Soccer Book Plays Well on Stage

Of sportswriting, George Plimpton once observed, the smaller the ball the better the literature. In Plimpton’s words, there were “superb books about golf, very good books about baseball, not many good books about tennis, football or soccer, very few good books about basketball, and no good books at all about beach balls.”

Plimpton’s winking “small ball theory” downplayed, of course, his own contributions -- “Paper Lion,” a book about football, is an American sportswriting classic -- and failed to anticipate the burst of excellent books about soccer that would emanate from the United Kingdom in the early 1990s.

They rolled off the presses within a matter of months: Pete Davies’ “All Played Out” (1990), followed by Bill Buford’s “Among The Thugs” (1991), followed by Nick Hornby’s “Fever Pitch” (1992). To varying degrees, each of them dealt with the extremes of fan culture. Hornby took an introspective look at his own obsession. Davies set out for Italy in 1990 to chronicle the misadventures of English soccer hooligans at the World Cup, only to be ambushed by a startling run to the semifinals by the England team.

Buford’s book was the darkest of all, taking the participatory-journalism tactics of Plimpton and turning them on their heads -- after grabbing them by the throat and slamming them against the wall of a decaying English soccer stadium.

As an American living in England while editing the literary journal Granta during the 1980s, Buford became fascinated with what was then known as “the English disease,” soccer hooliganism. The disease was at its peak in 1982 when Buford first encountered a train station waylaid by rowdy Liverpool fans.

Buford began asking questions about the sport and this behavior. He infiltrated a group of supporters, as they preferred to call themselves. He befriended them. They trusted him, even after learning he was writing a book about them.

Eventually, Buford became one of them, regularly running with the thugs, which, he discovered, was no less seductive and far more dangerous than running with the bulls.

Buford’s book is full of nightmarish imagery: bodies slashed, heads cracked against pavement, a policeman’s eye gouged out by the gnashing teeth of a frenzied hooligan.

I heard Buford’s book had been turned into a play, now approaching the end of a 2 1/2-month run at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles. I’d read glowing reviews, but I couldn’t envision the actual conversion -- how to convincingly convey the claustrophobic crush of an overcrowded stadium, or a street clash between hundreds of rabid fans, on a small theater stage.

I saw “Among The Thugs” last week. The roster for the entire cast is smaller than a soccer team’s starting lineup -- only 10 men, one playing the role of Buford (“Bill”), the others handling a variety of parts ranging from train passengers to bartenders to policemen to soccer thugs.

It’s a formidable, and successful, undertaking. Tom Szentgyorgyi’s adaptation of Buford’s book is fast-paced, highly energized, with one wave of hooligan threat quickly following another. The sense of menace is ever-present -- interrupted only by Bill’s narrative observations on the chaos erupting around him.

William Dennis Hurley plays Bill as a clueless American curiosity seeker stranded in a very foreign land. It’s a device that makes the material more accessible to American audiences, and helps dilute the grimness with breaks of self-deprecating humor.

Early on, the locals taunt Bill when he reveals he has never seen a “sawker match.” As he tries to drink his way into acceptance with a group of Manchester United supporters, Bill is grossly overmatched, a pathetic lightweight compared to the pint-guzzling machines belching in their too-tight replica jerseys.

Along the way, Bill discovers some of the hazards of gonzo participatory journalism. Among them: How to get the supporters to let down their guard and get to the truth without scaring them off with a notepad or tape recorder. Another: how to report the story “objectively” while your belly and brain are swimming in lager.

Bill’s solution is to engage the fans in conversation and beer, then sprint to the nearest restroom and write down all he can remember. This seems to be working well until one supporter follows him into the restroom, spots Bill’s notepad and asks what’s going on.

Fearing for his safety, Bill reluctantly spits out the truth: He’s researching a book on “football supporters.” Bill grimaces, bracing for the worst. The supporter inches closer, glares at Bill and demands to know, “So, why haven’t you interviewed me?”

Bill never finds the big truth he was looking for, which is, why do the hooligans do what they do? He discovers it’s not down to economics; many of the rabble-rousers he meets have white-collar, well-paying jobs. He learns it’s not a byproduct of the sport.

One supporter tells him, “If not at the football matches, we’d be doing it at the pub on Saturday night.” Bill concludes the violence must be a result of boredom, something a “bored, empty, decadent culture” decides to do to “wake itself up.”

Much has changed in England since the publication of “Among The Thugs.” An increased police presence at games, coupled with increased ticket prices and the requirement of all-seat stadiums, has helped curb the violence at soccer matches, or at least re-direct it elsewhere.

The play concludes at the Odyssey this weekend, with final performances Friday and Saturday nights. It captures a different time and a different place, although local veterans of the 1980s and early ‘90s will recognize the coarse language, the threatening gestures and the loutish behavior. The Oakland Raiders used to play their home games here.