Theatre review: King James

After being very disappointing in 2023, Hampstead Theatre has been getting back into my good books this year, and a strong autumn season continues with King James. Hot on the heels of the Guards at the Taj revival, Rajiv Joseph gives us another two-hander about a platonic male friendship, although while this one also reaches a crisis it's a mercifully bloodless one. We also get to see the relationship right from its inception, as it begins in the Cleveland wine bar where Matt (Sam Mitchell) works. His wages there certainly don't cover the amount of debt he's in, because he's having to sell the remaining games on his season ticket for the local basketball team, the Cavaliers, seats he and his father have sat in all his life. What makes it particularly heartbreaking is that this is the 2003-4 season, in which after decades without any silverware the team has signed teenager LeBron James, a player who went on to become so famous even a British audience is likely to have heard of him, even if we couldn't tell you his full history with the "Cavs."

That history plays out in the background of the story over the next couple of decades, as Matt lucks out with the buyer: Aspiring writer Shawn (Enyi Okoronkwo) has never been able to afford to watch a game live but after selling a short story he can finally treat himself.

But the tickets come in a pair and Shawn never thought who he'd take with him or what to do when he gets there - fortunately there's someone right there who knows all the tricks of the trade, and will be able to carry on his family tradition if Shawn invites him along. These trips to games together begin a genuine friendship, which we next see seven years later when James, after years as a big fish in a small pond, has announced he'll be moving to an all-star Miami team where he actually stands a chance of winning the NBA championship. The friends echo the city's disappointment both at him leaving, and at what they see as the crass announcement of it via a TV special.

The remaining two scenes coincide with the announcement that James would return to Cleveland in 2014 as he thought he could finally bring the title home to the Cavs; and the aftermath of him finally making good on that promise in 2016. In the process Matt and Shawn have various reversals of their personal fortunes, but except for the third scene their stories rarely cover explosive events in their personal lives, only how they're expressed through the ups and downs of their sports fandom.

That's ultimately the strength of Alice Hamilton's production, which initially feels a bit throwaway - the characters are funny and likeable but the stakes comparatively low, plus the need to transform Good Teeth's set from wine bar to bric-a-brac shop means a short play needs an energy-draining interval. But Joseph's look at the way sports talk does a lot of heavy lifting in straight men's relationships is so well carried out by Okoronkwo and Mitchell that the extent to which you care about the two men takes you by surprise - my tearing up in the final scene definitely felt like it came out of nowhere.

I also liked that Joseph acknowledges the fact that race is more than likely to cause tension at some point in an interracial relationship of any kind, without going all in on the depressing, common trope that suggests it makes a relationship unsalvageable by default; the characters' ups and downs over the story also seem to be reflected in how forgiving they are likely to be about James' perceived betrayal of the city that made his name. Going from the odd isolated audience chuckle there's a few in-jokes for the basketball fans here, but for the most part this is a human story accessible to all: Regardless of whether you could care less about LeBron James, you end up caring how these guys feel about him.

King James by Rajiv Joseph is booking until the 4th of January at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs.

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Mark Douet.