Peter Viney's Blog

by Roy Williams

Original director Nicole Charles
Revival director Joanna Bowman
Isaac Madge – video design
Designer- Joanna Scotcher

Chichester Minerva Theatre
Wednesday 3rd August 2022. 14.45

CAST

Harold Addo- Duane
Makir Ahmed – Barry
Samuel Armfield – Becks
Alexander Cobb – Lee
Rob Compton – Phil
Kirsty J Curtis – Jess
Jennifer Daley- Sharon
Steven Dykes – Jimmy
Michael Hodgson – Alan
Duramaney Kamara – Bad T
Jem Matthews – Glen
Sian Reese-Williams – Gina
Richard Riddell- Lawrie
Mark Springer- Mark

Roy Williams play dates from 2002 at the National Theatre. The 2019 Chichester version (then performed in the large tent on the lawn) got Covid-cancelled in 2020 as it was about to move to the National Theatre. It’s back with ten of the fourteen cast.

The play is set during the 2000 World Cup qualifiers (for the 2022 World Cup), England v Germany 7 October 2000. It was the last game at the Old Wembley Stadium, and Kevin Keegan’s last as England manager. It takes over from Peter Terson’s 1967 Zigger Zagger as THE play centred around football fans.

The set extends outside. The Minerva statue had a traffic cone and England flag. In the interval, we walked out, and looked down from the windows (The Minerva is upstairs) and saw a police car outside, and it was totally appropriate for the point in the play. ‘What a coincidence, the police are here! we said, until we saw the letters on the roof read CFT – Chichester Festival Theatre.

I took this photo a week later, during the interval for Crazy For You at the Festival Theatre opposite. I hadn’t noticed that the Minerva Theatre sign had been changed to “The King George”. I went over and spoke to the “policeman” and he stayed in character, nodding but not commenting.

The pub where the play takes place, The King George, started in the lobby, with a framed pub football shirt, as seen in the play, and a photo of the “team” (the cast) wearing the shirts. Note the sponsors ‘Imperial Interiors’ – i.e.They’re Imperialists inside! There was a door to the Ladies in the lobby … out of order of course. Note the “mould” on the door frame. The pub carpet had a faded bit cut in and taped round. You could almost smell the beer and cigarette smoke in the carpet, so real was it.

There is an original match programme framed in the lobby area too – it’s worth lingering there.

The ‘balcony’ is the pub men’s toilet, which is not only lit, but filmed live in black & white when there’s activity there (as if on security cameras) and projected on the multiple TV screens which are there to show the match in the pub. Co-ordinating the right bits of the match with live action, plus the TVs going wrong at times, was a remarkable piece of work by the sound / light / video operators.

We’d opted for “pub seating” at a mere £20, which meant we were almost part of the set, surrounding the playing area, Go for it! It’s a visceral experience. The action and the split second timing of the physicality are inches in front of you, to the extend of being terrifying at times. The play is extraordinarily physical, and powerfully so. As we walked out, Karen was still very distressed at the portrayal of racism, because that’s what it’s about. We have a sheltered life on the South Coast.

It would be easy to say, ‘Yes, but it was twenty-two years ago.’ That’s aided by the play’s argument over Andy Cole, as the only black player in the England team, never being given a chance to shine. We can sit back comfortably and point to the current and recent England teams, with half the player being black. We can pat ourselves on the back and say, ‘It’s all changed. They take the knee. Black players are national heroes, look at Marcus Rashford, and at Ian Wright’s commentary on the Women’s football.’ Then we think back to just before Covid, on a Saturday early evening delayed train which terminated at Winchester, due to industrial action. Another train from Southampton to Birmingham had also terminated at Winchester. We had to walk to buses (though I had had the sense to phone my son and ask him to pick us up). Winchester station was packed with Aston Villa fans, screaming abuse, doing Nazi salutes, and doing racist chants. A young black guy was shivering in fear, and I said, ‘Walk close with us to the buses.’ I don’t know if Aston Villa are particularly known for racism, though since that day I’d support ANY team against them. In the play, the terrifying Alan after spewing racism to Barry says he’s an Aston Villa fan, so maybe Roy Williams, the playwright, may know more about the intricacies of football fan racism than me.

Another reference in the play is that Gareth Southgate was in that ten white / one black team. They describe him as a muppet. Was that written before he was England manager? Gareth Southgate was then an Aston Villa player. Gareth Barry who came on at half time was also a Villa player. One of the major characters is called Barry … just saying.

The racism in the play is complicated. The white and black characters are united in racially abusing the Germans during the game … Hitler salutes and mimed moustaches. It happens, though as an English jokey thing, and is restricted to football games, as a kind of tradition dating back to 1966. I doubt Germans find it hilarious. But it’s not ‘just banter’ in the play. Lawrie describes his vicious assault on a German fan and manages to be anti-semitic at the same time as calling someone a Nazi. Mark is the one who hangs back from this.

Alan is the older, mysterious and powerful one. In Alan’s extreme racist speeches, he notes that Afro-Caribbeans and Africans fit pre-existing British life culturally more easily than Asians … in that they don’t shut themselves off.

Alan (white) is speaking to Barry (black).

