★★★☆☆
At first glance, the world of English football seems an odd choice for a big-budget production at the National Theatre.
Not so much because the sporting scene is devoid of drama – far from it. Just that common wisdom would have us believe that the circles of the theatre/football fan Venn diagram aren’t so much far apart as at opposite ends of an appropriate pitch.
If there were any doubts about the suitability of this story for the stage, though, playwright James Graham soon puts them to bed with a lesson in story structure from, of all people, Gareth Southgate. Charting his time as England men’s manager from 2016 to the present day, he sets out his plan as a story in three acts: the 2018 Russia World Cup, the 2020 Euros and concluding in Qatar in 2022.
Photo: Marc Brenner
Of course, Southgate’s story doesn’t quite go according to the outline. Public expectations, global pandemics and the ever-looming ghost of penalty-shootouts past all do their best to sabotage the manager’s tenure in “the impossible job.”
If the set-up has theatre fans rolling their eyes, then don’t worry: Dear England is ludicrously entertaining. Completely unafraid to poke fun at the beautiful game, the endless parade of uncanny impressions and vox pops from the Village People-styled residents of this fictional England proves a winning combination. At the same time, a charming earnestness means even when things get objectively silly, and we’re asked to watch the cast mime a penalty shootout, it’s hard not to get swept along with the thing.
Front and centre of all this, of course, is Joseph Fiennes’ remarkable turn as Southgate himself. Not just a physical transformation – one which looks far more effective on-stage than in the play’s promotion – the mimicry of the manager’s calm but steely nice-guy persona carries the narrative weight of the show with aplomb, despite more often playing the straight man to the more comedic moments popping up around him.
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Many of those moments come from the cast of young men assembled to portray the England squad, all of whom are having a whale of a time playing up the side’s more eccentric characters. Ryan Whittle, who took over from the acclaimed Will Close the night I saw it, is brilliantly unverbose as Harry Kane, while Josh Barrow’s Jordan Pickford prowls around the stage like a particularly bad-tempered wolverine.
But where Dear England excels in its Ted Lasso-esque joshing of the national pastime, the reverence of the sport sometimes prevents Graham from going all-in on its more uncomfortable failures. The end of the second act, as Southgate flags up from the start, attempts to explore the horrendous racism Saka, Sancho and Rashford received following the Euro 2020 final, but soon abandons it in favour of a neater, optimistic conclusion.
Photo: Marc Brenner
For a play nominally concerned with Southgate’s reinvention of what it means to be English, that’s a bit of a missed opportunity. Football has such a powerful hold on the British psyche that a more introspective look at the culture surrounding the game is a topic ripe for the kind of knotty, big-picture drama Graham excels at.
Like an overhead scorcher from outside the penalty area, Dear England is both impressively flashy and an awful lot of fun. Even for a football-agnostic, there’s plenty of entertainment value to be mined here. But despite a strong lineup and the beginnings of a good game plan, the score at full-time feels more like an entertaining draw than a hard-won victory.
Now, that’s enough of the footie metaphors; I’m off back to the theatre.
Dear England is playing at the National Theatre until 11 August.
