The Red Lion Tickets

The setting of The Red Lion, the changing room of a non-league football club, recalls the 70's Play for Today. At first glance, it seems too parochial for the West End with too esoteric a backdrop. Even the intimate confines of Trafalgar Studios’ smallest space has the whiff of fringe (along with body odour and wet grass). But Patrick Marber’s chamber piece, late of the National Theatre, revived here leaner, retooled and relocated to a North Eastern setting, proves the maxim that any story can be interesting if told with passion and an ear for what we sometimes call real lives.