It is unusual to see a revival of an excellent play praying for it to have dated. But it would have been a relief if Roy Williams’s 2002 depiction of rabid racism and nationalism among London pub drinkers watching an England v Germany fixture on TV was a record of historical toxicity.
In a frighteningly visceral staging by Nicole Charles, though, the overlap between patriotic hooliganism and right-and-white nationalism in Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads feels dismayingly topical. Currently, special observers attend international matches to monitor racist chanting; BAME footballers are regularly abused online; and some terrace thugs doubtless dream of rewriting the notorious anti-German chant “Two world wars and one World Cup” to reference Brexit.
The Spiegeltent, a pop-up between Chichester’s main and studio theatres, has been transformed into the King George boozer in October 2000 and Williams cleverly selects characters who cover every angle including a copper, a soldier, a white teenager in thrall to black street culture and a Britain First local councillor. The TV screen cunningly becomes a CCTV monitor to cover a harrowing criminal subplot.
With modern dramatists often careful to signal being onside of liberal opinion, this play displays a rare sense of danger. Unsayable racist and misogynist things are said, in a scabrous, scatological vernacular true to the people, trusting other characters or the audience to challenge them. The front rows lean nervously away from the roared anthems and stomping celebratory rituals.
Among a faultless cast, Michael Hodgson brings a chilling insidiousness to the Enoch Powell-like politico Alan, and Richard Riddell locates redemptive complexities in the main replica-shirted drunk bigot Lawrie. Sian Reese-Williams and Mark Springer suggest the agonised emotions of a woman and a black man offered honorary membership of the tribe.
Its cast of 14 and suitability for site-specific staging make the play a luxury production, but it feels like a modern classic that, theatrically and thematically, merits regular showings.
• At Chichester Festival theatre, until 2 November.
