It was football pundit Alan Hansen who erroneously stated that you never win anything with kids. He was referring to Manchester United's rookie squad, but it could equally apply to Pilot, a young people's theatre company that, under the stewardship of Marcus Romer, has ascended towards the premiership.
Pilot's burgeoning reputation has enabled Romer to field his strongest team to date: 14 actors in Roy Williams' coruscating state-of-the-nation drama, in which a beery gang descend on their local boozer to watch England lose 1-0 to Germany in the last match played at the old Wembley stadium.
It was a dismal send-off for the hallowed ground (and indeed for Kevin Keegan, who resigned immediately afterwards). But Williams' play captured attention when it was first performed at the National Theatre for daring to say the unsayable: that racism is so endemic in English society, you can barely scratch an ordinary gang of lads without finding a vicious streak of prejudice beneath the surface.
Yet beyond the polemic, the play is a brilliantly animated observation of social dynamics. He captures the ritual humiliation of watching Ing-ur-land on television, as bombastic patriotism dissipates into disenchantment, frustration and fury. And Romer's full-tilt direction expertly conceals the artifice of the situation - when did you last stand in a crowded inner-city pub where everybody takes it in turns to speak?
Emma Donovan's design has an authentic whiff of sticky carpets. And though there are numerous candidates for man of the match, Deka Walmsley shades it for his steely-eyed portrayal of an auto-didact who advances the cause of white suprematism with his library ticket rather than his fists. As Alan Hansen might put it, the production seems to have everything: pace, precision, power. The result is sensational.
· Until Sunday. Box office: 01904 623568. Then touring.
