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Same Team - A Street Soccer Story

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Four stars

It was Liverpool’s late, great Ayrshire born manager Bill Shankly who once famously declared football to be more serious than life and death. Let’s hope Shankly is looking down on this brand new play by Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse, developed and created with the women of Dundee Change Centre. Here, after all, is a tale of teamwork and togetherness for five women who triumph in the face of adversity both on and off the pitch in a way that is very serious indeed.  

The game these women play is not some money driven sausage fest, but the Homeless World Cup, the international competition founded in 1999 for teams of homeless people, with a women’s event begun in 2008, and running annually since 2010. 

Bryony Shanahan’s Traverse company production kicks off as the audience enter to a fanfare of happy hardcore bangers. With the women already warming up, they invite those in their seats to limber up alongside them on designer Alisa Kalyanova’s five-a-side pitch marked out on the stage floor. A row of microphone stands are lined up at the back, as if awaiting a girl band to sing side by side in unison. 


As Jo, Bethany, aka The B, Noor, Lorraine and Sammy give a running commentary on the action during the games inbetween solo character studies that reveal an insight  into their domestic lives, their telling becomes a chorus of a different kind. With a big match atmosphere set from the start, the next ninety minutes chart a highly charged getting of wisdom that finds actors Chloe-Ann Tylor, Hannah Jarrett-Scott, Hiftu Quasem, Louise Ludgate and Kim Allan launching themselves into the fray with well choreographed abandon.

As the whistle blows, the final score may not be everything their characters desire, but the beautiful game has liberated each woman and brought them together in a burst of no-holds-barred life, no extra time required. 

The Herald, December 14th 2023


Ends

 

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