Review: THE GREATER GAME, Southwark Playhouse, 19 September 2016

Like the Pals of a Lancashire milltown, 100 years ago, all 41 men of Clapton Orient Football Club signed up to fight for King and Country on the battlefields of France - not all 41 came back.

The Greater Game tells their story and, through it, the stories of countless men who answered their country's call and were thrown into the mincing machines of Passchendaele and Ypres, whistled up to fix bayonets and walk towards machine guns, reduced to cowering in foxholes as shell bursts turned terrifying night into furious day, and condemned to die in pursuit of a few yards of mud that is forever England.

Their graves speckle the flat, featureless landscapes of Picardy and Flanders and, for those whose bodies were never recovered, the Menin Gate lists the Smiths and the Singhs, the McDonalds and the Evanses, the Murphys and the Changs. A century later, the sting for a working-class lad like me with the good fortune to be born in 1963, not 1893, is still very sharp.

Richard McFadden and William Jonas meet as kids up North and then, as so often now, move south to make a living - Richard first, as a star forward at Clapton Orient, then his mate in the midfield. There's plenty of laddish banter at training, of course, with veteran pro "Jumbo" Reason pulling a few stunts on the cross-country runs and "Peggy" Evans relentlessly ribbing the dim and aggressive George Scott - a man with hidden depths.

There are wives too, struggling to cope new to The Smoke: struggling even more when their husbands are posted. Manager Billy Holmes keeps a paternal eye on things, a Matt Busby figure looking after his doomed Babes.

The lads are posted into battle and some make it and some don't, but their fundamental decency and commitment to each other never wavers (the production has the backing of the Professional Footballers Association and the Royal British Legion, so it's no "warts an' all" exposé). If it feels a bit like Rolf Harris's "Two Little Boys" song, well that's how things were and I'm giving the sentimentality a free pass in this case.

As theatre though, it's only partially successful. The first half is too long, the lads' backstories a little too florid in their painting - we know where they're going and we're know they're salt-of-the-earth types from the first ten minutes. Their experiences on the battlefield are tear-jerking but not revelatory, at least not to anyone who has seen the brilliantly realised final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth or read All Quiet on the Western Front, so this lengthy production would benefit from a few cuts, which would also enhance its theatrical element too, since it's somewhat episodic and choppy in its narrative construction.

There's possibly a touch too much authenticity in the strong Northern accents, which take a bit of deciphering if the speaker isn't face on to you. That said, Peter Hannah's McFadden is a credible hero, a man whose personal bravery had been proved long before he was sent to the trenches. As William Jonas, Will Howard convinces as a loyal friend, happy to let McFadden shine until his time comes to show his true colours.

If Nick Hancock isn't given much to do, especially stuck back home in the second half, there are good turns from writer Michael Head as ducker-and-diver Jumbo and Charlie Clements, whose leadership credentials expand as The Game becomes Greater. The wives, Laura Webb and Patsy Lowe, wobble their stiff upper lips (understandably) and sing a beautiful, if slightly incongruous, duet showing that it wasn't just the men who suffered in wartime.

This production is partly didactic (with a few cuts, it will play wonderfully well in schools) and partly a tribute to those whose stories once were lost, but it never forgets that it's a play too and one that needs to entertain. Truth be told, it never properly resolves those varying priorities, but its heart is in the right place and it's a story that every generation needs to learn afresh.

The Greater Game continues at Southwark Playhouse until 15 October.

Photo Mark Allan

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