Bingo show gives Sally a winning feeling
IT’S eyes down for a full house at the Royal Exchange Theatre from Friday when the building is transformed into a working bingo hall for Everybody Loves A Winner.
A major new production for the Manchester International Festival and co-commissioned by the theatre, with the festival, the show has been created by Neil Bartlett (whose production of The Pianist was an M.E.N. Award-winning big hit at 2007’s MIF), Simon Deacon and Struan Leslie.
Combining drama, comedy, music and choreography, Everybody Loves A Winner this remarkably-devised show opens a door on a secret world of dreams, dabbers, camaraderie and cash as a tightly choreographed cast of 20 delve beneath the surface of a day in the life of a Manchester bingo hall.
Designer Miriam Buether has removed much of the seating on the stage level of the auditorium to accommodate an authentic bingo hall set and there will also be slot machines in the theatre’s Great Hall foyer space to add to the experience.
Audiences will have the chance to play for a cash prize, or to simply sit back and watch the action unfold.
The cast includes Coronation Street favourite Sally Lindsay, who was recently seen at the theatre in A Taste Of Honey, as the bingo hall manageress Linda Chappell and Ian Puleston-Davies as Frank.
Sally has been involved she tells me, since Christmas, a few weeks after her triumph in A Taste Of Honey.
She said: “I was asked to an interview by Neil only a few weeks after that show closed, in December last year, and I didn’t know much about him at the time.
“But I went home and read about him and thought ‘Oh God! He’s done a lot!’.
“Basically, Neil said ‘I’d like you to play Linda, who’s the manageress, but I haven’t written it yet’.
“So I was a bit nervous but thought ‘it’s at the Royal Exchange, so it won’t be rubbish. Let’s just give it a go!’
“What he did explain was the concept he had. He’d been obsessed with bingo halls and why people go there, what goes on in their heads.
“There was this one moment in particular which had struck him and spurred the whole play on. The ladies go Eyes Down and they all start playing in absolute silence.
“Then somebody wins and there’s this great collective exhalation. What is that about and what are they thinking in that instant? Is it about loneliness? Is it about hope? Is it about promise? It’s about all of those things and more which led to the thought that bingo is a brilliant metaphor for life.
“So I was getting more and more fascinated by this and thought ‘okay then, I think I’ll get on your train. I like you and I think you’re smart’.
Egotistically
“Egotistically, I’ve never had a play written for me before and that’s quite nice too.
“All these other great northern actors and actresses came on board and I put a lot of other stuff on hold because I wanted to do this more and more.
“When I finally got to read the script in May, it was just like a Brechtian roller-coaster of emotions, all set on this one day in a bingo hall. But I don’t want to give too much away and spoil the fun for everyone else!”
When she met Neil that first time, he’d asked her to come to the bingo with him.
“We went to the Mecca on Hyde Road. Then I went to one on my own that was closing that week,” she reveals.
“I slipped in on a Saturday morning to the Astoria in Hyde. It was such a sad day because it felt like a family of some sort was being dismantled and that’s what has stuck in my head since.
“The Rex Bingo, as we call our bingo hall, is much more like that, one of a dying breed of very small bingo houses that are just everything to the people who go to them.”
Like a good working class boy, I tell her my mum used to go to the bingo every week and it was a social experience, the only time she regularly got to meet people who were nothing more or less than friends.
I still vividly remember her being excited beyond belief when she won the princely sum of £100 one week, although afterwards she had to walk home very nervously with more cash in her pocket than she’d ever had in her life.
“Whatever class you are, we always think about British culture involving some sort of alcohol and bingo’s just not like that,” Sally agrees.
“You go in, you pay your money, you get a cup of tea or a sandwich, and you just play. It’s fascinating.
“It’s also unbelievable when you watch these women filling in a half-a-dozen cards at a time – what astonishing coordination that needs. she marvels.
“I’m the manageress so I don’t have to do it so much in the show, but the other girls have to pretend they can do that really easily and I don’t envy them.
“As manageress, Linda’s got a very specific role in the play which is a bit apart from the ladies who are playing.
“She’s got her little empire but she’s also got her own moral dilemmas.
“Her job is to make sure the bingo hall pays its way but is she exploiting these ladies when they give her £40 or £50 a week and all they get at the end of it is a box of Milk Tray?
“I’ve never experienced working like this on anything I’ve ever done before, and it’s just really, really exciting.
“I’ve never been interested in bingo before either – and now I love it.”
Everybody Loves A Winner will be at The Royal Exchange Theatre, from Friday July 3.
Tickets will be priced between £8.50- £29, with concessions available, and can be booked either via www.mif.co.uk or www.royalexchange.co.uk or by calling 0844 815 4960.
Published: Thu, 25 June, 2009
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