Review: The Other Neville at Theatre by the Lake

“…real and authentic…Greenwood is an impressive writer…“

The Other Neville by Imogen Greenwood, Theatre by the Lake

By Ken Powell

Can theatre do fanfiction? That’s a question I didn’t expect to ask. But at CumbriaFest, hosted by Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake, anything goes!

The festival is aimed at everyone but is intended as “a catalyst for new ideas”. There you can enjoy a lively atmosphere of artists and creatives trying out new ideas – often from scratch, right in front of you. Food also seems to be a big thing with at least two ‘scrans’ listed as events. You also get to see new plays from emerging writers – such as actor/writer Imogen Greenwood who is touring with this new play written and performed by herself.

The Other Neville, we are told in the accompanying notes, is not endorsed by Tracey Neville or her family and so has not been written in conjunction with her. In that sense then, this is a kind of staged ‘fanfiction’. That can sound dismissive, but don’t knock it – there’s actually there’s a lot of fanfiction that has made it big in the world of literature. There’s certainly nothing dismissive about Greenwood’s work. Her ‘extensive research’ (as the notes also tell us) has paid off. This production comes across as real and authentic.

I will confess, I’m not much of a sports fan, less so about women’s sports in general and least of all about netball. I’ve enjoyed watching the women’s football finals in recent years, as England have finally started winning the national attention they’ve deserved for so long, and absolutely rate those games as good as, or better, than then men’s. But netball simply hasn’t ever entered my world.

So I came to The Other Neville with little to no expectations. I wasn’t invested in the topic at all. I knew of Gary Neville (of course, I’m not that dense), but barely knew of his brother Phil and certainly didn’t know he had a sister. I had to research to find out that their dad was called Neville Neville – I kid you not. But the sister remaining half-hidden by her male siblings’ football successes is very much one of the points of the play.

We get the story of how Tracey Neville wasn’t allowed to play football like her brothers and so turned to netball, which she loved. Working just as hard to achieve comparable results, she did not get the fame and adulation her siblings received. And yet, the hard work paid off and Neville brought netball into the UK public imagination.

There is, of course, a team behind any ‘one man’ production and this show is no exception. Sound, staging and direction are all on point. But Greenwood does a fantastic job of bringing all this to life. The highs and lows, the sorrows and the joys – she communicates with the audience (and even involves some members!) in such a way that you can’t help but be sucked into the story. I was rooting for Neville fairly quickly into the story and quietly fist-pumping when her team won victories.

There is a more difficult theme that runs throughout the play and, again, Greenwood presents this brilliantly and with great delicacy. If I have any criticism, it is that at the end I was ever so slightly confused precisely how things finish. I had to google the real Neville’s life story just to confirm what happened. However, my feeling is that the women in the room understood all this precisely, so some of this minor criticism is aimed squarely back at me.

But, overall, this is as perfect a solo performance as I’ve ever seen. With just a handful of props (watch out for the hilarious ‘trophy’ scene), Imogen Greenwood draws us in, invites us to admire this remarkable character and has us laughing and crying throughout the show. Greenwood is an impressive writer, but her acting skills are such that even though you know she’s not Tracey Neville, it is very hard to believe it’s not her. I may not have been a netball fan when I went into the theatre, but I certainly came out as one. Not only should you see this play, but Tracey Neville should see it too.

The Other Neville plays at Theatre by the Lake on Wednesday 29 October.

Ken Powell is chief editor for Northern Arts Review and is also a bestselling author and writer for various publications around the world. A former school teacher, he continues to write educational books along with fiction and travelogues. You can find all his books and various websites here including his popular TEDx talk about the Global Village. He lives with his family in a wonderfully isolated village in West Cumbria where he enjoys drinking tea, chatting with the birds and winding up his dog. You can support his work (or just buy him a coffee) here.