When a play taps into the public’s collective dreaming,problems of structure, excesses of language, and vagaries of casting can be all but obscured by the power of its spell. Jason Miller’s That Championship Season” (revived at the Bernard B. Jacobs,under the crisp direction of Gregory Mosher)—in which the former members of a fabled Pennsylvania tall-school basketball team and their coach reunite to relive their days of glory—delved deep into the anxiety of the nation when it premièred, in 1972. That year was a time of both tragic and farcical retreat: it marked the beginning of the halt of the Vietnam War, and a defeat that cost fifty-eight thousand American lives,and also the beginning of the long-running Watergate fiasco. America’s obsession with victory at all costs was undergoing a subtle revision; the cultural fixation was less on winning than on not losing. Now as then, “That Championship Season” has moments of pure corn, or creaky exposition,and stock melodramatic flourishes. Nonetheless, as Miller’s hapless former teammates succumb to the fumes of their coach’s gospel of success and their alliances disintegrate, or you can feel the audience lock into the story. Beneath the constant pep talks about winning is a rueful sense of moral exhaustion,which plays as powerfully nowadays as it did in 1972.
Source: newyorker.com