CityLife

Looking For Buddy lifts lid on cities' woes

GEORDIE EX-PAT: Tim Healy in the show

LOOKING For Buddy is the story of a Geordie private eye on the trail of the missing recording of the legendary jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden.

It is Alan Plater’s first new play since Blonde Bombshells Of 1943, his hilarious and nostalgic hit presented to great acclaim at the Octagon, including an M.E.N. Theatre Award for best production, and now on its third national tour.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that Plater has chosen to have the play’s porld premiere at the Bolton Octagon and that Blonde Bombshells’ director Mark Babych (pictured) is directing this song-filled jazz musical, about what’s happening to the cities in the north, as part of his final season as the theatre’s artistic director. 

Tim Healy, making his debut at the Octagon, plays Phil, the Geordie private eye. While being haunted by the legend Phil finds himself entangled with smart London developers and financiers as they plan to transform and vandalise all that is best in a north eastern town.

The play is filled with jokes and songs in Alan’s own inimitable style with a new score from renowned jazz composer and musician Alan Barnes. 

Actually, the fact that Mark, who has been artistic director at Bolton for 10 years and is moving on at the end of this season, is directing turns out to be more fortuitous than I’d supposed.

“This didn’t really lead on from Blonde Bombshells at all,” Mark laughs.

“We’d been involved in the play from the very outset, it had been pencilled in for a run here at various times and we had always said we’d be happy to co-produce with Newcastle’s Live Theatre.

“Then Live Theatre’s Max Roberts found himself with a massive hit on his hands with Pitmen Painters, then he got offered something to direct in Vienna and so I became the director – which I’m very happy about!”

The show is, he says, "a great night out and a wry look at our current economic woes. A light-hearted look at the recession, if you can imagine such a thing!

Geordie private detective

“It’s written in the style of a Raymond Chandler, with Tim Healy, who is, obviously, a Geordie himself, as a Geordie private detective who is also an architect.

“He’s appalled at the way certain ways of life and long-standing, valuable traditions are being killed off by this model of regeneration that’s dead in the water.

“We’ve all seen the flats that have been built only to stand empty and the buildings built without purpose that once would have been about something – like people.

“But it’s not a polemic – it’s actually very funny and full of joy,” he emphasises.

“It’s set on the day that Northern Rock collapsed, which obviously has all sorts of resonances and, crucially, it features 14  original songs.

“Musicals have been an important factor in the revitalisation of the Octagon, which I’m very happy and proud to have been a part of.

“The scale of the success of Blonde Bombshells has been very gratifying, of course, but this feels a little more sophisticated – as if we’re all moving on.

“At the same time there’s an element of Alan looking back over his own life. 

“It might be set in the north east, which is where Alan’s roots are, but the show is about things that affect us all – about how people have to find a sense of community. That’s what it sings powerfully about.”

The show is Mark’s penultimate. His last will be Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer in June, for the Octagon, which he joined in 1999.

“It’s tough to leave, one doesn’t give these things up easily,” he admits. “But I think I’ve done a decent job, I’m very, very pleased that David Thacker will be taking over and I feel very positive about the future.”

Looking For Buddy is at the Bolton Octagon until Saturday, April 25. Tickets are from £9 on 01204 520661, or at www.octagonbolton.co.uk.