KEV and Phil are Sheffield United fans, and semi-reformed hooligans to boot.

Their Saturday afternoon ritual of watching the Blades disappoint them once again is becoming an empty experience, as the realities of life, rather than the boot, start to kick in. Kev (Keith Hukin) still has a taste for blood in his nostrils; Phil (Richard Marriott) is coming to terms with his wife, Janet, being pregnant with their first child - news he passes on to Kev amid the ebb and blow of United's latest frustrating match.

Where is Janet (Ava Burton) on Saturday afternoon? She's with fellow football widow Laura (Susan Mitchell), Kev's wife, flashing thighs and downing bottled lagers in one at their local. Like their men, they too are man-watching, eyeing up the talent, and they too are reflecting on marital responsibilities in the wake of Janet's pregnancy and Laura's all-night hotel fling with a man whose name but not body escaped her.

David Bown's Stand, winner of the 1998 Sunday Times Playwriting Award, is a tragicomic study of how the rituals of football impact upon fans and those around them. In a game and play of two (marital) halves, we first see the lads going about their Saturday business, as Hukin's Kev and Marriott's Phil join in the communal terrace chants and taunts, in between chunks of private conversation. This is hard-man ballet, with choreographed movement on and off their seats, at once humorous (because watching impassioned ritual as an outsider always is humorous) but also troubling, as the threat of violence soars.

In the second half, the wives' rituals match their partners: they sing along to the jukebox, they assess the men they watch, they make startling revelations in public places. As with a football ground, the pub is a fulcrum for pushing, shoving, shouting, swearing and fighting.

Game over, the men join them, and Bown's play reaches its squirming end- game, humour slipping out of the back door as booze and violence spill over.

Reform Theatre Company's production is up-close, personal, frank and full of balls, and Stand delivers, harder than John Godber's social comedies and just as physical.

Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 10:41 Friday, July 08, 2005