Playwright: Jim Provenzano
At: Bailiwick Repertory Theatre,
1229 W. Belmont
Phone: 773/883-1090, $25
Runs through: July 23
He's a star wrestler, but fights of the flesh aren't the primary battles Joey grapples with in Pins, running through July 23 at the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre. No, the real wars of the Catholic-raised New Jersey teen come right out of Ephesians, in a passage that is briefly mentioned in Jim Provenzano's drama. Joey's 'wrestling not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world's rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.'
Indeed, aren't we all? Therein lays the universality of Provenzano's messy, in-need-of-an-edit adaptation of his own novel. There's a disturbing, darkly real and ultimately exhilarating story in here—but in the Bailiwick production directed by David Zak, it's suffocated in an overstuffed script.
The story centers on Joey, the closeted son of working-class parents and a new student at a public high school. He's thrilled to be in public school after eight years of Catholic schools, and double-stoked when he makes the varsity wrestling team. He knows he's gay but unlike Anthony, his nerdy best friend from church, Joey's keeps his sexuality a secret from his peers, and struggles mightily against the advances of his new best friend and teammate Dink, who is also gay and whose gaydar hones in on Joey immediately.
The rest of the wrestling team—who become Joey's posse—are a bunch of homophobic thugs, boys who one imagines are cut from the same cloth as those who murdered Matthew Shepard.
The play unfolds with on- and off-the-mat violence, with a heavy-handed ( and irrelevant ) theme of eating disorders among wrestlers distracting from the main themes of the plot.
The plot takes forever to develop; there's a solid hour of set-up and exposition before the story finally reaches a jumping off point.
Further obscuring the wounding tragedy and emotional redemption that should rise to the surface are the performances. Director Zak fails to elicit much authenticity or depth from most of his actors. As Joey, Eddie Bennett begins at a shrill, over-excited pitch and stays right there for the duration of the production. He's got some mean wrestling moves, but his one-note, strident delivery starts to sound like nails on a blackboard by the second act.
As Anthony, ( and it's worth nothing that in Catholicism, Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost items and oppressed people ) Alex Sanborn stands out, giving a performance that mines the poignancy and the anger of his character.
Everybody on stage needs a crash course in New Jersey accents; they exaggerate the speech patterns of Garden State natives until they sound like cartoons.
