GOLDEN BALLS. To 29 June.

London

GOLDEN BALLS
by Paul Pavitt and Jay Simpson

Old Red Lion To 29 June 2002
Tue-Sun 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS 020 7837 7816
Review Timothy Ramsden 25 June

It's the first rather than second word of the title that best applies in this football fan comedy.Football needs to be better than sex for Stu and Dave, as they spend three weeks of Euro '96 at Stu's place watching the games on TV, dispatching their wives to cohabit at Dave's. It's not the glorious liberation they expect. For the women, it's the time of their lives. It gets pretty good for the audience too.

Among the male mates, Dave has the worse time of it, his confidence swooping from Premiere League to Third Division as Stu's vulgarities unnerve him, his stomach's churned by an unwise take-away and the initially euphoric telephone betting goes bigtime sour. Stu, permanently untroubled by a self-reflecting thought, loses his job but survives better.

For the female friends, life begins with football. Wives and husbands reflect each other; Tone seeing the OK side of everything, Nicky echoing Dave's switchback emotions. Jane Arden's newly-educated Rita finds her feet and her mind in a job away from her husband's business. Arden brings her close to tragedy at Nicky's frozen post-tournament reunion with a Dave she's now totally outgrown. Neither willing nor able to cramp herself back into his life, she stands shocked and disgusted with the husband who's has blown all they have and more.

However laddish the women become as they score points for drinks blokes buy them in the pub and become football's newest fans, they have a sense of fun and purpose missing in the male household, Gannon giving Tone a smiling, reassuring attitude to life that repeatedly hints at sense, and sensitivity, underneath.

Maskell offers a doltish sympathy in Stu's defence, contrasting the initially attacking confidence in Jarvis's Dave, which sputters out as the bookies call full-time on his credit.

Alastair McGowan's enjoyable John Motson voiceover commentaries don't quite come off scriptwise, being too cutely relevant to the situation onstage, and usually kicking in a half-second too late. Maybe the authors try cramming in a few too many plot points. But these are minor matters; here's a fine comedy, in a well-paced production, already updated from its 1997 original and doubtless set to play for several tournaments yet to come.

Nicky: Jane Arden
Tone: Patricia Gannon
Dave: Rob Jarvis
Stu: Neil Maskell
The Voice of John Motson: Alastair McGowan

2002-06-26 08:38:50