Santino Smith

Moorcroft

24/10/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

It’s Garry (Martin Docherty)’s 50th birthday and he’s not in the mood for a celebration. Instead, he prefers to think back to his teenage years and the wee amateur football team he put together with his best friends in Renfrew. He warns us in advance, this isn’t going to be an easy ride…

He assembles his crew. For starters, there’s Mick (Jatinder Singh Randhawa), once a promising member of a junior football team, now plying his trade as a hairdresser. There’s Tubs (Dylan Wood), who is gay – and in a 1980s small town, that’s seriously difficult – and there’s Paul (Sean Connor), struggling to cope with an abusive, alcoholic father. Noodles (Santino Smith) appears to be the most successful of the crew, with a decent job and the money to pay for some fancy football shirts (but should they be that shade of maroon?). Sooty (Kyle Gardiner) is a dedicated mod with a fishtail parka and no higher ambition than to ‘do a Quadrophenia’ and ride his scooter to Brighton, while Mince (Bailey Newsome) has an uncanny propensity for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time… every time.

But from their very first training session, the teammates work well together. The go from strength to strength, finding pleasure in the simple joys of kicking a ball around a pitch. They are blissfully unaware that darker times are inexorably closing in on them.

Moorcroft, written and directed by Elidh Loan, is a fabulous slice of theatre, one that moves effortlessly through a whole series of emotions. It swerves from raucous hilarity to visceral anger to heartrending tragedy with all the sure-footed precision of a well-drilled team. There are superb performances from the entire cast – particularly from Newsome as the slow-witted but oddly adorable Mince – and I especially enjoy the physical sequences as the team leap, twirl and kick their way through a series of energetic routines backed by a selection of 80s bangers. Loan knows exactly when to switch the mood. One minute I’m laughing out loud, the next my eyes are filling with tears.

It would be so easy to dismiss this as ‘a play about football’ but it’s much more than that. Moorcroft is a meditation on masculinity, its strengths, its weaknesses. It’s a reflection on the everyday deprivation of working-class life, and it’s a lament about the awful injustice of fate. Compelling and propulsive throughout, it never once relaxes its powerful grip.

It shoots, it scores. It’s a winner.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

The Real Thing

 

 

Laurence Fox (as Henry). Dress Rehearsal of The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard (a co-production by Cambridge Arts Theatre with Theatre Royal Bath and Rose Theatre, Kingston). Cambridge Arts Theatre. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK. September 06, 2017. Photo: Edmond Terakopian
Laurence Fox (as Henry) and Flora Spencer-Longhurst (as Annie). Dress Rehearsal of The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard (a co-production by Cambridge Arts Theatre with Theatre Royal Bath and Rose Theatre, Kingston). Cambridge Arts Theatre. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK. September 06, 2017. Photo: Edmond Terakopian

25/10/17

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing is an arch examination of what we mean by ‘truth’ – in love, in life and, of course, in theatre. Despite the linguistic flourishes, however, the central premise – that reality is a shape-shifter, subject to narrative perspective – is pretty bluntly hammered home.

It starts well, with the initial confrontation between husband and wife slowly exposed as fiction: a scene from playwright Henry (Laurence Fox)’s House of Cards. The blurred lines between reality and fantasy are underscored by the revelation that Charlotte (Rebecca Johnson), the cheating wife in the first scene, is – in fact – married to Henry. Her on-stage husband, Max (Adam Jackson-Smith), visits with his real-life wife, Annie (Flora Spencer-Longhurst), and things are further complicated when we discover that Henry and Annie are having an affair. It’s the stuff that farce is made of, and it’s rather nicely done – even if it does at times seem a little too wordy and pleased with itself.

But I’m not sure we need the constant reinforcement of what is, at heart, a straightforward idea. Henry’s Desert Island Discs choices don’t reflect his real musical taste; Charlotte has never been a faithful wife. Brodie (Santino Smith), Annie’s ‘good-cause’, is not the wronged war hero she pretends he is. Most of Billy (Kit Young)’s dialogue is taken from ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore: he’s rehearsing with Annie; they’re acting the part. It’s all very meta, and interesting to watch, but it does seem to over-complicate an essentially simple premise.

Henry and Charlotte’s daughter, Debbie, is nicely played by Venice Van Someren, but I really don’t understand the character’s function. The role doesn’t add anything to the piece.

The performances are good: the play is dialogue-heavy, but the actors make the most of the sprightly humour, and the verbal jousting is entertaining throughout. Fox’s voice seems a little strained at times, but he plays the part with relish and, particularly in the second act, imbues Henry with real depth.

Stephen Unwin’s direction is clear and unfussy, each scene separated by a choreography of moving furniture, which serves to underline the theatricality. But I think perhaps more layers might have been unearthed had the actors multi-rolled, further calling into question the whole notion of reality. As it is, it’s all a bit one-note, and something of a missed opportunity.

3.8 stars

Susan Singfield