Read the reviews of Sing Yer Heart Out...
A selection of quotes (see below for full review):
Yorkshire Post
This is a brilliant, difficult, important play. It has grown and matured since it first premiered in York and deserves an audience during its run in Leeds.
The Guardian **** four star review
...the production seems to have
everything: pace, precision, power. The result is sensational.
The Daily Telegraph
A big shout must go out for Pilot
Theatre Company's touring revival of Roy Williams's gruelling but
unmissable drama about football, patriotism and racial integration.
Marcus Romer's production is every bit as assured as the National's
staging of 2002 – a true team effort that raises boyish high-spirits to
a fever pitch of ugly machismo.
The London Evening Standard
Critics choice top show to see in London
Manchester Evening News ****Four Star Review
This is powerful stuff, with language to match. Grittily directed by
Pilot Theatre’s Marcus Romer and sharply acted by the unusually large
ensemble cast
METRO **** four star review
Pilot Theatre's slick play, directed by Marcus Romer [is] an unflinching and realistic glimpse of what it means to be British today.
BIRMINHAM POST ***** Five star review
It's
an astonishing tour de force...Director
Marcus Romer and his company deliver a terrific ensemble performance
WHAT'SONSTAGE.COM ***** Five star review
a true ensemble piece and here receives a true ensemble performance.
Marcus Romer
's
pitch-perfect production complements Williams' examination of different
forms of racism via characters who never become ciphers.
UK THEATRE NET **** Five Star review
Under Marcus Romer's gritty direction this fascinating exposure of
everything that's wrong with society grips from first to last. A deeply disturbing slice of British working class football culture,
it send out a bleak message that no one should ignore. Don't miss it.
YORKSHIRE POST
It is one of the boldest, most moving, most thrilling pieces of theatre seen in these parts for sometime.
The Stage
With a cast of 14, this production is the biggest in Pilot Theatre's history and it marks the company's 25th anniversary. Congratulations to all concerned.
York Evening Press
Marcus Romer's fast, furious direction cranks up the fierce friction;
Sweetie Irie's songs and Sandy Nuttgens' soundtrack add further punch,
but the most powerful hand is played by Williams. He gradually peels back different layers of racism on all sides until,
like Lord Of The Flies or West Side Story, the play erupts
THE GUARDIAN **** four star review
It was football pundit Alan Hansen who erroneously stated that you never win anything with kids. He was referring to Manchester United's rookie squad, but it could equally apply to Pilot, a young people's theatre company that, under the stewardship of Marcus Romer, has ascended towards the premiership.
Pilot's burgeoning reputation has enabled Romer to field his strongest team to date: 14 actors in Roy Williams' coruscating state-of-the-nation drama, in which a beery gang descend on their local boozer to watch England lose 1-0 to Germany in the last match played at the old Wembley stadium.
It was a dismal send-off for the hallowed ground (and indeed for Kevin Keegan, who resigned immediately afterwards). But Williams' play captured attention when it was first performed at the National Theatre for daring to say the unsayable: that racism is so endemic in English society, you can barely scratch an ordinary gang of lads without finding a vicious streak of prejudice beneath the surface.Yet beyond the polemic, the play is a brilliantly animated observation of social dynamics. He captures the ritual humiliation of watching Ing-ur-land on television, as bombastic patriotism dissipates into disenchantment, frustration and fury. And Romer's full-tilt direction expertly conceals the artifice of the situation - when did you last stand in a crowded inner-city pub where everybody takes it in turns to speak?
Emma Donovan's design has an authentic whiff of sticky carpets. And though there are numerous candidates for man of the match, Deka Walmsley shades it for his steely-eyed portrayal of an auto-didact who advances the cause of white suprematism with his library ticket rather than his fists. As Alan Hansen might put it, the production seems to have everything: pace, precision, power. The result is sensational.
Alfred Hickling 2nd October 2006
Click here for online Guardian link
Manchester Evening News ****Four Star Review
ORIGINALLY staged by the National Theatre in 2002, Roy William’s vital and violent exploration of race relations at the sharp end in modern Britain has been revived by MEN Theatre award-winning Pilot Theatre.
It’s set in the King George, a pub in south-west London on Saturday October 7, 2000, as the pub’s football team gather to watch England’s World Cup qualifier match against Germany on TV, under the watchful eye of white landlady Gina (Sally Orrock) and her dad Jimmy (Claude Close).
