Morey Produces Musical
Rockets GM and Houston dream team stage a madcap basketball musical
Tarra Gaines
Apr 9, 2018, 12:26 pm
The Lilliputians contemplate "Sex With Giants.” Photo by Anthony Rathbun
Originally appeared on CultureMap
Michael Jordan has an assist problem. Not the NBA legend, but a Michael Jordan — a mediocre journeyman point guard, who has managed to even wash out of the Icelandic Dominos (as in pizza) League.
Jordan has now washed ashore on a much more exotic land, the recently-discovered-to-be-real Lilliput. Will the six-foot-plus Jordan learn to pass the ball to his six-inch teammates, and therefore assist the island nation–from Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century satiric masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels–in gaining respect from the rest of normal-sized humanity? Such is the dilemma in Small Ball the delightfully deranged world premiere musical from Catastrophic Theatre.
Produced and commissioned by Rockets general manager Daryl Morey, Small Ball has garnered much early media attention as probably the first basketball musical ever. Yet, with book and lyrics by playwright Mickle Maher, a Catastrophic favorite, music by Meryl van Dijk and Tony Barilla and as directed by company co-founders, Jason Nodler and Tamarie Cooper, I’d argue for also categorizing the strange, wondrous and very funny show as perhaps the first full court pressing absurdest musical.
Maher does bring sports and sportscasting satire to the show, though much more gently than Swift’s swipes at the politics of his time. But from its lovely and poignant first song “First You Lose” to its funny yet weirdly wise finale “Don’t Drown,” Small Ball goes beyond comedy and basketball to present a melodic questioning of the nature of reality, storytelling and the meaning of our bizarre existence, no matter what our size.
A different kind of musical
Don’t expect elaborate dance numbers on a basketball court stage, as Maher sets most of the scenes during pre and post-game press conferences. Two sports reporters (Tamarie Cooper and Jeff Miller) spend the entire show in the audience asking questions, including the difference between “the” and “a” Michael Jordan. Above all, they probe to find out why Jordan (Orlanders Tao Jones) refuses to pass the ball to his tiny teammates. Is it a salary dispute? Is he afraid he’ll crush the other players? Or is Jordan having a much more existential dilemma about moving and playing in this game of life, especially on a team named the Lilliputian Existers?
Just as frustrated and demanding of answers is coach Phil Jackson (Rodrick Randall), the former Lilliputian emperor, now president-elect. It seems both rudimentary democracy, basketball and rats have arrived on Lilliput as imports from the outside, averaged-sized world.
Jackson is later joined at the table by the admittedly-villainous assistant coach, Pippin (Seán Patrick Judge), players Bird (Candice D’Meza) and Magic (Greg Cote) and the team’s director of analytics, Horton (Angela Pinina), who is also Jackson’s wife. We later meet the Existers real star player, Lilli (Julia Krohn), Jackson and Horton’s daughter and therefore the former-princess. Another cause of their losing streak might stem from their lack of a fifth player, since Lilliputian culture doesn’t have a concept of the number five.
A dream team
As crazy as this set up might sound, the slam dunking performances by the cast make the concepts both plausible and outlandish at the same time, which seem to be Maher and directors Nodler and Cooper objective in surrealistic world-building. On the beach of Lilliput everyone wrestles with insomnia while living in a dream-like state under the constant camera lights.
D’Meza and Cote are all in as reluctant players. Randall makes a good case that many coaches are likely melodramatic ex-emperors at heart, and Pinina gives Horton a complexity in all the chaos as both mathematician and understandably pissed off wife. Krohn plays Lilli as a powerhouse princess who won’t take shit, even while falling in love.
While I’m certain Judge in reality is not as gleefully demented as Pippin, he does reveal himself a skilled scene kleptomaniac. This isn’t really the kind of show that includes a show-stopping number, but Judge’s rendition of the hilarious yet somehow nuanced “Sex With Giants” comes close.
