Good, Not Very Clean Fun

Bullpen

Directed by Larry Blamire

At the Hasty Pudding Theatre

Plays about sports are risky business for both writer and producer. Pleasing both die-hard sports fans and regular theater goers can be a playwright's dilemma. The fan demands a high-degree of authenticity, complete with credible gestures, jargon and appearance. While regulars require a plot offering more than instructions on how to throw a fork-ball.

Since ancient Greek dramatists began chronicling their athlete's exploits, few plays have pleased both kinds of audience. Steve Kluger's comedy, Bullpen, currently playing at the Hasty Pudding Theatre (12 Holyoke St.) attempts to completely satisfy both parties, and almost does.

The play, fittingly, is loosely-focused on life in the Boston Red Sox bullpen. The Sox have just added to their roster a 19-year-old pitching sensation named "The Kid," a Roger Clemens-type, who is scheduled to pitch in that day's game against the New York Yankees. In order to make room for him, they must cut a player from the bullpen, creating a great deal of anxiety among the six principals in the play--a catcher and five pitchers.

Each person is a likely candidate to be dropped from the team, for reasons ranging from the player's age to a recent slump. During the performance, which spans "The Kid's" pitching debut, the actors constantly banter back and forth about which one will be cut. Through the funny repartee, that ranges from self-criticism to denigration, the Los Angeles-based playwright raises his characters from stereotypes to more complex figures.

Early on, the audience has no problem pegging the players, as if they have come from an ex-jock's "as told to" book. The second-string catcher, named Boomer, is divorced by his wife during the game over the bullpen phone. He, by the way, is played by Peter Fox '72, an alumnus of the Hasty Pudding Theatrical Society. The pitching corps consists of Frito (Bobby DiCicco), a Bruce Springsteen-loving Hispanic; Duke (Wesley Thompson), a self-proclaimed persecuted Black; Moose (Vince Lucchesi), an over-the-hill knuckler; Ripper (Artie Gerunda), a Harvard educated alcoholic; and Tank (Eddie Frierson), a not-too-swift minded hurler.

Left as stereotypes, Kluger's play would fail to hold the audience's attention into the later innings. But the players' predicament creates an excellent vehicle for making the characters more interesting. The vulnerability of each player to the manager's axe, brought out best in separate monologues, successfully shows their strengths and weaknesses. Both Tank and Boomer's monologues are especially moving and genuine.

Attempts to draw too much significance from these athletes' situation is part of the play's problem. Through all the verbal jabbing, backstabbing and competition, the players, teammates for the past six years, realize that their jobs are not what they're going to miss most about being cut. Instead, not too surprisingly and too cliched, they are going to miss each other. When the moralizing commences and the banter begins to lose its freshness, sometime mid-way through the second act, the play starts to drag.

Another problem is that Bullpen is a bit too authentic, and therefore is either a bit offensive or contains too much "shop talk." The language is really too vulgar and the crotch clutching too excessive. The inside baseball jokes often fly over or under the audiences' heads. Still the jokes are not so provincial that only Red Sox die-hards can be heard laughing. The fact that the play is about the Boston club bears little significance in the story.

At the same time, this accuracy holds much of the play's charm. The players are believable as athletes, both in appearance and manner. Situated in the bullpen at Fenway Park, complete with green walls, the actors are fully clad in Red Sox uniforms. An especially nice touch is the plastering of bubble gum all over the bullpen. Each could pass for a ball player, and the lone-lefty, Ripper, conjures up images of Boston's beloved spaceman Bill Lee.

For the sports fan, the play strikes its highest marks with its hilarious observations of how players in the bullpen wile away many hours waiting to be called in on relief. This activity ranges from scoping girls and playing baseball trivia games to performing practical jokes and rough-housing. Among the funniest moments is when Frito calls Dave Winfield on the bullpen phone and pretends to be a police officer calling about a statuatory rape case involving the Yankee star.

The play is good fun, and should be seen, especially if you like baseball. Even if you are not especially keen on the game, but do not mind locker room talk, it is very possible you will enjoy it. The proximity of the theater to Harvard Square makes it especially inviting for Summer School students, although the tickets are quite pricey ($14 Tuesday--Thursday evenings and Saturday, Sunday matinees; $17 Friday, Saturday evenings). Like the Sox pitching staff, this play is colorful and unpredictable, definitely worth a trip to the bullpen.