By Barney Efthimiou
Why coming out remains offside
Two seventeen year olds, about to launch their professional football careers, against “a bunch of farmers”, find themselves sharing a hotel room in Bulgaria. Jason and Ade are determined to make the most of their big chance knowing that they are not only competing for their club but against each other too. Its dog eats dog in the world of football. Boys will be boys and at that age the testosterone courses through the body uncontrollably. Very quickly the crude banter and joshing turns sexual and as Jason – “I had a good education me” – demonstrates how Eskimos kiss, nose to nose, the lads get up close and personal. Jason, in a naked provocative pose, tells Ade he is going to take a shower.
John Donnelly’s new play The Pass (Royal Court) is a bold and compelling attempt to blow the whistle on football’s pathetic inability to come to terms with gay players. It captures the zeitgeist, the matter is a hot topic just now following German international Thomas Hitzlsperger’s coming out a couple of weeks ago. That he had to do it when his Premier League career was over is further evidence, if any was needed, that football still has still not grown up and lags behind sports such as rugby and cricket. Yet this about much more than football and is a damning indictment of modern day celebrity and the oft associated megalomania.
Six years later we see Jason in yet another swish hotel room. He has ‘made it’ while Ade’s career got kicked into touch. The trappings of success have gone to Jason’s head and a table dancer lures him into a ‘honey trap’ with a camera secretly hidden in her glossy pink designer bag. In a nice twist Donnelly exposes the media gluttony and foolishness when Jason reveals that she was in fact hired by his agent to demonstrate his red-blooded masculinity and desire for women (by now he is also married with a son) and thereby avoid any exposure of his real lust for a plentiful supply of young men. By now his psychotic nature, now imbued with ruthless arrogance has transformed into acute paranoia. Drink and drugs provide a temporary panacea.
Finally we see Jason on the verge of 30 (in nothing but underwear yet again – he spends most of the play in a state of semi-nakedness), old in football terms. Injuries and mental afflictions have taken their toll. He has invited Ade for a reunion – “I still think about what happened in that hotel room twelve years ago” – when they are interrupted by a chirpy, start-struck and apparently naive hotel bellhop who is “up for anything” which of course meets with Jason’s approval. Ade, who has now settled into life as a plumber with the love of his life Gary, is not amused. The three fellas have a bit of a fun, rolling back the years, but this time Jason ends up alone and desperate, a fate that has befallen so many obsessed with fame and fortune.
Donnelly knows the game well and from kick off writes with a clarity and passion that permeates through all the characters. Though whether he wishes us to sympathise with Jason or feel that he has reaped what he has sown is unclear. Nevertheless, it is riveting stuff with Russell Tovey giving an outstanding stamina-sapping performance in the lead role, moving from brash teenager into star player exuding conceit and contempt for those who do not share his hedonistic outlook. Gary Carr is touching and vulnerable as Ade hitting the right note to contrast Tovey’s narcissism. The cast are completed by Lisa McGrillis as the feisty and garrulous table dance while Nico Mirallegro delivers a fine comic turn as the laddish bellhop.
Director John Tiffany adopts the tactics of an attacking team keeping the play moving forward with great tempo and energy and the choreographed scene changes give the feeling of a training session leading into the next big match. Yet when the game is over we are left with the sobering thought that our national sport still applies the offside rule to gay players wanting to come out.
N.B. Note to members – the run is production is already sold out!
