Customer Reviews

Take Me Out: A Play

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Richard Greenberg walks a delicate but intriguing line in his play "Take Me Out". He tries to avoid cliches and stereotypes in a play that is all about cliches and stereotypes of all sorts. The end result is an intrguing, compelling, and often funny look at how baseball and in a larger sense, America, handled, is handling, or will handle her diversity.

Take Me Out starts out about a talented gay baseball player, Darren Lemming of the ficitonal Empires, who has already come out of the closet to his team and the world before the play begins. Instead of falling into the now thankfully tired cliche of the team and coach having to "deal" with Darren's sexuality, Greenberg allows the team to deal with the news quickly and move on with the story, including his literary and intelligent best friend Kippy, who narrates the play.

Bring in Shane Mungitt, a relief pitcher who struggles to put two words intelligibly together, and in turn, revives the Empire's sagging baseball season. Through his gruffness and lack of communication, Shane clearly becomes the play's antagonist, and does so quite publicly and unintentionally, on television during an interview. Shane spouts off a quick string of prejudical labels that shock and dismay his team right at the end of act one. Of course, act two picks up with the team having to deal (or not deal) with Shane's obvious bigotry, which leads to a series of surprising and shocking events that somehow make sense in the larger sense of the play.

Greenberg never allows his play to fall into a stereotypical trap of victimization. Throughout the play, Darren retains his leadership and assertiveness, and even publicly rebels against any sympathy garnered from the public by Shane's outburst. It's refreshing to read a gay character with a spine, who relies on no one but himself.

However, almost as a comic relief, Greenberg imbued his play with one of the most memroable stage characters ever written, the incomperable Mason Marzac, who plays Darren's financial manager. Normally staid, boring, stiff, and uninteresting, Greenberg has turned this character on its ear by making him a nelly queen, and one of the most hilarious characters to boot. Almost immediately, Mason is the character that draws in the audience, and you love him for wearing his emotions on his sleeve. Even more amazing, Mason becomes a baseball convert, and drags the audience into understanding why people love baseball, or even its grander meaning in American society. How rich!

Take Me Out is an incredible play for many reasons, and I highly recommend reading it, or if you are lucky enough to be near a local or national production of the play, see it. It will be a very enlightening, entertaining night at the theater!

I have seen this play three times already, once in previews and twice in the same week last June, and plan to go back the next time I am in NYC because several cast members have changed since the summer. I confess that I have not read the script yet, but as the genius of the play is more in the writing than in the acting (although that was wonderful, too), I believe the script can be reviewed by watching it. I plan to buy it soon.

I believe that Take Me Out is the best show currently on Broadway. To people who are overly focused on musicals and do not consider it, I say that the monologues are the equivalent of any big ballad they could hope to see. The dialogue is the equivalent of Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, or, for television, Sports Night and The West Wing). It is intelligent, witty, and capable of turning progressively darker while never feeling out of touch with the humorous lines.

It is not a baseball show. To continue the Aaron Sorkin comparison, a love of sports is no more of a necessity to enjoy Take Me Out than to enjoy Sports Night. No matter how much I love Marzac's monologues on the wonders of the game, I would no more actually watch it played after seeing the show than before. That does not prevent enjoying the description.

It also should not be dismissed as being "just" a gay show. Yes, bigotry is a major issue of the play, both in terms of homophobia and racism. It is also a show about friendships, and varying degrees of strength and of honesty in them. Of course, there is the question raised by a few plot twists near the end, which I will not spoil, but regarding Kippy's theory that everything is for the best if people can put their true thoughts into words. In most situations, honesty may make the strongest friendships, but the truth can be ugly, or bring about ugly reactions from hatred. It is a play about how few simple answers there are, and that not every question is answered at the end is appropriate.

I've seen this play twice, and I am amazed by the depth of character and attention to detail in the written form. Greenberg has obviously paid attention to the sport press, and the various players in the game of baseball. There are redneck baseball players who make horrific remarks, and there are also meek Japanese players. I dislike baseball, and I rarely watch baseball and the ensuing media, but even I know that the characters in Greenberg's play have real-life counterparts.

The play is crisply written, and deals honestly with many issues. The characters are not one dimensional, but multi-dimensional. The redneck character (Shane) is a lot more complicated than the previous character would you have believe. His motives for his actions are never as obvious as the previous reviewer would have you believe. The character of Mason falls in love with the game of baseball, and it's a joy to read even if you dislike baseball like I do.

This is a wonderfully written script. Greenberg takes the question of the gay culture into a new realm, by not including it so much.

The sexual innuendos, the shower scenes, the fact that this is in a locker room? These all help create the mood that this is a setting of a typical male sports player. With issues that have surrounded homosexuals in athletes having been brought up, this play clearly identifies many pertinent questions.

Yet, like any good play (as long as we're not going by Aristotelean methods), the themes, tropes, and plots all weave together nicely to create a complete package.

And don't think because there are nude scenes that this is what the play is about. The nudity is more an aspect of realism, and one that Greenberg is conscious of, as the first scene has rather impertinent information, so that by the time it is introduced en masse, the audience may have gotten used to it.

The characters are all well written, however, and one can easily identify and empathize with every single one, to an extent. Greenberg makes sure not to alienate any one person in particular, but makes it obvious that everyone has their issues, and that to coexist, we need to deal with them, or the consequences may not be so wonderful.

