By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — In Jason Miller's 1972 play That Championship Season, four former high school basketball teammates reunite 20 years later in their old coach's home. As the liquor flows, conversation turns to the jobs and relationships, concerns and frustrations that have defined — and linked — their adult lives.
You don't have to be a psychiatrist or a prophet to know that this won't end prettily.
In the new Broadway revival of Season (* * ½ out of four), which opened Sunday at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, a starry cast that includes Miller's son Jason Patric reintroduces these no-longer-young men. Over two boozy hours (in the short first act, virtually every other line seems to be an invitation to imbibe), they revisit old grievances and form new ones, gradually tearing to shreds both past glories and present accomplishments.
Along the way, the ex-athletes and coach examine and excoriate aspects of the changing world around them. Their blunt, rancorous swipes at Jews, communists, African Americans and women remind us that the fear-based intolerance some observe in our own unstable times has deep roots.
To say that Season hasn't lost its edge or topicality is not to proclaim it a timeless classic. The arguments and diatribes fueling the play seldom encourage reflection, and like real-life drunken banter, can grow tedious. But under Gregory Mosher's sensitive, rigorous direction, this production is at least a showcase for the theatrical talents of several actors better known for their film and TV work.
Patric and Kiefer Sutherland play siblings Tom and James Daley, respectively an aimless alcoholic and an earnest, self-sacrificing school principal. Each performer cannily charts his character's evolution under the influence: Tom's from a passive bystander to a bitter critic of the others' hypocrisy, James' from a bookish appeaser to a man capable of rage and even spite.
As the more intrinsically hot-blooded businessman Phil Romano, Chris Noth is predictably charismatic and funny, but also reveals the insecurity and lack of purpose underlying Phil's crass, arrogant behavior. Similarly, comedian Jim Gaffigan finds an awkward sweetness and repressed sadness in George Sikowski, a buffoonish, epithet-spewing politician.
But the most flamboyant role in Season is that of the fellow simply referred to as Coach. The older man, who still fancies himself a protector and teacher to the "boys," is assigned the play's loftiest speeches and some of its most hateful invective, and venerable Scottish trouper Brian Cox invests him with a feverish energy and emotional heft befitting the Shakespearean heroes he has tackled in the past.
Sadly, Cox's effort and skill only underscore that Coach is not King Lear, just as neither the younger characters nor the play itself inspires comparisons to weightier stuff.
Season is nonetheless a capably crafted and solidly acted show — not to mention a sobering reminder of the dangers of overindulging at cocktail parties.
Source: USAToday.com
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