REVIEW
✭✭✭✭☆ 4/5
The Red Lion
Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch
Billet Lane
Hornchurch |
RM11 1QT
✭✭✭✭☆ 4/5
The Red Lion
Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch
Billet Lane
Hornchurch |
RM11 1QT
Football is not all it’s cracked up to be
Patrick Marber’s play, the Red Lion, shows that what is known as the ‘Beautiful Game’ is really a dirty business. He uses the world of small time football to explore issues of trust, loyalty and betrayal. The team spirit contrasts with individual ambition, using football as a metaphor for life.
The Red Lions, a semi-professional team have been having a successful season under their manager Kidd. A brilliant portrayal of the foul-mouthed wheeler-dealer by Alastair Natkiel, who dominates the stage. He moves around with restless energy. Natkiel is ably supported by Crispin Letts as the older, disillusioned, Yates. A man who once managed the team, but failed and, after a breakdown found a role as a Kit Man. The two men are contrasting individuals. One the ambitious manager, using success of the team as his gateway to moving onwards and upwards. The other championing the players and devoting his life to the team.
Into this mix arrives a young player Jordan, an excellent performance by Olatunji Ayofe. He starts as the naïve, and quietly spoken young man who gradually reveals his true self and, becomes a pawn between the two men. Initially, Jordan has Christian values and a moral outlook that is alien to the manager. When Kidd advises him how to feign injury, and dive in the penalty box, he refuses to cheat, wanting only to play a decent game. However, he has his own agenda and a tendency to violence when provoked.
Yates takes the young player under his wing and cultivates him at the expense of the manager. Meanwhile, Kidd under the pretence of enjoying Jordan’s success for the team is quietly slipping him back handers. At the same time, trying to put him under contract to sell him on, thus earning a kickback from the transfer fee. Yates, betraying their friendship, circumvents this.
This production takes place in a football changing room and the three strong actors dominate the stage circling each other, like tigers in a cage. It is about the emotional drive between players and managers and the perception of betrayal as relationships fall apart.
In what could be a static, talking heads play, there is a lot of movement. Yates spends a lot of time ironing, hanging up shirts, clearing rubbish, giving Jordan a rub down. Kidd comes and goes having showers dressing and undressing whilst he ridicules the unpaid volunteers who maintain the pitch etc.
The set excellently conveys a football changing room with the hanging clothes pegs, high windows and even a working tap in a butler sink, which is in constant use. The passing of time is indicated by backstage staff collecting and delivering kit in laundry baskets. All the while accompanied by what appears to be choral music or a dramatic thud of evocative sound. Maybe denoting that football is a religion and there is something of a cathedral in a changing room.
This play has humour, conflict and drama. Award winning playwright, Marber, shows the desperation of young players longing for stardom, and the men who want success, by hanging on the players’ coat tails.
The director Douglas Rintoul should be complimented on making a three hander an amusing and interesting watch. As someone once said, football isn’t about life and death, it is more important than that.
Review - Jacquee Storozynski-Toll
The play continues :–
Thurs – Saturday 28 -30 September Thurs & Sat Mat 2.30 – evenings 7.30 p.m.
Box Office -01708 443333
www.queens-theatre.co.uk/whatson/the-red-lion/
The Red Lions, a semi-professional team have been having a successful season under their manager Kidd. A brilliant portrayal of the foul-mouthed wheeler-dealer by Alastair Natkiel, who dominates the stage. He moves around with restless energy. Natkiel is ably supported by Crispin Letts as the older, disillusioned, Yates. A man who once managed the team, but failed and, after a breakdown found a role as a Kit Man. The two men are contrasting individuals. One the ambitious manager, using success of the team as his gateway to moving onwards and upwards. The other championing the players and devoting his life to the team.
Into this mix arrives a young player Jordan, an excellent performance by Olatunji Ayofe. He starts as the naïve, and quietly spoken young man who gradually reveals his true self and, becomes a pawn between the two men. Initially, Jordan has Christian values and a moral outlook that is alien to the manager. When Kidd advises him how to feign injury, and dive in the penalty box, he refuses to cheat, wanting only to play a decent game. However, he has his own agenda and a tendency to violence when provoked.
Yates takes the young player under his wing and cultivates him at the expense of the manager. Meanwhile, Kidd under the pretence of enjoying Jordan’s success for the team is quietly slipping him back handers. At the same time, trying to put him under contract to sell him on, thus earning a kickback from the transfer fee. Yates, betraying their friendship, circumvents this.
This production takes place in a football changing room and the three strong actors dominate the stage circling each other, like tigers in a cage. It is about the emotional drive between players and managers and the perception of betrayal as relationships fall apart.
In what could be a static, talking heads play, there is a lot of movement. Yates spends a lot of time ironing, hanging up shirts, clearing rubbish, giving Jordan a rub down. Kidd comes and goes having showers dressing and undressing whilst he ridicules the unpaid volunteers who maintain the pitch etc.
The set excellently conveys a football changing room with the hanging clothes pegs, high windows and even a working tap in a butler sink, which is in constant use. The passing of time is indicated by backstage staff collecting and delivering kit in laundry baskets. All the while accompanied by what appears to be choral music or a dramatic thud of evocative sound. Maybe denoting that football is a religion and there is something of a cathedral in a changing room.
This play has humour, conflict and drama. Award winning playwright, Marber, shows the desperation of young players longing for stardom, and the men who want success, by hanging on the players’ coat tails.
The director Douglas Rintoul should be complimented on making a three hander an amusing and interesting watch. As someone once said, football isn’t about life and death, it is more important than that.
Review - Jacquee Storozynski-Toll
The play continues :–
Thurs – Saturday 28 -30 September Thurs & Sat Mat 2.30 – evenings 7.30 p.m.
Box Office -01708 443333
www.queens-theatre.co.uk/whatson/the-red-lion/