Preview: The Nap

The name conjures up the elements of a contest perhaps more than any other theatre in the land: The Crucible.

Once a year the world’s greatest snooker players gather in this cauldron to pit their wits against each other over a period of 17 days.

The rest of the year, The Crucible is home to tales that explore what it means to be human, dramas playing out on the famous stage.

While sport is theatre unwritten, this spring the Crucible plays host to a perfect marriage of sport and drama written in the new play from Richard Bean, The Nap, a play about snooker to be performed in The Crucible.

“Snooker is so unnatural. There is a line in the play that goes ‘there is nothing in existence that is as flat as a snooker table and there is nothing in existence that is as round as a snooker ball’. The game is an entirely manufactured construct, the rules are a human invention and that’s what I like about the game: it’s an agreement. We say we have created this and now we are going to play the game against each other,” says Bean.

“There’s something about the game that defines humanity.”

Richard Bean is the son of Hull who has become British theatre’s hottest property. In 2011 the former stand-up comedian and one time psychologist had been working as a playwright for a decade when he was commissioned to write an updated version of Carlo Goldoni’s 1743 commedia dell’arte play Servant of Two Masters.

The National Theatre production of Bean’s reworking, titled One Man Two Guvnors, became one of British theatre’s biggest ever hits. It went on to tour the world, taking in Broadway where it earned James Corden a Tony Award. Bean says: “I think when you have a massive success like that it changes the environment around you. People are expecting another One Man Two Guvnors and you become 
a bit susceptible to all that. Not 
all of us are geared for success – I’m geared more for struggle, so when success came it was difficult for me.

“That was a long time ago now, I think I’ve readjusted.”

The readjustment has included in the past few years a play for the National Theatre (Great Britain) and the West End musical Made in Dagenham, based on the movie of the same name.

Now it includes something of a return to his roots with the new play The Nap which will be directed by Richard Wilson and receive its world premiere next week in Sheffield.

Wilson, still best known as Victor Meldrew, is also considered one of the country’s finest directors and has spent the last few years as an associate director at Sheffield Theatres.

Bean says: “Me and Richard have history. He directed my first professionally produced play, Toast, at the Royal Court in 2001. He also directed Under the Whaleback then a few years ago did a revival of my play Smack Family Robinson in Kingston, so we’re good mates and respect each other.

“Three years ago he came to me and said he had an idea for a play with the central set a snooker table. I said yes, but you’ll have to have actors playing snooker and they can’t – so how do you get around that?

“It’s a great marketing idea, I told him, but not so sure it’s a great idea for a play. We spent two years struggling with the idea of how to make it work and then came up with the scenario that it’s a match fixing story so you have a protagonist who is trying to throw a game. That way, if the actor playing the character misses the shot, the audience believes it’s part of the plot.

“It’s tricky and it needs perfecting, but we’re getting there.” Clearly, it is a tricky prospect to put sport on stage, particularly something like snooker that is so open to the gods – how do you write a play where you try to control something as unpredictable as the path of a snooker ball? It sounds like we should all be glad Bean has found a way.

“I have a real respect for the game because it’s just so difficult. There’s also something fascinating about it – it was wrenched from the aristocracy who invented it and is now this sleazy game that’s played by kids who are truant from school in smoky bars and by people who hit each other with cues when they get angry. That’s how it’s portrayed in drama, that idea that a snooker hall is where criminals meet. It’s always got such dramatic potential. It’s always night-time in a snooker hall.”

Having cracked the code of how to put snooker on stage, Bean has created a story involving a young hotshot of the snooker world and his slightly dodgy father, all wrapped up in a match-fixing plot. The play also features professional snooker player John Astley.

“He’s quite brilliant. What he can do is incredible, so it’s not going to be too tricky for him to wipe the floor with Jack O’Connell’s character, especially given that he’s trying to throw 
the match.”

O’Connell, a BAFTA rising star and cast as a lead by Angelina Jolie in Unbroken, plays Dylan Spokes and joins a seriously impressive cast. There’s Mark Addy as Dylan’s ex-con dad and Ralf Little too.

“There’s no pressure working with a cast like this. It’s nice to have great actors in your plays, it takes the pressure off. I’ve understood that from the start, 
as soon as I saw Sam Kelly playing a character in my first play, 
Toast, I realised that when you have a great actor saying your lines, suddenly those lines are twice as good as when you wrote them.”