take me out: theatre as spectator sport?
mmm... sleepytime tea.
I am finally done with my critical analysis paper for Modern Theatre. I am going to have a mug of sleepytime tea and take a nap. If the paper hadn't been so tedious (and due last Friday to boot), I'd actually say it was pretty fun to write. Got to choose my own modern play to analyze, so I wrote on Take Me Out. For being a big fan and for preparing to act in the show, I wasn't that nice to it in my analysis. If you're highly bored, you can check it out here:
"Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out: Theatre as Spectator Sport?"
by Vi Nhan H. Tran
"Democracy is lovely, but baseball’s more mature" (37)[1].
Mason Marzac, an accountant and new fan of baseball, delivers this bold statement at the heart of a monologue that is “destined to take its place in anthologies of baseball writing” (Weber 12)[2]. Indeed, judging from its nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in drama, a Tony award for Best Play, strong critical responses, and enthusiastic audience support, Richard Greenberg’s successful play, Take Me Out, may not only enjoy a place in the baseball literary canon, but in the theatrical world beyond sports drama. Still yet to be determined, however, is whether admiration for this play springs from the strength of Greenberg’s dramatic story or from the spectacle of its presentation to an audience.
The author explains, “Baseball functions very much the way tragedy does. It’s a symbolic realm that allows a lot of emotions to happen that wouldn’t otherwise” (8)[3]. Indeed, Greenberg has created a play that is simultaneously intellectual and physical, philosophical and visceral. In his exploration of grand themes, the author seems to employ many devices of classical tragedy: a central figure marked by hubris, long monologues that serve almost as choral odes of exposition, an event that serves as a peripety, a cast of minor characters that function like a chorus, and two strong supporting characters that alternately function as the choregos.
Kippy, the shortstop for the world champion New York Empires franchise, begins the play with an expositional monologue. He will serve as Greenberg’s incredibly articulate narrator for the length of the play. The tale he must tell is so vitally more significant than just any particular incident in baseball that Greenberg has him struggling (artfully nonetheless) to find the description. Kippy delivers no less than three false starts in an attempt to explain the play’s circumstances. These include the arrival of Shane Mungitt, a volatile new relief pitcher, Abner Doubleday’s invention of baseball itself, and finally, the fall of humanity as a whole in the Garden of Eden: “The whole mess started with a really beautiful park. And in the park were a man, a woman, a serpent and this tree […]” (6). But true to the form, Kippy, returns the audience to the root of most tragedies: the tragic hero beset by hubris (5 - 7).
This central figure is Darren Lemming, who possesses all the trademarks of a tragic hero. Kippy’s opening monologue describes the star’s stature: “mess does not flow forth from Darren.” The Empire’s star centerfielder was “a five-tool player of such incredible grace, he made you suspect there was a sixth tool,” and with his black father and white mother, he served society as “the one-man-emblem-of-racial-harmony” (5 - 6). The self-assured superstar feels so comfortable with his status in the world that he makes one of the most taboo declarations in all of professional sports: he comes out of the closet as an homosexual.
“Apparently he has no specific agenda, not even a lover, his motive seems to be a willful honesty […]” (Rawson G3)[4]. At first, it does seem like Darren has made a bold and confident step forward with his declaration. Nevertheless, the play’s action revolves around Darren’s attitude that he is above reproach and his assumption that his personal decisions are without consequence.
Take Me Out, then, becomes an out-of-the-closet-and-into-the-locker-room play. Kippy analyzes the situation on behalf of all who share that locker room in the controversial shower scene (featuring full male nudity) that starts Act Two:
"KIPPY.
I think we’ve experienced a kind of profound loss.
First in the physical realm-in the sexual realm, even.
[…] look at us now.
How we turn from each other.
How, when we turn to each other, we maintain eye contact.
[…] Before, this wasn’t necessary.
We were Men.
This meant we could be girlish.
We could pat fannies, snap towels; hug.
Now…
What do we do with our stray homosexual impulses?
[…] We’ve lost a kind of paradise. We see that we are
naked” (53 - 54).
