TEXT OF REVIEW:

Film and TV audiences love sports stories, groups of disparate people thrown together striving to work as one to achieve their goal, usually to win the big game. From Major League to Ted Lasso to The Sandlot, we are entranced by how the characters grow and mature, and hopefully, in the end, they will become heroes.

Sports stories in live theatre are few and far between, most likely because you can’t really show the games. And sports stories about girls, black girls in particular? They’re nowhere to be found, except in the play Flex by Candice Jones, having its West Coast premiere at San Francisco Playhouse through May 2nd.

Flex tries the impossible: to actually show the game, or at least some facsimile. The stage has basketball hoops at both ends, the one stage right in a playground, and stage left at a gym.

We’re in a small town in Arkansas in 1998, a team of five high school girls, all black, as is their coach, are just good enough to win a regional championship. We zero in on Starra Jones, played with hip-hop swagger by Santeon Brown, the best athlete on the stage. In the opening sequence, all five are pregnant, only they’re not. It’s a test to see how they would play with big bellies because small town girls always become pregnant and are forced to leave the team. But we soon learn one of them, April, actually is pregnant. She wants to play, but the coach says no.

The championship is important because scouts will be there, there will be scholarships available and who knows, maybe the newly founded WNBA could be in someone’s future, and Starra, willing to stretch ethics to get ahead, wants to be the one they see.

But maybe it’s Sidney who’s the best on the team, and maybe Starra needs to figure out a way to take the spotlight. April, for her part, isn’t sure she wants to keep the baby. The religious Cherisse meanwhile, is uncomfortable with her sexuality. Each girl has her own secrets.

Flex – named after the team’s signature five-person shoot around play – is set on basketball courts, and much of the play occurs on the court. This works in conception, but not always in practice. The bouncing ball muffles the dialogue, and the road to the championship becomes a McGuffin only the girls care about. It’s in the non-basketball scenes that the play really comes alive, and where the actors really shine, and its those scenes that makes Flex worth seeing.

Flex by Candrice Jones, directed by Margo Hall, plays at San Francisco Playhouse through May 2nd. For more information, you can go to SFPlayhouse.org. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area Theatre for KPFA.

The post Review: “Flex” at San Francisco Playhouse appeared first on KPFA.