Dear England - NT Olivier / Prince Edward Theatre / Lowry

I saw a screening in my local cinema yesterday. This is the first time I've been to an NT Live screening and certainly won't be the last; I greatly enjoyed it, felt I didn't miss an awful lot from watching on screen rather than going to the enormous inconvenience and expense of travelling down to London and especially appreciated the interval! It's a shame that the quick-change makeup (particularly the bald caps) didn't stand up to scrutiny when on-screen, but that's obviously understandable.

I'm a huge football fan who has followed the Southgate England team very closely having become entirely disillusioned with them during the Eriksson/Capello/Hodgson years, so was very much looking forward to experiencing this.

To me it's a fascinating example of a creative project simultaneously trying to cover far too much ground but also being far too long; the significance of Southgate's England team in the wider context of the country's political and social direction, the amount of scrutiny and pressure international footballers face against their personal feelings, the lack of mental health provisions for top athletes, the "shut up and play" controversies that have come with cultural figures becoming more and more outspoken on social media, everything the play touches on is ripe for artistic analysis but ultimately Dear England tries to cover all of it with various levels of success. To me it would have been a lot better to cover a single tournament, probably the 2021 Euros, rather than Southgate's entire tenure to date. I would also just remove the various references to real-life political figures if you're going to chicken out of doing anything more dangerous than just having an ensemble member put on a bad wig and do a Boris Johnson impression.

The staging of the production and performances from the ensemble were spectacular. The stand-outs amongst the players for me were Pickford, Sterling and especially Harry Kane; the running motif of the pressure that comes with taking penalties, tied up with one of the world's most dependable penalty takers missing the most important penalty of his career, bordered on genius and was very effective. I absolutely *loved* the players reciting their numbers in the order of England players across time before taking their penalties, which was a beautiful way of portraying the effect Southgate had on changing the perception of playing for England.

I have very mixed feelings on Fienne's performance as Southgate. He's clearly put an enormous amount of time, work and effort into capturing the mannerisms but at times it bordered on the ridiculous and I wondered whether it was supposed to be venerating Southgate or mocking him. His monologue about his trauma of missing the penalty was absolutely sublime in writing and acting, and the final moment between him and Kane was perfect.

All in all I think I'd give this 4/5. I agree with the comments that it would make a good movie!