Taking one Liverpool football fan’s true tale as his end point, writer John Graham Davies has created a long, involved and hilarious shaggy dog story for Paul Duckworth to sprawl across this play of two halves. The fact of that tale, a drunken meeting with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi during the Liverpool versus AC Milan European Cup Final of 2005, allows Davies to unleash Kenny, a new flawed - but sound in all the important areas - working class anti-hero.
Duckworth has a ball with the material. His creation of Kenny is just the start. There are another 39 characters to portray as he relates Kenny’s lifelong love affair with Liverpool. There’s nothing slack here, either - the characterisations are kept clean and under control, each used with purpose, whether for comedy or the tragedy.
Mike Wight’s basic design, a near bare stage with video screen above, gives Duckworth it all to do. Although the specific video clips - of football highlights and news footage - provide both reference points for fans who remember such things and key signifiers for those new to the background.
Director Matt Rutter lays it out as a great, celebratory, working class, bash the rich piece of theatre which plays firmly to a football crowd - but also does enough to make itself relevant beyond. He allows it to wander a bit too far in the first half, but the tragedies of Heysel and Hillsborough are sensitively used to give the whole story more depth, while the working class perspective is well used too.
Thoughtful stuff with plenty to laugh about.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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