Finally, I’ve caught other Jones performances around town in the past, but I won’t sing praises for his performance as Jordan, only because I’m afraid he’ll soon take his stage presence and glorious voice to larger theatric pastures. So let’s give him lots of roles and try to keep him a Houston secret a little while longer.
Musical fantasy
Helping keep the cast afloat in this ocean dream is Meryl van Dijk and Tony Barilla’s sweet and sometimes melancholy score. Barilla also leads the fine orchestra behind the set backdrop depicting the Lilliputian sea and sky.
Like the whole concept of tiny, fantastical people playing basketball, Small Ball, the musical is so out there, it probably shouldn’t even exist. And perhaps it doesn’t. Maybe Houston is just having a mass theatrical waking dream about the general manager of the Rockets teaming up with our local avant garde theater company to produce a musical about Swift’s Lilliput becoming corporeal, putting together a basketball team and recruiting a Michael Jordan to lead them. If such is the case, I say: dream and play on.
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Small Ball runs through May 13 at the MATCH.
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A lockout appears unavoidable! Photo via: Wiki Commons.
Looming over baseball is a likely lockout in December 2026, a possible management push for a salary cap and perhaps lost regular-season games for the first time since 1995.
“No one’s talking about it, but we all know that they’re going to lock us out for it, and then we’re going to miss time,” New York Mets All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso said Monday at the All-Star Game. “We’re definitely going to fight to not have a salary cap and the league’s obviously not going to like that.”
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and some owners have cited payroll disparity as a problem, while at the same time MLB is working to address a revenue decline from regional sports networks. Unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL, baseball has never had a salary cap because its players staunchly oppose one.
Despite higher levels of luxury tax that started in 2022, the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets have pushed payrolls to record levels. The last small-market MLB club to win a World Series was the Kansas City Royals in 2015.
After signing outfielder Juan Soto to a record $765 million contract, New York opened this season with an industry-high $326 million payroll, nearly five times Miami’s $69 million, according to Major League Baseball’s figures. Using luxury tax payrolls, based on average annual values that account for future commitments and include benefits, the Dodgers were first at $400 million and on track to owe a record luxury tax of about $151 million — shattering the previous tax record of $103 million set by Los Angeles last year.
“When I talk to the players, I don’t try to convince them that a salary cap system would be a good thing,” Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday. “I identify a problem in the media business and explain to them that owners need to change to address that problem. I then identify a second problem that we need to work together and that is that there are fans in a lot of our markets who feel like we have a competitive balance problem.”
Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, 2026, and management lockouts have become the norm, which shifts the start of a stoppage to the offseason. During the last negotiations, the sides reached a five-year deal on March 10 after a 99-day lockout, salvaging a 162-game 2022 season.
“A cap is not about a partnership. A cap isn’t about growing the game,” union head Tony Clark said Tuesday. “A cap is about franchise values and profits. ... A salary cap historically has limited contract guarantees associated with it, literally pits one player against another and is often what we share with players as the definitive non-competitive system. It doesn’t reward excellence. It undermines it from an organizational standpoint. That’s why this is not about competitive balance. It’s not about a fair versus not. This is institutionalized collusion.”
The union’s opposition to a cap has paved the way for record-breaking salaries for star players. Soto’s deal is believed to be the richest in pro sports history, eclipsing Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million deal with the Dodgers signed a year earlier. By comparison, the biggest guaranteed contract in the NFL is $250 million for Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
Manfred cites that 10% of players earn 72% of salaries.
“I never use the word `salary’ within one of `cap,’” he said. “What I do say to them is in addressing this competitive issue that’s real we should think about whether this system is the perfect system from a players’ perspective.”
A management salary cap proposal could contain a salary floor and a guaranteed percentage of revenue to players. Baseball players have endured nine work stoppages, including a 7 1/2-month strike in 1994-95 that fought off a cap proposal.
Agent Scott Boras likens a cap plan to attracting kids to a “gingerbread house.”
“We’ve heard it for 20 years. It’s almost like the childhood fable,” he said. “This very traditional, same approach is not something that would lead the younger players to the gingerbread house.”