Review: WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND, Underbelly (Boulevard)
Rah Petherbridge
Don’t be fooled by the brashness of this play’s title; Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Arse For England - the imagined story of what led a real-life football fan to put a pyrotechnic between his bum cheeks on Wembley Way - may be loud and unapologetic but Alex Hill’s nuanced writing and performance is anything but.
This is what you get when you take Dear England, strip away National Theatre funding, ditch Joseph Fiennes and lose the broadsheet adulation. For Hill’s one-man play is just as attuned to the state-of-the-nation as anything in the West End right now. In fact, it goes further with its raw depiction of how masculinity can become so toxic without positive intervention.
Hill plays Billy. The Billy we are introduced to is bold, obnoxious, uncompromising… everything you might expect. But the journey Hill takes us on is delicate in its storytelling and so subtly portrayed. He finds the light and dark in Billy’s life with ease and gives a disarming portrayal that makes you think you know Billy - but the way he pulls the rug on the character is sublime.
Billy has always loved football from an early age and, as he has grown up, his friendship with best mate Adam coupled with regular trips to watch their beloved AFC Wimbledon has seen the sport take over his life. Other hobbies and relationships fall by the wayside as trips to the likes of Grimsby and Hartlepool take priority in his life.
In many ways, the narrative is a well-trodden path of an impressionable young lad falling in with the wrong crowd - in this case, a firm led by an older football thug, nicknamed Wine Gum because of his love for the confectionery. It is relatable for anyone who has spent decades supporting a lower league football team and highlights how easy it is to become consumed by a world of violence, cocaine and, most of all, wanting to feel part of something.
Hill gives a whirlwind of a performance, giving meaning to every word and breathing life into this fictional backstory to what was a real-life event; a young bloke really did stick a flare up his arse, on the day of the Euros final in 2021. In Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Arse For England, he has created a story of identity, masculinity and loss that deserves to be seen beyond fringe theatre.
The show has enjoyed a lot of success and rave reviews during several runs at Edinburgh fringe festival, off-West End and out on tour, and even though the events depicted in the play took place more than four years ago; the message has never felt more relevant or poignant.
***** Five stars
Reviewed by Tom Ambrose
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