Driving to this theatre, I passed signs to Sidmouth and Tiverton, more known for West Country charm than sporting supremacy. They are namechecked early in a play about the region’s recent rugby union history to make the point that, in the early 80s, Exeter used to lose to neighbourhood clubs considered minnows.
Exe Men is adapted by Ashley Pharoah from Guardian rugby writer Robert Kitson’s 2020 book. It shows how an ambitious investor, Tony Rowe, and enterprising coach, Rob Baxter, renamed the club the Exeter Chiefs and made them the best in England and then Europe. The Chiefs were the Seabiscuit of jock-straps and scrum caps, the Leicester City of rugby.
The biggest problem in sporting theatre is how to stage the games without the audience being hit by flying balls or the too obvious difference between the movement of actors and professional athletes. David Storey’s great 1971 rugby league play, The Changing Room is sensibly set around the action. As the Chiefs’ rise had so many rich onfield scenes, Pharoah and director Martin Berry really have to show some rucks, scrums and drop kicks but do so impressionistically; in the props department, the score is: rugby balls 1, giant inflatable plastic penises 2. (The latter relating to Baxter’s coaching manual containing a thick section on getting loose on the bus and in the pub.) Play is portrayed through effective tableaux created by movement director Kim Healey, the use of a community cast of volunteers allowing Berry sometimes to have two full XVs on the artificial turf covering the strip of stage between seating risers called for this show “stands”.
Two other obstacles are a two-decade span and a potential lack of tension as even non-Chiefs fans know that there wouldn’t be a book and play if the team hadn’t kept winning. Pharoah, though, has a sure sense of when to cut and run from the calendar (one four-year jump), within a match or from sport to home, including a powerful scene of private grief.
The biggest risk is of a local show for local people. Certainly, names of places and players drew cheers but Exe Men holds wider interest by exploring the metaphor in the Storey title: that sport changes people. The great Chiefs team – multiple squad members played by Joe Feeney, Pete Watts and Emile Ruddock with engaging versatility – were allowed a second chance, reflecting a generosity projected by Tim Hudson’s Rowe and Robert Shaw Cameron’s Baxter. Micha Colombo as the coach’s wife has a narrative subs’ bench role but, with the amateur cast, radiates an appropriate sense of team work.
