Dear England Reviews at the National Theatre in London [Updated]

"James Graham’s ode to the beautiful game feels even more epic in its new home" (Prince Edward Theatre London 2023)

"The National's smash-hit play gets a seamless West End transfer with the terrific Joseph Fiennes reprising his role as Gareth Southgate"

"Stuffed with outsized characters, smart one-liners and an astute understanding of national myth-making, it channels the story of Southgate and his reboot of the English footballing mentality into a theatrical spectacle as uplifting as any England victory."

"This is not Graham’s best play. It’s too long, its points are sometimes obvious... But ably abetted by Rupert Goold’s fast-moving, extremely touching production, it also powerfully reproduces the agonising psychodrama of the English national team by casting the audience as England fans."

"Joseph Fiennes is just terrific as Southgate, nailing his uneven speech patterns and the way he stands like a coat hanger bent slightly out of shape, his nervy watchfulness and his unswerving faith in decency and kindness."

"This is a rare and special thing – a play that dares to let us feel not so bad about being us."

"Joseph Fiennes mesmerises as Gareth Southgate" (National Theatre London 2023)

"State-of-the-nation playwright James Graham brilliantly captures the blokey awkwardness within our wider national story"

"Taking its title from the letter that Southgate addressed to the country, mid-pandemic in 2021, James Graham’s new Olivier stage epic about the man and his methods - starring Joseph Fiennes as the pensive, self-effacing coach - incorporates some negative, unpersuaded views of its subject."

"But Graham, now our premier state-of-the-nation playwright, is plainly persuaded by the substance of Southgate’s mission. He sees the apparent recent renaissance of the beautiful game as a foundational opportunity, contrasting it explicitly with the division, rancour and chaos of our political life since 2016, factoring in satirical cameos of recent PMs."

"It’s all done with tremendous lightness of touch, script-wise, and corresponding theatrical elan from director Rupert Goold and his team - Es Devlin’s design dominating the expanse of the Olivier with two vast halos of light, one aloft, the other on the often revolving floor, conjuring everywhere from Wembley to St George’s Park, Russia, Qatar and even the cosmos."

"Fiennes played the Bard in Shakespeare in Love, and achieves a mesmeric intellectual intensity, hands deep in pockets or delicately gesticulating, that makes Southgate seem almost like Shakespeare’s inheritor, weaving dreams for us all."

"Rebooted Gareth Southgate drama scores again" (National Theatre London 2025)

"Dear England's return to the National with an added final chapter bounds and bounces with energy "

"I’m delighted to report that Dear England, populist and profound simultaneously, remains a towering achievement. Graham and director Rupert Goold, each the best of their kind working today, remain a dream team of a strike force, with Graham’s lively and often larky dialogue matched by Goold’s gloriously kinetic production."

"Lee, with a beautifully Southgatean repertoire of conciliatory and explicatory hand gestures, gives a fine account of himself in the role originally created by Joseph Fiennes"

"If football itself still hasn’t quite managed to come home, a winning drama about the beautiful game in our country most certainly has."

"Joseph Fiennes is a phenomenal Gareth Southgate" (National Theatre London 2023)

"Graham offers us the England men’s team as both entirely itself and, by skilful sleight of hand, a representation of English manhood"

"The result is in and it’s a thumping win. Director Rupert Goold and writer James Graham have delivered a rollicking examination of the England football team under manager Gareth Southgate. Graham, that master examiner of specific slices of modern history, applies the same dazzling set of forensic skills he displayed in his masterpiece political drama, This House. How entirely fitting it is that our national game should come under scrutiny at our National Theatre."

"Joseph Fiennes is a phenomenal Southgate, both looking and sounding uncannily like the man himself, but even more crucially conveying his all-important sense of decency and fairness."

"Goold directs with his typical pizzazz, offering a wildly enjoyable and highly kinetic all-action production. When a player is no longer part of Southgate’s plans, they take the long walk down the tunnel – or up the Olivier’s central aisle – to the dressing room."

"Revised play covers 2024 Euros plus Southgate’s retirement and still hits the back of the net" (National Theatre London 2025)

"... what’s wonderful about Dear England, is that it presents Southgate’s attempts to introduce a less divisive culture into football, in ways that are stunningly theatrical and hugely enjoyable. The travails of the English team may be used to stand as a metaphor for England’s own attempts to define itself and its future, but dramatically, it is as thrilling and nail-biting as a penalty shoot-out."

