2 hours ago
4
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s almost time to take your seats. The most compelling West Country drama since Poldark? Friday Night Lights with pasties? Or, if you like, a little dash of Scrumpy & Western? Never let it be said we lack creative enthusiasm out here in the sticks, nor the desire to offer local theatregoers something refreshingly different.
Welcome, either way, to the world’s most improbable new stage play. How else to summarise a production about the rise of an unflashy Devon rugby club, based on the book Exe Men by – there’s no easy way to say this – yours truly. Trust me, watching professional actors rehearse scenes that started life on your own keyboard is a surreal experience.
Fortunately Exe Men the play – which opens next week – has been written by someone with significantly better credentials. Remember the BBC’s brilliant Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes? Detective Gene Hunt firing up the Quattro? The show’s co-creator Ashley Pharoah has specialised in TV screenwriting but also loves his rugby and was instantly intrigued when Martin Berry, creative director at Exeter’s Northcott Theatre, approached him.
It was brave of them because rugby – with wonderful exceptions such as Up n’ Under, Stand Up And Fight and Grav – can be a tricky theatrical theme. How do you improve, dramatically speaking, on Exeter going from lower-league anonymity to the champions of Europe in little over a decade? Particularly if everyone knows the ending? Or if some people watching don’t really like sport?
The aim, accordingly, has been to highlight the characters who made it happen and the intense regional pride they aroused. And how each can shape the other. Ashley, Martin and myself also share the same conviction: that the south-west deserves a higher national profile.
“When was the last time you heard a national newsreader with a West Country accent?” asks Berry rhetorically. If the peninsula does make the news it’s usually because something unpleasant has washed up on a beach or the weather has scared the tourists away.
The lack of Premier League football south-west of Bristol has traditionally been another factor. Which is why it caused a stir when the Chiefs were promoted to English rugby’s top division in 2010. Devon has produced plenty of yachtsmen, swimmers and the occasional Tom Daley but, aside from a few FA Cup victories for Plymouth Argyle, not much sustained team sporting success.
Little did anyone guess that, by October 2020, the club would be claiming a domestic and European trophy double. A feat that even Pharoah, as a Bath fan, found extraordinary. “To go from sidestepping dog poo in a public park to winning the European Cup is amazing. It’s a bigger story, in some ways, than Leicester winning the Premier League when you think of where they came from.”
The book sought to tell that epic tale through its central pillars. Men such as Rob Baxter who, along with his brother Richie, followed their farmer father John into the “other” family enterprise at the muddy old County Ground. Or the club’s chair, Tony Rowe, whose business nous helped to rescue the club financially. Or Gareth Steenson, the fly-half previously rejected by his native Ulster. “We were all told we weren’t good enough somewhere else,” says Steenson. “The strength of the group at the start was that we were from all over the place so we got to know each other’s families.”
While slightly disappointed that Jamie Dornan will not be portraying him – “He would have been perfect” – “Steeno” is now looking forward to seeing how the Chiefs’ once-lively post-match “rehydration” sessions are depicted. “Sitting on the bus home for three hours gave us time to socialise. I could barely tell you what happened in a lot of games but what I remember most are the social times. I remember we got our first losing bonus point away from home, at Northampton, and celebrating like we’d won with a bonus point.”
All the above, plus the chocolate muffin-loving Kiwi Thomas Waldrom, England’s Jack Nowell and Henry Slade, and Ireland’s Ian Whitten are engagingly played by six professional actors and a 31-strong community ensemble. Berry, though, is aware that on-stage rugby has to be artfully done. “Without giving away too many spoilers we’re doing it in various ways: lighting and sound, real and imaginary balls. There’s actually a lot you can do to take the audience with you. If we just ask them to sit and watch some footage then we’ve cocked it up.”
after newsletter promotion
Cometh the hour, then, for Robert Shaw Cameron, who plays the club’s big chief, Rob Baxter. The former was the dentist Laurence Reeves in Coronation Street but now has a role he can properly sink his teeth into. “It’s the first time I’ve played a ‘real’ person and you do feel a deep responsibility. There’s a public version of Rob and Tony but there’s a private version as well. The challenge was accessing that private bit. I wanted to explore what people don’t see. When I asked Rob whether he has a confidant he talked about his wife, Jo. That’s something we’ve worked hard to reflect.”
Pharoah has also sought to tease out the human emotions of other pivotal individuals. “It’s about sport but it’s not really. It’s about people and dreams.” And, when you dig slightly deeper, about male fellowship, too. “One of the elements is that men aren’t completely crap and can achieve things. I really like that about it. It’s a play about maleness which isn’t necessarily the most fashionable thing to write about at the moment, is it?”
A few of those portrayed may not instantly recognise themselves but in Rowe’s case it is very much the opposite. Tim Hudson, the actor playing him, arguably looks more like Rowe than the chair does himself. “It is quite strange,” confirms Rowe, now 77 but still bound for South America this week to drive a rally car through Brazil and Guyana. “When the people who know me see him they’ll say: ‘There’s Tony.’”
So brace yourselves. The south-west – and rugby – is about to enjoy a rare stage closeup. As Cameron puts it: “In this golden age of telly and Netflix, this is what theatre can still do better than anything else: tell stories that resonate with people and speak to their community.” Will anyone “do an Exeter” again? Probably not. All the more reason, five years on, to reimagine how the west was won.
* Exe Men is being staged at the Northcott Theatre, Exeter from 7-18 October. Tickets available at https://exeternorthcott.co.uk/events/exe-men/#book.
