The Bench

This review was originally written for The Reviews Hub. See here for the original.

Translating sport onto the stage is a thankless task. It’s impossible to top the natural drama of last-gasp goals and underdog triumphs without veering into cliché. The Bench, which begins a month-long tour of northeast England this weekend, manages a discreet nod to the tradition with one plot device, but wisely ensures that the action takes place far away from the field.

Instead, we meet Premier League striker Adi (Jason Njoroge) on the bench of a park near his flashy but soulless apartment. Vicky (Hannah Marie Davis), single mum, carer for her own terminally ill mother, and possibly the only person in town who isn’t obsessed with the football team, strikes up an unlikely friendship with him. Poles apart, they find that their life stories bring more common ground than points of difference.

Author Jeff Brown is a well-known face from years of local TV sports coverage. In Adi, he draws on that experience to inform a portrait of a young man far from home and struggling to fit. But while football is the hook – and before the performance many in the audience were enthusiastically discussing Sunderland’s upcoming trip to Wembley – the game permeates the story without dominating.

Instead, Brown’s sensitive script explores the nature of home, friendship and loyalty. There’s a nod to the cast-iron resilience of the women of the northeast: Vicky’s once indomitable Mam, never seen, but memorably present: “You couldn’t knock her down with a stick.” The same spirit imbues one of the play’s two enduring relationships: best friend Becs (Abigail Lawson), a gossipy, giggly hairdresser, is unfailing supportive of Vicky; agent Mike (David Nellist) looks at Adi and sees ££££s for all concerned.

At first, it’s light-hearted. In act one, the blows are cushioned by humour: when Vicky hears her welfare payments are being stopped, the scene plays out in the manner of a Two Ronnies sketch, juxtaposing her phone call from the benefits officer with Adi’s agent boorishly cutting a deal. Nellist relishes the pantomime villain elements of his monstrous role as Mike, the amoral money man, and steals the first half of the show.

But The Bench is a game of two halves. Act two is, in effect, pared down to a two-hander as Davis and Njoroge explore the emotional core of the work. It’s intense, powerful stuff and the performance holds the audience rapt as the backstory unflinchingly unfolds. A fragile love story can blossom, unless Mike’s machinations rip the couple apart like studs down the back of a knee.

Opening night in Durham drew a standing ovation. The Bench packs a lot into a two-hour span: the play tackles racism, the plight of unpaid carers and the dismal state of social provision in the UK, while also making a nod towards inequality and the cesspit of social media. Perhaps, at times, it tries to do too much: like a team trying to score the perfect goal, it risks attempting one trick too many and passing up the opportunity. But at its best, as Davis and Njoroge flesh out their complex, sometimes unsympathetic stories, it is compelling viewing that invites deeper consideration of a raft of issues that are all-too-often swamped by a deluge of half-baked opinion.