Waiting for Madonna

Jan 11 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

Playwright Tommy Kearney has finally got his play on stage in Liverpool, and now just wants a celebrity endorsement. Emma Pinch reports

DAVID and Goliath is how Tommy Kearney cheerfully compares himself to theatre giant, Willy Russell. But what he currently lacks in might, the fellow Whiston–born playwright certainly makes up for in fighting spirit.

His play, Madonna and Me, opens at the Actors’ Studio next month, and fulfils a vow he made a year earlier to see one of his works on a Liverpool stage in 2008, with an authentic Scouse cast. Coincidentally, Blood Brothers was enjoying a successful run at the Empire then, as it is now.

“I’m absolutely thrilled, it couldn’t have been better timing,” says Kearney affably. “Me and Willy Russell, both from Whiston, up against each other. I’m opening at the simplest theatre, he’s at the largest. You can go and watch Barbara Dickson or whoever going on about going away and shoes on the table like she has for the past 28 years. Or you can see something new and fresh that you haven’t seen before. That’s the choice.”

Kearney says he felt Liverpool to be stuck in a bit of rut choicewise, in terms of theatre. A feeling no doubt furthered by the hurdles he’s faced in getting his play staged in this city – despite its critical success on the polished boards of Jermyn Street Theatre, Piccadilly, London. He’s now funding the Liverpool venture himself.

“I just got really fed up because each time I went home it was the same old thing,” he says. “Blood Brothers, Tuppence Across the Mersey, Shirley Valentine being staged every time, although I think it is changing now.

“I tried to get my play on at home but no one returned my calls or emails. I’m passionate about this and I thought, stuff you, I’ll do it in London then. Now I’ve put my money where my mouth is and I’m putting the money up for it myself.”

Kearney’s play follows the fortunes of six friends at school in Liverpool from 1984, the time Madonna burst onto the pop scene, igniting fashion crazes like bangles and crucifixes, Ray Bans, ripped tights and lace gloves.

“It's the story of six friends – three girls and three boys – who grow up on a council estate in Liverpool and are joined by an extra character, a Scottish lad called Adam, who is gay,” says Kearney, who is 37.

“There are a couple of love triangles, rites of passage, loyalty and betrayal. It’s like a slice of life, so though there is a gay character it is not a “gay” story. I see it as a romantic comedy about friendship; about what true friendship means and how far you would go for a friend. It questions your allegiances. The moral is ‘do unto others as you would unto yourself’.”

There are however, elements of Kearney’s own story mashed into it. The characters grow up in Whiston, and part of it is set in his own secondary school, St Edmund Arrowsmith the Martyr.

“I try to keep it authentic and, like most writers, I draw on my own experiences,” he says.

“When the play is set, the gay quarter didn’t exist. A gay club called Jodie’s existed and it was really underground, you had to bang on a door to be let in. Inside, there are four male dancers Vogueing and it really changes Adam’s life.

“The audience follows the three characters setting off at Lime Street to see Madonna in concert on her Who’s That Girl tour in 1987 in London. Me and two friends actually did that. We paid £16 and it was a huge amount when you were on the dole.”

Kearney’s route to becoming a playwright was a winding one. Like his characters and real life friends he left school in the ’80s to embark on a YTS. His was in design and he joined a T–shirt factory in Anfield, staying there for 10 years. “I was one of the YTS successes,” he comments dryly. “You worked for a pittance, and then they still took money off you.”

He moved to London 15 years ago and started writing seriously two years ago, attending a creative writing course in his spare time. He entered a competition to write a play for a theatre group, won, and was taken on. He still holds down a full time job in IT at a national newspaper while writing and producing.

His first play, Windermere, set around a youth training scheme in the Lake District, was well received at the Clerkenwell Theatre, Islington, last summer. Another, Maggie, about a brother replacing a sister as their mother's carer, was produced at the Hen And Chickens London fringe venue.

As well as the forthcoming Liverpool run, Madonna And Me has also been seen at the Union Theatre, Southwark, having already featured in the three-week West End Festival of Performance last August.

And there has been a little input from the pop legend herself. Well, near enough. Her publicist has been to see the show in London, and they received her approval to put Madonna’s Malawi aid charity on their literature.

“I’d love her to come and see it,” Kearney grins at the suggestion Madonna might one night be in the audience. “I paid £165 to see her Confessions tour. Maybe she’ll return the favour.”

* MADONNA And Me is at the Actors' Studio, 36, Seel Street, from January 15 to February 2.

emma.pinch@dailypost.co.uk