Damn Yankees Review: Arena Stage’s Modern Home Run
A revised Damn Yankees brings queer couples, sharp new jokes, and powerhouse performances to Arena’s 75th season opener.
We are not the same baseball-adoring America we were in 1955, the year the Tony-winning Damn Yankees hit Broadway. Most notably, as it pertains to the musical created by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, with music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, “America’s pastime” doesn’t occupy nearly the same space in the nation’s hearts or cultural consciousness as it did then.
Today, if Adler and Ross were writing a number like “Six Months Out of Every Year” — in which wives lament losing their baseball-obsessed hubbies’ attention completely to the game from May to October — it would have to be about football to reflect where America’s obsessions currently lie.
Football never even comes up in Damn Yankees. Accounting for cultural shifts in baseball’s relative popularity, not to mention evolving sexual politics and musical tastes, “Six Months Out of Every Year,” or the whole damn show, might seem dated under even the best of circumstances.
Fortunately for us, Arena Stage has invested in the best of circumstances for its newly “revised” production, enlisting writer-artist Will Power and Pulitzer- and Tony-winner Doug Wright to freshen up the script, along with Tony-winning composer-lyricist Lynn Ahrens to zhuzh up the lyrics.
The team has thought strategically about where and how to modernize the show, including moves like inserting a gay couple among the married pairs in “Six Months of Every Year.” And Broadway powerhouse director-choreographer Sergio Trujillo (a Tony-winner for Ain’t Too Proud), mixing modern special effects with old-fashioned sleights of hand, stages the updated production fluidly inside Arena’s in-the-round Fichandler Stage.
Featuring a dynamite cast, and updating the team backdrop from the Washington Senators of the 1950s to the 2000s Baltimore Orioles, the whole enterprise moves and sounds as fresh as you’d like, thanks largely to the robust orchestra under Adam Rothenberg’s direction, tucked offstage.
Onstage, leading man Jordan Donica, freed from his Gilded Age garb of stately suits and doctorly decorum, is freshness personified as the Orioles’ new star slugger Joe Hardy. Humble and kind, yet susceptible to flattery and temptation, his Joe sings with a rugged stage-honed baritone and swings a bat like a guy who sold his soul to the devil for major-league success.
That is, of course, where Applegate, the Prince of Darkness in this spin on the Faustian legend, comes in, played with devilish charm by Broadway’s Mrs. Doubtfire, Rob McClure.
Applegate doesn’t require much updating. The devil is timeless, and so are con men and suckers. Applegate’s agent of seduction, femme fatale Lola (Ana Villafañe, somewhat effortful in the role) can ply her feminine wiles in the same fashion, if not the exact same fashions.
Audiences, especially now, don’t have to stretch their imaginations far to conceive of folks willing to sell their souls for unearned success. That said, Applegate does get some of the script’s sharpest new jokes and one-liners, dealt with expert timing by McClure, including a dig at Baltimore I’ll be chuckling over for the rest of my life.
Charm City also gets its share of love in the production, a heartfelt fable throughout — and not only during the delightful “Heart,” performed by O’s Coach Van Buren (Nehal Joshi) and the endearing ensemble of leaping, kicking pro ballers.
But none are more endearing here than Meg Boyd, beautifully performed by Bryonha Marie. The long-suffering wife of long-suffering Baltimore Orioles fan Joe Boyd (Quentin Earl Darrington), Meg is left bereft and confused after her beloved husband leaves her high and dry.
She doesn’t know Joe made a deal with Applegate to go from middle-aged fan in front of the TV to slugging homers as Joe Hardy. Marie plays the woman’s longing and sheer dismay over her husband’s disappearance with an emotional intelligence that eases what might have been one of the more dated plot points to overcome, grounding this fantasy in Meg’s need to see hers and Joe’s story resolved.
As Meg awaits answers, she has her circle of friends to keep up her spirits. Her friend Sister (the fabulous Rayanne Gonzales) has the bawdy humor and infectious energy to keep all of our spirits up, much like the show.
At nearly every turn, Damn Yankees engenders bubbly good feelings for its underdogs and true believers, devoted wives, husbands, friends, and fans. To open its milestone 75th anniversary season, Arena takes the whole house out to the ballgame, and Trujillo and company hit a home run.
Damn Yankees (★★★★☆) runs through Nov. 9 at Arena Stage, 1101 6th St. SW. Tickets are $69 to $209, with discount options available. Call 202-488-3300, or visit www.arenastage.org.
More from Metro Weekly:
Support Metro Weekly’s Journalism
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.