Take Me Out
A Play
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ISBN10: 0571211186
ISBN13: 9780571211180
Trade Paperback
128 Pages
$18.00
CA$24.00
Tony Award Winner
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
Winner of the Drama Desk Award
Winner of the Lucille Lortel Award
Winner of the Outer Critics Circle Award
Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award
Darren Lemming is the star center fielder for the champion New York Empires. An extraordinary athlete, he fills both his fans and his teammates with awe at his abilities and his presence on and off the field. When he makes the matter-of-fact announcement that he's gay, he throws his team into turmoil and confusion, while also emboldening his repressed business manager to come to terms with his own sexuality—and to fully experience the pure joy of watching great athletes play a sport as well as it can be played. Most of all, however, Darren's announcement brings to the fore the confused and twisted hostilities of the Empires' brilliantly talented but deeply racist and homophobic pitcher, Shane Mungitt—from whose rage tragic consequences arise.
Reviews
Praise for Take Me Out
"Extravagantly smart, touching and engrossing . . . An enormously enjoyable work—as eloquently verbal as it is delightful [and] physical."—Linda Winer, Newsday
"Exhilarating . . . Take Me Out marvelously demonstrates [that] the spirit can be lost and sometimes found."—John Lahr, The New Yorker
"Mr. Greenberg brings his gymnastic verbal skills to bear on the subject of the all-American pastime . . . An enchanting and enchanted take on baseball . . . [It is] the story of Darren Lemming, a god among baseball players and the star of a team called the Empires, who sets off a complicated chain of ultimately tragic events when he publicly announces that he is gay. This allows Mr. Greenberg to consider . . . big, big subjects like sexual and racial prejudice, moral responsibility, public versus personal identities and the inability of people to ever truly know one another."—Ben Brantley, The New York Times
"The first major play to grapple with homosexuality and its uneasy overlap in the world of professional baseball."—Steven Drukman, American Theatre
"A funny and troubling look at athletes and identity . . . Take Me Out is a dynamic, involving play."—New York Post
"Greenberg . . . intoxicates us with his words in the same way he's intoxicated by the game. [Take Me Out] achieves a lyrical power to match the beauty of . . . either a sublime piece of music or an exquisitely turned double play. Or both . . . Engaging and convincingly drawn."—Charles Isherwood, Variety
"This terrific American tragic-comedy about baseball and bigotry engages heart, mind and nervous system in its disturbing grasp . . . What helps make Take Me Out so exciting and incisive is its ambition."—Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard
"[A] brilliant comic paean to baseball . . . Take Me Out is the hands-down champion of the season."—David Cote, Time Out New York
"A probing and briskly clever study of the emotional and psychological dynamics at play in human relationships, be they personal or vocational, romantic or platonic, gay or straight . . . Take Me Out is a show worth rooting for."—Elysa Gardner, USA Today