What Exit Theatre: Review

Review of What Exit? Theatre's production of Rounding Third

Touching base: Little League play's a hit in 'Rounding Third' at Maplewood

Tuesday, October 04, 2005
BY PETER FILICHIA
Star-Ledger Staff

Who will be named baseball's manager of the year for 2005? Joe Torre? Terry Francona? Don Baker?

The last name will be unfamiliar to even the most ardent baseball fan, for Don is the coach of a fictitious Little League team. Nevertheless, his pursuit of victory makes for a delightfully funny comedy, "Rounding Third." The nifty, two- actor production it's receiving at the What Exit? Theatre Company makes it well worth a road trip to Maplewood.

Don's kids won the championship last year, and he expects the same after this campaign, too. One problem: His assistant coach has left for greener infields, and now he's stuck with Michael Johnson. This easy-going guy believes that the important thing in Little League is that the kids have fun. If they miss a pop fly or run to the wrong base, he thinks it's rather cute.

Not Don. He's a Gen. Patton type who isn't used to the general upheaval that Michael will cause. While Michael tells kids after a loss that, "It's okay to cry," Don is furious. He knew that there was no crying in baseball long before Tom Hanks told his team in "A League of Their Own."

It'll be a long season for these two, but theatergoers will discover the two-hour show goes by as quickly as a 5-4-3 double play.

Though Dresser writes for Don plenty of ignorant remarks ("Not talking to a woman is a lot different than not talking to a normal person") and errors in syntax, he's careful to give him some smarts. It's hard to argue with Don's simple logic that "In the real world, the happiest people are the winners."

There have been countless plays in which two diametrically opposed characters meet, dislike each other, and eventually wind up being pals. Dresser knows this, too, and takes pains to keep the relationship between Don and Michael as honest as possible. It's one of the play's best strengths. John Pietrowski, who provides the taut direction, also ensures that the proceedings remain unsentimental.

He has two expert performers on hand. Jim Ligon, looking part pug dog and part pit bull, is utterly winning as Don. He's deadly serious when he tells the kids that if they don't honor his every directive, they'll "wind up in the spring musical."

Though Don spends most of the show dispensing scowls and skeptical looks, he is capable of a smile. But it's a wonderfully condescending one, when he learns that Michael doesn't quite understand the game. Ligon gets every bit of Dresser's subtext, that as long as a man is adept at sports, he can consider himself more masculine -- and superior -- to other guys. It doesn't matter to Don that he's a big fish in a little league.

As Michael, Philip F. Lynch resembles a bespectacled scholar: Gangly, round shouldered and with a nose that looks like it's met many a grindstone. Lynch is most amusing when he continually bends his knees while pleading with Don. His painful squint in response to Don's genuinely fascist comments adds to the fun. Michael, however, must be convincing when he delivers an oration to the team, and Lynch scores here when he says, "We're all winners if we try our best," with the requisite sensitivity.

So never mind the major league playoffs. Why care if the Yankees wind up playing either Red or White Sox, or if the Angels knock their socks off first? That all that pales in comparison to "Rounding Third."

Review of Jack! and the Beans Talk!

Fractured Fairy Tale

What Exit? troupe's gender-bending twist on classic tale is a real gas

Corrigan sure knows the tradition of the panto -- though derived from the word "pantomime," in England it doesn't mean a wordless show. A British panto always fractures a fairy tale, to the delight of children and adults. Here, Corrigan plays fast and loose with the story of Jack, who sells the family cow for a handful of beans -- leading to gigantic problems.

In a panto, the leading male role is always played by a young woman, so the intrepid Jack is played by the charming and adorably dimpled Lori McNally. In her green shirt and tights, arms akimbo, she rather resembles Peter Pan. But the actress has such a sense of spunky determination, it seems she could outwit Pan and Captain Hook, too.

On the other hand, the leading female role in a panto is portrayed by a man. That gives Harry Patrick Christian the chance to surrender his ample body and soul to a $3 housedress and copper-colored wig. He acts with hysteria, which is precisely right. The audience's laughter over his antics is pretty hysterical, too.

McNally and Christian aren't the only cross-dressers on the scene. Noreen Farley plays the family's landlord in the silent-movie villain tradition, with a black cape and drawn-on mustache. Farley is so wonderfully out of control that she looks ready to swoop into the crowd, grab a damsel, and tie her to the railroad tracks.
Then there's cross-dressing of another kind. Pantos include an animal, in this case Jack's cow, so Tess Ryan Herbert and Lia King don the most intentionally unconvincing costume. They mooo-ve delightfully in tandem.

Some performers do wear clothes befitting their sex. Parri Sontag is Belinda, a narrator with the perfect bored demeanor of an actor who's introduced one -- no, one hundred -- children's shows too many. Paul Mantell is cacklingly good with a nifty Cockney accent as Beanie, the slightly demented bean seller who does business with Jack. And once all the characters climb the beanstalk, they have a real treat in store, thanks to Carey Urban, who's droll in underplaying the giant's long-suffering, human-sized wife.

A caution to adults who are thinking of taking children: Corrigan's script is often vulgar. Granted, pantos offer the occasional double-entendre, and Corrigan has created worthy ones. But he goes overboard in one respect.

The beans, you see, don't actually talk. They make their presence known by Beanie's flatulence. Much is made of that all performance long. So while pantos encourage audiences to hiss the villain and shout to the actors on stage, some spectators will feel like yelling, "Enough with the gas jokes!" Others, though, may be laughing too hard to do anything but double over with glee.

Reviews of previous performances ->

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