The final play in my series at Washington, D.C.’s Studio
Theatre was Tom Wells’s Jumpers for
Goalposts, a U.S. première. I caught
the official opening performance in Studio’s Metheny Theatre, the matinee on
Sunday, 17 May; the play started previews on 13 May and is scheduled to close
on 21 June. This was not only a play I
didn’t know, but a playwright whose name I’d never heard before as well. It was a delightful introduction to the work
of an artist from whom I think we will hear more in the near future because he
has an interesting and striking approach to theater and an eye and ear for
human behavior which he portrays with a rare sensitivity.
Wells is a Britisher, born in East Yorkshire in 1985. The son of a farmer, Wells won admission to
Oxford University and graduated with a degree in English. He returned to Yorkshire to study playwriting
at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds; the company would début his first
play, Me, As a Penguin, in 2009. Though he’d wanted to be a writer, Wells
wasn’t considering playwriting—but the WYP program was free, so, the young
dramatist now says, “It was a happy accident that I got there and loved it.”
Like Jumpers for
Goalposts and many of his other plays, Penguin
is set in the fishing town of Hull, a port city of a quarter million
inhabitants where Wells grew up. (“It’s
about what happens when you’re outside your comfort zone,” said Wells in an
interview five years ago. “Obviously
there’s a penguin involved . . . .”) The WYP production toured Britain and ended
up on the stage of London’s Arcola Theatre in 2010. His next work, The Kitchen Sink, premièred at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2011,
and was a break-out hit, garnering Wells the 2011 Critics’ Circle Theatre Award
for Most Promising Playwright and the 2012 George Devine Award for Most
Promising Playwright. Jumpers for
Goalposts premièred at the Watford Palace Theatre in London in 2013, a
co-production of the Watford, London’s Paines Plough Theatre Company,
and the Hull Truck Theatre, then toured Britain in 2013 (stopping in Hull) and
ended with a well-received run at the Bush in 2014. Other plays by Tom Wells include Notes
for First Time Astronauts (2009), About a Goth (2009), Spacewang
(2011), and Cosmic (2013). (Wells has also written for TV and
radio.) From what I have been able to
discern, none of his work has been staged in the U.S. until now—but I predict
that Studio’s Jumpers won’t be
Wells’s last stateside outing. He’s far
too interesting to expire on a stage in the Logan Circle neighborhood of
Washington, D.C. (As I write these
words, no reviews of the U.S. preem of Jumpers
have been published. I guess we’ll see
if I’m right about his critical reception in a day or two.)
All of Wells’s
scripts include at least one gay character.
(Jumpers has four—out of
five.) His plays, however, aren’t “gay”
plays the way that descriptor usually signifies. He’s gay and uses his experience of growing
up and living as a gay man in Northern England as the material out of which he
crafts his plays. The plot and the dialogue reference gay events and
topics—Jumpers’ story is
about a gay pub soccer league, for instance—but what the play’s about is
friendship, reaching out, looking for love, trust, and helping each other out.
It just happens that the people working all this out are mostly gay; but
the issues are universal. As David Muse,
Studio’s artistic director, explains, Wells “writes a straightforward story
with characters who happen to be gay, presenting their lives as varied,
mainstream, and normal. And he waits for
a world where that act doesn’t feel so surprising.” In other words, what Wells is doing is
writing about ideas important to him (and, I believe, most of the rest of us)
in a medium with which he’s intimately familiar. Like any good, serious writer. (Tennessee Williams wrote plays on important
themes set in the American South; Neil Simon wrote his plays populated by Jews
from New York; Marsha Norman and Wendy Wasserstein wrote about women; David
Henry Hwang’s plays are mostly about Chinese-Americans. ‘Write what you know,’ right?)
Muse says that Wells’s
effort “to turn the assumptions of the ‘gay play’ on its head” is the second of
the writer’s “two quietly subversive” intentions. “The first,” writes Muse, is “upending the
notion . . . that drama is conflict.”
