Review: Glory, Albion Electric Warehouse, Leeds, until Saturday

NOTHING is fake about West Yorkshire playwright, journalist and radio presenter Nick Ahad's Glory, a play that mines the innate theatricality of wrestling, a sport too easily dismissed as pantomime.

Ahad brings the necessary sweaty physicality to his witty state-of-the-multicultural nation drama, but hits the canvas even harder with his caustic comedy and brutal darker truths.

The setting is the ropey old wrestling ring at Jim "Glorious" Glory's faded gym, where Glory (Jamie Smelt) is living on past glories, but the bug still bites him as British-Chinese Dan (Josh Hart), ex-British black soldier Ben (Joshua Lyster) and Syrian refugee Sami (Ali Ahzar) each seek out his tuition for a shot at glory.

Ahad is no stranger to addressing the subject of racism, and here it becomes more complex, no one-way street of prejudice, as Dan, Ben and Sami all clash, while each seeks a sense of self-identity when confronted by stereotypes. They are fighting for more than glory in the ring; they are fighting for who they are. Smelt's Glory, meanwhile, is fighting for who he used to be, for reinstating his name, a mission that might push him too far.

Aided by the gripping direction of Red Ladder's Rod Dixon, the fight scene choreography of Kevin McCurd and the cast's give-everything performances, Ahad makes serious points with crunching comedy. You can feel the pain, both physical and emotional.

Charles Hutchinson