Richard Greenberg’s play “Take Me Out” was such a superb and intense work that it not only won the 2003 Best Play Tony Award and many others when it first ran on Broadway, but also the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play 19 years later. Greenberg, who died last year, was a terrific writer, even if he did have the major failing of being a Yankees fan. But we should probably forgive him for that now, what with him being deceased and all.
“Take Me Out” is a baseball play, centering on the New York
Empires (get it?) and their star center fielder, Darren Lemming, who decides to announce in the middle of a season that he’s gay.
That sets off a lot of drama as some teammates support him, some excoriate him — one with tragic consequences — and others just try to steer clear. The team falters as it splits on the matter, but recovers in time to — this is the pseudo-Yankees of a few decades ago, remember — win the World Series.
“How does that predict 2027?” you may ask. Which is a fair question. For that, we need to get to a specific production and even a specific performance of that production. And consider what is about to happen at the end of this month.
Then let’s get this there already!
In the course of the season, Lemming acquires a nebbish accountant and later friend named Mason Marzac, who at the start has no interest in baseball wins or losses, just spreadsheet assets and liabilities. Naturally, Marzac, in a role that won a Tony Award for best featured actor in a play for Northwestern grad Denis O’Hare (now probably best known as Stanley in “American Horror Story”), becomes a huge fan. So much of one that, as he and Lemming are the last ones to leave the locker room after the final World Series win, he turns back to the room (and the audience, of course) and wistfully wonders, “What will we do until spring?”
But how does this get us to 2027, for crying out loud?
Hold on, I’m getting there.
I was working for the Human Race Theatre in Dayton when it produced “Take Me Out” in Spring 2007. Come opening night, all went well except for the fact that in the game scenes, the actor playing the Japanese pitcher couldn’t for the life of him be cajoled, ordered or otherwise convinced to throw with his foot on the rubber — he pitched from behind the rubber the entire run of the play, clearly seen by the audience seated around the stage. Chances are nobody but a few of us who had tried to get him to start out correctly even noticed, so it was a minor matter, but a flaw nonetheless.
That’s 2027? Huh?
Not yet. We have to come to the end of the play.
Picture Lemming and Marzac, season over, World Series won, hate and discontent behind them. Brian McKnight, a Human Race resident artist with strong Chicago ties (including an MFA from DePaul), played Marzac. He’s a fine, solid actor.
As they exit the locker room, he turns back and with proper wistfulness says, “What will we do until (pause) (pause) summer?”
Now, probably only those of us who knew the script noticed the change of seasons, so it was no biggie. I kidded Brian about it later, and he said he had a brain freeze and was lucky to get any word out. He was mortified — it happens to most actors on occasion.
But 2027?
Notice that was precisely 20 years before the upcoming season, a season that may well not begin in the spring (or even summer?) thanks to the greed of a nonagenarian control freak who despises players for taking too much of his money and fans for not giving him enough of theirs (see, there is a White Sox connection here, after all) and his five co-conspirators on the owners’ negotiating team.
So did Brian just suffer a momentary mental lapse? Or did he somehow foresee what is soon to come, to the dismay of all of us fans?
