When
Patrick Marber got involved with his local non-league football team, he wasn’t
looking to write a play about it. As it is, when it was first seen in 2015, The
Red Lion became one of Marber’s biggest hits since his early plays such as
Closer and Dealer’s Choice caught the 1990s zeitgeist. The Red Lion, however, is
a grown-up play of a different kind, as Rapture Theatre’s revival should make
clear when it goes out on tour next week.
The
company’s series of away away games go further afield than Marber’s beloved East
Sussex based Lewes FC have ever ventured. This is unlike his ‘first’ team, multi-nationally
owned big-hitters, Arsenal, who went global even before the north London club
made the move from Highbury to the club’s home since 2006 at the Emirates
Stadium. It is such a disconnect between big business and community-based clubs
like Lewes FC that fires The Red Lion.
“It was
a surprise to me I came to write the play,” says Marber on a Saturday morning
the day before Arsenal go down 3-0 to Leicester City, while Lewes finish their
season with a 0-0 draw against AFC Hornchurch in front of a crowd of 611. “I
got involved with Lewes FC around about 2009, and over the next couple of years
worked quite hard for the club. At the time, the people I was working with said
I’d get a play out of it, but I said it was never going to happen. Then when I
came off the board, I found there was something I wanted to say about football,
and about how football relates to the wider world politically.”
The Red
Lion sets itself in the dressing room of a small town club not a million miles
away from Lewes, where a hot-shot striker is torn between the dreams and
ambitions of a local hero kit-man who has given his life and soul to the club,
and an ambitious manager on the make. Such a self-contained setting is itself
indicative of the tug of love Marber was forced to square up to when Lewes FC
was saved by a fan-based buy-out.
“The
play crept up on me,” he says, “and it took a while to write. The way it’s done
seems so simple, but it took a while to find the form. It seems logical now
having three characters, but there was a part of me that wanted to write
something with twenty characters and have it set throughout the entire season.”
Football
is clearly in Marber’s blood, and The Red Lion is in part a reaction to the
gentrification of the beautiful game over the last few decades.
“I’ve
watched Arsenal all my life,” he says. “Then in my thirties I started playing
football to keep fit. Then I had children, and they started playing, and me and
my then eight-year-old son started going to watch Lewes, and I just thought,
what an amazing game this is, that you can go through different generations
experiencing it. So writing the play was love. Love for the game and love for
what it’s given me over the years. With Lewes, I got to know all these old
football managers, and through talking with them, I realised what football was,
what politics was, and what society was.”
Marber
may have moved away from Lewes geographically, but the club still holds a place
in his heart, and he still keeps an eye on how they’re doing.
“I still
feel very emotionally attached to Lewes,” he says. “We saved the club, and even
though I’m back living in London now, it will always be my second club. They’ve
had an up and down season this year. It’s the club’s first season in the premier
division of the Isthmian League, but I think they’ve done alright.”
It is
here the differences between amateur and professional football become more
marked. In non-league teams like Lewes FC, “The alignment between the supporters
and the club is much greater,” according to Marber. “This is my big problem
about big league football, because it’s become this mega-corporate business, and
I feel very sad about that.”
The
changes at Arsenal are a particular grievance.
“I mourn
the loss of Highbury,” says Marber. “These great stadiums matter. They matter
deeply. I’ve never felt quite as much in love with Arsenal once we moved. I
still go, but I loathe the owners for what they’ve done to the club. I used to
have a share in the club, but I had to sell it in a compulsory purchase sort of
thing, and any sense of community there was, for me at least, has been lost.”
The Red
Lion, then, is a reminder that football was, and arguably still is, the
people’s game.
“I
suppose my message is really to football supporters,’ says Marber. “We bought
our football club and saved it, and the play is a plea for more supporter
involvement. There’s an illusion of that with all the various schemes that the
big clubs have started, but ultimately the power lies with the club’s owner,
and if you don’t engage with the supporters, it’s over.”
The Red
Lion, Palace Theatre, Kilmarnock, May 8-9; Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, May
11; Howden Park, Livingston, May 16; Tolbooth, Stirling, May 18; Motherwell
Theatre, May 20; Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, May 23; Lanark Memorial Hall,
May 24; Harbour Art, Irvine, May 25; Eastwood Part, Giffnock, May 26; Village
Theatre, East Kilbride, May 28; Ryan Centre, Stranraer, May 31; Theatre Royal,
Dumfries, June 1; Byre Theatre, St Andrews, June 7-8; Falkirk Theatre, June 13;
Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, June 15; Theatre Royal, Glasgow, June 18-22.
Panel
Patrick
Marber first came to prominence performing alongside Chris Morris on radio news
satire On the Hour, and with Steve Coogan on Knowing Me, Knowing You. He also appeared
in both shows’ TV spin-offs, The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You…with
Alan Partridge.
As a
playwright, Marber won the 1995 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy for his
debut work, Dealer’s Choice, first seen at the National Theatre. He won the
same award for his second stage play, Closer, also produced at the National
Theatre, in 1997. A film version, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Julia
Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen, was released in 2004.
The same
year as Dealer’s Choice, After Miss Julie was a TV version of Strindberg’s play
updated to 1945 Britain. A stage adaptation was first performed at the Donmar
in 2003.
Other
plays include Howard Katz (2001) and Don Juan in Soho (2006). He also co-wrote
the screenplay for David Mackenzie’s film, Asylum (2005), and was
Oscar-nominated for his screenplay for Notes on a Scandal (2006).
As a
director, Marber oversaw the multiple-Olivier nominated 2016 revival of Tom
Stoppard’s lay, Travesties. He has also directed productions of Blue Remembered
Hills by Dennis potter, The Old Neighbourhood by David Mamet and Harold
Pinter’s play, The Caretaker. In 2018 he directed a production of Eugene
Ionesco’s Exit the King.
With
Peter Curran, Marber also co-writes BBC Radio 4’s series, Bunk Bed.
The Herald, May 4th 2019
ends
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