Cast

Synopsis

From the author of Hobson’s Choice.
1914 – The play is centred around a fictional football team, Blackton Rovers, their star player, Jack Metherell, and the family of club owner, Austin Whitworth. The club is on the brink of financial ruin and its pampered star player is having girlfriend problems. Fans are fretful as the chairman considers a controversial plan to bring in much-needed cash to balance the books.
A comic and dramatic tale about love, honour, class and football – lively characters and something for everyone.

Directors Notes

I saw The Game at Dean Clough in Halifax in 2010, performed by the fantastic theatrical company that is Northern Broadsides. I was immediately taken with the play. Not only is it a brilliant northern comedy about love, honour, class, stubbornness and pride but it is also so prescient. Here is a story about a football club facing financial ruin, a less than honest chairman selling his star player to balance the books, the player himself, supremely confident in his own ability and a wannabe Wagg bathing in his reflected glory. This could have been a story from last week’s tabloids. The fact that it was written a year short of a century ago says much about the quality of author.

Most people will know of Harold Brighouse for his most famous work, Hobson’s Choice, itself a great comedy immortalised for many by David Lean’s film production of 1953 starring Charles Laughton as the curmudgeonly shoe shop owner who ends up getting his own particular ‘Hobson’s Choice’. Very few will have heard of The Game prior to the Broadsides production. In fact Barrie Rutter claims he had to go to Canada to find a copy of the script. It is a great shame that the play went unperformed for many years due largely to scathing and dismissive reviews from London papers who snobbishly thought the whole subject of football as the basis for a play was of no interest to their southern readers.

However, BLT have now joined in its revival and I hope that we can do some justice to this delightful story as a tribute to Mr Brighouse himself. I have had a brilliant cast who have been responsible for bringing the tale to life and I am delighted to have had such a broad mix of old and new members, past and present Kaleidoscope members and those we are welcoming back to the Bingley stage. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with them all over the past few weeks. But, as always, the actors are only part of the team. They have been supported by an equally talented and dedicated backstage crew. When I presented my set design to Godfrey Elliott in the workshop he raised his eyebrows in near incredulity and for a minute I thought I was in for a very hard time but almost immediately he started working out how my ‘outlandish’ plan could work and he and the team have been brilliant. In fact, at time of writing we have three weeks to go to curtain up and the set is complete. Amazing.It just remains for me to say that I hope you enjoy our production tonight and if you do please pass on the word so we can have full houses all week.