Sunday, 3 July 2005 08:28 pm
It's easy to make the song dirty
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deckardcanineYesterday I saw Take Me Out, a play whose title has at least six relevant interpretations. It's about the aftermath of an African-American baseball all-star, a Darren Lemming, coming out of the closet. (Lest you be confused like many viewers, the action begins when his orientation is already common knowledge.)
Have I mentioned that I've been losing interest in pure comedies? Perhaps the trouble is that recognizing a pure comedy causes me to expect frequent laughs, thereby making them predictable. As a result, sporadically hilarious dramatic fare like The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? is more my style.
TMO was as great as any play I saw in the last year or so, including, you might recall, M. Butterfly. The humor never detracts from the angsty dead seriousness at points, nor vice versa, no matter who it involves. The breaking of the fourth wall by various characters, even with others watching, is seamless, as is the time jumping. The abstract depiction of baseball on a medium-sized stage – players not actually posed with relation to one another – works perfectly. Everyone has their sins and other flaws as well as their strengths (not sure about all having virtues). The schlemiehl-y Mason "Mars" Marzac is easily the best source of humor, but thankfully he doesn't nearly steal the show. It's hard to believe that the same actor of ribald, laconic, all-around bigoted redneck pitcher Shane Mungit also played Ernest Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest.
Here's a bad habit of mine: when I see a story that features a non-straight and people reacting to that fact about him or her, I initially assume that the ultimate message is "Homosexuality isn't bad." Such a message, while not followed by more than half the population, would already sound trite to me. Fortunately, neither Angels in America nor Walk on Water nor most other stories I know to have non-straight characters take such a simple approach. In truth, I still haven't figured out the message of TMO, but it must have something to do with communication, like "There is a time to talk and a time to keep your mouth shut." One of the narrating leads, an amiable player of indeterminate orientation, firmly believes in the healing power of speech, but all too frequently the wrong words are used.
You probably know by now that I almost never rave about a piece of entertainment without mentioning a weakness or two. In this case:
(1) It seems the playwright could have used some more communication. Besides the slight confusion at the beginning about Darren already being famously gay, there comes a point when the hostility between two friends leaves us guessing, tho we did figure it out after the play.
(2) The team, which must be based on the Yankees, is called The Empires. Not only does that sound weird for a team of human individuals, but if you didn't already know or get a good look at the uniforms, you'd think at first they were saying "umpires."
Have I mentioned that I've been losing interest in pure comedies? Perhaps the trouble is that recognizing a pure comedy causes me to expect frequent laughs, thereby making them predictable. As a result, sporadically hilarious dramatic fare like The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? is more my style.
TMO was as great as any play I saw in the last year or so, including, you might recall, M. Butterfly. The humor never detracts from the angsty dead seriousness at points, nor vice versa, no matter who it involves. The breaking of the fourth wall by various characters, even with others watching, is seamless, as is the time jumping. The abstract depiction of baseball on a medium-sized stage – players not actually posed with relation to one another – works perfectly. Everyone has their sins and other flaws as well as their strengths (not sure about all having virtues). The schlemiehl-y Mason "Mars" Marzac is easily the best source of humor, but thankfully he doesn't nearly steal the show. It's hard to believe that the same actor of ribald, laconic, all-around bigoted redneck pitcher Shane Mungit also played Ernest Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest.
Here's a bad habit of mine: when I see a story that features a non-straight and people reacting to that fact about him or her, I initially assume that the ultimate message is "Homosexuality isn't bad." Such a message, while not followed by more than half the population, would already sound trite to me. Fortunately, neither Angels in America nor Walk on Water nor most other stories I know to have non-straight characters take such a simple approach. In truth, I still haven't figured out the message of TMO, but it must have something to do with communication, like "There is a time to talk and a time to keep your mouth shut." One of the narrating leads, an amiable player of indeterminate orientation, firmly believes in the healing power of speech, but all too frequently the wrong words are used.
You probably know by now that I almost never rave about a piece of entertainment without mentioning a weakness or two. In this case:
(1) It seems the playwright could have used some more communication. Besides the slight confusion at the beginning about Darren already being famously gay, there comes a point when the hostility between two friends leaves us guessing, tho we did figure it out after the play.
(2) The team, which must be based on the Yankees, is called The Empires. Not only does that sound weird for a team of human individuals, but if you didn't already know or get a good look at the uniforms, you'd think at first they were saying "umpires."
