Tony Blair is on the rise and, among the dyed-in-the-wool socialists of the north-east, things can only get bitter. The New Labour values of moderation, delivered with a metropolitan PR sheen, sit uneasily with the ex-miners who manned the picket lines in defiance of Thatcherism. To the working-class campaigners, this new brand of leadership looks pallid and suspiciously southern.
But it is not all bad news. On the football field, Newcastle United stand a serious chance of Premier League victory under the management of Kevin Keegan. While politics are in flux, King Kev brings the promise of triumph.
Rob Ward’s four-hander is at its giddy best when it appears to be two plays at once. Kicking off Live theatre’s 50th anniversary season, it takes us back to a 1996 when the banter switches interchangeably between party politics and sport. “Love it if we beat them” is the phrase used by Keegan as he squared up to Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United, but it applies equally to civic life, whether that be defeating the Tories or trouncing an opposing faction on the left.
Merging the two is an inspired idea and, in Bex Bowsher’s production performed on Alison Ashton’s striking barroom set, it is vigorously played. Ward’s script is smart, witty and, as Keir Starmer plots his own Blairite path to power, timely in its to-and-fro debate about principles and expediency.
Playing Len, an aspiring MP, David Nellist espouses the ideology of his real-life militant namesake, but looks to be usurped by Eve Tucker as Victoria, parachuted in as the NEC-approved candidate. She offers less confrontation, more hope. Dealing with the fallout are Jessica Johnson as Len’s no-nonsense wife, and Dean Bone as an acolyte starting to wonder if his loyalty to Len has been justified.
When it fires, the play sizzles with the tension between the four points of view, but it has slacker scenes of speechifying, driven less by character than opposing arguments. A backstory about a stillbirth seems a manipulative way of introducing emotion into the debate. The final sequence unites the twin themes of politics and football, but does not quite convince that sporting hope can be a substitute for political reason.
At Live theatre, Newcastle, until 25 March