The Studio head observes that Wells “is driven to write honestly about
his experience of life, which seems to him to involve conflicted people trying
to do right by each other far more frequently than people in direct
conflict.” ( I guess you could argue
that the dramatist’s “conflict” is internal instead of external.) Comparing Wells’s dramaturgy to that of Studio
favorite Annie Baker, Muse concludes that the playwright “has a gift for making
art out of the everyday.”
Since I haven’t seen
or read any of Wells’s other plays (some of his texts are published in British
editions that are available at U.S. libraries and through Barnes & Noble or
Amazon), I have to take Muse’s word that all of Wells’s work exhibits these
characteristics. I can attest to the
fact that Jumpers does, and though
some may find the writer’s dramaturgy sentimental or soft-hearted, I found the
play charming and touching. The
characters are all likeable, even endearing, though hardly high-achievers, and
I wanted them to succeed—if not at soccer, at least in their other, small (or,
perhaps, not-so-small), personal desires.
(In tandem with Wells’s writing, of course, this effect is tremendously
aided by the quality of the performances and the astuteness of Matt Torney’s
direction. I’ll get to these
successes shortly.)
The 100-minute,
intermissionless Jumpers for Goalposts,
as I’ve already hinted, is set in the locker room of a public playing field in
Hull where the five teammates of Barely Athletic, the pub soccer (they call it
football, of course—silly Brits) team which makes up the cast, change after the
five-a-side league games. This is hardly
World Cup soccer; it’s one step above pick-up or sand-lot games, and Barely
Athletic easily measures up to its (intentionally) sarcastic name. (A word about the title here: in street
soccer, the popular equivalent I gather of stickball in New York City, the
field is whatever empty space the players can find and the equipment is
whatever they can improvise. Often the
goal is marked off with bits of clothing, such as jumpers, the common British
word for sweaters or sweatshirts.
“Jumpers for goalposts” is a colloquial name for this kind of soccer
game and is the title of a series of video games and at least one book on the
sport, published in 2011, that has nothing to do with the play.) Barely Athletic have the ignominious rep of
losing all their games, so when 30-ish Viv is kicked off the Lesbian Rovers for
being bossy, she appoints herself player-coach of Barely Athletic, a team made
up principally of patrons of the pub she owns.
There’s 20-something Danny, her assistant coach who is trying to become
a youth-soccer coach; Beardy Geoff, a stocky (and, I guess obviously, bearded)
Falstaffian street busker, in his later 20’s; Viv’s widowed brother-in-law, Joe,
turning 40 and the team’s token straight guy; and the new boy, 19-year-old Luke,
an almost painfully shy library worker who still lives at home and dutifully
returns after each game for dinner with the folks even as his new teammates
gather at the pub.
The five each have
slightly different motives for wanting to be on the team. Only Viv (Kimberly Gilbert) actually sees it
as a sports outlet: she wants to beat the lesbians and hopes Barely Athletic
will be her means—though she gets her coaching ideas from a Soccer Coaching for Dummies manual. The others want to be part of the team for
social purposes, the comradery and friendship: Danny (Zdenko Martin) has a
crush on young Luke and wants Barely Athletic to be proof of his skill for the
sports center’s manager. Joe (Michael
Glenn) is still grieving the loss of his wife and the team is a way to keep
from sitting at home alone in despair.
Geoff (Jonathan Judge-Russo), unattached, isn’t beyond some serious
flirting with members of the opposition; he’s also Danny’s best friend and
confidant—for Danny has a secret which only Geoff knows. Luke (Liam Forde), who has no friends of his
own and confides the insignificant details of his ordinary life to his diary,
was attracted to Danny the first time the older boy came into the library to
hang a recruitment poster. That’s just a
nutshell summary, of course. Wells’s
characters and situation have a few quirks and curlicues I won’t disclose that
prevent Jumpers from being simplistic
or predictable. Even the ending, which
is a little pat and neat, isn’t inevitable—though the nature of the play
suggests that it’ll be happy-ish or at least bitter-sweet. Just as there are speed bumps along the way
to the final scene, however, we can predict there’ll be more to come after the
play’s over.
