REVIEW - Red Pitch by Tyrell Williams @SohoPlace Theatre
How do you follow your dreams when basic decisions about your life are taken by the Government?
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Football is the national game in the UK. The sport of working class boys and girls which captures the national consciousness and reflects the nation’s mood like nothing else. The recent rise in politicians spouting far right rhetoric has been accompanied by a rise in racial abuse of football players at games and online. A minor creative re-interpretation of the England flag on a Nike football shirt led to a performative outpouring of faux fury from middle class right wing wobbleheads and the leaders of both political parties - who together possess less cojones than a neutered budgie.
What politicians, client journalists and TV talking heads never realise is that for many young people in Britain (and beyond) football represents hope. The sport has few barriers to entry, offers a way out of state enforced poverty and helps to build friendships, to understand teamwork and also serves as a platform for communication.
With Red Pitch, Tyrell Williams has written a play that uses football as its catalyst to examine social issues within society from a personal perspective. The characters are three teenage boys: Joey (Emeka Sesay), Bilal ( Kedar Williams -Stirling) and Omz (Francis Lovehall) who live on a council estate in an area of South London that is changing. And for ‘change’ read 'gentrification’. The chicken shop has become a Costa Coffee (note for non-UK readers - this is a BAD thing), and the physical world around the boys is being changed - or ‘redeveloped’.
The boys are black, two are Muslim, one is Christian and all three want to play football professionally which is why they meet on the concrete space surrounded by metal barriers where they can practice which is known as Red Pitch. There are rules to follow when they play football and roles that have developed as the boys have grown up. It is when these rules are challenged or the roles change that we start to get under the skin of the boys and find out who they really are.
The show is played in the round with the football pitch in the middle and starts with the characters inviting boys and girls from the audience up onstage to join them in a kick around. Grime and UK Rap tracks fuel the show, providing pre-show ignition and jumping up in various forms between the scenes. This creative choice is one of the many that keeps the show grounded and rather than being a tactic to shock pearl clutchers (see the breakdown of Skepta’s Shutdown) it sets the unique sensory scene for the piece. You know that you’re not in Theatreland-Kansas anymore when ‘Sprinter’ is they first track you here on taking your seat!
(Sound Designer Khalil Madovi put together this playlist from and inspired by the show: The Red Pitch Playlist)
Red Pitch takes us through a classic journey of characters wanting to achieve something, getting close to their objective, and then hitting a hurdle before there is a resolution. Underneath this simple structure, and because of it, we get to learn much more on both an individual and societal level.
The desire to become professional footballers is revealed as being about more than just earning money. It is also about having agency and being able to make choices because, when you live in social housing or you are not financially secure then decisions about how you live your life are in the hands of others.
When Omz is on the verge of screwing everything up we learn about the pressures he is facing: as well as being a boy he is a carer for his grandfather who may have dementia and suffers a fall while taking the stairs to their fifth floor flat because the lifts are not working. This would disrupt anyone’s life and state of mind - especially a 16 year old boy who is bringing himself up.
It helps us understand why Omz’ frustration manifests itself violently when Joey has a successful trial and is signed as a professional footballer by Queens Park Rangers. Omz is jealous of his friend’s success and he is happy for it too but he is also aware that Joey may now be able to escape while he remains trapped. As an audience we know that there is something else behind the boy’s anger, we know that he loves his friends like brothers and the actors play this darkness and confusion with heartbreaking depth.
This episode is one of many that bring to the stage important stories about British society today. The boys are all aware of what is happening around them but, as they are only 16 their perspective is limited. Writer Tyrell Williams and Director Daniel Bailey have spoken about ‘humanising communities that are spoken about when we discuss displacement of peoples’ and this play delivers on that statement. Bailey’s direction is energetic, focused and intelligent - he never lets the story become a series of statements and allows us to experience the peeling back of layers as the play develops.
Khalil Madovi’s sound design brings the noise of construction and gentrification ever closer. The boys notice the little things that identify their community disappearing (like the previously mentioned Chicken Shop and then the dry cleaners) and they have to work out how to get themselves rehoused somewhere else. And those of us who have never been at the mercy of local government when deciding where we live should stop and consider this. You live in a place, you know the people around you and you may have kids that go to the nearby school. Then you have to live somewhere else because your home and community is being sold from under your feet and you have no say or agency in the decision. You literally have to apply for a roof over your head and put yourself at the mercy of a system. And how have we allowed a system to develop in which a 16 year old boy is having to apply for a place to live for his grandfather?
The boys have no idea what it might cost to buy the flats they now live in once they are refurbished or rebuilt and sold commercially. Joey thinks they will be sold for around £400,000 each which some people might think that sounds reasonable for a London property. But for a 16 year old boy caring for his grandfather £400k is about as realistic as flying to the moon. However, the bigger questions raised in Red Pitch are ‘Why should he have to move anyway?’ and ‘Why are our public services so piss poor that the poorest communities who need the most help end up getting the least?’
Red Pitch is another incredible play produced by the multiple Olivier Award winning Bush Theatre. The venue is on an incredible run of success with plays that reflect and tell the stories of the community where it is based in West London.
Writer and Director Williams and Bailey have created a play that has taken something personal and specific and found the universal in it. Football is the metaphor and the catalyst for a play that teaches but never preaches. Friendship, community and youthful optimism are the roads that take us to the viewpoint where we see the effect that austerity and dogma has on our fellow citizens.
The actors playing the three friends combine movie star charisma with deep, emotional insight and powerful performances making you long to be back in your own childhood gang. These three young men have all enjoyed screen success in the UK and internationally and it speaks so much to the strength of Red Pitch that this trio of incredible actors chose to be a part of the play both at The Bush and now in the West End.
And in case you think that I left the theatre depressed about the state of the nation, let me assure you that I left feeling optimistic because if our nation (and world) is going to be in the hands of young people like Bilal, Joey and Omz then we have some wonderful times to look forward to!
Red Pitch runs at Soho Place until May 4th 2024
Book Tickets to Red Pitch here
The JasonWard Creative Substack is for readers like you. I really appreciate your time spent here and invite you to support my work by taking out a subscription. A paid subscription gives you access to exclusive content plus the entire archive of over 100 articles, reviews, interviews, podcasts and playlists all full of creative insight designed to help you develop your creative projects and practise.