The Beautiful Game

This Andrew Lloyd-Webber/Ben Eton musical was new to me. I knew it dealt with the subject of football and religion in Belfast in the 1970’s but I was quite unaware of the main thrust of the story being the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’. This show has one of the grittiest librettos I think I have ever seen in a musical. The hatred, the bigotry, the violence all came through very strongly set against the game of football and a modern love story. WOW! 

The music was in turn, tuneful and melodic, raucous and repetitive, with only a few memorable tunes, "Gods Own Country" has been stuck in my brain all day today!  The fine orchestra played beautifully; well balanced and under the control of experienced MD Matt Tilke, there wasn’t a note out of place, plus a beautiful violin solo… well done. The minimalist scenery was masterful; everything looked right and slickly moved into place very cleverly. The lighting was spot on, creating necessary shadows and tension. The costumes were good, just as I remembered from the era. The Choreography, particularly in the ‘football match’ was cleverly designed with many of the moves balletic and ‘football’ at the same time.

The direction must have been difficult, many in the cast were relatively inexperienced but they managed to express the emotions required most of the time, although I doubt Daniel and Gregory had ever been drunk before! Visually some of the cast were too old to be 17/18 years old and this spoiled the illusion of the innocence of the footballers.           

The company was at its best when singing with movement and dance but some of the groupings on this large stage showed little imagination. The principals, overall, were talented and many showed great promise but there were times when the pace lagged because of slow cue pickup and slow entrances onto the stage. The sound engineer had a problem because although we could hear, the words were often distorted by poor delivery and too thick accents.

Holly McEleney was outstanding as Mary Maguire, her beautiful voice overwhelmed me with emotion particularly when singing unaccompanied. She is a fine actress with a good ‘ear’ for the Northern Irish accent … congratulations. Andy Heaven almost stole the show as Father O’Donnell; he gave an excellent all-round performance (and was lucky as he had most of the laughs). Ian Pring as Thomas Malloy, showed his fine acting and singing to great effect… he certainly frightened me with his determination and belief. Luke Hayes-Middleton although with a very pleasant singing voice, under played John Kelly, but this was probably reasonable with such strong characters around him. But from his early likable characterisation I found his conversion to the IRA unbelievable.

The story allowed for a little humour but mostly it was overridingly sad. The death of ‘Ginger’ was graphic and almost too painful to watch. I went home having enjoyed watching the production very much indeed, but it didn’t inspire me to ever want to be a part of it or even to see it again. I’m not against harrowing realistic live theatre, but I remember the 70’s and 80’s very well and the realism of some of the lines sent a shiver down my spine.

Well done to Weston for tackling this newly released show with complex music and thorny story which was never ever going to be easy and I know turned into a real challenge. But the low audience numbers told their own story.

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