The Telegraph
5 stars out of 5
Dear England, National’s Olivier Theatre, review: Joseph Fiennes mesmerises as Gareth Southgate
State-of-the-nation playwright James Graham brilliantly captures the blokey awkwardness within our wider national story
Is England football manager Gareth Southgate a miracle worker who has transformed the men’s team’s fortunes and put a spring in the step of the country as a whole, his goal not just trophies (albeit that’s the necessary aim) but improved mindsets, collective inner wisdom?
Or is he a smart, gentle, thoughtful soul, who’s had a decent stab – so far – at a near-impossible job and sported an eye-catching line in dapper waistcoats?
Taking its title from the letter that Southgate addressed to the country, mid-pandemic in 2021, James Graham’s new Olivier stage epic about the man and his methods – starring Joseph Fiennes as the pensive, self-effacing coach – incorporates some negative, unpersuaded views of its subject.
They’re there at the start – “I went to school with so many ‘Gareths’” one chap in the street sneers, on hearing the news of his appointment in November 2016. The doubts are even voiced by our mild-mannered hero himself when the going gets tough: “Is it all nonsense, this? Snake oil and fairy dust.”
But Graham, now our premier state-of-the-nation playwright, is plainly persuaded by the substance of Southgate’s mission. He sees the apparent recent renaissance of the beautiful game as a foundational opportunity, contrasting it explicitly with the division, rancour and chaos of our political life since 2016, factoring in satirical cameos of recent PMs.
What starts as a useful recap of how Southgate has reengineered the England squad’s sense of itself (as well as its personnel) builds not only into a gripping drama but one that valuably glances at the confusions of our wider national story.
It’s all done with tremendous lightness of touch, script-wise, and corresponding theatrical elan from director Rupert Goold and his team – Es Devlin’s design dominating the expanse of the Olivier with two vast halos of light, one aloft, the other on the often revolving floor, conjuring everywhere from Wembley to St George’s Park, Russia, Qatar and even the cosmos.
Southgate famously said he wanted to put a smile on people’s faces again, and that’s Graham’s approach too – there’s a skittish pleasure to the set-up scenes, in which previous incumbents of the job are jocularly impersonated, with lovely work from Sean Gilder as Sam Allardyce and Fabio Capello. Later, we even get commentary from Gary Lineker (Gunnar Cauthery).
Does it get a bit The Fast Show? If it does, the production still stokes the necessary adrenalin and poignancy, as it traces the journey from Southgate’s character-forming experience with ‘that’ botched penalty kick at the Euro semi-final in 1996 to the confidence that attends next year’s competition.
There’s not a football to be seen – all the shots and headers are effectively mimed, abetted by much balletic fancy foot-work. And the body language of the inarticulate squad (Will Close’s Harry Kane painfully so) has its own lion-like prowess.
It indicates blokey awkwardness as Fiennes’ furrowed, remarkably look-alike Southgate, collaborating with sports psychologist Pippa Grange (a wonderfully self-possessed Gina McKee), demands a sharing of vulnerabilities. It becomes more carnivalesque as recognisable anthems are blared. And it arrives at the final eloquent statement of a swaying group hug. Fiennes played the Bard in Shakespeare in Love, and achieves a mesmeric intellectual intensity, hands deep in pockets or delicately gesticulating, that makes Southgate seem almost like Shakespeare’s inheritor, weaving dreams for us all.