ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
The Red Lion
Trafalgar Studios, London
FOOTBALL — beautiful game, sometimes a very ugly business. And at the heart of this piece by the accomplished Patrick Marber is the commodification of young player Jordan (Dean Bone).
Talented but damaged in more ways than one, he seems to embody the tension between the old and the new — football’s golden age versus a brash business world.
Sexual harassment on Britain’s railways is rising sharply, according to the British Transport Police, yet too many women still feel reporting is futile. LYNNE WALSH asks why the burden of safety all too often remains on women themselves
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
Still the only black man to win the US Open tennis title, a statue of the legendary champion, Arthur Ashe, is now the only one remaining on Monument Avenue in his Richmond, Virginia hometown, where confederate leaders of the Civil War were also once displayed, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
SUSAN DARLINGTON is bowled over by an outstanding play about the past, present and future of race and identity in the US



