SMILE (Rep Studios/Dundee Rep)****

 

By Angel

Link: https://dundeerep.co.uk/whats-on/smile 

Available until: Sunday 2^nd May-Sunday 9^th May and Wednesday 12^th May-Sunday 16^th May at 7pm. Matinées on Thursdays and Saturdays at 2.30pm.

Content warning: There’s a bit of swearing but nothing I don’t hear every day at school

Jim McLean was the manager of Dundee United Football Club between 1971 and 1993. He never played for the club – he actually spent three years at their very local rivals Dundee who are literally just down the road – but he was appointed manager not long after finishing his playing career at Kilmarnock. McLean was an inside forward (that’s like a second striker who plays in the hole except there were two inside forwards) who began his career at Hamilton Academical and also played for Clyde.

Even though managing Dundee Utd was his first and only job in management McLean did really well. He spent 12 years at the club (imagine anyone spending 12 years at a club now! Arsene Wenger was obviously at Arsenal for nearly twice as long but I can’t see anything like that happening again unless there are massive changes) and in that time, Dundee Utd won the Scottish Premier Division (the old name for Scotland’s top football division, now rebranded and restructured as the Scottish Premiership), they won the Scottish League Cup twice and they reached the semi final of the European Cup (the old Champions league) and the final of the UEFA Cup (the old Europa league.)

The fact Dundee Utd could lose to Roma in the European Cup and feel hard done by kind of shows the miracles McLean achieved. You wouldn’t see anything like that from Dundee Utd now. Or even Celtic.

Like McLean says in the play he is remembered more for assaulting John Barnes (the Scottish football commentator not the English footballer) but I think his football achievements are much more interesting. Any idiot can attack someone and one of the negative sides of football is that it is an environment where emotions and passions can get very strong. But how many people could take Dundee Utd into the semi finals of the biggest competition in Europe?

McLean died on Boxing Day 2020 aged 83 after a long battle with dementia – a condition which we have heard a lot about recently. More footballers are developing dementia than you’d expect and research suggests that heading a football gives an increased risk of dementia. Footballs aren’t nearly as dangerous now as they used to be but there is more research ongoing and changes have already been made to the rules about children heading balls and there are also calls for female footballers to be given the same recovery times as men after they suffer from a concussion. I know women are tough but they need looking after just as much as the men.

Smile is a new play about Jim McLean’s career which had its premiere in Dundee just before the theatres all shut and is now being streamed online. It is written by Philip Differ for two actors. One plays the role of McLean and the other one is called ‘Jimmy’ in the programme. As McLean’s first name is Jim I wonder if Jimmy is a sort of conscience figure but I think he also appears as other characters.

In the play McLean talks about different moments in his career and there are also flashbacks. Sometimes we hear commentary or the sounds of the crowd. Kenny Miller (not the Scottish footballer who played for Celtic and Rangers!) is the designer and the set looks nothing like a football stadium or a training ground. There is junk everywhere including an old TV which switches itself on. It’s like McLean is looking back on his life and seeing the wreckage and not the good things he achieved. Sally Reid is the director and I really like how she has made the two characters so different. McLean is all sort of weighed down by life and Jimmy is running about all over the place. I like the way how he can exit one part of the stage and enter somewhere else. I also like the bit where Jimmy uses an unusual object as a microphone. I’m not telling you what it is but it was good.

Barrie Hunter is really brilliant as McLean. The way he shouts and moves around in a stressed way is just like a football manager and he also does his personality really well. He’s aggressive but it’s like football is really really important to him even by usual football manager standards and there’s something in his performance that makes you respect him just like a lot of people respected the real McLean. I like the way he reacts emotionally to everything and tells all the old stories and sometimes there’s a bit of humour too which is good.

Chris Alexander plays Jimmy and all the other characters. He is really good at changing his accent and I like how Jimmy keeps trying to get into McLean’s head, like really challenging him.

Smile is a really good play. I think football fans would especially like it but it’s also about a human being so anyone who likes stuff like psychology might like it too.