Theatre review: Testmatch

As football plays have proven on multiple occasions, I don't have to be interested in a sport to enjoy a piece of theatre about it. Still, you've got your work cut out for you if the sport in question is cricket, even if it's not remotely the real subject of the story being told, like in Kate Attwell's Testmatch, set during a one-day match between England and India at the women's cricket World Cup. India are the bookies' favourites and have briefly managed to make a good start before rain stopped play; three women from each team are waiting together to hear if, or more likely when, the match is going to be called off because of the flooded pitch. England 2 (Mia Turner,) recently dumped by the England men's captain, would like to talk about why rugby boys are much better shags than cricket boys anyway, and India 3 (Tanya Katyal) is just disappointed because she loves the game so much she hates to miss out.

For others the pressure seems to be hitting them a lot harder though, and the gossip and bickering starts to take on a nastier edge, eventually ending up in racist exchanges and stereotyping.

There's also a sense that the English women have at best a fuzzy idea of what the Empire's history in India actually is, so the second act takes us back to 18th century Calcutta, where two British East India Company executives (Bea Svistunenko, Haylie Jones) get on with the important business of making sure the rules of cricket are properly recorded, and properly credited to them. Meanwhile a Messenger (Aarushi Riya Ganju) witnesses the famine left behind by the Company's use of the land for opium poppies instead of rice.

I can see the shape of the satirical story Attwell is trying to tell, but the writer has loaded it with so many different ideas and themes that it never quite makes sense. A subplot about India 2 (Aiyana Bartlett) dealing with her own pride in accepting her sexuality while worrying about it becoming public knowledge, is ultimately just a footnote in another plotline about match fixing. The dialogue between the 21st-century women is oddly stilted by the decision to give none of the characters, including the offstage ones, names: There's an awful lot of gossip about "that scandal involving that white male South African cricket player," which is absolutely how genuine Earthlings talk and will arouse no suspicions.

It's all Diane Page's production can do to stay on top of the wild lurches in tone - the very broad parody of British Imperialists crashing into the Messenger's bleak description of the famine being the most glaring example - although it does deal wittily with the way a sport involving a lot of ground has to be fitted onto Cat Fuller's small raised disc of a stage. (Why Rajiv Pattani's lighting and Simon Slater's music seem to be setting the action inside the American Gods opening credits is a mystery I can't help with though.) There's a good cast giving life to a muddled play, and once again I have to comment that a writer seems to have found an interesting collection of threads but not quite pulled tham all together in the final product.

Testmatch by Kate Attwell is booking until the 18th of May at the Orange Tree Theatre; and from the 23rd of May to the 1st of June at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton.

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.