I Love Kent Walton
Tom Kelly

The Customs House

Customs House, South Shields

From 04 September 2013 to 07 September 2013

Review by Peter Lathan

So this guy walks into the Customs House and asks to speak to the Director, Ray Spencer. He has, he tells him, a story to tell which he thinks would make a great play. He used to be a professional wrestler and he tells Spencer some tales of his career: a South Shields lad, he had his first fight in the town.

Spencer was fascinated so he brought Gary Davison (“The Hard Line Pro” as he was billed) together with playwright and poet Tom Kelly, many of whose plays have premiered at the Customs House, and so I Love Kent Walton was born.

It’s a one-man show which intertwines Davison’s personal life with his wrestling career. This peek behind the scenes of the grappling world, during which we see not only his career but meet almost mythical characters like Giant Haystacks, Big Daddy and Kendo Nagasaki, is fascinating in its own right, but what really holds the attention is Davison’s grappling with his own personal and familial demons and his essentially dysfunctional relationship with his first girlfriend Nicola, who has her own psychological problems which are made worse by her awareness of them.

Kelly’s writing segues smoothly and effectively between these themes, assisted by lighting changes and carefully chosen archive footage from the Saturday afternoon wrestling broadcasts, with commentary by Kent Walton, which finished in 1988, the year before Davison made his debut, and which had had a major impact on the young wrestler.

Actor Micky Cochrane plays Davison and captures the complexity of the character well, switching as smoothly as the writing between the child who feels himself abandoned, the anger-filled teenager, the bewildered lover and the man who has found himself in the wrestling game.

Fiona Kelly (Tom Kelly’s daughter), in her professional directorial debut, judges the pace nicely, especially in the second act where the tone turns decidedly darker.

The audience loved it, and herein lies the sadness for me. This is an excellent play, well written and well performed, but the audience was far smaller than it deserved. The Tyneside theatregoers who didn’t see it missed a real theatrical treat.

http://britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/i-love-kent-wal-customs-house-9367

Evening Chronicle
Review: I Love Kent Walton – Customs House, South Shields
6 Sep 2013 16:06
Maggie Maclean reviews I Love Kent Walton, a play written by Tom Kelly that tells the real-life story of South Shields wrestler Gary ‘The Hardline Pro’ Davison

For those of us of a certain age, Saturday afternoons inevitably followed the same pattern.

Long before the WWF was even thought of, families were glued to World of Sport and the teatime spectacular of grown men with ridiculous sounding names grappling with each with almost balletic expertise.

People such as Giant Haystacks, Big Daddy and the masked Kendo Nagasaki were household names and – although slightly further down the pecking order – so was South Shields-born Gary Davison.

It is Gary’s story, bursting on the wrestling scene at just 16 after a chance meeting with a promoter, that is told in Tom Kelly’s I Love Kent Walton – an absorbing, entertaining and often poignant tale.

Taking its title from the Canadian wrestling commentator, this one-man show starting Micky Cochrane follows Gary’s life both in and out of the ring.

Interspersed with actual footage from those great matches, Gary’s blows didn’t just come from the sport but from a traumatic personal relationship and a life with little to offer.

It’s a testament to the skill of the writer and the performer, however, that this show also gives you much to smile about, and a cleverly chosen soundtrack adds an extra dimension.

The real Gary “Hard Line Pro” Davison was in the audience the first night and was clearly moved by the way his story has been told.

Arguably the biggest fights he faced weren’t against his wrestling opponents but just dealing with every day life.

Whichever you look at it, I Love Kent Walton really is a knockout.

SHIELDS GAZETTE REVIEW

PLAYS based on the world of wrestling aren’t commonplace.

But I Love Kent Walton proves that the sport makes for gripping drama.

Writer Tom Kelly’s one-man play has Micky Cochrane in the role of South Tyneside wrestler Gary ‘The Hardline Pro’ Davison.

Cochrane manages to pull off both the physicality of the role and capture the emotional ups and downs of his life outside the ropes.

That’s no mean task, especially with the added pressure of the real Mr Davison, who had collaborated with the playwright, watching from the audience.

The setting is simple. We’re in Davison’s front room, who, with a can of lager in hand, takes us through his extraordinary life.

But the setting changes dramatically when he stands up from behind his living room table.

Suddenly we’re in a wrestling ring in the late 1980s, at the fag end years of the sport’s popularity.

Big Daddy is on one side, Giant Haystacks on the other, and a young imposter is making an impact – Davison.

I Love Kent Walton is not really a play about the world of wrestling, although that’s fascinating enough.

It’s a gritty journey, with laugh-out-loud moments, telling the tale of a man achieving his dream, only to see it shattered.

I Love Kent Walton is at the Customs House until tomorrow.

WAYNE BURGESS