In this Tony Award-winning Best Play, playwright Richard Greenberg celebrates the personal and professional intricacies of America's favorite pastime. When Darren Lemming (Jesse Williams), the star center fielder for the Empires, comes out of the closet, the reception off the field reveals a barrage of long-held unspoken prejudices. Facing some hostile teammates and fraught friendships, Darren is forced to contend with the challenges of being a gay person of color within the confines of a classic American institution. As the Empires struggle to rally toward a championship season, the players and their fans begin to question tradition, their loyalties, and the price of victory.
What Shane embodies is before us in the many and varied current attacks on the LGBTQ community, and trans youth in particular. It may even explain the paucity of out sports-people 20-plus years after Take Me Out's debut. Yet finally, Take Me Out also offers a vision of inclusion, of both finding a place, finding friendship, and finding a home. It comes with costs, but it's there-a genuinely unexpected field of dreams.
Ellis's ensemble cast-which also includes Julian Chi as a Japanese pitcher, Hiram Delgado and Eduardo Ramos as macho Empires, and Ken Marks as their manager-is a model of teamwork, with the main cast leading the charge. The role of Darren is challenging because the character is such a cipher ("I don't have a secret, Kippy. I am a secret"), but Williams balances believable swagger with lovely shades of growing self-awareness. Oberholtzer brings high low-life intensity to his performance as the foolish Shane, and Dirden is a pillar of testy rectitude as the pious Davey. But Mason is by far the play's best role, and Ferguson-warm, sweet and infectiously enthusiastic-is the show's most valuable player. In every moment he spends onstage, with every perfectly timed aperçu, he wears the audience like a glove.
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