And so, much like a modern Chorus Leader delivering a strophe, Kippy explicates the dilemma their entire team faces because of one man’s seemingly noble and courageous actions. The ballpark becomes a metaphoric for “a really beautiful park” with “a serpent and this tree” (6). The baseball stadium becomes synonymous for the greek stadium where tragedies are enacted and human failings are dramatized for spectators to behold.
Still, Greenberg cannot claim that baseball, and in turn, his play about baseball, lends itself to tragedy if his tragic hero does not have some kind of reversal of fortune. For most of the first act, Darren seems untouched by his actions. He truly seems invincible, above all the consequences of his actions, and aloof to the discomfort of his teammates and fans. His peripety would come in the form of a backwoods relief pitcher.
In need of a solution to their slumping bullpen, the Empires call upon minor leaguer, Shane Mungitt, who promptly sets the team aright with his unpolished but effective pitching. Kippy describes him as a bit of a redneck loner who “doesn’t know any words […and who] most of the guys hated” (44). He keeps the team winning, but it isn’t long before the inevitable occurs. Mungitt is obviously placed in the plot as an antagonist. He is a dramatic, hyperbolized version of real Major League pitcher, John Rocker, who stirred up controversy by making racist and homophobic statements about the inhabitants of New York. Soon after becoming a sensation for the Empires, Mungitt speaks to the media and sets the reversal of fortune for Darren’s tranquil existence and unquestioned control of the team:
"SHANE.
[…] An’ it’s a pretty funny team, ya know.
A pretty funny buncha guys.
Now don’t get me wrong.
I don’t mind the colored people-the gooks an’ the
spics an’ the coons an’ like that.
But every night t’hafta take a shower with a faggot?
Do you know what I’m sayin’?
Do ya get me?" (45).
Predictably, the backwoods, bigoted pitcher is promptly suspended. But as the season continues, the Empires begin to wane yet again. Management disregards Darren’s outrage and disapproval and decides to reinstate Mungitt. Forced to face the ignorance and stupidity of a bigot in his locker room, Darren behaves in typical tragic hero fashion, becoming increasingly disgruntled and disillusioned as events are no longer under his control. He even considers retiring from baseball altogether. The wounding of his pride and the poisoning of his temperament would lead to two events that would converge in a tragic consequence: a confrontation with his best friend, Davey Battle, a superstar for an opposing team whose staunch Christian beliefs have put the two at odds since Darren’s public declaration, and a taunting of Mungitt in the showers before the game when the pitcher was to return.
Mungitt overhears the argument between the two former friends and, enraged by Darren’s assault on him, takes the mound late in the game. Kippy recalls:
"KIPPY.
And I looked over to Darren, who’d been really quiet and solitary
the whole game. And he looked like he could murder somebody.
And Shane faced his first batter.
Who was Davey Battle […]
And he threw his first pitch.
And it hit Davey.
And he never got up” (80 - 81).
With the death of Davey Battle, Take Me Out reaches its tragic climax and fully demonstrates that Greenberg’s “title itself is rich with implication, with different meanings as it applies to baseball, dating, sexual identity sexual longing and even a hint of a death wish” (Rawson - G3).
The analysis of this play can be interpreted, as Greenberg suggests, as tragedy. Kippy and Darren’s accountant, Mason, serve as chorus leaders, the former on the action of the play and the latter on the philosophy and beauty behind the game of baseball as he begins to fall in love with it. Shane Mungitt is an easy villain, and the rest of the cast can be lumped into one large chorus that advances the action of the play, as needed.
Though the play successful executes a loose tragic form, further analysis of Take Me Out does not come lend itself well to categorizing this play as a tragedy. The most visible departure comes in the form of, arguably the most interesting character in the play, Mason Marzac. Serving as Darren’s new accountant, he has become emboldened about his homosexuality and impassioned about baseball ever since the superstar went public. He is left primarily outside the action, “and sometimes outside the play, acting as a kind of audience intermediary” (McCarter 18)[5]. In fact, it can be said that the gay accountant “is something of a stand-in for the playwright, who came to baseball recently and fell in love with it, much as Mason does” (Weber - 12).
More importantly, he serves as the primary source of comic relief in the play and acts as a counterbalance to the play’s tragic metabasis. As Darren grows increasingly weary and dissatisfied with baseball, Mason becomes more and more enthralled by it. Greenberg’s decision to cast the two together as an odd couple in the midst of a dramatic storm complicates the play’s generic purity as a tragedy. Their relationship - warm, poignant, and humorous - is the element of the play that deviates most strongly from the tragic form.
