James Graham on his New Play DEAR ENGLAND: Gareth Southgate is Like a Playwright

James Graham has said that Gareth Southgate's story of playing for and managing England's football team has been "Shakepearean".

Graham was speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme about his new play Dear England, that is coming to The National Theatre in June, starring Joseph Fiennes as England Manager Gareth Southgate.

Graham said Southgate's story was inspiring because "theatre has a great capacity to take national institutions and public life to use them as vessels to try and make sense of our national story, where we are now and obviously the English football team is one of our great national institutions it always seems to act as a unoffical barometer, rightly or wrongly, about where we are in our confidence and our self esteem".

He said that Southgate has created a "quiet revolution" in his cultural reform inside the dressing room, at a time when Britain has gone through a time of great turmoil.

"The questions he's been asking of his team and of the men playing is way greater than performance, strategy and tactics. There is emotional intelligence and philosphical curiosity which I think is quite surprising in a game that is seen as quite macho and quite tough."

About using Southgate as a subject for his new play, Graham said "he has allowed players to speak their truth" in a team of diverse races, classes and ethnicities, which he found "really inspiring and moving".

"He's a bit like a playwright...he thinks one of the problems that England has had in the past, both the team and possibly the nation, is that it's been really trapped and limited by the story it's telling itself."

Graham said that Southgate's own experience of missing a penalty against Germany in the 1996 Euros is a Shakespearean story; "he feels the burden that particularly English men feel when they put on that shirt".

Graham admitted that Southgate's unassuming character is a challenge to put on the stage; "he's described himself as an introvert, which, I'll admit...it's not bells and whistles, it's not screaming into the sky, it's something more considered and internal...what he's trying to do with England is quite epic and quite mythic.".

Listen to the full interview here at 2.24

Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski

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