Theater Review: "Lombardi" Scores a Touch Down

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 28 November 2010 14:42

Written by Lloyd Carroll

Lombardi
Written by Eric Simonson (Based on David Maraniss's book When Pride Mattered)
Directed by Thomas Kail  
Starring Dan Lauria, Judith Light, Robert Christopher Riley, Bill Dawes, Chris Sullivan, Keith Nobbs

This past September, 2010, marked the 40th anniversary of the passing of Vince Lombardi -- the most famous head coach in NFL history. Another sign that my fellow baby boomers are getting older.

This milestone has not gone unnoticed. The NFL has been instrumental in getting Lombardi’s story on Broadway as a major financial backer of the new play, Lombardi, based on David Maraniss’s bio, When Pride Still Mattered (Simon & Schuster).

Lombardi cleverly examines a random autumn week in the coach’s life as his Green Bay Packers are preparing to take on the San Francisco 49ers. Look Magazine has dispatched a young sports reporter, Michael McCormick (Keith Nobbs), to spend the week with Vince (Dan Lauria) and his wife Marie (Judith Light) for a profile.       

What McCormick does not know is that his editor and Lombardi are old friends and he's there to do a puff piece. Even worse, Look is willing to give the Packers coach the final edit over the piece. It turns out that the gruff Lombardi was sensitive to a harsh article about him that had been published a few weeks earlier in Esquire.       

McCormick represents the public and does a great job of probing Lombardi, not only by interviewing him, but also by speaking with his better half, Marie, and a trio of Packers legends, Dave Robinson (Robert Christopher Riley), Paul Hornung (Bill Dawes) and Jim Taylor (Chris Sullivan). These supporting characters hold the interest as much as does the protagonist.       

Mrs. Lombardi is no shrinking violet and can go toe-to-toe with her boisterous husband if necessary. Clearly, their love was deep and the play makes illustrates that she was his rock when he once considered dropping football for a banking career because he grew tired of only being an assistant coach with the Giants. He couldn’t understand why he had been overlooked by every major college and NFL team until the lowly Green Bay Packers came calling in 1959.     

While she encouraged her husband to take the Green Bay job, life in the NFL’s smallest outpost did not suit her. She tells McCormick that she desperately misses Manhattan and wiles away too much of the time by hitting the liquor cabinet.       

Lombardi does not shy away from key social and economic issues. The coach was never a big fan of individualism and preferred a marine corps-style thinking -- put the best interests of the group first. The positive side of that philosophy meant that the Packers were remarkably free of prejudice at a time when it was rife in football. Louisiana good ole boy Taylor did not think twice about socializing with black linebacker Robinson.       

The negative side of his philosophy was that Vince, who was also the Packers general manager, had trouble dealing with his players when it came to their economic welfare. He goes ballistic when Taylor lets it be known that he has an agent who will negotiate his next contract for him (he  soon gets traded to the expansion team, New Orleans Saints) while Robinson is team’s first union rep and relishes the idea of getting better benefits for the rank-and-file.       

The play takes pains to talk about how the quote most associated with Lombardi -- "Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing!” -- has been misinterpreted over the years. Lombardi was only trying to cultivate a winning attitude and not suggest that a team member should commit harakiri if he was on the losing side.       

Lauria, best known for his role as the dad on The Wonder Years, bears a strong physical resemblance to Lombardi and sounds like him as well. He is so credible in this role that it feel like an NFL team may want to hire him as their next head coach. Light, best remembered for the ABC sitcom Who’s the Boss?, makes Marie a sympathetic character. And as the young reporter, Nobbs recalls a young Tom Cruise.

Lombardi comes in at a sprite 95 minutes and doesn't have an intermission. While it helps to be a football fan, even those with little interest in the gridiron will enjoy this play. If you know little about Lombardi except that his name adorns the Super Bowl trophy and is a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, then you owe it to yourself to get to the Circle In The Square Theater ASAP. 

HBO Sports and NFL Films will air a documentary on the cable network this December about The Coach.

Lombardi
Circle In The Square Theater
1633 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

website: www.LombardiBroadway.com
 

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