Therefore, Take Me Out contains some elements that cause it to resemble the modern tragicomedy and perhaps it could also be argued that this is less The Tragedy of Darren, but rather a problem play on fear, bigotry, and ignorance in society as a whole. In the world of modern and postmodern drama where form is routinely broken, generic inconsistency cannot serve as a reliable criterion to judge this play’s quality.
There are, however, flaws within Take Me Out that are noticeable and can be appraised. The verisimilitude of Greenberg’s dialogue, for example, may be an aspect of the play that is lacking. It is not that the language is weak or unintelligent; Greenberg shows himself to be a quite capable wordsmith. In fact, “all of his plays - and characters - share a loquacious intelligence and a taste for touching on big philosophical issues” (McKinley 5)[6].
Here, in the rough-and-tumble locker room of professional baseball, it sometimes smacks of too much. Greenberg makes a concentrated effort to sound colloquial at times, especially in the examples previously cited, but at other times he is engaging in indulgence and or making a concentrated effort to justify why the speech is overwrought. For instance, the opening dialogue between Kippy and Darren:
“DARREN. Does this seem to you a Tuesday like any other, Kippy?
KIPPY. Well, Dar, you sort of gave it a different tinge, you gotta admit.
DARREN. I’m sensing a difference between the public and private realms.
[…]
KIPPY. You gotta expect that at first. It’s the “Billy Budd” thing, Dar.
DARREN. Couldn’t find the Cliff Notes for that one, Kippy.
[…] I don’t want to fuck any of you.
KIPPY. It’s not about that, Darren.
It’s about us wanting to fuck you.(Beat.)
DARREN. Do you?
KIPPY. No. But as an amateur of social psychology? I suspect that
we suspect that you suspect we do.
The reader should certainly not be prejudiced against the intelligence of professional baseball players, but the syntax and vocabulary in this conversation seems to be making a conscious effort to meet in the middle of Greenberg’s natural formal and intellectual style and the casualness of relaxed locker room banter.
The author also tries to justify the dialogue later by having Darren proclaim Kippy as “The most intelligent man in Major League baseball” (9). After many verbose monologues, Kippy reveals near the end of the play that he “was not on a baseball scholarhips at Stanford. The truth is, I was on an academic scholarship” (109). After the play is nearly completed and the audience has had to suspend its disbelief that anyone could so spontaneously speak so eloquently, Kippy lets out his secret. “You see, I was supposed to be an academic or a… minister. And I wasn’t precocious in baseball-did you know that?” (110). No indeed, the reader did not.
For the rest of the characters in Take Me Out, language acts too often as a stereotyping barrier. In a modern play about intolerance and prejudice that features a mixed race homosexual as the central character, a well-spoken black superstar as his best friend, and a walking dictionary of a shortstop, it is astounding to see minor characters such as Martinez, and Rodriguez caricaturized in the periphery. All of their lines are in Spanish, with an abundance of swearing, and mostly screamed comically at each other or Kawabata, the Japanese ace pitcher. All of this occurs while the three are nude during the Act Two shower scene (55 - 59).
And whereas Martinez and Rodriguez are cartoonish, angry Hispanics, Takeshi Kawabata, is predictably, a taciturn, intense, and honor-and-duty-bound Japanese man who doesn’t speak English. There are only three instances where Kawabata makes any sound at all: a guttural noise to indicate displeasure (56), the shouting match in the showers (56 - 58), and a somber monologue after Davey Battle’s death that reveals that the wily Japanese man could speak English and might have been able to all along (83 - 84). Nearly as bad as the forgotten minority players is redneck hick, Shane Mungitt, who speaks in monosyllabic phrases or a dialect depicted by “That’s why I wannid ta talk ta ya in the first place-” (98).
Perhaps these choices were made in an attempt to capture the fidelity of a professional baseball locker room, where there are, in fact, members of the team who cannot speak English intelligently or communicate with each other. Greenberg’s choice to richly develop some characters’ speech, however, only causes a greater contrast between those characters and these minor characters, relegating the latter to cardboard scenery status.
