May 26-June 1, 2005

theater

Fair Game

by David Anthony Fox

As the news continually reminds us, Americans aren't very good at accepting cultural challenges. So imagine how the country would respond on discovering that one of its heroes, a mixed-race baseball player of infinite beauty, talent, physical grace, intelligence and confidence, is also gay.

Meet Darren Lemming, star center fielder for the New York Empires, and the leading character of Richard Greenberg's immensely entertaining Take Me Out. Lemming has recently done just that — taken himself out of the closet. And his teammates are not much happier than the rest of America. Particularly surly about it all is Shane Mungitt, a recent team recruit and brilliant pitcher, but otherwise a bigoted, trailer-trash hick waiting to explode.

Take Me Out is plotted as a kind of double roller-coaster ride. On one track, we follow the inevitable course predestined by Darren's self-revelation. Given that his ball-playing best friend, Davey Battle, is a devout Christian, and that even Darren's most accepting colleagues have ambivalent feelings, that course is tragic as well as comic. (Kippy Sunderstrom, one of Darren's teammates and a man given to eloquent analyzes, serves as Take Me Out's narrator.)

But if Darren's career turns shaky, on track two there is an unexpected and happy result. Mason Marzac, a nebbishy gay accountant chosen by Darren to manage his finances, finds meaning in his own life. What begins as a crush on Darren becomes Mason's ecstatic love affair — with baseball.

Taken simply as the story of Darren, Mason et al, Take Me Out is a nearly flawless piece of playwriting. Greenberg's script has wit, intricacy and astonishing verve. Audience attention never flags throughout its three — yes, three — acts.

But Greenberg, who may well be Mason's doppelganger, surely wants us to buy into baseball as the Great American Metaphor. Perhaps you do, but I don't — and to me, aspects of Take Me Out are pretentious and overreaching. Take, for example, the team itself, which all too conveniently is populated (for diversity purposes) like a microcosmic Ellis Island. Nor do I believe the brilliant Kippy, punning about Kafka between games, as anything but a dramatic construct. In fact, the whole team seems made up of people either too bright or too stupid.

Ultimately, I wish Take Me Out were a bit less facile. Isn't Shane too broadly drawn? And isn't the real tragedy here that Mason — witty, erudite, charming — is rejected by the gay community for his terminal uncuteness until Darren pays him some attention? Another playwright might at least briefly ponder this absurdity, but not Greenberg, for it would slow Take Me Out's momentum and tarnish his love of the game.

That said, Take Me Out still makes for a potent evening in the theater, and the show is mostly well-served by director James Christy and his forces. In the debit column, Jacques Cowart II as Darren is neither God-like nor enigmatic enough, but a big plus here is Kraig Swartz's entirely loveable Mason.

TAKE ME OUT Through June 19, Philadelphia Theatre Company at Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey St., 215-985-0420