The Ghost of White Hart Lane tells the story of John White, the legendary Spurs midfielder who died tragically young. The ‘Ghost’, as he later became known for his amazing ability to slip past opposing players, was a well-liked and charismatic young Musselburgh lad who, despite his diminutive physique, was a tornado on the pitch and a man of simple means and endless charm off of it.
Even a veritable football luddite won’t have any issues following this incredibly endearing and charismatic story of a father and son separated by time and tragedy. Martin Murphy’s one-man play sees Cal Newman perform both as John and as his son, Rob. Contrasting them by means of an offset parallel, while John grows up football mad and dead-set on proving himself strong enough to be a world class player, Rob’s story instead focuses more on reflecting upon his tangential feelings about the game and growing up never knowing his father outside of photographs and old football footage.
The play is based partly upon the book The Ghost, written by Rob with Julie Welch, and Murphy’s adaptation does much to cram a lot of information into a relatively short runtime. What is clearly obvious is the easy charm with which Newman soaks each character, while keeping them distinctly different in both voice and accent. And while, strictly speaking, his Musselburgh twang is slightly off, making the dervish-like intro a little unclear, it’s an accent that settles in nicely as the play moves along.
Fans of Spurs and football history will lap this up, but even those who don’t care much for the game will be enthralled with this very human and bittersweetly tragic story of two men who never had the chance to know each other.