Sisters' tale is a running story
Sep 8 2009 by David Whetstone, The Journal
“Quite early on I started to work with the idea of the hare and the tortoise as a myth about running and as a fantastic metaphor.
“The way theatre works is as metaphor. The run is a huge thing but to put something on stage, it has to be larger than itself.”
Mike decide to crystallise the experiences of 50,000 runners into the tale of two sisters.
They are both in their 30s but Alice is a hare, a serious runner and a lifelong achiever, while Diane is a tortoise, a non-runner who has ambled through life.
The loss of their mother to cancer propels both of them to the Central Motorway start line of the Bupa Great North Run – in common with many who will do so for real later this month.
“The great thing about the Great North Run is that it’s a run,” says Mike. “It’s not the Great North Race but people approach it in different was. Some people approach it as a race and some people don’t.
“The tension between our characters comes from their different approach to things throughout their lives.
“Alice has done the run before and has done lots of runs. Wherever she goes, she takes her running shoes. It helps to keep her sane.
“Diane’s memories are of being forced to do cross-country runs and hating everything about it.”
Mike promises some flashbacks involving his two characters but the action of the play takes place along the famous Great North Run route – with some of the plentiful archive footage providing one of those theatrical solutions.
Mike, who was born in Oswestry, embarked early in life on a law degree before switching to teaching, then theatre-in-education and then to acting and finally to writing plays.
He was had work staged in the region before, some of it for Alnwick-based NTC, and adapted The Railway Children which was successfully staged at the National Railway Museum in York.
Mike attended the Great North Run as a spectator last year for the first time. “It moved me more than I expected. The individual stories are amazing but it is also a very warm thing to be involved in. I don’t think there’s any other run like it.”
13.1, with Vicky Elliott as Diane and Sonia Beinroth as Alice, is directed by Paul James. Tickets: (0191) 232-1232 or www.live.org.uk
