Three tremendous acting performances anchor this study of friendship, homophobia, team chemistry and baseball. Surprisingly, the baseball references didn’t bother a purist like me. As for the homophobia, it’s sad that there are no more openly gay Major Leaguers now than when the play was first performed twenty years ago. But most intriguing was the question implicit in every relationship: how well do we really know someone, even our best friend? Jesse Tyler Ferguson deserves his Tony for his funny, lovable portrayal of Darren’s business manager, and Bill Heck was  smart and sexy as the shortstop/narrator around whom the action pivoted. But most intriguing was Jesse Williams’s Darren Lemming. I don’t know if the character was modeled on Derek Jeter, but the parallels were obvious: best player, mixed heritage, emotionally distant and just enough attitude to make a Yankee-hater like me dislike him. There was a lot of action, and it all made sense–if you can believe that a team with so little harmony can win a World Series. That’s the team chemistry issue.

Everything we hope to find in the theater, as most commonly found Off-Broadway: thought-provoking subject, great ensemble acting, honest dialogue, gripping story and tragic, but not sad, ending. The subject was how the American justice system treats convicted sex offenders: it presented the raw deal they get, while acknowledging the pain they cause. But regardless of the subject, the play’s strength was the ensemble acting of the four offenders forced to share a home: a white man in a wheelchair, a repressed Latino, a sensitive gay Black and a smooth-talking Black hustler. Each was excellent, and their four-way dynamic made the stage of Leopoldstadt seem that much more crowded. Coming off productions in Chicago (Steppenwolf) and London (National Theatre), they were at the top of their game. I loved every minute.

A deeply personal play–and he wants you to know it–by Tom Stoppard, an apologia for not knowing until late in life that he is (100%) Jewish and most of his family died in and around the Holocaust. By honoring so many of his ancestors he assembles a cast of characters that challenges the audience’s understanding (“Aunt! – Why no, she’s my sister-in-law’s sister-in-law”), at the expense of identifying deeply with anyone. In fact, I found the play a much better read than a performance. Except for the two British imports (Gretl and Fritz/Leo), the actors disappointed. It felt they were reciting their lines, not inhabiting them, and the ensemble never flowed. (The child actors didn’t help.) I wonder if sitting in the third row hurt. There is drama and emotion, but some of it comes from the Holocaust, more than Stoppard.