'Take Me Out' of the closet

NEW YORK, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- As Richard Greenberg's new play, "Take Me Out" opens, a Major League baseball all-star center fielder decides to come out of the closet, rocking the sports world with such intensity that the game may never again be the same.

This taut drama had its premiere at the Donmar Warehouse Theater in London last summer and caused considerable stir even though England isn't exactly baseball country. Now that it has moved to the Joseph Papp Public Theater, co-producer with Donmar, it has become the season's hottest Off-Broadway ticket.

One of the attractions is the biggest display of male nudity since "The Full Monty," which was only a tease by comparison. In "Take Me Out" the whole Yankee-like Empire team is seen in the buff in two extended scenes, one of them a soap-down in the shower. In the intimate confines of the Public Theater, the display gives full frontal nudity a new dimension.

That is not the only hurdle offered by this nearly 3-hour drama.

There is plenty of raunchy language, offensive racial remarks, insults to America's redneck population and sexual bigotry. It scratches the external glamour of big time sports and finds the slime table closer to the surface than those who follow baseball religiously are likely to appreciate.

But there is much to attract theatergoers who are weary of plays where the crucial action takes place off-stage and is only talked about on-stage. This is a smoothly written, fast-moving story with plenty of action scenes, not only in the shower but on the baseball diamond. And the cast couldn't be improved upon.

Taking the lead role of star center fielder Darren Lemming, who is half black and half white, is Daniel Sunjata, a handsome, charismatic actor who seems a little wooden in the first act and second acts but warms up to a ravishingly emotional performance in the third. He is at last caught up in the full trauma of a situation precipitated by his innocent urge to live his life without pretense as a homosexual.

Actually, he shatters the seeming invincibility of the Empire team, which calls up from Double-A a fastball artist named Shane Mungitt to get it back on track to win the World Series. Mungitt, a shaggy, inarticulate Bible belt Neanderthal played with bulls-eye accuracy by Frederick Weller, manages to insult "coons," "gooks," "spics" and "faggots" in a television interview that has tragic consequences.

Mungitt has a showdown with homoerotic overtones with Lemming, goes furiously onto the mound and kills the black star of the opposing team with a lethally pitched ball. The victim is Davey Battle, Lemming's only close friend whose high principles verge on pomposity. The role is played by Kevin Carroll with a deeply felt intensity that is almost painful when Davey expresses his angry disappointment in Lemming.

Other top performances are given by Neal Huff as Kippy Sunderstrom, an intellectual shortstop who tries to be Lemming's friend and who helps the illiterate Mungitt get back into the game by composing a letter of apology for his bigoted remarks, and Joe Lisi as the blunt but big-hearted Empire manager, Skipper.

Denis O'Hare almost steals the show as a nebbish money manager, "Mars" Marzac, who inherits Lemming's account and unexpectedly finds himself falling in love with his new client and with baseball, a sport that had previously escaped his attention.

"Baseball is the perfect metaphor for hope in a democratic society," Marzac excitedly tells the uncomprehending Lemming. "Baseball achieves the tragic vision that democracy evades. ... Democracy is lovely but baseball's more mature." Oh sure!

Tripe like that occasionally clutters the play, probably because, as the playwright has admitted in interviews, baseball is a passion that came to him late in life. He became besotted with the game on his first encounter with it in 1999, when he was 41.

Marzac's pretentious encomiums also underlines Greenberg's tendency to wordiness, as proved by his critically acclaimed plays, "Three Days of Rain," "Everett Beekin," and "The Dazzle." He seems incapable or unwilling to edit out extraneous pronouncements that may sound clever but are unnatural in real conversation. Otherwise, he is continuing his climb up the ladder to join the top rung occupied by American playwrights. Another play like "Take Me Out," and he's almost there.

Designer Scott Pask has provided an all-purpose set crowned by Yankee Stadium's familiar exterior trim and sharply lit by Kevin Adams, and Jess Goldstein has provided authentic costuming where needed. Joe Mantello, fresh from directing "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" on Broadway, has done an admirable job in bringing spontaneity to a play full of potentially awkward confrontations.