Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads
By Roy Williams
7th to 11th November 2006
As we took our seats, the tone of the evening was set by football commentary persisting in the background and a mass of St. George flags draped across the set. This gave the impression of a local pub with the intimacy of the New Wolsey theatre adding to the feel of involvement in the production.
The play focused on a local pub football team watching the England v. Germany football match, the last at Wembley Stadium. However it soon becomes evident that there is more to this story than meets the eye, with the introduction to the audience of the main characters of the play that are nonchalantly racist, although this seemed to be without understanding.
The clever writing of Roy Williams drew the audience into a divided community where race and nationality define you and created a believable working class setting. As the plot develops and then action shifts from a somewhat tedious amount of football discussion to the politics of racism the play finally picks up to a climax of somewhat awkward choreography but of significant, thought provoking , contrary racial views.
This play addresses important contemporary racial issues however the added football element seemed somewhat labored and these parts of the play seemed to lull significantly. There were some strong performances from Tim Treloar playing Lawrie a violent, troubled, and angry individual, traits that became more evident as the drink flowed more freely. Also Mark Moneroe as Mark played a very subtle and consistent performance with tremendous presence. We must warn those easily offended and the younger theatre goers amongst you that there is a lot of swearing of varied degrees and some brief unsuitable sexual content mixed with some very heated and uncensored debate regarding nationality and race.
Although at times the play was demanding it certainly left us with a lot of food for thought, not a play for everyone but certainly one that gets its message across.
|