Theatre in Review: Magic/Bird (Longacre Theatre)

Attention sports fans: Magic/Bird is a slam-dunk entertainment, packing a few laughs, a few tears, and plenty of basketball lore into a fast-moving 90 minutes. Attention everyone else: The theatre district is packed with fine attractions for you to choose from.

Brought to you by the people behind last season's Lombardi, Magic/Bird is a scrapbook of scenes from the careers of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, the two dominant NBA players of their day. Coming on the pro scene during the same season, they follow parallel paths to celebrity and greatness on opposite coasts -- Johnson for the Los Angeles Lakers and Bird for the Boston Celtics. From the get-go, they get on each other's nerves, but, over time, they draw closer to each other. Eric Simonson's script follows their progress from frenemies to friends, a bond that proves its solidity when Johnson is diagnosed with HIV.

Simonson does a good job of illustrating the pair's temperamental differences -- Johnson's love of crowds, fame, and the ladies versus Bird's preference for the quiet life down on the farm -- while also making the point that, when it comes to an obsession with being the best in basketball, they are psychic twins. Director Thomas Kail has found a fine pair of relative unknowns for the roles. Tug Coker finds plenty of dry (and perfectly timed) comedy in Bird's clipped remarks -- he makes Gary Cooper look like a chatterbox -- and Kevin Daniels easily captures Johnson's impatience and lust for life. When the two strike a kind of mutual nonaggression pact to film a Nike commercial -- there's a brief, but witty, recap of the tortuous pre-shoot negotiations -- you can see how these rivals are meant to become soul mates: Only they understand their mutual addiction to the game. And when the dreaded phone call comes, and Johnson, stunned to learn of his infection, must face retirement, Magic/Bird becomes briefly, but genuinely, moving in its depiction of two men who clearly love each other deeply even if the words fail them.

But if Magic/Bird is about two giants of sports, the script is just a little slip of a thing, a sketchy collage of incidents -- most of them overloaded with exposition -- over a 20-year period. The action jumps around the decades, somewhat confusingly, although many in the audience at the performance I attended were able to fill in the blanks. Still, at times, the scenes feel as if they were chosen through a lottery, so little do they contribute to a dramatic arc. Also, this is a strictly upbeat portrait -- the authorized biography, if you will -- and you hear practically nothing about either of the men's marriages and nothing at all about such darker, more complicated matters as the suicide of Bird's father or the child Johnson fathered out of wedlock. Thanks to the play's time frame, there's nothing about Johnson's subsequent efforts to educate Americans about AIDS. It's indicative of the play's methodology that a good quarter of the running time is devoted to a couple of Boston barflies who worship the Celtics and their ongoing squabble with a black Lakers fan.

In any case, Kail's staging is swift and eye-pleasing enough that there's no time for spoilsport questions as long as Magic/Bird is on the court. The cast is a little uneven. Deirdre O'Connell, one of the slyest comic actresses around, is delightful as a cranky barmaid, a reporter who follows Johnson's career, and Bird's mother, a rabid basketball fan, who helps negotiate peace between the two men over a turkey dinner. As a number of coaches, owners, and basketball know-it-alls, Peter Scolari hams it up pretty shamelessly. Francois Battiste is good in a number of roles, although a running gag about Bryant Gumbel's high-pitched voice wears thin quickly. Robert Manning is good as one of Johnson's teammates, who gently advises his party-loving friend that it's time to grow up.

The production enjoys a highly innovative design, which takes full advantage of the fact that both men were media stars. David Korins' set places the action on a raised basketball court with several turntables built into the deck; he also creates an irising effect on the upstage wall that reveals, in various configurations, images on the LED wall behind. The masking fabric also serves as a projection surface, as does the downstage scrim that flies in from time to time. With this arrangement, Jeff Sugg, the media designer, creates stunningly layered looks drawn from game broadcasts, interviews, sports reports, and that famous Nike commercial. As specific games are analyzed, graphic depictions of the court are drawn before our eyes, letting us see the relative position of each player. There's also typically fine work from Howell Binkley, the lighting designer; Paul Tazewell, the costume designer; and Nevin Steinberg, the sound designer, here making his first Broadway appearance as a solo act, not as a member of the Acme Sound Partners design team.

If Magic/Bird feels more like a treatment for a play than the real thing it's likely to please its target audience, much as Lombardi did. As long as you know what you're getting into, you'll be fine. If the subject matter doesn't instantly grab your interest --well, this play wasn't written for you.--David Barbour