Review: Paint It White, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York (From York Press)

Review: Paint It White, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York

6:08pm Monday 17th October 2011 in Theatre By Charles Hutchinson

GARY Edwards, Kippax painter, decorator and Leeds United fan supreme/extreme, went through his usual pre-match routine on Sunday.

Pint in the pub, banter and down to the ground, only this time he was watching himself on stage, rather than LUFC home or away, sat in the front row as Gary Dunnington led a cast of Jonny Dixon, Cathy Breeze and Dan O’Brien through Edwards’s back pages.

Paint It White has been adapted from Edwards’s book of the same name by producer Les Rowley and actor Dunnington, and after an initial run on home turf last year, a new production is touring 15 venues across the country – such is the pull of England’s most reviled yet strangely magnetic club, even if it is hard to imagine supporters of any other team wanting to soak up the white stuff.

Just as the book is ruddy, blokey but also touching, so is the play, which is not the most polished piece of theatre you will ever see but captures the man, the club, its heroes, foibles, failings and sometime successes, as witnessed by Edwards, who has missed only one match in his adult years since being educated in the three Rs of reading, writing and Revie.

As you would expect from a painter who won’t paint anything red, nothing is rose-tinted about Paint It White. Instead, as the programme strap line promises, there is romance, glamour, travel, fun and Tetley bitter, but also self-deprecation and psychiatric self-analysis in juggling away matches with avoiding trouble at home.

In the best scene, Dunnington’s Edwards conducts a one-way conversation at the foot of Billy Bremner’s statue that goes to the heart of loving and living Leeds United, but also speaks to all sports fans with bygone heroes of their own.

- Charles Hutchinson, LUFC since 1969

Tour dates include West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, October 25 and 26; Spa Theatre, Scarborough, October 27; Milton Rooms, Malton, November 2. Ticket details: paintitwhite.co.uk