“If your first touch is good, life is easy. If it’s bad, there’s no recovery.” So says charismatic coach Lafferty (watchful Arthur Wilson) to young football hopeful Clayton (the wide-eyed and eager Raphael Akuwudike), who is dreaming of First Division glory in the 1970s. Lafferty is talking about the beautiful game, but his words have an ugly double meaning. He is, as Nathaniel Price’s new play painstakingly demonstrates, taking advantage of his position to groom the 12-year-old boy and sexually abuse him.
“Child abuse is an appalling crime against some of the most vulnerable in society, but it is also little discussed or understood… [and] usually hidden from view.” The Office for National Statistics’ 2020 report indicates that 20% of people have been subjected to serious abuse when young and that around 7% of that abuse is sexual. By commissioning work based on this issue, the Playhouse’s artistic director, Adam Penford, is performing an important social service. The finished piece, though, needs to do more than just convey information. As a drama, it needs shape, drive, intensity; it needs passion, engagement – all the elements that, on a pitch, distinguish a match from a training session. In this respect, First Touch falls well short of its goal.
Under Jeff James’s direction, the production does its best with the material. Rapid, television-style transitions in time and space are deftly managed. Charlotte Espiner’s set achieves the impossible – simultaneously stadium, sitting room, changing room, factory floor and hairdresser’s salon. Actors fitfully succeed in bringing to life thinly drawn characters and clumsily signposted period attitudes – sexist, racist and political. Sexist attitudes seep into the play itself: Clayton’s girlfriend, Serena (Chloe Oxley), is sexually humiliated in a scene played out before the audience; its function is to indicate how Clayton has been damaged by Lafferty’s abuse. By contrast, Clayton’s experience of abuse is presented in a more distanced, nuanced manner.
Lafferty’s final advice to Clayton is: “Keep your head down, mouth shut. Don’t make trouble.” As a drama, Price’s play may be a non-scorer, but its message blasts home: defy the Laffertys; blow the whistle on abuse.
• First Touch is at Nottingham Playhouse until 21 May
