Out of Hand throws Hail Mary pass with Stadium 360
March 20, 2009 at 11:43 am by Curt Holman in Events, theater
As if possessed by the spirit of Vince Lombardi, Out of Hand Theater shows a stubborn, never-say-die attitude by kicking off Stadium 360, a sharp but light-hearted deconstruction of American football, in the midst of March Madness. In a similar kind of perverse perseverance, the production casts four women and one man in a play about pro football players and their adoring, face-painting fans.
Written by Ken Weitzman and Out of Hand Theater and directed by Adam Fristoe, Stadium 360 uses multiple vignettes in its loose depiction of America’s most pumped-up and aggressive pastime. Stadium 360 doesn’t always go on the offensive, and in one of the funniest sketches, Maia Knispel plays a young female fan who grows up in a family of football-hating, NPR-listening yoga liberals. Can her Fairy Fan-father (Jeffrey Zwartjes) whisk her away to the big game and teach her the proper way to shout “Beer me!” at vendors? In another love letter to the game, Rebecca Dutton plays an immigrant single father who sees football as a perpetual celebration of the underdog and the American Dream.
Pointed critiques primarily define Stadium 360 as it follows a promising young athlete named Ray. In a spoof of the Nativity, on the night of Ray’s birth his mother receives three mysterious, Magi-like visitors (led by creepily serene Ariel de Man) who belong to a seemingly omniscient, all-controlling team of sports agents and want to cultivate Ray’s athletic potential beginning in the cradle. Kathleen Donahoe plays grown-up Ray and captures the posture of the adult male jock, but the script jumps around too much explore Ray as a character. In general, the reverse-gender casting draws attention to masculine vulnerability, rather than comment on oversized macho behavior.
Stadium 360 depicts pro sports as a Faustian bargain for would-be athletes. Out of Hand evokes the pharmaceutical aspects of prior original show MEDS with its discussion of steroids. (Oh, did I say steroids? I meant Vitamin B-12 and flax-seed oil.) In the most haunting section, former ball players, all based on real people, discuss their careers and debilitating injuries in equal parts harrowing detail and gallows humor. One ill-fated footballer suffered so many concussions that doctors described his brain as being filled with “abnormal white matter.”
As one would expect from the Out of Hand playbook, Stadium 360 seizes upon fun, theatrical details, from the shadow-puppet sports commentators to the “freeze frames” of tackles, arranged like Sports Illustrated photo spreads. The Village Theatre proves to be a fairly Spartan venue, and the production isn’t quite nimble enough to take successful detours into outright sentiment, such as the drawn-out wake for a lifelong football fan. Overall, Stadium 360 provides enough laughs and articulate commentary to suggest that the bread and circuses of the Roman Empire have been replaced by nachos and bowl games.
Stadium 360. Through April 11. Out of Hand Theater, The Village Theatre, 486 Decatur St., Suite 10. Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m. $12-35. 404-522-6194. www.outofhandtheater.com
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