Playwright: Rolin Jones. At: Pine Box Theater at the Athenaeum, 2936 N. Southport Ave. Tickets: 773-935-6875; www.pineboxtheater.org; $28. Runs through: July 1
Rolin Jones was a twentysomething student when he wrote The Jammer in 2004a play in which 1958 was a mythical age shrouded in commercial images flourishing under the post-war boom economy. Among these were the simplistic values preserved in spectator sports like pro wrestling and competitive skate-racingactivities whose popularity rests less on exhibitions of athletic skill than on spurious analogies to warfare. Granting that premise, it's only a short step to a morality fable.
Our prodigal, Jack Lovington, is a Catholic boy from Brooklyn, a former hell-on-wheels skater now working in a paper factory by day and driving a cab by nighthis sacrifice willingly endured to ensure a happy future with his betrothed. Temptation arrives in the form of small-time promoter Lenny Ringle, who lures the holy roller back into the rink to join his underdog squad of misfits and borderline psychos on their quest for the championship. After our innocent lamb suffers the requisite hard knocks, he returns home wiser for his experience, where he finds his peers likewise enlightened by a changing America.
The precision-drilled cast assembled in service of this reliable yarn cannot be faulted in any way, but the show currently occupying the Athenaeum's second-floor room is hobbled by two flaws that may prove insurmountable. First is the ambiguous tone of Jones' text, the mock-melodrama of Jack's anguish juxtaposed with comic-book exaggeration, as in a doctor's visit after our sad sack contracts multiple STDs and the ubiquitous jibes at his fiancee's alleged homeliness. Fortunately, it's not all frat-house humorthe slow-won accord between the old- and new-school parish priests is handled with wit and warmth, as is the growing independence of the much-maligned bride-to-be (and a brief, but significant, exchange between a pair of African-American professional men).
More problematic is Pine Box Theater's attempt to conjure a universe defined by ever-increasing velocity on too small a stage. When we are asked to imagine various vehiclestaxicabs, buses, Coney Island roller-coastersthe riders' body language apprises us of the journey's progress. However, on a circular raceway measuring only 17 feet at its widest, the kinetic nuances of actors miming gravity-defying propulsionoften encumbered by hand-held life-sized cutout mannequinscannot help but become blurred in visual clutter. If there's one thing derby competition teaches, it's that the tiniest margins count toward victory or defeat.