“Dear England”, National Theatre, Olivier
Jeremy Malies on the South Bank
23 March 2025
There have been almost as many updates and repeat runs of James Graham’s Dear England as England defeats in penalty shootouts. So, one of the uplifting scenes is when that hoodoo is put to bed, and we see Gwilym Lee as Gareth Southgate bonding with his team after he has coaxed them through a win on penalties against Switzerland in last year’s Euros.
Gwilym Lee (centre) as Gareth Southgate.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
“… not identical to the original 2023 production … an even more topical and dynamic experience …” runs the National’s PR blurb as it explains the addition of UEFA EURO 2024 to the script. Well, alright, but never having seen it before I was always going to respond simply to the play as it was presented on the night to me.
I was underwhelmed and tired of how director Rupert Goold (there is additional revival direction from Elin Schofield) repeatedly portrayed the cast kicking an imaginary ball towards us in the auditorium. That is presumably how Graham has written it, but couldn’t the pair have collaborated such that one of the shootouts was shown in a different way, perhaps with creative use of video and the players watching their efforts retrospectively in the locker room? Apart from the players, Theresa May side-foots a penalty ineptly into the stalls, while Boris Johnson and Liz Truss really put their laces through the ball but also to no avail. Tedious stuff.
In the spring of 2020 amid Covid, Southgate wrote an exquisite open letter in which he explained how the Euros of that year would be delayed by 12 months, football in general would be taking a back seat, and the public ought instead to focus on “looking out for each other”. It’s here that Dear England scores multiple times as a state-of-the-nation play.
The play may well have a permanent legacy in the way that it treats, through Graham’s portrayal of Southgate, the theme of transformational leadership across sport and business. There was much media discussion of the support staff with whom Southgate surrounded himself when he took on the job. One of Southgate’s insights was that he needed the broadest possible range of advisors. Critics sniped at his choice of Anglo-Australian sports psychologist Pippa Grange in a bid to transform the team’s mentality.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
I’ve taken the trouble to watch interviews with Grange and have been intrigued by her charisma and facility with figurative language. None of this comes across in Liz White’s monotone single-paced delivery which became an irritant for me. With the exception of Lee, White has more words than any other performer. I don’t understand how Goold and voice coach Richard Ryder could not get more out of her. By contrast, Felixe Forde catches the vivacity and analytical skill of Lioness-turned-pundit Alex Scott.
The locker room set with each player having a half cubicle is conjured up well by designer Es Devlin who collaborates to good effect with video designer Ash J Woodward as they present the original Wembley Twin Towers and the Arch of the new Wembley. I swallowed hard as Gamba Cole playing Raheem Sterling mentioned that the Arch would cast its shadow in his boyhood back garden. But this was a rare moment of real engagement.
There are plenty of wonderful gags and yet nothing coalesced for me. I was amused when Football Association executive Greg Clarke (played by John Hodgkinson) says that there was a time when no high-quality manager would touch the poisoned chalice that was the England job. “So, that was why you asked me!” says Southgate ruefully.
The more intimate scenes worked better. After Southgate has hurt his shoulder celebrating a victory, he has some treatment from a physio character played by Martin Marquez. The pair have a “time is fleeting” conversation in which the pace slows. I wish Goold had gone up and down the gears more in his handling of the play.
There is much fantastic mimicry. Gary Lineker’s accent (Leicester is notorious for mixing northern with south-eastern vowel sounds) must be a big ask, but Gunnar Cauthery who often appears on a commentator’s gantry stage-right in Devlin’s set manages to nail it. The moments when I truly howled were when Marquez preens himself in an Armani suit as Fabio Capello and captures the character’s pomposity and characteristic word salads.
I don’t think that as written and performed here the play truly earned its treatment of the social media abuse of Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka after they missed their penalties in the Euro 2020 final defeat to Italy. Something of this gravity needs to be integral to the overall endeavour. Here, at least for me, it felt bolted on with a preachy-clunky tone.
As I walked towards Waterloo, I heard two Danish audience members say, “There was hardly any treatment of the fans – perhaps that’s the English way?” That is a little harsh; there is a powerful vox pop scene in which we see everyone from shop assistants and construction workers to a lollipop man getting on board with the new management era. But like the Danes, I could have done with more of it. Woodward’s video (generally underused) might have switched to fan scenes.
On-stage music includes group singing of “Sweet Caroline”. Hmm! I wanted “Three Lions” and its “Football’s coming home!” refrain which of course would have been ironic. We do hear it but only over the Olivier’s general sound system as we leave the theatre. Yes, there were elements here that seduced me. I’d like to say that it was a game of two halves, but it didn’t even amount to that. The social content is notably inferior to, say, Red Pitch. I never felt that this play truly found the back of the net, and at two hours 50 minutes was pleased it didn’t go to extra time.
The production heads to the Lowry in Salford following the National Theatre run from 29 May – 29 June.
