Interview: Ian Kershaw, writer of By Far The Greatest Team

"We're all trainspotters," writer Ian Kershaw tells me during our interview about his contribution to Monkeywood Theatre's most recent production, By Far The Greatest Team. "We may laugh at the old bloke at the end of the platform, with his notepad and corduroys, but we are all passionate about something. All watching something and waiting for the next time. We're all trainspotters in our own way."

Four Mancunian writers explore what it is to be a football fan with four brand new plays. Told in a game of two halves, we hear stories of both Manchester City and Manchester United, identity, community, belonging and the passion that drives it all. Now Then spoke with one of the MVPs, Ian Kershaw, to tell us more about the beautiful game he and his fellow writers have created.

Hi Ian, can you tell us briefly about the production and how much football can we expect? 

It’s on at the Lowry between 18 September and 20 September, and it's made up of four plays written by four writers about football - two of them by Manchester City fans and the other two by Manchester United fans. The four plays have an overall running time of 90 minutes and the performance space has been decked out to look like a football stadium. We’ve asked the audience to come dressed in their footy colours, so it might kick off a bit - people might be fighting in the car park.

What we are wishing for is that there will be football fans who have never been to theatre before who come along, and equally, so that theatre fans are so caught up in the stories that they want to go to a match, we want the two worlds to inspire each other. I guess really we are trying to create an understanding from two sides, especially between the two teams, and just show that we are all in the same thing. We are all passionate and we both live and die for Saturday.

How were the stories for the production created?

Martin Gibbons (one third of the Artistic Directors of Monkeywood) sent a call out for writers some time ago, and I thought it sounded great and wanted to get involved. He then assembled the final four - luckily we all know each other through different Manchester connections - and he asked use all to meet up at the National Football Museum. Martin gave us an open brief and said we could write about anything we wanted, within a football scenario. Once we delivered our first drafts, we started thinking of the play as a whole, and how we could bring these four stories together where it wouldn’t be a case of one play, lights out, next play, lights out. So we tried to create a production that resembled football as an entity, but also had a journey.

Manchester celebrated the second Football Writing Festival last week. Was By Far The Greatest Team a part of that?

No, I think that was a happy accident. By Far the Greatest Team has been a long time in the making and in Martin’s head for a number of years. Martin is actually a Middlesbrough fan and he was at a home game against a much lesser team. Middlesbrough were losing, so the fans all began singing, “We’re by far the greatest team the world has ever seen". It was evidently not true. They weren’t even the greatest team on the field. But it was that passion and love of the game, and that has parallels to theatre which then inspired the project.

How has it been working in collaboration with other writers?

It’s been the best of both worlds. Being a writer, it’s a very solitary profession, so I’ve had the flip side of that which allowed me to have meetings and good times with other people. The other writers are all brilliant, and what’s been refreshing is that usually it can be quite competitive being in a team and you want to be the best. There's been nothing like that. Instead I've just wanted to be as good. It’s great.

What's been your favourite part of the process?

I think what I’ve most enjoyed is that we are all mates and there’s been a lot of winding up going on - little bits of gentle needling and a lot of banter. David Judge is a United fan and is the main actor in my play. He plays a die-hard City fan, so it’s been a lot of fun winding him up. The closer we get to opening night, I tell him, “I cant wait to see you wear that City shirt and kiss that badge".

Words by Kate Morris
Images courtesy of Monkeywood Theatre

By Far The Greatest Team is on at The Lowry from 18-20 September, kicking off at 7.30pm each night.

Tickets are available here

Away From Home @ New Century House, 23.07.13

Football and homosexuality are like City and United fans: the two don't mix. Insulting players from the stands with gay epithets is still common, the first openly gay professional footballer in the modern era hung himself and the 2022 World Cup is being held in a country where homosexuality is illegal. With this in mind, how would a drama about a young man in a relationship with a closeted Premiership footballer fare? The answer is that Away From Home in one of the best written, performed and directed dramas I have seen. Normally I take notes during a play I am reviewing, but by the end I realised I hadn't written anything beyond the first five minutes; I’d been too caught up in it.

