Reviewed
by Will Stackman
As
with other works by this author, Chicago playwright Rebecca Gilman's "The Sweetest Swing in
Baseball"
takes a potentially interesting question about the intersection of social
responsibility and personal life and oversimplifies it. Her instincts trend
toward melodrama and her characters are essentially stereotypes that even
experienced actors may have trouble overcoming. This play did well enough in
London with Gillian Andersen in the lead, but has run into criticism on this
side of the pond in San Francisco and in Chicago where it's about to close.
Running only eighty minutes without intermission, but having at least a dozen
scenes, the show feels like a staged Lifestyles TV movie.
Its
main character, true to form, is Dana, a contemporary painter, played with
conviction by Sarah Woodhouse, seen last fall at Actors' Shakespeare Project as
Cordelia. Here she's possibly miscast, but seems to be enjoying the role, with
its range of misery and madness, real and imagined. The author has provided
Dana with a reported troubled background and some snappy responses, but there's
not enough to make the audience really care. Her troubled family background is
seems more an excuse than a motive. The play's shorthand structure leaves no
time for discussion.
The
other four actors in the cast each play two parts, not necessarily related. Two
IRNE winners, Chris Brophy and Maureen Keillor have important, but ultimately not pivotal roles.
Chris, fresh from touring as Macbeth for the New Rep, plays Dana's boyfriend, a
frustrated artist who leaves her--that may precipitate her suicide attempt--and
a psychopathic
thug in the institution where she's checked in. The strongest scene is a
confrontation between the two of them in the occupational therapy room which
unfortunately doesn't really get anywhere. Keillor, who's done shows for BTW
before, plays the owner of the gallery--where Dana's last show is a failure--and her psychologist, Dr. Gilbert.
The artist's had several therapists during the last few years. Rhonda the
gallery owner is practically a stock character and Dr. Gilbert's one
interesting detail, that she trained to be a dancer is never explored. It's
just another passing factoid.
Similarly,
the characters played by Eve Passeltiner and Adam Soule don't get beyond the traits
Gilman has assigned them. Passeltiner is Rhonda's ambitious assistant and briefly, Dr. Stanton, the head
of the institution and old friend of Dana's former therapist--who died. As
Erica, the assistant, she's befriended Dana, and would really like her to
change allegiances when the former starts her own gallery. The conflict between
her friendship and self-interest is never really tested. Soule first plays an
up-and-coming young artist briefly, almost a walkon and Michael, an
alcoholic prone to binges, who's also a gay computer programmer, which might be
relevant but seems merely trendy. The most sympathetic of the lot, he could be
developed into a much more useful foil.
Scene
designer Jenna McFarland provides an effective set whose walls unfold to change the stark
gallery of the show's first and last scenes into several locations at the
institution, done in. The crew wears scrubs which makes the changes less
intrusive. Costumes by Molly Trainer help the cast distinguish between their dual roles;
Dana's might be a bit less depressive. Nathan Leigh's effective sound design could
use a touch more music; P.J.Strachman's lighting handles the multiple scenes with ease, given
the old Plaza's limitations. All in all, BTW has again provided a
well-conceived production, but unfortunately can't improve the script enough.
The
real problem is that in eighty minutes, even with a skilled ensemble, there's
not enough time to develop relationships between these characters which might
lead to drama. Instead, the author seems almost be writing a parody of a
parable about her own recent rise to transient fame. Gilman relies on
one-liners and blackout scenes rather than actual confrontations. Moreover, the
conceit that the leading character, in order to stay longer than her cheap
health insurance will allow, pretends to be Darryl Strawberry and finds some
kind of psychic salvation thereby is a joke without a punchline, and possibly
exploitative. London audiences might have accepted a Canadian playing an
American artist pretending--rather badly--to be a Black baseball superstar with
a checkered past and a drug habit. Here, she strikes out, to employ an obvious
metaphor, as Gilman too often does. Having the faux Strawberry take up
painting, successfully, takes the play further down a very slippery slope. And
don't get me started about the chickens.