WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★★

“Alex Hill is outstanding. He performs the role of Billy with such energy and dynamism it’s exhausting just to watch”

Ever wondered what might cause a man to do something as reckless as sticking a flare up his bum at the World Cup final? In the appropriately titled Why I stuck a Flare Up my Arse for England, writer, performer and producer Alex Hill gives us his interpretation which is funny, charming and surprisingly heartfelt all at once.

Hill introduces us to Billy Kinley, a kid from southwest London who grows up with an inherited love for the game. He and his best mate Adam are football mad – kicking about in the park and attending local club AFC Wimbledon weekly. When they leave school, Adam gets a job in the City whilst Billy works at the hairdressers run by his parents, but they still meet at the local café every week for a full English before the game. Then they meet ‘the King’ of the old firm, inexplicably named Winegum, and his equally obtusely named mates. Billy gets stuck in with the boozing, coke, and fighting, but Adam is reticent and their friendship starts to change.

There’s a lot that’s only briefly touched on, or left entirely unsaid: about Billy and Adam’s relationship but also about Billy’s grief over his mum’s death, and his burgeoning relationship with Daisy, the café’s waitress. Whilst this may slightly hamper the exposition, it certainly adds to the sense that Billy is coasting through life, not thinking too deeply about anyone or anything, just to get by. It’s intelligently and intentionally emotionally shallow, right up until the closing moments.

Alex Hill is outstanding. He performs the role of Billy with such energy and dynamism it’s exhausting just to watch. Under Sean Turner’s direction, Hill darts across the stage from pillar to post; necks not one, but two pints (the second largely, excusably, going down his front); and essentially barely takes a breath throughout. Hill even dials the energy up to eleven after taking his first line and having a rager at Infernos; or when he gets into his first fight and keeps punching until white noise takes over; or when the drum beat of Match Day, pints, gear, fight builds to a climax. Props must also be given to his script, littered with wry observations and rhetorical devices that keep the audience tittering throughout.

For a one man, one hour long show there are a surprising number of locations, each subtly situated with expert lighting, sound and stage design. Designer Joel Clements’ immediately sets the tone with distressed England flags of various shapes and sizes stitched together to form an almost quilted backdrop. Matt Cater’s lighting design expertly delivers, making the most of the full rig of the Southwark Playhouse. Together with sound designer Sam Baxter, the full design of this show leads to particular moments of playfulness – for example where a pool table appears on stage from a green rectangular gobo; or when the lights come up on the audience and strings of fairy lights appear accompanied by the sound of tuning strings with Alex as Billy shimmying into a seat at a West End theatre.

This interplay between theatre and football is skilfully observed by Hill. It’s a theme that’s definitely in vogue as evidenced by the abundance of football themed theatre of late. The National Theatre’s blockbuster ‘Dear England’ and the Bush Theatre’s ‘Red Pitch’ both received stellar reviews from this site. As Hill uses Billy to point out, it’s perhaps the theatricality and the drama of the game that makes football ripe for interpretation on the stage. But more than that, for men in particular, football is also the primary source of community and friendship in their lives – making it a thoroughly apt way to explore the contemporary male psyche. For a piece with such a plainly humorous title it’s a surprisingly multi-layered exploration of masculinity, friendship, romantic relationships and family.

WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND at Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 22nd April 2024

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Rah Petherbridge

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:

SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE VALLEY OF FEAR | ★★½ | March 2024

POLICE COPS: THE MUSICAL | ★★★★ | March 2024

CABLE STREET – A NEW MUSICAL | ★★★ | February 2024

BEFORE AFTER | ★★★ | February 2024

AFTERGLOW | ★★★★ | January 2024

UNFORTUNATE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF URSULA THE SEA WITCH A MUSICAL PARODY | ★★★★ | December 2023

GARRY STARR PERFORMS EVERYTHING | ★★★½ | December 2023

LIZZIE | ★★★ | November 2023

MANIC STREET CREATURE | ★★★★ | October 2023

THE CHANGELING | ★★★½ | October 2023

RIDE | ★★★ | July 2023

HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS … | ★★★★★ | May 2023

WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND

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★★★★★

“a production of charm and genuine ebullience”

The grade II* listed Wilton’s Music Hall has endured as one of London’s hidden theatrical gems since the Victorian era. Its current run of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Flabbergast Theatre) is a spectacle worthy of that history. Directed by the company’s founder, Henry Maynard, the production builds upon Flabbergast’s roots in physical theatre (Lecoq and Grotowski). The result is an adaptation of unrelenting vivacity and charm.

