A Tour de Force Performance from Tim Marriott in Jack's Ashes

Susan Stanley-Carroll says play at the Tabard not just for cricket fans

Tim Marriot as Jack 'delivers a sensitive, wryly humorous monologue'
Tim Marriot as Jack 'delivers a sensitive, wryly humorous monologue'

October 5, 2024

‘Jack’s Ashes’ won two awards last year: it is now running at the Theatre at the Tabard until Saturday 19 October. The production’s thoughtful insights into cricket and the anguish of mental health will interest not only cricket pundits but many others. Matt Banes a former professional cricketer and Tim Marriott, an award winning producer, wrote the script.

The production opens to the tinkling of BBC’s ‘yonketty tonketty” theme tune for Test Match Special. It provides a bitter sweet start along with videos of known cricketers talking about their cricketing joys and losses.

It is bizarre to be watching a cricket match in October, in, of all places Bedford Park’s Theatre at the Tabard. Yes, of course, a cricket narrative dominates the script but it also reflects on that dark, disturbing side to cricket: the metal health of many cricketers. Jack (Tim Marriott) delivers a sensitive, wryly humorous monologue: a ‘tour de force’ of a performance.

Jack, once a professional cricketer of repute, recalls his life story as he watches and comments on the game played by the young cricket team that he has coached. He muses on the ebb and flow from his past: boy to man to grandfather, especially his close cricketing friends.

The score of the imagined match, is screened from the back of the stage and it chimes superbly with the appropriate sound effects that resonate during Marriott’s sixty minute, flawless commentary .

For 42 years cricket has been a significant part of my life and the script rings true. A non-cricketing friend remarked that she had thoroughly enjoyed the production and its very important mental health message, however, ‘Jack’s Ashes’ may not be your ‘cup of tea’.

N.B: Buy a pint of bitter to sip at your seat in the Tabard, then, sit back to listen to Jack’s commentary as his team hit and miss that irksome ball. A random thought, you may recall that famous line in the BBC commentary spoken by Jonners’s (Brian Johnston) : ‘The bowler is Holding; the batsman’s Willey’: referring to Michael Holding of the West Indies and Peter Willey, of England in a Test Match at the Oval in 1976!

Susan Stanley-Carroll

FINDING The Tabard: it is less than a minute’s walk from Turnham Green tube station (District line). Just leave the station and turn right. The Theatre has its own entrance in the Tabard pub ’ s beer garden. Free Parking in The Avenue after 18.30.

The 94 Bus from the West End, Notting Hill and Shepherd’s Bush stops outside our front door. Other buses stopping nearby are the 27, 267, 237, 391, E3 and H91.

Phone 020 8995 6035

Don’t be caught out, get on the front foot and score your tickets before they run out …. Not many performances left before the final wicket falls!

TICKETS: £18 / £15 concession w/c 7th October
£20/ £17 concession w/c 14th October

Coming up at the Tabard

Theatre at the Tabard is at 2 Bath Road, Chiswick (W4 1LW).

 

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