Newcastle football musical Gerry and Sewell smashes West End – review

Inside, the sense of occasion was unmistakable as a sizeable expat Geordie contingent – and those who had made the journey south – gathered to support a production that, in just over three years, has travelled from an attic theatre in Whitley Bay to one of London’s most prominent stages.

That journey, forged through sell-out runs at Live Theatre and Newcastle Theatre Royal, has been as improbable and hard-won as the story unfolding on stage.

The 16-performance West End residency represents the most ambitious chapter yet in the show’s relatively short but dramatic life. Announced with little more than eight weeks’ notice – Christmas firmly wedged in the middle – the transfer demanded rapid adaptation, expansion and belief from a village of creatives determined not to let the opportunity pass.

The result is a production that looks entirely at home in Theatreland, while simultaneously serving up something the West End too rarely sees: a defiantly regional story told on its own terms.

An adaptation of Jonathan Tulloch’s book, The Season Ticket and the associated 2000 film, Purely Belter, Gerry and Sewell centres on two Gateshead lads whose shared obsession with scraping enough cash to secure their seats at St James’ Park becomes a wide lens through which friendship, family, class and aspiration in the North East are explored.

For Becky Clayburn, who has been with Gerry and Sewell since its earliest incarnation, the moment still feels surreal. “Walking down the Strand on a night with the lights on… I get properly choked up,” she said just before curtain-up. “It’s so reflective of the storyline. Doing whatever you can to make the dream happen on very limited resources – it’s just so special.”

Becky as Brabin and a full hand of other characters is one of several cast members enjoying their first West End run, alongside Erin Mullen (Brigette) and Katherine Dow Blyton (Mam), as well as the play’s titular stars Jack Robertson (Sewell) and Dean Logan (Gerry). 

That sense of shared arrival – collective rather than individual – is central to the production’s spirit.

Erin, who joined the cast for the Newcastle Theatre Royal run, described the moment she first saw the show’s name outside the Aldwych. “Every time I see the sign outside the door… it’s still incredible,” she said. “But when we’re on stage, it feels right – like we’ve properly taken up our space.”

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That balance – between scale and intimacy, spectacle and heart – is one of the show’s defining strengths. The West End version expands the world of Gerry and Sewell without losing its focus, introducing new characters including Gerry’s older sister Claire, played by Chelsea Halfpenny, and weaving in the music of Sam Fender as a powerful emotional undercurrent.

Chelsea puts in a gorgeous performance of Fender’s Leave Fast live on stage, while extracts from tracks including People Watching and Seventeen Going Under soundtrack the onstage action. 

South Shields-born Katherine Dow Blyton, who is performing in Gerry and Sewell for the first time, praised the show’s explosive opening which sees the theatre brimming with black and white, courtesy of Wor Flags, and an energy befitting a big finish.

“The start of the show just blows everyone away,” she said. “It gives the audience a real sense of what’s coming. It feels really good to be telling this story here and we’ve slipped really nicely into the theatre – everyone has been really welcoming.”

But the ease with which the production now fills the Aldwych has been anything but effortless.

This is a show that has been built, rebuilt and refined at speed. It is also a production deeply conscious of what it represents: a clear assertion that stories from the North East deserve their place on the national stage, without dilution or apology.

On stage, Gerry and Sewell – a co-production between Eastlake Productions and Newcastle Theatre Royal – remains a relentless blend of humour, music, big performances, even bigger hearts, social commentary and delightful puppetry, expanded for the West End while retaining its resonance.

Off stage, the opening night celebrations continued just along the road, with a black-and-white party at the Waldorf hotel, soundtracked by a North East–soaked playlist and underpinned by a palpable sense of pride.

Gerry and Sewell runs at the Aldwych Theatre in London until January 24.

The production will return to Newcastle Theatre Royal from June 9 to 13.