Among the Thugs

At Horse Head Theatre, men behave badly

Comments (0) By Lee Williams Thursday, Sep 16 2010

Horse Head Theatre is still relatively new to Houston's theater scene, but the company seems to have a theme going: wildly testosterone-driven plays that revel in men behaving badly. The newest production, Among the Thugs, focuses on the violence of British soccer in the 1980s. A bit of history - in 1984 at Heysel Stadium, 39 fans were killed and 600 more were injured when a wall collapsed during a riot. The amazing part? The game went on. In 1989, almost 100 fans died during a stampede at Hillsborough Stadium. The deaths don't even speak to all the injuries or to the property that was vandalized during and after games.

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American journalist Bill Buford became so fascinated by this violence that he started hanging out with these football hooligans in search of the personal and sociological reasons behind the mob mentality. The results of his journey to the dark side became a firsthand account called Among the Thugs, which has been turned into a play by Tom Szentgyorgyi. And, thanks to Horse Head Theatre, Houstonians get to watch the central character in Szentgyorgyi's work (a journalist named Bill) discover firsthand just what's so seductive about mob violence. See Among the Thugs at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Monday, September 20. Through October 2. Kryptonite, 717 Franklin. For information, call 713-364-4482 or visit www.horseheadtheatre.org. $20 to $25.
Thursdays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Starts: Sept. 16. Continues through Oct. 2, 2010