Why I Stuck A Flare Up My Arse For England is a one-person play that offers much more depth than its title suggests.
The one-person is Alex Hill, who as well as also writing the play, also acts as co-producer. Since the play debuted in a tiny 50-seater room at the Fringe in 2023, it has travelled around the world, and returns to Edinburgh for the third time, in what is stated to be its final outing.
The story is inspired by one of the incidents which took place during the finals of the European Football Championships in 2021. Just in case you somehow missed this cultural highlight, a recap: England were co-hosting the Euros, alongside a number of other countries in Europe.
The team made fantastic progress through the competition, eventually making their way to the Final, where they would play Italy at Wembley. As is the case whenever the England Men’s Team does well, the country’s press went into an immediate frenzied meltdown.
Into this hyped-up hysteria came a man who, for reasons that largely remain unknown, dropped their trousers, and shoved a lit flare up their backside. Cue many, many social media posts showing this happening, in real time, and a further collective meltdown from the press. Who couldn’t quite decide whether they condoned or condemned this occurrence.
Here, Hill has taken the real event, and woven a fictional tale around it. Hill plays Billy Kinley, and we deal with the asked question very early on: Billy did this because he’d had sixteen pints of lager, three grams of cocaine, and thought it would be fun! So, that’s that.
This could be the end of the tale, but Hill digs deeper, wondering how it would be that Billy came to decide that this was ‘fun’. And so we get a brief history of Billy’s progress through life so far.
Billy is a young-ish man who has followed his local club AFC Wimbledon since he was young. He goes to matches with his best friend, Adam.
They’ve been there for each other through everything: the nervous first days at senior school; the death of Billy’s mum; A level results. Adam is there as Billy is falling for Daisy, who works in a local cafe where Billy and Adam have breakfast every Saturday morning.
As Billy and Adam grow up, their paths diverge. Billy thinks that Adam is more content than he really is: Adam has a decent job earning good money – Billy works for his dad in his hair salon. As the boys become men, and their devotion to their team increases, they fall in with ‘Winegum’ and his crew.
It’s sub-textual, at least initially, but Winegum and his group are football hooligans, going to matches to fight opposition fans as much as they are to support their team. The violence escalates, as it always does, and Adam fades away, coming to matches less and less. Not staying for a pint afterwards, because a pint always leads to a fight. And then, one Saturday, he doesn’t turn up for breakfast.
Meanwhile, as Billy becomes more distant, his relationship with Daisy seems to stagnate. He misses her first gig as a musician, and to make it up to her, takes her to see Les Miserables in the West End.
What follows is a very funny sequence, where Hill gives a genuinely brilliant summary of the plot of Les Mis, with some obvious parallels being drawn to what’s happening in the main play, and in the world more widely.
From here, things become predictably tragic. But in more ways than you’re probably expecting. The ending is emotionally devastating, and Hill does an incredible job in making Billy’s bewildered distress feel very authentic.
That this play shows so many different versions of masculinity, within its sixty minute running time, is astonishing. From the gentle caring of Billy’s dad, to the drug-fueled pumped up aggression of Winegum, and the quiet despair of Adam, there are so many facets of ‘how to be a man’ presented here, that it can be difficult to see them all as the story races along.
It’s in thinking about this play afterwards that deeper truths emerge: that there is a lot of bravado, but there is also an incredibly worrying male loneliness epidemic. That a lot of men’s mental health is in a total mess. But that they are all too often reluctant to ask for help. That football can be great for bringing men together, but it can, and does, also bring out the worst in them.
Hill has created a play that lures you in, with its light and frothy premise about why someone would do something seemingly so bizarre. But it ends with the audience being asked why men ever behave in the ways they do. And what, if anything, we can do to shift those behaviours.
An unexpectedly thoughtful play, this production lights up the Fringe – catch it before the final season comes to an end.
Why I Stuck A Flare Up My Arse For England continues in the Cow Barn at Underbelly in Bristo Square, at 14:15, daily until August 25 (not 11).
All images including Featured Image courtesy of Michelle Mangan PR