From first stepping in to the grand hall you are met with members of the cast already in full character. Some sit next to you, others jump out at you, others sit languorously on stage, lute playing or stumbling their way through poetry recitals. Each of the players gradually form around a grand hay wain, which forms the centrepiece of the stage.

Immediately apparent is the hay wain’s flexibility as a piece of set (design also by Henry Maynard), yet its anachronism with the decadence of the grand hall also implies a more tantalising reality to the position of the characters first as actors themselves. It gives the impression of an itinerant, touring company, true to the kind one would find in Shakespearean times. The result is a sense of spectacle which begins from the moment you enter the hall.

This is the second time the company has turned its hand to classical adaptation, following their UK and European run of Macbeth (2022-23). The production’s roots in physical theatre complement the play’s imaginative scope. The cast and director consistently find creative ways to draw out Shakespeare’s humour wordlessly. From Bottom’s metamorphosis into the ass, to the various reshufflings of the love quadrangle between Lysander, Hermia, Helena, and Demetrius; the playfulness of the production’s delight in physicality, faultlessly delivers the series of fantastical fulcrums upon which Shakespeare’s plot rests.

Rachel Shipp’s lighting design is integral to the efficacy of the production’s shifts in atmosphere, narrative and tone between each of the three main character subsets. Her direction of front and side lighting harnesses the unique potentiality of the original Victorian architecture. The silhouettes of Quince’s masked players are beautifully cast onto the flaking paintwork of the wall beneath the proscenium arch. In Bottom’s metamorphosis scene, his newly satyrised shadow is projected against the shelf of the balcony at each side, grotesquely elongating his torso.

Quince’s players, played entirely in masks, utterly steal the show. The play is worth attending for them alone. Simon Gleave is unfalteringly funny both as Egeus and Bottom. Reanne Black’s doubling as the formidable Titania and the stuttering Snug is brilliantly executed. Lennie Longworth shines in her professional debut as Puck, whose various costume and prop changes brilliantly enhance her role as the plotline’s tinkering éminence grise. While Oberon (Krystian Godlewski) capers around in a golden leotard-cum-flower pouch leaving progressively little to the imagination.

It will have its detractors. Moments of dialogue are rushed, others overlong. Perhaps at times the incidence of air humping and thespian affectation reach excess. But at its heart the production captures the essential capacities of theatre at its best. It is deeply imaginative and funny, and recurrently finds innovative means of revitalising a storied classic.

Returning again to the central image of the hay wain which, as Maynard puts it, ‘anchors the production conceptually’. One is put in more of a mind of the spectacular chaos of Bosch’s hay wain triptych than Constable’s (rather less turbulent) bucolic landscape. The play exhibits notes of vaudeville, pantomime, absurdism, but it ends in the tradition of the masque. As Puck emerges, centre stage, in front of the hay wain, flanked by candlelit faces, and re-establishes the direct relationship with the audience with which the production began. ‘If we shadows have offended’, she perorates, as her silhouette continues to play against the wall. We see them last as we see them first, as actors engaged in the process of play. The effect is a production of charm and genuine ebullience, true to the most innate impulses of theatre’s potential to entertain.

WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★★

“Alex Hill is outstanding. He performs the role of Billy with such energy and dynamism it’s exhausting just to watch”

WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND at Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 22nd April 2024

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Rah Petherbridge

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:

WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND

WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM at Wilton’s Music Hall

★★★★★

“a production of charm and genuine ebullience”

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM at Wilton’s Music Hall

Reviewed on 10th April 2024

by Flynn Hallman

Photography by Michael Lynch

Previously reviewed at this venue:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream