Rounding Third at Flat Rock Playhouse
If Scott Treadway isn’t careful, local theater audiences may demand that he only star in two-person shows.
Nearly four months to the day after impressively embodying seven characters alongside Charlie Flynn-McIver’s six roles in NC Stage Co.’s production of Stones in His Pockets, Treadway can currently be seen opposite JP Sarro in the boisterous comedy Rounding Third at Flat Rock Playhouse.
The delightful duo star as a pair of mismatched Little League baseball coaches. A riot as Bill in last summer’s Mamma Mia!, Sarro is a natural as Don, the opinionated veteran skipper who’s never at fault and values winning over everything else in his life. Into this volatile storm walks Michael, a proponent of participation and trying one’s best who’s desperate for an activity through which he and his athletically-challenged son can bond. This sort of nebbish do-gooder is right in Treadway’s wheelhouse, but as the plot develops and new wrinkles are introduced, one of Western North Carolina’s most beloved actors gets to show his range and wow the crowd with temperaments and volumes that he’s rarely afforded.
JP Sarro (Don) and Scott Treadway (Michael) in Rounding Third.
Written by Richard Dresser, Rounding Third takes a basic odd couple premise, potentially rife with clichés about fathers, sons, sports, and masculinity, and imbues the material with a spirit that makes the genre feel fresh. Directed by Flynn-McIver, who performed Rounding Third at NC Stage Co. alongside Treadway, the inherent limitations of a two-person play likewise fade the moment the action shifts from an opening scene at a sports bar — one of three locations in Dennis C. Maulden’s straightforward yet wholly effective stage design — to a sandlot bench.
Suddenly, Don and Michael aren’t just addressing one another, but an entire team of young men. The effect lifts the story’s confinements, producing the illusion of far more than is actually occurring onstage. In that moment, Flynn-McIver’s familiarity with the writing and its potential for a larger scope and level of emotion than its limited cast and settings suggest become strikingly evident, and the sensation only grows from there.
Crucial to these ends is Treadway’s and Sarro’s rapport, which earns a steady stream of laughs along with a few gasps and groans as the script’s handful of revelations are organically doled out. Though Sarro flubbed a surprising number of lines on opening night, none hampered the subsequent dialogue’s impact and clarity — and are the kind of minuscule miscues that will almost certainly get ironed out as the production rolls along. Indeed, he and Treadway are too in-step with each other for such fleeting distractions to slow them down, dedicated to entertaining folks in the seats and ably flexing their significant talents in the process.
Rounding Third runs through Sept. 8 at Flat Rock Playhouse in Flat Rock. For schedule, directions and tickets, visit flatrockplayhouse.org.
(Photos by Scott Treadway)
