Williamstown Theatre Festival's 'Johnny Baseball': So much for the Bambino's curse

Young pitching phenom Johnny O?Brien (James Snyder, right) tries out for the manager of the Boston Red Sox (Joe Cassidy) in this scene from the new musical ?Johnny Baseball? at Williamstown Theatre Festival?s Nikos Stage. (Photo courtesy Charles Erickson / Williamstown Theatre Festival)

WILLIAMSTOWN -- "Johnny Baseball," a thoughtful, ambitious, if also uneven, musical at Williamstown Theatre Festival's Nikos Stage, ends with a powerful anthem called, simply, "The Game of Baseball," which closes this show with the reassuring promise of the game itself -- "you get on base, I'll bring you home," the lyric goes at one point. It is not simply a game's promise, it is a nation's as well.

But nothing in life, especially "America's Pastime," is that simple.

Part parable, part freewheeling comedy, part satire, part love story, part drama, part soap opera, "Johnny Baseball" attempts nothing less than an exploration of racism in America through the prism of Major League Baseball with the Boston Red Sox -- the last team to integrate, in 1959, 12 years after the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson -- as the emblem. (My guys, the N.Y. Yankees, were second to last.)

"Johnny Baseball" unfolds as a narrative delivered to his fellow Red Sox fans by Fan 9 (Roger Robinson), during Game 4 of the American League Championship game when the Red Sox, down three games to none to the New York Yankees, broke a tie game in the bottom of the 12th inning and began an improbable comeback that led to the Sox winning the AL championship and going on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, thus bringing to an end "The Curse of the Bambino" -- the inability of the Red Sox to win a championship since 1920, when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

But the old man's tale offers a different scenario for the origin of the Curse, one that begins in 1919 with the arrival of a young white pitching phenom, Johnny O'Brien (a moving, convincing James Snyder) to the Red Sox but sparked 29 years later, in 1948, when O'Brien, now managing a minor league team in Worcester, where his own career began, brings the son he never knew he had -- a 29-year old black pitching phenom -- to Fenway Park for a tryout with the Sox.

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When first we meet Johnny, he is guileless and ingenuous. Circumstance puts him together with an attractive, seemingly naive young blues singer from the South, Daisy Wyatt (played by a sultry voiced De'adre Aziza with a smooth blend of naivete, maturity, anger, regret, compassion). But when he is forced to make a choice between Daisy and his skyrocketing career, Johnny's life takes a dramatic turn and so does Daisy's.

The second act brings us to 1948, Johnny, a wounded war veteran, is getting by on liquor and the fumes of memory. He gets a second chance through a former boss who offers him a job managing his old minor league team in Worcester, and the appearance of a young black pitching prospect, Tim Wyatt (an effective and touching Derrick Baskin), who is given a shot at making the Red Sox.

Beyond racism in America, "Johnny Baseball" is about a lot of things -- fathers and sons, redemption, second chances, choices and consequence.

It's a frustratingly fitful piece. Dresser's writing is often simplistic and conveniently ducks critical dramatic moments. His reach too often exceeds his grasp.

And yet, Robert Reale's score is tuneful and evocative, drawing on a variety of musical genres. The Reales' songs serve any number of functions from flat-out rippingly entertaining production numbers to recitative to songs that advance plot and reveal character in ways Dresser's book cannot (indeed, four of the show's more powerful and dramatic moments are musical -- the aforementioned finale; Johnny's description of his pitching technique, "All I Have to Do," reprised later by his son; Johnny and Tim's haunting duet, "Circle in the Diamond"; and Johnny and Daisy's reconciliation duet, "I Thought About You").

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For all the pitfalls chiefly in Dresser's book. the production, under Gordon Greenberg's direction, is first-rate --rhythmic, sensitive; resourcefully acted by a company of actors who all, with the exceptions of Snyder, Aziza and Robinson, play multiple roles and play them stylishly.

Stumbles on the basepath, sure. Curses -- not a one.

Source: http://www.berkshireeagle.com/entertainment/ci_23764761/williamstown-theatre-festivals-johnny-baseball-so-much-bambinos?source=rss

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