There’s something reassuringly "classy" about this production of Patrick Marber's The Red Lion, now touring Scotland for the first time courtesy of Glasgow-based Rapture Theatre. Frances Collier's set (presenting the home changing room of a semi-professional football club in the North of England) is solidly "realistic" while still teasing us with little pieces of theatricality, aided immensely by Mark Doubleday's lighting which perfectly creates distinctive noon/dusk/night settings for the play’s three scenes.
Nominally, Marber's 2015 drama is about football, but from early on it's clearly about far more.
Under Michael Emans' focused direction, the cast are undoubtedly in a class above what might be expected of a production touring generally small venues in central Scotland. John McArdle and Brendan Charleston, unsurprisingly for anyone who has seen them before on stage, are superb as, respectively, kit-man Yates, full of weariness and hard-earned wisdom, and the team manager Kidd, the brittle personification of low-rent show-business. Between them is the most pleasant surprise: 2018 LAMDA graduate Harry McMullen, who more than holds his own against two experienced performers, creating in protege Jordan a strong yet fickle persona.
Nominally, Marber's 2015 drama is about football, but from early on it's clearly about far more; a state-of-the-nation drama exploring the Thatcher-esque conflict over whether or not aspects of our culture can simply be bought and sold for hard cash. When Yates, a former player and a part of the team all his life, is finally goaded into explaining why he hates Kidd, he insists its because the manager doesn't love the club, dismissive of the many volunteers who tend the grounds and keep the whole enterprise going. The worst: "You don’t even love the Game."
Kidd does love the game, even if he sees the Club first and foremost as a business that can advance his personal prospects... what he hates most is being considered an amateur. Jordan, despite his self-declared Christian principles against lying, keeps a secret from both men which ultimately brings all three of their careers in the Club crashing down. Yates's, meantime, for all his talk of team loyalty and tradition (going right back to him, as a baby, being washed in the changing room sink) seems almost infatuated with Jordan's talent and what it could mean to him personally.
Marber’s characters are subtle, multi-layered and revealed as much more heightened than you'd expect; in that respect there's absolutely nothing to complain about. Where I have my own doubts (non-football fan that I am) is that the play sometimes feels as if it's more about the specifics of football than it needs to be. Given the potential that can be found in dramatic conflict between community and individualism, that feels something of a disappointment.
