The World’s Biggest Stage

The Gridiron Meets Broadway in Smart, Entertaining Lombardi

It would be easy to mount a play about one of the most legendary football coaches in history and have it turn out to be a pandering, shallow mess. Fortunately for New York theatergoers – and football lovers everywhere – the folks behind Lombardi have avoided that route. What they have created instead is a nice, probing and – yes – meaningful study of an ordinary man who achieved extraordinary success.

On the surface this new play by Eric Simonson is about Vince Lombardi, the mystical coach of the Green Bay Packers, and his coaching style that helps him whip a 0-11-1 team into perennial champions. Beyond that, however, there is a lot of intriguing subtext about the relationship between coaches/players and the media. Coaches and players rely on reporters to tell their stories, and hope that they do so in the most positive light. Reporters, on the other hand, need their superstar subjects to further their own careers, to make their mark.

Lombardi –Dan Lauria (The Wonder Years), in the role he was born to play – was about to say goodbye to his football coaching dreams and live a comfortable life as a banker in Englewood, New Jersey, when he got the call to take the helm of the Green Bay Packers in 1958. Lucky for him – not to mention the National Football League and its growing fan base – Lombardi accepted the challenge and ultimately became one of the sport’s most beloved and celebrated coaches.

The one-act play takes place mostly over a weeklong period in 1965, when Look Magazine reporter Michael McCormick arrives in Wisconsin to observe Lombardi, his coaching style, his team and his methods. McCormick has a tough time getting the coach to open up, and runs into similar roadblocks with Packers players, so he turns to Lombardi’s wife, Marie (Judith Light), for insight. Through the revealing scenes in Lombardi’s home, the locker room, playing field and a local bar, the characters – including star players Paul Hornung, Dave Robinson and Jim Taylor – make it clear exactly why Lombardi was an exemplary coach, one who was both a throw-back and a visionary at the same time.

The play hinges on Lauria, who is so perfect as Vince Lombardi that it is unfathomable that an understudy would ever be allowed to go on in his place. Lauria exhibits delight as well as restraint in the role, precisely what is needed to portray a man many would consider one-dimensional … prior to seeing this production, that is. Keith Nobbs holds his own as the reporter trying to hold his own against the coach. As Packers Hornung, Robinson and Taylor, Bill Dawes, Robert Christopher Riley and Chris Sullivan help bring out the depth and humor of the script, and play 1960s NFL brutes with great believability. Sullivan, in particular, shines as the seemingly meatheaded fullback with a lot on his mind that he is hesitant to express. And gay audiences will relish HIV and gay equality activist Judith Light (Who’s the Boss, Ugly Betty) as Marie Lombardi; if anything, Light’s role could’ve been expanded, since the scenes with her and Lauria are the play’s best.

The finest aspect of Lombardi is its accessibility to casual and even non-theatergoers. The night I attended there were at least two dozen various audience members in Packers jerseys, t-shirts and other apparel. While the show doesn’t pander to those folk, it doesn’t alienate them either. Fervent football fans will be happy to learn something about the man for whom the Super Bowl trophy is named, and will certainly be entertained in the process. Theater lovers will savor a solid script, effectual staging and excellent acting. And if they’re truly paying attention, both groups will discover the parallels between the sports world of the 1960s and the sports world of today: it’s not all that different.

See Lombardi on Broadway
Circle in the Square Theatre
235 West 50th Street
New York City
www.lombardibroadway.com