Dear England - NT Olivier / Prince Edward Theatre

Really enjoyed this. Joseph Fiennes and Gina McKee were both excellent (Fiennes has Southgate’s voice and mannerisms down to a tee). The staging is excellent. It’s very much of the moment (in some ways it reminded me of the Great Britain play with Billie Piper) and is in some ways a play for people who don’t go to plays (to the point that the three act structure is explained, albeit in the context of tournaments). But Graham uses every tool in his arsenal to make it work. The music is a particular highlight, with Fabio Capello’s music a laugh out loud moment. Some of the laughs don’t quite land but it is very funny overall. And it plays on every England football fan’s emotions very skilfully. The three hours flew by, for me. By the time it opens it will be very tight.

The Crucible transferred from the Olivier.

Almost had my heart in my mouth there as I had cancelled my booking when I managed to snag on stage seating for A Little Life. Good reminder to rebook.

I booked as it sounded an interesting subject & though I know nothing of sport (nor do I have any interest), I always enjoy stories about people and relationships, which are after all at the heart of any good play/film/book, etc. For the same reason I find newspaper sports sections fascinating for articles about sportspeople, coaches, managers, etc: their motivations & interactions. In any case I would hope that the NT wouldn't mount a new play in a large space if likely to be intelligible only to a few; this wouldn't make business sense for a start.

I wouldn’t say so, no. Everything is explained very well. If you know the back story then there are some jokes that might land better than others, but you don’t need to know anything about football to appreciate this.

Logged into Friday Rush out of curiosity for a friend, and a bunch of tickets which were £10 at about 3 mins past 1 soon went up to, and are still £69 / £86.
Is that standard? What an absolute con.

They really are fine. I'm not a small guy and I regularly book those seats. Sure not quite as comfortable but I think you'll be fine.

capybara I tend to think the comfort of the front three rows depends on who is sitting next to you and, for your neighbours, how much timber you are carrying.

I'm likely in the middle between my neighbours thinking of me 'holy sh!t, kill me now' and 'could be worse, a bit'.

For most, it's not too bad.

Saw this tonight, and for a non-football fan like me, this was nonetheless a triumph, engrossing and moving in equal measure.

For expectation management, be aware that the first half is SO GOOD that, like life lol, the second half can't quite live up to it.

Joseph Fiennes is a terrific Gareth Southgate, carrying the emotional throughline effortlessly, and Will Close is a hilarious and loveable Harry Kane.

Some spoilers follow. . .

"Wokeness" has many definitions, and depending on how you define it, it's either the end of freedom or it's the start of compassion.

This play is the rare positive take on "wokeness," adopting the latter definition with a passion, and telling a story about how Gareth Southgate brings his own brand of big-hearted wokeness to the unlikely job of England Manager.

Southgate's humility, the key to his compassion in James Graham's telling, is rooted in his lonely and horrible 1996 humiliation of missing a critical penalty at a critical point in a critical match.

In Fiennes's depiction of the man, this scar never leaves him, and his resolve that noone he comes into contact should ever suffer the loneliness of similar scars, from players to colleagues to fans, is at the heart of his plan to change football by stripping the macho individualism out of it and replacing it with the wokiest brotherhood-of-man communal oneness imaginable.

In fact, so woke is he, that to the chagrin of players and trainers alike, he seeks the help of a woman, Gina McKee's psychologist, Dr Pippa Grange, to strip away the performance anxieties of players and trainers alike. The stage is set for a journey from everyone-for-themselves individualism to everyone-for-everyone-else communalism, a journey that will involve Southgate permitting and encouraging all sorts of wokeness, including the communal taking of the knee in protest against racist chanting, in solidarity with his black players.

The triumph of the perfect first half is in how successfully director Rupert Goold and writer James Graham join hands to create an exhilarating sense of motion to the storytelling, where every plot point leads seamlessly to the next, whether it be a new idea, a new recruit, to the players or to the trainers, to the expectations of the fans on the street, to the politics of the moments, to putting all those ideas and team members into action on the pitch. The flow of ideas and stage movements is graceful, involving and intoxicating.

Fiennes IS Southgate. I had the sense I was watching the man, not the actor. I felt and understood his intentions, and I was moved by his expression of them, in his successes, but equally in his failures.

As Harry Kane, Will Close affects a slow speaking gormless honesty that is as amusing as it is affecting.

The whole cast are wonderful, really, with Gina McKee, Paul Thornley, Kel Matsena, John Hodgkinson, Adam Hugill, Ebenezer Gyau and Sean Gilder all having shining monents.

The second half reminded me of Shakespeare's Henry V, of the moments of doubt between battles where everyone is thoughtful, everyone bowed. This slowdown of the action is deliberate, a reaching for depth, but it is protracted and noticeable, as if after a period of reading an unputdownable book, you put it down for a bit, had a think and realised you were thinking, thrown out of the story a little bit.

Like in Henry V, our Harry (Kane) eventually rallies the English team, in a more amusing and novel way than his Shakespearean counterpart's use of florid words, but with equally rousing effect.

Ultimately, the story is not finished as we move towards the England team's next chapter, but as a non-fan, I find I now care a whole lot about what happens next, and that's because this 4 and a half star wonder of a production got under my skin.

I sat on the front row on the aisle, so width was not a problem, but I did find the seat to be very uncomfortable in general! I would still book one again if I had to, but not for anything too long!

The view from Row A isn’t great but ok for £20 just the shock when you first sit down and don’t think the girl next to me could see very much
I loved the play and as a football fan,it’s the play I’ve been waiting for such a brilliant cast as the Harry Kane and Harry Maguire characters are played to perfection.

Well I saw the first 5 minutes tonight and then the show was halted - a number of techy guys started lifting up the stage and peering into the black hole of the revolve mechanism. This went on for an hour whilst a large number of creatives looked on anxiously: Rufus, Rupert and James, the latter looked like he was about to burst into tears. Around 8.45 an announcement was made: performance cancelled, full refund.

Why is that? I always get the front row tickets, is the set raised for this?

Thanks for the review, Steve. The problem on the 19th was due to the drum revolve not working. I thought that the NT had sorted this out a couple of years ago. Its a great asset for the Olivier and Rufus said that the play couldn't be performed without it.