Review of: Back Back Back

Itamar Moses' Back Back Back is a fast moving one-act that takes on the issue of the world's ever-increasing performance enhancing drug culture. Examining baseball players' lives, Mr. Moses says more about a society eager for self-improvement and the companies that greedily market such products than it does about the recent scandals hitting athletic associations. Though the set-up for this tightly wound play is a bit simple, the results stick to you like sweat in a steam room.

A solid, well-liked and well-respected ball player, Kent, realizes that he's on the verge of slipping into his final professional years. This becomes readily apparent when a wide-eyed, innocent newcomer, Adam, arrives on the scene. Although admiring Adam's talents not to mention the rookie's innate integrity, Kent feels slightly threatened. Feeling even more threatened is Kent's teammate, Raul, a man not only suspected of taking steroids but procuring them as well. Raul, sharply astute, senses Kent's insecurity and realizes that if he can get Kent to join him in his 'special cocktails' then no one is going to question the situation. But sniffing around a news item as the media is wont to do, Kent finds himself at a microphone in front of a bunch of cameras. The tragedy is not the downfall of a genuinely upright golden boy, but what the downfall does to the dismayed and bitterly disappointed Adam who now can no longer even trust or love the all-American sport of baseball and all that that implies.

There are no really good or bad guys in Mr. Moses' story. Though wrong as it is, we can clearly identify with Kent's need to stay on top and the drive to accomplish it. As for Raul, he convinces himself that drugs are the way to go and should be legalized. If they can make one do better in life, as so many pharmaceutical companies tell us, where's the harm? Even the ostensible good guy Adam is so relentlessly blind to anything remotely shady it renders him a tad psychotic. The characters are universal in their desires and flaws but specifically drawn. Mr. Moses gives his trio a lingo that is at once poetic and low and outside and he lets the plot rip along as the stadium clock on David Zinn's simple set ticks on.

The acting couldn't be bettered. Michael Mosley's Adam has enough enthusiasm to fill an arena so that when his wide eyes slowly go hollow by play's end you know exactly where he's headed. Jeremy Davidson as Kent anchors the play with an indisputably laid-back charm. When Kent takes responsibility for his actions you know it's because he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't. But I have to say my favorite is James Martinez as Raul. Mr. Martinez makes Raul a man so smart and yet so ignorant of the ramifications of his crimes you can't help but forgive him. I'd buy drugs off of him in a second. The actors definitely owe their director, Daniel Aukin, who has brought the best out of them while perfectly connecting up the individual scenes that picks up momentum like a hard line drive.

To sum up Mr. Moses' work: there's the pitch, a swing and a hit. As you go back back back, it's up to you to determine if it's foul or in play.

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