Wilko – Love and Death and Rock ‘n’ Roll celebrates the life of one of British music’s great eccentrics, Wilko Johnson.

By Miles Salter

Photos by Nick Haeffner

A key member of Dr Feelgood, his bulging eyes and ‘machine gun’ guitar pose made him a distinctive performer. This play takes the audience through Wilko’s life, focusing on his battles with ill health and mortality and alludes to a change of behaviour (more of which later).

In the play, written by Jonathan Maitland, his wife Irene (played energetically by Lara Lemon) pays for Johnson’s expensive Fender Telecaster, helping to kick start his musical dreams. His previous guitar, a Watkins Rapier, is no match for the Fender. ‘It’s like playing a deck chair,’ Wilko opines.

Irene puts up with his industrious love life. He tells her he loves another woman, with a rather child-like sense of honesty, and wrote about this in one of his songs, Paradise. (‘I love two girls, I ain’t ashamed.’) Irene is likeably feisty. When a promoter fails to pay the band for a gig, she uses vandalism.

Wilko says this is true love ‘when your missus puts a brick through someone’s window.’ The script has some great energy and humour. Wilko describes his student days pithily: ‘I took English Literature and drugs.’

The attention to detail is enjoyable. Jon House performs as Lee Brilleaux, Dr Feelgood’s singer. House sports a stained white suit, which is how Brilleaux appeared on stage.

Georgina Field as Sparko wanders robotically forwards and back in the way the bass player did. (‘She got that spot on,’ I heard somebody in the audience say during the interval.)

David John enjoyed himself as drummer Big Figure. The band were capable but not especially exciting. They lacked some of Dr Feelgood’s bite and raucous energy. It was imitation, of course. That said, House played some very tasty harmonica.

The story doesn’t show how successful the band were. The detail of releases and key appearances gets lost in the relationships around the band. This was a shame. Just a few lines of dialogue would have made this clear.

The depiction on stage of Wilko, by the appropriately names Johnson Willis is full of charisma. Willis’ depiction is empathetic and good natured. He frequently addresses the audience. His Wilko is foul mouthed but irresistible.

Drama is added in his relationship with Lee Brilleaux, who appears as a sort of ghost of Christmas past. Brilleaux (who died in 1994 aged only 41) confronts Wilko, playing a sort of post-life game of ‘we did better than you’. ‘Do you know how many Dr Feelgood tribute acts there are in Spain?’ Brilleaux asks, pointedly.

Dr Feelgood’s biggest hit, Milk and Alcohol, came after Wilko was ejected from the band in 1977. A solo career followed. Wilko did pretty well. There were numerous trips to Japan.

The second half of the play focuses on Wilko’s health battles. A huge tumour is removed, and he gets a second crack at life. In real life, he eventually succumbed in 2022 at the age of 75.

The play’s main problem is a lack of contrast. The programme accompanying the show suggests a redemptive arc for Wilko, like Dickens’ famous parable A Christmas Carol. The Wilko in the play is hugely likeable, a big kid with a lust for life, literature, and astronomy.

In reality, he could be very self-centred. ‘I look back on Dr Feelgood sometimes and I would do a lot of things differently,’ Johnson said in 2012. ‘Oh man, I was intolerable.’ But the play refuses to sink to depravity or nastiness, which dilutes the drama.

Maitland was defensive about his choices in the post-show Q and A, saying he didn’t want any of the audience to be alienated from the main character.

There has been a tendency in British theatre to keep things ‘nice’ in recent decades. We can’t possibly offend anybody or show characters who are unpleasant.

Perhaps, though, Maitland was overthinking the script, worried that he would lose the room if he showed Wilko’s more unpleasant antics.

In Breaking Bad, we know Walter White is capable of heinous crimes, but we still cheer for him. In Lolita, Humbert Humbert is a deceitful and lustful charlatan, but the reader still laughs at the jokes. We know Scrooge is a selfish misery in A Christmas Carol, but the redemption, when it comes, is all the more moving.

There was little redemption in the Wilko play because we didn’t see how unpleasant he could be. The play is less incisive than it thinks it is. We get a sanitised version of Wilko Johnson’s colourful life. It is still, however, a lot of fun.

Miles Salter is a writer and musician based in York. His book about The Pretenders, A Dangerous Band, is out on 1 November 2026. He writes regularly for York Calling and fronts the band Miles and The Chain Gang. 

Wilko – Love and Death and Rock ‘n’ Roll was performed at York Theatre Royal on 10 September 2026.