Nothing but the football. The cast of Result. Photo credit: Greg Goodale
Play: Result
Theatre: Pleasance Theatre, Islington
Playwrights: Alex Clarke and Michael Clarke
Directors: Alex Clarke and Michael Clarke
Review by Joy Francis
Recent media coverage of the beautiful game continues to pick holes in its glamorous image, with young footballers on trial for rape or being demonised for demanding more money. What isn’t so readily under scrutiny are the mental health challenges facing young players.
Result tackles the taboo of mental health in football with style, humour and inventiveness. Set in a fictitious football academy for young talent, brash and sweary coach Carl (a hilarious Cameron Jack) gives a hard nose pep talk to a group of 18 year olds, now in their final year. “I’m not your dad. I’m not your mum. I’m your fucking coach.”
The pressure is on as they are at the end of the road to secure one of the few professional football contracts on offer. Pressure is also on the club to modernise, leading to the hasty appointment of Mark, (the charmingly geeky Richard James-Clarke) a PhD student sports psychologist, to work with the boys.
A fan of tennis, not football, Mark’s presence goes down like a ton of bricks with the young footballers, and he has to fight to win them (and the coach) over.
At the beginning of the play, the young footballers are nameless bodies, being drilled within an inch of their lives. As the play progresses we get to know these young men and their back stories.
Amiable goalie Titch (a sensitive Joel Phillimore) whose heart isn’t in it and who is consumed by homesickness. Cocky striker David (an intense Leon Tennant) who lives under the shadow of a recurring injury. Angry and temperamental Ashley (a menacing Zephryn Taitte), whose inability to control his anger puts his career at risk.
Solid and reliable Devs (an earnest Liam Steward-George) cannot bear to think of anything beyond a career in football while Stokey (a brilliant Paul Adeyefa) jokes his way through the whole experience.
The football industry’s cynicism, money-focus and absence of an emotional duty of care for its young gullible talent is shrewdly highlighted when a non-English speaking Japanese player Ichiro (Jules Chan) is parachuted in halfway through the final year to be considered as a striker.
These are young men who have been plucked from their working class communities, with little or no education, to work relentlessly for a dream that is largely out of reach. And with no plan B. When it is time to for the players to discover whether they have a future at the club, very little goes according to plan.
Poetry in motion. Titch (Joel Phillimore) is held aloft during one of the many balletic displays of football. Photo credit: Greg Goodale
Directors and writers Alex and Toby Clarke are clearly passionate about the game, but they aren’t afraid to show football’s shortcomings. By drawing attention to the biting antics of international striker Luis Suarez, which captured the headlines, to the lesser known fact that Liverpool veteran Steven Gerrard works with a sports psychologist, they clearly want to inspire change.
The set is all fake turf flanked by a convincing changing room, allowing us a fly on a wall position into the locker room banter – and moments of despair. Movement director Fionn Cox-Davies has to be commended for the dexterity, skill and effort of the actors in their balletic display of ambitious football moves in slow motion. All ably assisted by mood lighting from Pablo Fernandez Baz.
So finding out that Result is unfunded defies belief. Creatives, performers and partners were forced to club together to make the production happen with the help of crowdfunding. I took a diehard Liverpool football fan who is rarely sighted anywhere near a theatre. He was riveted from start to finish.
Based on the quality performances from the young cast and naturalistic direction, Result is a play worth making a bid for.
Result is at the Pleasance Theatre until 17 May 2015.