‘Rounding Third’

Friday, Sept. 12, 2008

Sounds like the tagline to a feel-good Disney movie, but if you were to compare Richard Dresser’s play ‘‘Rounding Third” to a film, it would be 1976’s‘‘The Bad News Bears,” which stars a slovenly Walther Matthau and was described by critic Robert Ebert as ‘‘an unblinking, scathing look at competition in American society.”

It is the ultra-competitive spirit embodied by the head coach, Don (Kevin Jiggetts), which inspired Dresser to write ‘‘Rounding Third,” a somewhat tragically comic play with dark hues and palpable threads of existential dread that has found more than a worthy home within the confines of the Black Box Theatre.

On a sparse black stage (save a brown bench, clipboard and sack of equipment) surrounded by black walls and with the lights shining down, Bob Bartlett’s Accokeek Creek Theaterco production zooms in on Don and his new assistant and neophyte coach, Michael (Brian Donohue), and renders the rest of the world invisible.

In the mainstream, optimistic world, perhaps these two would transcend their awkward first meeting and become best friends. This is not what happens here.

As the nerdy Michael eases up on his ‘‘the fun is in the playing, not the winning” routine and starts to learn a little bit about baseball, he does become easier for the win-at-all-costs Don to tolerate, but the friendship never loses its raw dysfunctionality.

Don, who tells the team that the ‘‘key to having fun is winning,” paints houses. Michael, who says ‘‘kids need to be the captains of their own little ships,” works for a company with government contracts, and a boss that makes him do dumb stuff on the weekends.

Beyond logistical considerations, it makes sense for the Little Leaguers and their parents to be invisible, as Don and Michael seem to talk about each other and them as if they were, anyway. Scenes progress — switching quickly as the lights dim and music (like Springsteen) streams in — in a way that is linear yet surreal; it’s as if the coaches exist in real time while everything around them is in fast forward. One second the coaches are getting on each other’s nerves before the game; the next second it’s the last inning, bases loaded, score close, a crack of the bat and the ball flying out to Michael’s uncoordinated son.

Jiggetts, an accomplished stage actor who has also had numerous television roles, delivers an energetic, explosive performance. And Donohue, who performs often in Southern Maryland, embodies Michael’s clumsiness as aptly as he does his complexity.

Don and Michael are unconsciously influenced by each other, and subtle changes in both personalities register in the second act, during which the action intensifies and the dialogue packs some shock-value.

Michael becomes more like Don than vice versa. And Donohue’s performance is particularly resonant as his character begins to assert himself and shed his inner demons.