Alan: I understand where you’re coming from. I really do. You’re from this country, you live here, born here, but there are still a few, a minority, won’t accept you.
Barry: I am accepted.
Alan: Course you are. I mean you’re not like Asians, are you?
Barry: Too right!
Alan: No, I don’t see your lot owning hundreds of shops lined up next to each other in Southall. Cutting yourselves off from the rest of the country. Not speaking the Queen’s English. Your lot ain’t like that at all. You’re sweet with us now …

Play text, page 72

There is a point. When I wrote a literacy programme for adults from non-Roman alphabet cultures, I spent much time talking to people teaching the area, and a repeated issue was that a percentage of newer arrival Asian Moslem men actively did not want women learning English or reading in English. There was never a language barrier with Afro-Caribbean people and Africans. Certainly BAME positive discrimination in the theatre, is heavily Afro-Caribbean / African oriented. On the other hand politics seems to have more Asians in high positions. Interestingly, this is a rare modern play in setting the characters’ ethnicity in concrete. You couldn’t do this one colour-blind. The character notes in the text are short, noting ‘black’ or ‘white’ first for each.

No plot spoiling, so instead I’ll describe the characters. Every actor on there was brilliant. Take it for each that it’s five star.

First there’s the pub. Gina (Sian Reese-Williams) is the very tough landlady. She is a towering figure throughout- no decent production photos though. Steven Dykes is her dad, Jimmy. Glen Matthews is Gina’s teenage son. This photo is from the programme:

Glen is hanging out with two black guys, Bad T (Duramaney Kamar), and Duane (Harold Addo). They’re bullying him mercilessly over his mobile phone and jacket.

Mark (Mark Springer) is black, and a strong figure of sense. An ex-boyfriend of Gina, he’s just left the army. You wouldn’t mess with him, but he’s grounded. Mark’s brother, Barry (Makir Ahmed)is the star of the pub team, a fanatic England fan, face painted in a St George’s flag. Both have patriotic tattoos.

The white pair of brothers are Richard Riddell as Lawrie, and Alexander Cobb as Lee. Riddell’s performance of Lawrie’s full on violent fury for two hours is astonishing. Lee is a serving police officer, who plays for the pub team.

Then we have the other fans, Jess, Becks and Phil. Every one of them gets a strong piece of dialogue and action, whether it’s Phil’s “Winston” joke or Jess changing her clothes on stage.

Jess was ‘Jason’ or ‘Jase’ in the original play. There was a point, in that the play is about an aggressive male group. With theatres going for 50 / 50 male / female over the season, this play leaves a fair bit of catching up in other productions. I did wonder about Jess at the time, as she arrives in the pub in the green pub team shirt, has muddy legs, football socks and shin pads. She gets changed into an England away shirt. Twenty years have passed since the original production. We were watching this just three days after the Lionesses beat the Germans in the Euro final. However good they were, I can’t see mixed football working past middle school. Though unlike some observers, I thought the foul / yellow card rate was at least the same in women’s games as men’s. Though Jess is just as aggressive as the males, it might dilute the male attitudes to Sharon. Jennifer Daley has a short but memorable cameo as Sharon, Duane’s mum. She comes in to complain about Duane’s savage treatment by the white regulars and gets into a confrontation with Lee, finally losing his cool and reverting to policeman.

Then there’s Alan (Michael Hodgson ). Much older. Nine in 1960. A figure in black. Quieter, smoother, utterly terrifying. Is he a local gangster or the leader of a neo-Nazi group? Or both? The programme notes by Roy Williams point out that the BNP (British National Party) was having some local success when he wrote the play.

Lawrie seeks his approval. The long, “reasoned” explanations of white racism are from Alan’s mouth. Driving back, we said that Richard Riddell’s Lawrie is something you could act (given his talent, energy, violent passion and physique) but we would have found it incredibly hard to deliver Alan’s poisonous speeches to black actors. This is spewing out the well-rehearsed ‘Rivers of Blood’ Enoch Powell racism.

The writer, Roy Williams, is Black and British. I don’t think a white writer could have submitted the text to any theatre. He does the programme intro”

As much as Alan’s views disgust me, he does say one thing in the play that I agree with: “If you want to stop people being like me, then you are going to have start listening to people like me.”
That pretty much sums up how I feel racial issues should be addressed. Listen. Then confront. No apologies.

Roy Williams, programme introduction

The timing and the energy are what marks it out.

Have you seen a play with NINE 5 star reviews? Everyone gave it five.

Make that ten 5 star reviews. I have to wonder how Chichester is doing it this year. I can’t remember anywhere getting such a run of five star reviews.

*****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

5 star
Anya Ryan, The Guardian *****
Dzifa Benson, Telegraph *****
Dominic Maxwell, The Times *****

It makes a case for Roy Williams’s drama, first seen in 2002, as one of the great British plays of the century. It’s not quite the south London precursor to Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, but it packs a similar, all too pertinent state-of-the-nation wallop into, in this case, an evening of pub chat and edgy confrontation. 

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

MICHAEL HODGSON

Romeo & Juliet, RSC2018 (Capulet)
Macbeth, RSC 2018 (Porter)
Strife by John Galsworthy, Chichester 2016
The Shoemaker’s Holiday, by Thomas Dekker, RSC 2015

ALEXANDER COBB

The Duchess of Malfi, RSC 2018
The Seagull, by Chekhov, Nuffield, Southampton 2013 (Konstantin)