From early rejection to national stages, Mr Blackpool is a high-camp, homegrown spectacle coming to the Grand Theatre stage next month. Harry Clayton-Wright traces the six-year journey behind this vibrant, defiant celebration of a town’s legacy, built through collaboration, resilience and unapologetic pride.
“It’s too regional.”
Those were the words I was told when pitching Mr Blackpool to a consortium of theatre commissioners. I was in actual disbelief. Hell hath no fury like a Northern artist told that their work is too regional.
Why would a show about Blackpool be too regional? Like Blackpool doesn’t receive 20-plus million visitors a year and isn’t one of the most iconic seaside towns in the UK’s history? Where dancers travel from around the world to grace our ballroom floors, magicians gather to share their tricks, where variety was built and honed, a capital of entertainment…
But our globally iconic seaside town is too regional for you? Those three words were like fuel on a bonfire, the straw, the tipping point. Spite is a powerful fuel. It was then I decided that we were gonna make this show whether we received permission to do so or not. It was gonna be a full-blown spectacle you couldn’t ignore.
Ahead of our upcoming tour, I wanted to write and reflect for Blackpool Social Club on a six-year process of making Mr Blackpool – an end of the pier show at the end of the world, which is coming to Blackpool Grand Theatre on Wednesday 20 May for a big celebration Homecoming Gala.
Presented in lurid technicolour and garish spectacle, the show is created in collaboration with some of Blackpool’s most innovative and exciting contemporary performers. Emulating the vivid attractions we are both known and loved for, making this show has been an absolute rollercoaster and behind the smoke and mirrors is a story of steely determination and dreamy collaboration.
Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
In 2019, I’d taken my debut solo autobiographical theatre show Sex Education to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and it had done quite well – a Total Theatre award nomination, named as one of British Council’s ‘Artists to Watch’, some lovely reviews and a booking to take the show to Sydney Mardi Gras. At the end of that year, conversations turned to what I might want to make next and there was only one singular topic I wanted to explore: I wanted to devise a show about Blackpool.
Growing up in such an amazing town, with that unadulterated access to spectacle – the glamour, glitz and grit of it – whenever I would travel internationally and people would ask where I grew up, I would tell stories about Blackpool and they would find it extraordinary.
Blackpool’s a place where people come to feel free, connected, find thrills, have the best nights out of their lives and relive the happiest moments of their childhoods.
A place where the circus ring fills with 42,000 gallons of water, where the greatest free light show on earth predates Edison’s lightbulb and can be seen from space, the home of some of Frank Matcham’s finest-designed venues like our beautiful Tower Ballroom and Blackpool Grand Theatre, where drag queens perform in beautifully restored Art Deco cinemas, or where you can’t swing a cat without finding yourself at a world-class attraction. It’s a place where people come to feel free, connected, find thrills, have the best nights out of their lives and relive the happiest moments of their childhoods.
All of that is great, but do we actually get to hear from the people who live there? I wanted to make something that embodied what it felt like to come of age in Blackpool, about what it’s like to be from a place that a lot of people have big opinions about without really knowing anything deeper outside of the public or tourist perception. I wanted to make a piece of theatre on national stages authored by Blackpool voices, platforming our homegrown talent, showcasing genres of performance we have mastered over decades. Cultural archaeology at its campiest. We had the idea, we just needed the money.
In the immortal words of Velma Kelly, “I simply cannot do it alone”.
It’s one thing dreaming of making a show, it’s a full-on quest to make it. One of the first things I did when I heard those three words about our show being ‘too regional’, other than wanting to roll my sleeves up and have a fight (metaphorically, of course), was realise that if a pitch on paper wasn’t gonna work, we needed a world of visuals to create a rich invitation to the world of the show. One that an audience or theatre programmer wouldn’t want to turn down. I called up my friend Ryan Dawson Laight – an Olivier Award-nominated costume designer – and asked for one giant feather showgirl costume. “They’re not cheap, babe,” he told me. “Because if you can count the feathers on a showgirl, she’s not a showgirl”.
With some research and development funding, something I’d never had before, a costume was commissioned. Feathers were dyed to feel like we had unearthed a heritage showgirl ensemble from an archive, my head was moulded for a Blackpool Tower themed headdress, and the costume stoned to within an inch of its life.
I then called up another friend, West End photographer Matt Crockett, to come to Blackpool and create imagery of the character at various iconic backdrops with a two-day shoot of dreams produced by the brilliant Catherine Mugonyi. With a merry gang and talented crew, like filmmaker Mark Yeoman and makeup artist Guy Common, across two days in July 2022, we made photographic and moving image work to create a visual reference for what people could expect if they were to either commission or attend and enjoy the show.
