Written for Culture Wars
For over half a century, the British stage has been characterised as feverishly hankering after the state of the nation. It is, arguably, the Holy Grail of our subsidised theatres and, in itself, that says a great deal about our national character.
Judging from Total Football, a softly scornful exploration of the notion of national identity, Ridiculusmus find the base terms absurd, futile and superfluous. For Jon Haynes and David Wood (the spit of Italian referee Pierluigi Collina), who twist the traditional double act into something robust and rigorous without losing the humour, national identity is nonsense:
“An almond croissant,” Haynes begins, shooting words out like a semi-automatic, “wasted down with a cappuccino made from Morroccan beans by a Canadian coffee chain….a Chinese take away sitting on Swedish furniture as you watch an American cop drama. This is what it means to be British today.”
So, when we cheer on twenty-two millionaires kicking a ball about a patch of grass, what exactly are we cheering? What does it mean to cheer Wayne Rooney’s name in unison from the terraces and the pubs, from the factory floors and the rooftops?
Haynes plays a civil servant charged with organising a British soccer team for the 2012 Olympics: a task that grows increasingly impossible. Rivalries prove ever more irreconcilable and national identity slides towards arbitrariness. In fact, thanks to a heavy dose of cynicism – Beckham and Rooney as scapegoats to soften the blow of elimination, anyone - the whole effort becomes entirely meaningless, “a cycle of grief” without any real rationale.
Total Football’s humour comes from awkwardness and surrealism, all doused with scepticism. Its wordplay is sharp, often drifting into looping, sentimental asides or reliant on a novice mis-opining on someone else’s specialism, but physically it scores highest: two British delegates celebrate the Olympic announcement like inelegant Teletubbies; two FA suits hop through training exercises that morph into dubstep dance moves.
However, it is the sincerity that makes Total Football worthwhile. What Ridiculusmus deplore is the need to pigeon-hole and delineate. The British citzenship test comes in for particular scorn as nationality by multiple choice and an outmoded and absolutist concept of British identity. Total Football tackles its subject like a tricksy winger up against a bulky defending, dumbfounding it with nifty trickery, until finally delivering the ultimate humiliation of a nutmeg through the legs.
Photograph: Ridiculusmus
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