We talk to Gwilym Lee (Gareth Southgate), Liz White (Dr Pippa Grange), Josh Barrow (Jordan Pickford) and Jude Carmichael (Marcus Rashford) about Dear England, the Olivier award-winning play by James Graham, which comes to Salford from May 29-June 29 following a 10-week run at the National Theatre.
Gwilym Lee as England manager Gareth Southgate with his team in the play Dear England. All pics: Marc Brenner
TRN: How challenging is it to play characters so well known in the media?
Josh Barrow (Jordan Pickford): “You don’t get much characterisation when they’re on the pitch or in post-match interviews, so you have to dig for scenes like in the locker room, when it’s just them. You have to make your choices with the characters and that’s when you get to play around a little bit.”
Gwilym Lee (Gareth Southgate): “I think we benefited during Southgate’s tenure from them opening up to the England fans on social media – for instance, the YouTube videos that go behind the scenes at St George’s Park. They are really illuminating, because when you see post-match interviews, they present a version of themselves that is quite considered, whereas in those videos, dealing with inflatables in the swimming pool or just messing around, that’s when you see them free, without constraints.”
TRN: Gwilym, while you’re not a caricature of Gareth Southgate, how much did you study him to create such a convincing performance?
Comfort in heartbreak: Gwilym Lee as England manager Gareth Southgate in Dear England
Gwilym Lee (GS): “You start with the outside-in when you’re working with a real person, which is kind of the opposite way around to how I’d usually approach a character. The trick is to constantly look for answers to the question ‘why’: the ticks, twitches and mannerisms. Why does he move like that? What is it about his character that makes him move like that?
“We’re not impersonators, we’re actors and our aim is hopefully to find both the humanity of the character and to find ourself in a character. This is very much my version of Gareth.”
TRN: The staging is so impressive, featuring a huge round stage with three revolving segments. How much of a challenge is that when you’re performing?
Josh Barrow (JP): “We had a whole portion of rehearsals devoted to learning how to use the revolve, as it’s three tiers: one goes this way, the other goes that way, the third goes the first way. We really have to practise how to walk on it.”
TRN: Jude, how does it feel knowing you’re going to be playing Marcus Rashford a stone’s throw from Old Trafford?
Jude Carmichael (MR): “When my agent told me I’d got the job, the fear came through! I was thinking ‘when we go to Manchester, everyone’s gonna be like: Go on then!’”
A scene from Dear England
Gwilym Lee (GS): “When you get closer to the weekend, you start to get some football crowds in and it’s great fun; you have people who react when the players come out or when Leicester City or Manchester City or whoever is mentioned, and they go yay or boo and it’s really fun.”
Josh Barrow (JP): “We feed off it. When you go to the theatre, you sit down, watch the show, applaud the actors and so on, but with this, it almost demands participation. There’s laughs and cheers, and boos, but then it culminates in this a massive party at the end with Sweet Caroline. The more a crowd leans into it and gives itself over to you, the more fun it is. When we get football fans in the audience that end moment is just wild – almost like a rock concert.”
Gwilym Lee (GS): “Some people come not knowing anything about football, and the play resonates on a different level. Then there’s the opposite – people who come expecting it to be a football play, which it is, but then it’s also kind of a Trojan horse; it’s about so much more. The idea of bringing in new audiences is a real bonus.”
TRN: This play feels so special because while we know the outcome, the audience still watches with a sense of hope. Does that translate to you all on stage?
Josh Barrow (JP): “You see audience members during some of the penalties, and even though everybody knows how it goes – it was such a big moment – everyone is watching gripped and engaged. It’s just perfect.”
Jude Carmichael (MR): “You get swept up in it. You know the outcome, you know what it means to be a fan watching, and even the aftermath. Whether that is good or bad, you can’t help but get caught up in it.”
TRN: Have any of you performed at the Lowry before?
Gwilym Lee (GS): “I was part of a tour years ago; we did King Lear there with Derek Jacobi. I’m looking forward to going back, I love it! It’s a beautiful theatre and a perfect match to the Olivier Theatre at the National – a similar kind of space. It’s going to be fun taking the show to a new audience there and seeing how they respond.”
TRN: There are so many themes in this play – what do you want audiences to take away from it?
Gwilym Lee (GS): “It was interesting to watch Gareth Southgate’s lecture recently; it feels like everything he touched on in that is at the heart of this play. It’s about resilience and belief, and giving those things to people.”
Liz White (Dr PG): “Masculinity is an interesting part of it, too. I’ve really enjoyed researching Pippa because I get to listen to all her strategies and approaches for a better, calmer life, one filled with deeper joy – and deeper loss too. She talks about how to lose, and that sometimes gets a laugh. It could sound quite defeatist, but what she’s saying is you can look at defeat in a reflective way, and let that feed the way you approach your next match.”
Gwilym Lee (GS): “I think one of my favourite things of Pippa’s is the idea of winning ‘deep’ or ‘shallow’ and there’s a difference to just winning at all costs; it’s about winning with integrity and depth.”
Liz White (Dr PG): “That means if you go out there and play with integrity after all the prep and effort, you’ve won – regardless of the outcome.”
TRN: Sport and theatre have many parallels in terms of the shared experience – this is something the play explores well, isn’t it?
Gwilym Lee (GS): “We need these national moments of togetherness. We we get them we realise how brilliant this country is and how great its people are. It’s a divided world at the moment, at times even a divided society. When Gareth wrote that Dear England letter, it was a galvanising moment, encouraging people to come together. with power and strength, and it can be glorious. I think that’s why the play has such power; because it taps into the collective consciousness and hopefully that’s what audiences take away from it. There’s hope, there’s joy, there’s power in being together.”
Liz White (Dr PG): “On a very basic level, all of those things say you’re not alone. Someone else is there having the same experience as you, it’s so powerful.”
Gwilym Lee (GS): “There’s a lot of parallels, sport is about performance, we’re dealing with fear. I was scared about taking on this job, I read the script and told myself I had to take on my fears and go for it; to put myself in an uncomfortable position and see what happened!”
Dear England opens at the Lowry on May 29. Tickets and more info here.