It’s the last-ever game at the old Wembley and as the disastrous match unfolds on the big screen, racial tensions bubble to the surface in the pub. The team are entirely white, except for their star player Barry (Peter Bankole) who’s as keen to be one of the boys as Gina’s adolescent son Glen (Mikey North) is to imitate the cool black kids from the nearby estate.
Barry’s older brother Mark (Mark Moreno) has just quit the Army, tired of racial abuse, but his warnings to Barry fall on deaf ears as the racist football hooligan Lawrie (Tim Treloar) and the more discreet white supremacist Alan (Deka Walmsley) poison an already-volatile situation.
Even Lawrie’s liberal policeman brother Lee (Andrew Falvey) can’t prevent the sickening spiral downward into tragedy.
This is powerful stuff, with language to match. Grittily directed by Pilot Theatre’s Marcus Romer and sharply acted by the unusually large ensemble cast, it raises some deeply disturbing questions but declines to offer any trite answers.
Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads is at Contact until Saturday, February 10. £6, £10. Call 0161 274 0600.
BIRMINGHAM POST ***** Five star review
Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads offers an uncomfortable critique of British attitudes to race and football.
Originally staged at the National Theatre in 2002, Roy Williams' stunning play has been revived by Yorkshire-based Pilot Theatre for this national tour.
Its arrival in Birmingham four years after its premiere is significant, because it was in a pub in the city that Williams witnessed the incident that became the starting point for the play – the arrival of a group of raucous England supporters during a televised international who introduced an atmosphere of latent racism and violence.
The
pub in the play, the King George, is in south-west London, despite the
landlord Jimmy's allegiance to West Ham. Members of the pub football
team are gathering to watch England v Germany, the last international
at the old Wembley in 2000.
In contrast to Mark's wariness, Barry is keen to demonstrate his Englishness by matching his white team-mates' crude patriotism and xenophobia, but it is soon clear that there is some ambivalence in their apparent acceptance of him.
In a mirror-image of Barry's equivocal relationship with the other players, Gina's teenage son Glen affects the supposedly cool but actually loutish behaviour of two black friends, who treat him with scarcely concealed contempt.
Lee, an off-duty policeman, is keeping a wary eye on his brother Lawrie, an uncomplicated racist on a short fuse, while in the background Alan, a bookish and soft-spoken activist for a far right party, plays a subtler game.
Taking full advantage of the unusually large cast made possible by the National Theatre commission, Williams has created both an exceptionally exuberant and edgy theatrical experience and a remarkable, multilayered exploration of the meaning of racism in early 21st century Britain.
It's an astonishing tour de force which cleverly uses the symbolism of England losing to Germany at Wembley as a metaphor for a nation uneasy in decline (though Williams did not know what the score would be when he chose the setting).
With its sustained atmosphere of latent violence, its portrayal of English males as over-testosteroned and under-educated and its obscene language (Benny's fantasy about what he would like to do to the England captain's wife in the event of his failing to score is apparently lifted direct from the supporters in the Birmingham pub) it is not for the faint-hearted.
It's a practical demonstration of the old cliché that theatre has a role to illuminate and disturb as well as entertain.
Director Marcus Romer and his company deliver a terrific ensemble performance, but I have to single out Deka Walmsley for making Alan as convincingly creepy a character as you are likely to see in the theatre this year. Unfortunately, presumably in acknowledgement to his Birmingham inspiration, Williams has chosen to make him an Aston Villa supporter.n Running time: Two hours, ten minutes. Until Saturday.
The Daily Telegraph
Finally, a big shout must go out for Pilot Theatre Company's touring revival of Roy Williams's gruelling but unmissable drama about football, patriotism and racial integration. Set in a south London pub during the England-Germany World Cup qualifier of 2000, Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads gets under the skin of a coachload of local characters.Though centring on the divergent views of two black brothers, it displays remarkable understanding of even the most bigoted white regulars. Marcus Romer's production is every bit as assured as the National's staging of 2002 – a true team effort that raises boyish high-spirits to a fever pitch of ugly machismo.
METRO **** four star review - Amanda TrickettWritten by award-winning playwright Roy Williams, Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads is a shining example of a contemporary playwright getting issues right. Set in London in a boozer during the England versus Germany 2000 World Cup qualifier, Pilot Theatre's slick play, directed by Marcus Romer, opens with the pub's football team gathering to watch the match. First appearing united as they join in with the usual football banter, racial tensions between black and white characters soon bubble to the surface and events spiral towards a climactic and brutal end.
