Our Friends In The North - The Lowry - 18/03/08 by Jo Beggs

Long before Our Friends in the North hit our TV screens in 1996, it existed as a play. Produced while Flannery was writer in Residence at the RSC, some of the atmosphere must have rubbed off because his epic survey of Britain in the 1960s and 70s has echoes of Shakepeare’s history plays. Flannery casts his hapless characters into world of misplaced power and corruption, a world where no human flaw goes unpunished.

Flannery’s research for the play gave him an insight into a Britain which was being brought to its knees by corruption in the police force and local and national government. He was shocked by what he found. A society with institutional and personal greed at its heart. Flannery could write nothing less than this ambitious play, three and a half hours of harrowing drama which deals with the global - war in Rhodesia, to the personal – prostitution and drug addiction, conflict between and father and son.

At the centre of it all are three Newcastle boys, friends whose lives take very different paths. Nicky is an aspiring politician, Family man Tosker’s just trying to make ends meet and Geordie just lets life carry him along – into some dangerous and life changing situations.

Northern Stage have revived the play for the first time in twenty five years. Why now? We might ask, what does the play have to say to a twenty first century audience. Sadly it seems to be saying that little has changed. Ordinary families still have to live in squalid, damp public housing, council officials are still caught taking a back-hander now and again. We still profit from wars on the other side of the globe.

The company’s no fuss style works well here. Stark sets drive home the idea of emotions and ugly truths laid bare. A cast of fifteen portray a whole community with what is, at first, slightly confusing doubling up. The production moves at a frantic pace and provokes the audience to keep up. It’s two hundred and ten minutes of hard but satisfying work – and it passes astonishingly fast.

Erica Whyman’s direction appears light-touch – which probably means it’s far from it. Anything that moves at this pace requires great accuracy and performances to match. Northern Stage take this tough, powerful play and give it new life.