MASTERCLASS

Jack Studio Theatre

★★★

“The play is deft and sufficiently funny”

There is an old anecdote about Sir Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman on the set of Marathon Man. The story goes that, to prepare himself for the part of frazzled Thomas Levy, Hoffman went for nights without sleep.

“Why don’t you try acting, my dear boy,” commented old-school thesp Sir Laurence.

This is the stuff of Masterclass, a natty two-hander from the pen of Tim Connery.

In this version, the conflict is literally spelled out. On the whiteboard of the primary school setting, brash pretender Gary Brock writes his Method philosophy: “Be who you are.”

To which old-school luvvie Roger Sutherland adds the word “not”. Be who you are not is the most obvious definition of acting, he says, astounded anyone might think otherwise.

And so the clash is established. Brock (Kurt Lucas) and Sutherland (Alex Dee) rage across the generations. In a short play, this quickly becomes a tired refrain, going nowhere particularly original.

We crave more from Brock and Sutherland, and it is slowly teased out to great effect. Why are Sutherland, once a contender for Bond, and Brock, a former ten-year veteran of an Aussie soap, holed up in an £85-an-hour masterclass in a rented classroom?

They both have issues. Ah. Here it comes.

Sutherland is old (ie, overlooked by the profession), making a meagre living doing ads for funeral payment plans, with the money heading straight to HMRC. More than that, though, he is becoming forgetful.

“Do you know who I am?” he bellows, with an actor’s penchant for self-aggrandisement.
“Do you?” replies Brock.

Brock has immersed himself so far into his method that he has become a liability on set, violent and unpredictable. Besides, who wants a child actor who grew up?

Under Luke Adamson’s careful direction, they begin to see commonalities where before there were only differences.

To carry this through, Lucas, playing Brock, has a gleeful pseud’s intensity, sucking in his cheeks and going effortfully to his core essence. On occasion, he has the air of a David Brent.

Alex Dee is conveniently a Peter Graves look-alike. He presents Sutherland as stately, suave and imperturbable. It is only under duress that he peels away layers to reveal an ultimately tragic reality.

The play is deft and sufficiently funny and, while its initial pitch lingers too long, it remains for the most part sharp and inquiring. Towards the end, one wonders how the writer will find a fitting resolution. He does so with some heavy-handed heart-tugging that comes a little too easily, especially after so much effort has been expended priming the pumps.

However, as a swift exploration of life’s capricious tendency to burst balloons, the Bridge House Theatre production is nicely done and well packaged.

And let’s just hope its success gets Brock and Sutherland back on their feet.

MASTERCLASS

Jack Studio Theatre

Reviewed on 22nd January 2026

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by The Bridge House Theatre

MASTERCLASS

GERRY & SEWELL

Aldwych Theatre

★★★

“The show begins with a surge of energy, the stage heaving and bouncing”

The story of Gerry & Sewell captures the story of the production itself.

A plucky little thing from the North East is fired by a dream of going places.

Writer-director Jamie Eastlake set out with a three-strong cast in the dusty attic of a former social club in Whitley Bay in 2022. The production captured a moment, a feeling, and was carried on the shoulders of the community to the Newcastle Theatre Royal.

Now, pinching himself, Eastlake brings his untidy show – complete with a bulging cast, impressive staging and glittery oomph – to the West End, where it remains at heart just as scrappy, just as raucous and chaotic as that opening night at Laurels.

This is the upward trajectory that Gerry (Dean Logan) and Sewell (Jack Robertson) want to pursue. Drifting through graffiti-strewn Gateshead, the feckless, hopeless duo have nothing, but they’re willing to risk it all to buy season tickets to the Gallowgate End of St James’ Park to worship Newcastle. Toon. The Magpies. (“One for sorrow, two for joy” is their bond and mantra).

They want, as Gerry says, “a bit of something, a bit of respect, our own space”. The season ticket is their escape route, and they embark on “one last mission” for a better life fired by that most precious ingredient of all – hope.

The third member of the original cast is Becky Clayburn, filling in for the wild elements and chaos of Tyneside: part street rapper, part thug, part force of nature. But now she has her own entourage, a band of hoodie-wearing hooligans and flash mobbers who add stomp and urgency to the proceedings.

The cast is fleshed out by Gerry’s family, with Emmerdale veteran Katherine Dow Blyton particularly good as faded matriarch Mrs McCarten, and Erin Mullen affecting as sullen and dislocated daughter Bridget.

From three originals, then, to a cast of 32, all managed well by director Eastlake’s kinetic and swift production.

We’re in for a good night.

Or are we?

The show begins with a surge of energy, the stage heaving and bouncing, the audience – many dressed in the black and white of Toon – waving flags and cheering. And everyone’s thinking: this is going to be a blast.

It doesn’t quite work out like that. The production betrays its roots for good and ill, its expansion providing brio but also serving to amplify the weaknesses.

Crucially, Gerry and Sewell’s story is not the joyous and rascally caper the publicity shots depict. Yes, there are laughs – mostly thanks to Robertson’s depiction of hangdog and ever-hungry Sewell. There are good lines and strong visual gags. And yes, the bond between the two is affirming.

But this is, for vast spans of time, an exploration of misery and cruelty, with every type of evil concocted, often needlessly and to the point of indulgence. Too frequently the production drifts into synthetic misery porn, counterbalanced by a misjudged working-class sentimentality, where the dumped mattress is elevated to the status of Keats’s Grecian Urn.

The partisan audience – up for a good time – becomes fidgety and disorientated. On press night, one audience member cried out, “Oh no!” Not, perhaps, at the horror of the confected act of violence we were witnessing, but shock that the production would go to such a ridiculous extreme to elicit a reaction.

However, for all its flaws, there is an unstructured, throw-it-all-in-and-see-what-sticks vibe, including puppetry and fantasy music numbers. This creates sufficient goodwill to prompt a standing ovation from a previously twitchy but ultimately forgiving crowd. A fitting conclusion for a production aiming to emulate the Gallowgate.

Tag Archives: Giles Broadbent

MASTERCLASS

★★★

Jack Studio Theatre

MASTERCLASS

Jack Studio Theatre

★★★

“The play is deft and sufficiently funny”