I’m not an obvious target audience for The Nap. Snooker is not my sport nor Sheffield my city, and I’d feared a “nap” of the non-snooker variety might threaten in a comedy dedicated to both. But Richard Bean’s smart play is crammed with eccentric entertainment, and I was potted (can this be the verb?) from the first. Director Richard Wilson, at the top of his form, and nifty designer James Cotterill exploit the Crucible’s other incarnation as host to the annual Snooker World championship.
But it’s in an inferior venue that we first meet Dylan Spokes (convincing Jack O’Connell), local snooker star. He reverentially inspects the baize table, stroking it like a favoured pet (with and against the “nap”). Wan and imperfectly socialised, Dylan has one GCSE, no girlfriend and Bobby – a liability of a father (outrageously funny Mark Addy). Stout, innumerate and verbally challenged (when he forgot the word “banana”, he looked it up on the Ocado website), he patrols the joint, repeating: “What a dump.” It’s a mini masterclass in comic timing. He has brought along a prawn sandwich (Dylan is a vegetarian). “I don’t eat owt wi’ a brain,” he asserts, to which Bobby responds: “They’re prawns, they’re not novelists.” A few jokes in, and you remember Bean is a safely unsafe pair of hands.
The plot hinges on the attempt at match-fixing: Dylan is encouraged to “tank a frame”. But the interest is more in characters than plot. Louise Gold plays Waxy Chuff with brassy pizazz – a transsexual with a mechanical hand, a piebald fur coat and a black bob – a Mrs Malaprop for Sheffield. It is her dignity that makes her verbal slippages such a delight (listen out for her “peanut analogy”.) The language is full of booby traps and there is no shortage of boobies. Stella, Dylan’s mother, is a tarty alcoholic (a nicely slovenly performance by Esther Coles).
Her Irish partner-in-booze is the inimitable Dermot Crowley (“I am an outrider on the carousel of life”). And there are two odd coppers: Mohammad Habib (Youssef Kerkour) – an amusing egghead who treats us to a surprise revelation: “I had an affair. I forgave myself” – and Rochenda Sadnall’s fiercely glamorous Eleanor Sargeant, who is not everything she seems. And then there is Dylan’s smart-ass manager Tony Danlino (enjoyably performed by Ralf Little).
The production has also sensibly recruited professional snooker player John Astley, who pots dazzling shots to order. The finale is unusually tense because the players have to score to suit the story. On the first night, O’Connell’s Dylan struggled hilariously to get what he needed, but that only added to the glorious, nail-biting, theatrical fun.
- At the Crucible, Sheffield until 2 April
