Divided into ‘quarters’ rather than acts, the ‘king’ of the play’s title is LeBron James, a 6ft 9in basketball player with multiple medals and awards, including various Olympic golds, the NBA Most Valuable Player award and AP Male Athlete of the Decade. To find out about his off-court activities, such as philanthropy and political activism, however, you’d have to read up about them elsewhere. Whatever talk there is of James in this play is purely about basketball, and how good he is (or isn’t), with more or less the same kind partisan views different people have about football players.
Thankfully, the play doesn’t have nearly as many interruptions as a basketball game does. I tried to watch a match once – there were far too many ‘timeouts’ as teams discussed strategy every few seconds (and I am not alone in that opinion). Anyway, one doesn’t require even my rudimentary levels of exposure to American basketball to understand the dynamics at work in this play, which introduces with (just about) sufficient context quite how invested, both financially and psychologically, followers of sport can be. I find it quite admirable how sports fans, regardless of age, can rattle off names of players and ex-players and who did what in the fifty-eighth minute of a football match thirty-two years ago. There’s a palpable sense in this play as much as there is in almost any British pub of what I can only describe as collective ownership: LeBron James really was ‘their’ player – until, of course, he goes off to play for another team, a regular occurrence in top-flight professional team sports.
Years later, Matt (Sam Mitchell) still hasn’t forgiven ‘King James’ for leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2010 as a free agent to join the Miami Heat (yes, of course I looked that up). Shawn (Ényì Okoronkwo), who ends up buying Matt’s tickets, explains for those in the audience like me who didn’t know: “He [LeBron James] gave Cleveland the finger. On national TV!” It was like watching the abrupt breakup of a long-term relationship. In a play whose second half is more engaging than the first, the dialogue begins with an overly long preamble about Matt putting his season tickets on sale – apparently, this is something that can be done without the basketball authorities deeming the tickets null and void because of touting.
Elsewhere, Matt’s frustrations about what’s “wrong with America” seemed to me to be about the never-ending chase, again common to various team sports, for the next win, the next championship, the next tournament, always striving to be better regardless of whether the enjoyment of one’s sporting obsession is still there. Shawn raises some good points about microaggressions and how being black still counts against him in the workplace even in these supposedly more enlightened and egalitarian times. There are implications for both on-stage characters of the rat race pursuit – both of them chase separate dreams and ambitions outside of sport that end up being significantly far removed from what they had envisaged.
Both actors demonstrate considerable commitment to their roles, holding court, as it were, with convincing and surprisingly nuanced performances. A line in the show’s programme states, “Hampstead Theatre would like to thank Mary Ellen Wanty for the basketball coaching”. I would like to do the same: if I hadn’t known any better, I might have been inclined to think these actors were cast in the first place at least partly for basketball prowess.
Review by Chris Omaweng
“All the time we invested. In him. All the money. Al the games we went to. The basis of our entire friendship… LeBron for the win. LeBron for the win…”
The fortunes of the Cavaliers are about to change: the great LeBron James, the biggest star in basketball, is coming to Cleveland. But when superfan Matt’s latest business venture turns sour, he has to sell his most prized possession – his pair of Cavs season tickets. The buyer, Shawn, just sold his first short story – so watching his team in the flesh for the first time will be a sweet reward. Now just to figure out what to do with that second ticket…
Thrown together by chance, the next 12 years prove as defining, dramatic, and sometimes heart-breaking for Matt and Shawn as they do for the Cavs – and for ‘King’ LeBron James.
CAST
Matt – Sam Mitchell
Shawn – Ényì Okonronkwo
CREATIVES
Writer – Rajiv Joseph
Director – Alice Hamilton
Designer – Good Teeth
Lighting Designer – Matt Haskins
Sound Designer – Max Pappenheim
KING JAMES
15 November 2024 to 4 January 2025
Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, London NW3 3EU
