Love It If We Beat Them review

As the opening production of Live Theatre’s 50th anniversary season, Love It If We Beat Them is a bold statement of intent. Rob Ward’s play is by turns personal and political, local and universal, set in a recognisable past yet relevant today.

It is 1996 and Newcastle is a city brimming with excitement. Having helped Newcastle United to promotion as a player, local hero Kevin Keegan returns to St James’ Park as manager, bringing with him a scrappy optimism that might turn the team’s fortunes around once more. In politics, too, the tide is changing, with Tony Blair’s New Labour on the rise. But when local man Len (David Nellist) decides to run for MP against parachuted-in candidate Victoria (Eve Tucker), that optimism starts to fracture.

It may not be original to use sport as an allegory for life – though many in the North East would echo the Bill Shankly quote that football isn’t a matter of life or death, it’s much more important than that – but this show does it exceptionally well. The false promise of Keegan’s team becomes apparent as the season progresses, reflecting the disappointment in New Labour that would have a much slower gestation. The glossy newness of the Premier League itself – only a few years old at the time – with its "Sky money" and corporate sponsors taking the game away from the fans and beginning its transition into a megabucks business, echoes Labour’s careful morphing from donkey jackets and picket lines to smart suits and sound bites. But Ward is careful not to create villains, understanding both Len’s sense of betrayal at values abandoned and Victoria’s frustration at an old order unwilling to change with the times.

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