Cast’s red card for new orange strip
Jun 23 2009 by David Whetstone, The Journal
IN the green room at Live Theatre yesterday, there was much mirth on a colour-related theme.
“It’s shocking,” declares actor Chris Connel. “As if we’re not already figures of fun. I mean, who over the age of 12 is going to wear it?”
Er, the players?
“They bloody deserve it as well,” says Chris, conceding the point.
Yes, in another episode in the fun-filled soap that is Newcastle United it has been decreed that the Magpies will play away from home looking like a packet of custard creams, all yellow and orange.
According to Chris, only Kevin Keegan was really happy. Keegan, that is, as played by Bill Fellows. “He’s a Smoggie,” groaned Chris.
While Bill is Keegan and Dave Nellist is Mike Ashley, Chris has the honour of playing Alan Shearer in the updated version of You Really Couldn’t Make It Up – the Newcastle United play by Michael and Tom Chaplin that is struggling to keep pace with reality.
Chris is a Magpie, poor soul.
“I had a season ticket for 15 years. I gave it up the season before Shearer retired because he was supposed to be retiring that season – then Graeme Souness persuaded him to stay on.
“I was quite disillusioned at the time because there weren’t any other players I could really look at and say, ‘You are my hero’.
“My friend George, who I’d gone to the match with all my life, wasn’t renewing his and the guy on my other side was really boring.”
The Chaplins’ play was first aired at Live Theatre earlier this year, and enough has happened since then to merit an update.
Enter Alan Shearer, as performed by Chris, in between shifts in The Pitmen Painters.
Chris reveals that he saw Michael Owen recently in Sainsbury’s (“big shoulders for a little guy”) and was once starstruck when appearing in a video with Peter Beardsley. But all his glimpses of Shearer have been on the pitch or on the telly.
“There’s no point in trying to do an impersonation because I’m not Alan Shearer. It’s more what people might imagine him to be like behind closed doors,” he says.
And how does Chris imagine him to be? “Calm and dry.”
You may wonder where the playwrights got their material from. Chris mentions a few well-known people who were prepared to be quite candid with a promise of anonymity. I am sworn to secrecy, but the sources do give credence to the imagined stuff we will see on stage.
And what of the ending? “We do have one,” says Chris. “But it might change.” No surprises there, then.
You Really Couldn’t Make It Up is at Live Theatre from Thursday until July 10. Call (0191) 232-1232.
