Shay Mace
The whiff of aerosol fills the room as a spray paint can marks the outline of a football goal at the back of the stage. Robbie, sports-mad young Belfast boy, meets young GAA player Deren over a confusion about a pair of trainers. As it turns out, confusion is rife on this pitch in East Belfast, and the future of the sport, the country, these two young men, and Robbie’s sister Melissa, hang in the balance.
Philip Catherwood’s script set in an imagined future that sees a referendum about the unification of the island of Ireland is equal parts sensitive, playful, and often ebullient. It misses no beat in presenting these three young people as equally three-dimensional people, and spotlights the humanity in both sport, politics, and the intersection of the two. As the once football pitch becomes repurposed for Gaelic football in the overwhelmingly unionist East Belfast, questions of visibility and politics intertwine with coming-of-age visions of identity, and whether sport can be a valid career for these emerging players, whichever side of the debate they land on.
Robbie and Deren’s frequent chance meetings soon turn into a budding friendship, yet Robbie cannot shake the grip of his father’s campaigning against the arrival of Gaelic football in the area, something he sees as a sign of something deeper to come. It soon becomes apparent that Deren is facing a reckoning of his own identity, and younger Melissa desperately seeks a sense of her own self that is not defined by the men in her family. At the centre of their tos-and-fros, a great love of sport that frees them all from broader questions about their place in a society that none seem to see themselves consistently reflected in, yet feel so at home within at the same time.
Multiple debates and metaphors fling within the piece about the future of Belfast, from sectarian violence, the differing sports (to which Robbie quite hilariously cannot draw the difference between hurling and GAA) down to the difference in the Mr. Tayto characters in both respective parts of the island. All allow Catherwood to paint a vivid picture of a place firmly once again at a judgement point for its future. Melissa soon finds herself swirling into the world of GAA, drawn away from her father’s divisive activism and seeing all three driven towards a referendum that will define not only her future but that of an entire island – an island of families, friends, and sports fans all the same.
Joy bounces around the stage with the GAA ball, as Deren teaches the siblings how to play a sport that’s felt so alien to them. Physicality weaves its way into the narrative with purpose and is never overdone, with a stunning soundscape intersecting naturalistic scenes that are played with candour and refinement from the cast. James Grimm captures Robbie’s isolation and internal wrestling through arresting facial expressions and taught physicality, while Jake Douglas gives fervour and vitality to Deren, who is an instantly likeable character. While both young men are fraught, their on-stage chemistry fizzes and provides many laughs, alongside drama performed with a light touch.
Dión Di Maio’s Melissa steals the scene instantly with light quips and a teasing nature that brings both young men out of their shell and roots the whole situation in a young woman’s perspective, facing pressures of her own, while scheming over her dating life in a charming and greatly entertaining fashion. The piece intimately follows these characters while positioning the central debates firmly, and never abstracts the political questions at the core of the story from their lived realities.
Have no doubt, there is a real sense of levity at the heart of this show that platforms a great love for GAA, football, Belfast, Coming of Age nostalgia and all of the delights and difficulties that the convergences of those things bring. Bright, resonant, striking and joyful, lace up your boots and get down to The Pitch.
Recommended Drink: Join Melissa in swigging down a bottle of Buckfast after a long night of partying – zesty, caffeinated stuff.
You can catch The Pitch at Baby Grand at Pleasance Courtyard on August 5th – 31st from 14:00 (70mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Image Credit: Kinga Anna Dulka
Salvador Kent
Oli Fuller