According to Mason Marzac, “baseball is a perfect metaphor for hope in a democratic society […because] everyone is given exactly the same chance. And the opportunity to exercise that chance at his own pace” (35). Despite all the equality of opportunity granted upon the playing field, Take Me Out does not offer the same within its pages of text. The author’s rendering of the locker room oversimplifies his conflict’s bigotry and peril. The issues of fear and mistrust cannot fully resonate, so they fall flat: “Had Greenberg not filled his play with so many bows to gay life and such cartoon-like straight ballplayers, he might have had something going dramatically. But [it] is essentially a sham that never deals honestly with its topic” (Sarmento 23)[7].
Furthermore, in this critic’s opinion, “Shane throwing a pitch that kills Darren’s best friend on an opposing team is contrived.” He also protests about the shower scene between Darren and Shane that leads up to Davey’s death, saying that it is “incredible and preposterous. How low must we sink for shock value, with no dramatic support?”
One critic even views Darren’s actions as downright abominable: “never on stage or screen has there been a gay predator who was also a champion” (Goldstein 40)[8]. It is such a deplorable sight, to see a homosexual man portrayed in such a manner, that this critic would rather defend Shane Mungitt. “A hapless bigot is sexually assaulted by the play’s protagonist, a Godlike slugger. That the victim is straight and the victimizer gay sets […] a new standard for showing gay aggression.”
On the other hand, other critical views of the play acknowledge some of these problems and yet do not see them in the same negative light: On the matter of language, “Kippy and Mason may seem too articulate and Darren too little, but articulation is not always truth” (Rawson G3). And on tragic purity, “its chief pleasures are the evolving relationships among the central characters and the considerable snap and crackle of Greenberg’s comic writing […] The audience-friendly ending is a bit of a cop-out, but it doesn’t compromise the central enigma, the mystery of the human character.”
Despite the deconstruction of this text and the considerable negative criticism that has been presented, actual performances do not seem to be suffering. Denis O’Hare, who won the Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor in the role of Mason, “has found that the size of the audience affects the show. ‘With 900 or 700 people, there’s a sense of community.” (McCarter 18). Take Me Out is also described as “an overtly theatrical play, shot through with monologues and narration that make it particularly sensitive to the chemistry between actors and the crowd.” There is a visceral and kinetic quality about the play in performance that excites the audience (the least of which is the shower scene). Reviewers even state that “while Take Me Out shows plenty of skin, I also has a big heart under all that flesh” (Muther M8)[9].
Apparently, the artfulness and success of this play lie in the eye of the specific spectator. Perhaps a baseball fan might explain that watching a baseball game on television is wholly different than attending a game at the park. In the same way, reading the script of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out might prove less pleasurable than seeing his vision realized onstage. The dramatic text of Take Me Out may reveal the inconsistencies and overwriting that the play suffers from, but perhaps in attending a performance, the theatre fan may witness something that the page cannot always capture: live players transcending and transforming the game until it ripens into something greater.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Greenberg, Richard. Take Me Out. New York: Faber, 2003.
[2] Weber, Bruce. “Sing Out, Mason: Making an Accountant Bloom.” New York Times 01 June, 2003, late ed., sec. 2: 12.
[3] “Take Me Out, Gracie, to Enchanged Brixton.” New York Times 01 June 2003, late ed., sec. 2: 8.
[4] Rawson, Christopher. “Four Runs, Four Hits; Take Me Out, Three Other Broadway Plays Are Winners.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 08 June 2003, five star ed., G3.
[5] McCarter, Jeremy. “Denis O'Hare: The Exit Interview.” New York Sun 24 December 2003: 18
[6] McKinley, Jesse. “Broadway Has a New Heavy Hitter.” New York Times 07 Sept. 2003, late ed., sec. 2: 5.
[7] Sarmento, William. “As drama, Take Me Out, strikes out.” Lowell Sun 03 Apr. 2003, lifestyles sec.
[8] Goldstein, Richard. “Against His Will.” Village Voice 01 July 2003: 40.
[9] Muther, Christopher. “Outbound; Curtain Up on Gay Broadway.” Boston Globe 24 Aug. 2003, 3rd ed.: M8.
