It’s a promising premise for a play, presenting the state of a nation through the lens of the beautiful game. Despite this, I have always found football’s inability to translate to stage or screen, aside from one or two notable exceptions (The Damned United, Bend It Like Beckham), inexplicable. Our national sport has arguably never been so entwined with our political state as it is now, so how can a subject that informs so much of our national discourse, for better or worse, inspire so little in the creative arts?
Observing a gap in the market, Graham (Sherwood, The Way, Quiz) uses a roster of characters, better known to the public for their footwork than their speech-making, to challenge the perception that footballers’ brains are in their feet. Joseph Fiennes (The Handmaid’s Tale, Shakespeare in Love), leads the ensemble as the self-deprecating, wet-lipped England boss Gareth Southgate.
Fiennes characterises Southgate as a bumbling Englishman, completely in awe of the situation he finds himself in. On his first day on the job, he greets his backroom staff with a selection of baked goods and the instruction, “Just call me Gareth”, chucking away centuries of English custom just as a certain Prime Minister did in 1997. Unlike Blair, you feel like Southgate really means it, he has no designs on becoming a messiah.
The play contains a carousel of former Prime Ministers and England managers, all of whom were once cast to lead the country out of the wilderness, whether that be to end X years of hurt or push through a Brexit deal. Each one fails and is subject to public humiliation, another great British tradition, and you sense Southgate is eager to avoid the same fate.
Fear informs much of the play, with Southgate’s Euro 96 penalty miss acting as a useful catalyst, “You still haven’t left that spot”, says Psychologist Pippa Grange (Gina McKee) to Southgate on the Wembley turf, teeing Fiennes up for a heartfelt monologue as he relives the immediate aftermath of that decisive kick and the years of guilt that followed.
St George’s Park, England’s training facility, is where the majority of the action takes place, but those hoping to see football reinterpreted as a ‘ballet for the masses’, as The Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich once said, will be disappointed, the occasional exaggerated leg swing and ‘thud’ notwithstanding.
Harry Kane (Will Close), is the pick of the England lads, with one moment, in particular, elevating his performance from amusing impersonation to one of heartfelt authenticity. The majority of the squad, featuring players like Raheem Sterling (Kel Matsena), Marcus Rashford (Darragh Hand) and Jordan Pickford (Josh Barrow) make for useful mouthpieces for Graham’s witticisms, but the play fails to pull back the curtain convincingly on what life might be like for these men beyond what we see on the field and in post-match interviews, including the abominable racist abuse some of those players have been subject to. Instead, we are witness to team meetings that feel a little like Dead Poets Society, though there is a resounding feeling of ‘togetherness’ which was clearly absent in England teams of old.
In his first classroom lecture, Southgate says “England needs a new story”. With the help of a blackboard, he maps out the play’s impending narrative – parts one, two and three – otherwise known as the 2018 World Cup, the 2020 Euros and the 2022 World Cup. A countdown till the 2022 final appears and remains thereafter, marking the number of days till the play’s denouement and England’s supposed moment of glory. Fans of the national side will be too keenly aware of how the most recent World Cup campaign ended, and, like Southgate’s team, the play runs out of steam towards the latter stages of the second half.
Perhaps Graham was too hasty to write his play, acutely aware that Southgate’s team are regularly seized upon by opposing political parties, and made a more political issue than they might initially seem to be – in other words – a political football.
For me, a man in his 30s who measures time in international football tournaments rather than the more conventional 12 months in a year approach, I sat down to watch this play hoping to learn why I care about the England football team so much. As a result, my expectations were probably unreasonably high, but I did hope Dear England might tell me a little more about our national psyche.
Attaboy! 