CityLife

Main event: Corrie!

Corrie!

The Lowry - August 12 to 21, 2010.

Coronation Street, the nation’s favourite and longest-running soap, is trading its famous cobbles for the boards next week with a new comedy written by Jonathan Harvey, having its world premiere – appropriately enough – at The Lowry, Salford.

As well as penning more than 100 episodes of Coronation Street, Jonathan is an award-winning playwright and perhaps his most famous play has been Beautiful Thing.  

Written to celebrate the soap’s 50th anniversary, Corrie! condenses five decades of much-loved storylines and characters into one two-hour show. Former Coronation Street star Charles Lawson, who played Jim
McDonald in the soap from 1989 and remained as a regular character in the award winning show for the next 11 years, will tread the boards as narrator for the theatre production.

His character first appeared on the cobbles with his wife Liz and their twin sons Steve and Andy and was most recently seen in 2009 when he returned for his on-screen son’s wedding.

He says he’s ‘delighted to be narrating the piece and looking forward to this 50th celebration of the established church’, while the series’ creator Tony Warren described the play as ‘an insider’s affectionate romp through 50 dramatic years’.

The show promises to feature more than 55 of everyone’s favourite characters including the likes of Bet Lynch, Elsie Tanner, Ken Barlow and Gail Platt, as well as reliving most of the great storylines including Deirdre going to prison (remember Free The Weatherfield One?), Brian getting stabbed and Tracy killing Charlie.

The complete cast has been announced as Leanne Best, Simon Chadwick, Katherine Dow Blyton, Matthew Wait and Josie Walker. 

Simon, Katherine and Matthew have each previously taken roles (albeit briefly) in Coronation Street over the years, but this time the five will be playing all the Corrie character parts between them!

“When promoter Phil McIntyre and the programme’s executive producer Kieron Roberts first came up with the idea and approached the current writing team for someone to script it, they suggested that the live show should be something like the Reduced Shakespeare Company,” remembers Harvey, who has been on the writing team for six years.

“I expressed an interest because I thought it could be a bit of a laugh.

“Now I’d have to say it’s been bizarre but enjoyable. Luckily, we’ve got a really good archive department and I insisted on a researcher to help me, which has been invaluable!

“First of all, I tried to make a list of all the really good characters but that was just too massive!

“Then I went through all the top story lines from each year so I could get a sense of the important characters.

“From that, I decided you could build it around Ken, Deirdre and Gail and then started to add in all the comic or iconic characters that you just couldn’t leave out.

“Even so, there was lots of stuff I wanted to get in that you simply couldn’t fit in a two-hour show.

“Ken, Deirdre and Gail are at the centre of it all, but it’s peppered with comedy scenes such as Ken giving Raquel French ­lessons.

“Then you have scenes like Hilda referring to Stan dying, so I’ve warned the cast to be ready for all sorts of reactions.

“I did try to do all the dialogue verbatim, but when I actually looked at the scripts, as opposed to relying on my memory, that obviously wasn’t always going to work.

“The conversation with Gail where Richard Hillman is revealed as a serial killer took place over three episodes, for instance, so you obviously have to condense things like that.”

“Even thought it’s obviously enormously popular and has been for years  you can’t assume the audience know everything,” he points out.

“I wasn’t born when it started, for instance. So you have to make sure it works as a piece of live entertainment.

“But also, this should really be a series of little treats for the audience, and that’s what I’ve tried to provide.

“It’s quite cheeky and irreverent but I love the programme and these people as much as anybody and want other fans to share the affection I have for these characters.”

Corrie! is at The Lowry from Thursday August 12 to Saturday August 21, 2010.