Class A drugs, surefire laughs and Richard Bean's North East hit
Smack Family Robinson returns
Most people probably know Richard Bean for One Man, Two Guvnors, his hilarious adaptation of an 18th Century comedy by Italian playwright Carlo Goldini, set in the 1960s.
It premiered at the National Theatre in 2011 and went on to win plaudits galore, boosting the acting credentials of James Corden who won a Tony Award when it ran on Broadway.
In 2012 it brought the house down at the Theatre Royal when Rufus Hound took the Corden role of Francis Henshall, out-of-work skiffle player turned illicit multi-tasker trying to keep his two bosses out of each other’s orbit.
It’s still generating laughter, says the real Mr Bean.
“I think there are about six productions on around the world, amateur or professional.
“For me it’s a bit of a pension plan. You need one otherwise you’d need to do another job.”
And you can see why he wouldn’t want that, well knowing the perils of two guvnors.
Some years before the inadvertent pension plan opened in London, Richard Bean had his sights on Newcastle after his work had caught the eye of Jeremy Herrin, then associate director at Live Theatre.
Herrin fancied directing Toast, Bean’s second play inspired by his early experience of working in a bakery, but also wanted to commission a new play… which turned out to be Smack Family Robinson.
“I’d come across this report in a Brighton newspaper,” Richard remembers, asked where the idea came from.
“A family there were the local heroin dealers and it was such a fascinating story.
“Those that do heroin dealing have two problems: what the hell do you do with the stock and what do you do with the money? You’ve got too much and it can become a bit obvious.”
He had the notion of “a nice comic flip”, making the dealer family ostentatiously middle class and setting his story in respectable Whitley Bay.
“The dad is in the golf club and the Rotarians and all that kind of stuff.
“In the newspaper report the mother ran a flower shop and all the heroin money went through the books, which is obviously how they got done in the end.
“HMRC must have tipped off the police that this flower shop was making over £2m a year.
“I started researching the court reports and there’d been a murder within the family, or a suspicious death.
“And of course if you’re in that world of heroin, death is a daily occurrence, a kind of occupational hazard.”
Richard Bean has had some experience of this, as he explains.
“I used to live in a squat in London when I was a stand-up comedian and starting my writing career. In those days all the punk bands lived in squats and it was quite a big thing.
“You could be artistic and creative but you couldn’t pay the rent so you had to squat. It was really quite sensible.”
It had its downside, though, exemplified when a younger guy, seeing in Richard something of a father figure, asked if he could move in and share.
“I said, ‘Why do you want to do that, Pat?’ He said, ‘Because I want to get away from my dealers. I’ve been doing heroin and want to get off it. I know you’ll be tough with me’.”
Rules were laid down but Pat, perhaps inevitably, transgressed. As agreed, he packed his stuff and left.
“Two months later he was dead,” recalls Richard.
“I’ve never done heroin but I’ve known quite a few people who’ve got themselves clean and they all have near miss stories. You never know what’s in it, for one thing.”
The comedy in his play, says Richard, comes from the “flipped values”, being appalled at the wearing of shoes on a shagpile carpet but blasé about drug dealing.
Helping to mark Live Theatre’s 30th anniversary, Smack Family Robinson was hailed by one reviewer as “a funny black comedy firmly grounded in Geordie culture (in its widest sense!)”.
Performances by Colin Maclachlan, Judi Earl, Mike Goodenough, David Nellist and, in her first professional role, Laura Norton were praised as “excellent”.
Subsequent productions have shown the play can be grounded in other cultures, too, with the addition of a little local ‘colour’.
“Everyone kind of knows that these Mr Big heroin dealers live in the middle class suburbs and all the kids will have cars,” says the playwright
“We did it in London, in Richmond, directed by Richard Wilson of Victor Meldrew fame, and we re-wrote it for there. We also did it in Hull.”
And now, for one night only, it’s coming back to where it began with a starry read-through in which Denise Welch will take the part of Cath, the florist (as she did in the London production), and Trevor Fox will play her husband, Gavin.
Also due to appear are Denise’s son Louis, Beth Crame and Luke Maddison.
Is Richard Bean being disingenuous when he wonders why Live Theatre are reviving his creation to mark… “what, its 23rd anniversary?”
Told that it’s billed as ‘Richard Bean at 70’, he chortles: “Ah! They’re celebrating my age.
“Well, I’ve got another week to go. My birthday’s on June 11.”
Seventy (nearly) and clearly still going strong.
Current projects include an updated version of another Goldoni play, The Venetian Twins – “It’s a bit like One Man, Two Guvnors, I suppose. Let’s hope it’s not second album syndrome” – and a version of a French farce which he is calling Triple Bypass and has relocated in a hospital.
“It’s a bit like The Comedy of Errors or indeed The Venetian Twins, except there are three of them. But they’re not triplets.
“There are two identical twins and they’re doppelgangers for a third person. The trick is that one actor has to play all three parts so it’s a bit of a tour de force.
“We’re just casting it at the moment and trying to get a theatre.”
Audiences may be fickle but surely both of those have the potential to boost the pension plan.
Now living near Stratford-upon-Avon – the town’s famous living playwright – he says he’s looking forward to returning to Newcastle to renew acquaintance with the drug-dealing yet oh-so-respectable Robinsons.
“We’ll stay on the Quayside. I remember the whole development going on down there with the bridge and everything. It was good fun at the time.”
And still is and will be again, particularly on Friday, June 19, when Smack Family Robinson, the reading, is at Live Theatre. Tickets (still some left) from the theatre website or tel. 0191 232 1232.