As a lifelong soccer fan, I’d never really paid much attention to American football. This all changed when I belatedly became obsessed with “Friday Night Lights.” And clearly I’m not the only one, since the series’s influence looms large over
Tina Satter‘s new play “In the Pony Palace/Football,” at the
Bushwick Starr until Saturday 26. (Full disclosure: My friend Moe Angelos plays Maureen, the assistant coach.)
Satter, who also directed, uses familiar elements but what she comes up with is just completely bizarre. First of all, the team is called the Owls, which has got to be one of the least football-appropriate monikers ever. The characters often look dazed and speak in a monotone that makes everything sounds like advanced “Heathers”-ese; the cheerleaders are popular and snotty yet uncommonly strange; the mascot has an identity crisis. Oh yeah, the Owls are an all-girls high-school team, and they rock — just like the live band, which performs marching-band arrangements of Lady Gaga songs while the dynamite plays unfurl.
Satter manages to create an amazing amount of explosive action out of a handful of actors crammed in a tight space and a $14 budget (my estimate). And she’s cast cannily: The team’s and the show’s stars are Jess Barbagallo as QB1 Dara and Erin Markey (recently seen in Tennessee Williams’s
“Green Eyes”) as wide receiver Trace. Markey, in particular, has an ominously intense sexiness. When she laughs, it bubbles up without quite spilling over. You dread running into her in a dark alley, but you kinda wish for it, too.