Playwright: Eric Simonson, from the Mark Harris novel. At: Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St. Tickets: 773--338-2177; www.raventheatre.com; $30. Runs through: June 30
Sixty years ago baseball stood as "the National Pastime" without dispute. There only were eight teams in each league (none west of Kansas City), no players' union, and most players still were under-educated, underpaid, hard-drinking, tobacco-chewing, country boys who frequently were racist and chauvinist. Managers and owners weren't much betterjust older and shrewder. This is the world of Bang the Drum Slowly and its fictional ball team, the New York Mammoths.
But baseball, which novelist Mark Harris understood intimately, is only the framing device for this story of how men bonded, and expressed male loyalty and affection, long before our present era of guys in touch with their emotions. It centers on star pitcher Henry Wiggen, who's a few years older and a lot smarter than his on-the-road roommate, Bruce Pearson, the fatally ill third-string catcher whom Wiggen comes to guide and protect.
In the process of assisting Pearson, Wiggen also forges a band of brothers out of what merely had been a team. Think of a typical war movie with a platoon of mixed racial and ethnic types who face death together. Although only one man is dying in Bang the Drum Slowly, everyone eventually must confront the reality of mortality and of an athlete dying young.
Art imitates life imitates art: The story echoes that of Lou Gehrig, and was a precursor to that of Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo. It also profoundly reflects the last 30 years of LGBT experience during which so many of us have participated in the deaths of friends and lovers.
The stage adaptation necessarily short-changes a lot of character exposition and development in order to retain the novel's Huck Finn-like narrative voice, delivered by Wiggen in down-home English. Indeed, the series of moral and ethical decisions Wiggen must make owe a good deal to Mark Twain. However, the adaptation is curiously static despite director Michael Menendian's effective use of athletic, ballet-like group movement and tableau staging. The midweek performance I saw was lackadaisical, which certainly was part of the problem. Comic moments (there are many) weren't playing well, and the emotional gut punch of the ending simply wasn't there. Perhaps it will gel later in the run.
This ambitious production features 15 actors playing 26 characters in uneven fashion, but perhaps the company can do with the many two-dimensional secondary characters. Fortunately, Michael Stegall is a good choice as Wiggen, down to his tall rangy build. Kevin Duvall, as Pearson, is rather slim for a catcher but nails Pearson's good-old-boy personality. Tim Walsh is amusing as the cagey, lumpy team executive and manager. Jen Short and Kristen Williams do well in the limited women's roles as dames of different extremes.