Beating Berlusconi - One Night in Istanbul

Synopsis

In May 2005 middle-aged Kenny Noonan travels to Istanbul to watch Liverpool play AC Milan in the Champions’ League final. What Liverpool achieved is dramatic legend. What happened to Kenny is stranger than fiction. Based on a bizarre real event - a scouser ends up sitting next to Italy’s Prime Minister. A laugh out loud, story of a man’s attempt to rediscover his belief in himself, his club, and his city - a must see for all comedy lovers and football fans.

Our Review:

Anne Morley-Priestman - 2 February 2012

Watching Beating Berlusconi by John Graham Davies one is reminded in many ways of Nick Hornby’s seminal Fever Pitch. In both plays the protagonist is a football-fanatic, letting relationships and all other considerations slip in pursuit of attending that one, soul-defining earth-moving match. But the Davies’ play has a broader canvas.

It’s the story of Liverpudlian fan Kenny Norman whose life and adventures before, during and after the 2003 European Cup final in Istanbul are whirled before us by Paul Duckworth, an actor with a gift for funny faces, awkward poses and a barrage of different voices.

We meet (on screen) his family, including long-suffering wife Marie, friends (of whom one is killed fighting in Afghanistan and another is a drug-dealer), fellow fans and – of course – the Italian prime minister of the title.

We are also taken on a tour of Liverpool’s history and its famously acerbic attitude t...

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