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Broadway’s “Lombardi: A New American Play” recently celebrated its 100th performance

“Lombardi:” Broadway dares to present an “American” play



imageIt is an unlikely piece of modern stagecraft. Contemporary drama strives to be not so much dramatic as to be shocking, not to present the truth but to wallow in clichéd, politically-correct truisms. “Lombardi: A New American Play,” at New York’s Circle in the Square Theater, breaks the mold of permanently adolescent modernity to narrate a tale of mature sensibilities superficially disguised in a story that might conceivably lack any sensibilities whatsoever: a narrative of a long-dead middle-aged football coach in a nondescript Midwestern city a time zone removed from Broadway.

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The play, however, is aided by the fact that it recounts the saga of not just any football coach but that of the obsessive Green Bay Packers head coach Vince Lombardi, who famously advised that “Winning isn’t everything, but the will to win is everything.” He delivered five NFL championships for a formerly woebegone team to prove it. Presented in theater-in-the round fashion, the production delivers a finely-tuned package of understated stagecraft, performance, intelligence, and heart. It reveals a legendary man driven to win but, devout Catholic that he is, realizing and regretting the often out-of-control rage his quest engenders. “Lombardi” examines a single week in the 1965 Packers season as Look magazine reporter Michael McCormick treks to Green Bay to craft a feature article on Lombardi, at present media-skittish from a recent trashing by Look-rival Esquire magazine. The story deals not merely with the obsessive Lombardi’s quest to drive his once more championship-bound team ever forward but also with McCormick and Lombardi’s jousting regarding journalist independence and ultimately why those cursed with the gift of unbending standards must inevitably strike out on their own. A series of flashbacks skillfully further reveals what brought a frustrated Lombardi, on the verge of abandoning football to become a full-time New Jersey banker, to Green Bay from his job as assistant coach at West Point and New York and how Vincent Thomas Lombardi brought the patented “Lombardi sweep”—and unprecedentedly championship football—to the previously 1-12-1 Green Bay franchise. The play’s disparate trio of stars complement each other flawlessly and seemingly effortlessly. Dan Lauria, formerly of television’s “The Wonder Years”—and, not incidentally, the United States Marine Corps—in his Broadway debut, brings Vince Lombardi to life in the title role, becoming Lombardi not only in terms of emotions and decibels also uncannily physically. As sturdily sure-footed as the burly, rumpled Lauria may be, however, Judith Light, formerly of the ABC soap opera “One Life to Live” and such prime time series as “Who’s the Boss?” may top him, for “Lombardi” is not merely about football and the demons that drive men to achieve, but also about the women who support them. Light’s Marie Lombardi not only understands her husband’s frustrations of years of never being even considered for a head coaching berth, but she is willing to make the move from their New York metropolitan-area home to snow-blinded, fashion-unconscious Wisconsin, an area so initially foreign to her that she must locate it in a gazetteer. To infer from the often-tipsy Marie’s wifely support, however, a deficiency in either inner or outer strength misses the point. The always grounded Marie, the one person Lombardi will not only listen to—but apologize to—may be the strongest character in the play. And Judith Light’s performance may be an adept production’s strongest dramatic turn. The youthful and slightly built Keith Nobbs delivers as Michael McCormick, a reporter caught between his own drive for truth and an editor’s agenda for something else. The compact supporting cast of Bill Dawes (as buoyantly controversial Golden Boy halfback Paul Hornung), Chris Sullivan (lumbering Baton Rouge-born fullback Jim Taylor), and Robert Christopher Riley (linebacker and club player rep Dave Robinson) neatly buttress the show’s three principles. “Lombardi” is based on the bestselling When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by the Wisconsin-bred Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist David Maraniss, noted both for his work on sports (Rome 1960 and Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero) and his three studies of the Clinton-Gore years. It is seamlessly directed by Thomas Kail, nominated for a Tony for his work on the 2008-season musical hit “In the Heights.” Yes, “Lombardi” is about football. Yes, “Lombardi” is about the demands and graces of marriage. But it also about Vince Lombardi’s never-ceasing, inevitably never-to-be-completely successful, forced march toward perfection, and it is about, and for, people who strive and fail and rise to attempt success again—and even occasionally to triumph. As previously noted, Vince Lombardi was not only a believing, but a practicing, Catholic. In a world which now reflexively mocks Christianity in general and Catholicism in savage particular, Academy-Award winner Eric Simonson’s script takes care not to mock—and that is more than appreciated. One swallow does not make a spring. And neither do two—though two swallows have on occasion been known to generate more swallows. In October and November of last year, a modest off-off Broadway company staged a long-forgotten, short-lived 1952 musical called “Three Wishes for Jamie,” based on a novel by Charles O’Neal (father of Ryan and grandfather of Tatum O’Neal) that was sufficiently Catholic it captured the 1949 Christopher Award. The resultant play, blessed not only with heart but with a decidedly beautiful score, dealt with such decidedly non-musical issues as struggling to conceive, adoption, and forgiveness. It literally reduced its largely Upper West Side audience to tears. “Lombardi” does not quite produce tears—but it does produce cheers. It does in part because it dares to champion seemingly archaic, but, in fact, quite eternal, values. It is not merely for gridiron nostalgia that so many males of a certain generation transport themselves to the precincts of Circle in the Square. Lombardi' has demonstrated that an audience still exists—nay, it does more than exist—it hungers for works that skillfully examine American and traditional standards. “Lombardi: A New American Play” is a winner in my book. See it—either on Broadway—or when it hits the road company circuit.


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David Pietrusza -- Bio and Archives

David Pietrusza davidpietrusza.com, is the author of 1920:// The Year of the Six Presidents and Silent Cal’s Almanack: The Homespun Wit & Wisdom of Vermont’s Calvin Coolidge


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