Playwright: Lee Blessing
At: Apple Tree Theatre,
595 Elm Place in Highland Park
Phone: 847-432-4335; $35-$45
Runs through: July 16
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
In 1916, the fourth-place New York Giants suddenly rallied to win a mind-boggling 26 consecutive games, setting a record unsurpassed to this day. This occurrence offers playwright Lee Blessing his solution to the recurring problem faced by all playwrights, to wit: how to stop his personae from walking out of the story when the atmosphere gets uncomfortable.
Our locale is an unnamed city where, 30 years earlier, a young umpire and a younger would-be teacher shared part of a night in a hotel. Ryland Davis, the result of that brief union, has now come searching for his father and his roots. Omar Carlyle, believing this post-adolescent waif to be the charm inspiring his home team's winning streak, acknowledges Ryland as his son and consents to recount the secrets of their progenitors. But are the crafty sire's revelations accurate, or are they a Scheherazade-like ploy to keep the desperate lad by his side until the baseball season ends?
The more important question is whether Blessing can keep US occupied until his father-and-sons play achieves its pre-ordained resolution. To be sure, his plot pitches a number of provocative curveballs, for the distinctions between fact and myth; experience and wishful thinking; and recollection and confabulation are eternally doomed to obscurity by the sorry realization that NO person can ever know the whole truth of his or her lineage. And while we congratulate ourselves on guessing Carlyle's strategy and smugly note his tactical moves, another thrower is warming up in left field to take advantage of our misdirection.
None of this would make any difference if Robert Breuler did not make Carlyle a character so cozy and congenial that we warm to him immediately, even as we recognize his less-charming real-life counterpart in the daytime gaffers, nursing tap beers at the sports bars. Matthew Brumlow's Ryland is also a familiar figure in our modern society, his anomie expressed in the impatience petulance of a disillusioned child not yet ready to accept disappointment. Blessing's always-articulate dialogue provides them the fuel with which to generate a chemistry that softens the baselines of this well-worn genre, bringing us home safe and satisfied.