Theater Review - Naked Boys Swinging
Take Me Out puts sexual politics in play
The clich goes that there’s no “I” in “team.” If the Empires, the fictional baseball team of Richard Greenberg’s comedy Take Me Out, did have an “I,” he would be Darren Lemming, a superstar center fielder with a sky-high salary and an ego to match. The grand-slam production at Theatre in the Square’s Alley Stage reveals Darren to be a sports legend waiting to happen, since he’s talented, handsome, biracial - and gay.
Played by Brandon J. Dirden, Darren drops a bombshell on the Empires when, without warning, he outs himself at a press conference. Darren makes the public gesture not to avert scandal or show gay pride, but as an act of both self-actualization and arrogance: Having lived such a charmed life as an athlete, he believes nothing bad can happen to him. Dirden’s performance compellingly fosters the athlete’s air of hubris and flashes of insight. Who Darren sleeps with never matters as much as who he is.
Narrator and shortstop Kip (Daniel May) describes the fallout of Darren’s announcement in the nation, the sport, and especially the Empires’ locker room, where most of the play takes place. The showers and changing rooms, once strongholds of unreflective masculinity, becomes places of self-conscious anxiety. The showy political correctness of Jason Loughlin’s catcher proves as awkward and humorous as the dim-witted bigotry of Brik Berkes’ thuggish right fielder. When the Empires slump into a losing streak, “white trash” relief pitcher Shane Mungitt (Travis Young) drags the team’s racist and homophobic impulses onto the field.
Greenberg could sum up Take Me Out’s ripped-from-the-headlines plot like a movie pitch: “It’s John Rocker and a gay Tiger Woods both playing for the New York Yankees!” Fortunately, the playwright subverts our expectations for the plot’s media frenzy and “victim politics.” When Darren receives support from gay groups, he expresses outrage at no longer being a figure of admiration, but of sympathy.
Take Me Out’s characters riff on baseball as a metaphor for different facets of America, but Greenberg seems most excited by ideas of inclusion that reach beyond the ball park. Who’s the bigger outcast? Darren’s “godly” ability and sexual preference set him apart from other people. Shane’s closet contains sociopathic tendencies and a tragic childhood, but the Empires ignore his dark sides to exploit his pitching prowess. Darren’s lonely homosexual accountant, Mason (scene-stealer Matthew Myers), feels excluded from both straight and gay society. When Darren and Mason become unlikely friends, they admit that neither belongs to communities - Darren having always felt above them, Mason beneath them.
Mason, at least, finds camaraderie as a newly converted baseball fan. Communing with the other fans at a big game, he has the revelation, “It was the first crowd I ever agreed with.” Yet the Empires scarcely function as a cohesive unit. The Spanish-speaking ball players have their own clique, while Japanese pitcher Kawabata (John Liu) speaks no English and maintains a samurai-like solitude. Kip, whom May likeably portrays as a figure of all-American decency, ultimately carries his faith in togetherness to an ill-advised extreme. Take Me Out speculates that if baseball, like the United States, aspires to be a melting pot, what happens to the ingredients that never combine with the rest?
Director Alan Kilpatrick instills the snappy pace of Bull Durham or a classic Billy Wilder comedy in the first two acts, then steps back and lets the serious moments play more softly in the third. Greenberg’s Tony-winning play proves smart enough that it doesn’t need the full-frontal showers to keep our attention. Watching an actor rinse his backside can distract from Take Me Out’s sharp dialogue, but at least the locker room moments put macho tensions out in the open. Take Me Out proves that in the showers as in the game, all men are created equal, but some are more equal than others.