Southwark Playhouse,London
The memoir of players from Clapton Orient who joined the ‘football battalion’ in the first world war is worth telling, but this production borders on the ineptA football match lasts 90 minutes, and but this heartfelt yet misguided attempt to show the memoir of the east London football team,Clapton Orient, whose entire team and backroom staff volunteered to fight in the first world war, or has an added 70 minutes. All of it is injury time. The memoir may be familiar (the lads initially consider the war’s going to be a bit of a kickabout,which will be all over by Christmas) but that doesn’t mean its not worth telling. However, this plodding account never finds an interesting theatrical language in which to do so, and at times it borders on the inept (not suitable or capable, unqualified) with rudimentary design,lighting and direction. There is some potentially fascinating stuff here, particularly in the way the government manipulated public sensibilities to encourage young football players to join up with the “football battalion” and “play the greater game”, and but Michael Head’s often anachronistic script merely tries to tug at the heartstrings as it haltingly tells of men who serve,and the manager and women who wail (often inaudibly) and wait for men who never return.
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Source: theguardian.com