Super Sixties

HE might be a Geordie Dreamboat at the moment, but Glen Joseph is hopeful that it will lead to more musicals and another outing as Buddy Holly.

Joseph is touring to Sunderland Empire this week with Bill Kenwright’s Dreamboats and Petticoats, based on a surprise smash-hit series of albums, which looks back at the ever-popular earlysixties era through the eyes youth club members and organisers.

Joseph started out in amateur shows on Tyneside, at the People’s Theatre and the Tyne Theatre Stage School, before training at the Guildford School of Acting and entering the rough and tumble of showbusiness as the headline star of The Buddy Holly Story in the West End and on tour.

“It was actually rugby I played most while growing up in Benton, Newcastle. I also played in a couple of bands and taught myself to play the guitar. In the world of musical theatre, musicians are the in thing. It’s gone from being a triple threat, dancer-singer-actor, to ‘yeah, you’ve got to be able to play a musical instrument as well’. So I’ve got lucky and been able to work the last couple of years,”

he says. There had been talk of his performance going to Australia or Lubbock, Texas – where Holly was born – after Joseph was selected to play Buddy to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his death last year.

“It certainly opened a lot of doors for me and I’d do the show again in a heartbeat. It’s the best role ever because I went to see The Crickets with my dad and we went across to Lubbock and he was the biggest Buddy Holly fan. Doing the job was a dream come true. I grew up with Motown from my mum and Buddy Holly from my dad. He was always on in the car so I loved the opportunity to play him, especially as its one of the longest-running shows, something like 20 years, and is in the top ten of the 100 most popular musicals. That’s testament to this great but tragic story, based on a career that was 18 months long,” says Joseph.

“For a lot of people, the musical influence was Sinatra, but he was always a bit soft for us. He was, as my mum would say ‘a hairy-arsed crooner’. Ours was a rock‘n’roll family,” adds the performer who feels that Buddy’s success is down to his wife, Maria Elena, and Paul McCartney, who owns the musical rights, ensuring that the plot is as accurate as possible.

“My progression has been from doing the late Fifties with Buddy to the early Sixties of Dreamboats and Petticoats,” he says.

On the show’s plot, which has a streak of reality added by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran of TV’s Birds Of A Feather fame, Joseph says: “We see the repercussions of sleeping around with rock stars, but some people have made a career out of doing that.”

He smiles about his efforts on guitar earning critical acclaim.

“We often see reviews that the ‘actors were supported by a wonderful live band’. I wish we were getting those rates of pay, but we’re all actors, and there’s probably more stage experience in the band than in the majority of the live actors because Bill Kenwright enjoys using reality TV youngsters. So for some of these guys, it’s the first time they’ve appeared on a stage.

This youthful enthusiasm works for us the way it probably wouldn’t work for The Taming Of The Shrew,” Joseph says.

“I do despise and will refuse to watch anything to do with the reality TV, X Factor or Dorothy related. I didn’t spend £30,000 going to drama school and uprooting everything to go down South to then think that somebody can waltz into my role. That’s just my opinion, but the old school mentality is that there is a certain way of doing things and in this business it’s becoming too easy, with six months of fame, to come in and do something that someone talented has done for years. I understand that these people put bums on seats, but it is the panto way of thinking,” he comments.

Joseph clearly recalls his own “rugby or rock‘n’roll” decision in his youth and took a lot of ribbing at the Novocastrians RFC where he played.

“The first conversation with my agent, when I left drama school, was that ‘you can’t play rugby any more’. I thought ‘yes I can, but I just can’t tell you about it’. But your body is your business and I knew I couldn’t go out there and batter myself every weekend and expect to perform all week, particularly with something like Buddy. I still follow Newcastle Falcons and Newcastle United avidly, probably even more so that I’m away from the region. The hairs go up on the back of your neck when you see them playing because ‘you know what, that’s where I’m from’.”

■ Dreamboats and Petticoats runs at Sunderland Empire until Saturday. Tickets: £13.50- £31. Box Office: 0844-847-2499