A whole new ball game

The other characters are Laurie, the club's current coach, who sticks to the traditional values of the club; Geoff, the new star recruit, who plays badly and defies coach Laurie, and, finally, there is Danny, the team captain, who is aware of the fact that he is no longer the star player he once was.

"The Club was my first experience of being an assistant director after I joined Beijing People's Art Theatre in 2001. I was there with the director Ren Ming (1960-2022) and other actors in the play for months, watching how they worked and how they acted, which was a memorable experience," recalls Xu Ang, director of this new production, who also played the role of Geoff in the 2002 version of the play.