Tony Sportiello, who wrote the book for “National Pastime” at Keegan Theatre, must have had fun coming up with all the silliness that constitutes the musical. A work that breezily begins with a far-fetched comedic idea, “National Pastime” is the story of a small Iowa radio station that is going bust in 1933. Sportiello’s solution is to have the station, WZBQ, broadcast baseball games between a nonexistent home team, the Baker City Cougars, and endless European teams. The trick is that the games are always played away from home, so that through the magic of radio they can be created by two men in a studio. The public never catches on.
As the team triumphs against the French, the Portuguese and so on, their fame grows, everyone listens, companies buy advertising and the station is soon back in the black again. At least until a reporter from Life magazine decides to do a story. Then the station has to come up with an even more outrageous way out of the situation.
| Onstage |
| ‘National Pastime’ |
| Where: The Keegan Theatre, 1742 Church St. NW |
| When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays through May 15 |
| Info: $35 to $40; 703-892-0202; keegantheatre.org |
Despite its slender plot, goofy jokes and lots of love-at-first-sight, “National Pastime” creates a platform for some excellent actors and singers. The owner of the station, an old-time radio man, is portrayed well by Timothy Lynch. His lawyer daughter, Karen, is played by Katie McManus, whose vibrant voice carries the musical’s best numbers, particularly “Life is Selection.”
One of Karen’s lowlife criminal clients, Joe Miller, becomes the most celebrated player on the Baker City Cougars. Played as a lovable Don Juan by the talented Dan Van Why, Miller is one of the most engaging characters onstage and his short-lived romance with Mary (Larissa Gallagher) is a high point of the show. “National Pastime” seems a bit empty after Joe’s trumped-up demise sends him back to Chicago.
The rest of the cast is first rate and directed well by Mark Rhea and Susan Rhea, especially John Loughney as a young, bright-eyed announcer, Tim O’Kane as the seasoned radio man, and Autumn Seavey, who plays a secretary with dreams of going to Hollywood.
The music by Al Tapper includes more variety of tempo than style. There are some lively songs, some slow ballads, one pretty romantic number (“Suddenly Somehow”) and a rousing finale, “We Are America,” trading on baseball as the national pastime.
Unfortunately, Tapper’s lyrics are less than brilliant, offering sentimentality instead of sentiment. But then this musical makes no attempt to be seriously poetic and can’t be analyzed deeply. Its book and lyrics are fluff for fluff’s sake and it will no doubt be produced liberally come the Fourth of July.
