FringeReview UK 2024

Testmatch

Orange Tree Theatre, in Association with Octagon Theatre and ETT

Genre: Contemporary, Dark Comedy, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Theatre

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre Richmond

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

“That’s just a little too little, too late.” So says one India woman cricket player to an apologetic England one, after a monumental bust-up. Kate Attwell’s Testmatch enjoys its UK premiere at Orange Tree Theatre directed by Diane Page till May 18^th. Its world premiere was perhaps surprisingly in San Francisco, in 2019, where Attwell was based.

It mightn’t seem the most obvious route into the DNA of 18^th century colonialism as six players morph back in Act Two into a world where nascent cricket rules – as well as territory – are up for grabs: especially if women got there first.

Nevertheless, like other plays that reveal by going back in time, Testmatch in two hours uncovers uncomfortable assumptions: the kind culture ministers bury. Six rain-frustrated players, three each from India and England known by numbers only, vent, tense up, share, form brief alliances and edgy stand-offs with the rival team.

Long-buried prejudices erupt and we’re in the shorter second act: realism’s swapped for performative colonialism, a quasi-panto with most taking male roles echoing their chronologically later avatars. This is riotous, as fantastic as the opium one takes which impels them to a vision of the future. But like Act One it ends in something more explosive.

Cat Fuller’s simple off-white circle of a set surrounded by gravel, is lit up by her costumes – both bright team colours (England red, bright baby blue for India), and full 18^th century garb, including a primitive Union Jack run up with rope. Rajiv Pattani’s lighting swaps interior light for a blazing sun and Simon Slater’s sound is often intense downpour.

The six actors ensure their numbers are distinct people. India 1 (Aarushi Riya Ganju) is so great a bowler that England 1 (Bea Svistunenko), generally regarded as the finest batter, is terrified of her. It induces this frantically competitive captain to a shocking action. She’s so uptight she smashes a bat.

Ganju’s India 1 meanwhile wants to go out on a high: as everyone knows she’s been 12 years at the top but confides to her team-mates. England 1wants to do something else entirely.

Meanwhile England 2 (Mia Turner), raunching up the sexuality of rugby players is humiliated by her male cricket-captain’s infidelity. In what turns out an ironic twist Turner’s brash character can’t help casual racism over match-fixing.

India 2 (Aiyana Bartlett, making an excellent stage debut) also has a secret she doesn’t want out. She’s perhaps the shrewdest, able to confide to people-pleasing England 3 (Haylie Jones) – who keeps on offering to make undrinkable tea every time things cut up – exactly the damage her team-mates have caused.

India 3 (Tanya Katyal) hails from a village where some things have never been dreamt of. She overhears conversations though, taking in more than anyone else realises.

In Act Two, set in an East India Company residence, Svistunenko, previously England 1 is just as intent on “winning” as One, now married  to Turner’s Memsahib, a frustrated woman obsessed with comfort and opium (justifying it as genital pain she squirmingly transmits to male company), who starts hallucinating the future as an advert for Max Factor, sponsorship of which had been awarded to England 1.

Ganju, previously India 1 is later Sultan’s Messenger who arrives near the end with a long disgusted monologue, detailing starvation the British after only a short time have wrought in Bengal. Colonial famines there include the latest one of 1943, killing up to three million: caused when Churchill diverted grain to Greece.

Jones now as (like her England 3) the more conciliatory Two holds a secret under their spectacles, playing second-fiddle to One’s vast ego. Whilst Katyal’s Abhi is a delight of sardonic humour, reading out all the newly-devised cricket rules they understand more than British masters who attempted to frame them. Katyal darts about with ironic supplications, but reveals steel when called for.

When she arrives Bartlett’s cricket-playing Daanya uncovers a hitherto secret relation to the British, proves her bowling chops in more ways than one.

In contrast to Act One’s realism, the burlesque quicksilver of Act Two unzips the roots of cricket and its relation to colonialism, misogyny and racism. Being so short its points are made deftly in primary colours. Less nuance, more drawing lines of descent, then applying retroactively to what we’ve seen. There’s a magnificent collision at the end.

This is a superbly witty interrogation of identity, abuses many histories deep, asking questions it sets up in not too sober a fashion. Testmatch is a lightning-conductor. As Bartlett says when still India 2:  “You people have got some fucking baggage to figure out.”

Published April 25, 2024April 25, 2024 by Simon Jenner