My way of working is that before even writing a script, creating a set of images can help me communicate what audiences will feel. If we can see the show in our imaginations, our collective job becomes shaping it as we pull it into reality.
Throughout its gestation, Mr Blackpool was developed through a series of research and development processes over many years, at The Old Electric, ACCA, Cambridge Junction, Shoreditch Town Hall and House of Wingz. These featured contributions from invited artists, dramaturgs, producers and creative friends, where we ingested articles, songs and videos, told stories and had conversations about our experiences and important issues. We put it all in a blender to see what came out.
Mr Blackpool is performed by myself, Aysh De Belle and Sam De Belle – the creative force behind dance and movement organisation House of Wingz, fierce femme DJ collective HerHouse and landladies of Ferny House on Blackpool’s Golden Mile. Sam and Aysh are magnetic to watch, from their hilarious characterisation to sharp movements – they are fabulous.
Blake Rainey joined the company in 2026 – a brilliant actor, dancer and emerging talent from the town who was part of the Sadler’s Wells National Youth Dance Company in 2025. Blake’s first performance was on stage at North Pier at four years old and has been training with Sam and Aysh from the age of eight. Behind the scenes and a vital part of making the show is Oliver Gregory, aka Miss Titty Kaka, who started a career at Funny Girls at just 18 years old, and whose sound design can be heard throughout the piece.
Our show feels like an exhilarating ride, where the music takes you from the euphoric sounds of Fairground by Simply Red, to the dark wave throbbing synth of Pain by Boy Harsher, and with elements echoing throughout of Divine’s performance at the Flamingo in 1986 – sounds of the future blended with a club performance from 40 years ago. The dreamy sound of the Wurlitzer meets an unnecessarily intense Flying Handbag remix of a Cilla Black song, crossed with a brass band orchestra supporting classic variety turns. Interviews and found audio are woven into the fabric of the piece to give it a heritage quality, and pre-show music is curated to feel like a night out through a lens of nostalgia.
If you’re ever in a rehearsal room with me, you will hear me repeat the mantra: “You gotta crack eggs if you wanna make an omelette”. It’s messy and raw, while also being quite organised with our limited time to be able to afford to have everyone in the room together. We had six days last year in which to make this, and we have five days this year. There is the space for trying things out and there is the expertise in the room to guide and refine the things that feel like they’re working to a place where they become stunning brand new turns. There’s rewrites, there’s putting things down to later realise that was the right thread all along, there’s revelations and growth and most importantly teamwork. Theatre is a collective effort and it is an incredible thing to embark on collectively.
New skills are learned along the way too. As part of this process, I learned magic with Scott Penrose who is an amazing magician and former president of the Magic Circle. Scottee, Ursula Martinez and Darren Pritchard, three incredible artists, are our dramaturgs and Darren also is the show’s movement director. At one point there were 12 people in the rehearsal studio making and costuming our show. A dream come true as a lover and believer in the art and spirit of collaboration. The work is built together.
“It’s too regional”
It has felt like the honour of my life to represent Blackpool on national stages. By the time we get to our Homecoming Gala at Blackpool Grand Theatre, our show will have toured to Northern Stage in Newcastle, played a brand new festival at the Southbank Centre, zipped over to Unity Theatre in Liverpool as part of Homotopia, played the beautiful Quays Theatre at Lowry in Salford with Word of Warning, and had a three-night run at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts as part of Brighton Festival.
I’m so proud of what we have collectively achieved and accomplished, and while this has been one of the biggest projects I have embarked on, and at times quite hard… (let’s not talk about being £13k in the red at one point), thanks must be shared with Brighton-based Marlborough Productions for always guiding the process with care and ambition, while helping us find a way through to support this Blackpool-made work.
Why are we made to feel like we have to fight for our place, or to be taken seriously?
We are in an amazing position to have toured this work to such reputable and beautiful theatres because of Blackpool’s talent. Because it was work once deemed “too regional”, that is our strength and it always has been. Never let them make you feel any different.
At the end of this process and as we approach our tour, I have been deep in the process of reflecting: Why aren’t there more opportunities for artists from Blackpool? Why do we not have bigger platforms? Why do we have to prove ourselves time and time again? Why are we made to feel like we have to fight for our place, or to be taken seriously? It’s endlessly exhausting, but actually, as Aysh says, people from Blackpool are super talented because you have to learn how to do everything when there isn’t the same amount of resources in front of you. We don’t let it stop us. This show is a testament to that spirit, as well as our history and is a stake in the ground to resist and be proud of something altogether.
Mr Blackpool: Homecoming Gala, Wednesday 20 May, Blackpool Grand Theatre, 7.30pm, tickets from £15. Book here.
