EXCLUSIVE: Joseph Fiennes has scored a winner with playwright James Graham’s knockout stage play Dear England, which will transfer from London’s National Theatre to the West End in the fall.
The play is an uplifting dramatization of Gareth Southgate’s inspirational leadership of the England’s men’s soccer team and has garnered strong reviews.
Dear England will run at the Cameron Mackintosh-owned Prince Edward Theatre in Soho, London for a 14-week season from October 9. National Theatre Productions is producing.
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Fiennes (The Handmaid’s Tale, American Horror Story) will transfer with the drama. He has been praised for capturing Southgate’s determination to reignite the England team’s pride, plus the sense that the bloke’s a darn good egg. England stars such as captain Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling are also played in the show by actors.
The show, directed with joyful verve by Rupert Goold (Judy), also recounts the bittersweet decades since the England lads enjoyed a moment of sheer glory, when the country won the World Cup against Germany in 1966 on home turf at Wembley.
Dear England has performed to capacity crowds on the National Theatre’s Olivier stage since its June 20 opening.
“I really hoped it would become a cross-over play,” Graham told me, meaning that it would bring in “loads of lads in their football shirts” along with regular theater-goers.
Figures released to Deadline by the National Theatre show that close to 75,000 people have seen the play since its June 20 opening. It’s another in a long line of recent hits for Artistic Director Rufus Norris. Others include The Motive and the Cue and Standing at the Sky’s Edge, both of which have announced transfers to the West End.
Dear England’s eight-week run ends August 11, having drawn the likes of former England team captain Gary Lineker – now the BBC’s star sports commentator -and fellow pundit and former England forward, Ian Wright.
Hugh Jackman was spotted cheering from the stalls as were Oscar-winning stars Emma Thompson, Daniel Kaluuya and Ariana De Bose along with Kathy Burke, who won the best actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Gary Oldman’s directorial debut Nil by Mouth. Designer Stella McCartney, who created the team GB uniforms at the 2016 Olympics, visited. Ed Millband, the UK Labour Party’s front bench spokesman on the environment and climate change went, as did Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s one-time communications chief and lifelong Burnley F.C. supporter.
Hundreds of young people were able to watch Dear England for free, thanks to a smart partnership scheme run by the National Theatre’s Learning department and Football Beyond Borders.
Oftentimes at performances of Dear England, the National has resembled a premier league stadium with some punters kitted out in Three Lions shirts while others sported their favorite team’s colors.
“I know sometimes people say these things in a kind of glib way,” director Goold told me, “but I’ve been really amazed by the breadth of the audience that has come to see this show, over and above the regular National audience – so many National Theatre regulars have enjoyed it as much as fans of the game.”
Goold spoke of receiving “so many emails from people saying, ‘I don’t know anything about football. I’m not interested in football, but I really liked it,’ which is great.”
Laughing, Goold described the fandom for Dear England as “like Frozen for boys in a way, there’s a lot of people who bring their sons but equally adult men bringing their older fathers.”
The play has “really touched a nerve,” Goold believes, in the way that it “explores masculine identity and what it means to be a boy and a man in contemporary society.”
“People have said it’s a populist show,” Goold mused. “I think that’s true, but in a really good way. I think it tries to in the way that football can be. A lot of people don’t love football and don’t like the culture around football, but an amazing number of people will watch England in the World Cup …it becomes a different sort of cross generational, cross class, cross gender activity and I really feel this play could be like that in a West End theater where we can have accessible pricing. I think it’ll be a great Christmas show.”
No reason why not. It’s a rollicking night out.
James Graham (Sherwood) told me that he was “surprised and quite relieved” that hope and national unity wasn’t met with cynicism but “standing ovations every night.”
Graham was drawn to writing about Southgate because “he’s offering hope and unity” and not a soup of “fear, anger and doom.”
Highly appropriate too that a play about the nation’s game “is on at the National because the National Theatre of England should belong to everybody,” he added.
Graham said that he will gently tinker with parts of the play because “I’m a big believer that you are meant to learn from the audience.”
The huge theater hit has attracted attention from filmmakers, producers and studios. “Both Rupert and I have been surprised by the level of interest,” Graham said. However, he and Goold have yet to make a decision.
Story not over
One reason for this is that the story isn’t over yet. Southgate’s England contract stretches into 2024 when he will lead his team to Germany for the Euro 2024 competition.
One idea floating about would have Graham write a film or prestige TV series incorporating whatever might happen with England at next year’s Euros.
However, after its run at the Prince Edward Theatre, it’s hoped that Dear England could “tour the big footballing cities of the nation,” said Graham.
Available theaters in the West End are as rare as hen’s teeth. But the Prince Edward had an opening. Present occupant, the musical Ain’t Too Proud, about The Temptations, has had a pretty disastrous run and will close early.
Dear England will fill the gap until MJ, the Michael Jackson Musical needs to move in to prepare for a March opening.
Goold’s creative team will ready the Prince Edward Theatre for the beautiful play about the so-called beautiful game.
They include: set designer, Es Devlin; costume designer Evie Gurney; lighting designer, Jon Clark; movement directors, Ellen Kane and Hannes Langolf; sound designers, Dan Balfour and Tom Gibbons and video designer, Ash J Woodward. Casting by Bryony Jarvis Taylor; dialect coach Richard Ryder and associate director Elin Schofield. Goold has also filmed the show for NT Live.
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