Dr Feelgood’s legendary guitarist and singer-songwriter Wilko Johnson (born John Wilkinson) died in Nov 2022. During his lifetime he influenced the punk movement, lived way beyond an erroneous terminal cancer diagnosis, and became a blues icon.
Jonathan Maitland’s latest play, (with music) Wilko, is a striking biographic play celebrating the life of this unique musician and his world. Wilko Johnson was “Essex through and through”, and as portrayed by Johnson Willis, brings this fascinating personality to the stage at Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch.
Jonathan tells us a bit more about Wilko the man and the world premiere of his play below.
Where: Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch
When: 1-24 Feb 2024
Ticket link: https://www.queens-theatre.co.uk/whatson/wilko/
Wilko Johnson is a fascinating subject for a play. As he only passed away last year, was he aware of the show and involved in the planning?
Yes he knew all about it and was very supportive. I worried he wouldn’t get it but he couldn’t have been more helpful, kind or enthusiastic. I actually went to his house and read him the entire play, doing all the voices myself. His only criticism was that I had got the details of his drug ingestion wrong. I had him down as a coke fiend but his chosen drug was in fact – as he explained amusingly and at length – speed.
What made you focus on this particular subject, and where did the idea originally come from?
I’ve always been a huge fan. I was mesmerised the moment I saw him careering across the stage at a Dr Feelgood gig at the Kursaal in Southend in the mid 70s. He was amazing: I was excited by the music, the image, the menace. But it was also weirdly funny. His double act with Lee Brilleaux is one of the great pairings in rock ‘n’ roll. And when Wilko was mistakenly diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2012 I thought there might be a play in it. It’s a great premise: a rockstar is given 12 months to live, becomes world famous again, and goes to number one. But it turns out to be a mistake. You couldn’t make it up.
The music is such an important part of who Wilko was. How much of this is represented in the play?
It’s a play with music, not jukebox musical but there are half a dozen of Wilko’s best loved songs in there.
Why this venue? What does it bring to the story other than the Essex connection?
The team at the Queen’s theatre Hornchurch loved the play and the theatre has a great track record of telling stories rooted in Essex so it seemed the perfect fit.
There was a TV documentary about Wilko’s remission from cancer in 2015. Did you use this to inform your writing and play development?
It gave me some insight into Wilko, but the main source of inspiration were the man himself, the many TV interviews on you tube with him, his own superb and brilliantly written autobiography, and Zoe Howe’s books on him and Lee Brilleaux, the excellent ‘Rock ‘n Roll Gentleman’.
What will audiences get from this play, whether they have heard of the subject or not?
We hope it will resonate with them whether they know Wilko or not as the themes are universal and relatable: this is a story about overcoming adversity, courage, love, and the sheer joy of creativity, and rock ‘n roll..