'Football as a culture is such a big part of our lives' - James Graham on Dear England play telling Gareth Southgate's story

Playwright James Graham vividly remembers the night when Gareth Southgate, as an England football player, missed a penalty – the moment that England were knocked out of Euro 96.

“I was acting in my first ever play, a production of Of Mice and Men, at my secondary school in Nottingham”, the 42-year-old remembers. “We were all watching the semi-final against Germany at Wembley on TV as we came off stage. I’d been really into the tournament. It was at home, it was sunny. It was full of drama. And then Gareth missed that penalty. I was in tears going home in the car with my mum. I couldn’t make sense of it.”

That harrowing miss forms the starting point for Graham’s Dear England, his smash-hit play about Southgate’s eight years as manager of the men’s team from 2016, to his resignation after England’s defeat in the Euro 2024 final, which is about to embark on its first national tour. The play uses Southgate’s revolutionary approach to winning – his belief that in order to conquer their fear of the penalty shootout, the players needed to cultivate a different, warmer and more inclusive version of masculinity - to examine the state of England itself, and of men’s role within an ever-changing society where allegiance to the national football team is a badge of pride.

“I love putting institutions and systems on stage, to help us make sense of our public life”, Graham explains. “The England football teams – the men’s and the women’s – have such an impact. Football as a culture is such a big part of our lives...I wanted to find a story that would make sense of why it matters to us. And I was an England fan as well – it does something to me. I don’t know why I feel so emotional about it, but I do.”

He first thought of writing a play about Southgate after watching the team play at the World Cup in Russia in 2018, when, for the first time since 1996, they won a penalty shootout on the way to the semi-finals. “I think like a lot of people, I noticed that it just felt immediately different”, Graham says. “Southgate’s conduct, the new generation of players, the new values and attitudes they carried with them. This wasn’t the traditional football I remembered, which was more aggressive. These guys had a nobility, a compassion, and a decency that I thought was really striking. I was curious about how anyone can go into an old institution and begin to change its values and culture so quickly.”

As he read more, talking to football writers to check his conclusions, he realised Southgate was indeed trying something new: he had introduced a psychologist, Pippa Grange, to work with the players; he was cultivating a new ethos inside the camp. “The neatness and beauty of that arc, that the guy who was the emblem of missing a penalty was the guy who 20 years later came back to solve the problem was just incredible”, Graham says.

Samantha Womack takes on the role of Grange in the play, marking her return to work after having treatment for breast cancer and then taking 18 months away in the quiet of her home in Valencia, Spain. “She is very calm and centred, very direct,” she says. “There’s no mania with her. I was looking for something calm, contemplative, the space I wanted to be in. I didn’t want anything too frantic.”

Before taking on the part, Womack, best known for playing Ronnie Mitchell in EastEnders, did her research, reading Grange’s books, listening to her podcasts, and found herself fascinated by a woman who was so instrumental to the change in thinking that Graham dramatizes so vividly. “I think some of her sensibilities felt familiar to me. She left home relatively early, did a lot of sofa surfing,” says Womack. “There were some familiarities that mirrored my experiences. She takes herself away from her childhood, and of dealing with issues of addiction and family abandonment. She talks about dealing with breast cancer. I thought this is interesting to me, because she is someone who understands boundaries and is clear about where they are.”

The FA asked Graham to wait to meet with Southgate, until the conclusion of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. By then, however, the National Theatre had decided to commission the play, and Graham went into the rehearsal rooms with the script unfinished. It was only weeks before opening night that he actually met Southgate. “The thing that I saw behind his eyes is that it is a mischaracterisation of him to think he is soft. He is kind, he’s really decent, and he has an impossible amount of empathy, but he also wanted to win,” Graham says. “I kept talking about how he changed the culture, but he was clear that it was all about winning. It wasn’t just to feel good about ourselves.”

While Graham’s first version of Dear England – the title is taken from Southgate’s famous letter to fans during Covid and ahead of Euro 2020 – finished with Harry Kane missing a penalty against France at the World Cup in 2022, he has now updated it to take account of England’s ultimate loss to Spain in the final of Euro 2024.

Would it have been better for the play if England had won that tournament? “As a fan, it would have been, yes”, Graham says with a smile. “But as a playwright, it’s entirely fine. I think ultimately, in any quest narrative, getting close but not quite getting the trophy is always profound and moving. The project is ongoing. I am an advocate for what Gareth tried to do, and I want his legacy to be that it worked. That being kinder and having compassion and decency in football will also ultimately lead to getting the trophy.”

Dear England is at Sheffield Lyceum from October 21 to 25, Leeds Grand Theatre from November 4 to 8 and Bradford Alhambra from February 17 to 21. For tickets, visit dearenglandonstage.com