Halftime with Don
Directed by Bill Simmons
Tipping Pointe Theatre
Northville, Mich.
Through Feb. 16
In what way are football players and prostitutes the same?
“We both ruin our bodies for the pleasure of others,” jokes Don Denvers, the titular character of Halftime with Don, which made its Michigan premiere Saturday at Northville’s Tipping Pointe Theatre.
This is the crux of Ken Weitzman’s play, which explores the severe consequences of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated head injury and often suffered by football players.
In this case Don, portrayed by Alex Leydenfrost, is a La-Z-Boy-ridden former professional football player whose CTE-caused chronic pain, memory loss, emotional outbursts, and violent episodes have left him nearly isolated from the rest of the world. This changes when superfan and aspiring sports journalist Ed Ryan, played by Brian Sullivan Taylor, knocks on his door for a meet-and-greet bought as a birthday present from his wife.
As he enters Don’s Post-it-covered home, Ed is taken aback at what’s become of his lifelong hero and fantasy-surrogate father. Don was once known for his fierce athleticism, sportsmanship and motivational quotes. Now Don barks at Ed, who, over the course of a few minutes, mistakes him for a delivery boy, former nurse, and the lowlife who impregnated his daughter – the latter of which results in a walker-turned-projectile aimed at Ed’s head.
The situation begins to turn around when a lucid Don invites Ed to spend the week with him and document the reality of his life – a self-described “Tuesdays with Morrie”-like situation – culminating by watching the Super Bowl together.
Don’s heavily pregnant daughter Stephanie, played by Caitlin Cavannaugh, is thrilled for her father to have some human contact. She invites Ed and his wife Sarah, played by Janai Lashon, to stay with her during the week.
As the week ensues, Ed learns Don has alternative plans for their time together. Meanwhile, Stephanie and Sarah – also pregnant – bond.
To borrow a phrase from another popular American sport, Halftime with Donis a home run.
Directed by Bill Simmons, the cast is strong, each expertly embodying a character struggling with the fear and uncertainty of major life-altering events ahead. Leydenfrost – himself a former football player – is seamless as he transitions in and out of lucidity, terrifying at times with moods that change from 0 to 100 in seconds. Your heart breaks as he struggles with a disease he cannot control and actions he cannot undo, no longer recognizing or trusting the man – or monster – he has become. In one particularly heartbreaking scene, he changes his own diaper on stage, exposing a truth and vulnerability he’s desperate for Ed and the world to see.
Taylor is the window through which we learn of Ed’s trauma. We join him in feeling awe, disappointment, disgust, frustration, hope and – later – anguish when faced with an impossible choice.
Cavannaugh’s foul-mouthed Stephanie is delightfully sarcastic and snarky, a welcome comedic relief to an otherwise dire subject matter. Her relationship with Lashon’s Sarah is equally heartwarming. You feel a palpable chemistry, trust and vulnerability between the two women as they connect through the often-comedic trials of pregnancy.
There’s little subtly in Weitzman’s intent. His Don is raw. Although Don wants players to give a second thought to their shared vocation, he admits he misses football every day – an inner conflict shared by Weitzman and Leydenfrost in a post-show panel discussion. None of them has an answer to solving the discrepancy between continuing to indulge in the country’s nearly cult-like obsession with football and protecting the human beings beneath the helmets.
But if the sniffles heard throughout the theater at the show’s finale are any indication, maybe people will finally start asking the question.
