Review: It’s A Funny New Game (The Changing Farce of Football), Canal Café Theatre

Just over a decade ago, 2015 to be precise, I saw a comedian in one of the members’ boxes at Molineux Stadium, home of Wolverhampton Wanderers. He wasn’t great, serving up a mixture of 1970s sexism and trite observations. To be fair, his target audience was the two 80-year-olds whose birthday party it was, and they loved it. The rest of us, less so. 

Unfortunately, It’s a Funny New Game felt like a rerun of that experience: a series of poor jokes based on stereotypes and bad impressions, delivered through a never-ending run of disconnected football-related vignettes. Theatre it was not.

The Canal Café Theatre is in the upstairs room of the lovely Bridge House Pub in Little Venice, overlooking the canal. For this production, the layout consisted of cabaret-style tables, which created a particularly welcoming atmosphere. It is a great space. Three Lions (Baddiel, Skinner & the Lightning Seeds) and Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond) were played on a continuous loop before curtain-up. I know these two are ubiquitous World Cup football anthems, but there are other songs associated with the beautiful game. Doris Day, anyone?

The action opens with an angelic chorus announcing, in biblical style, that the day of rest had been sacrificed for the good of the game, before moving to a pundit-style interview with sheepskin-clad Barry Mousetrap (Mark Keegan), the original VAR (Very Amusing Raconteur). The subject matter was unoriginal, the impressions awkward and the puns unfunny. It set the scene for the rest of the evening. Some of the references I got; some I did not, although I am not sure it mattered. They seemed to be a random collection of skits that had originated in the pub and had been thrown together with little consideration given to any narrative arc.

The characters included Kurt Kliche (football’s most fashionable manager), Flange Costabobortwo (football’s most sacked manager) and Sir Fergus McAllison (football’s most miserable manager). A particularly low moment was a lengthy interview with the not-so-beautiful footballer and underwear model Ronald Biggego. In other words, Keegan in his pants. No more needs to be said about that.

Keegan was supported by John Random and David Hicks, both of whom displayed competence, decent comic timing and dexterity in moving between various characters, while also interacting comfortably with the audience. Producer Victoria Waddington also appeared in a couple of sketches, although she occasionally tripped over her lines. Nonetheless, she acquitted herself well in a decently written Austen-inspired sketch.

The 2026 World Cup officially kicks off in Mexico on Thursday 11 June, so inevitably, up and down this great nation, punters will be offering unwanted advice, sitting in pubs and doing bad comic impressions of managers, pundits and players alike. This is all to be expected, and I am sure I have offered equally irrelevant and unqualified advice myself. However, something that purports to be theatre, and charges money for a ticket, needs to offer more than that.

Written by Mark Keegan and John Random
Directed by Victoria Waddington

It’s A Funny New Game (The Changing Farce of Football) plays at the Canal Café Theatre until Friday 12 June 2026