Boys of Summer

It's a hot day in DC, and I've just realized it's the last weekend for Take Me Out. I heard about the play mostly through Tony Kornheiser. He had been reluctant to watch it because it has male nudity, and yet, the topic was sports, and it had good reviews, and he likes plays as well, so everything aside from the nudity was appealing enough and he did go.

Take Me Out was hosted at the Studio Theater in the Mead Theater. This theater holds maybe 150 people? It's tiny, and you are as close to the stage as you can get. I mean, if I had side seating, I'd almost be able to touch the actors.

So, back to the play. The more I think about it, the more challenging the topic of the play is. Ostensibly, it's about a ball player that comes out. On the one hand, it could have been the gay Jackie Robinson play. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. He was the first African American player in a white sport. There were plenty of people, in those days, who did not want to see blacks play baseball. He had to deal with racist fans, and had to do so, without protest, so he could be above the fray, and be a beacon to those who followed him.

If a player were to come out in baseball, in this day and age, I don't think it would create the same kind of uproar that Jackie Robinson did. People are more accepting of the gays than ever. Sure, it's not roses. Christian (and other religious) conservatives still protest the idea of widespread acceptance of gays. No player in football, baseball, or basketball, has ever come out as gay while playing the sport actively. There is a sense of machismo in sports, with coaches routinely calling players women, pansies, and I'm sure faggots as a form of motivation.

Despite all that, the media is willing to accept it, and I think, players, to some extent are willing to accept it as well.

How do you make a play about a player that comes out? Would he represent the gay community? Would he be an icon the way Jackie Robinson was? How would the public react? How would the media react?

Richard Greenberg, the playwright, takes a different angle on the whole thing, and much of that is due to his interest in baseball. Mason Marzac, who plays Darren Lemming's gay agent, is really Greenberg, who a few years ago, became entranced by the Yankees, and followed the sport fanatically. In the end, even if Marzac serves as comic relief, it is his observations about baseball and why it has meaning to him that provides some insight.

Darren Lemming is a superstar on the Empires, loosely based on the Yankees. One day, he announces he's gay. Yet, he's not out to become poster boy for the gay community. He just sees it as who he is. He has no boyfriend either. What are the repercussions of the announcement? Well, nothing exactly. Sure, everyone is uncomfortable, but that's about it.

Kippy, his best friend on the team, accepts him, and the other characters do too. Well, as my friend Jaime points out, they aren't exactly characters. There are two Latinos, who mostly speak Spanish, a Japanese player who mostly speaks Japanese, Kippy, a Southerner, and Darren. On the team, there's only two real characters, which are Kippy and Darren.

Instead, they deal with how good a life Darren has. He's always been good at baseball. He's never been the victim of racism. Things are good for him. So why do it this way? Michael Wilbon often invokes issues of race when it comes to black athletes. He says he has been a victim of racism, and yet, who wants to see a play about victimhood, especially a comedy. It's much easier, in a comedy, to take a different tack, and to assume that Darrent hasn't ever had to deal with serious issues.

Given that it's not going to be a play about the insensitivity of the fans to a gay player, then what's it about? Partly, it's going to be about how Darren deals with his fall from his perfect world, and this fall comes about in a peculiar way. When Darren comes out, the team goes in a slump, so they bring up a pitcher, Shane Mungitt. He doesn't much mingle with anyone else, but he's a star closer, and so no one cares that much. Then, in an inopportune TV moment, he hurls racial and homophobic comments.

As the play progresses, Shane turns out to be someone with a low IQ, a guy who's barely aware that he's saying things that can be seen as racist or homophobic. For a moment, he is ostracized in much the same way that maybe a player like Jackie Robinson might have been. I suspect Greenberg is trying to point out how we might be generous to those who are gay, because it seems right, but we're still willing to punish those who don't toe the PC line, even if there might be some justification for it.

By taking out the external factors of the game---the fans, the media, and by making most of the baseball players cartoon characters, we're left with the complexity at the core of the play, which is how does Darren deal with this guy, who he now feels is racist, and how much does a team value winning. A key revelation at the end also tests his friendship with Kippy, and with Dave, and yet, these issues aren't explored as deeply as they could be.

Jaime claimed the playwright was a bit lazy using such extensive voiceover (mostly Kippy), and also through shallow characterization. Yet, this is a challenging play to write correctly, and Greenberg took some unusual chances with the characters he did care about. Mungitt could have been a racist, but he isn't quite that. Greenberg doesn't imbue him with the kind of complexity that he could have. Rocker, I've heard, despite his comments, is a generous person. That would be quite interesting, to deal with issues where he's racist or homophobe, but likeable in other ways.

One thing I'm sure they get completely wrong is the dialog. Both Kippy and Darren are hyper-literate, which appeals, I'm sure to a Broadway crowd, but I'm sure is not the way athletes talk. I'm not saying all athletes are dumb, but that they wouldn't talk this way. Still, this is an artistic license I'm willing to deal with because I'd rather hear characters talk like this, even if it's not realistic.

Any time you have a play about a gay baseball player, it helps to have nudity. It really does. Gay men like to watch plays, and watching buff guys naked puts people in seats. I might have watched the play anyway, but it helped to know there was going to be nudity. Still, being a play, it's not overdone. Is it important to have nudity? Probably not. I mean, sure they want to talk about how homophobia might affect people in the locker room, but even so, it wasn't so essential.

There is something, though, about watching nude actors live that's so much different from watching it on film. It's so much more immediate. You get the full 3D effect, and not just for a few seconds, but minutes at a time. Of the bunch, I probably enjoyed seeing the guy who played Kippy the most, though everyone is in pretty good shape. I always find it mildly incongrous to see all this acting still going on, as people aren't wearing clothes.

Still, as I said before, the nudity is maybe ten minutes of the play. What's more intriguing to me is how they managed to stage a play on such a tiny stage. They were able to make creative decisions to convey what it must be like to be on an outfield, despite playing on a small, small stage.

Perhaps the play's main point though comes through it's comic relief, which is Mason Marzac, who's played very swishy and stereotypically gay. But it's his comment about why baseball has become to mean so much to him, and why people love sports so much, that provides its greatest insights. It doesn't really capture how a team operates, and even Darren's realization that he's not a god doesn't quite create the kind of conflict we expect.

Shane's downfall doesn't have a pat resolution, even though Greenberg is sympathetic to his character, presenting him as someone to mentally feeble to understand what's going on. There's also a hint that Kippy likes Darren more than he can really admit, and yet, this is never fully explored. They seem to be friends, yet Darren is so aloof, and there aren't scenes of true friendship, that we wonder what's going on. I know it would have been perhaps wrong to make Kippy gay, and goes to show the complexity of trying to tell this story.

On the whole, though, I'd say I enjoyed Take Me Out. It is very funny, it has some good observations, it's getting kinda close to where it needs to be emotionally, and yeah, the eye candy doesn't hurt. But what I did like most, despite the obvious theatricality of the acting, is the immediacy of seeing a performance on stage, especially, a stage this close.

Addendum. I looked at some other reviews of the play. One thing I love about plays is that the cast can change. So, in one version, Darren isn't obviously black, or Kippy is a redhead, or Mason doesn't look like John Majors. Each cast, crew, and director can give nuances to the play, and create a different experience. Even if it's flawed, it is worth taking the time to watch, because there's certainly humor and even poignant moments, even if fails to reach the heights you want it to.