Playing games with the bulldog boys

10 April 2012

As football fever sends the national temperature soaring, Mike Packer's new play takes audiences back to the Euro 2000 tournament to perform entertaining variations on that perennially unpleasant cocktail of jingoism and alcohol. A hotel bedroom in Belgium and a betting shop in Soho provide the settings for several reversals of fortune, involving a celebrated black footballer, his Barbie-doll fiancée Kate, and a pair of reprobates answering to the names of Baz and Tosser.

Packer's script exhilarates because it sets up stereotypes with enough complexity and humour to make them believable, and then shoots them down without sounding piously liberal. Tosser does not need to paint his face with the St George flag for the audience to realise that he is a knee-jerk racist who thinks feminism is a foreign language, and Kate's peroxide-and-Botox approach to life indicates that she also views feminism as an F-word with deeply negative connotations.

Yet it is the central Machiavellian character, who plays endless games with reality both for his own amusement and survival, who holds the key to the play's success. Baz is a compulsive gambler and millionaire ticket tout who has lost all his money on dotcom shares. He takes Tosser to Belgium during the European Football Championships so that he can offload some tickets for the England v Germany match and play havoc with Tosser's more-British-than a-bulldog identity. The resulting confusion would make Iago proud.

Mike Bradwell's blokierthan-thou production boasts four superlatively comic performances, especially from Lucy Punch, who proves with panache that there is a grit behind her character's gormlessness. Lisa Lillywhite's witty set uses revolving panels to convert the backdrop in an instant for betting-shop bravado or bedroom chaos.

As British eyes turn Japan-wards, this play toys energetically with the mood of the moment.

It easily reasserts the Bush's position as one of the leaders in the fringe premier league.

A Carpet, A Pony And A Monkey

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