Moments before Red or Dead begins, we watch Peter Mullan warming up. At the edge of the stage, arms windmilling, his face set in concentration, he looks like a footballer waiting to take to the pitch. In fact he’s Liverpool manager Bill Shankly. In writer-director Phillip Breen’s new play, adapted from David Peace’s book, we see Shankly take the club into the first division and on to FA and Uefa Cup victories between 1959 and his retirement in 1974.
Narration is passed from one actor to another in a 52-strong cast, rippling across them like a chant around a stand. This huge ensemble moves over the stage like a shoal of fish, gravitating towards Shankly. Mullan stands, solid as a tree trunk, as if defending a goal; squinting into the distance like someone sizing up a shot. His hand flicks forward while motivational lines fire out of his mouth like the blasts of a whistle.
He constantly calls the players “boys” and “son”, but Breen’s script doesn’t unpack the psychology of the team, and Shankly’s wife, Nessie, is also sidelined. A scrappy stampede of scenes plays out like a series of match reports, declarative rather than dynamic, so the show loses the dressing room at the end of each wordy long half.
Its visual language is more eloquent. As Shankly assembles a team and legacy at the club, wooden planks are gradually slotted into a wall behind him until it stands complete. Empty space grows when he retires and is forced apart from the team by Les Dennis’s stiff and thinly drawn chairman Tom Williams. Slumped on a chair, Mullan’s precise verbal strikes are now stutters. It’s as if he has been punctured, slowly deflating before us until he resembles a boy, looking up wistfully, waiting for someone to guide him. Like one of the players after all.
• Red or Dead is at the Royal Court, Liverpool, until 19 April
