Review: JIMMY, Park Theatre

US tennis player Jimmy Connors is an eight-time Grand Slam champion, but he’s now probably best remembered for his unlikely semi-final run at the 1991 US Open at the geriatric (for athletes, at least) age of 39. This is the episode in Connors’ life that comedian Adam Riches has chosen to dramatise in Jimmy, a one-man show newly transferred from the Edinburgh Fringe.

Writer and performer Riches is a physically imposing presence who’s used to doing celebrity impressions (he’s most famous for his Sean Bean on various TV panel shows), but his version of Connors seems to extend beyond superficial mimicry. In several on-court scenes, Riches’ micro-expressions convey all the highs and lows of a desperate man on the edge of glory (no cloying Hollywood endings here): the moment just before a ball lands where everything hangs in the balance, the nervous plucking of racket strings, the manic energy siphoned off a supportive crowd.

On every level, the script and production (directed by Tom Parry) understand the adrenaline involved in professional tennis. The pulsating sound design (by Jim Johnson) makes Connors’ intense training regimens as a young boy feel like military drills (“I was six,” Riches wisecracks after remembering a session where he was forced to recall the ingredients of a Manhattan). The space we’re in, one of the Park Theatre’s smaller studios, where audience members sit up close and personal with the performer, is also ideal for a play partially about tennis players’ relationships with their fans – I feel so immersed on press night that sometimes I want to applaud after Riches hits a winner.

Jimmy, however, is clearly a piece that wants to be more than the sum of its parts, to say something more profound about its subject’s state of mind or even about male anger more generally, and this is where it sometimes falls flat. Riches’ script is unconvincingly framed around Connors’ relationship with the mother who was his first coach and the grandmother who helped her raise him (and died before Connors’ career took off), and these figures never attain much characterisation in Connors’ memory beyond the “tiger mum” stereotype. They are, however, a fantastic showcase for Riches’ aptitude for deftly shifting between characters.

Since Jimmy is at its richest psychologically when it actually allows Connors to play tennis, it’s a shame that we waste so much time in the middle third on expository biographical detail. Revelatory lines, like Connors telling himself to “create whatever narrative you need to succeed”, feel buried beneath lists of past tournaments; a brief, slower paced scene where Connors reflects on his on-off romance with fellow player Chris Evert is treated as a footnote rather than something to delve into more deeply.

Still, for anyone who loves or even likes the game of tennis, this is a worthy paean to how harrowing the sport can be at its best. The character it carves out from Connors’ story may need some more depth and refinement, but it’ll certainly be playing at the back of my mind as we head into Wimbledon.

Jimmy plays at the Park Theatre until 26 July