SPORTS OBSESSION MAKES A HIT
Richard Greenberg has made his reputation as a writer of talky, literate plays about eccentric nerds, twisted geniuses and loners. His long association with South Coast Repertory has featured many of them: "Night and Her Stars," "Three Days of Rain," Everett Beekin," "Hurrah at Last," "The Dazzle," "The Violet Hour."
How, then, does he explain "Take Me Out," a script about baseball that features wall-to-wall jocks - most of them totally nude for much of the time - talking trash and trading insults?
"It was a new obsession displacing all the old ones," said Greenberg from his Manhattan home. "Look, I can't figure it out either. I've tried. Baseball happens, and everything else gets obliterated."
As if to prove his point, Greenberg suddenly began screaming, presumably at his television: "Throw it, throw it! Sorry, there's a game on. There. End of the inning. I'm totally yours now."
"Take Me Out," which receives its West Coast premiere this week at the Geffen Playhouse, caused something of a stir, first in London, then in New York, where its brazen nudity and hot-button topic tended to overshadow its literary merits. The play is a poignant and often hilarious examination of changing homosexual mores, the Byzantine rituals of major-league sports, and the nature of friendship. It posits an unlikely hypothetical: What if a baseball star publicly acknowledged he was gay?
Greenberg concentrates on how the coming-out decision of Darren Lemming, a talented and arrogant young slugger, affects his team and, ultimately, his future. His friends and teammates have trouble adjusting to his new notoriety. And a country-boy pitcher named Shane Mungitt heats things up with bigoted on-the-record remarks about homosexuality.
Like all Greenberg plays, "Take Me Out" features intelligent characters with a knack for expressing themselves, often hilariously. It's the first script to bring Greenberg both commercial and critical success: It won the Best Play Tony Award last year and enjoyed a lucrative Broadway run.
Despite such rewards, Greenberg doesn't plan to write another script in the same vein. "Take Me Out" resulted from his sudden and unexplainable midlife addiction to baseball - a passion that started a few years back which Greenberg insists has died down somewhat, despite his rapt attention to a Yankees game during our interview.
"It was a tangent. I think what it does fit into is my tendency to obsess. I can find a subject thoroughly absorptive in the moment, and then move on to another one. That was one of the things I most enjoyed about baseball - there were so many facts and minutiae to fuss over."
There's even a character in "Take Me Out" who bears more than a passing resemblance to the play's author: Mason Marzac, a mild-mannered accountant who becomes the story's reluctant narrator. Delving deep into Lemming's world, Marzac turns into baseball's most rabid fan - an obsession stoked by his attraction to the young superstar. He's a rumpled Everyman who's more surprised by his new jock-ish passion than we are.
Putting a kink in it
Greenberg disagrees with those who complain that the play's nude scenes are gratuitous. But it's one thing to justify nudity intellectually and quite another to actually participate in it, according to actor Jeremy Sisto, who plays Mungitt in the Geffen production.
"We just (rehearsed) our first scene with nudity, and I watched it," Sisto said. "And it's shocking.
"To be honest, I don't know - I don't have an opinion about (the play's extensive nudity) yet. I think there is a purpose for it. I think it's an important part of the dynamic of this group, where you're comfortable enough to be naked with each other; you've been doing it for years. And (Lemming's announcement of homosexuality) puts a kink in that dynamic."
Sisto admits he's a fan of shock value. "Something like this wakes people up. It gets a reaction, which is always good."
Sisto, 29, is perhaps most famous for his recent work in the HBO dramatic series "Six Feet Under," on which he plays an art teacher who has recently taken control of his mental illness and is trying to live a productive life. That character has helped to prepare him for the role he plays in "Take Me Out," Sisto said: a talented but bigoted and troubled young pitcher from a small Southern town.
"I was having some trouble trying to figure out how to make this guy a fully three-dimensional character and not to fall into any stereotypes. The reason I'm attracted to a part like this is a desire to stick up for people that need understanding."
Though Sisto is still unsure about how audiences will react to the nudity in "Take Me Out," he's confident they'll share his opinion that it's a work that transcends its sensationalism.
"I read reviews that said it was purely sensational. I don't feel that. I've had a lot of profound discoveries when reading this play. And I don't mind a play that's giving itself to the audience - a play that'sentertaining for the sake of being entertaining at times."
There's an unusual demographic who should warm to "Take Me Out," Sisto added: baseball fans.
"I'm really pleased that ('Take Me Out') has brought me back to baseball. I haven't been a fan for about 10 years. But since I've been rehearsing this play I've been watching full games, which I haven't done since high school. That's one of the things you take away from this play: It's such a great game!"
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