"Graham has cut, rewritten and reshaped its second act, to incorporate the team’s subsequent defeat in the finals of the 2024 Euros and Southgate’s retirement. It’s still not perfect. The second act is too sketchy and still does not lend enough weight to the ferocious racism unleashed by the penalty misses of Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka in the 2020 Euros final, events that revealed exactly the kind of toxicity Southgate was fighting against. Yet the sheer energy of both the writing and the production carries it through."

"A brisk update of the decade’s biggest theatrical triumph" (National Theatre London 2025)

"It could usefully dwell longer on the saga’s final twist, but James Graham’s reboot of his drama about the Gareth Southgate era still scores"

"British theatre’s star-striker James Graham scores again with this updated reboot of his 2023 drama about Gareth Southgate’s time as manager of the English (men’s) national team."

"Being tolerant of vulnerability and failure is fine on paper; in practice, Southgate’s tenure was judged on its big victories (or lack of them). The paradox of Graham’s play is that when it was a “work a progress”, looking ahead, at the end, to the 2024 Euros – “Boss, that’s your third act”, Harry Maguire suggested – it satisfyingly raised hopes even as it qualified them. There’s no getting round the muted quality of the fresh ending here, notwithstanding the rousing sounds of Sweet Caroline with which Rupert Goold’s production climaxes."

"If anything, Graham could dwell longer on the concluding twist of the saga. One of Dear England’s strengths is its in-built state-of-the-nation aspect"

"Even so, the inclusive fascination and adrenal fervour of the evening remains. The way Graham marshals information is a wonder – here a stat, there a gag; the way Goold co-ordinates his (mainly recast) players a wonder too"

"Footballing reboot adds extra time for Gareth Southgate’s exit" (National Theatre London 2025)

"James Graham has rewritten parts of his hit play to reflect the 2024 Euros, and the gaffer emerges as a progressive, gentle, alternative national leader"

"t’s unusual for an award-winning, commercially successful play to be revived with a substantially rewritten second half and multiple new characters. James Graham’s reason for dismantling a hit is that his story of Gareth Southgate’s renewal of the England men’s football team was, in effect, written at half-time."

"So in the new version, the protagonist becomes Sir Gareth Southgate and additional cameos include his successor, Thomas Tuchel. Original squad members such as Gunnar Cauthery’s crisp Gary Lineker now have new teammates. As Southgate, Gwilym Lee matches the role’s originator, Joseph Fiennes, in uncannily capturing the corkscrew frown and jumping eyebrows. As the Yorkshire-born, Australia-trained team psychologist Pippa Grange, Gina McKee in 2023 foregrounded the northern English while Liz White now emphasises the Antipodean."

"A weakness remains the simplicity of some minor characters. Graham Taylor and Greg Dyke, respectively a manager and football executive of intelligence and charm, are portrayed as unrecognisable vulgarians. Oddly, Dear England chooses not to dramatise one England manager (Roy Hodgson) and a prime minister of the period (Rishi Sunak)."

"Still poignant with a perfect new Gareth Southgate" (National Theatre London 2025)

"James Graham’s beguiling love letter to the former England football manager returns with Gwilym Lee in the lead role"

"Newly brushed up and recast for the National Theatre’s Olivier stage, this is essentially the same high-energy heart-thumping celebration of sporting humanity, although there is another brave defeat to be woven in: the Euros final loss to Spain last year. Oh, and the real Gareth Southgate has since departed the managerial stage. That it remains powerful and poignant theatre is a sign of how convincingly the play speaks to profound themes beyond results on the pitch. The idea of an England manager being a storyteller is obviously a playwright’s fantasy but it remains a beguiling one."

"Ably filling the shoes of Joseph Fiennes, Gwilym Lee delivers a pitch-perfect impression of Southgate’s vocal delivery, slightly nervous head waggle and, most importantly, that slightly humourless intensity."

"While in some ways it’s the same old story of glorious English failure, this play convincingly shows a man who left dear England a slightly nicer place. And with a much better football team."

"A triumphant transfer scores on the West End" (Prince Edward Theatre London 2023)

"The director Rupert Goold, never one to leave his showmanship in the locker room, has rarely married storytelling with spectacle with more of a flourish. Between him and Graham and an ensemble so good it would be invidious to pick out individuals (sorry, lads) they ensure that a huge cast of characters are delineated with wit and clarity."

