In 2007 the public relations department of an American basketball team, the New Jersey Jets, decided to add a new element to their half-time entertainment. They would form a dance team comprising over-60s – “senior citizens”, to use that rather ghastly phrase. You can just about see the light bulbs going off in the board room, even from this distance in time and space. A documentary team came on board too, naturally, and followed the process of auditioning and training the Jersey NETsationals. The film Gotta Dance was released in 2008.

A project to empower a cohort that often feels invisible or a cynical marketing gimmick? Hard to say. Possibly a bit of both. Probably more of the latter.

The cast of Hayes Theatre Co’s Half Time. Photo © David Hooley

A fictionalised music-theatre adaptation premiered in 2015, was revised in the hopes of a Broadway run that never eventuated and opened as Half Time in New Jersey in 2018. Unfortunately, it could perhaps better be titled Half Baked. Its many creatives, who include top-tier book writer Chad Beguelin (Aladdin, The Prom), found no persuasive way to balance...