Sensibly, Alex Hill, a talented Brit, went to acting school at Chiswick and soon demonstrated a flair for writing and flamboyant acting with this cracker good show!

With the Euro 2020 Final fresh in his mind (when Italy beat England in a 3-2 penalty shoot-out!), Hill reimagines the life of football fanatic tragic Charlie Perry who brought English fans together for the biggest day in English football in 55 years by sticking a lit flare up his crack in Leicester Square. Which end you may well ask?

Hill concocts a fictional backstory of Perry’s football fanaticism since sixth form to the aforementioned big game - to a surprisingly elegiac epilogue.  Hill narrates and performs his story through Billy, a football weekend warrior who is taken down the highway to hooliganism by a mongrel warlord called Winegum, another of Hill’s characters.  Best though to keep your eye on Adam, Billy’s bestie from school days.

Against an emblematic backdrop of English ensigns, Billy bursts onto the scene with vim and vigour and is an instant celebrity for his fan flare.  Under the direction of Sean Turner, Hill’s Billy hoists himself around the stage taking us into cafes, pubs, his dad’s salon and even a matinee of Les Mis with girlfriend Daisy (where oddly he doesn’t have an ear piece to hear the play of the day’s game).  He seems too middle class to be a yob, but his transition into cult capture and manipulation is part of the story.  Billy increasingly brims with beer and copilots with coke - Hill does exuberance magnificently. The tribal rituals are seductive and fun… until they are not.   

Why I Stuck A Flare Up My Ar** For England won this year’s Holden Street Theatres Edinburgh Fringe Award which provides funding for the recipient to come to the Adelaide Fringe.  A great pick by Martha Lott.