BWW Reviews: BEATING MCENROE, Ovalhouse Theatre, November 26 2013

You were either Borg or McEnroe back in the 70s. You could admire the other's skills, play, achievements and even their looks, but you were always for one or the other. Nobody ever said that they didn't mind who won - you rooted for the ice-cold Swede or the red-hot Yank. What a gift to tennis they were!

30-odd years on, when Jamie Wood goes round the audience - and there's plenty of audience participation in this show, which retains a real Edinburgh feel down South in London - passions still burn bright amongst each man's fans.

But Jamie and his brother Byron were both Borg men - or rather boys, as Jamie was six and Byron 14 - at the height of the tennis titans' tumultuous tournaments. Byron thought (or pretended to think) that he was teaching Jamie how to play the game - more than that, Byron thought, Kiplingesquely, that he was teaching how Jamie could become a man. Jamie thought he was just beating him for the sake of it - and Jamie felt himself morphing into McEnroe, no matter how much he tried to be Borg.

Told through clowning, mime, jokes, drawings and even through assuming the state of being a tennis ball, this one man show is funny and poignant, if occasionally a little haphazard. Jamie, as a boy, just wanted to be loved and now, as a man, one feels that he still just wants to be loved - but being hugged will do. Maybe McEnroe wanted to be loved too - as the play suggests - but real life tells us that Borg (appropriately, given that Jamie looks a lot like the Swede) was the man who, on putting away his racquet, missed his nemesis rather more than his nemesis missed him.

Beating McEnroe continues at the Ovalhouse Theatre until 30 November.