Who would be a football – or indeed a baseball – manager? DAVID WHETSTONE sees the pressures of the job expressed in a new play to be premiered at Northern Stage
THE demands on a sports team manager are seldom more evident than at the Press conference when the impression can be of a cornered animal. There he is, the gaffer, perspiring beneath the TV lights, brow furrowed and subject to the odd twitch.
He sees a sea of unsmiling faces, notebooks and lenses. On behalf of their readers, viewers or listeners, these massed inquisitors want answers to questions that may be unanswerable.
It’s one against dozens, the latter cocksure that they represent the fans in their countless thousands and maybe millions.
Pressure? What pressure?
One thing’s for sure, it takes a strong man – certainly a successful man – to turn the tables on those turning the screw.
In a black rehearsal room at Northern Stage, one such man is on the rack. Behind the desk with the microphones, he is attempting to justify a disastrous season to an audience of reporters (in this case, as it happens, me and director Erica Whyman) and, possibly, he is saying rather too much.
Beginning in confessional mode, he is seeking understanding, a little perspective, maybe even a modicum of sympathy.
It was, he confesses, a bleak year and, yes, there had been some losses.
Some changes had been made here and there but with the fans’ interests in mind – “because we wanted the fans to be happy. We wanted the fans to love us. I think they should be happy.”
Evidently the changes had proved fruitless. Results had not gone the team’s way. But, hey (clutching at straws): “We sold some hot dogs, we got some sun, some fresh air. We played some close games; some of them we were in right up until the end.”
You suspect the fans will not have been mollified by the fresh air. The manager, deftly played in this instance by actor John Kirk, is on the brink of meltdown.
“I know you guys in the Press are going to have a field day with some of the things I’ve said up here today,” he concludes, in perhaps his only perceptive utterance.
This fascinating and darkly funny monologue is the first of five small slices of life served up by American playwright Will Eno under the heading Oh, the Humanity.