‘Lombardi’ drama evinces a football legend

Dan Lauria depicts Green Bay Packers coach during his wonder years

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

BROADWAY REVIEW

Not so much a fumble as an incomplete pass, "Lombardi" is a new play about Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi that presents a limited impression of the gridiron giant and his famously driven ways.

Barking and bellowing as Lombardi, Dan Lauria manfully fleshes out the portrait sketched out by Eric Simonson's play, which opened Thursday at Circle in the Square Theatre. Football fans lured by the subject to a Broadway show probably can overlook the gaps in Simonson's solid if mechanical drama.

Set mostly during one week in 1965, with a few flashbacks to the late 1950s, "Lombardi" studies the coach just as the Packers are poised to capture their division championship.

The playwright invents a fictional reporter from Look magazine, Michael McCormick, to annotate the history for viewers and to keep the 90-minute play in motion. A young admirer of Lombardi, McCormick arrives in Wisconsin to live at the Lombardi home while observing the coach during the week leading up to the big game.

"I want to see what it is about you that makes you win," McCormick tells Lombardi.

McCormick talks to players, engages in long, boozy chats with Lombardi's neglected wife Marie and dogs the volatile coach on and off the practice field. In the process, crucial moments from Lombardi's life pop up. That discouraged night back in Englewood, New Jersey, when he nearly gave up coaching football to work for bank. The day Lombardi devised his celebrated power sweep play, complete with diagram.

What's not so complete is Simonson's exploration of Lombardi's inner self. Several pep talks and brow-beatings of players reveal only so much about the man. With Marie depicted as a functioning alcoholic and the couple as having a seemingly-estranged son (who's scarcely mentioned at all in the script), it's apparent that Lombardi's private life suffered from his professional obsessions. It would be good to learn more about those personal dynamics and through them more about the man behind the legend.

Considerable time is spent developing a conflict between Lombardi and McCormick over his story, which demonstrates the coach's controlling ways but also diverts the play's focus from Lombardi and football over to a fictional character.

Aw, I'm being fussy. This show's potential crowd is likely to enjoy Simonson's neat mix of Lombardi quotes and pigskin lore. Director Thomas Kail and his designers make the most of Circle in the Square's appropriately stadium-like space to enhance the story with video bits and evocative sound-and-light mixes. Forceful performances bring the characters to life.

Swigging Pepto-Bismol, a handsomely grizzled Lauria looks very much like the squat, paunchy Lombardi and easily assumes the coach's thundering ways. Often very funny, yet poignant, Judith Light creates a wry, poker-faced Marie whose wisdom shines behind an alcoholic haze. Always a dynamic actor, Keith Nobbs lends McCormick a strong sense of urgency (plus a hard-edged Jersey accent that sure doesn't sound like Bergen County to my Oradell-bred ears). Easygoing Bill Dawes is very much a sporty golden boy as Paul Hornung, solidly backed by Chris Sullivan and Robert Christopher Riley respectively as teammates Jim Taylor and Dave Robinson.

"Lombardi" continues at Circle in the Square Theatre, 1633 Broadway, New York. Call (212) 239-6200 or visit www.telecharge.com.