On 25th January 2024, I saw Dear England, a National Theatre production streamed to the Eastbourne Beacon cinema.
It’s a play about Gareth Southgate’s time as manager of the England men’s football team and how he recruited a (female) psychologist to change the culture in the dressing room from one of competitive toxic masculinity driven by a fear of failure to a team who supported one another and tried to have fun on the pitch. In the end he won no trophies but he achieved a semi-final place in the Russia world cup, breaking the England penalty shoot-out duck on the way, and a final place in the 2020 Euros (held at Wembley in 2021 because of the Covid pandemic).
In some ways it was good that I am not a football fan because I didn’t remember what happened at some of the critical moments so I was living the drama for real.
It was a very interesting play about changing attitudes and there were some exciting moments but it didn’t emotionally involve me. We’re talking about a bunch of (very talented and very rich) young men playing a game; it’s not exactly life or death.
The writer is James Graham who also wrote the screenplay for Sherwood and he used the play to reflect on changing values in England over the time period: issues such as racism and homophobia were tackled. Joseph Fiennes who played Gareth Southgate was superb but hardly stood out because there wasn’t a single poor performance from a very large cast. The play was produced ‘in the round’ with some interesting use of surtitles.
An enjoyable theatrical experience but not, for me, a classic.
Nevertheless, in 2024 Olivier Awards, it won Best New Play. Joseph Fiennes (playing Gareth Southgate) was nominated for Best Actor and Gina McKee (playing psychologist Pippa Grange) was nominated for Best Actress in a supporting role. Will Close (playing Harry Kane) won for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Rupert Goold was nominated as Best Director. It was also nominated for Sound Design and Lighting Design.
Comments
Post a Comment