Love It If We Beat Them - Tour Announced and BI-TOPIA Returns!
It’s official, we’re bringing back Rob Ward’s Love It If We Beat Them this Autumn, opening at Live Theatre Newcastle before touring!
It’s Spring 1996, Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United are riding high in the Premier League and Tony Blair’s New Labour are gathering pace. Hope is in the air and victory seems within reach. Len, a long term hard left activist, has decided to run as a candidate for local Labour MP, but the arrival of Victoria from Manchester as New Labour’s front runner throws a spanner in the works. With loyalties tested and tensions reaching fever pitch, the winning team will be decided in an explosive head-to-head challenge.
Set against the backdrop of the infamous Premier League season when Newcastle United almost won under the management of Kevin Keegan, Love It If We Beat them explores the age-old political questions: What is power without principle? And what are principles without power?
Love It If We Beat Them is a new political drama that explores a time of significant change in the identity of the North East communities and perfectly captures a moment in recent history that defines who we are today. Contains strong language and themes of child loss, recommended age 14+.
Full production information and tour details can be found here
From Rob Ward:
“The idea for ‘Love It If We Beat Them’ has its origins in the aftermath of the 2019 General election, the seismic event that supposedly reset the electoral map of the country. Many voters across the North and Midlands, a sizeable number in the old mining communities of the North East, severed generational ties with the Labour party to usher in the Boris Johnson era of Conservative rule. Some were talking about a decade in power.
Jeremy Corbyn led Labour to its largest defeat in a hundred years. Depending on your political persuasion, Corbyn was either a great man brought down by a brutal right-wing media, not to mention dissenting backbenchers, in an election overwhelmed by Brexit, or he was an idealist in over his head who was roundly rejected by the British people.
From the ashes emerged fresh leadership in Keir Starmer, a man who initially pitched to the left - the Labour membership retained a sizeable Corbyn supporting base - whilst offering the reassuring veneer of professionalism to the anti-Corbyn contingent. Some were calling it Corbynism in a suit. Some were more cynical.
My instinct at the time was that we were about to enter the next phase of the never-ending cycle that has plagued Labour since its inception in 1900. The Labour Left seize power, the Labour moderates complain they are unelectable. The Labour moderates seize power, the Labour Left complain about betrayal of Labour values. And repeat. Over and over and over again. The Tories near homogeny over British politics owes an enormous amount to their main opposition being far more interested in fighting amongst themselves.
That was my starting point for the play and this autumn is your chance to join the debate. Tribalism, factionalism, ideological purity and pragmatism. If the polls are to be believed, we are looking at not just a Labour victory, but a Labour landslide, larger, perhaps, than that achieved by Tony Blair in 1997. What should a Labour government look and feel like in these troubled times? Will Starmer be more radical in power than he appears in opposition? What is the right way to lead the left?
Aside from its political heartbeat, this is also a story about the passion of football fandom, the positioning of the North in a post-Thatcher world, the pride in local identity and the pursuit of ones’ dreams. Even if you have no interest in politics or football, there will be something in this show for you and I would LOVE IT if you could join us this autumn.”
Alongside ‘Love It’ we have just re-started our Summer tour of Sam Danson’s 5* play BI-TOPIA which is visiting Keswick, Gilford, Wakefield, Glastonbury Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival. All tickets on sale now, check out our audience reactions from the tour so far below!