Merciful Merriment

By T.E. Kalem

RUBBERS and YANKS 3,

DETROIT 0, TOP OF THE SEVENTH

by JONATHON REYNOLDS

These two one-acters are hilariously extended anecdotes in the U.S. tradition of the tall story. Making his playwriting debut at Manhattan's American Place Theater, Reynolds, 33, does not shape his plays with sufficient skill, but he does give them a wickedly comic mo mentum like an accomplished barstool raconteur.

Rubbers is the lesser, if wackier piece. It focuses on an inane day in the life of the New York state legislature.

The only woman in the chamber, Mrs. Crimmins (Laura Esterman), is ardently sponsoring a bill to have contraceptives openly displayed and clearly priced. The men regard this proposal as scandalous, although their own pet projects are as bad or worse. One member fulminates that if God had wanted a permissive society, "he would have given Moses ten suggestions instead of ten command ments." Ably abetted by the antic direction of Alan Arkin, Rubbers is a zany caricature of mandated imbecility. As Brooklyn's gift to liberated womanhood, Laura Esterman is roguishly supple in alternating the abrasiveness of Bella Abzug with the dimpled wiles of Eve.

Only One Pitch Left. In Yanks, Duke Bronkowski (Tony Lo Bianco) is on the mound, and he has shuddering intimations of mortality on that slab. He talks to himself continuously in an erratic monologue that is both manic and depressive: "Here I am 39 years old, and my hero is still Holden Caulfield." At the top of the seventh inning, the Duke is working on a no-hitter, but he has only one pitch left in his eroded repertory: a low slider. As he muses, in Archie Bunker fashion, on how much he detests the ethnic and racial back grounds of the batters he must face, he not only loses his no-hitter but gradually loads the bases.

The base runners sass the Duke relentlessly, and so does his apoplectic catcher, "Beanie" Maligima (Lou Crincuolo). The manager (Mitchell Jason) tries to psych the Duke back to his earlier form, but to no avail. A home run ball zooms over his head like a tracer bullet and murders him on the spot.

What Playwright Reynolds has deftly and sometimes poignantly done with in the guise of rollicking humor is to treat sport as a metaphor for the perils of imminent middle age. It is not the batters whom Duke hates the most but the loss of physical powers, of fame, of the only work he is qualified to do. Tony Lo Bianco captures every nuance of this, and his evening on the mound is a dramatically blazing no-hitter.

T.E. Kalem

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