Without wanting to state the obvious, basketball is a fast-moving world – not least for superstar LeBron James. Since this drama about two of his fans was first staged in the US in 2022, James has broken even more records, becoming the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and the oldest active player in the league and, last month, he even appeared alongside his son, Bronny, for the Los Angeles Lakers.
If LBJ’s extraordinary story has grown bigger, Rajiv Joseph’s play has shrunk somewhat for its UK premiere in Hampstead’s downstairs studio. In America, this low-key two-hander was given a supersized production, amping up a sporting atmosphere and adding a beaming DJ, who spun records at the side of the stage, to its cast list. That version, which I saw at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, was easy to like. But the play is more suited to this snug treatment by director Alice Hamilton, which has a traverse stage and no nosebleed seats.
We start out in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, in 2004 when a friendship is formed between Cleveland Cavaliers supporters Matt and Shawn, both 21. Matt sells Shawn some tickets after a bit of recognisable and competitively nerdy riffing about who is the bigger fan. With a gently sportive alternation of defence and attack in their conversation, Sam Mitchell (Matt) and Enyi Okoronkwo (Shawn) swiftly develop a rapport yet also establish an edgy undercurrent. As the play progresses, there is a flickering tension between jokes, offhand comments and serious statements. It comes to a head when Shawn, who is black, hears his white friend criticising James, saying the superstar “should have known his place”.
By the end of the play, the two men are 33. Joseph presents four encounters, like basketball game quarters, as their lives mirror events in James’s life. When they first meet, the player (already known as King James) is “rookie of the year” and has signed up for the Cavs. When he later quits Cleveland and joins Miami Heat, Shawn also leaves town to become a screenwriter, with Matt rocked by the double loss. Both eventually return to Cleveland and Joseph closely observes the thick and thin of fandom and friendship.
Despite Matt’s repeated cry “this is the problem with America”, the play is not really about the state of the nation and neither does a clear sense emerge of Cleveland. It is a chamber piece, asking what keeps us rooting for the same people, famous or otherwise, and what we should expect in return. These are questions actively raised by the characters, who repeatedly assess each other’s diction.
It is an overtly schematic play, whose signposted parallels resemble Bess Wohl’s Barcelona in the West End. Even if you don’t find yourself on the edge of your seat, as you would courtside, the dialogue is nuanced, especially about loyalty and legacy, privilege and prejudice. The set by Good Teeth design studio neatly turns the modest wine bar of the pair’s first encounter into the bric-a-brac shop run by Matt’s parents.
Joseph skilfully evokes the atmosphere of a game, heightened by Matt Haskins’ lighting and Max Pappenheim’s sound, establishing the dazzling flash of a stadium and its feverish crowd respectively. What the play lacks in specificity about why James and basketball itself are so enthralling to watch, it gains in universality about sporting passion – particularly useful for a UK audience less familiar with the game. It is a lean, keen-eyed and compelling piece but like many dramas giving a sideways look at a famous figure, it can’t quite emerge from the shadow of the stranger-than-fiction king himself.
At Hampstead theatre, London, until 4 January
