Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil review – a daughter waits to fulfil her football fan father’s final wish

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
Dawn Steele stars in Ron Ferguson’s warm-hearted tale of a town whose fortunes are tied to those of its coal mine and local team

Black diamonds are what they used to dig up from the Fife coalfields. The Blue Brazil is the unlikely nickname of Cowdenbeath football club. Together, in the 1993 book by Ron Ferguson, they represent the bittersweet hopes of a downtrodden town: the coal that brought work, fatal accidents and unemployment; the team that brought moments of joy and a litany of loss. You would call it a triumph of the underdog, except this team never triumphs.

“Some things are more important than winning,” is the catchphrase of the ex-miner and diehard Cowdenbeath fan (Barrie Hunter) who haunts this warm-hearted adaptation by Gary McNair, first aired as an audio drama in 2021. More important, the playwright would argue, is a sense of community, of shared experience, of learning not to be defeated by pit closures, job losses, relegation and death. It is about “how to lose and keep going with hope”.