Our Friends in the North to premiere at Theatre Royal
A Live Theatre co-production
If you were watching television as an adult in the mid-1990s – and most of us were back then – it’s highly likely you’ll remember Our Friends in the North.
It’s acknowledged now as a TV landmark, an epic undertaking embracing the personal and the political.
Telling the tangled story of four friends from Newcastle over 31 years, from 1964 to 1995, it ran to nine episodes on BBC2 in early 1996, impressing critics and captivating millions of viewers.
What’s more, it turbo-charged the careers of its leading players – Daniel Craig (a future James Bond), Christopher Ecceleston (a future Doctor Who), Mark Strong (star of many a film) and Peterlee-born Gina McKee (the only one actually from the North East) whose performance earned a Bafta award for best actress.
But it began as a stage play, written by Jarrow-born Peter Flannery for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which premiered in 1982, first in Stratford, then Newcastle – in the studio theatre of what is now Northern Stage – and then in London.
A 25th anniversary production of the play, with a few additions by Flannery, did open at Northern Stage in 2007, directed by Erica Whyman. It then toured to six other towns and cities.
Now, to mark the 30th anniversary of the TV adaptation, another manifestation of Our Friends in the North is returning to the stage.
A new telling of the tale, conceived and made in Newcastle, is to run for two weeks in October at the Theatre Royal, a venue which mostly presents big touring shows from London and elsewhere.
It’s an exciting undertaking and an expression of theatrical friendship in the North (well, the North East), being a three-way co-production between the Theatre Royal, Live Theatre and Eastlake Productions which was behind recent stage hit Gerry and Sewell.
Sitting round a table at Live Theatre, Jack McNamara, Live’s artistic director, Theatre Royal chief executive Marianne Locatori and Jamie Eastlake told how the ambitious joint venture came about.
Jack and Marianne, newcomers to the region when taking up their current roles in 2021, said they’d agreed to keep talking and be open to possible partnership projects.
Post-Covid, it was a time of soaring costs and depleted audiences (the latter problem now easing, the former still a serious consideration).
Marianne remembered it was Jack who had raised the idea of Our Friends in the North as something that could involve two theatres of such different scale (the Theatre Royal is big, Live is small).
Jack said: “It’s quite a unique model, to make a piece of new work and start it in a place like the Theatre Royal.
“There aren’t many similar theatres that would want to do that.
“There are other models, like with Gerry and Sewell which moved up the ranks (from little Laurels in Whitley Bay, to Live Theatre, to the Theatre Royal and then to the West End) but starting at the Theatre Royal…
“It’s very courageous of you (to Marianne) but it’s really exciting. It means we can dream on a much bigger scale.”
Marianne, calling it a pilot project, replied: “We’re really interested in how this partnership can work but we all bring different skills to the table.
“Theatre is challenging and expensive and risky to make and so, for us, working in partnership to create a new play that is relevant but appealing to audiences in this city and region really is exciting.
“October is a prime slot but if we’re going to do this then we want to do it properly and give it the best chance to fly. And why we wouldn’t we give it a prime slot… that title with these partners in this city?”
Jamie Eastlake, originally from Blyth, is the Oliver Award-winning theatre maker who set up Newcastle-based Eastlake Productions eight years ago.
He was about four years old when Our Friends in the North first aired on TV but discovered it later.
“One of my favourite films is Layer Cake (said to be what got Daniel Craig the 007 role) and I was also a Doctor Who fan – and one of my first parts as an actor was in a TV show with Gina McKee.
“When I saw there was a programme set up here with those three superstars in, I had to watch it. I probably saw it first in about 2006/7 and I watched it again last year and it absolutely translates to now.”
Jack said Peter Flannery, long resident down south but with the North East in his blood, had been enthusiastic.
But this is not to be a revival of his original play or an attempt to tell the whole TV story involving 1960s police and council corruption, the criminal underworld, political intrigue and the rise of Thatcherism.
“I spoke to Peter about what we could do and we settled on two key episodes in the TV series which are both in the Thatcher years.
“The first is 1979, which was her election year, and the second is 1984 which saw the realisation of her vision.”
The year-long miners’ strike may not have been part of that vision but it was part of her legacy and a dominant theme of that particular episode (broadcast on February 26, 1996).
“It just felt like they were the episodes where the political and the personal were completely enmeshed,” said Jack.
He will direct the play and has had Peter’s blessing to construct the drama around those episodes while plucking lines from others to make a coherent story.
TV viewers will remember the series began with Nicky (the Eccleston character) and girlfriend Mary (Gina McKee) cuddling on the beach. An earnest 20-year-old, he’s just back from America where he was impressed by the emerging civil rights movement.
Then we meet his friends Geordie (Daniel Craig on TV) and Tosker (Mark Strong)… and in subsequent episodes see how their lives pan out.
Jack envisages a cast of up to a dozen for this production, predominantly from the North East.
“I think lots of actors will be dying to be in it,” he said.
And after October, could this Our Friends in the North go beyond this region?
“It’s certainly an ambition,” said Marianne.
“We’ll create it here and premiere it for audiences in the North East, but we want it to have a future life.”
All three stressed that while the production will stir memories for fans of the TV series, the aim is for it to appeal equally to people for whom it will be new.
And audiences will be left in no doubt as to its collaborative nature with the Theatre Royal run coinciding with related events at Live as part of its 2026 Radical North East theme.
Jacqui Kell, executive director of Live Theatre, said later that auditions would be held locally as part of the production’s commitment to developing talent which hails from the region.
The venture represented, she added, “exactly the kind of ambitious, collaborative work we want to be making in and for the North East”.
Our Friends in the North will run from October 15 to 24.
Tickets go on general sale at 10am on March 4 (and to various Friends groups and others on March 2 and 3). Book by calling 0191 2327010 or online via the Theatre Royal website.