Up 'n' Under @ Hull Truck

A rugby ball sits, waiting, centre stage. A rugby ball-shaped spotlight focusses on it. Smoke fills the stage, beams of light shooting downwards. Is it Wembley? The Millennium Stadium? A true Theatre of Dreams, a Stadium of Light? It's certainly a big arena set-piece to open John Godber's Up 'n' Under at Hull Truck.

Godber allegedly wrote this play after promising to do so at his interview for the job of Artistic Director at Hull Truck. That was twenty-five years ago, and now the Truck has resurrected this tale of a failing rugby side struggling against both themselves and formidable opposition. In a way, it hasn't aged too well, the casual homophobia still being lapped up by 2009's audience. But this audience also laps up the local colour, the banter and the camaraderie of Godber's team. He sets up a fierce rivalry early on, which gets laughs and sets a lightly confrontational tone throughout – what do you expect from a play about rugby with five men and only one woman?

It's in the next scene that Godber triumphs though. It works when he keeps away from the grandiose themes and styles, instead giving the people what they want by sticking some northern blokes in a room to moan and bicker. This is – if you'll pardon the unintentional pun – Godber's home turf, and the scene is a masterclass in both character and dialogue, each line rushing the scene to its conclusion via a joke. Masterful.

You could probably criticise the casting of this play – the singer can't sing, and some argue that Abi Titmuss is just there for the headlines. But at least there's eye-candy for both halves of the audience, and (like many Truck plays) the cast are highly plausible as a unit, if not as individuals. Speaking of eye-candy, Titmuss surely doesn't need to do quite so much work alone in her onstage gym...does she?

There comes a time in this early play when a teacher writes a poem based around the opening of Romeo & Juliet. He actively apes the style of Shakespeare, and the same can be said of Godber throughout the play; he gives an epic scope to the action that tries to raise it above the level of mere amateur rugby up to something higher, something grander. Take, for example, Titmuss setting the scene in heroic fashion before the action starts (then later reminding us of the story so far, in case we'd forgotten...after the first scene), very Henry V. That stadium feels like just one part of Godber's plan to make everything much bigger than it really is. But for all his knowingly-dropped titbits from Henry V and King Lear, Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet, Godber can't get away from the fact that his story is about some blokes who are out of shape and need chivvying up.

What we're presented with is very much a populist piece of theatre. It doesn't engage with any big themes, apart perhaps from the effects of ageing. What it does do very well is tell an encouraging story and raise laugh after laugh, in classic Hull Truck style – no surprise, as this is probably the play which, more than any other, set the benchmark for that style back in the mid-eighties. The ripping of Shakespeare certainly feels like a new writer showing us what he knows and trying things out.

Viewed in such terms, this is a massive success, and deserves the rapturous applause it gets from a nearly-full house. How many of those kids were there because Up 'n' Under is a set text, or were there for Abi Titmuss, is debatable – but if they liked this (they should) and want to see more like it...who cares why they turned up?