Each scene of Jumpers
begins as the lights come up on the thrust stage of the 200-seat Metheny with
an unseen radio announcer (the voice of James Alexander Gordon, Scottish radio
broadcaster famous for reading the soccer scores on BBC Radio) reeling off
the scores of the matches played that Sunday.
(The sound design is by Kenny Neal.)
The five players file into the changing room and banter as they change
out of their soccer uniforms and back into street clothes. This is how we meet them; the backstories and
exposition is excellently handled by Wells—even Danny’s secret comes out
naturally. Viv launches into her
performance notes—but remarkably without recriminations or scolding. Losing, in Wells’s world, is okay, as long as
you try your hardest and take your best shot—even if it’s at the other team’s
goal! (Viv does try to get Beardy to
lose his childish knit hat, his “good-luck” charm—not that it’s really
working!—but he resists, revealing that he wears it to hide the scar on his
forehead from a recent gay-bashing he suffered.) As the play unfolds, and we learn more bits
about each player, they actually manage to win one game (against Tranny United—Get
it? Like Manchester United—a team that
played in leopard-print skirts and high heels on a muddy field!) and tie
another. The rest, Barely Athletic
loses, so Viv doesn’t beat the lesbian team this season—but there’s always next
year!
The single set, a bare-bones changing room with a shower
off-stage up left, designed with spot-on look by Studio’s house designer, Debra
Booth, is the world of this play. The
five characters may have outside lives—the pub, their jobs, their homes—but
this is where the people we get to know live.
The cast dwells here as if they’d been coming to this place for years, amid
the left-overs of other teams, the dirt they track in from the field (which
Danny sweeps up as the rest of the team filter out), the first-aid box on the
wall, the folding chars stacked against a wall.
Shared with other players in other leagues, this is still their universe
when we see them, and Michael Giannitti’s lighting brings the whole place to
drab, harsh—but familiar—life as the players file in after the match. The same’s true of Kathleen Geldard’s
sports-kit costumes. These folks live in
them, for all their lack of athletic prowess, they’re as comfortable in the
gear as they are in their own skins.
(Halfway through the play, Viv brings in new jerseys personalized for
each team member: “Coach Viv,” “Assistant Coach Danny,” and even “Token
Straight Joe.” They’re all comfortable
with who they are to one another. This
is not a fish-out-of-water play: these people are perfectly content with who
and where they are.)
Torney’s staging is natural and straightforward, nothing
fancy or showy; some of the actors even sit with their backs to us on occasion. He’s created with his actors a sense that
these five are comfortable with one another and with their surroundings—this is
everyday life for them. The movement,
though minimal in the confined quarters of the locker room, is plenty for
keeping the play from seeming static—horseplay, an occasional bit of practice
(they try to make a goalie of Joe), changing, sweeping up, and so on. The life on stage seems neither practiced nor
gratuitous. The play’s emotional life,
too, is naturally modulated—no histrionic highs or depression lows. As Studio dramaturg Adrien-Alice Hansel puts
it, “The conflicts and triumphs are modest but potent—exactly life-sized,” and
Torney’s company conveys this on stage superbly.
With the help of dialect coach Gary Logan, Torney’s cast
masters the Yorkshire accent consistently and (to my ear) accurately enough to
be convincing. (My companions did
mention that they sometimes had trouble understanding the dialect, and I did,
too, but that didn’t detract from the point of the play, which doesn’t depend
on foreknowledge of the Yorkshire idiom or British soccer culture. The things that do matter come through loud
and clear, trust me.) Torney’s major
directorial achievement, though, is to have melded the five actors, who don’t
seem to have ever worked together or at Studio or for Torney before, into a
perfect ensemble. For 100 minutes, I had
no trouble believing that these folks are buds.
Individual stage characters are the creations of the actor, guided,
certainly, by the director—but a real acting ensemble is the accomplishment of
the director. It starts with the
casting, but it’s not easy to manage. Jumpers doesn’t work on stage if the
five actors aren’t a team—just like Barely Athletic are supposed to be on the
soccer field (. . . er, football pitch).
