sport
Veronica Lee
Adam Riches: Jimmy, Summerhall ★★★Adam Riches has long been famed as a performer who throws himself into his physical comedy – so much so that during the Fringe run of a previous comedy show he broke his leg. And now, with this one-man play he is on stage in tennis whites, running around and slamming down imaginary balls to a percussive soundtrack as he tells the story of Jimmy Connors, the self-proclaimed world's greatest tennis player.It's a fascinating story that even some keen tennis fans might not know. Connors retired at the age of 43, playing on well past his best days. But during Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Cricket has always been a lens through which to examine the legacy of the British Empire. In the 1930s, the infamous Bodyline series saw the new nation, Australia, stand up to its big brother’s bullying tactics. In the 1970s, the all-conquering West Indies team gave pride to the Windrush generation when they vanquished an England whose captain had promised to make them grovel. In the 2010s, the brash and bold Indian Premier League saw the world’s largest democracy flex its financial muscle as global power shifted eastwards. Kate Attwell’s 2019 play, Testmatch (receiving its UK Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When the first season of Drive to Survive launched on Netflix in 2019, it was greeted with suspicion by some in the Formula One paddock. But with its sixth season now up on Netflix, just ahead of next weekend’s 2024 season-opening race in Bahrain, the show can congratulate itself for having helped to bring about a revolution within Formula One.It’s credited with bringing the sport to vast new swathes of viewers, many of whom are female, and has enabled F1’s owners, the entertainment colossus Liberty Media, to achieve the holy grail of massive success in the USA.F1 has battled for decades to Read more ...
James Saynor
The Iron Claw is the sort of solid, mid-market Hollywood “programmer” that is often said to no longer exist on the big screen, and this family saga set in the world of Texas wrestling certainly has the feel of a museum piece. Many have warmed to it, perhaps for that nostalgic reason. American sports movies tend to do poorly in overseas markets, so it’s a little surprising that this one has the prominent involvement of BBC Film. It tells the true-ish story of Fritz and Doris Von Erich and four of their sons, who entertained the public with their tight-trunked slaprobatics in the 1970s and Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Just as Napoleon may be Ridley Scott’s most autobiographical subject, so motor-racing potentate Enzo Ferrari’s mastery of streamlined speed seems made for Michael Mann. But where his best films’ cool control accelerates into calibrated mayhem, Ferrari mostly stays underpowered.Mann focuses on four months in 1957, when his company’s survival hinges on Enzo (Adam Driver) attracting investment with a win at the Mille Miglia, a daunting thousand-mile race around Italy’s public roads, while his domestic double-life with wife Laura (Penélope Cruz, pictured below) and long-term secret mistress Lina Read more ...
James Saynor
For those who ever wonder if soccer scoreboards, or score-line captions on TV, can ever be made to reach three figures, consider the match between AS Adema and SO l’Emyrne, two teams in Madagascar, in 2002. It ended 149-0, but that was only because of an on-field protest. (They were all own goals.)A more shocking shellacking was a year earlier when American Samoa lost 31-0 to Australia in a World Cup Qualifier. It was the biggest loss in international football history, or possibly in school playground history, or possibly in back garden history against the dog – and is now the starting point Read more ...
David Kettle
You can keep your Cinderellas, your Aladdins, your wannabe Lord Mayors of London. The way forward with Christmas shows is clearly women’s football – more specifically, a Scottish five-a-side team that competes in the Homeless World Cup.You’ve got to hand it to Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre for the sheer audacity of presenting such a shamelessly un-Christmassy show as its… er… Christmas show. In fact, there’s plenty about Same Team – its sometimes distressing details of abuse, neglect and deprivation, for example, but also its gloriously rich lexicon of profanities – that makes is decidedly Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When they read the roll-call of British Formula One champions, the likes of Jackie Stewart, Graham and Damon Hill and Nigel Mansell tend to grab the spotlight, but Jenson Button’s dramatic and totally unexpected win in 2009 is every bit as worthy of celebration. It get its due here, in Disney’s hugely entertaining account of how Button, team boss Ross Brawn and his unfancied and underfunded squad defied the odds and provoked apoplexy among the F1 aristocracy.It’s a great story, though it undoubtedly helps if you have some interest in F1 to begin with, and it gains an extra jolt of horsepower Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
It was interesting, in the same week that the England football team trounced Italy 3-1 in a Euros qualifier, to see Dear England again, the National Theatre smash that has just embarked on a West End run at the Prince Edward Theatre.One of the three goals was a penalty scored by captain Harry Kane. England manager Gareth Southgate’s task of fixing the England team's woeful record on that score seems to be complete: England have overcome their fear of penalties. No England fan would be that confident, however, and James Graham’s play, among other things, spells out why. Buried under all Read more ...
David Kettle
Trojan Women, Festival Theatre ★★★★★You can feel the white-hot intensity radiating from the stage virtually from start to finish of this remarkable, hypnotic production from the National Changgeuk Company of Korea and Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen. Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise: the show has been around since 2016 and has already toured internationally to enormous acclaim, before stopping off for its three International Festival performances.But that’s not to detract from the sheer overwhelming power of Trojan Women. Ong has collided together the austere, ritualistic Korean Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Much of cricket comprises waiting – you wait on the boundary to hear news of the toss, you wait your turn to bat, you heed the call of your batting partner to wait to see if a run is on, you wait for the rain to stop. A friend once told me that he played cricket in order to make the rest of his life seem more interesting. There is something in that observation that would appeal to both principals in this play for sure.Two men bicker on the boundary as they wait their turn to bat. In at five and six, one is keeping score (and "working the telegraph", as cricket’s arcane argot has it), while Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"Is everything loss?" the great Oliver Ford Davies once asked on the National's Olivier stage, in the closing moment of David Hare's masterful Racing Demon. That question informs another masterful play, James Graham's Dear England, newly opened in the same space.This stirring portrait of Gareth Southgate (the remarkable Joseph Fiennes) and the England squad that he continues to lead takes the national temperature and finds it wedded to defeat; what's most remarkable is that the three-hour drama then dares to go the distance and insist upon hope because, well, what other choice have Read more ...