Actors Mark Womack and Jay Johnson shsre their excitment at bringing Boys From the Blackstuff to The Lowry.
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00We're going to the Salford, so how are you feeling about your Greater Manchester visit?
00:05I like the theatre, so I'm excited to go into it as well, because I've never worked there yet.
00:15I've been there to see friends and whatever, many, many times, so I'm really excited about that.
00:23And see how the Manchester folk will get on with a bunch of Scousers.
00:27Yeah, taking over for a week.
00:31You know what, it's about, it's touching, so it's about working class people, so I'm sure we'll get on with it.
00:41What do you think?
00:42Yeah, no, I agree. I think it'd be interesting, as we say, for a load of Scousers to rock up and take over the theatre for the week.
00:49But, you know, putting that aside, people from Liverpool, people from Manchester, we're similar in so many ways.
00:57Do you know what I mean?
00:57Political beliefs, a lot of, you know, similar views are shared across the two cities.
01:02I think the one thing that does separate us, and probably the only thing that does separate us is the football.
01:08Do you know what I mean? That's what the rivalry sort of comes from, along with, like, you know, the shipping canals and stuff like that, maybe, if you want to go deeper into it.
01:15But I think, you know, underneath the football rivalry, we're very similar. We get on, we have a lot of similar ideas on things.
01:26So it'd be nice to take a story, as Mark said, of working class people to another working class, predominantly working class city, and telling a story that, you know, they will have lived as well at the same time.
01:39Why should people buy tickets to come see you?
01:44Why, do you think?
01:47I would say, you know, in saying everything we've already said, it is really funny as well.
01:52Yes.
01:53You've got everything in this play. You've got humour. You've got, it's thought-provoking. It's heartbreaking at times. There's an amazing sequence. It's a fight scene. I won't tell you any more.
02:08And it literally will break people's hearts when they see it. It always does. It never fails.
02:15So it's really got everything, you know. Put that TV remote down and come out and see a proper play and good acting and songs, humour. You'll laugh, you'll cry.
02:27No, I agree. I think we live in an age now where entertainment, shall we call it, is so accessible. It's at our fingertips, whether it's, you know, Netflix, Instagram Reels, TikToks, YouTube, Amazon, whatever it may be, that we can get lost in that as well.
02:50It's very easy to get lost in that world. And it's very easy to start something, pause it, go to the toilet, make a cup of tea. Whereas when you come to the theatre, for those two hours, your phone's off, hopefully, and you're, you know, you're just engrossed in what's going on on the stage.
03:08Imagine, you know, whether, and it's in touching distance. And, you know, we have cups of tea and stuff in the show and you can see the steam coming off them. We have food, you know, there's like the black stuff, which is the tarmac that's in like a, I think, what would you call it? Bucket.
03:31And there's smoke coming off it. So you can, there's these things that you can smell. Someone's having a cigarette in the scene, you can smell it. It allows your imagination to be fully invested in it. And there's no distractions.
03:44And because it's so close, I think those emotional moments and the moments of comedy sort of hit more because, as I say, hopefully you're more invested because you're there. You can almost touch it. You can smell things. You can see it. And it's much more of an experience, I think. So yeah, come and see others.