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The Review - THEATRE by TOM FOOT
Published: 1 November 2007

Joe has a word for the footballing wise guys

JOE GUY
Soho Theatre

I WAS at a press conference last week when Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, reflecting on the rise of starlet Theo Walcott, spoke about the pitfalls of the Premiership.
He said of the teenager: “When you go from a young promising player in to a world of men you discover the world is not how you dreamed it.”
The sinister realities of that statement are all the more clear thanks to writer Roy Williams and a powerful central performance from Abdul Salis.
From humble origins, Joe Boateng embraces a world beyond the dreams of avarice.
His world of men is inhabited by coke-sniffing, champagne-quaffing, sex-crazed hedonists – the Premiershits, as Private Eye call them.
He is elevated into a financial stratosphere only to spurn his humble roots and sneer down at the rest of world.
Inevitably, he takes a King Lear-style trip through topsy-turveydom, ending in redemption.
It is love – his father’s disappointment and the sight of his baby – that brings him crashing back to earth with a bump.
Bubbling beneath the surface is a socio-political message.
Williams shows the 18-year-old Joe being cruelly mocked by West Indian guys and white girls for his African origins. He suggests our whole society is built on a series of interlocking racial hostilities.
Joe’s world of men is essentially a microcosm of capitalism. Players’ individualism disrupts the team. With old age (in the case of the footballer, mid-30s) comes inability to produce. Their former glories soon forgotten, Joe’s team-mates find themselves left out in the cold.
“So get a jacket then,” mocks Joe, who soon suffers a monumental fall from grace.
Salis was convincing in the central role – his transformation, Scarface-style in front of a mirror, was something to behold – and the audience appeared to have a good time. But at nearly two hours, the plot felt convoluted and the themes laboured.
Until November 24
0870 429 6883

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