Q&A with writer Mick Martin on Keep On Keepin' On

A big-hearted comedy performed in three non-theatre spaces in Northern Soul strongholds, Keep On Keepin’ On is the story a dysfunctional family just trying to keep it together on a run-down northern high street. A sequel to Mick Martin’s 2003 show Once Upon a Time in Wigan, the Bradford-born writer’s high energy comedy sees teenage dreamers Eugene and Maxine, whose romance first ignited on the dance floor, now in their 60’s. Life has spun them out of each other’s arms, and Eugene is now a weekend DJ and a full-time disaster, barely keeping his Northern Soul themed discount shop afloat. We spoke to writer Mick Martin.

Tell us what Keep On Keepin’ On is about.

It’s about what it is to live your life through a passionate love affair with a music and scene that touched the very marrow of your existence, gave you the most amazing highs and has been the core of life since. It’s about change, the way that nothing stays the same and nor should it. It’s about family, no matter how broken, love, loss, joy and laughter. It’s about this country, the north and the times we live in now, the change we see all around us as our towns and cities, places and things we have known all our lives close down and disappear before us. This modern day struggle of people to keep on keepin’ on in the face of economic siege. All the stuff to which the Northern Soul scene and its weekend release has always provided the perfect antidote.

Northern Soul plays a central role in both the story and the spirit of the show. What is it about this music and culture that still resonates so strongly today?

Where to start? It’s just got such a passionate, beating heart to it, beautiful harmonies and driving beating rhythms, once you get it there’s no going back. It’s so immediate and emotionally raw, it cuts straight through and touches people somewhere very deep. I think it’s also a powerful antidote to modern music production that’s so cleanly computerized, and of course is borrowing from first principle sources like 60’s soul all the way. But there is something really pure about the original, a vocal that might be rough at the edges, was recorded in two or three takes but delivered so powerfully from the heart, you can hear the sinews straining in the singer’s voice box. Likewise the scene itself is a unique and essentially working class subculture of live for the weekend, love the music you find and cherish not the stuff that is mass produced and pumped out by the giant corporations. But these records were rejected and thrown out and had to be found, cherished and loved by devotees, just like the artists who made them. Northern Soul in that sense is a massive fuck you to the ‘man’.

Keep On Keepin’ On revisits characters you first wrote about over 20 years ago. What drew you back to Eugene and Maxine after all this time?

I love them and they’re part of my life, but it was the sense of a fracturing society and the increasing vilification of working class culture that finally sparked me in to life on the project. Guys like Eugene for whom the job was a way to earn a crust and occupy five days a week until Friday and the music called again, seem to have gravitated from being working class heroes, soul boys and rebels of my youth to being the bad guys somehow. That struck me as deeply unfair and also fascinating. So I wanted to put him and Maxine back in the same room in a world where women have made huge strides in working life and independence, and see what the last 40 years have done to them. And I get to trawl through all the records I love along the way so it’s win win!

The show isn’t being performed in traditional theatres. Why was that important to you, and how do you think it changes the audience’s experience?

The play is mostly set in Eugene’s northern soul themed Home Improvement Discount Centre – a second hand shop in other words, where he concocts an elaborate scheme to beat his enemies (ie creditors!) to keep his shop open and his family sort of together. So actually producing it in just such a shop itself just seemed right, and also more fun to recreate the create the shop as authentically as possible in a town centre site. Another reason is because some of the audiences we want to connect with may not necessarily normally set foot in a traditional theatre. It was important to put it directly on the high street, a space that they are familiar with but perhaps have stopped visiting as frequently in the evenings because our high streets are not what they once were. This is about bringing the people back into the town centres of an evening and activating it with places and events people want to go to and are willing to come back into town for.  It’s more difficult to achieve on the one hand but also very liberating creatively on the other. It means that the audience will be just a few feet from the action, in the thick of it almost, it makes for a much more engaging experience for them and they always really enjoy it as opposed to a traditional theatre with people sitting in rows and rows of seats. 

You’re also doing workshops and outreach around the play. Can you tell us more about what those involve and what you hope they’ll achieve?

We live in a time when town centres up and down the country are struggling so we’re working with organisations like the Vacant Shops Academy and also local authorities and BID teams to link the theme from the play surrounding Eugene’s efforts to keep his shop open, last man on the high street, to the realities faced by business owners now in a very real and positive way. So the outreach is all about engaging the local high street and business community and exploring creative methods and approaches to address this sense of struggle and decline. This part of the wider project is about how the arts play a role in getting people to come back into town centres and revitalise them. As well as this we’ll be doing acting and writing workshops in Blackpool and who knows maybe some Northern Soul dance classes too.

What do you hope audiences take away from Keep On Keepin’ On—whether they’re Northern Soul fans, or have seen Once Upon A Time in Wigan, or are coming to this show afresh?

A great night out, a very heartfelt and uplifting experience, with lots of beautiful tunes, where they have laughed, but also engaged with a very real and true depiction of life in the UK today. Older soulies will recognise every detail and see themselves in Eugene and Maxine, but younger audiences will also relate to their children Liam and Siobhan. But if you know nothing at all about Northern Soul you will have learned a lot by the end, it is a very entertaining and funny play that talks about music subculture, Britain and our history, race and gender, and the sheer beauty of dancing your backside off like the world is about to end. 

Keep On Keepin’ On runs from 13 – 31 May at The Market Shopping Centre, Crewe; St Paul’s Working Men’s Blackburn; and Blackpool Central Library. Tickets at www.keeponkeepinonplay.co.uk