Considering football is played and adored by millions across the globe, it's a little surprising that there are few theatre productions based on it.
Perhaps the reason for that is because it is already so prominent in our daily lives, or maybe producers have been a tad wary ever since The Beautiful Game, a collaboration between Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton, lost £3m over a year-long run at London's Cambridge Theatre in 2000.
But The Red Lion - currently running at the Bristol Old Vic's Weston Studio - shows that football is not just a game played on well-kept grass in front of spectators. The three-hander is instead set away from the pitch, in the dressing room of a non-league team with an ill-tempered, meddling manager played superbly by Broadchurch star and local boy Joe Sims.
