THE award-winning team presenting an innately northern play at the Oldham Coliseum are hoping for a full house and a visit from the cast and writers of iconic TV soap Coronation Street.

The production of Jimmie Chinn’s A Different Way Home runs from tonight (January 31) until Saturday, February 9, exactly 21 years since it was given its world premiere at the Coliseum.

Then, Roy Barraclough (aka Coronation Street Rovers Return landlord Alec Gilroy of yesteryear) took the role of both Leslie and his sister Maureen while the theatre’s artistic director Kenneth Alan Taylor directed.

Now, Londoner Kenneth, who first trod the boards at the Coliseum in 1959, has returned to recreate both characters himself on stage while BFTA award-winning director Noreen Kershaw directs.

Original designer Celia Perkins also returns for the astutely observed play which takes the form of two monologues from a brother and sister, telling a powerful story from two wildly different perspectives. For long-time friends Kenneth and Noreen, it’s a dream combination.

“We’re like a mutual admiration society,” said Kenneth. “Although we’ve known each other for years, we’ve never actually worked together before.

“Anyone worth their salt as an actor needs a director, unless you’re as clever as someone like Kenneth Branagh. You need that outside eye and that’s what Noreen’s got in abundance.

“Noreen has helped me tremendously and pushed me more than would have happened without her.

“The premise of the play is that Leslie is a curmudgeonly man who’s lived with his mum all his life and he tells how he died in Boundary Park, and that side of the story is absolutely true, because Jimmy lived with his mother.

“But then he invented lots of other characters around his awful sister who we meet in act two. And of course, like brother and sisters, she’s not the monster Leslie says she is and he’s not the angel he thinks he is. So you get both sides of it.” Kenneth explained how A Different Way Home started off as a one-act play, before it was broadcast on the radio with Oldhamer Bernard Cribbins as Leslie.

Then it was done for TV with Barraclough in the role. Kenneth went on: “It went out at 10.30pm on New Year’s Eve and on Granada, which meant not many people watched it, and Roy moaned like hell.

“I knew Jimmie Chinn and got in touch with him and told him it was brilliant, but that I couldn’t do it in the theatre because it wasn’t long enough.

“I asked him if he could extend it. He came back to me some weeks later with the second act – Leslie’s sister Maureen.”

Noreen – no stranger to treading the boards herself on stage and TV – has been a series director for Coronation Street and was awarded her BAFTA in 2014 for an episode she directed.

Alluding to her conversion to director from actor, Noreen quipped: “I don’t miss acting. If anyone asks me to act it would have to be something where there’s not many lines to learn.

“But seriously, I like telling stories and I like interesting characters. And now I can hopefully pick and choose what to do. But I absolutely love this play.

“What’s made a huge difference and made it easier is that Ken knew the lines and he delivers them expertly. I’d almost describe it as sit-down stand-up. It’s so funny.

“(In rehearsal) Kenneth has to keep telling us to shut up because it’s so funny and I can’t wait to put in front of an audience.

“I’m sure they might be tempted to join in, because he’s talking to the audience. Hopefully, they will love it.

“One of my great friends was the late Tony Warren, the creator of Coronation Street, and he would’ve just loved this. Hopefully, some of the cast will come and some of the writers because I think it’s got a real northern identity. And I think people who’ve never been to the theatre will absolutely love it.”

The love and respect both have for the Coliseum and its audiences shines through in both Noreen and Kenneth.

We’ll leave the last word with Kenneth, when he said: “This theatre has got a great name and it’s got a great atmosphere.

“When you’re on stage you not far away from the audience. I’m not just saying this, but here, they are the best audience.

“When I was running this theatre, I found them to be so responsive but they’re also very honest. They would fight their way through the bar at the end of the show to say to me ‘that was bloody awful Kenneth’, and that’s what I love about them.”