In Away From Home, Kyle (played by co-writer and lone actor Rob Ward) talks an un-seen partner through his relationship with a professional footballer who plays for his club’s rivals (referred to as “the scum” throughout). But this is no ordinary relationship, as the footballer is in the closet and no one can know. Oh, and they meet as John and rent boy, not as equals. Add to that the pressures being brought on Kyle by his family and catastrophe never seems far away. But, such is the heart of this play, nor does hope.

Littered with great one-liners, such as describing a girl as so clever that “she's re-taking her first year of uni” and telling the crossbar to “fuck off” during a game, the play is funny as well as thoughtful, dealing with difficult relationships while also poking fun at them. The directing (by co-writer Martin Jameson) sees Kyle move smoothly around the stage, with each re-enactment running seamlessly into the next – a scene set in hospital was particularly striking for its simple brilliance.

There is a lot you can take away from this play: the power of friendships, the difficulties that families go through, the pressure of keeping a secret. But most of all I think it is that we are all capable of growing as people, so long as we keep our self-respect, and there is always hope that conflicts can be resolved. Well, most conflicts: I’m still not sure that City and United fans will be hugging come match day anytime soon.

Words: Andrew Anderson.
Image: Courtesy of 24:7 Festival.

Away From Home's run concludes on Thursday 25th July, while the 24:7 Festival continues until this Friday, 26th July.

The Best @ Lass O’ Gowrie, 12.03.13

George Best was one of the most brilliant sportsmen of his era, a man possessed of natural talents coupled to good looks and charm. He was the first celebrity athlete, in the sense that his fame eventually had nothing to do with the game that he played, and everything to do with his personality and lifestyle. He was a storybook hero, a boy from the streets of Belfast made good, beating the rest of the world and getting the girl(s). But, like so many heroes, he had an Achilles heel. Best's was drink.



'The Best' is a lost script by writer Jack Rosenthal that was recently discovered in the archives, and has now been adapted for the stage by Ian Winterton. The play follows George Best through the twilight years of his career, once the glory was over and he was merely a journeyman footballer. It deals with many complicated issues, but all of them have a common source: self destruction through drinking. The question that the play grapples with is why; why would a man who has it all need to drink?

The subject is tackled through group interrogation while Best is trying to dry out in an American clinic. His fellow patients shout, swear and berate him, always asking him why: why would you hurt your wife? Why are you throwing your talents away? Why can't you be happy? Of course, there are no simple answers, and if there is one thing I took away from 'The Best' it is that addiction has many parents. No one thing causes someone to drink, and no one thing can cure them.



Benjamin Patterson as George Best was presented with a difficult task; to be charming, troubled and somewhat of a bastard all in just over an hour. He succeeded admirably, managing to portray red-eyed bleariness, raging self hatred and impish charm. Charlotte Dalton, as the long-suffering Mrs Best, was certainly believable, if not quite as engaging as Patterson. The cast as a whole was strong, with a notable comic performance coming from Sinead Parker as Best's mother. Even the difficult issue of the cast performing much of the play in American accents did not prove a problem; never jarring, if not quite hitting every note.

The set was simple, with white walls invoking a changing room and a clinic. You could almost smell the disinfectant, mixed with the sweat of a used football shirt. The compact nature of the Lass O' Gowrie was perfect for representing the claustrophobia of a rehab clinic, the pressure of being hunted by the paparazzi and the shuttered world of an addict. The direction never got in the way of the story, allowing the dialogue – and there is a lot of dialogue in 'The Best' – to be heard. A few flourishes, such as repeated crowd chanting of “Georgie”, by the entire cast, strobe-lighting that imitated flash-bulbs and a projection of the real George Best scoring a goal, added to the immersive quality of the play.



For a script written almost thirty years ago, the issues dealt with in 'The Best' are surprisingly modern. Sportspeople, particularly footballers, are now personalities first and athletes second, and George Best was the first of their breed. Private lives have become public, with dozens of magazines and TV channels devoted to tracking the every move of ‘celebs’. 'The Best' asks the question: why did George Best drink?, but it ends up revealing something more disturbing. With that much adulation, that much pressure and that much temptation, drinking yourself to death suddenly seems like a reasonable response. Don't be surprised to see 'The Best' touring soon as it is very strong play, well performed, with effective staging and direction.

Words: Andrew Anderson.
Posters: Anthony Dry.
Photo: Simon Lee.