Court Jester? Not quite: Adam Riches explores the dark corners of Jimmy Connors

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Thursday 3rd July 2025

One of the best shows at last year's Edinburgh Fringe has finally transferred to London, 10 months on. And fair play, as Adam Riches has probably only just recovered.

His portrayal of last-dance tennis star Jimmy Connors is an extraordinary mix of athletic ball-busting, high-wire tech feats and gut-punching background story, as we're whisked courtside at New York's Flushing Meadow - the graveyard slot, Connors laments, early on - for the 1991 US Open. It's a bold foray beyond comedy for Riches, but quite possibly his finest hour. An ATP-Tour-de-force.

Between those Jimmy runs the Fringe favourite has also earned raves, and swoons, for his charismatic Ball; Michael Ball, in Adam Riches and John Kearns ARE Ball and Boe, which is back for big shows in Edinburgh and London's Soho Walthamstow soon. If, of course, he's still standing, after a sweaty month at the Park Theatre. Time to climb that mountain again, Adam. Up the Jimmy hill.

I was fascinated by this show before seeing it, at the Fringe - you seem to capture Jimmy Connors even in that poster photo

Thanks - the physicality of Jimmy was really intrinsic to it. You're talking about a guy that did something in the early '90s when he was 39, and the world has changed a lot since then. Now, being 39 in any environment - particularly sporting - it's not seen as such a difficult thing.

But I'm older than that, so I knew that the physicality of me doing it on stage live, and how that would affect my body, my sweat, would be intrinsic in selling it. I knew that would be a huge, huge part of what that show was going to be, how much an achievement it was [for Jimmy], how big it was. You have to see it on me. You have to feel it on me. You have to be exhausted as well.

Speaking of aging, we started a whole feature, Which Footballer are You, because I loved your answer to that question. Late-era John Barnes, adjusting his game as his speed went...

I've always been fascinated by getting older, and a lot of my characters, when I started out, they would always be older than me. And now I'm older, I think Jimmy was the first character I was like, oh, 10 years [younger], right. So I'm putting my age struggles on this guy, and kind of navigating it through him.

The actual logistics of the tennis sequences, just you and a racquet, but really visceral. I was very impressed with the tech, the whole experience of that.

It was so difficult. We didn't do any rehearsals, we didn't do any previews, the very, very first time at the Fringe was the very, very first time we did it.

The logistics of getting all of the sound effects selected, worked out and lined up, getting all of the tennis choreography devised, the writing and the performance of the text, then the drums - my wife's dad [Roy Martin] is a professional drummer - getting all of that stuff together and then just kind of mixing it.

Then you've got the lights, and then you've got the space. And I got in the space and I couldn't serve. And it was like, 'oh shit. How do I serve now?'

Right - and it needs to be realistic.

So the very first show was just this explosion - god knows what the people that were in the room thought - just a release of everything. And as Edinburgh demands of you anyway, your decisions go so fast, 'that's not gonna work, that's good.' We changed a couple of bits. We redid the ending a little bit, and then we just had to refine different bits.

But very quickly we knew that we had something that, if we could just get it together, it would at least serve the story that I'd written. And then it was just whether you like it, whether you connect with it.

At the Fringe it was billed as theatre, rather than comedy. It's still very much one of your shows - often very funny - but clearly a different thing.

Did you feel that when you walked in? Because obviously that's a mindset that I don't have: what it feels like to have seen someone perform a certain type of thing for a long time, then go in knowing that it's something different. But still, at the same time, there's your relationship with that performer. Was there an adjustment that you had to make?

To be honest, I'd been chatting to Kirsty Wark in the queue and trying not to make a massive arse of myself - she was doing a Front Row piece on comedy, so I was tempted to say 'ah, but this isn't...' But I enjoyed the tone shift, the stuff about his upbringing was fascinating.

That was the thing for me as well, because it was a show that I tried to get going for a couple of years, and there was a really interesting story there. I thought the sporting thing was interesting anyway, then digging deeper and finding out about his mum and his grandma - well, that's the story.

I remember that tournament you focus on, '91 - he'd been massively overshadowed by John McEnroe, but suddenly made a big impact again.

I don't know if you noticed, or saw me message it, but during the run, Jimmy Connors himself got in touch. He tweeted, and he does a podcast with his son now. He just sent a lovely message saying they've heard about the show, he's very flattered, would love to come and see it.

I think of everything I've ever done, possibly because it's a real person and a straight thing, I think this has got the most ability to translate internationally. It's a very known story. And you don't have to like tennis to like it. You don't have to know Jimmy to understand it, and that was very important to me with the creation of it like that, that I get beyond what I love about this story, and I make it sort of universal for everybody.

It would be interesting to perform with him in the room - he's famously a tough character, as comes across in the show.

That's a very different experience. Because, you know, some of the stuff is not flattering, he's a guy that's famously quoted as saying, 'I don't read anything about me, because I was the one that was there; how can anyone know better than me what went on?' I think he's very cool and comfortable about himself, and if he did come, that would be strange for both of us. But fun.

Usually I get back from Edinburgh and it's tricky explaining stuff I saw, but I remember telling a tennis fan, 'Oh, you'd love this...'

That's something that Edinburgh is lovely about, you get so many people coming to see you from different places. And there were so many stories that came out from people that had been at that tournament, in the stadium. So they'd experienced that shift that's covered in the show, that moment where he just kind of kicked in and everybody's rallying behind him.

There were people that had played with him when he was a young boy, on the same court as he was getting drilled with his mum and his grandma. This one guy was there, he heard and felt that dynamic, as they were whacking the ball at him. So there's these wonderful stories just through doing Edinburgh that I don't think I'm gonna have got anywhere else.

From people who wouldn't normally turn up to a Fringe show at Summerhall, presumably?

One guy, when Jimmy came to Edinburgh to play in a tournament, he was the driver that was charged with driving him around town, to clubs and bars. He spent an evening with Jimmy. There was a guy that got given two of his racquets. It was just amazing.

And it changed the way I behaved at the end of the show, because in the first week or so I'd finish, and I would bow and I'd go straight off. Because physically I'm like [looks knackered] 'okay, yeah...'

But there were lots of people that were wanting to talk and say hi, how important that was, that they'd seen that tournament on TV with their dad, and then their dad had taken them to see him, and now they were here at the festival with their son. They had this whole legacy, that the play kind of talks about, that we map our own lives against sporting events, or music, or cinema. I can remember what I was doing in '84 or '85 because of Ghostbusters and Back To The Future.

But you weren't around to chat after the shows, at first?

I changed it because it was this one guy that had waited at Summerhall's entrance for me for like, an hour, just an older guy who knew Jimmy. And I didn't come out, I wasn't available. And so I missed that story, and I felt really, really bad. Because having spent so long on an idea, on my own, and so much of a worry about whether this would actually connect with anybody, to then not be available...

So I changed it. I would then go off to the other side, might stand by the door, and I'd just have a towel there and some water, if anybody wanted to kind of give me a story, and they did. And that was great, because - and you know this a tonne from talking to lots of performers - it's a slog, that festival. Sometimes you need stuff from other sources to give you that oomph.

That's the side of it that isn't represented in star ratings.

The reviews are the reviews, and applause is applause, but having people step forward and say, 'yeah, this show was great because of this, or tennis was important to me because of my dad.' That was really, really lovely. And I can tell you, when I played Sean Bean, no-one was coming up to me with wet eyes and saying, 'You know what? When I saw the end of Game Of Thrones, or Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief, what you did there...'

Jimmy is at Park Theatre, Finsbury Park, London, until July 26. Tickets