It would be easy to say that Stand or Fall at the Theatre Royal in Brighton was a play about football because, on the surface, that’s exactly what it is.
It’s much more too though. It’s about home and family and community. It celebrates loyalty, endurance and perseverance. And while it’s laugh out loud funny, there’s reflection and a real poignancy.
The play tells the true story of Brighton and Hove Albion as the club celebrates its 125th anniversary, with the focus on the rags to riches fairytale of the past 30 years or so.
The main storyline contains drama enough, starting in the 1990s, with the club facing financial ruin, the risk of relegation from the Football League and the treacherous sale of the club’s home, the Goldstone, in Hove.
The shirt sponsors down the years tell a shorthand version of the story. Brighton players have gone from wearing tops bearing the word Skint to ones that say American Express. That’ll do nicely!
Woven through some of the real highlights of the past quarter of a century – on and off the pitch – is a fictional family saga played out by a fantastic cast.
They portray the Smith family – and Brighton have had a few players with the same surname – as the club leaves the Goldstone Ground, spends two years in exile in Gillingham and returns to Brighton – at first to the old running track at Withdean aka the “theatre of trees”.
And then there was the campaign for the stadium at Falmer including the love-bombing of the former deputy prime minister John Prescott who had the final say. It worked!
The club’s story, with all its ups and downs, is told through the lives of the fans who make up the Smith family.
Various incidental details will resonate from children standing on crates in the old East Stand at the Goldstone to the slog up the steps to the West Upper seats at the Amex.
And those who are old enough may well recognise the rapacious pantomime villains Bill Archer and David Bellotti – oh yes they will – and the song Build a Bonfire.
Younger audience members or those who aren’t fans needn’t worry because the pair’s role is spelt out pretty clearly.
And the 90-minute production – a play of two halves – couldn’t happen without a few jibes at arch-rivals Crystal Palace. Chelsea were also a target because of their repeated plundering of Albion talent.
The writer and director Mark Brailsford, known widely for the Treason Show, which is stuffed full of topical satire, took the title, Stand or Fall, from Brighton’s anthem, Sussex by the Sea.
The old marching song appears to have been inspired by a Rudyard Kipling verse and, on stage, was set in the context of the young men of the Royal Sussex Regiment as they went to war.
Another poet, Lord Byron, wrote how the truth is “stranger than fiction” – and as the Seagulls continue to soar in English football’s top flight and in European competition, there have been some almost unbelievable “pinch me” moments on the pitch.
Back at the Theatre Royal, there are men in the audience, plenty in blue and white striped shirts, dabbing their eyes at times.
One of the tender moments came as the Brighton Swing Choir performed a Brailsford song, Seagulls over the Downland.
One of the joyful moments came when, bedecked in shining armour, Dick Knight rode to the club’s rescue on stage.
In reality, he saved Albion from oblivion – and several fans were delighted last night (Friday 25 September) to see the real Dick Knight watching the show with approval.
The fictional story of the Smith family was entertaining and moving. But the backdrop happened – the years with no permanent home, the play-off defeats and the eventual promotion to the Premier League and later a place in Europe.
Stand or Fall is a story about home, a story about hope and, as the club’s current owner Tony Bloom writes in the programme, a story that is still being written.
Opening night was on Wednesday (23 September) and the final two performances are today (Saturday 26 September) at 2.30pm and 7.30pm. To book tickets, click here.
What a great show! I went reluctantly with friends who are football fans, and I’m not so I didn’t get all of the in-jokes and references. The story was really quite moving though, and the cast were wonderful.