Bill Shankly show Red or Dead lured Peter Mullan back to stage

Peter Mullan in new play about Bill Shankly, Red or Dead.

He is one of the most celebrated Scottish managers in the history of football, credited with turning Liverpool FC into the huge club they are today.

Now, the influence of Bill Shankly is still resonating through the streets of Liverpool decades after his death, motivating one of Scotland’s great players to take one last turn on the front line.

Only this player isn’t on the pitch at Anfield, and the fans he’s playing to aren’t in the Kop.

Instead, he’s leading the charge in the theatre, reviving a facet of his life he’d turned his back on decades ago. And all to tell the story of the man from Glenbuck, Ayrshire.

“I was last on stage 30 years ago,” says Peter Mullan, one of the most successful film and TV actors the country has ever produced. “The money is brutal in theatre, and the only way you can afford to do it is if you’re young and have no responsibilities, or you’re a middle-class actor – which, sadly, I now am – with maybe a wee bit of money in the bank.”

It’s about much more than money, though. Having recently starred in the likes of streaming hits Lord Of The Rings, After The Party and Ozark, Peter’s not pleading poverty.

When director Phillip Breen first contacted Peter to ask if he was interested in his idea for a show about Shankly, based on an adaptation of David Peace’s novel Red Or Dead, it was to be staged as a seven-day Passion play performed around Liverpool and feature a huge community cast.

“But Covid happened and the money fell away,” says Peter, speaking to The Sunday Post backstage in a break from rehearsals at Liverpool’s Royal Court theatre, where the show opened this weekend. “When I got a message saying he was able to make it happen here and that the community cast was still involved, I wanted to work with all these people. He sent me the script, I loved it, and I was in.

“But I didn’t want to do it without the community involvement. When Shankly came along in football, it was part of a very patriarchal world. He came along with what he called his ‘socialistic ideas’ and saw the game as part of a collective. So if you’re going to do a play about Bill Shankly it has to be about the collective. If not, then it’s just a story about one individual man, and everything he stood for was against that.”

Liverpool's legendary manager Bill Shankly. — Liverpool’s legendary manager Bill Shankly.

Over 15 years in the Reds dugout, Ayrshireman Shankly rose to the pinnacle of club football, elevating Liverpool from the also-ran doldrums in the 1950s English Second Division to First Division champions, FA Cup winners and Uefa Cup winners. Together Shankly, Celtic’s Jock Stein and Manchester United’s Matt Busby were dubbed football’s Three Kings.

When Celtic won the European Cup in 1967, becoming the first non-Latin side to do so, he famously told Stein: “John, you’re immortal now.” Few would deny Shankly the same appraisal.

“He dragged this sleeping giant into the 20th Century and, like Stein and Busby, saw the bigger picture, that football was a world game,” says Peter. “Doing this play this way, we can see how he was a force that came into people’s lives, this club and this city.”

Mullan with fellow actors and the community cast as they perform Red Or Dead.

Red Or Dead would seem tailor made for a Glasgow run, albeit unlikely to feature Peter as lead. The star’s last stage turn was at Glasgow’s Tron in an adaptation of Janice Galloway’s novel The Trick Is To Keep Breathing.

Yet this isn’t the first time he’s acted in a football story on stage.

“I did The Celtic Story in 1988,” he says, recalling the influential Wildcat Theatre Company’s show to mark the club’s centenary with Dorothy Paul, Jimmy Logan and Davie McKay.

“It was no great play, but it was without doubt the greatest theatre experience I ever had, and not just because I am a Celtic fan, but because never before or since did I have a gig where you had a non-theatre football audience who reacted to the show the way they would react to the football. That blew me away.

“It will be interesting to see how the crowd reacts to this. This is more epic, more like Shakespeare in terms of the scale.”

Peter isn’t the only Scot telling Shankly’s story. Allison McKenzie plays the manager’s wife, Nessie, a role that requires as much singing as acting.

“There’s often an iconic woman behind every iconic man,” says Allison, known for TV roles in River City and Line Of Duty. “They say she was the first Wag, but she never saw herself that way.

“There’s a Shankly hotel here that reveres her as well as him. She was an iconic woman backing an iconic man managing an iconic team in an iconic city. A formidable woman.”

Bill Shankly says farewell to the Liverpool fans after his last game as manager in 1974.

Outlander’s Keith Fleming plays Jock Stein and also portrays a tragic figure at the club, Shankly’s fellow Ayrshireman Jimmy McInnes, who worked in an administrative role at Anfield.

“Jimmy hanged himself inside the stadium,” says Keith. “It’s a story there isn’t much information on because it was brushed under the carpet. Things like men’s mental health and suicide weren’t discussed in those days, but it had an impact on Shankly and it’s part of the story.”

For Liverpool fan Gordon Kennedy, star of Scots comedy classic Absolutely, taking the role of legendary former Manchester United manager Matt Busby “feels like playing the panto baddie. I’ve been looking forward to being heckled”.

Peter Mullan with Allison McKenzie, Keith Fleming and Gordon Kennedy.

Gordon managed to score tickets for the Kop for the first time in a break from rehearsals, and has learned even more about the enduring high regard for Shankly among the red half of this two-team city.

He says: “It’s not until you come and work in his city that you realise the impact he had. This is not just a football story – it’s a story of how this man saw the potential of a city through his sport and awakened it. It’s an extraordinary tale.”

Red Or Dead runs until April 19 at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre