4 January - Back into London

A quiet day at home before a trip to London to see Dear England at the Prince Edward Theatre. The theatre itself has a fascinating history. Named after the Prince of Wales who would become King Edward VIII then abdicate to marry Wallis Simpson, it was built in 1930. In 1935 it was converted into a dance hall and cabaret and renamed The London Casino. It was badly damaged in an air raid in 1941 and when it reopened in 1942, it was as the Queensbury All Services Club, a club for servicemen. After the war, it became, once again, the London Casino and featured theatrical performances, including one with a full-sized swimming pool onstage. In 1954 it was converted to a Cinerama cinema and remained so until 1974 when the Cinerama screen was replaced with a conventional one. Converted once again to a theatre with its original name, in 1978 it opened with the world premiere of Evita. It has a lovely stained glass ceiling and a bit of decoration around the walls and boxes, but doesn’t have the sort of ornate plasterwork of many of the lovely smaller, older theatres. 

That said, the stage is obviously state of the art and the production featured a wonderful flying ring of light meant, I imagine, to represent the shape of a football stadium. The stage was marked with what looked like a coaching diagram full of lines and arrows.

The set made very clever use of wheeled wooden boxes with doors, meant to represent, variously, lockers, walls, or doorways of buildings. They were pushed around the set by the actors, who also moved chairs on and off the stage. There were no blackouts between scenes, the changes in settings being represented by the rearrangement of the boxes.

Dear England is a play about the England football manager Gareth Southgate, the pressures of elite sport and the role of the English men's football team in the national psyche. The play explores how Southgate helped to change notions of masculinity on the England team. It stars Joseph Fiennes, Ralph Fiennes brother. I think we were at a bit of a disadvantage as audience members, since we aren’t familiar with the specific players and sportscasters and their personalities. Those characters with whom we were familiar: Teresa May, Boris Johnson & Liz Truss were played more as caricatures than characters, so I wonder if the same holds true for some of the other characters.  The actors playing the coach and the team psychologist were excellent; believable, and not at all over-the-top. The actors portraying the team players were credible and incredibly fit since there was a lot of running around and calisthenics involved. Much of the show was spent rehashing the past of the English team, the attitude of the British public toward the team and how the team manager wanted to change the mindset of the players in order to improve their results. It all worked quite well, but where the show really came to life for me was when the players talked about “their England.” They’re always sold the idea of playing for the honor of their country, but their country hasn’t always treated them honorably, particularly the players of color. It was when the coach and players faced their demons and shared them with the rest of their teammates that the show came to life. It’s a shame that it was such a small part of the play and a bigger shame that you become aware that it is unlikely to change anytime soon. One thing I found particularly interesting was the demographics of the audience. I can’t recall a time when I’ve seen more groups of young men at the theatre. I’m sure it was because of the general subject matter, football, but I wonder if they knew that it would be more of an examination of the mental aspects of football, toxic masculinity and the inner demons faced by everyone, not just athletes, rather than a look at the English football team. I’d like to hope that seeing how powerful theatre can be might give them an appetite for theatre in general. I guess that remains to be seen.

On the way home we passed a wonderful multimedia presentation, Butterflies of Life, across the street from the train station.