It is a year of significant anniversaries on Tyneside: Live Theatre is 30 years old and its most venerable playwright, Tom Hadaway, turns 80. So what better way to celebrate than to turn the clock back to where it all began?
In terms of wider national recognition, Hadaway has never entirely had his due. But among north-eastern writers, he's a living legend. Hadaway co-authored the TV series When the Boat Comes In, and showed writers such as Alan Plater and Peter Flannery that it was possible to put their own lives and experiences on the stage.
Hadaway's pungent domestic drama, documenting his own early experiences in the fish trade, was the first play commissioned and performed by Live Theatre. It concerns the life choices of sullen North Shields teenager Davey, who is "ganna dee what he's ganna dee and gan where he's ganna gan", which, for readers south of Darlington, means he is either going to utilise his O-levels to please his ma, or graduate into gutting fish on the quayside like dad.
It's a simple play that rehearses the age-old working class dilemma that the desire for self-betterment carries the risk of social alienation. But Hadaway packs a great deal into a slender frame. As Davey's personality veers more towards the machismo of dad than the aspirations of ma, there lurks the suggestion that his employment as an unskilled machine-operative will eventually put the manual workers of his parents' generation out of business.
There are sublime performances, with notable debuts from Adam Scott as Davey and Stephanie Lacey as his sister Alice. Denise Welch eminates stoical desperation as Ma, trapped in a violent, loveless marriage, but Trevor Fox's dangerous, drink-soused Dad is the dominant figure, spraying invective, spittle and most of his supper.
Hadaway's deadpan, demotic poetry proves great writing never goes out of fashion.
