Patrick Marber’s poignant and pertinent football changing room drama will transfer to Trafalgar Studios this Winter.
Based on Marber’s own personal experiences of lower-level football clubs, The Red Lion is set in the changing facilities of a Tyneside semi-professional team desperate to win.
Exploring contrasting ideas about loyalty, ambition and the will to win from the perspectives of three different generations – pre- and post-1980s England, and a youngster dealing with the fall out of a turbulent political landscape – the play centres on aspirations and obsessions beyond the pitch.
Director Max Roberts’ new version received a highly successful, sell-out run, at Live Theatre in Newcastle earlier this year, with the cast set to reprise their roles in London, comprising Stephen Tompkinson (Spamalot, West End), John Bolwer (Operation Elvis, RSC/Almeida) and Dean Bone (Vera, ITV).
Max Roberts, also Artistic Director of Live Theatre, comments, “Whilst the play is inherently accessible, full of salty dialogue and laugh out loud set pieces its lyrical qualities to my mind seem to be enhanced by the north-east vernacular brought vividly to life by Stephen Tompkinson, John Bowler and Dean Bone who also compellingly represent the characters emotional complexity.”
Patrick Marber added, “To an extent the play is dramatising something about England; that there is one strain of thought which is about community, tolerance and belonging, and there is another which represents a whole counter trajectory about what England could or should be; that England is a business.”
The Red Lion plays at Trafalgar Studios from Wednesday 1 November – Saturday 2 December.
You can book your tickets through the venue’s website.