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Sox sufferers
Savior is a winner about losers
BY LIZA WEISSTUCH
The Savior of Fenway
By Brendon Bates. Directed by Michael D. Laibson. Set by Jennifer Schriever. Lighting by Josh Zangen. Sound by Drew Levy. With Brendon Bates, Joe Burch, John Highsmith, and Nate Meyer. At the Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre through May 30.


Pity the bartender who contends with rowdy patrons night after night. In Brendon Bates’s The Savior of Fenway, the pure-hearted Walshie is forever cleaning up all sorts of messes made by his patrons, the ones who are as much fixtures in his Quincy watering hole as the vintage jukebox in the corner. Actually, no, pity the regulars parked on the stools. These beer-swigging has-beens have few constants in their lives other than the one they share: a religious hope that the Red Sox will win a championship in Fenway Park before it’s torn down.

Hope springs eternal in the most unlikely places. For Shane McGill and Sweeney, Walshie’s watering hole is a sanctuary where they can nourish that dream as they take cover from the humdrum glumness of daily life. In a similar fashion, those who cling to the belief that Boston can cultivate a vibrant fringe-theater scene — one that pitches surprises while demonstrating solid dramatic form — might find their own hope realized this month in unlikely surrounds: the Cambridge YMCA, where The Savior of Fenway is having its New England premiere after scoring an Excellence in Playwriting award at the 2003 New York International Fringe Festival.

Savior, in which Massachusetts native Bates also stars, introduces a line-up of working-class guys who, like their pack of heroes, try real hard but can’t win. The play begins after the Sox have lost to the Yankees in game six of a fictional American League Championship Series. Sox fans now have "another sour memory to add to their archive," and Shane (a grizzly-bear-like Bates harboring the alter ego of a kitten within) is not taking it well. We hear him in the bathroom breaking things in rage — a none-too-subtle hint of the havoc he’s capable of wreaking on property and people.

Sweeney (Joe Burch) is no less miffed, but his ire comes out in verbal screeds. The Yankees only inspire him to go off about other sources of irritation, such as how the fashionable and fit "two-percent-body-fat punks" have sabotaged the male macho image. Walshie, as patient and gentle-mannered as a psychiatrist on rounds at Bellevue, is left to mediate the proceedings, and that’s no easy task. It’s late, he wants to close, and he has to keep an eye out for his assistant, Patty (John Highsmith), a sweet, sad, pretty-boy athlete who dropped out of college, forgoing a possible Major League career to care for his ailing mother. He’s an open target for Sweeney’s animosity, and the fact that one of his brothers is fooling around with Shane’s wife doesn’t help. Although the first act centers on Shane and Sweeney, the focus shifts abruptly in the second to Walshie, who’s loose-lipped and unsteady after an atypical night of drinking on the job.

Imagine that: a local pub where two guys, one of whom had a shot at being a great ballplayer, serve booze to two pudgy, glory-days-behind-them patrons who bellyache about household woes and go-nowhere jobs. But this team is a line drive away from Sam, Woody, Norm, and Cliff. Walshie’s dive conveys more of the animated spirit of Moe’s Tavern, where the beer guzzlers actually get drunk in the manner of Homer, Lenny, and Carl and the bartender, dependable though he may be, wrestles with demons.

Still, Bates’s foul-mouthed fellas aren’t cartoons, or even caricatures. Nate Meyer’s Walshie is a therapist in an apron. He knows enough about some of his clients’ dangerous tendencies that he took precautions long ago to protect himself: one of those guns is registered, but the other isn’t. Bates’s dialogue reveals a knack for complex characters floundering in situations too deep for them to deal with. They’re not the brightest crayons in the box, so they have little choice but to bank their happiness on simple pleasures like a Red Sox victory. Yet between nostalgic recollections and accounts of what happened that morning, they paint their circumstances in enough detail that when violence erupts, it’s not a gimmick exploited for dramatic effect. It’s the upshot of a collision of numerous factors that have no other means of expression.

Under Michael D. Laibson’s direction, the play strikes a balance between vicious macho swaggering that can be frightening to watch and potent, if awkwardly uttered, bonds of understanding that make the Sex in the City gals look like casual acquaintances. That’s because these guys belong to a brotherhood with a mortal enemy: the Yankees.


Issue Date: May 14 - 20, 2004
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