Ten years ago — shudder — I pointed my Honda toward Munster, Ind., to check out a new musical about one of the Hoosier State’s most vaunted citizens: Coach Knute Kenneth Rockne of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, the prophet of the forward pass, arguably the inventor of Big College Football, and a guy who not only loved to win one for the Gipper (or otherwise), but almost always failed to lose.
It was not without trepidation, and I speak not of my thanking Ohio State University for paying for my doctorate with my unrelenting personal support for the Buckeyes.
While most musicals target women, who buy the vast majority of theater tickets, more than one producer has decided that there is a great untapped reservoir of sports-loving dudes who are ready and willing to throw down some cash for show tunes if only the subject is sports. Plenty of Notre Dame women are compelled by the legacy of Rockne, of course, but back then, there also was much talk of attracting sports-loving guys to the Theatre at the Center by offering up a show about a semi-mythical Notre Dame coach who was at his peak in the 1920s.
On the drive over the steel bridge, I remember thinking it would be tricky.
One of the problems with sports musicals (or sports plays) is that practicality and the live theater’s need for predictable patterns of action tend to dictate that the action be limited to off the field. You can spend time in the dressing room, the gym, the car, anywhere but during the playing of the actual game for which the subject of the show is famous. This problem has beset shows about Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Vince Lombardi, among others. If you’re looking for the list of successful sports musicals on Broadway, the list pretty much starts and ends with “Damn Yankees.”
That was 1955. And they had Bob Fosse doing the choreography.
But, with some reservations about the show’s structure, I liked what I saw at “Knute Rockne All American.” In my first paragraph: “A thrilling new Heartland tuner.”
Part of that enthusiasm came from my hearing the music of Michael Mahler for the first time. Ten years on, most theater fans in Chicago (and a good number in New York and beyond) are fully aware of Mahler’s growing body of work as a composer, lyricist and performer. But in 2008, he was barely known at all.
Mahler (and the presence of the actress Kate Fry) aside, I was also tickled by the wit of a piece that dared to kick off with a number called “Completing the Forward Pass.”
Most importantly of all, though, Rockne turned out to have a very compelling life story for a musical. I would not claim his biography to be akin to that of Alexander Hamilton, but he also was an immigrant who got the job done.
He was raised in poverty in Chicago’s Logan Square. And he died in a crash in a Kansas wheat field: He was riding in a plane made, in part, from plywood. This was, to say the least, a compelling story.
Straight to Broadway then? Nope. The critic’s enthusiasm did not forge a win. Probably for some of the reasons articulated above.
But Knute Rockne is coming back. And this time he’s in Evanston.
Yup, “Knute Rockne All American” is getting another developmental production at Northwestern University, a whopping 10 years after the first time around.
And how did this happen? David H. Bell, who directed that Munster production and, with Mahler, co-wrote the lyrics to Buddy Farmer’s book, teaches at Northwestern and runs a program called the American Musical Theatre Project.
The AMTP has been around for a long time — it aims to use professional and student casts to develop new musicals — but for the last several years, it has stuck to staged readings. That is different this summer, due to the presence (and the fiscal resources) of an attached Broadway producer Greg Schaffert.
Bell told me that the show has been extensively revised (they surely had the time) and that five new musical numbers have been written. “We’ve refocused the energy of the show,” Bell said, while also noting that much new thought has been put into how the piece might stage the crucial scenes on the sports field.
I don’t normally review shows with students — every artist deserves time to learn without critics — but this one might be an exception, especially since the cast is a blend of Equity professionals and college-age performers. And that’s pretty much the requirement of a show set on the campus of a great university.
I plan to give them a bit more time — it’s been 10 years, so what’s another week? But if you want to get into the game, you can head to the lakefront this very weekend and watch ‘em bear down.
“Something in the Game: An All-American Musical” by the American Music Theatre Project runs through Aug. 5 at the Josephine Louis Theater, 20 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston; somethinginthegame.com.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