An unflinching and realistic glimpse of what it means to be British today, what makes Williams' play stand out are the well rounded arguments it raises. Angry thug Lawrie (Tim Teloar) represents the obvious side of hate, but respectable looking friend Alan (Deka Walmsley) is far more sinister as an educated BNP member. Angry ex-soldier Mark (Mark Monero), meanwhile argues that black people are repressed, but is full of contradiction, and even liberal characters' attitudes become confused as scenes take a chilling turn
WHAT'SONSTAGE.COM ***** Five star review - Ron Simpson
Pilot Theatre, now working in partnership with York Theatre Royal, celebrates its 25th birthday with Roy Williams' Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads, an ambitious choice not only in terms of the size of cast and scale of production, but also in its uncompromising language and attitudes.
Originally produced at the National Theatre in 2002, the play is set in the King George public house in south-west London as England lose to Germany in the last game at the old Wembley. No one story predominates, but, as the match unfolds on the big television in the bar (situated somewhere above the audience's heads), racial tensions surface and develop until a final well prepared, but still unexpected, tragic twist.
Williams is unafraid of the obvious, but also delineates with great subtlety and awareness nuances of racist prejudice and hatred, some relatively harmless, some very dangerous, some (perhaps the most virulent) apparently moderate. Violent and shocking, but also very funny, Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads is a true ensemble piece and here receives a true ensemble performance.
The production inspires belief even before the start, with the curtain raised on Emma Donovan 's superbly detailed set, with its pool and football tables, beer engines and bunting. The opening scene between the landlady (played by Sally Orrock with fierce conviction) and her father (the very amusing Claude Close ) is equally believable.
Marcus Romer 's pitch-perfect production complements Williams' examination of different forms of racism via characters who never become ciphers. Tim Treloar 's thuggish Lawrie, the victim of his own anger and inadequacy, seems almost innocent alongside Deka Walmsley 's chilling Alan, the smooth-speaking believer in books and 'facts' and other people getting their hands dirty.
Lee, the white policeman (the palpably sincere Andrew Falvey ) and Mark, the black ex-soldier (a performance of brooding intensity from Mark Monero ) should be the voices of intelligent co-operation, but circumstances conspire. Meanwhile Mark's brother Barry ( Peter Bankole ), the pub team's star striker, at first winningly cheerful in his wrapped-in-the-flag British patriotism, moves to disillusionment while the callow son of the landlady ( Mikey North ) discovers the danger of identifying with local black gangs. Plenty of issues, no glib solutions.
For all the harrowing material and shocking climax, Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads is also high on entertainment. The scene where the locals join in the National Anthem from Wembley, for instance, is a masterpiece of comic understatement with its solemnly absurd postures and inevitably out-of-time singing.
BBC ONLINE by Wendy Barton- O'Neill
this play will drag you from any comfort zone you may be currently inhabiting, and you will not go quietly, you will be dragged kicking and screaming
you have been warned, if you are of a delicate disposition, stay at home and watch Eastenders, and have a nice cup of tea and pretend everything will be fine. Because this play does not tie the story up in a neat, tidy package, it hurts to watch, it hurts a lot.
Roy Williams has a voice, what he has to say is not pretty, it's not nice, but f**k it's clever.
Go and see it if yer hard enough.
...Click Here for full reviewYORKSHIRE POST by Nick Ahad
Pilot Theatre, resident company at York, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.
It does so with this production of Roy Williams's deeply disturbing play that tackles issues of race, national identity and multi-culturalism.
It is one of the boldest, most moving, most thrilling pieces of theatre seen in these parts for sometime.
Creating his own Little England within the King George pub, Williams takes the framework of the England versus Germany match on October 7, 2000, at Wembley.
Watching the game are the members of the King George pub team, entirely white save for Barry, and Barry's older brother Mark, a soldier returned from Northern Ireland.
The performances, from Deka Walmsley's pseudo-intellectual racist, to Tim Treloar's savage Lawrie, to Mark Monero's bubbling volcano Mark, are outstanding.
The subject matter is disconcerting and deeply uncomfortable to watch at times. Williams and this production challenges the audience from the off and never loosens its grip.
Marcus Romer, artistic director of Pilot, pulls no punches with his tense directing, creating a production where you are constantly aware of the storm bubbling underneath the surface of the story.
THE STAGE - Kevin Berry
Roy Williams' already forthright examination of what it means to be English is given uncompromising treatment by Pilot Theatre.
Bazzer is the star striker for the King George pub team but Bazzer is black and he is only tolerated because of his skill. Players and various others are assembling in front of the pub television. They are preparing to cheer England against Germany in the last match at Wembley.
