PLAYS ABOUT BASEBALL
(part 1)
DAMN
YANKEES /
Plays Part
3
AT
LAST, A PERSONAL LIST OF THE BEST OF THE FILMS ON BASEBALL
OCT2013: THE
126th
ARTICLE FOR BASEBALL
GURU
ONEMOREINNING
PLAYSPARTFOUR
"there is no joy in mudville, mighty casey has struck
out"
A line from the most famous
poem written about the
What
if mighty Casey had not struck out? What would the results have been?
The
short lived musical
"Batter
Up" gives us the answer and delivers
several fast moving skits dealing with the game of baseball,
its characters, and wacky baseball plays that are carried out on the stage
in highly original skits.
It opened
up at the Princess Theatre in
The
cast was a fairly large one, seventeen men, two women, seven children, and
a chorus.
There
were no leading players as such, everyone had a chance to do a turn either
in a skit or a musical number. It didn't
help!!
BOOCOCK'S HOUSE OF BASEBALL:
A one
man show that opened and closed in 2005.
The combination
of political bashing of the Right wing political base and the Republican
party using baseball metaphors to put it all together just didn't work on
the stage.
Its put together
within a stream of consciousness, was awkwardly done, and ended up being
simplistic and muddled.
Paul Boocock
is in this tour de force and his acting is certainly the highlight of the
show. It tried to show that Democracy is a delicate
balance of the needs of many
with those of the few, with the Republicans ending up as the bad guys. I
have no problem with that assumption but the public at large did.
He also
digs into corporate greed, political shenanigans, and the gullibility of
the baseball and general public.
Three
strikes and it was out.
POP-UP:
A short
one act play.
A batter
hits a pop-up. In the six seconds it takes to go up and then come down the
catcher and the manager of the team
talk about life in general.
More
of a look at the personal feelings of the two men than baseball itself, the
play garnered no publicity and disappeared
quickly.
THE HOT CORNER:
The play was never published but did reach Broadway where it appeared
for 5 days in 1956. It featured some top notch names (Sam Levene, and Don
Murray)…..Levene also directed the
production.
A cant miss pitching phenom holds the fate of his manger in his hands
with the possibility of his making
the Major Leagues. Without giving away the the gist of the plot it should
be mentioned that a Peanut Vendors picket line figures prominently in the
play.
There was some humor and the acting did well but the dialogue was
stiff and predictable. This was one of Don Murray's earliest roles. Shortly
thereafter he went on to have a successful career in films.
LOU GEHRIG DID NOT DIE OF CANCER:
A Baseball Little League
coach and his wife go through the disintegration of their marriage, alcoholism,
and the conflict of his wife's rocky career as an aspiring actress.
Actor
Victor Spinilli has a tour de force as the alcoholic coach throughout the
whole play. Some of his lines called for complex acting, which he pulled
off admirably while still drunk.
The
play ends with a developing affair between the mother of one of the coach's
of the boy's on his team.
The author of the play
was Jonathon Miller who wrote the Championship Season and had a career as
an actor as well (appearing as the troubled priest in the Exorcist
FENCES:
August
It deals with a former player who has trouble with his disappointments
in life, is now a trash collector, and makes things difficult for his friends
and family.
It takes place in 1957 and
The play won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for drama and also the Tony award
for best drama of 1987. It starred James Earl Jones and Mary Alice who won
Tony awards for best actor and actress.
Next month BASEBALL FILMS.
There are
plenty of them and most of them are pretty
awful.
