"A sports play written by Mat Smart? I'm in! (See also
Tinker to Evers to Chance.)" I wrote this on Instagram last night, but as it turns out,
Samuel J. and K. is not really a sports play. It's a play about brothers, family, betrayal, loss, and love. In the same way that
Tinker to Evers to Chance (
seen in a fantastic production at Artistry earlier this year) is not a sports play, but a play about family, grief, love, connection. There's something about sports that loosens people up and allows them to connect and talk about deeper things, and
Playwrights' Center core writer Mat Smart uses that to great advantage in these plays. Here, two brothers (one adopted from
Cameroon when he was three years old) bond over a game of basketball. Gremlin's production features two talented actors in their cozy intimate theater space, transformed into a basketball court and a hut in Cameroon by deceptively simple design.
