COROnation Street
Civic Theatre, Auckland
A giggling gaggle of women a third his age cluster around William Roache at the bar. Freshly lipsticked and highly coiffed, they hone in on the star of the COROnation Street stage show after its opening night like birds do to prey.
They want another photo with him. They want to snuggle up real close for their own personal encounter with the tousle-haired actor.
Roache, a glint in his 80-year- old eyes, obliges.
The older audience members – and there are many many pensioners – are equally fawning.
Loitering in the Auckland Civic Theatre’s lobby to catch a glimpse of him, their adulation is palpable. He’s been in their front rooms for half a century. His unyielding dullness filling our screens and, apparently, fuelling some pretty intense fantasies for some viewers. Seeing him in the flesh must be quite surreal.
Roache links arms with one after the other, smiling, kissing, signing. Maybe the actor really has bedded the thousand or more women he alluded to in the press last year.
As Roache himself said: “There’s life in the old dog yet!”
Any thought to the controversy Roache stirred up in recent weeks – he implied victims of sexual abuse are paying for past sins – appears to matter not to any of these Street-struck fans.
His second newsworthy comment, flirting with a daytime TV presenter last month telling her of his urge to smack her bottom “You naughty girl”, seems only to have added fuel to this playboy’s fire.
Eh oop, there’s nought as queer as folk.
While his alter ego, Ken Barlow, has had a pretty good innings with the ladies over the past 50 years in sunny Weatherfield, Roache’s popularity is perfectly astounding. For the women of Auckland, he’s hotter than one of Betty’s famous hot pots.
Earlier, Roache looked comfortable on the stage ambling in to the strains of the Coronation Street theme song. The full house let out an excited and anticipatory “Ahhhh”. The panto begins.
And panto is what it really is.
It was difficult to imagine how one would tell the story of Coronation Street in a stage show.
The reality was a collage of plot lines told in almost slapstick fashion. Coronation Street writer Jonathan Harvey wrote the stage show in celebration of the street’s 50th anniversary and pokes fun at the complex and usually outlandish storylines condensing them into often hilarious vignettes. With an average of 416,000 Kiwis watching each episode here, New Zealand was an obvious place to tour the show.
Ad Feedback
The highlight for the mostly die-hard Coro audience was surely the saga of the Connor brothers told by way of a Swan Lake-esque ballet.
In another scene we’re transported a few decades back to Blackpool where Rita is singin’ up a jazz storm when she is discovered by some old flame out to wreak havoc. Those who watched the real episode way back will be pleased to know Harvey managed to complete the edge-of- the-seat scene with Rita’s near miss with a tram – painted on a curtain dragged across the stage – in slow mo. Like I said, it’s panto.
There are moments of pathos which take us by surprise. One moment we’re laughing at Hilda Ogden talking about her “murial”, the next our laughter is cut short as she unwraps the belongings of her dead husband Stan and weeps over them.
Like any good soap we watch, we have to remind ourselves, “It’s not real”.
There’s no doubt that the cast of six, who play 56 characters, are a talented bunch. The rapid transformation from Rita to Raquel, from Ena Sharples to Hilda Ogden is slick and must require serious concentration.
Actor Daniel Crowder managed to morph from Steve McDonald to Peter Barlow on stage with aplomb. The wardrobe mistress, waiting at the wings to undress and dress the frantic actors, is as much a star of the show.
Roache needs a few more shows to get into his stride as the narrator.
Lucy Thackeray plays Gail Potter better than Helen Worth herself. Jo Mousley’s impression of Deirdre was so good that the audience often cheered when she took to the stage.
The show needs a bit of polishing. Perhaps by the time it gets to Wellington, it’ll be on track.
It’s an odd thing indeed to watch actors playing actors. If you’re not a fan or have never watched the soap, it would be a confusing few hours.
You’d be better off down at the local having a pint of bitter, a hot pot and a barny with the bar maid.
For the die-hard Coro devotees, well, even if they preferred the real thing on the box with their feet up and a TV dinner, they did get the chance to have a William Roache experience. And only a thousand women can say that.
–
