By Adam Bloodworth
Dear England review and star rating: ★★★★
If theatre’s true purpose is bringing people together and reflecting the things we care about, Dear England is surely is a five-star show. There has long been a disconnect between theatre fans and football; one is historically a working class pursuit and the other for the moneyed few. But the football fans hurrying to their seats to watch Dear England is a hopeful forecast of the potential for theatre to reflect all of us.
Dear England, which premiered at the National Theatre earlier this year and was a mega success, tells the story of the England football team, largely through the lens of Gareth Southgate, the former England football manager. Compared to the men before him Southgate was soft, thoughtful and existential about the role of football. He is in many ways the ideal theatrical examination, a fish out of water who helped introduce conversations about mental health to the locker room in a game that is stigmatised for being blokeish, where men don’t talk about their emotions.
The various so-called failures of England are writ large, from the the semifinals at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, England’s 2020 European Championship final loss at Wembley Stadium and our exit at the quarterfinals of the 2022 World Cup.
Rupert Goold, one of theatre’s great visionaries who brought Enron, King Charles 111, Patriots and to the London stage, and is artistic director at the Almeida, gives Dear England another strike of his magic wand. We’re transported incredibly convincingly to World Cup finals, with the help of clever on-screen visuals and a stripped-back stage that makes clever use of monochromatic lighting. Goold really drags us back through the perceived failures of those games, the seismic highs, through to the embittered debates in the locker room. It’s a spectacular-looking production that pays homage to perhaps the greatest theatre of them all: the football stadium.
Goold is paired with writing titan James Graham, of Tammy Faye and Best of Enemies, and TV shows like Brexit: The Uncivil War and The Crown, who finds comedy and pathos in the squad. You feel the trauma Southgate embodied after the 1996 World Cup loss and, through his gentle but insistent words of support was quietly radical and a unique force. Pippa Grange, the sports psychologist realis, is equally well written, her academic language and professionalism standing at odds with the masculine energy of the locker room.
The cast bring the themes to joyous life. Joseph Fiennes is captivating as Southgate, fizzing with passion and unspent energy. When he comes to the front of the stage to deliver occasional state of the nation-style speeches, you listen, like we the audience are an extension of his team. Will Close nails Harry Kane, and Josh Barrow is brilliant comic relief as impressionable Jordan Pickford; he does some brilliant physical acting during his nail-biting goalkeeping during the 2022 World Cup.
If there is a criticism, perhaps Dear England is a touch too linear, and could do with forgetting the footballing timeline a little more often to offer deeper examinations around the theme of mental health, perhaps allowing the players more time one on one with each other, or Southgate, to really chew the fat. For non-football fans some of the jokes and characterisations get lost because they’re too aligned with the ‘story’ of England over the past few years.
Nonetheless, before the play ends on a predictable moment of stadium-level euphoria, the boys huddle together in a frozen moment of unity as the lights dim. We begin to see the bravado strip away: just a dozen men standing together, holding one another for support.
Dear England plays at the Prince Edward Theatre