I am finally done with my critical analysis paper for Modern Theatre. I am going to have a mug of sleepytime tea and take a nap. If the paper hadn't been so tedious (and due last Friday to boot), I'd actually say it was pretty fun to write. Got to choose my own modern play to analyze, so I wrote on Take Me Out. For being a big fan and for preparing to act in the show, I wasn't that nice to it in my analysis. If you're highly bored, you can check it out here:
"Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out: Theatre as Spectator Sport?"
by Vi Nhan H. Tran
"Democracy is lovely, but baseball’s more mature" (37)[1].
Mason Marzac, an accountant and new fan of baseball, delivers this bold statement at the heart of a monologue that is “destined to take its place in anthologies of baseball writing” (Weber 12)[2]. Indeed, judging from its nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in drama, a Tony award for Best Play, strong critical responses, and enthusiastic audience support, Richard Greenberg’s successful play, Take Me Out, may not only enjoy a place in the baseball literary canon, but in the theatrical world beyond sports drama. Still yet to be determined, however, is whether admiration for this play springs from the strength of Greenberg’s dramatic story or from the spectacle of its presentation to an audience.
The author explains, “Baseball functions very much the way tragedy does. It’s a symbolic realm that allows a lot of emotions to happen that wouldn’t otherwise” (8)[3]. Indeed, Greenberg has created a play that is simultaneously intellectual and physical, philosophical and visceral. In his exploration of grand themes, the author seems to employ many devices of classical tragedy: a central figure marked by hubris, long monologues that serve almost as choral odes of exposition, an event that serves as a peripety, a cast of minor characters that function like a chorus, and two strong supporting characters that alternately function as the choregos.
Kippy, the shortstop for the world champion New York Empires franchise, begins the play with an expositional monologue. He will serve as Greenberg’s incredibly articulate narrator for the length of the play. The tale he must tell is so vitally more significant than just any particular incident in baseball that Greenberg has him struggling (artfully nonetheless) to find the description. Kippy delivers no less than three false starts in an attempt to explain the play’s circumstances. These include the arrival of Shane Mungitt, a volatile new relief pitcher, Abner Doubleday’s invention of baseball itself, and finally, the fall of humanity as a whole in the Garden of Eden: “The whole mess started with a really beautiful park. And in the park were a man, a woman, a serpent and this tree […]” (6). But true to the form, Kippy, returns the audience to the root of most tragedies: the tragic hero beset by hubris (5 - 7).
This central figure is Darren Lemming, who possesses all the trademarks of a tragic hero. Kippy’s opening monologue describes the star’s stature: “mess does not flow forth from Darren.” The Empire’s star centerfielder was “a five-tool player of such incredible grace, he made you suspect there was a sixth tool,” and with his black father and white mother, he served society as “the one-man-emblem-of-racial-harmony” (5 - 6). The self-assured superstar feels so comfortable with his status in the world that he makes one of the most taboo declarations in all of professional sports: he comes out of the closet as an homosexual.
“Apparently he has no specific agenda, not even a lover, his motive seems to be a willful honesty […]” (Rawson G3)[4]. At first, it does seem like Darren has made a bold and confident step forward with his declaration. Nevertheless, the play’s action revolves around Darren’s attitude that he is above reproach and his assumption that his personal decisions are without consequence.
Take Me Out, then, becomes an out-of-the-closet-and-into-the-locker-room play. Kippy analyzes the situation on behalf of all who share that locker room in the controversial shower scene (featuring full male nudity) that starts Act Two:
"KIPPY.
I think we’ve experienced a kind of profound loss.
First in the physical realm-in the sexual realm, even.
[…] look at us now.
How we turn from each other.
How, when we turn to each other, we maintain eye contact.
[…] Before, this wasn’t necessary.
We were Men.
This meant we could be girlish.
We could pat fannies, snap towels; hug.
Now…
What do we do with our stray homosexual impulses?
[…] We’ve lost a kind of paradise. We see that we are
naked” (53 - 54).
And so, much like a modern Chorus Leader delivering a strophe, Kippy explicates the dilemma their entire team faces because of one man’s seemingly noble and courageous actions. The ballpark becomes a metaphoric for “a really beautiful park” with “a serpent and this tree” (6). The baseball stadium becomes synonymous for the greek stadium where tragedies are enacted and human failings are dramatized for spectators to behold.
