransigent, self-made southerner shovelling millions of his personal fortune into a black-and-white hole and wondering why he does not receive more appreciation for it. Bill Fellows presents Keegan as taciturn, tetchy and more than a little money-oriented. The great frisson of the encounter arises from the fact that the two men are rather more like each other than either wishes to admit.
The play is far from perfect, but it's brimming with passion and will undoubtedly develop as new headlines are written over the course of the run. The speculation on the night I saw it was that Steve Bruce was already being lined up as the new manager. Oh no he isn't, insists the club. Oh yes he is, claim the fans. Poor Joe Kinnear will have to watch out for the chairman when he returns from hospital. He's behind you ...
