by Simon Block
Library Theatre Manchester 2007
Direction
★★★★ ‘A funny, thought-provoking and foul-mouthed exploration of loyalty, masculinity and the dwindling of ambition … directed by the very promising young director Simon Pittman’. (Manchester Evening News)
★★★★ ‘The small cast inhabit their roles with comfortable aplomb, delicately balancing the audience between understanding and pity … Director Simon Pittman displays a confident and restrained hand’. (Metro)
Programme Note:
‘Maybe it’s something they’re putting in the beer, but it seems men are self-destructing all over our stages’ (Sarah Hemming, Financial Times, September 1995).
First produced at the Royal Court Upstairs in 1995, Not A Game For Boys marks Simon Block’s professional debut as a playwright for the theatre. The play forged a place amongst a growing family of ‘boy’s plays’ emerging from the 1990’s and a new found fascination with the male psyche. As the 90’s gave birth to the Lad’s Mag culture, High Fidelity and Skinner and Badeal, we found Blokedom and Masculinity in crisis on the stage. Jez Butterworth, Naomi Wallace, Patrick Marber, David Eldridge all lead the way in this new strand of what has come to be know as in-yer-face-theatre.
Today we’re reviving the play and setting it in present day London, 12 years after the original production. We hope our production illuminates the themes of the nature of loyalty; the dwindling of ambition, and those things men don’t talk about, to be as resonant and contemporary as they were in the 1990’s. We join the team of table-tennis playing cab driver’s fighting relegation in their local tablet-tennis league; each man at a personal point of crisis in life and doing there best to find a way out the other side.
Further Reviews
‘The audience laughing raucously, loudly and often. This is popular comedy done well that doesn’t talk down to its audiences or short-change them with something simplistic and under-written … a very funny and entertaining night at the theatre’ (The British Theatre Guide)
★★★★★ ‘Director Simon Pittman maintains the dramatic tension throughout, and the excellent cast make their characters both credible and comic – the whole production is rich and satisfying. Tonight’s audience laughed from start to finish. This is a rarity well worth catching’. (UK Theatre Network)
‘Simon Pittman’s new production is a salutary corrective to the near-mythological status this abomination from ‘Cool Britannia’ has achieved … a trio of excellent performances’. (Plays International)
★★★★ ‘… brought up to date with some subtle production touches, provided courtesy of Simon Pittman … slick, yet unspectacular production skills and authentic acting … the brutal and blunt climax creeps upon you like a taxi at a T-junction’. (Entertainment Manchester)
*Nominated for Best Production and for Best Actor (the cast) in the Manchester Evening News Awards*