Photo by Alex Moy
Reviewed by Catherine Crouch
Little Fish Theatre
Through September 28
RECOMMENDED
Admittedly, I am known among family and friends as somewhat of a sports hater. Growing up, I pleaded with my parents to ban Dodgers talk at the dinner table, and I didn’t attend a single one of my college’s football games. Though I’ve come around to watching certain sports in my adulthood – and to my parents’ relief, this now includes Dodgers baseball– I have always distanced myself from organized athletics in favor of the arts. So when I was assigned to see King James, Rajiv Joseph’s play centered around the Lebron James era of the Cleveland Cavaliers, you could say I was less than enthused.
Yet to my delight, King James is less about basketball than it is about friendship, legacy, and belonging, and skeptics such as myself will likely come to see the sport as a worthy backdrop to explore these themes. While fans of the game will enjoy the references to players, tactics, and transfers, Joseph’s accessible writing ensures newcomers won’t feel left out of the joke.
The story follows Cleveland locals Shawn (Mark Antony Howard) and Matt (Nathaniel Weiss) as they mature, try and fail, and learn how to love something when the going gets tough. Shawn is Black and Matt is white; they come from different backgrounds, and they have different dreams. At first, their mutual love of the Cavaliers is all that they share. But as they open up to each other and support one another through life’s ups and downs, Shaun and Matt become a model of the type of enduring male friendship that forms a needed cement in explosive times.
Perhaps King James’s greatest strength is its ability to balance conversations about racial disparity with levity, comedy, and basketball, while also honoring the complex intersectionality within Shawn and Matt’s friendship. King James is not a play about race, but it also doesn’t relegate racial difference to a backburner or overstate its effect on the friendship at the story’s center. Shaun and Matt are two men who value each other for everything that they are and aren’t; this isn’t shocking or rare, but it does allow for depth of character, emotionality, and a realistic and moving portrayal of loyalty strengthened by their differences.
The production includes a few odd lighting cues that are easily forgiven and overpowered by Howard and Weiss’s stellar performances under Akin Omotoso’s natural direction. I might not relate to experiencing the epic throes of watching your team let you down and lift you back up, but King James’s most powerful message is far more universal: close friends can break your heart, but they can also put it back together.
Little Fish Theatre, 514 N. Prospect Ave Ste. L-1, Redondo Beach; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm; thru Sept. 28. www.littlefishtheatre.org. Running time: Approximately 2 hours 5 minutes with 20-minute intermission
