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Toil and trouble for Macbecks the musical

Ken Sweeney, Entertainment Editor

Spoof of England footballer David Beckham fails to grab Irish audiences

Fair is foul and foul is fair: Gary Cooke, the Après Match comedian and Macbecks co-writer and actor, says Irish audiences weren't as interested in David Beckham as they were in Roy Keane

Ambition: Poshoria (Kelly Gough, CENTRE) and the Spice Witches

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Après Match comedian Gary Cooke has revealed he does not think his musical Macbecks will return to an Irish stage.

Launched in a media blitz in January, the populist romp seemed to have everything going for it. Taking its lead from the Roy Keane-inspired Saipan 2002 musical I Keano, the production promised to go one better by telling the tale of an even bigger football name: Manchester United and England star David Beckham. But Cooke, who co-wrote the spoof with Malachy McKenna, says this could have been the problem.

"Irish people just weren't as interested in David Beckham as they were in Roy Keane," he said. "There's a strange disconnect in that it's not an Irish story. Essentially we were telling an English story to an Irish audience. We did well, comedy wise, but there are no Irish references in Macbecks. Not one.

If you think about Après Match, Pat Shortt or Gift Grub, it's the Irish reference points that really lift it. We didn't have any and that is very alienating for an Irish audience."

Macbecks ran for three-and-a-half weeks in the Olympia in?Dublin, then moved south for an 11-night run at Cork's Opera House.

The show opened opened during January last. "It was the worst January in living memory. The worst month in the history of trade. A black hole of a month. People said to me they would have liked to have gone to see Macbecks but it wasn't the right time for them.

"We did okay in the Olympia but filling the early part of the week was difficult," says Cooke, who is now back working on TV projects.

Cooke says he hopes Macbecks may one day find its natural audience on a London stage.

"Macbecks is parked at the moment. Hopefully it will come back but I don't know whether it will or not. We are working on the script with something for the UK and in the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger – 'I'll be back.'"