A brave if uneven adaption of the Joy Division Story
New Dawn Fades | Royal Northern College of Music | 18th and 19th of October 2024
Reviewed by Peter Wild
The story of Joy Division, at this point in the history of the world, is something of a well-trodden path. There have been documentaries, books and high-profile films (24 Hour Party People and Control). Brian Gorman’s play, New Dawn Fades, first premiered in July 2013 at the Manchester Fringe Festival and has toured nationally, although it has since been completely revamped. It’s been playing to packed houses, and Saturday night at the Royal Northern College of Music was no exception. There was certainly a lot of love in the room for the band and also, if the scattered ovation at the end was anything to go by, for the play itself.
What you have here is a sort of drama-cum-lecture. A two-hander. Tony Wilson on the one side, at his lectern (admirably played by Brian Gorman himself), and the band and others (including Agricola, John Dee, Frederich Engels, etc.) either interact with Wilson or play out their scenes. The psychogeographical elements of New Dawn Fades – i.e. those attempts to place the story of Joy Division within a wider context of time and place – are evidence of what you might call the play’s ambition. It knows this is well-trodden ground and it’s trying to assert a place for itself as something different.
This ambition, though, runs at odds with the obvious budget limitations the play has. Certain actors play a number of parts: Nicholas Eccles and Josh Chadwick, for example, each play eight characters. Sometimes it works beautifully, as when Jamie Jones, who plays Bernard Sumner, dashes on as Johnny Rotten for a spell. Sometimes it’s less successful: the Liam Gallagher-esque swagger of Martin Hannett doesn’t feel entirely on the money (Hannett was full of himself, but he was a complex figure all the same).
The play is at its best in the back and forth between Wilson, the band, and the band’s manager Rob Gretton (nicely played by Séan Cernow), or when the band ‘play’ for the audience. You can’t help but admire the gusto with which the production barrels along. There are, perhaps inevitably, longueurs, best seen in the relationship between Ian Curtis and his wife Debbie (the Factory story is not one that is at pains to bring women to the forefront – although I heartily recommend reading Audrey Golden’s I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women at Factory Records if you get the chance). Lauren Greenwood as Debbie does her best with what is largely a thankless task of trudging on stage to berate Ian and then wandering off again. And the fact that Curtis’ mistress Annik only gets name-checked without an actual physical presence on the stage feels like an odd creative choice.
Does New Dawn Fades manage to carve itself a unique space alongside the better-known 24-Hour Party People or Control? Not quite. But, on the evidence of the rapturous applause that greeted the spirited run through of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ that crowns the production, it doesn’t really matter. There will always be an audience for the Joy Division story.
Reviewed by Peter Wild