The Red Lion, Trafalgar Studios

After impressing at the National Theatre in 2015, football will again take centre stage as Patrick Marber’s The Red Lion comes to London from a sell-out run in Newcastle.

With a new cast directed by Max Roberts, The Red Lion charts a semi-pro, small town team struggling to make it into the league. Expect to see familiar faces from stage and screen with Stephen Tompkinson (Spamalot, DCI Banks) playing untrustworthy manager Jimmy Kidd, and John Bowler (DCI Banks) as a heartfelt Yates. Dean Bone plays Jordan, the rising football star, with complexity and panache.

Lauded as a ‘passionate’ production of a masterly script, the play is particularly interesting due to Marber’s involvement as director of regional football club Lewes FC since 2010. His accuracy and subtlety is palpable in this portrayal of sporting politics and what they represent. For Marber, 'the play is dramatising something about England; that there is one strain of thought which is about community, tolerance and belonging, and there is another which represents a whole counter trajectory about what England could or should be; that England is a business'.

Exploring the 'endless source of moral contradictions' inherent in football, The Red Lion is a moving and witty piece of theatre, whether you care about the offside rule or not.