“A comedy with teeth.”1995's Blur vs Oasis 'Battle of Britpop' to be dramatised in a new play staged in London next year

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The intense rivalry between Blur and Oasis is to be revisited in a new play coming to London's West End next year.

Kill All Your Friends author John Niven, formerly Mogawai's A&R man during his time working in the UK music industry, has been commissioned to write The Battle, “a comedy with teeth”, according to an interview given to Deadline by the show's producer Simon Friend (The Life of Pi, The Father).

The animosity between Blur and Oasis peaked in the summer of 1995 when the two bands competed for the number one spot on the UK single's chart, after Blur frontman Damon Albarn persuaded his band's record label to tweak the release date of their Country House single so that it would go head-to-head with Oasis' Roll With It. Both singles were subsequently released on August 14, 1995, with the so-called 'Battle of Britpop' getting coverage on the national TV news and in broadsheet newspapers.

“Crazy stuff happened,” Friend tells Deadline. “You had couples breaking up over it, there was a lot of family strife and other crazy stuff. It was quite extraordinary just how deep into the zeitgeist it managed to reach that you had to be one or the other, you couldn’t be both, which to me, it feels like the subject of brilliant drama.”

Friend adds that there “seems to be a great nostalgia for the mid-90s right now”, a reference, no doubt, to the current excitement around the Oasis reunion tour scheduled for next summer.

Neither Blur nor Oasis will be working with Niven and Friend on the production. Deadline reports that negotiations are taking place with a prominent director for the play, and actors have been approached about portraying the Gallagher brothers and the members of Blur.

Artists

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.