Testmatch
Cricket and playwrights is a weirdly classic combination, with Beckett, Stoppard and Pinter the most famous amongst many vocal fans of the sport. Nobody has ever actually written a great play about it, though, and that basically holds with this entertaining but flawed diptych of dramas about England’s relationship with India from writer Kate Attwell. The first half of ‘Testmatch’ is set during a rainy day stoppage at the Women’s World Cup, a one-day match between England and India. In a players’ lounge, three unnamed members of each team are cooling their heels. The English team are notably more stressed: after idly bantering for a bit, a silly debate over the phrase ‘too little, too late’ leads to Bea Svistunenko’s captain smashing her bat up in frustration and storming off. Attwell is trying to do a lot of things with this short piece, which takes in everything from corruption in the game, to contemporary England’s obliviousness to its legacy in India, to clandestine lesbianism in global majority sports teams. It’s enjoyable, but it essentially stuffs a full-length play’s-worth of incident into 45 minutes - Svistunenko’s character’s dizzyingly fast need to unburden herself of a dark secret could really have done with another hour or so to make its way to the surface. Part two is set in colonial Calcutta, at the British East India Company’s headquarters during the Great Bengal Famine of 1770. The tone is much broader and more knockabout – almost a ‘Blackadder’ vibe – with S