"Yet what anchors all this bittersweet hoopla, as the team moves from doldrums in 2016 to near-triumph in 2021, is an astonishing performance from Joseph Fiennes as Southgate."

"Will Close’s Harry Kane is exquisitely inarticulate yet demonstrably decent. And there is an unselfish and persuasive supporting turn from the show’s big new signing, Dervla Kirwan replacing Gina McKee as the team psychologist Dr Pippa Grange (whom she lends an Aussie accent for the evening)."

"Pitch-perfect Gareth Southgate brings the game home" (National Theatre London 2023)

"He shoots; he scores. James Graham’s fast-moving portrait of Gareth Southgate’s reign as the England football manager is a joyous example of populist theatre. There’s anguish, joy and a surprisingly generous helping of humour."

"Rupert Goold’s production zips along with all the brash energy of a graphic novel."

"Is there a hint of condescension in the way the lads are portrayed in the first half? I felt slightly uncomfortable, for instance, about the way the audience chuckled at Harry Kane’s tongue-tied utterances. Then again, the team captain — beautifully played by Will Close — is just one of the players to grow in stature after the interval, as Southgate’s patient psychological approach begins to bear fruit. Darragh Hand makes an affable Marcus Rashford, too."

"There’s a touch too much politically correct preaching in the final quarter. And I could have done without the political caricatures of May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Graham makes his points about the power of solidarity and compassion eloquently enough through what he shows us of Southgate himself."

"Gareth Southgate's kind revolution has a bittersweet ending in Dear England at the National" (National Theatre London 2025)

"This is a team effort, which captures the communal joy and heartache of sport, and now boasts a proper ending"

"A return fixture proves James Graham’s end-to-end, heart-in-mouth football drama a winner. An exploration of England manager Gareth Southgate’s bid to forge the men’s team and its fans into something more cohesive and less tribal, it was a popular and critical hit when it first appeared at the National in 2023. But it didn’t have an ending."

"Now it has a bittersweet one, courtesy of the Euro 2024 defeat and Southgate’s departure. It’s been recast, with Gwilym Lee a seamless replacement for Joseph Fiennes as the dogged, diffident Southgate, Liz White as his psychologist sidekick Pippa Grange, and some substitutions among the players."

"James Graham scores again with this thrilling football drama" (National Theatre London 2023)

"The Nottingham playmaker takes on the England football team’s recent highs and lows in a brilliant fusion of sport and art"

"Back of the net? James Graham’s play about Gareth Southgate’s stewardship of the England football team is a brilliant fusion of sport and art, exploring our nation’s character through our national game. And at the National Theatre, to boot. Rupert Goold’s production is pacy and dynamic and Joseph Fiennes uncannily captures Southgate’s distinctive diction and his careful blend of confidence and diffidence."

"At times it’s necessarily schematic: there’s a lot of sporting history, a lot of biography and a lot of hurt packed into the three-hour running time. But this show is witty, clever and at times heart-in-mouth exciting enough to win over even those who don’t care about football."

"There’s not much space for deep characterisation but Will Close and Josh Barrow are very funny as Kane and Pickford, Darragh Hand and Kel Matsena quietly moving as Rashford and Sterling."

"This is a thrilling piece of work, popular and political as Graham always intends his plays to be, and – appropriately – a consummate team effort."

"Updated state-of-the-nation drama feels more vital than ever" (National Theatre London 2025)

"Gareth Southgate may be gone, but the revival of James Graham’s football-themed play at the National Theatre is timely"

"... this remains a brilliant, state-of-the-nation piece: a wise, big-hearted, pulsating drama that explores, with Shakespearean wit and sweep, huge issues such as what it means to be English, to be successful, to be a leader. It’s a glorious assertion too of how exhilarating live theatre can be, with Rupert Goold’s vibrant production (revived here by Elin Schofield) bringing to the huge Olivier stage all the nail-biting excitement of a major tournament final. But what’s striking is that it now feels, if anything, even more pressing in its concerns. Like England’s (now-departed) manager Gareth Southgate, the play grapples with the role of the team in the national psyche and with the possibility of forging a better, more tolerant country with a different consensus of what winning looks like."