And besides, out of the many baseball monologues that have been given, comparing it to other works, how many talk about the strut in such a beautiful manner... or address it at all?

I participated in the cast of this play last July 2005. One of the best experiences I have ever had doing theater.

The play is excellent. In general, I think the play is sad. The lives of the characters take a drastic turn when Darren Lemming, a baseball superstar, announces publicly that he is gay.

Take Me Out is a play about self acceptance, prejudice, taboos, homophobia, racism, hate crime. Raw and honest, it exposes many things that have been known for a long time but that everybody prefers to keep to themselves.

Wow! Read this (or better yet, see it) and marvel at the wonders of great playwriting. Dazzling writing + a great story = amazing theatre. The characters jump off the page. This is NOT a "gay play", but a story about choices, courage and consequences. Squeezed in there is a monologue on baseball that is destined to achieve classic status and would make anyone want to head out to the ballfield. Somehow all of the elements of this play just work, though I defy anyone to explain how, in simple terms. It doesn't seem complex, but it is. This is what great writing for the theatre is all about...still alive and well in the 21st century: smart, provocative, fun and moving! Thank you Richard Greenberg!

Richard Greenberg has what it takes to be a great playwright. Take Me Out is one of his finest works he has written in his life. I didn't see the play, but i have read it and i thought it was a tastful work. It was funny, shocking, revealing, and at some points gone over the limits. There were parts where there's a lot of nudity involved and a lot of profanity used, but that didn't stop this play from getting good reviews. It's also an example of what makes theater strong and entertaining.

So, are you a big fan of Baseball? [...] then i recommend Take Me Out to you and you friends. What are you waiting for? GET THIS PLAY!!!

Today I received my package from Amazon in the mail, opened it, read "Take Me Out" from cover to cover, and then went back to the beginning and started reading it again. It's a story that I never want to forget.

I saw "Take Me Out" in its Broadway version first and then later purchased the book. It astounds and delights in both formats, although I have to admit that I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed it less had I not already seen the play. But having seen it, reading the book is a great way to relive my favorite moments at the theater.

Purchase this now. Whether you are a fan of baseball or of theater, you're bound to enjoy it.

I have never seen the play performed, so perhaps it plays better than it reads. But I was an actor for ten years in New York from the mid-Eighties to the mid-Nineties, and when I read plays I have a habit of picturing myself playing various roles.

Unfortunately, TAKE ME OUT has very little for an actor to really sink his teeth into. The only really good part in this thing is the role of Mason Marzac, and he is such a stereotypical queen that as good as I don't doubt Denis O'Hare was on Broadway, I suspect it did not make too many demands on his talents; all he had to do was copy Cliff Gorman from THE BOYS IN THE BAND.

The play's central character, Darren Lemming, a big star with one of the top teams in the major leagues, one day decides to announce his sexual orientation to the media. The play never fully gives us an acceptable answer to the inevitable question "why." He does not have a boyfriend. In fact, in one ambiguous statement to a teammate, while he acknowledges that he prefers sex with men, he also implies that he has little interest in it. Now I am sorry, but no young twenty-something man, gay OR straight, has that little libido. And if he says he does, either he is lying or there is something wrong with him.

Unfortunately, with an unbelievable character at its center, the play flounders around dealing with themes of masculinity, homophobia, sports, homosexuality in sports, reaction from fans, etc. Mostly in a perfunctory way. With the exception of the homophobia: a number of Lemming's teammates show their discomfort, and then enter the play's second cardboard stereotype: the ignorant bigot Shane Mungitt, whose dialogue is completely predictable when it isn't utterly incomprehensible.

There is some suggestion that Lemming's decision to come out has something to do with his close friendship with a player on another team, Davey Battle, a heterosexual man with a wife and three children. But Greenberg never follows up on all the hints he drops, and by the end, after a good many things transpire including a tragedy, all I was left with was the thought that the whole thing was utterly pointless.

It is worth noting that much of the action takes place in the team's locker room, and the production had a considerable amount of full male nudity. All very titillating, I'm sure, and in an early scene Greenberg does manage to score a couple of hits regarding homophobia, but reading this thing I got the ghastly feeling that if the actors had kept their clothes on the play would have closed on opening night. During intermission.

I saw Joe Mantello on Broadway in ANGELS IN AMERICA back in 1993. If he is as good a director as he is an actor, I am sure he made the best production that anyone could have done. Maybe it just doesn't work on paper; I don't know. But I thought it was a predictable and rather boring assembly of clichés masquerading as good drama, but for some inexplicable reason the Tony Awards people did not see it that way.

For myself, I just don't get it. I spent the first forty-two years of my life in New York City and saw many Broadway shows, plays and musicals alike. How such a muddled, stereotypical, and emotionally empty piece of work became so lauded is, frankly, a mystery to me.

I normaly don't like sports and try to dtray away from sport books. But this cought my eye, it spunded so inturesting, i had to read it. I instantly fell in love with it. it is very belivable and i love all the characters, including Shane Mungitt. I could see his point of view on the whole situation and how scared and confused he is. But my all time favorite character was Mason Marzac's character. He was what made me see baseball in a diffrent light. U still don't like basball, but it made me think for a minute, which was good. You don't have to know baseball to read this, whice is always a good thing. All in all a very good show. HBO shout turn this into a movie, I would watch it.