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Baseball invented - but is it a play?

By Robert W. Bethune

How can Ty Cobb point three different guns at himself? By being divided among three actors, as the famous baseball player finds himself in the excellent Planet Ant Theatre production of "Cobb" by Lee Blessing.
The play actually includes four versions of Ty Cobb – the player himself as the old (Mr. Cobb), middle-aged (Ty), and young (Peach) Cobb; and "the Black Ty Cobb," better known – or perhaps not so well known -as Oscar Charleston, a player from the Negro Leagues.
These versions of Cobb want to tell Cobb's life and career, but they can't agree on what or how. Peach is mostly interested in how he got started and how he fell in love. Ty is mostly interested in telling us about every fight he ever had. Mr. Cobb would like to find peace and human solace, but the fallout from his life doesn't make that easy. Oscar wants us to know how "the Black Cobb" feels.
Jacob Hodgson is wonderfully cast as Peach – young, handsome, athletic, the young Cobb as romantic hero. Steffen Dziczek is the viciously pugnacious ballplayer, famous for both spikes and his bat. Marty Smith is the old Cobb, vanished from baseball and our memories. Renell White gives us Oscar Charleston, "the black Ty Cobb," whose existence implies much about our country.
But is this a play? A recitation of facts and stats, dressed up with confrontations between Cobb, Cobb and Cobb or Cobbs and Oscar, it tells stories, but not a story; it is a portrait, not an action. The language of the play is certainly well-written – Blessing is one of our most underrated playwrights – but the structure of the piece is simply not the structure of a drama. When we go to the theater, we should get more than well-done PowerPoint captions, which, in the end, is about all this play gives us.

REVIEW:
'Cobb'
Planet Ant Theatre, 2357 Caniff, Hamtramck. Thu.-Sun., through May 24. Tickets: $15. For information: 313-365-4948 or http://www.planetant.com

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