THERE is a line, spoken by a fictionalised Gareth Southgate, that sums up the beating heart of James Graham’s smash play Dear England. In the scene in question, a newly appointed Southgate is attempting to win over his squad and cement in them a feeling of belonging. “What is England?” he asks them. “It’s not a trick question, it has to come from you.” The scripted words remain as vital and thought-provoking today as Dear England returns to the National Theatre, before a major tour. First released in 2023, it covered the former England manager’s tenure up to the team’s exit from the 2022 World Cup, lensed through a rousingly entertaining, inspiring examination of masculinity and nationhood. Then England surprised everyone by making a second Euros final in 2024 – and a reboot was in order. We’re chatting today after Graham’s revival of his Olivier Award-winning play received glowing reviews. For someone with more than 30 plays to his name, hit TV shows including crime drama Sherwood, and an OBE, the Nottingham-born playwright, 42, is surprisingly relieved.“I didn’t know whether the country was moving on, but there’s obviously still something about Gareth’s story which seems to touch people,” he says. “No one can deny that the last decade of our national life has not been easy, with a crazy conveyor belt of leaders. We were losing a sense of confidence in ourselves, losing our story. “You could feel the country panicking and in free fall, making all these quick, short-term decisions that had no long-term progress. And yet, here was a guy who survived the course and became a moral leader in terms of what he represented and his values. “Unlike previous managers and, arguably, the political leaders we had during the same period, rather than slapping a different colour paint on a car that’s not working anymore, he got in there and gave it a new engine and that work’s going to last.” Graham says he found that change inspiring. “I wanted to understand how he did that,” he says. “It wasn’t purely about technique and performance, it was about culture and mindset, how you revitalise a team by digging deep and asking really uncomfortable questions.” One character boils it down to the devastating line: “England knows how to win but needs to learn how to lose.” Southgate famously brought in mental health experts and history teachers, asking the players to examine their feelings about themselves and their country. Believing the team’s failures, particularly in penalty shoot-outs, was rooted in fear and isolation, he was mocked for going “woke” in a traditionally macho world. “You can mischaracterise the Southgate project as going soft on these young lads,” James says, “when actually it’s the opposite. By not protecting young men from failure, saying, ‘You are going to fail, and you should fail,’ he was building resilience. “Like he did himself, becoming the most successful England manager since Alf Ramsey – and 20 years after missing the penalty that knocked England out of the 1996 Euros. That’s an incredible example to set for young men, rather than being resentful, bitter and angry about it.” The play argues that Southgate’s cultural reset helped reframe the paralysing expectations laid on players and change the national conversation. His famous 2012 “Dear England” open letter asked for compassion and mutual respect.
But in a world where the loudest voices increasingly dominate politics and social media, can Southgate’s quiet revolution triumph?
“I think his way of conducting yourself is losing on the world stage,” Graham says, with some sadness. “Over the pond, they’re celebrating bullying and boasting rather than humility. Gareth’s a traditional English patriot. He got his values from his granddad, a Second World War veteran in the Marines. He believes in decency, goodness and kindness.”
The burning debate over masculinity and the social alienation of young males also runs through James’s other current play Punch, on at the Young Vic until the end of April when it heads to Nottingham and Broadway. It’s the true life story of how “one-punch killer” and teenage drop-out Jacob Dunne found redemption, and new hope, after meeting his victim James’s parents Joan and David.
Both plays contain lines where young men speak of their “anger and despair”.
“There’s a danger in constantly talking about the crisis facing men,” James says. “One of the reasons why Andrew Tate and his ilk are really seductive is because they have his compelling narrative that the world is against men.
“Talking about ‘the crisis of masculinity’ reconfirms it in their heads. We talk about men as a problem to solve rather than celebrating everything that’s brilliant about men and traditional masculinity, and working hard to unlock historic problems.” He continues: “The fact that the biggest killer of men in 2025 is men themselves in the form of suicide is a national tragedy.
“We should be ashamed of that. It’s not about apologising for men or apologising for Englishness. You can celebrate all those traditional values, but also offer support and instil the value of positive and authentic connections with male friends and relatives.
