Entertainment

Sweet but awkward volley: fault, playwright

Unlike Broadway’s “Magic/Bird,” which really is about Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, “Federer Versus Murray” doesn’t focus on those two tennis champions.

That’s a bummer, because Gerda Stevenson’s slight one-act play could have benefited from the tension and drama of a court battle.

Here, it’s a couple of working-class, middle-aged Scots, Jimmy (Dave Anderson) and Flo (Stevenson herself, who also directed), who do the volleying. Their son was killed in Afghanistan, and they deal with their grief in very different ways.

“Ye’re a Neanderthal when it comes tae feelins!” Flo tells Jimmy — luckily for New Yorkers, the Scottish brogue is easier on the ears than the eyes.

But Jimmy only looks placid. Unlike Flo, an open book, he channels his emotions through obsessions like clipping out articles about the war or following Roger Federer’s run at Wimbledon. Jimmy picks him over fellow Scot Murray because the Swiss “minds me o ma faither — a gentleman.”

This leads to the play’s single funniest moment, when Jimmy tries to paint the Swiss flag on his face and gets the colors wrong.

But otherwise the minutes tick by slowly, enlivened by musical interludes from Ben Bryden during scene changes — the late son played the sax.

Jimmy and Flo are likable folks, but their plight doesn’t get much dramatic traction, even when their simmering disagreement finally flares up. And when Stevenson tries to open up both their horizons and the play, the move is as clumsy as it is sweet.