God's Official
at Pleasance Cavern (Venue 33), Edinburgh

Geoff Kidder

Two Merseyside football fans have just seen their side relegated after a referee disallowed a perfectly good goal, allowing the opposition to go down the other end and score.

For Degsy this is too much. Down on his luck and humiliated by his girlfriend, who refused to accept his marriage proposal live on local radio, he takes matters into his own hands. He looks up the referee in the phone book, tracks him down, kidnaps him and takes him to his house. The play, which consists of three men and a chair, follows their exploits until they are finally caught outside an abandoned church.

Degsy gets prison, his mate Cliff (a bald Rowan Atkinson lookalike) community service. Greavsie the ref, who looks like a referee, refuses throughout to admit he has made a mistake. He is described as being in the same league as 'Hitler, Mussolini and Milosevic' (Savo presumably). We are told hundreds of people are out on the streets in support, demanding that the match is replayed, which it eventually is.

Kidnapping a referee (a Christian referee at that, hence the title) may seem a corny plot for a play. After all, we have all wanted to do something similar at some time. But this is a tremendous work, superbly acted. Ostensibly about football, God's Official is a powerful play about passion and commitment, a welcome relief in these wet and cynical times.