Dear England review – How Southgate changed fortunes by listening not speaking

by Dom Smith at the National Theatre

★★★★☆

Quizzed by one of his coaching staff as to what his targets are as the new England manager, Gareth Southgate (Joseph Fiennes) replies in a half-muffled voice: “To get the players smiling again.”

“Sorry, what?”, comes the baffled response.

“Get them smiling again.”

“Oh. Right…”

There, in microcosmic form, is the raison d’être of Southgate as England manager — and, indeed, what James Graham’s ‘Dear England’, currently playing at the National Theatre, seeks to celebrate.

Football is an odd thing to write a play about. Particularly when it centres around a team who have no gongs to show for their graft. But in his seven years as England manager, Gareth Southgate has driven and masterminded a collective relieving of the weight previously crippling the shoulders of England players for generations.

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Success (for the men) with three lions on their shirts is more possible now than at any previous point in the modern era. And, trophy to show for it or not, it is an inspiring story as much about the nation’s intertwined discomfiture with patriotism as with the trials and tribulations of its long-underperforming national football team.

Director Rupert Goold is right to make light of the characters of Southgate’s disgraced 67-day predecessor Sam Allardyce and former FA chief execs Greg Dyke and Greg Clarke. The line “You don’t have to be called Greg to run The FA, but it helps” orchestrates perfectly the suits and bureaucracy and insularity Southgate had to wade through to even have a chance in hell of conquering the root causes of English football’s self-sabotage.

It isn’t long after the depiction of the general public’s disillusionment about Southgate’s appointment that we see a scene where Southgate tactfully but steadfastly encourages Wayne Rooney, England’s then-highest-ever scorer and most-capped outfield player, into international retirement. Those who still call Southgate a ‘Yes man’ tend conveniently to leave out the time he retired one of England’s greatest players.

There is perhaps undue prominence for the role of Pippa Grange (Gina McKee) the performance psychologist who helped Southgate’s young players improve their mindsets for the better.

She was only in post between 2017 and 2019, leaving when she felt Southgate’s sense of urgency to push for a trophy threatened to undo their good mental work, but Graham understandably feels so much of Southgate’s thought-process cannot be told without a likeminded character alongside him on stage. Gareth from Crawley is, of course, best portrayed through any other method than monologue.

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It wouldn’t make for good theatre if this became a three-hour homage to how one man, largely on his own, fixed the national team — perhaps the country’s biggest obsession after politics — even if that’s largely what had happened. So Grange enables the audience to grasp Southgateism. Fair enough.

As he and his coaching staff get to work, Southgate rightly asks: “Why do we believe every time that we’re gonna win? Based on what evidence?” And when conquering penalties, which ultimately leads to England’s first-ever World Cup shootout win against Colombia at the 2018 World Cup, Graham is smart to major on Jamie Carragher’s miss at the 2006 World Cup.

Carragher scored, only to miss when asked to retake his penalty because he’d initially struck before the referee’s whistle. It demonstrated the cataclysmic nature of England’s impoverished past — tournament savviness nowhere to be seen.

We learn about all manner of smart moves. Owning the moment from 12 yards. “Call me Gareth, not Gaffer.” And the ‘Legacy Numbers’ that map England players from Robert Barker, player No1 in 1872 (though Fiennes wrongly says 1873), to Eberechi Eze, who debuted in June this year as player No1273.

It is fitting, though not exactly rocket science, that Act 1 should end on England’s Colombia penalty triumph in the 2018 round of 16. The 2-1 win over Tunisia in the group stage — England’s first victory in a tournament opener since 2006 — felt a turning point for England, but success on the hurdle at which England always fall, penalties, will no doubt have reassured Southgate’s players that all the ‘writing your own narrative’ stuff wasn’t just corporate nonsense. There were now tangible dividends.

Act 2 feels perhaps just a little too jovial and a tad rushed — though I accept that football is football, while theatre is theatre. Sweet Caroline had to feature; it was out of our hands.

But still there are tender moments, and Graham continues to give Southgate his flowers in 2023, at a stage in his tenure when much of the English public have found mounting micro-reasons to want someone more bolshy or less bolshy or just damn better in charge of England than Mr Considered.

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While the cameos of various Prime Ministers is a jarring way to signify time — and their penalty misses cringey and crass — the scene when Southgate debates the meaning of the St George’s flag, the Three Lions, and ‘Englishness’ more broadly is vital to understanding this play. England’s players seem happier and more in tune with their nation than they did before Southgate, even if the racist abuse and rioting in the capital after the ill-fated Euro 2020 final served as a reminder that changing opinions does not happen overnight.

The scene when Southgate drops Dele Alli and Eric Dier before the Euros reminds the audience that sport cannot have a happy ending for everyone. It is a results-driven business, even if ‘Dear England’ allows for a celebration of the other stuff, the nuance.

Told through a plethora of regional accents — Eric Dier’s (Ryan Whittle) good, Harry Kane’s (Will Close) OK, Southgate’s a smidge too cockney, Marcus Rashford’s (Darragh Hand) not great — there comes a clear message: that Southgate, still battling his woes after his Euro 96 penalty miss, sees his approach as blindingly obvious — that it should have been how England operated decades ago. “What philosophy? There’s no philosophy”, Fiennes says.

And it is no good barking into the players’ ears. “It has to come from you”.

England’s tussle with patriotism is rightly addressed and rightly not majored on. Still there is that familiar feeling at the end of each tournament routine. Out of the tournament. Out of the tournament. Out of the tournament again.

No trophy. But a detoxified environment, with more ingredients to succeed in the future than ever before.

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As Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve — ITV’s long-time theme tune for England coverage — plays out, it is hard not to labour on its lyrics.

“I am here in my mould. I can’t change, I can’t change.”

Yet that mould had for too long been producing disappointment. And, despite the lyrics, England can change, as a nation as well as a national football team. Gareth Southgate has shown how, by listening rather than speaking. Dressed up to facelift the story a little, ‘Dear England’ offers considered answers as to why and how he did it.

“It wouldn’t feel right, I don’t know what to make of it really,” Southgate has said about why he won’t be watching ‘Dear England’. Unassuming and unwaveringly modest to the last.

Sure, he wrote his letter to the nation, whose title this play borrows. But he was originally hesitant about the idea, so strident was his belief that it was the voices of others who most needed to be heard. This was never about him. His tenure has been one of selfless service, in a sport that so rarely strays from the selfish.