25
March 2004 - 15 May 2004
Evening Performances:
Monday - Saturday 7.30pm
Saturday Matinees:
3, 10, 17, 24 April, 1, 8 and 15 May 3.30pm
Mid-Week Matinees:
29 April 3.30pm
Royal
Court Theatre
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1st April 2004 - What's on Stage Review
2 stars (out of 5)
Sweetest Swing in Baseball
Venue: Royal Court - Jerwood Theatre
Where: West End
You can’t help but suspect that Rebecca Gilman must have been deeply wounded
once by a review. Although The Sweetest Swing in Baseball concerns a painter
rather than a playwright, it appears to tap into some very personal feelings
about critical, and other forms of professional, rejection.
The sense of semi-autobiography in Ian Rickson’s premiere production is
heightened by the casting of Gillian Anderson as depressive artist Dana Fielding,
who attempts suicide after the media’s mauling of her latest exhibition.
Anderson’s 2002 West End debut in What the Night Is For proved popular with
audiences - who voted her Best Actress in last year’s Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’
Choice Awards – but it didn’t go down well with the critics.
While that experience hardly drove the former X Files star into a mental
asylum, it’s easy to imagine how it could fill her with the extra venom here to
really spit out lines about not being “a player until you play”. Certainly, the
final moment on opening night – when her character, assuming the questionable
persona of Afro-American baseball star and bad boy Darryl Strawberry, glares
defiantly at the press-packed audience and dismisses them as ‘fuckers!’ –
takes on an added acerbity.
It would be all the sweeter then if I could report that Anderson’s return to
the London stage will silence any detractors. However, her vindication is only
partially realised with Sweetest Swing . Undoubtedly, this is a striking
performer and, in the opening scenes in particular, face gaunt, eyes shimmering on
the verge of tears, she makes a strong impression as an artist in the grip of
self-doubt.
But the subsequent proceedings of Gilman’s script – in which Fielding,
finding solace in the psychiatric ward, cooks up a multiple personality disorder to
fool her insurance company into paying for a longer stay - lets Anderson
down. Aside from some group room banter with a recovering alcoholic (a chirpy
Demetri Goritsas) and a tranquillised but still cranky celebrity-stalking
sociopath (played amusingly deadpan by John Sharian), it’s never clear how Anderson’s
sensitive creative soul benefits from being institutionalised.
Even less clear, especially to baseball ignorant London audiences, is why the
unseen Strawberry becomes such a beacon for her. And, when she’s inspired to
paint a series of bat-wielding chickens and those paintings (which we’re only
ever able to see the blank canvas backs of on Hildegard Bechtler’s minimal
workshop-style set) are hailed by the establishment as masterpieces, the unclear
skids quickly into the unbelievable.
Perhaps Gilman is aiming for satire. There are some wry lines and the
supporting cast’s attempts to inject energetic humour into their deliveries would
suggest so, but it never quite comes together.
I’d hate to mangle metaphors but here goes: Sweetest Swing isn’t exactly a
strike-out for either Gilman or Anderson, but it’s far from a home run. Foul
ball then?
- Terri Paddock
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