Patrick Marber’s The Red Lion, a passionate and dramatic play about the love for the beautiful game, makes its Scottish premiere with a new tour in Glasgow this week.
Set in the dressing room of a semi-professional football club in the North of England, three men lives change over the course of the season as they become embroiled in a battle over loyalty, ambition and dirty dealings as a result of their dedication and love for their club and the game of football.
Yates (John McCardle) is a former legend for the Red Lions team and now spends his days as the kit-man after dedicating his life and soul to his club. Yates meets Jordan (Harry McMullen) who arrives at the club as a naieve young footballer with an incredible talent and a dodgy knee as a result of a vicious attack when he was younger.
Kidd (Brendan Charleson), the aggressive and restless club manager, is fighting a battle against his drowning debts and failing marriage as he struggles to stay on top. Kidd sees Jordan as his golden ticket to success and tries to manipulate him into a dodgy deal against the advice and guidance of Yates. Without giving too much of the plot away, the many twists and turns of the plot determines the future for these three characters as they navigate challenges and moral dilemmas that extend well beyond the pitch.
There is no interval in this short play as all of the action takes place in the single setting of the home dressing room. The passionate performances of all three actors on stage carry the plot along and keep the audience engaged despite the lack of action or change of scene. Charleson in particular delivers a stellar performance of an unlikeable and arrogant dodgy manager before showing a softer, emotional side which gathers empathy from the audience towards the finale. McMullen makes his professional stage debut in this performance and shows great promise.
Director Michael Emans believes that The Red Lion has powerful political connotations embedded in its sporting theme. “The Red Lion focuses on the ideological battle between two opposing views; the idea that the main purpose of a football club is to benefit its local community, and that a football club is a money-making machine, a platform for personal gain. This depiction of a clash between those who believe in the cultivation of a powerful, collective ethic and those who display raw, ruthless, individual ambition, represents for me a powerful symbol for an age that began with Thatcher and now seems to be approaching its zenith with Brexit”
While its appeal may lie more with die-hard football fans, it’s still an interesting watch for those with little knowledge of the game. Tickets are available from the Theatre Royal until 22nd June 2019.