There is a violent racist in the team, played with seething anger and some insight by Tim Treloar. An already sour atmosphere soon worsens. The language is raw but honest, as is the humour. Everyone in the pub feels threatened and director Marcus Romer has the tension as tight as it should be.
Peter Bankole's playing of Bazzer is exemplary. The gradual realisation of how he is perceived by his team mates is played with admirable control. Mikey North is a comic then tragic contrast as a young white boy seeking acceptance by black friends. There are no weak spots in this cast. Mark Monero is prominent as Bazzer's brother and Deka Walmsley, as a far right organiser, is persistently unsettling.
Emma Donovan's set is a formidable structure, complete with a substantial, rolled on gents' lavatory. The theatre becomes a pub and the audience is steadily drawn in. This really is confrontational drama. With a cast of 14, this production is the biggest in Pilot Theatre's history and it marks the company's 25th anniversary.
Congratulations to all concerned.
YORK EVENING PRESS - Charles Hutchinson
PERSIL Town! "The only chocolate you'll find in York is at the sweet factories!" York has heard all the accusations of being a racist city, dating back to the burning of the Jewish community huddled inside Clifford's Tower in 1190. This perception adds still more pertinence to the first production outside London of Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads, a bloody, bruised account of England's obsession with football, race and loss of national and cultural identity, written by black playwright Roy Williams.
The play has not been staged since its National Theatre debut but not because of any shortcomings in the piece, nor because of the full-throttle pub language. The size of the cast - 14 - has been prohibitive, but the long friendship of Williams and artistic director Marcus Romer, and Romer's wish to mark Pilot Theatre's 25th anniversary with a big show, has given York the regional premiere.
Williams wanted to write a play that would be "closer to the bone", prompted to cut deeper after he watched England's Euro 2000 game against Germany in a Birmingham pub in a xenophobic atmosphere. His setting is the last day of the old Wembley - symbolically the end of the Empire - as England play Germany once more.
The lads of the victorious King George pub team have the run of the London boozer, watching Keegan's inept last match in management with rising anger under the old East End eye of Jimmy (Claude Close) and his no-nonsense landlady daughter Gina (Sally Orrock). Any number of flashpoints could erupt. Gina's impressionable son, Glen (Mikey North), wants to run with estate lads Bad T (Charles Mnene) and Duane, who abuse his doe-eyed desperation.
Mark (Mark Moreno), back on the manor after a bucketful of racial abuse in the army, has unfinished business with his younger brother, the team's black star striker, Barry (Peter Bankole), who so yearns to be one of the boys.
Policeman Lee (Andrew Falvey) is struggling to hold his own innate feelings in check and to curb the overt, hooligan racism of his brother, Lawrie (the outstanding Tim Treloar). White supremacist Alan (Deka Walmsley) nags away, preaching the power of disarming literature over the brutal fist.
Marcus Romer's fast, furious direction cranks up the fierce friction; Sweetie Irie's songs and Sandy Nuttgens' soundtrack add further punch, but the most powerful hand is played by Williams.
He gradually peels back different layers of racism on all sides until, like Lord Of The Flies or West Side Story, the play erupts. As with Romeo And Juliet, you wonder how much is learned in the bloody mess.
UK THEATRE NET **** Five Stars
York Theatre Royal and Pilot Theatre Company have joined forces to take Roy Williams's superb play on tour. This is significant because since stunning the theatrical world four years ago, at the National Theatre, it has not, apparently, been seen out of London.
Truly a remarkable play, it exposes the racial tensions that seem if anything to have intensified in recent times. It is set entirely in a London pub, aptly named The King George, and designer Emma Donovan is to be complimented on its snug authenticity; in particular the convenient device of a pull-out toilet. Characters occasionally sidle into it for private purposes and a killing will take place there.
This production's large cast spend their time in search of proprietorial rights to English identity whilst watching on television the last match at old Wembley. It is a World Cup qualifier between England and Germany, and initially everyone is united against the old enemy.
But Englandis losing, the pints are going down fast and tempers begin to fray. Barry, played sympathetically by Peter Bankole, begins the day as hero, having scored the pub team's winner. No one is prouder to shout up for Enger-land: he even boasts a Union Jack tattoo at the base of his spine. He happens to be black.
At first he distances himself from elder brother, Mark Monero's Mark, who is returning to the community after being driven out of the army by racial abuse. Blood, however, proves thicker than beer and almost inevitably - it seems - the two brothers find themselves in conflict with the white majority.
