All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,

It begins when the player – we’ll call him Brando – is on the ground. He tries to get up but he’s unsteady. He shakes his head, blinks his eyes, seemingly can’t focus. We all wait. He stubbornly remains there looking around, going through a pantomime of dazed vision and foggy-headed helplessness. We continue to wait. We’ve seen this before. Brando is acting.

Acting? Let’s just take a brief detour into the world of rugby league thespians.

There was a time when all it took for a rugby league player to get an acting gig was to put on a woman’s dress, or maybe a turban and a cliched foreign accent. It wasn’t Benny Hill but it got an audience.

Audiences are fickle though and when sexism and racism became passé in the performing arts, so did those parts. We might’ve missed Benny Hill but footballers in drag went unlamented.

We’ve seen a crossover from field to stage lately in the Matty Johns show. The host can act when he gets a good part and Fletch might surprise when not typecast as a clever boofhead. Hindmarsh though can really act. He can tap into his tears , show joy, and bring verity to the look of a man deeply wounded. He is undoubtedly a method actor, but does he know it? It doesn’t matter.

Back to Brando who is not a good actor. The crowd at the game know he’s acting. The referee knows he is acting. And worst of all, Brando knows that everyone knows he’s acting and he doesn’t care.

He stubbornly remains in character refusing to get up. He looks like The Dying Gaul.

The game has come to a standstill. You wonder whether someone has mistakenly called an ambulance. Then you get a replay on a screen. A defensive player, let’s call him Lucifer, has gone in shoulder high. The laws of physics, which apply with equal inevitability to both the intentional and the accidental, have caused Luther’s swinging arm to bounce up from Brando’s shoulder and touch his forehead. There is not much contact and Brando has a head like a buffalo. Few of us are doctors but we think we are on safe ground in thinking that nothing much is wrong with Brando.

The referee now listens carefully with a hand to his earpiece. He too has a sense of drama. He once played a villain in a school play which inspired him to become a referee. Several suspenseful beats pass. We have been here before and we know he is listening to the bunker and not someone asking him to bring home some milk. Suddenly, he reacts, and points at Lucifer and waves him over. From the theatre pews, we join in booing the villain. The referee not Lucifer.

As he talks to Lucifer he looks a little regretful, sheepish and apologetic. The referee not Lucifer. You know the ref is using the Nuremberg defence. Don’t blame me. The bunker is making me do it. His hands then reach skyward. Lucifer gets ten in the bin and runs off accompanied by close ups on the big screen. He is aggrieved. Like King Lear, he is a man more sinned against than sinning.

Brando leaps to his feet and plays the ball. His vision and other senses are no longer an issue. His quick return to health doesn’t have to be explained with more unnecessary acting. It’s the end of the matter.

Except it’s not. Not by a very long shot. The acting part is over, yes. But the reviews are just beginning.

The commentators get the first opportunity. They are obliged to be non partisan but the colour man (maybe Steve Roach) is allowed to say that Lucifer’s contact with the head wouldn’t have knocked a fly off a sausage. The responsible adult in the room (say Warren Smith) will opine tentatively that it did look accidental. Their review of the send off decision will vary but there’ll be noises of regret and pieties about this being what the game is these days and contact with the head needs to be discouraged and you do want mothers to bring their kids to the games.

Move on to the press conference. Brando’s coach, if his team has lost, and if he has steam coming out of his ears, and if his name is Ricky, and if he is biting his tongue to avoid a fine, might, on being asked for an opinion, fire back with..

“You saw what I saw. What did you think?”

This is not really an invitation for the journalist to comment. There is a subtext to this script. And it’s full of expletives.

If it’s a coach of a more taciturn disposition, someone maybe called Wayne, he might say, dryly.

“I’ll be interested in what Graham Annesley has to say.”

Again, he isn’t the slightest bit interested in what Annesley has to say. The subtext here is, as always, “You are an idiot. I don’t want to be here.”

The journalists rush off to write their own reviews.

Monday it’s Graham Annesley’s turn. Carrying the burden of office, his role is to authoritatively rule on the correctness or otherwise of the decisions of the referee and the bunker and bring to an end to the spooling reviews from non authoritative sources such as the media and the coaches.

But no one takes that seriously. We applaud the skill in the deadpan delivery, but everyone including Annesley knows this is really a comedy. Sophisticated theatre goers will think of the farces of Aristophanes and movie Aficionados wont miss the Woody Allen inspired irony.

His ruling immediately sets off another bout of reviews. Including reviews of Annesley’s performance.

We are up to Monday night and it’s the turn of the NRL 360 panel.

If we are lucky we’ll see an acclaimed veteran like Buzz Rothfield still in character from a stint as Polonius in Hamlet. But if you’re expecting Paul Kent it really is a case of to be on the show or not to be, depending on whether or not he’s got out of the arboretum.

If neither is there, there’ll be another cast. Braith Anasta is the leading man. (Some old timers think he is channeling the sixties academy award winner Anthony Quinn.) Braith is encouraging some improv. Show me some disagreement boys. This is necessary because without conflict there is no progression and poor ratings. Gordon Tallis, known for his performance as the Raging Bull, invites the journalists to go nose to nose with him on the subject of the send off. They look nervous. No one wants to get dragged off the set by the collar.

And we haven’t yet got to the court room drama that is the NRL judiciary. Here the very best of the acting profession, classically trained, declaim with art and technique to each other on the topics of head contact, physics and the difference between intentional and reckless. This is a unique form of theatre where most of the audience, unsophisticated lumpenproletariat, have to sit outside.

And if you are still with me it’s time to remind you of how all this started. Bad acting and pretend injury. A risible parody of pain and disability set all this in motion. The reviews themselves and the reviews of the reviews, have become the theatre. It’s not Aida, but there’s an elephant on stage, and no one, it seems, wants to see it.

Who wants popcorn?