Confessions of a City Supporter

I first saw Confessions of a City Supporter at its 2004 premiere. In truth, five years on, Alan Plater’s play seems somewhat diminished, though it’s essentially the same, despite updatings, with the same director (Gareth Tudor Price) and cast. Accidents of time and place have not been kind to the production.

Under John Godber, Hull Truck Theatre will no doubt swiftly find a production style to fit the new building. At the moment productions are Spring Street writ large. City Supporter makes good use of screen projections but, when the opening images fade and the spotlights get out of the audience’s faces, it’s still Martin Barrass confiding in the audience – for which the intimacy of the old theatre was so well suited.

In terms of timing, the last production celebrated Hull City becoming established in the second tier of English football. In 2008 the club took it one stage further and reached the Premiership – hence the updated revival. However, I saw the new production less than 24 hours before possible relegation and the celebration was somewhat muted – even the replica shirts were less in evidence than five years ago. After the final day’s results, future performances may well regain the party spirit, but it would have been good to see it when European football seemed a possibility.

All this may seem irrelevant to a dramatic performance, but City Supporter is positively tribal in its approach to the audience: this Barnsley supporter was one of a tiny minority not to respond to a request for Tigers fans to raise their hands and anyone unfamiliar with the cult status of Dean Windass may struggle a bit. The plot is slight in the extreme: a City fan uses his family’s four generation involvement with the club to play out comic scenes (the boys of the family are always born on the occasions of 0-0 draws which their fathers religiously attend) and dredge up fascinating facts about Hull City.

Fortunately Alan Plater has the ability to make the trivial interesting, amusing and dramatically effective and consistently hits the right self-deprecating note – and the performances are nicely in kilter with his script. Martin Barrass, in particular, is a master of the seemingly artless and works the audience expertly. Despite their multiple roles, Una McNulty and Roy North don’t have much to do (time and again the play teeters on the brink of a monologue), but do it very engagingly.

Plater realises that, despite the triumph that prompted this revival, real football fans know that ultimately it’s all about disappointment – a secret vouchsafed even to Old Traffordites over the age of 30. The new anthem about the remarkable series of results summarised as ‘Hull 4, London 0’ is a stirring start to the second half, but such confidence is untypical. The play has a geographically limited appeal – it already has my nomination as The Play Least Likely to Tour – but tells the truth, admittedly sentimentalised, about the supporter’s experience.

-Ron Simpson