East End Review

Tag: Crouch Touch Pause Engage

  • Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage – stage review: between a ruck and a hard place

    The cast of Crouch, Touch, Pause Engage. Photograph: Robert Workman
    Tackling discrimination: Crouch, Touch, Pause Engage. Photograph: Robert Workman

    In 2007 the Welsh rugby legend Gareth Thomas published the first of his two autobiographies. In the introduction he writes “As soon as I was made captain of Wales, I pledged to be honest to myself and honest with everyone around me.”

    Two years later he came out as gay and has since called the book “one big lie from beginning to end”.

    Thomas’s journey is re-told in Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage, a new play by Robin Soans created by Out of Joint Theatre Company and the National Theatre of Wales. Using text from real-life interviews, the play sees six actors play Thomas, who is known by his childhood nickname ‘Alfie’, with each taking their turn to sport the Welsh jersey and catch the rugby ball, which indicates a change of actor.

    Thomas says he wasn’t scared that people would reject him because of his sexuality, but because “suddenly you turn around and tell them you’ve been lying to them for twenty years”.

    As is so often the case, his best friend Compo had known all along. But his wife and parents hadn’t – and nor had his fans.

    But it’s not just a play about Thomas. As he suffers the taunts and jeers of the crowd, and his secret gradually becomes public knowledge, we also hear the testimony of a young girl whose own taunts and jeers drove her to edge of the void.

    Darcy, played with tenderness and humour by Lauren Roberts, is a character created from interviews with two suicide attempt survivors from Bridgend, South Wales.

    Both parties live to fight another day and even meet to share their experiences, Alfie confessing: “There’s so much of me I see in you.”

    The show comes to a close with a demonstration of the scrum – the inspiration for the title – the forwards huddling together before crouching to engage their opponents.

    The pressure and excitement of various big match encounters punctuate the story as it unfolds and we are frequently presented with a huge gladiator of a man – strong and brave, and totally unequipped for the labours that face him.

    Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 20 June.
    arcolatheatre.co.uk

  • Rugby drama tells the story of a pioneer for sexual equality

    Crouch, Touch, Pause Engage. Photograph: Robert Workman
    Tackling discrimination: cast members of Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage. Photograph: Robert Workman

    Following a tip off, I arrive to meet the playwright Robin Soans, holding a packet of Jaffa Cakes. In Soans’ new play Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage, opening at the Arcola this month, the main character’s mother says she always knows her son’s mood based on his eating habits – when things got bad, she says, he stopped eating Jaffa Cakes: “He can usually eat them by the packet.”

    The son in question is Welsh rugby legend Gareth Thomas, who in 2009 came out, bringing a lifetime of denial to an end and beginning the long journey towards acceptance among his fellow professionals.

    Accepting a Jaffa Cake and dunking it into a cup of lemon tea, Soans tells me it is domestic detail like this that is so essential in a documentary play: “If you want people to believe the big stuff and go on the big journeys, you’ve got to woo them with the detail,” he says.

    The play is about a pioneer. “It’s about someone who did something that had never been done before,” says Soans. During research for the play Thomas admitted that whilst it was a groundbreaking act, it also came with the knowledge that “you have to be prepared to take the shit for it”.

    And Thomas did, being ritually insulted on rugby fields around the country in his late career. Six years on, it is his resilience and self-awareness through those dark times that have made him a hero to more than just sport fans, Soans says.

    Thomas is very keen for his story to be told – hence persistent rumours of a forthcoming Mickey Rourke film portrayal – but when Soans initially approached him, he was sceptical.

    “I think he distrusted the theatre as being exploitative and pretentious, but the first time he saw a run-through in the theatre he was gasping, he was sitting up, it was this absolute recognition.”

    On stage Thomas’ personal story is interwoven with that of his hometown of Bridgend, which, around the same time, saw 25 teenage suicides in just two years.

    “The two things I never, never try to be are either worthy or grim,” says Soans, “even if it’s a very serious subject.” Instead, with humour and humanity his express intention is, he says, to “reveal a piece of human nature that hasn’t been revealed in that way before.”

    Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL from 20 May – 20 June
    arcolatheatre.com