By Jesse Boykin Kimmel

Y’all Weekly

SALISBURY — The NFL season may have come to an end, but there is still a chance to experience a little more of the glory in Salisbury.

“Lombardi,” now on stage at Lee Street theatre, tells the story of the legendary Green Bay Packers coach over the course of a critical week in the 1965 season. Written by Eric Simonson, a playwright with a penchant for sports narratives, this show is sure to entertain football aficionados and initiates alike.

A man of rigid philosophy and clear vision, Vincent Lombardi was legendary for his hardnose approach to coaching. Single-mindedly focused on championships, he is often quoted for his reference to the 1953 John Wayne football picture, “Trouble Along the Way” — “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”

For Lombardi, football was a grand unifying principle. He applied lessons about hard work from his Jesuit upbringing to the game, and understood his life, even his stint as a bank manager in New Jersey, through football. As we see in Simonson’s play, he was Coach Lombardi on and off the field, and his famous hair trigger temper was reserved neither for the arena nor those closest to him — he would let no one get in his way without an argument.

In the play, Marie Lombardi, speaking to Look Magazine reporter Mike McCormick, says Vince’s life revolves around “God, family and football, and not necessarily in that order.” Rod Oden’s set deliberately reinforces football’s primacy, centralizing the football field while placing the offices and locker rooms at Lambeau Field in one end zone, and the Lombardis’ living room in the other.

Audiences are treated to plenty of Packers history with Paul Hornung (Andrew Williams), Dave “Robbie” Robinson (Andrew Monroe), and a moody Jim Taylor’s (Matty Montes) fraught admiration for their coach central to the plot. Other contemporary Packers players — including future Hall of Famer Bart Starr — are absent from the stage but not the play.

With these players as proxies for Lombardi’s coaching style, lead John Colby Britt broadcasts Vince’s obsession like a tea kettle on boil. Britt softens and explodes at a moment’s notice. The extreme shifts are guided by the clarity of Lombardi’s worldview, Britt conveys, rather than the influence of anyone around him.

The actor uses this stark contrast to great effect. Rather than building to a fever pitch, the dramatic nodes of Simonson’s narrative are marked by Britt’s rare moments of gentleness and, even rarer, acquiescence.

Raquel Oden is deadpan and funny as Marie Lombardi, whose dominant personality is only overshadowed by Vincent’s. She is as invested in the Packers as her husband, yet discontent simmers beneath the surface. Both Lombardis grease their friction with liquor. Her greater inclination to emotional vulnerability seems to be Mike McCormick’s only pathway to the inner workings of this obstinate coach.

As fictional rookie reporter McCormick, Brayden Daugherty begins with a tacit coolness. Suave but furtive, McCormick is the play’s narrator, stepping in and out of scenes as he moves the action along.

Trying to slip by unnoticed rather than barge in ham-fisted, Daugherty’s character struggles to find an angle on the coaching genius with no interest in publicity. McCormick keeps meeting obstacles, and Daugherty’s loss of patience is careful and measured. He shares the finest scene of the play with Britt: McCormick and Lombardi switch places with the reporter letting his drunken temper flare for the first time while Lombardi finally relaxes into laughter and sweetness, a glass of Scotch and a bottle of Pepto Bismol next to the projector beside him.

There is much to be read between the lines. Verbal abuse was regular and whisky flowed freely in the Lombardi household. Marie remarks to Mike that Vincent Jr. had “felt the back of [his father’s] hand.”

The real-life Vince and Marie had a tumultuous marriage that, while clearly represented on stage, is more often than not played for comedy, like a sitcom of the era. The shouts and barbs that Lombardi and Marie trade throughout their scenes are often funny and a few times underscore the deepness of their bond. We can be sure that their family life in Green Bay was not placid, to say the least.

The line Marie delivers early in the play — “I wasn’t married to him more than one week, when I said to myself, Marie Planitz, you’ve made the greatest mistake of your life” – is a direct quote from the David Maraniss book the play is loosely based on. A possible failing of the original text — not Lee St. theatre’s production — is that Lombardi’s verbal abuse is not viewed through a critical lens for most of the play. However, the script is clearly on the side of Lombardi as great man; a more rigid analysis would chip at the pedestal reserved for the coaching legend.

On the other hand, Lombardi’s sense of fairness and stubborn adherence to personal principles meant that the Green Bay Packers were the only team with overt non-discrimination policies for much of the 1960s. Born in Brooklyn to second generation Italian immigrants, Lombardi’s experience with prejudice shaped a no-nonsense philosophy of absolute equality in every organization he led. Simonson’s script acknowledges that Lombardi would not book segregated hotels during away games, and that he kept a list of off-limits establishments in Green Bay where he felt that his players would not receive equal treatment. Lombardi famously would fire any player who exhibited prejudice against a teammate.

The purity of coach Lombardi’s fair mindedness runs even more deeply than we are shown on stage. His loyalty to his brother Hal, who was gay, meant this zero-tolerance discrimination policy also extended to sexual orientation. Hal Lombardi’s lifelong partner Richard said of the legendary coach, “Vin was always fair in how he treated everybody … He just wanted you to do the job.”

With a subject as complicated yet relevant to culture as Lombardi is, Simonson’s small window into his life is a smart choice. No matter their level of interest in football itself, audiences will come away from Lee Street’s production more interested in the human stories that make sports like football more than just a game.

Lombardi’s run at Lee St. theatre will continue through March 2.

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This review can be found at https://www.yallweekly.com/p/stage-lee-streets-lombardi.

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