Unbeaten
Salvage Vanguard Theater, through Nov. 8
Running time: 1 hr, 15 min
It’s the Omaha Oxen vs. the Topeka Top Hats in the Professional Football League’s Ultra Bowl. It’s brother against brother as Oxen quarterback Paul Van Pie faces off against his younger sibling, Tad Van Pie, who leads the tenacious Top Hats.
It’s playwright, actor, and improviser Shannon McCormick, ultimately, embodying 10 different gridiron personalities in this new one-man play from Salvage Vanguard Theater.
The show changes slightly each night as McCormick brings the Oxen and their battle to life upon a minimal stage enhanced by Lowell Bartholomee’s video announcements and commercials and driven by original music from Graham Reynolds. The game is different each night – which team will emerge triumphant? – and the characters themselves, the parts the audience gets to see, are always a little different, too.
“These people are half-scripted and half-improvised,” says the grinning actor, a thin line of sweat glistening along the side of his bald pate. “You can try to figure out which half’s which.” The sweat’s there because McCormick is seldom at rest in this production, more often bouncing around in a self-pimping frenzy as the Oxen’s Hollywood-obsessed wide receiver, Coleco Baggins, or nearly busting a vein while raging (as head coach Carl Hannegan) against the failings of various “motherfucking dick-nipples.”
The game and its surrounding personal dramas are related through those two and the other players: Ramon Gutierrez, the excited young cornerback from Nicaragua; Avis Booth, the big defensive tackle who prefers to physically devastate his opponents “in a loving, Christian sort of way”; Paul Van Pie, the soft-spoken quarterback who shoulders a load of intense sibling rivalry every time he steps on the field. These men and more are evoked through interviews, locker-room harangues, and interior monologues made external, with McCormick switching costumes and ranging the stage to aid his spot-on transformations. At one point, the actor even takes a seat among the audience to play the part of superfan Dan Kolowski, cheering on his beloved Oxen and bantering with the crowd.
Is it a successful play, this play? Your reviewer thinks it is, yes: There’s a core realism to the stereotypes depicted, sufficient truth to anchor the humorous caricatures to a place of empathy; there’s a battleground narrative unfolding between the two teams, keeping the viewers uncertain and invested; there’s McCormick doing a terrific job of improvisation and busting enough moves to stimulate your own sweat glands.
“The show’s pretty physically demanding,” the actor allows, storied pigskin in one glistening hand. “Night after night, it’s a regular workout.”
It’s also highly enjoyable to watch … and, hell, I don’t even like football.
For Thomas Hackett’s sporty take on Unbeaten, see “Playing Through.”
This article appears in November 7 • 2008.