Creating the ensemble may have been Torney’s job, but those
individual character portrayals are well seen-to as well. (This is an actors’ play—the cast and their
work must carry the production.) I’m not
familiar with any of this cast’s work, even the D.C.-area vets in the company,
but they all give exemplary performances.
No one falls back on stereotypes or clichés—not that Wells’s writing
leads in that direction anyway—and no one shies away from committing to the
characters’ more unappealing traits.
Gilbert’s Viv, for instance, is bossy, but she’s no bitch dyke with a
brush cut. In fact, Gilbert plays her as
almost maternal—a little brusque around the edges, but if Barely Athletic were
the Lost Boys, Gilbert’s Viv would be Wendy.
If Wendy were a lesbian, that is.
Though young Luke is the obvious shy guy in the bunch,
Martin plays Danny with almost equal diffidence. While Luke’s timidity comes from lack of
worldly experience, Martin’s Danny is just a gentle person. His awkwardness when he reveals his secret to
Luke makes palpable Danny’s reluctance to tell his new friend what we can also
see he knows he must. Martin’s disappointment
at the way Luke takes the news is almost too intense to watch (even though we
can guess that a reversal must be coming).
If Martin could pass for a healthy young athlete, though, Forde is the
classic geek—tall, gangly, skinny, beanpole-straight. He could be
a goalpost! He absolutely looks like the
kind of awkward kid who’d have trouble constantly trying to push on a “pull”
door. But Forde makes Luke so endearing,
so in need of peer companionship, that his welcome into the group is
self-justifying. Of course, Forde’s
portrayal of the long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs makes Luke’s
quiet return to the locker room after a breach all the more powerful.
If Viv is the mom in this ad hoc surrogate family, and Luke
and Danny the little brothers, Judge-Russo’s Beardy is the older brother;
though not always wise or even reliable—no Wally Cleaver or David Nelson, this
big bro—his Beardy’s innately protective and present. Judge-Russo’s a bear of a guy, roly-poly with
a big, round face, but he’s a teddy, not a grizzly. His Beardy is just as needy as any of the
others, and as vulnerable, but he keeps putting himself out there, even when
it’s not so advisable. Beardy’s a
busker, a street entertainer, but Judge-Russo (who has some operas on his
résumé) doesn’t present him as someone who sings or plays his (hot pink) guitar
like a pro—yet his aim throughout the play is to select and perform a song in
the audition for a Pride celebration coming up.
(In the last scene, Beardy decides on a pop cover of Rodgers and
Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel that’s become a soccer anthem in the U.K. Now there’s
Wells’s message for this play.)
That leaves Joe—not a father figure despite being older than
his mates, but more like the concerned uncle (he is Mom’s brother-in-law after
all). Glenn’s portrayal is a sad sack,
as much in need of the team’s support as they might be in need of his. His (lack of) facial expressions remind me
some of Buster Keaton, “The Great Stone Face.”
Indeed, Glenn infuses Joe with some of Keaton’s warmth and
sympathy. Even though Joe’s the only
straight member of the team and despite his total lack of athletic ability—less
even perhaps than any of the rest (the scene in which Danny and Beardy try to
teach Joe to be a goalie is priceless)—Glenn makes him an integral part of the
group, a member in as good standing as Danny or Beardy, as welcome as newcomer
Luke and leadership-usurper Viv.
We don’t know what will become of Luke and Danny’s nascent
relationship. We never learn if Danny
gets his job at the sports center. We
don’t know if Beardy even makes the audition, much less secures a spot on the
program or gets the career boost he hopes for.
We’ll never hear if Barely Athletic ever beats the Lesbian Rovers (Viv
turns over head-coaching to Danny at the end of Jumpers) or even wins another game.
But we can be sure that, as long as these five are together, they won’t
ever walk alone. And that’s what Tom
Wells wants us to know. I know some
people who’ll see that as sappy. That’s
okay. I’m a sap.
