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THEATRE
13th Street Rep

OPENED
July 25, 2002

CLOSES
October 12, 2002

PERFORMANCES
Thu - Sat at 7pm

RUNNING TIME
1 hour, 45 minutes

TICKETS
$15
$10 students/seniors
 

CAST
Red Company:
Peter Stewart, Gyda Arber, Adam Raynen, Jason Godbey, Brianna Hansen, Mike Shen

Blue Company:
David Engel, Heather Pamula, Nick Marcotti, Mike Anthony, Jennifer Johnson, Mike Shen

AUTHOR
Richard Day
DIRECTOR
Robert Kreis
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
Deirdre Schwiesow
LIGHTING
Gavin Smith
SOUND
John DiMaggio

Straight-Jacket

nytheatre.com review
by Martin Denton · September 1, 2002

For a while this past summer, when there was talk in the media about the New York Mets' Mike Piazza's sexual preference, Take Me Out looked to be incredibly timely. After all, its catalytic event—the thing that gets the plot going—is a press conference called by New York "Empire" Darren Lemming, at which he tells the world that he is gay. Lemming is one of those golden people—he remarks frequently that things always go right for him—and so he expects this announcement to have no negative impact on his very lucrative career or his astonishing popularity with the public. It's clear that he believes setting the record straight, so to speak, on this point, is a good idea.

What's not at clear, from Richard Greenberg's long and rambling script, is why. The obvious reasons—to avoid a scandal or to make a political/social statement—are both rejected in the course of the play. It would be terrific, I guess, if prominent gay people would suddenly acknowledge their sexual preference publicly and the world would say, "mmm, how interesting," and move on. But it doesn't seem the least bit likely: ask Ellen DeGeneres or Rosie O'Donnell.

What's even more problematic about Take Me Out is that Greenberg does not use this hook to explore the issues surrounding it. How does America react to Lemming's shocking revelation? Well, except for one letter from an upset though understanding fan, we never find out. Lemming's career in baseball seems to continue on more or less the same trajectory it was already on, which is a lovely way to imagine the world behaving, but doesn't seem particularly realistic or, more to the point, insightful. Greenberg throws a hot potato at his audience and then never picks it up, leaving us to wonder why he brought it into the theatre in the first place.

Take Me Out does delve into one area related to this "outing" theme, namely, the way that a surprise announcement such as Lemming's really destroys the morale of the ball club he's supposedly part of. And here we arrive at the meat of Greenberg's play, as far as I can tell; for Take Me Out turns out to be, more than anything else, a celebration of the great American pastime of baseball. The protagonist of Take Me Out is neither Lemming nor his teammate Kippy Sunderstrom (who narrates the play); it's Mason Marzac, a misfit gay financial adviser who discovers the game when Lemming makes his announcement and finds, in baseball, some of the connection and meaning that has eluded him elsewhere in his lonely life. Greenberg gives Marzac some exuberant speeches about the sport: about the ineffable mystery of threes in baseball (three outs, three strikes, nine innings, etc.), and the patriotic joy of being consumed in a crowd rooting for your favorite team. It's interesting stuff, but it comes out of left field, if you'll forgive the allusion, after Lemming's provocative action.

Greenberg also throws in an uneducated orphan hick named Shane Mungit, who has an amazing pitching arm, and who joins the team mid-season and eventually antagonizes all of its members, but especially Lemming, by using words like "faggot" and "colored" in public. (Lemming is black, by the way.) Eventually this leads to a confrontation between Lemming and Mungit, and to a shocking development (a socko second act curtain!) involving a player from an opposing team, one Davey Battle, who is supposedly Lemming's best friend in the world (though it's hard to understand how or why). Lemming's Japanese teammate Kawabata provides pretext for another subplot dealing with prejudice and the nature of the American melting pot, while dopey but surprisingly in-touch-with-his-feelings teammate Toddy Koovitz allows Greenberg to explore issues of masculinity and sexual panic.

As you can see by now, Take Me Out covers lots and lots of ground—too much for its own good, I fear. Ultimately, Greenberg brings up plenty of interesting subjects but he doesn't really do any of them justice. I left the show without a clear idea of what the playwright wanted to tell me.

And I haven't even mentioned the shower scenes. There are two of them, with a working shower right on stage and, at one point, as many as six naked actors soaping up right before our eyes. It's the opposite of erotic and entirely distracting (questions of hygiene popped into my head); it feels, also, entirely calculated to generate hype. Rather than reveal important elements of plot or character, this use of nudity just left me feeling uncomfortable for the actors.

Who are, in fact, quite good: I was particularly impressed by the genuineness of Frederick Weller's performance as the retrograde pitcher Shane Mungit. Neal Huff (as the narrator, Kippy), Dominic Fumusa (as Koovitz), and Joe Lisi (as the team manager, Skipper) also do outstanding work. Daniel Sunjata is unable to make Lemming more than the cipher that Greenberg seems to have written, however, and Denis O'Hare, as the cheerleading accountant Marzac, plays to the crowd way too much for my taste.

I guess a play that poses intriguing questions is better than one that makes no demands whatsoever of its audience. I just wish that in Take Me Out, the playwright's intentions and point of view were more clearly articulated.

13th Street Repertory Company presents the first New York revival of Richard Day's comedy Straight-Jacket. Straight-Jacket had a brief off-Broadway run in 2000; I liked it so much that I included in NYTE's anthology Plays and Playwrights 2001.

Straight-Jacket is set in Hollywood in the 1950s, and tells the story of a gay movie star who falls in love with his (male) screenwriter. His boss and agent decide to marry him off to a naive young secretary to try to save his career. Straight-Jacket is a brilliantly funny satire and send-up of Hollywood hypocrisy; I can't wait to see it again.

Note that there are two rotating casts performing Straight-Jacket. The review below is of the "Red Company."

 

Review provided by nytheatre.com