After two acclaimed sold-out runs at the Bush Theatre and collecting numerous awards, Red Pitch now reaches the West End still fizzing with energy.
The play had its origins in a much shorter piece that Tyrell Williams wrote in response to finding that the the aged concrete pitch on the Aylesbury Estate in South London where he played as a lad had been built over.
Red Pitch is set on just such a pitch: @sohoplace’s in-the-round (or rather “in-the-square”) stage marked out with its lines and surrounded by a red-painted wire fence to suggest the one that enclosed it. Here its protagonists, three mid-teenage youngsters who have grown up together and all dream of becoming professional soccer players, meet to play the game, train, dream and socialise.
On the surface, this is a play about football, for they are obsessed by the game, but you don’t have to be to enjoy Red Pitch. I’m not: as a kid I was taken to see local team Aston Villa play; standing on the terraces, I could hardly see anything. I’ve never been to a match since, but actors Frances Lovehall as Omz, Kedar Williams-Stirling as Bilal, Emeka Sesay as Joey and Daniel Bailey’s production held me completely, even though authentic accents and delivery sometimes ran counter to clarity.
Indulging in ball play before the play proper starts, it is clear this cast have soccer skills, and they are totally convincing in creating that mixture of mutual support and friendly competition of mates who have known each other a long time.
Two of these young men are Muslim, one Christian; religion doesn't divide them, but there are clear differences between them. Despite their brave fronts, the way Bilal and Omz massage hands tucked under their sweatshirts betrays their insecurities. Joey seems much more confident and more grounded; he has alternative plans if a football future doesn’t work out. They are all up for a trial with QPR, and Bilal, who keeps filming himself for YouTube, is banking on succeeding. Omz is particularly vulnerable and more immediately concerned with the problems of his ailing 81-year-old grandad with whom he and his younger brother live on the fifth floor of a block where the lift isn’t working. Will things be get better when the neighbourhood redevelopment reaches them?
This is as much about the effects of redevelopment, gentrification and the breaking up of communities as it is about football. The sound of the bulldozers is getting ever closer.
Throughout its 80- to 90-minute playing time (no interval), this is an intensely physical piece, though the dialogue flows with the same skill as the ball passes between them. Their comic timing is spot on, and Red Pitch has lots of laughs. There is a beautifully choreographed fight (directed by Kev McCurdy) that looks really hurtful, and sequences of flashbulb-lit near ballet (movement by Gabriele Nimo) interspersed between scenes present us with their dreams of a football future.
This is a production in which all the elements are beautifully woven together. Even altered elements in Amelia Jane Hankin’s costumes seem subtly to echo the changes of balance between the three characters who are given stunning performances working beautifully together.