.png)
12 hours ago
2
The Crucible Theatre is best known for hosting snooker, but it claims a place in football history too. On its outer wall, a blue plaque marks the site where the Sheffield Rules of the game were agreed in 1858, back when it was the Adelphi hotel. So it is a fitting spot to be premiering a new play this month about the establishment – and subsequent dismantling – of women’s football in the early 20th century.
Football fans and theatregoers may not have always felt like the obvious overlap in a Venn diagram, but the past decade has been a banner one for the beautiful game on stage. We have had a farce about the 2018 World Cup bid (Three Lions), a Royal Court drama about homophobia (The Pass), a Pulitzer Prize-nominated exploration of teenage girlhood (The Wolves) and even a 16th-century folk horror (The Bounds). Plus Dear England, the still-touring smash hit that tells the story of Gareth Southgate’s tenure as manager of the national men’s team.
That show – based on the research of the England team psychologist, Pippa Grange – explores the mental side of the game; The Ladies Football Club, at the Sheffield Theatre until 28 March, is grounded in the physical. The director, Elizabeth Newman, has brought in movement expert Scott Graham – of the renowned devised theatre company Frantic Assembly – to help render the action authentically.
“It’s really difficult representing football on stage,” says Graham, a passionate football lover who grew up supporting Rangers and dreaming of a professional playing career. “People who know the sport will see through it if it’s not right. I’ve not often seen it done well.”
This is the first time he has tackled the problem: Stefano Massini’s story of World War One ammunition factory workers, kicking a ball during their shift break and going on to establish one of the most popular football teams in the country, overcame his doubts.
“My youngest daughter has played football from the age of nine and it was there in front of me on the pitch: the girls’ reticence to be seen, their fear of taking up space, of risking potential humiliation or letting people down. You could see them physically shrinking. It was heartbreaking.”
In the seven years he has watched his daughter and her friends play, he has witnessed a metamorphosis. “They grew in physical confidence. They started to literally take up space. And I thought, that’s a metaphor. That’s political.”
For Newman, it represented the key to The Ladies Football Club script, adapted by Tim Firth from Massini’s original monologue. “A big reason for wanting to tell this particular story is because it’s about injustice,” she says. “It’s about the fact the FA banned women’s football. And in this moment, the rights we have won as women are, in many parts of the world, being taken away again.”
Newman played football as a child growing up in Croydon – “It was what you did, you saw a ball, you kicked it. Uuntil you got older and someone told you that wasn’t for you.”
In her production, the choreography becomes more expansive as the players grow in skill, the ensemble lifting and spinning each other as they execute a scissor kick or fly through the air to save a goal. The fictional team’s journey has been mirrored by the cast. While some were already football nuts – Cara Theobold, who plays the central role of Violet, runs her own community team – others have had to face their own insecurities about their physicality. “You can see how far they’ve come,” says Graham, proudly. “Their legs are rooted, their hips are fluid, their head comes forward to the ball.”
It is ironic that theatre has often felt so distanced from football and sport more generally, given all they have in common: live, embodied drama; an immersive shared experience that can only be truly appreciated in the moment. Sporting stadiums are, essentially, theatre in the round. Yet when Graham was at university, in the drama society and the first XI, he felt uncomfortable enough about his opposing passions that “I didn’t tell either of those parties that I was in the other”.
Today, the cultural climate has shifted significantly. Sport’s planetary takeover means it is now a near-universal touchstone and its role in contemporary society and politics makes it increasingly attractive as a theatrical subject. As storytellers increasingly recognise its value – and its potential audience draw – the division between sport and the loftier performing arts seems to be dissolving.
Last year, the RSC set Much Ado About Nothing in Serie A, an Edinburgh fringe show retold Lady Macbeth’s story on the netball court and a new musical launched about the first all-female sailing crew in the Whitbread Round the World race.
This isn’t just about the jocks and the nerds finally speaking each other’s language, however. Newman has worked on football plays before – including one about Bolton’s 1923 FA Cup victory, And Did Those Feet – and what interests her about sport is the example of people working together towards a common (and sometimes actual) goal. “It feels really important, for now, to show people being collegiate. There’s a strong sense of that across women’s sport.”
Three miles from the Crucible, the financial collapse of Sheffield Wednesday continues to play out its own saga. Football lovers of all stripes in the city can appreciate just how swiftly the collectivist roots of their sport are being dismantled by privatisation and profiteering. For Hillsborough faithfuls, looking for some light in the dark times, perhaps The Ladies Football Club can provide it.
