3 – 19 February
There have been relatively few plays about sport, but the best of them manage to transcend the drama of the individual game by focusing on the drama within.
If you think about football, it is likely that the image that springs to mind is one of the multi-billion-pound business of the Premiership, with players preening themselves on handsome carpets of emerald green turf while earning more in a week than the average fan in the crowd manages in several years. Patrick Marber’s The Red Lion does not inhabit that world, but concerns a local non-league semi-professional team scratching out an existence on a dreadful pitch. However, the passion generated by that club is just as powerful as by any of the big boys and the play is a microcosm of the tensions that exist when loyalty clashes with a higher calling.
The action focuses on just three individuals. Firstly, there is Yates, the kit man and club legend who has done every job in the club for fifty years, from playing to managing and now ironing the kit and placing out clean socks. David Lloyd, himself a former Bristol City FC match day announcer, exudes a world weariness combined with an on-going love for the beautiful game.
The magnificently manic potty-mouthed manager Jimmy Kidd has big ambitions closely aligned to his precarious domestic situation and bank balance. Joe Simms is superb as the would-be wheeler-dealer, sometimes aggressively going nose to nose and at others coming over all whimsical as he gushes lyrical odes to the skill he has just witnessed on the field.
The skill belongs to the gifted young player Jordan who has just wandered into the club and straight into the first team. Making his long-awaited professional debut, Thomas McGee exudes naivety combined with an inner steel arising from his firmly held religious convictions.
We learn that Kidd, although smitten by Jordan’s talent, is scheming to use him to further his own ambitions, while Yates dreams instead of him bringing the glory days back to the club. As for Jordan himself, well he just wants to play, but play within the rules; and just as long as the secret about his dodgy knee doesn’t come out.
Exploring the fallibilities hidden within each man, director Ed Viney captures the almost balletic conflict superbly as the three characters peel away each of their insecurities. Marber’s script veers from the brutally pugilistic to brilliantly poetic, mostly driven by Kidd’s salty and humorous polemics against the board, other teams, the groundsman and even his mobile phone provider.
James Helps’ marvellously evocative set fills the space with detail that demonstrates the utilitarian nature of the club, from the battered lockers to peeling paint and wonky pegs.
Timed at a suitably appropriate 90 minutes, the denouement reveals the true spirit of loss and pain that sometimes only a love of sport can produce. This is full throttle theatre, played with skill and precision and guaranteed to hit the back of the net.
★★★★★ Bryan J Mason 9th February 2022