Still, Greenberg cannot claim that baseball, and in turn, his play about baseball, lends itself to tragedy if his tragic hero does not have some kind of reversal of fortune. For most of the first act, Darren seems untouched by his actions. He truly seems invincible, above all the consequences of his actions, and aloof to the discomfort of his teammates and fans. His peripety would come in the form of a backwoods relief pitcher.
In need of a solution to their slumping bullpen, the Empires call upon minor leaguer, Shane Mungitt, who promptly sets the team aright with his unpolished but effective pitching. Kippy describes him as a bit of a redneck loner who “doesn’t know any words […and who] most of the guys hated” (44). He keeps the team winning, but it isn’t long before the inevitable occurs. Mungitt is obviously placed in the plot as an antagonist. He is a dramatic, hyperbolized version of real Major League pitcher, John Rocker, who stirred up controversy by making racist and homophobic statements about the inhabitants of New York. Soon after becoming a sensation for the Empires, Mungitt speaks to the media and sets the reversal of fortune for Darren’s tranquil existence and unquestioned control of the team:
"SHANE.
[…] An’ it’s a pretty funny team, ya know.
A pretty funny buncha guys.
Now don’t get me wrong.
I don’t mind the colored people-the gooks an’ the
spics an’ the coons an’ like that.
But every night t’hafta take a shower with a faggot?
Do you know what I’m sayin’?
Do ya get me?" (45).
Predictably, the backwoods, bigoted pitcher is promptly suspended. But as the season continues, the Empires begin to wane yet again. Management disregards Darren’s outrage and disapproval and decides to reinstate Mungitt. Forced to face the ignorance and stupidity of a bigot in his locker room, Darren behaves in typical tragic hero fashion, becoming increasingly disgruntled and disillusioned as events are no longer under his control. He even considers retiring from baseball altogether. The wounding of his pride and the poisoning of his temperament would lead to two events that would converge in a tragic consequence: a confrontation with his best friend, Davey Battle, a superstar for an opposing team whose staunch Christian beliefs have put the two at odds since Darren’s public declaration, and a taunting of Mungitt in the showers before the game when the pitcher was to return.
Mungitt overhears the argument between the two former friends and, enraged by Darren’s assault on him, takes the mound late in the game. Kippy recalls:
"KIPPY.
And I looked over to Darren, who’d been really quiet and solitary
the whole game. And he looked like he could murder somebody.
And Shane faced his first batter.
Who was Davey Battle […]
And he threw his first pitch.
And it hit Davey.
And he never got up” (80 - 81).
With the death of Davey Battle, Take Me Out reaches its tragic climax and fully demonstrates that Greenberg’s “title itself is rich with implication, with different meanings as it applies to baseball, dating, sexual identity sexual longing and even a hint of a death wish” (Rawson - G3).
The analysis of this play can be interpreted, as Greenberg suggests, as tragedy. Kippy and Darren’s accountant, Mason, serve as chorus leaders, the former on the action of the play and the latter on the philosophy and beauty behind the game of baseball as he begins to fall in love with it. Shane Mungitt is an easy villain, and the rest of the cast can be lumped into one large chorus that advances the action of the play, as needed.
Though the play successful executes a loose tragic form, further analysis of Take Me Out does not come lend itself well to categorizing this play as a tragedy. The most visible departure comes in the form of, arguably the most interesting character in the play, Mason Marzac. Serving as Darren’s new accountant, he has become emboldened about his homosexuality and impassioned about baseball ever since the superstar went public. He is left primarily outside the action, “and sometimes outside the play, acting as a kind of audience intermediary” (McCarter 18)[5]. In fact, it can be said that the gay accountant “is something of a stand-in for the playwright, who came to baseball recently and fell in love with it, much as Mason does” (Weber - 12).
More importantly, he serves as the primary source of comic relief in the play and acts as a counterbalance to the play’s tragic metabasis. As Darren grows increasingly weary and dissatisfied with baseball, Mason becomes more and more enthralled by it. Greenberg’s decision to cast the two together as an odd couple in the midst of a dramatic storm complicates the play’s generic purity as a tragedy. Their relationship - warm, poignant, and humorous - is the element of the play that deviates most strongly from the tragic form.
