WILL the boil ever be lanced from the 44 days Brian Clough did his damnedest to ruin Leeds United?
Not yet, not even on the home turf of Leeds, where the West Yorkshire Playhouse will join forces with Leeds neighbours Red Ladder Theatre Company next spring to stage the world premiere of The Damned United, the tale of the most controversial figure in LUFC's history of hostilities.
Adapted by Anders Lustgarten from David Peace’s novel The Damned Utd, the play follows on the muddied heels of Tom Hooper's 2009 film in recounting 44 days in the life of Brian Clough, Yorkshire-born enfant terrible of the football world.
Set in 1974, The Damned United "explores the tortured mind of a genius" in the turbulent period when he managed the newly crowned league champions, "revealing what really happened" in his brief tenure as the enemy within, in truculent charge of a Leeds team he had so openly despised throughout his career.
Brian Clough leading out Leeds United at Wembley in August 1974
The theatrical rights have been donated to Red Ladder by ex-pat Leeds author David Peace, putting an overwhelming vote of confidence in the company after its funding had been cut.
In the link-up with the Playhouse, the role of Brian Clough will be played by Andrew Lancel, best known for his soap days as bad lad Frank Foster in Coronation Street. You may remember he appeared in the national tours of Susan Hill’s The Small Hand and Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men that visited the Grand Opera House in York in October 2014 and April this year respectively.
Playhouse artistic director James Brining says: "This is an exciting project for West Yorkshire Playhouse and we’re very pleased to be working with Red Ladder to tell this incredible tale. The Damned United is not just about football, it's a story about power and prejudice, the individual against the collective and weakness and strength. I hope its drama and passion will appeal not only to football fans but also to theatregoers from Leeds and beyond."
Rod Dixon, Red Ladder's artistic director, is delighted to be joining forces with the West Yorkshire Playhouse to embark on the biggest production of the company's 47-year history. "We're really happy to be working with such an established and successful organisation to bring this story to the audience it deserves, and would once again like to thank David Peace for making this possible,” he says.
Author David Peace adds: "For me, after all the inspiration and support I got from Red Ladder, particularly with the Red Writers Group while I was back in the UK from 2009 and 2011, and all the enthusiasm and interest Rod Dixon and Chris Lloyd have shown in my work... offering the theatrical rights for The Damned United for the minimum amount possible was the very least I could try, even in a such a small way, to help ‘Save Red Ladder'.”
Directed by Rod Dixon and designed by Signe Beckmann, The Damned United will stir up old troubles in the Playhouse's Courtyard Theatre from March 4 to April 2 next year.
Could the Playhouse and Red Ladder have told another Leeds United tale instead, rather than add to the pile of "dirty Leeds" slurs? Maybe the story of pioneering but booze-broken "Black Flash", South African winger Albert Johanssen? Or what about Clough's nemesis, the revered yet reviled Don Revie?
Both have been the subject of books, like the life of Brian, and then there is the best Leeds United book of all, Anthony Clavane's Promised Land: A Northern Love Story, the one about growing up in the Seventies as a Jewish boy and Leeds fan in a city where religion and football and commerce are so entwined in its ups and downs.
Red Ladder have done that one already in a brilliant community musical production that ran all too briefly at the Leeds Carriageworks in June 2012. It warranted an immediate revival, a bigger staging at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and it still does. What's more, Promised Land is a love story, not a love-hate story, unlike Leeds's relationship with Brian Clough, even beyond the grave.
By Charles Hutchinson, LUFC fan, 1969-sine die
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