Our Friends in the North at The Lowry until 22nd March

The play behind the Bafta-award winning television series Our Friends in the North will have its first ever revival at The Lowry.

Few people realise that the popular series that made stars of then-unknowns Daniel Craig and Christopher Eccleston, started life as a small-scale play produced by the RSC. Now, 25 years later, Northern Stage are turning north-east writer Peter Flannery’s play into a large-scale epic. Told through the stories of four friends – Nicky, Mary, Tosker and Geordie – it is a chronicle through the 1960s and 70s, jumping from the House of Commons, to the banks of the River Tyne, to Scotland Yard, through a Newcastle high-rise and even into a seedy Soho porn shop.

It is a fast-paced and slick journey through the murky world of whispered conversations and underhand deals in the corridors of power, where everybody is getting their hands dirty. An extensive investigation into the nature of corruption and the abuse of power, Our Friends in the North is inspired by a number of real-life scandals and rumours: the inadequate social housing built by corrupt councillors in 1960s Newcastle; the London Metropolitan Police bribery by Soho gangsters; and the UK government’s selling of oil to the sanction-imposed Rhodesia after their declaration of independence.

Directed by Erica Whyman, the production looks at the defeat of left-wing idealism when the thirst for power becomes the driving force. The actors include Tracey Wilkinson (Di Barker in Bad Girls) and RSC regular Darren Tunstall, who will perform alongside some of the north east’s most recognisable faces – including Byker Grove’s Neil Armstrong, Jill Halfpenny’s husband Craig Conway, and veteran Geordie actors Rod Culbertson, Rod Arthur and Bill Fellows. Peter Flannery says, "The original stage play Our Friends in the North has lived for so long in the shadow of its television adaptation that I no longer believed it would ever be revived. Now, 25 years after its first and only production, Erica Whyman and Northern Stage are about to rescue it from near oblivion."