Therefore, Take Me Out contains some elements that cause it to resemble the modern tragicomedy and perhaps it could also be argued that this is less The Tragedy of Darren, but rather a problem play on fear, bigotry, and ignorance in society as a whole. In the world of modern and postmodern drama where form is routinely broken, generic inconsistency cannot serve as a reliable criterion to judge this play’s quality.
There are, however, flaws within Take Me Out that are noticeable and can be appraised. The verisimilitude of Greenberg’s dialogue, for example, may be an aspect of the play that is lacking. It is not that the language is weak or unintelligent; Greenberg shows himself to be a quite capable wordsmith. In fact, “all of his plays - and characters - share a loquacious intelligence and a taste for touching on big philosophical issues” (McKinley 5)[6].
Here, in the rough-and-tumble locker room of professional baseball, it sometimes smacks of too much. Greenberg makes a concentrated effort to sound colloquial at times, especially in the examples previously cited, but at other times he is engaging in indulgence and or making a concentrated effort to justify why the speech is overwrought. For instance, the opening dialogue between Kippy and Darren:
“DARREN. Does this seem to you a Tuesday like any other, Kippy?
KIPPY. Well, Dar, you sort of gave it a different tinge, you gotta admit.
DARREN. I’m sensing a difference between the public and private realms.
[…]
KIPPY. You gotta expect that at first. It’s the “Billy Budd” thing, Dar.
DARREN. Couldn’t find the Cliff Notes for that one, Kippy.
[…] I don’t want to fuck any of you.
KIPPY. It’s not about that, Darren.
It’s about us wanting to fuck you.(Beat.)
DARREN. Do you?
KIPPY. No. But as an amateur of social psychology? I suspect that
we suspect that you suspect we do.
The reader should certainly not be prejudiced against the intelligence of professional baseball players, but the syntax and vocabulary in this conversation seems to be making a conscious effort to meet in the middle of Greenberg’s natural formal and intellectual style and the casualness of relaxed locker room banter.
The author also tries to justify the dialogue later by having Darren proclaim Kippy as “The most intelligent man in Major League baseball” (9). After many verbose monologues, Kippy reveals near the end of the play that he “was not on a baseball scholarhips at Stanford. The truth is, I was on an academic scholarship” (109). After the play is nearly completed and the audience has had to suspend its disbelief that anyone could so spontaneously speak so eloquently, Kippy lets out his secret. “You see, I was supposed to be an academic or a… minister. And I wasn’t precocious in baseball-did you know that?” (110). No indeed, the reader did not.
For the rest of the characters in Take Me Out, language acts too often as a stereotyping barrier. In a modern play about intolerance and prejudice that features a mixed race homosexual as the central character, a well-spoken black superstar as his best friend, and a walking dictionary of a shortstop, it is astounding to see minor characters such as Martinez, and Rodriguez caricaturized in the periphery. All of their lines are in Spanish, with an abundance of swearing, and mostly screamed comically at each other or Kawabata, the Japanese ace pitcher. All of this occurs while the three are nude during the Act Two shower scene (55 - 59).
And whereas Martinez and Rodriguez are cartoonish, angry Hispanics, Takeshi Kawabata, is predictably, a taciturn, intense, and honor-and-duty-bound Japanese man who doesn’t speak English. There are only three instances where Kawabata makes any sound at all: a guttural noise to indicate displeasure (56), the shouting match in the showers (56 - 58), and a somber monologue after Davey Battle’s death that reveals that the wily Japanese man could speak English and might have been able to all along (83 - 84). Nearly as bad as the forgotten minority players is redneck hick, Shane Mungitt, who speaks in monosyllabic phrases or a dialect depicted by “That’s why I wannid ta talk ta ya in the first place-” (98).
Perhaps these choices were made in an attempt to capture the fidelity of a professional baseball locker room, where there are, in fact, members of the team who cannot speak English intelligently or communicate with each other. Greenberg’s choice to richly develop some characters’ speech, however, only causes a greater contrast between those characters and these minor characters, relegating the latter to cardboard scenery status.
