Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Dugald Bruce-Lockhart, Antonia Kinlay, Ravi Aujula, Séan Browne, Tom Davey, Lewis Collier.
The performance on the field of play is what sells newspapers and lights up the hope in a nation. It is though the commotion, the sometimes arrogant fuss and nail chewing excitement that goes on behind the scenes that captures the imagination and provides the truth behind the success and failure, the unbelievable high and the very desperate low which makes drama so fulfilling.
The seared in the memory moment when Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup for England on a beautiful rose tinted day in 1966, was only as good as what followed in the run up to the completion finals in Mexico four years later as the perfect football gentleman stood falsely accused of stealing jewels from a shop in Columbia. The sporting high, the behind the scenes low. Perhaps the modern example of conspiracy chicanery would be when F.I.F.A. stepped up to the plate and delivered, with the smiling beam reserved for an alligator being fed a small antelope and being told the supply was endless, the World Cup to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022. Political intrigue and endless speculation at its very journalistic best and captured with great writing in William Gaminara’s new play, The Three Lions.
The Three Lions imagines the behind the scenes conversations ahead of the vote in 2010 between newly installed Prime Minister, David Cameron, England’s modern football God, David Beckham and the heir to the throne, Prince William and gives it that terrific satirical twist, the thought that incompetence goes hand in hand with the steel reserve of the faint whiff of corruption at the highest levels.
Owing perhaps the slightest of nods to the famous sketch shown on The Frost Report in which the British pre-occupation to class was played out in its fullest sense, The Three Lions runs with it further and shows the divide between supposed measures of breeding and the adulation given to some modern footballers, between the twin highs shown to the monarchy and icon and with the despair and disdain shown to the so called political elite; everybody has their price in this world and the papers know exactly who to prey upon.
The last time Dugald Bruce-Lockhart came to Liverpool Playhouse Theatre he thrilled audiences in the superb 39 Steps, in The Three Lions he takes hold of the horns of the immensity before him and tames it to the point where a F.I.F.A. President would surely cry foul and have the whole organisation denouncing it and envelopes changing hands. As David Cameron, Mr. Bruce-Lockhart captures that raw idealism shown in the hands of a fool who speaks for a nation; keen to make their mark on society, but who is never heard above the roar of majesty and the back pages of the country’s desire for a sporting life.
Great comedy can come in many forms, the best though is usually that in which has more than one foot in the truth of an event and in The Three Lions, the truth is very much given a home in which to play lovingly in.
Ian D. Hall