"James Graham scores a winner with exhilarating football play" (National Theatre London 2023)

"James Graham’s epic new play"

"This glorious, generous, rollercoaster of a piece grapples, like Southgate, with the role of the national team in the national psyche. It proposes that this fractious, bruised nation can be something better, something kinder, something happier. Rupert Goold’s exhilarating production fills the National Theatre’s huge Olivier space with the buzz and electricity of a major tournament final."

"Joseph Fiennes is perfect as Southgate"

"Like many a football match, however, there are some misses, as Graham packs in Covid, Qatar, taking the knee and online abuse. The kaleidoscopic swirl and scope of the piece mean some key characters become one-note — including the endlessly patient Grange. But the spirit of the show overrides its flaws."

"Joseph Fiennes is uncanny as Gareth Southgate" (National Theatre London 2023)

"Joseph Fiennes gives an extraordinarily uncanny central performance in James Graham’s entertaining character study of England manager Gareth Southgate"

"Graham copes with both these two hospital passes admirably and, rather like Southgate himself, succeeds in creating a slick and consistently enjoyable piece of popular entertainment that stirs the emotions, even if it is not quite a trophy-winner. His writing is tonally broad (perhaps a little too broad at times), and it is given brisk, kinetic direction by Rupert Goold... Plenty is thrown at the production, and most of it sticks."

"As Southgate, Joseph Fiennes gives a bona-fide star turn. With a facsimile beard and some excellent make-up (including impressive dental and nasal tweaks), he perfects the England manager’s diffidence, his voice, his forced smile, his furrowed brow, his pursed lips, his measured hand gestures. It is uncanny – at times, you forget it’s Fiennes standing on stage. Around him, with the exception of Gina McKee as Grange, the other characters are intentionally played in a more caricatured style."

"At the end of the day, Dear England falls short of some of Graham’s greatest works because it never quite nails its wider analogy about what Southgate’s achievements might mean beyond football..."

"James Graham’s reworked, recast Gareth Southgate drama is basically exactly the same as it was before – and it’s a joy" (National Theatre London 2025)

"Dear England has been tweaked a bit for its third run in three years, but not a lot. A new cast hasn’t radically changed the vibe either: as Southgate, Gwilym Lee is broadly going going for exactly the same sort of respectful impersonation as his predecessor Joseph Fiennes; likewise Ryan Whittle’s scene-stealingly funny Harry Kane is pretty much the same as Will Close’s scene-stealingly funny Harry Kane."

"Clearly it’s back because it gets bums on seats rather than because Graham has astonishing new insights to share. But who cares? Graham has written deeper and more important plays than Dear England. But the secret of its success is that – unlike the actual England men’s team – it is consistently, relentlessly entertaining."

"... it’s a joy! Taking a kaleidoscopic, broad-brush approach to depicting the England team themselves - who range from funny (Whittle’s Kane) to more serious (Tom Lane’s surprisingly sensitive Eric Dier) – Goold’s kinetic production conjures the mania of the country in the grip of a national tournament: stupid songs, stupid mascots, embarrassing politicians."

"James Graham’s new play is a wildly entertaining romp through the reformation of the England men’s team under Joseph Fiennes’ pitch-perfect Gareth Southgate" (National Theatre London 2023)

"... ‘Dear England’ is written by James Graham, a playwright who has made genuinely classic work out of such esoteric subjects as the quiz show ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’, and the Labour whips office during the 1970s. Unlike the England team, his form is so impeccable that you kind of have to trust that whatever he has planned is probably going to work. And with ‘Dear England’, he’s hit the back of the net once again."

"Reuniting Graham with Almeida boss Rupert Goold (following last year’s musical ‘Tammy Faye’ and 2017’s Rupert Murdoch drama ‘Ink’), ‘Dear England’ essentially works because Graham and Southgate are interested in the same thing: why is the England men’s team burdened with such high expectations? And what do those expectations do to the psychology of both the team and the nation?"

"Importantly, it’s an extremely fun show, and essentially up for a laugh, celebrating the foibles of our national sport rather than getting self-important about them. Some of the turns are extremely funny, notably Will Close’s Harry Kane"

"It does have a more serious core, though, which revolves around Southgate bringing in Gina McKee’s wary psychologist Pippa Grange to diagnose the team’s mental malaise. Graham never lays it on too thick, but nonetheless, he gets in some fascinating theories about the interlinking of the national team and the national psyche"

"‘Dear England’ is a big-hearted, technically dazzling celebration of football first and a critique of it second. If it was the other way around I wonder if it might feel a little more like a play for the ages."

