Jeff Brown’s football themed play The Bench comes to Live this week as part of a wider tour, and I was lucky enough to get an invite to see it last night.

[Image description: poster for The Bench]

The play centres on the story of an unlikely friendship and tentative romance between a Premier League footballer and a working-class single mum. Adi (Jason Njoroge) is finding the adjustment to England a tough one: he hasn’t yet found his feet as a player with his new team, he misses his adoptive home country of France, and he’s already the weary recipient of the sport’s toxic racism. Isolated with no one but his mercenary – if protective – manager (David Nellist) on his side, when he meets Vicky (Hannah Marie Davis) at a local park, the pair somehow click. Vicky is struggling to raise her son alone on the meagre benefits the state provides, while also having to care for her ailing mother.

Brown finds both empathy and humour in the pair’s blossoming relationship, much of the latter coming from Vicky’s bestie, Becs, who gets most of the best lines (props to a delightfully deadpan Abigail Lawson). A solid cast (rounded out by Dan Howe, who plays a variety of fans who have varying degrees of respect or lack thereof for their team’s new signing) is supported by some great design, with Lee Ward’s stylish set bringing home both the difference in Adi and Vicky’s lives, as well as their common ground.

Directed with warmth by Olivia Millar-Ross, the play is at pains to show the complex reality of the human beings behind the headlines of people who are so often reduced to shallow stereotypes – whether that’s a spoiled, rich footballer or a benefits-claiming single mum.

This sometimes feels a little heavy handed. The writing isn’t particularly subtle, and Adi’s traumatic childhood in his native DRC in particular feels a little shoe-horned in, as if we couldn’t be expected to sympathise with him without a tragic backstory. But the production’s heart is clearly in the right place (the tour is also collaborating with charity Show Racism the Red Card to spread its anti-racism message), and in the damaged but gently optimistic pair, it ultimately gives us a couple worth rooting for.

The Bench is at Live until Saturday and then continues its tour, including going to the Customs House next week. Read more here.

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