Deka Walmsly is quietly menacing as Alan,the new face of the National Front, moralising on the virtues of education and self-restraint, but whose real agenda is 'rivers of blood'. Tim Treloar is the football hooligan's football hooligan, Lawrie, somewhere on the psychotic spectrum and full of murderous intent after the national team's loss. His brother, Lee, played by Andrew Falvey, is the off-duty copper trying to be one of the lads.
Lee, himself, is no lover of blacks having been stabbed by one he was trying to help - and nursed back to health by Lawrie. Neither is he prejudiced against them. Irony of ironies, Lee finds himself having to arrest his own brother, who happens in this instance to be innocent. We see the terrible muddiness of everything once black and white are pitted against each other.
Under Marcus Romer's gritty direction this fascinating exposure of everything that's wrong with societygrips from first to last. Thedialogue is as sharply realistic as if it had been transcripted; and after a while the crude expletives cease to shock and become what they are, mere banalities.
A deeply disturbing slice of British working class football culture, it send out a bleak message that no one should ignore. Don't miss it.
NORTHERN ECHO - Steve Pratt
Saturday, October 7, 2000. England are playing Germany in the last match at the old Wembley Stadium. By the end of the game, World War Three has broken out in the King George pub as issues of race and nationality are debated - with vocal passion and physical violence - by the pub football team and locals watching the match on the big screen.
Pilot Theatre celebrates its 25th birthday in style with a co-production with York Theatre Royal of Roy Williams' play, receiving its first showing outside London.
Director Marcus Romer and the large cast bring the energy and rawness expected from Pilot's shows to a short, sharp shock of a production bursting with the teamwork and commitment demanded of players on the football field.
Mark (Mark Monero) has been hounded out of the army by racial discrimination and wants to calm down younger brother Barry (Peter Bankole), the pub team's star player.
Policeman Lee (Andrew Falvey) is trying to restrain his racist brother Lawrie (Tim Treloar), while white supremacist Alan (Deka Walmsley) chips away with carefully measured incitements against those he feels have no place in British society.
Be warned, William peppers his dialogue with many a four-letter word of both the 'f' and 'c' variety. But that shouldn't detract from the power of the writing that forcefully raises important questions about the state of play in our society today.
Pocklington Post - Julia Pattison
It's unusual these days to see a production with such a huge cast; no less than fourteen actors. However, Sing Yer Hearts Out For The Lads is a huge play which captures the voice of contemporary Britain in a unique and inclusive way, and asks that all important question – what does it mean to be British? Writer Roy Williams was inspired to write the play after his pleasure in watching football in a pub was marred by the xenophobic chants of a group of young white men.
Pilot Theatre and York Theatre Royal have joined forces once again to produce his play about Britain's obsessions with football, race and national identity at the sharp end. Director Marcus Romer was able get all his first choices for the cast, who put on a first class performance.
Barry ( Peter Bankole ) the pub team's only black player tried desperately hard to belong, chanting ' Enger-land ' along with the rest , and expressing obscene thoughts to try to impress. Glen (Mikey North ) the landlady's teenage son was equally desperate to fit in with the black kids from the estate. With echoes of Romeo and Juliet and West Side story, Lee (Andrew Falvey) tried valiantly to be the voice of reason, but to no avail. ' Rivers of blood ' stated white supremacist Alan ( Deka Walmsley ) as the bubbling tension finally erupted.
An uncompromising modern classic that can't fail to engage young people from early teens to late twenties.
Yorkshire Post - Nick Ahad
This Pilot Theatre production has been on the road since premiering at York Theatre Royal late last year. When it was first launched, it was a work that appealed to the heart, that hit you straight in the gut. It grabbed hold you at the start and wouldn't let go until the highly charged, highly emotional ending.
While visiting venues around the country, Roy Williams's play based on his personal experience as a black man watching an England game in a pub where racial tensions threatened to spill into violence, has become a more reflective piece...Williams captures perfectly the the latent violence of the situation and Marcus Romer's deft direction draws it out with subtlety.
The performances are universally outstanding, from the equally terrifying Tim Treloar as Lawrie and Deka Walmsley as Alan to Peter Bankole as Barry, the confused young black man, struggling to find his place in the world. Mark Monero has an impressive power as the volcanic Mark, struggling to keep the lid on his emotions.
This is a brilliant, difficult, important play. It has grown and matured since it first premiered in York and deserves an audience during its run in Leeds.