Director/designer Joseph Meighan’s set was of a realistic changing room in a modest-looking community football club, with plenty of little details everywhere such as sports equipment piled in a corner and pompoms hanging on a peg. Christine Mills’s sound design began with high-octane energy; and kept up a thumping array of modern pop tracks, many from Northern artistes, to punctuate the action. Mike Shaw had fun with the costumes, keeping the cast in a varying array of grotty-looking, sweaty sportswear - someone must have gone out and specially muddified all those socks – and then adding the smart green football shirts with the players’ nicknames stencilled on them. A lot of references were made to how bad the characters smelled: I almost wished naturalistic realism could have been carried to that extent.
In this story of five-a-side amateur football, a voiceover kept up the current scores earned by the four participating teams: Men City (filled with hot players), Lesbian Rovers (filled with excellent players), Trans United (filled with players who combined drunkenness with stilettos), and Barely Athletic (our protagonists.) The audience must have had a lot of football fans: they cheered or sighed with every announcement, depending on how well Barely Athletic were doing. And they did that too during the building love story, with a chorus of “Awws” when the first kiss was reached.
Beverley Stuart-Cole was the feisty, bossy team captain Viv, dividing her time between running her pub, rescuing her widowed brother-in-law Joe from loneliness, and giving out blunt notes to her usually mangled-looking team. Stuart-Cole was a seismic whirlwind, and a pleasure to watch.
Lewis Sewell regularly stole the scene as Beardy Geoff, the charming partygoing player who was forever behaving badly - particularly if it involved phone photos and a member of the opposition. As well as having a playfully lewd sense of comedy, Sewell’s sweet singing voice and guitar-playing also added to the production.
Sebastian Farrell had the quietly stoic role of Joe, the widower with the shirt stencilled “Token Straight.” He packed a lot of depth into a man of few words, and gave a performance of subtle detail.
Mason Lockwood was shyly awkward as young player Luke, who could never quite figure out which way the changing room door opened. This could have been a stock character, but Lockwood kept him real and believable, and then went into quite strong depth when the reveal scene occurred.
Dan Ellis was very strong as courting young player Danny. There was an elegant sensitivity to his performance, and a deep sense of romance. The reveal scene was quite powerfully underplayed, and the developments afterwards were quite moving.
Director Joseph Meighan had a very deft touch, and an eye
for fine detail, such as a running motif of characters spraying aerosols into
their armpits at pertinent points. Part of the production’s objective was to
de-stigmatise HIV. This is
a good production of a very enjoyable play. And the audience loved it.
Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 9.5.22
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