It is not common. This feeling of confident excitement as you wait for the curtain to go up. It is about as rare as being certain that England are going to win a big match. Ah, but Dear England is by James Graham, who over the last decade has altered what we expect from the theatre – not least on the stage of the National – and the expectation is justified. Once again the playwright shows his particular gift, for writing a popular play with a resonant social theme. He is mightily helped by director Rupert Goold – who moves from production to production like a theatrical oxygen cylinder – and by a tremendous performance, one of the best of the year so far, from Joseph Fiennes. Oh, and did I say it is about football?
Dear England takes its name from the open letter the national football team’s manager, Gareth Southgate, wrote to fans in 2021, pleading for a more generous, more ample, more interesting view of what the country could be. Graham vividly sketches the particular mess in which the team found themselves before Southgate tiptoed in to take over: though seldom winning, they still considered themselves a top talent; any loss was an insupportable shock. Graham does not need to batter home the point that this could be considered the equivalent of the sense of inherited privilege that has helped to make the country flounder.
