“The play works as both a striking portrait of friendship rent asunder but also reinforced, and as a separate enquiry into a community under threat. You’re soon aware of the extended social network – an unseen grandfather, for one – that informs these adolescents’ lives and of the hairpin turns between camaraderie and cruelty that are part of anyone’s growing pains.”
Read more

As well as a coming-of-age story, this is an account of social displacement by gentrification...It’s still rare to see a play about young, black, working-class youths on our stages: rarer still to see one in which they are celebrated like this.
Read more

“It’s so beautifully crafted – empathetically acted, deftly directed by Daniel Bailey and with a lovely football court set by Amelia Jane Hankin – that it manages to feel hugely meaningful while relatively little happens.”
Read more

A promising debut about football, friendship and gentrification...While the writing doesn’t always dig deep, the piece gathers momentum thanks to Daniel Bailey’s crisp direction and the strong performances.
Read more

“The plot is tight, but never schematic...The movement direction by Dickson Mbi is also superb. The snatches of skills are realistic, but the slow-motion bends and swerves between scenes serve the double purpose of suggesting another more graceful world beyond the one where the boys struggle and strive...That little detail is just one of the careful joys of a magnificent production of a play that is set to become a classic.”
Read more

To the background sound of construction work, and the foregrounding of dance music, this excellent piece of new writing is effortlessly and energetically entertaining.
Read more

Tyrell Williams has hardly come from nowhere, he is a graduate of the BAFTA Elevate scheme, but he's a rising talent of the first rank. Theatre needs voices like his...
Read more

“Three immaculate performances lie at the centre of ‘Red Pitch,’ but no other factor is lost in watching these young men work – everything is too well-done, too finely-crafted, for me to believe anyone could overlook anyone’s work here.”
Read more