"James Graham scores again" (National Theatre London 2023)

"Football is drama, after all. The National Theatre’s big new play about the England football team and its penalty-taking paranoia seizes on the truism that international football is both tragedy and comedy, with shafts of farce."

"James Graham’s latest degutting of British current affairs is given a tremendous staging by Rupert Goold. The show is well cast, ingeniously staged and pulsatingly performed. Joseph Fiennes is an almost AI-grade exactness as Gareth Southgate"

"Goold fields a squad of little-known actors who, within the script’s two-dimensional confines, are pretty convincing as the squad Southgate developed when he became England manager in 2016."

"He crams in a few too many angles. It’s fun to see the National shed its occasional glumness and give us a play about football. The staging, let one repeat, is thrilling. But this is more Spitting Image than Chariots of Fire."

"Joseph Fiennes scores as Gareth Southgate in a rousing football drama" (National Theatre London 2023)

"... Dear England is by James Graham, who over the last decade has altered what we expect from the theatre – not least on the stage of the National – and the expectation is justified. Once again the playwright shows his particular gift, for writing a popular play with a resonant social theme. He is mightily helped by director Rupert Goold – who moves from production to production like a theatrical oxygen cylinder – and by a tremendous performance, one of the best of the year so far, from Joseph Fiennes. Oh, and did I say it is about football?"

"Graham and Goold won me over. By rousing the blood and raising the stakes. And by making counsel and advice look less wafty, more practical: by showing change being embodied – as the stage is able uniquely to do."

"Fiennes is utterly convincing. He begins fidgety – arms as busy as a footballer’s feet as he amplifies his phrases with gestures, his hands keeping people and difficulties at bay; he often looks as if he wants to brush cobwebs from his face. The more he pleads for collaboration, the more individual he becomes."

"National Theatre’s Southgate play is a solid team effort but no shots on target" (National Theatre London 2023)

"Joseph Fiennes delivers a remarkable performance as the waistcoated England manager, but James Graham’s new play won’t get the world in motion"

"At almost three hours, Dear England is ambitious, but often overloaded by the sheer number of events since 2016."

"While Graham’s intention, to explore what the England team represent in the broader picture of our national identity, is an intriguing one, the play ends up giving us few new insights. Often it feels like a cut-and-paste job, a highlights package of the last few years, without the helter-skelter emotion of the beautiful game itself. The most thrilling moments are the recreations of two penalty shootouts, but they’re still a poor substitute for rewatching the real thing."

"But Fiennes’s portrait of Southgate is remarkable: he captures the gentle head nods, the toothy smile that sometimes feels more like a grimace, the soft, nervy exterior hiding a steely inner resolve. But in Grange, played by Gina McKee, the Ted Lasso-fication of sport looms large."

"A frustrating evening, then – like seeing your team put in a solid defensive performance but fail to get any shots on target. But, of course, we still believe."

"Touching, funny retelling of Gareth Southgate’s quiet revolution" (National Theatre London 2023)

"It’s a game of two halves, but James Graham’s dramatisation of Southgate rescuing a languishing England team delivers tension and movement"

"James Graham’s story of the beautiful game and the travails of the England squad has some beautiful moments."

"The meat of the play is Southgate’s inspirational leadership of an England squad that’s languishing when he first takes over, and to which he gives new life, leading the team all the way to the semi-finals in the 2018 World Cup and onwards. But as endearing as it is, the production, directed by Rupert Goold, takes time to really lift off the ground, focusing on story rather than drama in the first half – and it does seem like a game of two halves."

"There are not enough dramatic moments in the first half that grip: it is 50 minutes in, when Southgate recalls his terror at taking and missing a penalty in the Euro 96 semi-finals, that we feel we enter into his emotional world. We want and need more of this – and perhaps more conflict and drama between players themselves – rather than the Dead Poets Society-style “seize the moment” lectures."

"Fiennes’s Southgate is slightly geeky, full of earnestness and quiet integrity, and channels more than just an impersonation. But we never really get beneath the skin of Southgate"