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02/26/2014
Bronx Bombers
By: Eugene Paul
Francois
Battiste, Peter Scolari and Christopher
Jackson
in a scene from Bronx Bombers
(Photo
credit: Joan Marcus)
I
kept thinking Jerome Kern. Jerome Kern wrote “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” one
of the loveliest ballads in the canon and one of the saddest. And
sentimentalest. Don’t think you are going to get off lightly in this present
era of dimming Yankees when you meet middle-aged Yankees manager Yogi Berra,
having a fit in a Boston hotel room in 1977, stomping around, trying to set
up a meeting of clashing minds and personalities among the likes of Thurman
Munson, Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin, names which need no introduction.
Playwright/director Eric Simonson wants us geared up, in Yogi’s pocket, all
for the good of the team, and since this show is about those beloved Bronx Bombers,
the New York Yankees, the way they were, you’re assumed to be just as ripe
for a trip down memory lane with all the trimmings as he is. It is not a
valid assumption.
First
of all, first impression, yes? Yes. We are in that impressive pit of a theater
in the round in the depths of the Circle in the Square, artfully trimmed by
designer Beowulf Boritt with Yankee Stadium detail – the old detail – to put
us in the ball park, you might say, but we’re still unmistakably in a theater
that hangs settings overhead as well as pushes settings up from that magic
floor. Which makes us ready to not accept anything immediately; we have to be
wooed a little more. Or even more. It’s so not Yankee stadium.
Peter
Scolari as Yogi Berra has to be young Yogi, middle-aged Yogi and Old Yogi
during the performance and his wife, Carmen (Tracy Shayne), also ages but a
damn sight more gracefully; however, all the others, the famous, legendary,
mystical characters, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle,
Reggie Jackson, Billy Martin, Elston Howard, Derek Jeter appear in their
prime. That’s why we’re here. Paying homage. Not to the real ball players but
to our memories of them, without the warts. Playwright Simonson knows this
full well and hits his stride in a dream sequence that brings the legends
back, all rose-colored with memory, in their height of glory.
Peter
Scolari and Tracy Shayne as
Yogi
and Carmen Berra in a scene
from
Bronx Bombers
(Photo
credit: Joan Marcus)
Does
Simonson leave it there? Not likely. He pushes all the buttons. He directs
John Wernke, truly touching as Lou Gehrig, to collapse before us because we
know that this is the killing disease which now bears his name. And we are
helplessly moved, our memories at work. Then, strikingly – if you’ll pardon
the expression – he has him as Lou Gehrig demonstrating the full beauty of
Babe Ruth’s swing at bat and it’s poetry in motion. You don’t have to be a
true blue Yankee to realize that the image of the swing of the Sultan of Swat
is so iconic that seeing it performed superbly in the flesh sends chills,
just as Simonson intends. (Why Babe Ruth (C.J. Wilson) didn’t swing instead
you don’t even ask, you’re so carried away.)
Again
and again, in this jumble of a play, hung on Yogi’s mantra of once a Yankee,
always a Yankee, there are flashes of genuine pleasure, of excitement, of
lumps in the throat, of remaining anger but overriding everything is the
clear sense that we are watching a show about the Yankees and it is our
relationships to our memories of the now shaken enterprise that is the
Yankees that playwright Simonson plays on, right to the curtain calls, when
each baseball hero takes his separate bow in the correct pinstripes
accurately detailed for each of their periods of glory, meticulously executed
by costume designer David C. Woolard.
Francois
Battiste as Reggie Jackson
and
Keith Nobbs as Billy Martin
in a
scene from Bronx Bombers
(Photo
credit: James Leynse)
The
actors, all of them, get right to it, enjoying the reflected fame. Bill
Dawes, both as Thurman Munson and Mickey Mantle is distinctively effective in
each role. Keith Norris is emotional Billy Martin, nips and all. Nobody can
be Reggie Jackson but Francois Battiste sure gives a good try. Was Joe
DiMaggio ever as suave as played by Chris Henry Coffey?
Would
a complete stranger to anything Yankee baseball be as involved, as intrigued?
If you can find such a person, you should not be surprised if he or she
yawned on occasion. But the show is not for him or her anyway. It belongs to
the fans, and as such, can do no wrong. If others see it differently, too
bad. That’s not what baseball memories are for. “When a lovely flame dies,
smoke gets in your eyes.”
Bronx
Bombers (through
March 2, 2014)
Circle
in the Square, 50th Street near 8th Avenue, in
Manhattan
Tickets:
call 212-239-6200 or 800-901-4092 or visit http://www.bronxbombersplay.com
Running
time: two hours and ten minutes including one intermission
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