The Battle review – Britpop bickering and 90s nostalgia in Blur v Oasis comedy

2026-02-18 - 15:53

Birmingham Rep The bands that came to symbolise a divided nation compete to top the charts in John Niven’s jokey play but it is woefully short on drama Apparently, they did a lot of sitting about in 1995. They lounged in Alexandra Palace for the Brit awards when Damon Albarn was magnanimous in victory. They propped up the tables in the members’ area where Blur crashed an Oasis party to celebrate Some Might Say getting to No 1. They had deckchairs for Liam Gallagher to be interviewed, bar stools for hard-drinking pop stars to fall off, and fancy couches for Albarn and Justine Frischmann to splash their cash on. There might have been more, but a big chunk of Fly Davis’s set was obscured from my side of the theatre. So many chairs but so little drama. John Niven’s play alights on pop’s last great moment of cultural tension. Releasing singles in the same week, Oasis and Blur went into the ring, one representing the working-class north, the other the bourgeois south. Together, they were the flag-wavers of Britpop. In opposition, they symbolised a divided nation. The song that got to No 1 – Oasis’s Roll With It or Blur’s Country House – would define the country’s mood. Continue reading...