Tucsonan Bill Epstein is like most of us.
As we find in his autobiographical play “My Life in Sports,” on stage at Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre, he played sports when he was young; some of his childhood friends grew up and got lost in drugs; he had an unhappy marriage but found love; and he painfully watched as that love succumbed to cancer.
But most of us aren’t likely to write a play about our lives.
Epstein shouldn’t have, either.
Watching his play is a bit like watching a distant friend’s home movies.
We get scenes, moments, of his life. But they are just that. His story lacks an arc and, more importantly, there is little insight, no themes that speak to or enlighten us.
Oh, Epstein, who performs the piece, is likable enough. And we are sorry for his loss. But what are we to take from knowing he played baseball as a kid — poorly, he tells us. Or that he and his late wife made love several times a day, or that they would say “I love you” before she went off to sleep.
And then there is this: This is a 2½-hour, mostly humorless play. If you took out all the redundancies, the repeated scenes, the repeated conversations, it would probably be an hour long.
The length isn’t really the problem, however. It is the lack of substance, of strong storytelling, that keeps “My Life in Sports” from scoring.
This is a surprising choice for Scoundrel & Scamp. Its artistic director, Bryan Rafael Falcón, who directed this, has shown a keen sense when it comes to staging plays. This season opened with a powerful production of “Eurydice,” the poignant “Every Brilliant Thing” is next.
This production was a misstep.
