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ROUNDING THIRD by Richard Dresser
(2 productions and counting...)


SHADOWLAND THEATRE  -  Ellenvile, NY                FULL REVIEW

            Michael Pollard as Michael                  Jim Ligon as Don

WHAT EXIT THEATRE COMPANY  -  Maplewood, NJ            FULL REVIEW

           Philip Lynch as Michael
 

(What Exit? production - photo credit:  Carol Ventola)

REVIEWS

BY PETER FILICHIA
Star-Ledger

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.

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Play review: Root, root, root for 'Rounding Third'

By Marcus Kalipolites
For the Times Herald-Record

June 05, 2007

Ellenville — Playwright Richard Dresser might have had the likes of Lou Piniella in mind when he wrote "Rounding Third," the season's opener at the Shadowland Theatre.

Like the perennially demanding and "win-at-all-costs" current manager of the Chicago Cubs, Don is hard-nosed and unforgiving. Instead of coaching in the Majors, however, Don heads up the local Little League team. And to his bewilderment, who should sign on as his assistant coach but bespectacled, business-suited and geeky-looking Michael?

How's that for a plot?

Jim Ligon as Don wears all the mannerisms of a blue-collar ex-jock. Whether blowing his whistle, threatening his own player-son (offstage) to stop fooling around at the expense of being "dead meat," or warming up the team with macarena exercises, the head coach never stops pushing the buttons of excess. To release some of his pent-up energy, he paces in front of the dugout while swinging a bat and reinforces all his verbal attacks with expressive hand gestures.

By contrast, Michael Irvin Pollard provides his white-collar businessman character of assistant coach with the optimism and hope of promoting "play for fun." The father figure of Michael pushes his feel-good approach by wanting to know what the players are thinking and he also assures them that "it's OK to cry."

With such different philosophies, episodes of contention are sure to mount. Besides berating his sidekick for arriving 11 minutes late, Ligon's character hassles the assistant coach for incorrectly storing gear in a duffle bag. The head coach also stubbornly refuses to accept Michael's offer to pay for the windshield he broke on a long ball he hit during practice, and as long as his team is winning, the broken glass remains. Superstition (a trait among some professionals) also finds the coach continuing to wear the same socks in a winning streak.

In his direction of this well-acted and hilarious play, John Pietrowski serves the genre well by integrating physical action, spirited dialogue and frequent commands to "offstage" players. Among the outgoing messages, a particularly special "stop-the-clock" moment finds a heartfelt Michael asking for God's help as his outfielder "waits," in suspended time, to catch the game-winning fly ball.

Now given all the intensity and focus on the two players, set designer Drew Francis needed little more than backdrops for a social bar, gym, Little League ball field and van crowded with Don's "other-home" stuff.
As a comedy, Dresser's play is well-written, but what makes this production equally appealing are the superior characterizations by Ligon and Pollard. The show is seasonal, funny and worth seeing even if baseball is not your wont — it's really about human values.