New stage for streetwalkers of hit TV show
Red light drama gets world premiere
IT BEGAN with the chance sighting of a woman engaged in the oldest profession, beneath the glow of a street lamp in Bradford. It will end in the glare of a stage light, up the road in Leeds.
Band of Gold, the controversial but hugely popular 1990s ITV drama about sex workers negotiating the pimps and pitfalls as they ply their trade in the wild West Riding, has not been seen since its third series ended, more than 20 years ago.
But this November the red light will burn once more, as the characters return to their old stomping ground in a theatre production conceived by the show’s creator, Kay Mellor.
The stage version of Band of Gold will have its world premiere at the Grand Theatre in Leeds, Ms Mellor’s home town, its producers will announce today.
Its commissioning follows the record-breaking run of the stage version of another of her TV successes, Fat Friends, which premiered as a musical in 2017.
Band of Gold, however, is a darker production – a crime drama in which death stalks the seedy underworld of West Yorkshire in the late 1980s.
The original show was Ms Mellor’s breakthrough into mainstream drama.
First aired in March 1995, it starred, amongst others, Geraldine James, Cathy Tyson, Barbara Dickson and Samantha Morton as down-at-heel sex workers, drug pushers and police officers.
“We have the same characters as the original TV series, but some of the elements have changed.
“If you thought you knew who the killer was, you may be challenged,” said Ms Mellor, who went
on to write a canon of TV work that includes Playing the Field, In The Club and The Syndicate.
She had been invited, she said, to revive it for the stage following the reception of Fat Friends: The Musical, which also premiered at the Leeds Grand.
“The manager, Ian Sime, said to me, ‘If ever you have anything else, think of us first’. That’s all any writer wants to hear.”
Mr Sime said: “Kay knows Leeds and Yorkshire audiences like no other and is one of the great writers of our time. This is going to be pure gold.”
But the show’s origins are rooted in streets whose paving only ever glistened with tears.
It was in the early 1990s that Ms Mellor and her husband had been driving down Lumb Lane, in Bradford’s red light district, on their way to a party, when she caught sight of a young girl.
“She bent down to look at our car as we drove past and she had the face of someone the age of my daughter – about 13, 14 – and it burned into my brain. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“We left the party early and drove back the same way. I tried to find her, but one of the other girls said she’d had problems and gone off to Birmingham,” Ms Mellor said.
The 10 months of research that followed set in motion a showbusiness juggernaut that made her one of the most powerful writers in TV. But Band of Gold was soon supplanted by other projects, and she revisited it only after prompting by producers.
“I’ve resisted it all the time. But when I started thinking about it again, I realised that poverty’s exactly the same – there are still women who are prostituting themselves and selling their bodies for sex. Nothing has changed.”
The attraction of the theatre, rather than TV, for the revival was the immediacy of the medium, she said.
“You’re sat there and you can feel the mood of the audience. You know when you’ve got them and you know when you haven’t.
“We had an invited audience of 30 and the feedback from everyone was that they would pay to see it.”
The first tickets for its premiere run in Leeds, from November 28 to December 14, go on sale today, with performances at other venues likely to follow.
If you thought you knew who the killer was, you may be challenged. Yorkshire playwright
Kay Mellor.