Review: Love It If We Beat Them at Live Theatre, Newcastle
Rob Ward’s critically acclaimed play returns to Live Theatre and takes the audience back to the last time the Labour party and Newcastle United were on the up. Michael Telfer was on the terraces.
Love It If We Beat Them is set in 1996, when belief was building that a Tony Blair-led Labour could end umpteen years of Tory rule and a Kevin Keegan-led Newcastle United could end a significantly longer wait for silverware.
As anyone who lives within Live Theatre’s catchment area will already know, the member for Sedgefield had more success than King Kev.
In hindsight John Major was always going to be easier to knock off his perch than Alex Ferguson, the wily Scot who got so far under the Newcastle manager’s skin as the 1995/96 Premier League season drew to a close that Keegan famously exploded on live television, with one particular soundbite giving the play its name.
But Love It If We Beat Them isn’t about football really.
It tells the story of Len, a socialist ex-miner and lifelong hardcore Newcastle United fan played brilliantly by David Nellist, and his single-minded attempt to become an MP in Newcastle after the sudden death of the sitting member.
The fictional by-election is played out alongside United’s all too real stuttering end to a campaign that had started so promisingly. As points are dropped on the pitch, Len finds out that the party nomination seems to be all but sealed for Victoria (Eve Tucker), a New Labour candidate parachuted in from Manchester (which in Len’s view of the world is pretty much London).
Len stubbornly starts his own party, initially finding support through his mining and union roots, but then deeply buried secrets from his past threaten to surface and derail his campaign, meanwhile Victoria turns out not to be the Southern pushover Len had bargained for.
But Love It If We Beat Them isn’t about politics really.
As Len’s past comes back to haunt him, his obsession with beating New Labour becomes all consuming and he realises too late that he could lose his marriage and friendships as well as the by-election.
Jean, Len’s long-suffering wife, is played by the terrific Jessica Johnson and their scenes together are easily the most powerful in the play as the layers of their marriage are brutally stripped away during a series of counselling sessions and visceral stand up rows.
Len’s relationship with his equally long-suffering Mackem friend and one time protégé Michael (Daniel Watson) also suffers, as the younger man struggles to find work in the pits and ultimately dares to believe Blair’s promise of hope.
The play makes a number of observations about the substance of New Labour, which could feel equally apt today, but don’t quite make it into a cohesive or coherent argument and ultimately Victoria is the least developed of the four characters, feeling at times like a plot device rather than a fully fleshed-out person.
Director Bex Bowsher does a fantastic job of keeping everything moving, with snippets of football commentary being used effectively to break up the scenes and chart Newcastle’s misfiring conclusion to the season.
The overall writing and the performances from the lead actors in particular make Love It If We Beat Them an easy show to recommend. The play is on at Live Theatre until September 28 and then tours theatres across the north until November 10.
Tickets can be purchased at Live Theatre’s Box Office.
Why haven’t you reviewed Alphabetti’s new play The Nurse’s Station? Please do! So many people would love it.