IN the last 50 years, more than 10,000 school playing fields, and many public recreation spaces, have been sold off for development. During the early part of that period, it was also thought that being involved in competition of any sort a was not a good thing for young people.

The old saying “what goes around comes around” – in other words be careful what you do because it is very likely to return and attack you in the rear, can be applied to both those decisions.  The shortage of recreational space, particularly in schools, is now very much an issue, and the growth of sporting competition, particularly among girls, has thrown a spotlight on people’s natural instinct to compete.

In this, their 30th anniversary production, Bristol Old Vic Youth Company shows just how far young peoples’ thinking and desire to be involved in the workings of society have come in the past three decades, by devising with their director Krista Matthews a play that attacks equally Local Government and Big Business. The 11 members of a successful girls football team, plus a local sports commentator and their male coach, are faced with having to disband when the local council votes to sell off their home ground to faceless big business for redevelopment.

Faced with what appears to be impossible odds, the camaraderie among the team looks like disintegrating as individual personalities clash. The strength generated by teamwork saves the day, and as a group of actors, this youth group has that same strength as they make the most of every opportunity open to them.

They not only have created 13 distinct characters, but with the minimum of costume changes and props, play the opposition characters and move at speed from one location to another. With sound designer and composer Jack Orozco Morrison providing the ammunition, some individuals and the team as a whole attack vocals with the same tenacity as they play their football opponents.

Although it has a serious message to put over, this play is not full of head-in-hands intensity, as the story and personalities develop, so does a great deal of comedy. There would have been even more response to this comedy had some of the cast not slipped into the habit of dropping the ends of their sentences, making many a very funny punch line difficult to catch. But in a production busting with ebullient energy and passionate belief, the company swept their audience along, convincing them almost 100% that they were preaching a just cause that applies to present-day real life as well as their play.

At the end of big football matches on TV the commentator is asked to name their player of the match. Asked the same question I plead the fifth amendment, refusing to testify on the grounds that I might incriminate myself, for it would be unjust to name a single player from a cast that worked for each other so closely as this uninhibited, determined-to-be-heard and talented company did.

GRP