Field of Dreams

Kazuhito Tadano, a 24-year-old right-handed relief pitcher, recently joined the Cleveland Indians and apologized for his past. "All of us have made mistakes in our lives. You learn from them and move on," he announced. His indiscretion: starring in a gay porn film in his native Japan. But even more surprising was the reaction to Tadano's star turn. "Little Commotion Over a Pitcher's Past," read a New York Times headline last week.

Perhaps such a revelation isn't all that shocking these days. But playwright Richard Greenberg proposes in his marvelous play Take Me Out, excellently staged at the Unicorn Theatre, that things might get a little dicier if a player didn't insist that his gay life was all in the past.

Cynthia Levin astutely and sensitively directs the show, which is, depending on the scene, a biting comedy with doses of tragedy or a prescient drama with laughs. Act One opens on the talented and cocky Darren Lemming (Edouard Fontaine), a superstar center fielder with the fictitious (though Yankeeslike) New York Empires, unapologetically revealing at a run-of-the-mill press conference that he happens to be gay.

His best friend on the team, Kippy Sunderstrom (Will Fowler), is definitely in his court. He imagines hanging out comfortably with his wife and Darren and a future lover of Darren's. What baffles Kippy, though, is why Darren, under no impending threat of being outed, comes out at all. Still, unlike the rest of the team, he respects his friend's honesty. What's compelling is how much everyone around Darren must readjust.

Darren has been a role model of blinding star wattage for such a long time -- he's even been called a "one-man emblem of racial harmony" -- that it's gone right to his head. He's admittedly arrogant and untouchable, and he can't imagine why his coming out would dull his dazzling patina. The first hint that it has comes when a teammate demands of Darren something impossible to confirm -- not to check him out when he showers. If only the impact on the team's morale were that hollow.

When Shane Mungitt (Rusty Sneary), a redneck farm-team pitcher with a steel arm, is brought up to the Empires, he is at first a comical distraction -- the players make fun of him with words he doesn't understand. But the ribbing takes an ugly turn when Shane opens his mouth. With cameras rolling, he calls his teammates "coons", "spics" and "gooks" and Darren "that faggot." He's suspended from play but in a perverse way, he's much like Darren, so comfortable in his skin that he's blind to the fact that words have repercussions.

Toward the end of the second act, Greenberg's story teeters on the brink of -- but never falls into -- melodrama. Without spoiling too much, Shane is reinstated to the roster, but it's not long before a tragic turn of events unfolds on the field. It's not directly related to Darren's homosexuality, but it isn't completely detached, either. The agility of Greenberg's writing and Levin's direction keeps the motive a mystery.

What's not hazy is the talent assembled onstage. Fontaine is still in graduate school and Fowler just out, but if acting class has taught them anything, it's to keep the audience from seeing you act. At this, they're superb, so uncannily at ease with Darren and Kippy that their words never sound scripted. Also wonderful is Dean Vivian in the role of Mason Marzac, Darren's nerdy, gay money manager. Marzac is a tricky part -- though he's not central to the big story, he's a crucial part of what Greenberg wants to communicate.

Marzac, acknowledging his unassuming demeanor and average looks, says it's hell to be part of a community that doesn't want to include you. He takes the game of baseball as his lover. And through Vivian's magical performance, we watch a man fall in love with an American dream he'll always watch from the bleachers. It doesn't make the love any less pure.