One side are ‘badger-stranglers’ from Gunchester. The other eat ‘rice with Bovril’. It’s summer 1995, and in the greatest battle between bands in 30 years, Oasis and Blur are in a race to the top for UK Number One Single. In a technicolour bombshell of beats, beatings, and booze, this week at the Opera House, ‘The Battle’ is on.
What begins as a bitter Brit Awards rivalry quickly descends into all-out war when second-place Oasis announce their next single will land a week before Blur’s. Dressed-down, and proudly, aggressively Northern, the working-class Oasis are the rock star shadow of Blur’s Southern, middle-class ‘problem drinker musicians’, who are now facing a looming CD-sale crisis. With the threat of being overshadowed by their ‘Gunchester’ rivals, Blur brings forward their release date, and in a blaring rush of bombshell interviews, packaging crises, and fizzing, electric resentment, the Battle of Britpop explodes into being.
Straight from the mind of John Niven and expertly directed by Matthew Dunster, ‘The Battle’ is a grinning two fingers after Oasis’ grand reunion last summer, and a welcome throwback to a moment in music we’re unlikely to witness again. Part biography, part drama, and total comedy from beginning to end, ‘The Battle’ wades through the six weeks leading up to Oasis and Blur’s joint release date in a retelling as razor-sharp as it is mischievously neutral to both sides. Ahead of ‘The Battle’s’ opening night, Niven knew he’d be faced with the “stupid question” on everyone’s minds, to which he said simply: “It’s music, not football. You don’t have to pick a team. [And] if you can’t get the beauty in all that stuff, I don’t know what to tell you.”
In a story where both sides are as hilariously trash-talking as the other, Paddy Stafford is a standout act as the swaggering, tongue-gnashing Noel Gallagher. Explosively offensive and raucously witty, the boy from Burnage dominates his every scene, and is a magnetic watch from beginning to end. Mathew Horne (Gavin and Stacey, Bad Education) as Blur’s Andy Ross is a manager forever teetering on the edge, and Will Taylor as Graham Coxon drunkenly staggers his way to crowd favourite by the show’s finale.
Beyond four-letter outbursts and swigs of spirits, all that plunges the bands further into rivalry is the rumour-mill frenzy of the press – a fact poked at between scenes with the use of real radio clips from the era. Between dizzying bursts of music video, real presenters including Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq are reduced to slapdash cartoons that bathe the stage, in a move as comical as it is tongue-in-cheek. A brilliant way to sneak extra time for building the more inventive stage setups.
In its retelling of ‘mostly real events’ in the Oasis-Blur clash, ‘The Battle’ isn’t afraid to go beyond the limits of history to possibilities more exciting. With the show dicing up a sparkling line of wit and anxiety, it’s inevitable there’ll be a finale that hits hard. In a pinball frenzy of scenes from melodramatic to bizarre, ‘The Battle’ at last explodes into its own identity as a performance that stands on its own two feet. Far from a play-by-play of history, this is a show for the nineties teens who, in that fateful August in 1995, saw the war between Oasis and Blur and bought a CD from both. A real trick shot of a performance.
The Battle is at The Opera House, Manchester from 17-21 March 2026