The Red Lion

by Patrick Marber

seen the the National Theatre (Dorfman) on 4 August 2015

The play is directed by Ian Rickson and features Daniel Mays as Kidd, Peter Wight as Yates and Calvin Kemba as Jordan. It is set in the dressing room of a football club. Kidd is the ambitious and slightly dodgy club manager, Yates a one-time player now reduced to managing the club's kit (washing and ironing), and Jordan a promising young player offered a contract with the club.

The three men are all passionate about football, but being totally different personalities, each brings different loyalties to the situation. Kidd regards Yates as a loser and an encumbrance, while Yates sees Kidd as the unacceptable modern face of football as a business instead of a vocation. Jordan wishes to behave in an ethical manner and bridles at Kidd's tactical instructions - yet he fails to disclose a crucial piece of information, naively expecting that playing well in an amateur club with no further ambition bypasses the issue. Since the other two (especially Kidd) see him as a candidate for a potentially lucrative transfer, a crisis rapidly engulfs all three.

In a bare and rather run-down set, with only three actors, a wealth of tension, aspiration, frustration and anger is revealed as the two older men battle for their vision of the game and hope to recruit the youngster to their own cause, without really telling him straightforwardly what is at stake. Marber is excellent at providing dialogue which uses the situation at hand to reveal many issues of personality, status and ambition, and the three actors rise to the challenge. The explosions of energy and anger are offset by scenes of mundane activity or quiet reminiscence, through which we come to realise how heavily invested the three men are in the club. Though sport as a metaphor for life is a well-worn idea, the play uses it with great skill to reveal their characters, their weaknesses and strengths alike.

Daniel Mays brings a cocky urgency to Kidd, his pent-up energy masking an emptiness that only the wiser Yates can perceive - but Yates has neither the strength nor the authority to help resolve the problem. Peter Wight's body language, a pitiable slumped stature from which he rarely asserts himself, conveys the shattered shell of an out-of-touch romantic. Calvin Kemba convincingly sows us a young man looking to his future from a bleak past.  But, for all their shared enthusiasm, the three men are ultimately alone with their demons, which have fairly wrecked the Red Lion club.