Book by Ron Ferguson

Adapted by Gary McNair

Directed by James Brining

Review by Dominic Corr

The Lyceum

Football and the theatre are intrinsically linked. Think about it; the drama, the tension, the tears and team dynamics, the expensive pints and bathroom queues. And most teams have had their time switching the field for the boards; Oh When The Saints, Same Team, The Scaff, The Ghost of White Hart Lane, 1902, and the Tynecastle unofficial trilogy.

And now, it’s Cowdenbeath’s turn. No, really.

Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil continues (taken from the coalmines of Fife, and the unlikely name for the team) to prove that Scotland’s cultural identity is stitched together from emotional combinations. Adapted from Ron Ferguson’s book and directed with swagger and sentiment by Joe Douglas and adapted by Gary McNair, the production charts the intertwined histories of Cowdenbeath FC and the mining communities that sustained it, threaded by Sally – the daughter of a true-blue Cowdenbeath father; weaving pride, struggle and gallows humour into a story that feels both local and national.

The stage version reframes the memoir’s archival affection into a living, communal drama, following Sally’s return to Cowdenbeath after her father’s death, and using that personal grief as a lens on community, memory and the stubborn rituals that keep a town breathing. Sally isn’t happy to be back, at all. She’s got one thing to do; spread her dad’s ashes after a win at home. And if you know the team; it’s going to be a long season. And Dawn Steele delivers a defining performance, one which turns narration into an art, armed with comedy and heart. Nostalgia is infused in this gentle show with a clear‑eyed look at the costs of deindustrialisation, family, and it earns a strong reception craft and occasional theatrical daring.

The narrative spine is simple and effective, a temporary homecoming that becomes extra-time; as Steele arrives to a triggering effective Miners club in the 90s, Jessica Worrall’s design work gives the production its familiar architecture; you can smell the funeral sandwiches, the Bovril and pies. A few chairs and tables; some blue dressings, and a couple of grotty windows lit with an early morning glow – it’s welcoming, if haunting at the same time. It’s an echo chamber for Pippa Murphy’s sound scape, design threads in crowd noise, folk motifs and the distant mechanical thrum of industry, which shifts with a clarity that separates memory from Sally’s present, bathing recollection in Simon Wilkinson’s warmer lighting palette while exposing the present in cooler, harder tones.

Step by step, goal by goal, the production finds its emotional truth. While Steele anchors the evening with a performance that is both toughened and tender, a daughter who carries grief with a practical, sometimes wry, intelligence. Her narration is not merely expository, it is an act of reclamation, and Steele’s ability to move between humour and sorrow gives the show its moral centre. The scenes with her father, played with quiet authority by Barrie Hunter, are the production’s most affecting moments, a portrait of intergenerational love and the small cruelties of absence. Hunter’s presence is steady, his performance a reminder that the dead in these stories are not props but people whose lives ripple outward. But in the backdrop, up-stage at a piano, Ricky Ross’ songset in a quiet champion of the evening; threading the lines of lyric and spoken word.

Pacing is generally assured, though Brining’s show sometimes lingers in affectionate detail at the expense of sharper focus; despite covering two of Scotland’s most explosive subjects (our families, and our beloved game) it’s a subtle, gentle show. Gradually, the evening becomes a communal act of remembering and sentimentalising. It’s a show which, echoed by Hunter, is about championing hope, and how winning and losing, are second nature to experiencing life and family; community and club. It’s a beautiful show, about the beautiful game; a proper belter of a night, and one which turns those jaded memories into something special.

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