Theatre in Review: The Pass (La Mama ETC)

	Terry Bell. Photo: Andy Henderson

It's lonely at the top, especially if you're a closeted, self-loathing soccer star, a point made early and often in The Pass. First seen at the Royal Court in 2014 and filmed with Russell Tovey in 2016, John Donnelly's play is really a trilogy of sorts, catching Jason, its mixed-up protagonist, at three key points in his career. Each time, the news isn't good: Jason is a lost soul swathed in success, a poser so immersed in playing a role that he no longer knows himself. It's a tricky piece, irritating at first, then finding its stride in the middle before an only semi-satisfactory windup. In soccer terms, it's something of a draw.

The Pass comes out swinging, risking alienating the audience with a rude, noisy burst of laddish, loutish roughhousing. Teammates Jason and Ade, both seventeen, are in Bulgaria, the night before a match. Holed up in their hotel room, both have plenty of excess steam to blow off, which they do with competitive banter, sex talk (topics include penis sizes, amateur porn, and the definition of "succubus"), gay slurs, and trash talk. ("If Deano was a lolly he'd lick himself to death.") Jason taunts Ade, whose background is Nigerian, with blackface; Ade fights back with shaving cream. And, more than once, it looks like the television might get tossed out of the window.

It's a tall order to lead with a barrage of offensive behavior before establishing why these apparent hooligans might matter. So off-putting is this scene that it wasn't until later, going through the script, that I saw how carefully Donnelly seeds the action with plot points that bear fruit later. Among them is the importance of having an agent skilled at scrubbing scandalous stories from the media; another is the persistent rumor that Jason might be gay. This explains the homoerotic undertone in the room, especially when Jason and Ade get together in the shower for something other than washing up.

The second scene jumps ahead several years, to Spain, where Jason, now a star with a photogenic wife and kids, brings back to his room Lyndsey, a fetching "table dancer." (Call her a stripper at your own risk.) They're on a date, to be sure, but there's a cat-and-mouse quality to their flirting, and for good reason; each is pursuing an agenda and the question of who is in charge isn't easy to answer. This sequence, with its thriller undertones, is tautly written and tells you almost everything you need to know about Jason. (Among other things, we learn how he muscled Ade out of a career.) The finale unfolds several years later, when Jason, holed up in a deluxe suite, nursing a bad knee, summons Ade, retired from soccer and now the owner of a successful plumbing business, for a meeting that might be a settling of accounts, an elaborate humiliation, or a desperate attempt at getting back together.

In its best moments, The Pass is an acrid and authentic whiff of sports-world corruption focused on the tangle of lies in which Jason has enmeshed himself. For him, creating a sellable identity is as important as excelling at sport. As he tells Ashley, "I'm an athlete. A warrior. I go into battle every week in front of a baying mob. I sell millions in merchandise; I embody people's hopes and dreams." He adds, "No one decides who I am or what I do but me." Fair enough, if you don't mind ending up alone at night, with nobody to care about you.

Still, even with the running time of an average soccer match, The Pass arguably makes its case too extensively, stating and restating Jason's dilemma without arriving at a resolution. The dialogue, especially in the first scene, is dispiritingly crude, and Jason's contemptuous treatment of others becomes wearying. If Max Hunter's direction had more tension and crackle, we might not notice how often the script circles the same points. Also, the actors' heavy accents mean certain important bits of information are muffled. As far as this production goes, The Pass reads better than it plays.

To be sure, the actors have their successes. Matisse Ratron-Neal's soccer-god looks and casual, we're-just-having-a-laugh manner are ideal for Jason. Notice how in the first scene, he parades around the room, a towel carefully draped over his crotch, by way of arousing Ade's interest. Note, too, the hurt, stunned look when, in the third scene, Ade catches him in a lie, forcing him to recall the tenderness that once existed between them; his quietly snarled dismissal ("I can't really remember every detail to be completely honest") reveals a world of pain.

Terry Bell's Ade -- slim, excitable, and, early on, a little too eager to claim heterosexuality -- is a more interesting character, inhibited by his overtly Christian upbringing, disappointed in his sporting aspirations, yet ultimately building a substantial life for himself. So changed is he in the third scene that it's difficult to believe he would tolerate Jason's reckless attempt at reliving the past, aided by a moronic, boozing, celebrity-mad bellboy (Oliver Rowland-Jones, in the production's most overstated performance). The most striking turn belongs to Ino Badanjak's Lyndsey, who, in a rapidly unfolding situation, is, by turns, seductive, enraged, fearful, and ultimately complicit in a scheme designed to burnish Jason's image.

Seth Byrum's three-in-one scenic design plausibly evokes a series of very different hotel rooms, although the lengthy changeovers slow down the action. Cheyenne Sykes' lighting subtly casts a different tone for each scene. Amanda Roberge's costumes are solid, as are Megan Culley's sound design (including hits by Rachel Stevens and Franz Ferdinand), and Dwight Bellisimo's video, featuring films unspooling endlessly on the television.

It's not easy building a play around a character like Jason; more than once, I wondered how a specialist in anti-heroes, like Simon Gray (or even John Osborne) might have handled it. Also, the play is written for an audience immersed in UK soccer culture, which, even in this summer of World Cup madness, still seems a bit arcane. For most people, The Pass will succeed or fail based on whether they find Jason worth their time. Despite the accuracy of his portrait, I'm still not sure. --David Barbour