Review | The Shaw Festival’s ‘Damn Yankees’ isn’t a home run, but there are many pleasures

Damn Yankees

(out of 4)

Words and music by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, based on Wallop’s novel “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.” Directed by Brian Hill. Until Oct, 9 at the Festival Theatre, 10 Queen’s Parade, Niagara-on-the-Lake. shawfest.com and 1-800-511-7429

The Shaw Festival’s production of “Damn Yankees,” the 1955 musical love letter to baseball, is a solid base hit but not a home run.

While the show is musically strong and looks great, large-scale dance numbers feel overextended and there’s a spark missing in central relationships. The production realizes its full potential in a knock-it-out-of-the park performance by Mike Nadajewski as Mr. Applegate, a.k.a. the devil incarnate.

This is not a fully satisfying theatrical experience in some part because the material is lumpy and dated. It’s based on Douglass Wallop’s book in which he imagines the toppling of the then-invincible New York Yankees, a team he loathed. That downfall is orchestrated via a Faust story: Applegate appears to middle-aged, diehard Washington Senators fan Joe Boyd (Shane Carty) and offers to transform him into a baseball superstar if he agrees to leave his suburban existence behind. Boyd agrees but negotiates an escape clause to return to his normal life the night before the final game of the season.

Presto chango: Boyd becomes slugger Joe Hardy (Drew Plummer) and the Senators launch a winning streak. We mostly hear about this rather than see it — understandable because staging sports is tricky — but it contributes to the impression that baseball is actually a sideline premise. What the story’s really about is Applegate’s struggle to keep young Joe in the game, even as Joe increasingly longs to return to his wife Meg (Patty Jamieson).

Applegate conjures up Lola (Kimberley Rampersad), another denizen of the underworld, to seduce Joe, and we end up with a difficult premise in which female characters represent archetypical extremes (virtue and vice) and exist to serve the male-driven plot.

Sure, yes, it’s all in good fun and this is a musical comedy after all. The show’s at its best in musical sequences that foreground the voices and acting talents of the large ensemble, such as the opening number “Six Months Out of Every Year,” which bursts with the colour of Cory Sincennes’s costumes and the clever use of the Festival Theatre’s revolving stage under Brian Hill’s direction and Allison Plamondon’s choreography.

Sincennes’s striking set design features blown-up images from 1950s advertisements, which are given further texture under Mikael Kangas’s lights. Not only is this visually pleasing, it underlines that the show’s representations are in the past.

Jay Turvey and ensemble members winningly deliver the famed number “Heart” (as in “you gotta have”) and the show’s high point is Nadajewski’s brilliant delivery of “Those Were the Good Old Days,” celebrating past times when evil ran rampant. Throughout, Nadajewski leans into his character’s extremes and is evidently having a whale of a time doing so, and that’s the best way to sell this material.

The playing of other central roles seems more tentative — understandably given that James Daly as younger Joe is out of the show for a month with an injury and is being replaced by Plummer.

On the one hand, this is uncannily good casting because Plummer looks very much like a younger version of Carty. Plummer has a lovely singing voice and a kind presence, but there’s an initial uncertainty in the interactions between him and Lola, and that relationship needs to sizzle to pull off the numbers they share, including “Whatever Lola Wants.”

Rampersad does her estimable best with the character that makes the least sense in the 21st-century context, so much so that I found myself wishing that both Joes could continue to exist because her growing affection toward young Joe was so credible.

Extended dance sequences particularly in “Who’s Got the Pain?” bog the show down and contribute to an overlong playing time of two hours and 45 minutes.

Still and all, “Damn Yankees” brings many pleasures, starting and ending with the orchestra playing with verve under Paul Sportelli’s music direction (what a joy to hear an overture again!). Skylar Fox’s magic and illusions are enjoyable; and there are dynamic performances from Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane as determined journalist Gloria, Kelly Wong as Senators owner Welch, Élodie Gillett and Allison McCaughey as Senators superfans, and especially Jamieson, shining in her scenes with both older and younger Joe.

I’m looking forward to checking in again with this show later in the summer to see how it’s developed.

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