Girls With Balls

Review by: Paul Towers, 05 May 2016

Gilrs With Balls by Ann Richards

Produced by Off The Fence Theatre, Daisy Morris, Roslyn Paterson, Ellen-Gayle Harewood & Johnny Kinch

Curve, Leicester 5 May 2016

“a very timely examination of  women’s role in society.”

It is entirely appropriate that Girls With Balls returns to its home city in the very week that Leicester City Football Club succeeded in clawing their way to the top of the Premier Division against all the odds.

This is yet another successfully touring production from Off The Fence, the resident theatre company at Upstairs at The Western, Leicester’s only pub theatre.

Inspired by Tim Tate’s book of the same name, which documents the rise and fall of women’s professional football from the late 1880’s until the FA banned it in 1921, this has three timelines which are used to illustrate the differing attitudes to women against the backdrop of  their participation in the beautiful game.

In 1921, just prior to the FA forbidding women participating in professional football, the three women in the cast are playing regularly and earning more money than their day jobs in the factories.

In modern time the restrictions had long been lifted and the girls play for the thrill of it. Nevertheless it provides them with a much needed respite from their home lives.

Months later and they find that they are being sidelined again as their sole football ground is being torn down by an unsympathetic local council. The girls decide to make a stand and chain themselves to the pavilion to prevent the demolition squad doing their worst. It is then that things spiral out of control.

A small cast of three women and one man play all the characters on a revolving changing room set. More often than not the characters change costume onstage to avoid emptiness.

Terrific acting from the entire cast had us laughing one minute and, in the case of one over exuberant audience member, rooting for a protagonist to get their just deserts the next.

Off The Fence’s resident artistic director, Gary Phillpott, steers the play confidently through the stormy waters of this very timely examination of  women’s role in society.

Girls With Balls is in the middle of a nationwide tour and full details of dates can be found at http://off-the-fence.com/

Upstairs at The Western http://upstairsatthewestern.com/

First published  on Western Gazette