According to Mason Marzac, “baseball is a perfect metaphor for hope in a democratic society […because] everyone is given exactly the same chance. And the opportunity to exercise that chance at his own pace” (35). Despite all the equality of opportunity granted upon the playing field, Take Me Out does not offer the same within its pages of text. The author’s rendering of the locker room oversimplifies his conflict’s bigotry and peril. The issues of fear and mistrust cannot fully resonate, so they fall flat: “Had Greenberg not filled his play with so many bows to gay life and such cartoon-like straight ballplayers, he might have had something going dramatically. But [it] is essentially a sham that never deals honestly with its topic” (Sarmento 23)[7].
Furthermore, in this critic’s opinion, “Shane throwing a pitch that kills Darren’s best friend on an opposing team is contrived.” He also protests about the shower scene between Darren and Shane that leads up to Davey’s death, saying that it is “incredible and preposterous. How low must we sink for shock value, with no dramatic support?”
One critic even views Darren’s actions as downright abominable: “never on stage or screen has there been a gay predator who was also a champion” (Goldstein 40)[8]. It is such a deplorable sight, to see a homosexual man portrayed in such a manner, that this critic would rather defend Shane Mungitt. “A hapless bigot is sexually assaulted by the play’s protagonist, a Godlike slugger. That the victim is straight and the victimizer gay sets […] a new standard for showing gay aggression.”
On the other hand, other critical views of the play acknowledge some of these problems and yet do not see them in the same negative light: On the matter of language, “Kippy and Mason may seem too articulate and Darren too little, but articulation is not always truth” (Rawson G3). And on tragic purity, “its chief pleasures are the evolving relationships among the central characters and the considerable snap and crackle of Greenberg’s comic writing […] The audience-friendly ending is a bit of a cop-out, but it doesn’t compromise the central enigma, the mystery of the human character.”
Despite the deconstruction of this text and the considerable negative criticism that has been presented, actual performances do not seem to be suffering. Denis O’Hare, who won the Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor in the role of Mason, “has found that the size of the audience affects the show. ‘With 900 or 700 people, there’s a sense of community.” (McCarter 18). Take Me Out is also described as “an overtly theatrical play, shot through with monologues and narration that make it particularly sensitive to the chemistry between actors and the crowd.” There is a visceral and kinetic quality about the play in performance that excites the audience (the least of which is the shower scene). Reviewers even state that “while Take Me Out shows plenty of skin, I also has a big heart under all that flesh” (Muther M8)[9].
Apparently, the artfulness and success of this play lie in the eye of the specific spectator. Perhaps a baseball fan might explain that watching a baseball game on television is wholly different than attending a game at the park. In the same way, reading the script of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out might prove less pleasurable than seeing his vision realized onstage. The dramatic text of Take Me Out may reveal the inconsistencies and overwriting that the play suffers from, but perhaps in attending a performance, the theatre fan may witness something that the page cannot always capture: live players transcending and transforming the game until it ripens into something greater.
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[1] Greenberg, Richard. Take Me Out. New York: Faber, 2003.
[2] Weber, Bruce. “Sing Out, Mason: Making an Accountant Bloom.” New York Times 01 June, 2003, late ed., sec. 2: 12.
[3] “Take Me Out, Gracie, to Enchanged Brixton.” New York Times 01 June 2003, late ed., sec. 2: 8.
[4] Rawson, Christopher. “Four Runs, Four Hits; Take Me Out, Three Other Broadway Plays Are Winners.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 08 June 2003, five star ed., G3.
[5] McCarter, Jeremy. “Denis O'Hare: The Exit Interview.” New York Sun 24 December 2003: 18
[6] McKinley, Jesse. “Broadway Has a New Heavy Hitter.” New York Times 07 Sept. 2003, late ed., sec. 2: 5.
[7] Sarmento, William. “As drama, Take Me Out, strikes out.” Lowell Sun 03 Apr. 2003, lifestyles sec.
[8] Goldstein, Richard. “Against His Will.” Village Voice 01 July 2003: 40.
[9] Muther, Christopher. “Outbound; Curtain Up on Gay Broadway.” Boston Globe 24 Aug. 2003, 3rd ed.: M8.