Kay Mellor's The Syndicate: Review

You don’t have to be much of a gambler to bet any show written by the late Kay Mellor is going to be a success.

But as her last stage play, The Syndicate, premieres at The Lowry there is a sense of much more than the box office riding on this. The show opens with Mellor’s daughter, Gaynor Faye entering the large Lyric stage alone as Mercury Millions rep, Kay, to address ‘the syndicate’. For a moment it feels like the audience are all ticket holders of a different kind. And in a way we are. We are part of turning Faye’s dream of staging her mum’s final play into a winner.

The play is based on Mellor’s hit BBC show of the same name, starring Timothy Spall, which ran for four series between 2012 and 2021. For fans of the TV show the characters will be familiar, but you don’t have to have seen it before to enjoy the stage show.

L-R Samantha Giles as Denise, Rosa Coduri-Fulford as Leanne, Gaynor Faye as Kay, Benedict Shaw as Stuart and Oliver Anthony as Jamie in Kay Mellor's The Syndicate — L-R Samantha Giles as Denise, Rosa Coduri-Fulford as Leanne, Gaynor Faye as Kay, Benedict Shaw as Stuart and Oliver Anthony as Jamie in Kay Mellor’s The Syndicate

I hadn’t watched the TV version and didn’t feel left out of any part of the story or its gentle humour. Mellor’s talent was in creating complex characters from ordinary life who we can relate to. Here she has packed a lot of drama into just under two hours.

For the stage, the action has moved from a supermarket to a mini-market corner shop facing closure, whose five staff are all part of a lottery syndicate. From the start, although the characters aren’t aware, the audience knows that soon their money worries will be a thing of the past when they scoop the £24 million roll-over prize.

The drama comes not from the win itself but from the unfolding of the characters’ back stories, the dire lengths people go to when they are desperate for money, and the things they do with it when they have oodles of it.

Faye both stars and directs in the play, giving the production a fast pace that feels TV like. Bretta Gerecke’s set design splits the stage into three, in a simple but effective way that keeps the action moving swiftly from scene to scene, moving us from the shop floor to the staff office, hospital ward to palatial mansion.

Oliver Anthony as Jamie and Brooke Vincent as Amy in Kaye Mellor's The Syndicate — Oliver Anthony as Jamie and Brooke Vincent as Amy in Kaye Mellor’s The Syndicate

There are big-name TV favourites in the cast. Samantha Giles (Emmerdale’s Bernice Blackstock) plays the kind and naive syndicate organiser, Denise whose life has lost its way, while Brooke Vincent (Coronation Street’s Sophie Webster) takes on the role of loud-mouthed, young mum, Amy.

There are more family connections too with Faye’s son, Oliver Anthony making his stage debut as the reckless Jamie.

In all, it is quite an emotional rollercoaster and like all the best dramas leaves you pondering questions of your own – what would you do if you hit the jackpot? On hearing many asking that on the way out it’s clear in ‘The Syndicate’ Mellor’s genius has left us with another winner.

Kay Mellor’s The Syndicate premieres at The Lowry, Salford from 17 to 19 May 2024 then touring.