I attended a 99 seat house production of Take Me Out, the Tony winning Best Play of 2002. The revival of a play that was noted for its male nudity is interesting when great care if taken to mask the nudity of a locker room. Modesty panels are used in the shower room scenes, and the actors portraying the athletes wear dance belts at all times.
I saw the original production and now this small theater effort in Redwood City. The attention to not showing genitalia had an unexpected effect. It put more emphasis on the language. Words have a more powerful effect when the audience is not distracted but flopping male members or sadly one or two who lack the capacity to flop.
Playwright Richard Greenberg established a major league locker room as a modern day Tower of Babel in this work. Language enhances identity and the inability to communicate alienates. Tone, gesture and facial expression take on significant power. When racism and homophobia are introduced, the baiting we have removed from our politically correct conversations suddenly seems more painful, more shocking in this setting. The words we have been growing immune to hearing have a fresh capacity to cause an audience to catch its breath.
As much as this newly found focus on language in Take Me Out, The production running through July 20 also exposes the hoary, forced tool of narrator to enhance exposition. Like the fourth wall breaking comments used successfully in Jersey Boys, Greenberg has one character serve as the voice to direct the audience's attention. With the advantage of time, it is readily apparent how the sardonic comments add little insight to a train wreck of a story. As each incident is carefully constructed to create a compelling narrative that makes it difficult for the audience to look away, the commentary becomes unnecessary platitudes.
In the end, naked emotion is more compelling than nudity. Take Me Out has become, for me, a flawed exercise that seeks to explore the space where professional athletes wash and change for its insights into contemporary society’s more troubled areas. Like most such efforts, the emotional truth of the characters on stage here is more compelling than the noble intentions for which they have been drawn.
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