Now it’s time to see if any of the published critics agree
with me or not and if, as I predicted, Tom Wells and Jumpers for Goalposts get their own career boosts on this side of the
Atlantic. So, starting with the Washington Post, Nelson Pressley, describing the play as “sweet
and feather-light,” writes that “there’s a bashfulness to this tender play that
makes you want to put your arm around it.”
“Wells’s script is decidedly offbeat,” Pressley continues: “You may be
hard-pressed to name a recent play as ginger as this.” The Postman
sums up, “For a locker-room play, it’s astoundingly decent,” but he warns that all
the characters’ lives are “gravely complicated” and the play “deepens” as it
unfolds and that “the touching performances and graceful writing add up.” (I cheated a bit: the Post published its notice on the morning before I wrote
this part of the report. I already knew
that Pressley generally agrees with me.)
In Metro Weekly, Washington’s
LGBT magazine, Doug Rule also calls
the play “touching” and “tender” (a trend, I think we’ll find) and “is as
winsome as they come.” Rule praises the
quality of the cast Torney assembled to impart Wells’s “quietly powerful and
eventually surprising tale.” The Metro
man, however, notes that Jumpers “tackles some big issues and aspects of
modern-day life . . . in a remarkably realistic, restrained way.” A “tart-but-tender romantic comedy” is how Chris Klimek characterizes Jumpers in Washington
City Paper, but he quibbles that the play “would be even stronger if it
ended 10 minutes earlier,” ultimately forgiving Wells because the acting is so
good in the late scene he thinks we don’t need.
On DC Theatre
Scene, Steven McKnight, noting that “Wells has the rare ability to find
humor in ordinary people and here he mines the comedy in the real-life
difficulties of his characters with wit and affection,” reports that Jumpers
for Goalposts demonstrates “heartwarming humor and charm.” McKnight does find that some of Jumpers’
“more serious turns feel a little forced or obvious” and that the plot “is
wrapped up a bit too neatly,” but he adds that Torney’s direction “manages to
minimize these difficulties.” April
Forrer dubs Studio’s staging of Jumpers for Goalposts “a hands-down
terrific production of a charming script” on MD Theatre Guide, declaring,
“Each character is completely lovable and layered in distinct ways, so getting
to know each one is a joy.” In the end,
Forrer proclaims, “This play is a gem.” Jumpers
is “a sweet, side-splittingly funny, and subversive romantic comedy,” writes John
Stoltenberg of DCMetroTheaterArts, in a production “that will knock
your sweat socks off.” Wells, says Stoltenberg,
has “a wholly original angle of vision that, besides being laugh-out-loud
hilarious, is heartwarming and liberating,” and dubs Jumpers “an
incandescent comedy.”
TheaterMania’s Barbara Mackay affirms
that Wells has written such a “sensitive, intelligent” play that it manages “to
reveal intense heartache and joy “ in Studio’s “excellent American
premiere.” The playwright “writes with a
light touch,” says Mackay, “drawing his characters with a great deal of humor
and an equal amount of serious emotion, without making them sound maudlin.” While on Broadway World, Heather
Nadolny describes Jumpers as “heartfelt, well balanced and does not try
too hard,” and finds that in a theater where plays are overwritten and
underdeveloped, “this one is a winner.” Each
of the familiar characters, Nadolny says, “connects with audience” and Wells’s
“heartstring-tugging moments are balanced with hilarious jokes, quips and
physical comedy.” The Studio production,
Nadolny reports, provides “romance, wit and empa[t]hy” and she emphatically
advises, “See it, and enjoy.”
Matt Torney, who directed the production of 'Jumpers for Goalposts' reported above, has been named by David Muse, artistic director of Washington's Studio Theatre, to succeed Serge Seiden as the company's associate director, the Washington Post reported on 1 July. Torney, 33, is a native Irishman but has worked in Washington--at Studio--and New York for several years now; he starts his new position as Muse's right-hand man on Monday, 6 July. The Post suggests that this appointment demonstrates that Muse plans to continue and even increase his focus on plays from Ireland and the United Kingdom.
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