Red Speedo by the American playwright Lucas Hnath raises moral and ethical questions in sport.
Cheating at the Olympic Games is nothing new and has been going on ever since they began in 776 BCE and have continued to go on since they were revived in 1896.
The action takes place in and around a swimming pool. Ray (Finn Cole) lives to swim and has an amazing talent. His prospects in the Olympic trials are high and he is all set to get an extremely lucrative sponsorship.
He has been taking performance enhancing drugs he got from his ex-girlfriend (Parker Lapaine), a therapist who has been sacked. He thinks he needs the drugs in order to win races and wants to buy more drugs.
His elder brother (Ciaran Owens), who is also his lawyer and his manager and intends to live off his brother’s earning, thinks he should get rid of the drugs and keep quiet and admit nothing. His coach (Fraser James) is a decent honest bloke and thinks Ray should confess to the Olympic trials committee.
Ray has a dragon tattoo covering much of his body. He is not very bright. He has a talent for swimming and nothing else. If he is banned, he will have no life. He will always be poor. He has no education.
The 90-minute play, directed by Matthew Dunster straight through without interval, is both dramatic and comic and notable for a convincing fist fight. Lucas Hnath’s script with its sharp, staccato and overlapping dialogue sounds very like a David Mamet play.
The actors are well cast. Finn Cole, whom you may have seen on television in Peaky Blinders, is making his professional stage debut as Ray and very good he is, too. The tiny tight red speedo he wears plays an important supporting role and gets star billing.
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