There’s always one show that we hold close to our hearts and (on a personal note), it’s a show that began my theatre career 20 years ago.  So getting the opportunity to interview Sean Foley and Gary Morecombe at the press launch for The Play What I Wrote, I jumped at the chance. 

Due to open at The Birmingham Rep on 27 November, the play pays homage to Britain’s finest and funniest double act, Morecambe and Wise.  Originally directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Sean Foley, this new production is set to see Sean take the directing reigns and we were able to ask Sean and Eric Morecambe’s son Gary, all about what we can expect from this upcoming production.

How did you come up with the original concept for the play, how did it begin?

Sean:  Well, the idea of doing a show about or to do with Morecambe and Wise had been doing the rounds and the original producer of the show (now the co-producer of this new production) David Pugh had been semi obsessed with trying to find a way to do it. 

Gary:  He didn’t want to do it conventionally, that was the thing. 

Sean:  Yes. Hamish (McColl) and I had a little theatre company and we were essentially a double act.   We made our own shows but they were always theatre shows; we didn’t do just gags, we weren’t a comedy double act in that sense. We were lucky enough to have a big hit with a smaller show called Do You Come Here Often?, which got into the West End and then incredibly won an Olivier award.  It was just after David had seen the show that he called us in.  It’s like a fairy story in the sense that we were called in by a West End producer and he said, “Boys, I want you to do a show about Morecambe and Wise” We nodded politely, got out the room and said “This guy’s an idiot!” How could you do that?! That would be almost insulting in a weird way.  We said, “No, don’t want to do it”, and David said, “No, no, you come up with an idea about it".”  So genuinely, we took three or four days of going, we could do this or we could do that and it was the classic screwing up ideas and throwing them in the waste paper bin scenario. At some point, we just thought, maybe we do a show about us.

Gary:  Which was the lightbulb moment.

Sean:  We then started building a show and it came together really, really quickly.  Not all the lines and gags but the structure of the show, which is essentially one long tease about whether we are going to do Morecambe and Wise, but the idea that we would inhabit their comic world and have gags that were so similar to them, it could have been written by them and Eddie Braben.  That seemed to flow naturally but even then, we thought we’d still go back to David Pugh and say to him, “Well actually David, our idea is to do a show, essentially, kind of, about us in relationship to Morecambe and Wise.” We were convinced at that point that David would say, “No I’m not doing that, you’ve gotta do a proper impersonation.”  But he genuinely just went, “Great!”

Gary:  When did Kenneth Branagh come in?

Sean:  Well, that’s the genuine genius of David as a producer, he remembered that he’d read an interview when Ken Branagh had said, “I do all the Shakespeare and everything, but really my heroes are people like Morecambe and Wise”, and David, being the producer he is, he’d locked that away somewhere in his mind.  Again, a complete fairy story, he rang us up one day and said, “Oh, we’re gonna meet Ken Branagh,” and we went “Oh great, this is a terrible idea, this is gonna be the worst person ever to direct this show cause he’s Mr Shakespeare.  What’s he gonna do, ask us to come on with a skull?” and then literally, the moment we met and sat down with Ken, we realised that he’s a person who absolutely loves all parts of entertainment, actually, but has a complete fondness and love and great ability at comedy.  We connected on that and again incredibly, three days later, it came back, we’d like to do it, so we just did.  You couldn’t invent that series of events and in that sense, it was meant to be. Even on opening night, David recounts this story very well - we were completely unknowns.

That was my next question, when did you know that you really had something, that it was going to be a hit?

Gary:  Press night.

Sean:  When did I know?  Half time at press night.  I just thought we are killing it!

Gary:  I was there that night and there’s half the Python team there falling about laughing and Ken said the moment for him was at the end because they got a standing ovation, which you don’t normally get when the media are in.  So to get the standing ovation, when you see all these professionals in the audience who are there as guests standing up at the end and applauding, you’ve got to be pretty stone hearted to then go and say, “Oh, I didn’t enjoy it, so therefore, my readers won’t enjoy it”, so it was really positive.  I mean David Pugh told me the other day, in fact, that the sales suddenly rocketed.  Then the rest was history as they say.

Sean:  It was great fun!  I do remember distinctly coming off at half time and as a performer, I knew we were killing it and all that kept going through my mind at that moment was that we’ve got Ralph Fiennes up our sleeve.  We didn’t even need an ace at that point, but we had an ace!

Gary: Audiences will still love it this time round cause you haven’t changed the script as such.

Sean:  No, not really.  Not changed the script, just updated it here and there.

Gary:  You have to go with the current obviously.

Sean:  Just some of the references.

What can we expect from this production that is different from the original London production?

Sean:  Well, what’s different from the start is that there’s three different people doing it.  We did quite a long casting process to find performers with a very particular skill set. It sounds an obvious thing to say but you do need to be good to make this material live, it’s really great comedy material but to do it well, you need to look like you’re doing nothing and that’s the art of it; that’s the hard work of it.  We’ve got a fantastic new cast.  We will have some wonderful guest stars returning, who did it before, who all loved doing it.

Gary:  He won’t tell me who it is, I’m not allowed to know.

Sean:  Well, because I want it to be a surprise for you.

Gary:  It will be! 

Sean:  But it’s not just here (at the Birmingham Rep), we then go to Bath and there’s a national tour and hopefully, if it goes well, we’ll get back in to the West End and that would be glorious.  I can tell you that the opening night guest star is gonna knock your socks off!

Gary:  I’m excited already!

Sean, obviously it’s your writing, but which do you prefer, directing it or performing it?

Sean:  That’s a good question.  I don’t know if I prefer one or the other, you tend to prefer what you’re doing at the time.  But what I am really enjoying is working on the material again. It’s such a wonderful benign world of comedy to be in, the material itself is so fun, funny and generous.  I don’t look at the script, I mean I did 700 shows, it’s in my DNA.  I can give any of them their line but that aside and looking back, we’ve got a recording of when Sting did it so I refreshed some of the visual gags. Obviously they are not in the script but just having a look back at that, I don’t think you would ever, ever have a show that was so much fun to do as a performer. 

Gary:  I think David Pugh said it’s his biggest show isn’t it?  Biggest, most successful and I think Ken Branagh said it’s the biggest thing he’d worked on in the West End.

Sean:  Yes, Ken still says it to this day that is the biggest hit he’s have ever had in the theatre. The main thing is to communicate to audiences, particularly those who haven’t seen or heard of it.

Gary:  Exactly. And to audiences who were foreign as well, it still worked on that level, they didn’t know Morecombe and Wise.

Sean:   Exactly, it’s a show that stands by itself.  You don’t need to know anything, you can buy a ticket, rock up and have a great night out.

You’ll both have different perspectives on this, but how important do you think it is that we celebrate classic comedy such as Morecambe and Wise and bring that style of comedy to new audiences and new generations that wouldn’t have grown up seeing it?

Gary:  I think it’s huge that we recognise where comedy is now and where it came from.  I think it’s really important but that’s a very simplistic view.  Sean will probably have more to say on that because he’s working in it.  Literally.

Sean:  I don’t know if it’s important to me that you know where you come from but people today like Reeves and Mortimer would say, of course they’re inspired by Morecambe and Wise. That era of comedy is still with us.

The Play What I Wrote runs at The Rep Birmingham from 27 November 2021-1 January 2022, with tickets available here. There is also a special ticket offer for key workers.

Interview by: Rachel Louise Martin