The Nap - Jack O'Connell ! ! !

Saw the matinee today and it's one of the best and funniest plays I've seen. What made it such a great theatre experience was the audience. Often you hear actors talking about how a play is different with each performance or how the audience affect the playing and it sort of sounds pretentious. But with this, during the snooker scenes for example, if they miss a shot, it affects how they then respond to it. Likewise, during the match set in the Crucible, there were audience members cheering and heckling like in an actual snooker match and the characters responded likewise.
The cast are all on top form, the set is impressive, the jokes made me laugh like a drain, and the play has a gripping plot. Richard Wilson directed many of Bean's earlier plays (may of which were work plays) and The Nap goes back to that. There is something fascinating about watching the snooker and Dylan's preparation of the table.
If you can get up to Sheffield (a transfer wouldn't have the power that this production has in this theatre) then I definitely recommend The Nap.

The addition of a professional snooker player helps the play a lot. You completely get into the frame of snooker being played. John Astley creates an incredibly tense piece of theatre, which is great considering he's not an actor and doesn't say a word.

Traditionally in the UK, many theatres and other places of entertainment are closed on Good Friday which is the most solemn day of the Christian calendar. The National Theatre of Great Britain is also closed all day on Good Friday, as usual.

If I don't make it up to Sheffield, I wonder if this come down to London?

Would look great in the Donmar, except they don't take guest productions, or failing that the Dorfman?

Sooo... does that mean you happily accept the authenticity of Christmas, it's just Easter where you draw the line? Or did you just never notice that theatres don't open on Christmas day either?

Anyone that has been to the show... I'm going on tuesday and about to book a ticket, there are only a few seats left that face the front of the stage and they are back row. Am I better off in the back row facing the stage head on or would I be better off closer up with a side on view?

Thanks!

Thank you!

I loved this. It successfully combines the exaggerated comedy of "One Man 2 Guvnors," with a grounded emotional throughline that will serve as a tonic for those averse to pure schtick.

Jack O'Connell's Dylan Spokes is like a calm planet, around which the exaggerated characters revolve, grounded by his gravity to reality. That they constantly try to spin him off his axis is the source of the drama in the play, in that Spokes is a decent honourable sportsman, determined to play fair and not to cheat, while his mother, father and associates are affable reprobates. O'Connell's naturalism and solidity are reassuring and compelling, as the maelstrom of the plot swirls round his character.

Of the comedy characters, I particularly liked the delicious malapropisms of Louise Gold's transgender match fixer, Waxy Chuff (eg: quoting Polonius, "either a borrower or a lender be!"), and the insistent forgetfulness ("What was the name of that film with those grifters!?") of Mark Addy's loveable Bobby Spokes, Dylan's father, a man who uses 1000 words when 10 would suffice.

The play has a serious undertone, similar to Patrick Marber's "The Red Lion" in it's critique of corruption in sports, but lacks the hard edge and bitterness of that play, settling into the kind of raucous entertainment that would make for a massively successful populist British film, which is where I can see this going, ultimately.

Can this go on tour? Of course it can. With a camera televising the snooker action (which is quite limited in duration) from above onto a screen behind, this could play at any proscenium arch theatre. While it is true that one of the great attractions of staging it at The Crucible is the frisson of seeing real snooker played by John Astley (playing Dylan's rival, Duncan Ferryman), a real snooker player, in The Crucible, the home of snooker, the majority of snooker fans have only ever seen professional snooker on screens. The play even makes this point itself, when it talks of the 18 million fans who watched Steve "interesting" Davis get taken down by Dennis Taylor in the 1985 World Snooker Championship. How many of those 18 million ever saw a live game?

In fact, it would be far more reflective of the general public's relationship with snooker to televise the action on a screen, rather than ape the exclusive experience of the 980 people who actually watched the 1985 final live.

And for the London run, there are theatres such as Trafalgar Studios 1, where Row A would be able to see the top of a snooker table. Or maybe it could be staged at Kings Cross Station, like In the Heights, where you have that circus-like feeling of a ring-side event.

In any event, this play is too funny, with too many great comedic parts, for it not to do the rounds.

4 stars.

The Hexagon in Reading used to have a lot of snooker and has just started doing so again.

I watched the matinee yesterday, and thought it was well worth the trip to Sheffield. I thought it was very funny, if mostly in an obvious way, which going from he couple of other things I have seen by Richard Bean appears to be his style. The story and characters engaged and I even got gripped by the snooker, which I really didn't expect to happen.

Enjoyed the performance this afternoon and it was interesting to to see how they handle things when it doesn't quite go to plan.
I really can't see how this can successfully transfer, without a lot of re-writing as it is quite site specific.
I am at the moment staying in Hathersage which I doubt most people outside Yorkshire/Derbyshire will have heard of.

People including me have said including myself, that this would be good in the Dorfman, Donmar Warehouse and St James, which I agree with.

Failing that it would also look good in the large at the Southwark Playhouse and Park Theatre.

The St James has a hell of an audience rake doesn't it?