David Stubbs on how the AFC Wimbledon story has been brought to the stage
Written by Matthew Couper, a local government arts officer and sometime stand-up comedian, A Fans’ Club is a modest theatrical undertaking but a worthy addition to that invidious yet strangely resilient genre – the football musical. It tells the story of a group of four Wimbledon fans who look on in passive astonishment as their beloved club is snatched from them by the seemingly larger, inevitable powers of commercial interest and dumped in Milton Keynes, their wishes ignored “like a tramp’s coat”. In the second act, however, moved by the spirit of the club that still lingers and pull together to form AFC Wimbledon. Commentating on this heroic turnaround are two “footballing Gods”, Hun-Batz and Hun-Choen, one of the play’s better devices, the “monkey twins” taken from Mayan mythology, who add both levity and a sense of the wider world of events.
