by alun montgomery
Sometimes it’s not easy to step up to the plate to help someone who needs it, especially when life deals you a well-placed kick in the teeth. Sometimes it’s easier just to sit it out. But sometimes, the only way to be sure you’re still alive is to get back in the game.
Benchwarmers, a new work by playwright Chris Sheppard and directed by his creative partner Jeff Grove, recently enjoyed a limited engagement at Players by the Sea. As in their previous efforts, the pairing proved a winning combination.
The play tells the story of a wounded man’s warring impulses to stay numb and insulated while being impelled to set a conflicted teen on the right path to self-love and acceptance.
As an offering of Players by the Sea’s “second season”—comprised largely of new, edgy, or independent productions usually staged in the company’s studio theater space—Benchwarmers played to a limited two-weekend run. And that’s unfortunate, since it is a production that deserves a longer run and a larger audience.
As the story opens, we are introduced to Curt (Karl Rogers), a man at his life’s midpoint, who is pausing from his day’s labors at a “cube farm” for a lunch break at his favorite park bench. It’s an especially compelling promontory for a former teacher, as it overlooks the yard of a local high school. It’s a bittersweet vantage point, since Curt left the profession in frustration several years before. Curt is also grappling in a very personal way with mortality: he is struggling to live with HIV as well as with the loss of his lover, Mike (Juan Unzueta), in an automobile accident.
During one of his midday sojourns, an errant football comes lofting over to Curt’s perch, chased after by a gangly kid named Jesse (Solomon Levine). It’s clear right away that Jesse is an archetype we all recognize, and with which many of us feel a kinship: the last guy picked for any team in gym class, who gets picked on relentlessly, and who dreads the locker room. And it’s equally clear that Curt feels an instant empathy for the kid, seeing more than a little of himself in young Jesse.
Jesse has one lone compatriot: jockish Scott (Zack Kanner), who looks out for Jesse and brooks no abuse from Jesse’s tormentors. He is as athletically graceful and socially fluid as Jesse is not. Since gym class is at the end of the school day, Jesse habitually goes directly home, avoiding the hell that the locker room has become. Having seen him chatting earlier with Curt, Scott runs over to the bench with Jesse’s books and clothes, hoping to catch him before Jesse’s hasty retreat. In the ensuing confusion, Scott scoops up Curt’s gay magazines along with Jesse’s books.
Wanting to remain a purely neutral and objective adult friend, Curt is not pleased at the prospect of being outted so quickly. His concern may be mistaken for predation, he fears, and he risks chasing Jesse away before he has a chance to help his new young friend learn who he is, regardless of sexual orientation. But much to his surprise, both Jesse and Scott come back to see him full of questions and curiosity. Both boys are starved for a nurturing male role model: Jesse lives with his well intentioned though challenged grandmother, and Scott with his abusive Marine father. Thus begins a journey of discovery and reflection in which both adult and teen are by turns teacher and pupil. And by helping the boys to make informed choices, Curt finds he is able to establish a measure of resolution and closure about his own.
It comes as no surprise that the boys eventually become intimate, but the way in which the attraction unfolds is refreshingly unpredictable. And it’s clear that the boys come to value Curt as more than simply their “gay dad”; he is the one adult male in their lives has actually taken the time to care about them and to help them traverse the minefield of adolescence, teaching them lessons about responsibility, self-respect, inner strength, and compassion that cross all lines of gender and gender preference. Above all, they learn to love who they are.
Despite some initial opening-night tentativeness, the production was solid throughout. All the performances are warm and engaging, and the teens especially so. Rogers’ Curt is the story’s compass rose, faded with age and wear but providing unfailing direction when all reference points fail the young travelers. Unzueta’s Mike provides an infusion of youthful vibrancy to the reflective Curt, helping to keep his flame from extinguishing altogether. Levine’s Jesse is a real delight, and reminiscent of his turn in Players’ earlier SubUrbia: edgily goofy and clueless, becoming more self-possessed and confident as the story evolves. And Kanner, a newcomer to the PBTS stage is a revelation. His Scott makes a fluid transition from a guarded survivor to a fearless young man, as his pose of strength gives way to a radiant inner fortitude.
In a play such as this, the opportunities for missteps are ample: clichés, indulgence, and attempts at rewriting personal history are temptations that far too many playwrights succumb to. Aside from one questionable plot point—the eleventh-hour exposition of Mike’s abuse as a youth, which comes off a bit contrived and gratuitous—there is nary a wrong note in evidence. Sheppard’s characters are lean yet amply depicted, the arcs plausible, the timing and pacing are crisp, and the intermixing of comedy and pathos is deftly crafted. And most delightful of all, the dialogue crackles. It is honest, economical, and jam-packed with snappy patter without sounding precious.
The opening night audience was large and diverse—and gay or straight, young or old, Red State or Blue, everyone was on their feet for the ovation.
|
EU Critic’s Choice Awards
