Joseph Fiennes is Set to Play English Soccer Coach Gareth Southgate in New Play DEAR ENGLAND in London
Joseph Fiennes (The Handmaid’s Tale, Shakespeare in Love) has signed on to play English men’s soccer coach Gareth Southgate in a new playing coming to London titled Dear England. Playwright James Graham (Sherwood) has penned the play, and he told the BBC in a new interview that the production will chronicle the “gentle revolution” in the England soccer team since Southgate took charge.
Graham told BBC News:
“I think what has happened to the men’s England football team over the past six years has been quietly extraordinary. It’s been humming along in the background, but we’re only starting to really understand now Gareth’s gentle revolution.”
British theatre director Rupert Goold will helm the play, which National Theatre artistic director Rufus Norris described as “a captivating examination into the complex psychology of the much loved beautiful game.”
Southgate, a former England international player, was named England national team coach in 2016, a period that Graham said was framed by an “existential crisis about why we’d lost our way” and the country’s polarizing Brexit.
The play will open at the National Theatre in June and comes six months after England were knocked out in the quarter-finals of the World Cup by France, with striker Harry Kane missing a late penalty. After the tournament, Southgate said he will continue on as England manager until after Euro 2024.
Graham also said of the project:
“It’s great to be writing a story that hasn’t finished. My experience of watching England go out of this last World Cup, it was a multitude of conflicting feelings when I was sat there in the pub. None of my mates around me knew I was writing this play so I think they were wondering why I was sat silently staring into my pint trying to make sense of it all.”
This sounds like a great role for Fiennes. Hopefully the play will get an adaptation into TV or film so a wider audience can see this story as well.
via: Deadline