Dear England, National Theatre — James Graham scores a winner with exhilarating football play

Dear England

National Theatre, London

“I think we all have a problem with what it is to be England at the moment,” says Gareth Southgate pensively, staring off into the middle distance while his new bosses glance at each other in consternation. And in James Graham’s epic new play, it’s clear he’s talking about far more than football.

This glorious, generous, rollercoaster of a piece grapples, like Southgate, with the role of the national team in the national psyche. It proposes that this fractious, bruised nation can be something better, something kinder, something happier. Rupert Goold’s exhilarating production fills the National Theatre’s huge Olivier space with the buzz and electricity of a major tournament final.

It’s a play about winning and losing. This being the England football team, there’s a fair sprinkling of the latter. But much more than that, it’s about leadership and solidarity, about the way myths of past greatness can entrap us and about changing the narrative. “We are going to write our own story,” Southgate tells his — slightly baffled — young squad, as he introduces psychologist Pippa Grange (Gina McKee) into the mix.

Joseph Fiennes is perfect as Southgate, the quiet, diffident manager installed (initially as caretaker) in 2016 with post-Brexit-vote rancour scything through the country. Old-school boardroom and backroom staff look on nervously as he talks about black holes and feelings and invites players to “look within”. Fiennes has mastered that pleated brow and quizzical expression so well that he could easily stand in for Southgate’s next round of media interviews. But he also holds the stage with his own quiet brand of “band of brothers” inclusivity.

For England fans there’s the mixed blessing of reliving tournaments as the play whirls through recent history. But it’s also peppered with humour and bubbles along in the hands of movement directors Ellen Kane and Hannes Langolf and a young, vivacious acting company who barely stop running. It’s a delight to spot household names: Gunnar Cauthery’s chipper Gary Lineker; Darragh Hand’s moving Marcus Rashford; Josh Barrow’s wonderfully hyped-up Jordan Pickford. But the cast also bring care and nuance to their portrayals, particularly Will Close’s thoughtful Harry Kane.

Like many a football match, however, there are some misses, as Graham packs in Covid, Qatar, taking the knee and online abuse. The kaleidoscopic swirl and scope of the piece mean some key characters become one-note — including the endlessly patient Grange.

But the spirit of the show overrides its flaws. Central to it is the penalty shootout: the terrifying ritual that has wrecked so many England dreams and that haunted Southgate following his own crucial 1996 penalty miss. His achievement, Graham suggests, is to transform that excruciatingly lonely experience into a collective one and defy fear through mutual support.

Goold’s staging draws the audience into that. Es Devlin’s circular set revolves around a central penalty spot, illuminated by two huge circles of light. As the young players step up to shoot, the audience leans into the moment. It’s a play that recalibrates success and failure, that champions compassion and solidarity over hostility, and that stoutly defies the divisive populism that is the scourge of the age. That’s what winning looks like.  

★★★★☆

To August 11, nationaltheatre.org.uk

Romeo and Juliet

Almeida Theatre, London

The writing is literally on the wall from the outset of Rebecca Frecknall’s pulsating two-hour Romeo and Juliet. An oppressive slab of wall confronts the audience as they arrive, on which Shakespeare’s prologue “Two households, both alike in dignity . . . ” is projected. It reinforces the prologue’s grim message that the two young lovers never stood a chance: here the whole drama seems to unfold in a tomb.

And yet there’s so much life. Frecknall’s staging, driven by dance, seethes with the restless energy of youth. It’s the friction between vitality and the ever-present threat of death that makes the tragedy leap out afresh here. The young characters jog, dart and sprint, with the ensemble lurking restlessly around the edges of the playing space. Yet all their haste simply drives them faster into the arms of death. This is a play in which everyone is wired, nobody sleeps, time hurtles by and a few sultry days and sleep-starved nights leave multiple young people dead. “They stumble that run fast,” as Friar Lawrence warns Romeo.

It’s a play that is besotted with duality: life and death, love and enmity, night and day, sweet sorrow. Frecknall emphasises this — many scenes overlap or are intercut — together with the raw youth and essential loneliness of the two protagonists. Isis Hainsworth’s Juliet has a lovely, open quality and a winning combination of shyness and eagerness. Toheeb Jimoh’s Romeo, in return, is beautiful: impulsive, graceful, vulnerable.

Around them swirls a jittery mix of stressed adults and lost, edgy youth. Jack Riddiford’s volatile Mercutio feels near-unhinged; Jamie Ballard’s Capulet lurches into a rage so extreme that his wife (Amanda Bright) stares at him in horror. Jo McInnes’s nurse and Paul Higgins’s friar try, as ersatz parents, to forestall disaster. But repeated snatches of Prokofiev’s ballet score and Frecknall’s muscular, spinning choreography remind us of versions past. It’s as if previous accounts have left their imprint on this new iteration, reinforcing the sense of fate. The final scene, bathed in candlelight, looks exquisite but feels desolate.

★★★★☆

To July 29, almeida.co.uk

Frank and Percy

Theatre Royal, Windsor

The youth of Romeo and Juliet is part of their tragedy. But what of love in later years? At London’s Kiln Theatre you can still catch Jennifer Lunn’s immensely moving Es & Flo about a septuagenarian female couple (Liz Crowther and Doreene Blackstock) grappling with dementia. Meanwhile, at Theatre Royal Windsor, Ben Weatherill’s Frank and Percy follows the hesitant path of a new relationship between two pensioners, played with great poignancy by Ian McKellen (Percy) and Roger Allam (Frank).

They meet as dog-walkers on the heath, but tentatively their friendship shifts into something else. There’s plenty of comedy here — this is widower Frank’s first same-sex relationship, and they celebrate his inaugural Pride with McKellen in a tiny rainbow tutu and Allam in spangly shorts matched with grey socks and sandals. But there’s also a delicate exploration of the challenge of risking your heart in later years.

It’s a show that frustrates as much as it beguiles, however. Weatherill’s script and Sean Mathias’s production move too slowly, the plot twists are clunky and several huge themes arise without being fully developed. But McKellen and Allam make a droll comic double act who gradually discover a tender bond.

McKellen is spry, mischievous and drily funny, but he looks suddenly lost and scared when he faces illness, and there’s a stubbornness that speaks of hardships past. Allam complements him, combining deadpan comic delivery with a quietly effective portrayal of grief. And it is joyous to see such an unapologetic celebration of older same-sex romance.

★★★☆☆

To July 22, theatreroyalwindsor.co.uk