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by Richard Greenberg, directed by Morris Panych

CanStage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto

February 12, 2005

“This next part is Kafka-lite,” says Kippy Sunderstrom in Act 2 of Take Me Out.  “This whole play is drama-lite,” he might as well say right from the start.  Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out won a passel of  awards, but that is indicative less of quality than how slim pickings were in 2002.  If Angels in America is the home-run of gay American plays, Take Me Out is a pop fly.

As in many middle-brow plays, Take Me Out has a narrator, Kippy the intellectual ball-player (Matthew MacFadzean), who tells us everything we need to know so we don’t have to think for ourselves.  For reasons that are never truly clear, half-black, half-white, millionaire centre-fielder Darren Lemming (Thom Allison) decides to come out to the media.  Greenberg spares the audience ever having to deal with Lemming’s gayness by giving him no partner or lovers.  Greenberg focusses instead on the resulting decline in morale in Lemming’s team since a resident queer has taken the innocent fun out of communal showering and towel-snapping, that Greenberg, ever-primed for pretense, compares to the loss of Eden.  Events shift only when a worse threat to team spirit arrives in the form of bigoted pitcher Shane Mungitt (Mike Shara).

By the play’s end the narrow-minded are punished and the liberal-minded rewarded.  So much for reality.  What keeps our interest aroused, besides the abundant male nudity, is the tight direction of Morris Panych, the sleek design of Ken MacDonald’s set and the hard-ball performances of the eleven-member cast.  Shara’s great performance manages to find some vulnerability beneath Mungitt’s ignorance and seething hatred.  MacFadzean’s genial Kippy helps us forget the play’s superficiality.  David Storch steals the show as Lemming’s delightfully nerdy gay accountant.  Yet, neither Greenberg nor Allison provides any insight into Lemming beneath all the smiles, smoothness and smugness.                       

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2005-01-27.

Photo: Matthew MacFadzean and Thom Allison.