GIVEN that theatre show Brick Up the Mersey Tunnels has sold more than 100,000 tickets over four runs, it’s strange to hear the creator of its sequel saying he’s worried about audience numbers.

The show has been credited with saving Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre, which was due to close until Nicky Allt’s and Dave Kirby’s comedy broke box office records in 2006.

So surely a follow-up is bound to be a success?

“I never get nervous but I do feel this is the show where we’re taking a gamble,” says Allt, who has written Brick Up: The Wirral Strikes Back without Kirby.

“We’re putting it on in a big theatre for a new audience and hopefully they’ll come along with us.”

His goal from the beginning has been to widen theatre’s appeal to local people who feel it has nothing to offer them.

“All we ever set out to do is say to ordinary people – theatre’s for you. In this city, it doesn’t matter how many times you repeat it, they think it’s not for them,” says Allt.

“It’s why I started to write. I used to go and watch plays and I used to think ‘I could do better’ and in the end I was like a stuck record so I went back to John Moores University to get the basis of script-writing.”

The result was Brick Up, the story of three Liverpudlians who, sick of being insulted by the snooty people of Wirral, plan to wall up the Queensway and Kingsway tunnels.

With no link between Liverpool and Wirral – the Runcorn Bridge has also been incapacitated – the new show centres on entrepreneur William Laird, who sees the situation as a business opportunity, and his foreman, Vinny Kelly, who is busy embracing old school Labour politics while his son aims for a top job in the council.

It stars a mixture of seasoned actors, including Eithne Brown, Dean Sullivan, Warren Donnelly and Bernie Foley, alongside young people straight out of college.

Brick Up mark 2 launches at the Empire Theatre tomorrow – where Allt’s One Night in Istanbul enjoyed a successful second run earlier this year.

The production will be more hi-tech than the original show, with a giant screen showing historical footage of a Mersey Ferry sinking and riots outside St George’s Hall, as well as cameos by some of Merseyside’s great and good who had a tendency to ad-lib.

“We filmed (Liverpool City Council leader) Joe Anderson – he went off script,” reveals Allt.

“Lorraine Rogers, chair of Tranmere Rovers, didn’t stick to the script at all but what she said was very good.”

BRICK Up: The Wirral Strikes Back is at the Liverpool Empire from September 7-18.