KING JAMES at Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“a pitch perfect dissection of male friendship, that tender bond painted in violent strokes”

The saying (almost) goes, of all the unimportant things, sport is the most important.

One reason: sport is the lingua franca of male friendship, all those off-the-shelf metaphors and handy comparisons to fill in for intractable thoughts. Those ups, downs, bruises and heartbreaks. Computers talk in code, men channel life through the fluctuating fortunes of the team they follow.

In King James, we track Matt and Shawn on that journey.

First up, we’re in La Cave du Vin in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and Shawn is here to do a deal for Matt’s precious tickets for the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team, the Cavs. This is 2004, the rookie season of local hero LeBron James and, even now, these cagey strangers sense he’s going to be an all-time great.

And he’s theirs.

What the two men don’t know yet is that they’re going to be yoked together serving in the court of King James for the next 12 years (we time-jump to 2010, 2014 and 2016) and their friendship will reflect the comings and goings of the basketball star.

The goings (as LeBron sensationally quits for Miami Heat) are a betrayal and a trauma; the comings (when he returns to end half a century of Cavs failure) are a time of euphoria. Unless you judge a man’s worth not by his impact but by his loyalty.

Loyalty is everything to Matt. He is fragile, hangdog out of choice, riding a mostly luckless life. He has aspirations but they don’t take him far. He’s over reliant on his careless privilege and indulgent parents.

Shawn is sharper round the edges, more purposeful, but that doesn’t mean he is destined to carve out prosperity. Shawn heads to New York and LA to pursue a writing career (mirroring the playwright’s own life). Meanwhile, in between moments of good fortune, Matt tends his parents’ dusty bric-a-brac shop.

Matt is white, and Shawn black, which doesn’t matter much until Matt lets slip what Shawn perceives as a slur.

In this delicate, conventional two-hander, the chemistry is bro-code standard – funny, deluded and nerdy. (LeBron better than Jordan? Discuss.)

The story marks out tiny gradations of disappointment, how life is a study in the futility and necessity of connection. Tension underpins everything – who’s winning, who’s losing. Under Alice Hamilton’s direction, Sam Mitchell (Matt) and Enyi Okoronkwo (Shawn) – both excellent – capture the tone and rhythm of the script with such elan, every exchange feels like a hand-wrapped gift.

Arguing over the origin of the word “fan”:

Matt: No, it’s for “fan” – like electric fan or something.

Shawn: Why would that be the case?

Matt: I dunno! Because we’re cool?

Award-winning playwright Rajiv Joseph is a Cleveland native and this one’s from the heart. His razor-sharp vignettes – slangy and real – are held together with the scar tissue of a veteran sports fan, full of pangs, longing, and the most dreaded thing of all – hope.

King James is a pitch perfect dissection of male friendship, that tender bond painted in violent strokes. Joseph captures these moments in all their delightful and infuriating folly and significance.

You don’t need to know basketball to love King James. You just need to know a man’s essential sorrow.

Treat yourself to a court-side seat.

KING JAMES at Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 21st November 2024

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Mark Douet

Previously reviewed at this venue:

VISIT FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN | ★★ | July 2024

THE DIVINE MRS S | ★★★★ | March 2024

DOUBLE FEATURE | ★★★★ | February 2024

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL | ★★★★ | December 2023

ANTHROPOLOGY | ★★★★ | September 2023

STUMPED | ★★★★ | June 2023

LINCK & MÜLHAHN | ★★★★ | February 2023

THE ART OF ILLUSION | ★★★★★ | January 2023

SONS OF THE PROPHET | ★★★★ | December 2022

BLACKOUT SONGS | ★★★★ | November 2022

KING JAMES

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★★★★

“it is the storming performance of Cameron Robertson’s Creature that will live in the memory”

Tilted Wig presents a telling of Mary Shelley’s classic Victorian novel adapted and directed by Séan Aydon. The story begins in a lonely wooden hut somewhere in the cold frozen wilds. A starving traveller bangs on the door and is admitted by the scared and suspicious person living within. There is palpable tension in a scene almost devoid of dialogue. Both strangers have a story to tell but it is that of Doctor Victoria Frankenstein that we will see acted out before us.

The cabin moves away to reveal the Doctor’s laboratory. The set (designer Nicky Bunch) is a minimalist masterpiece. Shelves with a myriad of illuminated jars containing who knows what, skulls in cabinets. A half-tiled wall resembles that of the morgue or the asylum. Dominating the rear of the stage is a huge window like that of a church or cathedral. Doctor Frankenstein (Eleanor McLoughlin) and her assistant Francine (Annette Hannah) are about to complete an audacious experiment – the creation of life – by conducting an impending lightning strike into a mismatch of body parts and organs.

We are introduced to Henry (Dale Mathurin), a physicist sickened by the gooiness of biology, and Victoria’s love interest. But there is little spark between the two characters and it is hard to believe in their romance. The dialogue is stilted and some attempts at humour don’t land. Victoria’s sister Elizabeth (Lula Marsh) – feminine, colourful and vivacious against Victoria’s androgenous, drab, and dowdy – arrives unannounced and then as quickly departs.

The audience awaits the introduction of the Creature to lift the production above the pedestrian. Cameron Robertson is outstanding, bringing the Creature to life with a great deal of twitching, moaning and gurning. We feel his pain. With the help of excellent make-up and prosthetics (Missy Brazier), he is repulsive to look at and Robertson commands the stage, his movements deliberately awkward and clumsy with a drop of the shoulder and a twisted gait. A number of jump-scares add to the power of the storytelling.

Elements of the Gothic are seen in the extended flashes of lightning through the large window (lighting Matt Haskins), but this production skilfully avoids any slide into cliché or shtick. An eerie soundtrack of music and electronics (composer Eamonn O’Dwyer), reminiscent of a film soundtrack, heightens the tension at key moments.

This adaptation is set in pre-war Germany and there are sufficient mentions of master race ambitions for us to understand the writer’s suggestions. There are sinister undertones in the speech of Dr Richter (Basienka Blake) which are shown in her open disgust of Francine and Henry. The actor shows off her vocal versatility too with a role and accent so different to that of her earlier appearance in the wooden hut. A powerful scene between the Doctor and Francine raises the question of responsibilities with McLaughlin and Hannah’s performances reaching a new level of passion and earnestness.

Mary Shelley’s story is passably narrated in this two-hour adaptation. Much of the work falls on the competent but overly fastidious Eleanor McLaughlin as the Doctor but it is the storming performance of Cameron Robertson’s Creature that will live in the memory.

KING JAMES at Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“a pitch perfect dissection of male friendship, that tender bond painted in violent strokes”

KING JAMES at Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 21st November 2024

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Mark Douet

Previously reviewed at this venue:

KING JAMES

KING JAMES

FRANKENSTEIN at the Cambridge Arts Theatre

★★★★

“it is the storming performance of Cameron Robertson’s Creature that will live in the memory”

FRANKENSTEIN at the Cambridge Arts Theatre

Reviewed on 3rd October 2023

by Phillip Money

Photography by Robling Photography

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Frankenstein

Frankenstein