“Without role models, young lads will fill that vacuum on their phones, which will tell them they should be angry and resentful and punish the world around them. Nobody wants that.” These very themes are central to TV’s show-of-the-moment – Adolescence. The unsettling drama set in West Yorkshire follows 13-year-old schoolboy Jamie Miller, played by an electrifying Owen Cooper, who is accused of killing a female classmate.
The Netflix sensation has stirred the national conscience in a way not seen since Ken Loach’s hard-hitting play Cathy Come Home in 1966.
“That show is striking a chord for a reason,” says James, who was born and raised in Nottinghamshire. “That’s the power of drama, to help us understand something that can be really frightening. I grew up watching TV dramas by incredible working-class writers like Alan Bleasdale, Sally Wainwright and Jimmy McGovern. Their characters were not monosyllabic or bigoted; they were complicated, they could express themselves, and they had a love of gallows humour.
“I feel so lucky to be born in a red wall town in the North Midlands. It made me who I am, gave me that grounding in community and people.”
But can the rarified world of theatre also contribute on a deeper, universal level?
“Most conversations today exist in bursts on social media,” James argues. “They have no nuance, no complexity. They can be quite cruel and lack empathy. Basically locking people in a room for two and a half hours means you engage on a higher level. You calm down a bit and walk in the footsteps of people you wouldn’t normally get to walk in. That’s a superpower we should really celebrate.”
Graham is particularly excited about taking the show outside London.
“It’s a tragedy that the touring of work dried up because it’s so expensive. A play of this scale required multiple fundraising and revenue streams. No one’s going to get rich from it, but The National Theatre is committed to being a national theatre,” he says.
“Our press night’s in Nottingham in the theatre where I was a stage door keeper for a year. I can’t wait.”
Unlike Dear England, I suggest that perhaps too many issue-based plays alienate modern audiences with their didactic polemics, preaching to the converted, when their primary purpose should be to engage or entertain.
“I’m probably guilty of expressing a strong opinion through a character on stage,” James admits, “but I try to resist, because I would never patronise an audience by projecting my views on it. My England is no more interesting or valid than anyone else’s.”
He breaks into a smile. “And I’ve long given up my apologetic squeamishness about chasing humour on stage. I reject entirely the idea that that lacks integrity.
“Firstly, if you’re laughing at something, it’s because you recognise it to be true. The highest mission of any art form is to reflect truthfully what it is like to be alive.
“Secondly, I can’t stand the idea people should go to the theatre because it’s good for you, like a plate of vegetables, when it should be full of joy and wonder and magic.
“If your first experience is boring, you feel excluded. You’re never going to go back.”
He aims to stir hearts and minds through his works. “We’ve often been told as playwrights that story – as seen on screen and in theatre – is about ideas. I reject that. You’re asking people to leave the house and pay money when they could just be at home watching TV. Stories have always been a fundamental human need, from campfires to the pub. The most important thing is to ask questions.”
Dear England asks the thorny question of how we feel about our flag, past and future.
“To me, it’s not about pulling statues down and throwing them in the river,” James says. “The problem with the fabricated culture war is that you’re told to choose. One side says, ‘Burn it all down, apologise for the past and look to the future.’ And the other side says, ‘The future’s scary, we should go back to the past.’
“It’s about rejecting that binary, but everyone has to enter in good faith, not cynically. There’s a middle ground where you absolutely recognise, celebrate or question moments in the past that we are not responsible for. No one has to feel shame, but we can acknowledge it. Then we can ask questions about the story we want to build going forward.”
He’s a huge fan of footballer legacy numbers – representing each player’s unique place in the national line-up. Southgate was player number 1071 and the team’s most recent recruit, Myles Lewis-Kelly, is 1292.
“You’re part of the continuum. You feel part of a community that extends all the way back into history, and you see your place within it, but it also goes forward after you,” smiles Graham. “I think that’s a really simple but really beautiful idea.”
Dear England is at the National Theatre, London, until May 24 and The Lowry, Salford, until June 29. UK tour starts from September 15. For more information and tickets visit dearenglandonstage.com