Wilton’s Music Hall, til 29 June 2024 (also touring elsewhere)

⭐⭐⭐

Underdog football story is by-the-numbers but will please fans of the genre. 

There’s a fantastic sketch from David Mitchell and Robert Webb’s mid-2000s comedy series in which a plucky team of northern working men decide they want to enter the Ashes. It’s a brilliant send-up of the cliched underdog sports story, complete with inspiring speeches, training montages and a David vs Goliath battle to settle the score. It was impossible for me not to be reminded of this when watching The Giant Killers, the (partly) true tale of a working men’s football team from Lancashire that took on the posh boys in the then-exclusive FA Cup. This is a perfectly pleasant story that certainly gives you a team you want to root for, though it sticks to a pretty by-the-numbers formula throughout.

Our setting is the 1870s in Darwen (pronounced as such by the toffs but ‘Darren’ to the locals), a mill town in Lancashire where the working folk are struggling to make ends meet. Providing some relief and entertainment at the end of the week is the football match (also offering neutral ground between the unionists and mill boss Lord Ashford who sponsors the squad). The team has evolved from the childhood games of longtime Darwen resident Billy and the recently returned Bobby, scraped into shape by the bolshie Lucy (Billy’s sister and later Bobby’s wife). With the team already successful against local teams, the heroes decide it’s time they prove their worth by entering the prestigious FA Cup. Previously open only to lords, gentlemen and old boys’ teams, the plucky Darreners must fight not only for the win on the pitch but for respect and dignity.

It’s an undeniably endearing story, and by the end I was genuinely invested in seeing Darwen beat their repeat nemeses, the Old Etonians. Though to get there, we have to stop at a lot of pretty predictable plot points. There’s the bit where they get plagued by injury but have to keep playing; the bit where they run out of money; the bit where personal tragedy strikes and they have to find the spirit to carry on. Among my least favourite narrative threads was the hackneyed romance between Bobby and Lucy, which follows the pretty nauseous pattern of ‘man pursues woman’ – ‘woman says no thanks’ – ‘man pursues woman anyway because isn’t that actually quite romantic?’ I found the character of Lucy to be a bit wasted overall – she’s definitely the brains of the operation but falls too easily into the trope of the tough-as-nails woman who can hang with the boys (she almost literally says ‘pick me’ at one point when she laughs: “The other women hate me for it so I throw it in their faces!”) 

I also felt there could have been more social commentary surrounding the class divisions and the political nuances of what the team were up against. Sure, it’s laid on pretty thick that while the Eton snobs look down their noses at the northern nobodies it’s actually they who are the cheats and scoundrels. But there’s a whole element of the struggle for workers’ rights that’s hinted at but never really explored. In the first act, Billy the union rep is at loggerheads with Lord Ashford over a proposed cut to workers’ pay. But when Ashford funds the team to play in the cup, this dispute seems to dissolve entirely and he becomes just another beloved member of the team. In Act II there’s reference to the workers rioting, only for Billy to apologise to Ashford for the damage down to his house. The idea that ‘football crosses all bridges’ is all very nice and cosy, but I felt like it was indulged here at the expense of some more insightful political themes. 

The cast do a reasonable job, though for the most part they are playing pretty straightforward characters (and for the second week in a row, I’m none the wiser as to the accuracy of their northern brogues). On occasion they slip into other characters as the story demands it, and this works pretty effectively. I really felt for them during the football scenes – it was a hot room and they really have to do a lot of running about to convey the drama of the matches. I’m not sure it works entirely – I was left wondering if this wouldn’t make rather a better TV movie, so we could actually see a bit of footie in action. Having said that, I thought the stagecraft of the sets was used quite well – a few key moveable props become the football pitch, the bleachers, Bobby and Lucy’s home, Ashdown’s office and of course, the local boozer. 

The Saturday afternoon performance was fairly under-attended, which was a shame – for an independent theatre production, this is a story worth telling. The play ended with a banner showing the real Darwen football team, a good reminder that though underdog sports stories might be a bit passe, this one actually happened (well, mostly). If you’re a fan of say, A League of Their Own or Cool Runnings (or the undisputed king of the genre, Space Jam), and you don’t mind a few familiar beats, this is a fun story to see.