"The Last Match" A Review

It walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening. What is it?

 

"The Last Match" is a play at City Theatre by Anna Ziegler. It is recent but she is serious, with a play on Broadway this year starring Kidman. It is a four person play centering on a tennis match in the American Open Semifinals between an established and fading American star and a rising, young Russian who has not yet fulfilled his promise. The two battle each other (and their wives in flashbacks) in what is a very enjoyable story about competition, sacrifice and aging. It suffers somewhat from sport's over-exposure and the minute public dissection of competition; the story line is familiar. But it is an enjoyable time.

It is more a narrative than a true play with external rather than internal struggle--an element I clearly over-translated in my initial assessment of the story as really a story of age and development of a single individual--rather than the more narrative competitive story between two athletes. A review states:

"For a moment, forget what the actors look like and forget the backstories created for them by playwright Anna Ziegler. Sergei Sergeyev clearly is patterned after the world’s No. 1 player, Novak Djokovic, and Tim Porter just as clearly is channeling the No. 3 player at age 34, Roger Federer.
Watching the play now at City Theatre, you can make the comparison right down to Tim wearing Federer’s familiar Nike swoosh and Sergei in Adidas, the brand that sponsored Djokovic when he was on the rise."

Well, I didn't think that at all. I never conceived of Federer as a self-satisfied and privileged guy nor did I think of the wise-cracking Djokovic as ever short or troubled. (I did, however, see both players as Agassi at different stages of his life.) Nor did I insightfully see the ads on the shirts. I saw two different ages view competition and sacrifice with hunger and regret.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed it thoroughly. There were some quibbles. I thought the emphasis on the parents' absence on both sides artificial, added, I think, to salt the drama. And I think the peripheral female leads were a bit too strong; the Russian girlfriend played by Robin Abramson came dangerously close to swamping her extravagant male counterpart and the American wife, Daina Michelle Griffith, played her character with such isolated complexity that she threatened to absorb the story when she was on stage.

J. D. Taylor was very good in a terrific part as the Russian, Danny Binstock was a bit thick for such a refined athlete but did well in a more difficult part that did not inherently have the audience sympathy.

All in all, a fun time regardless of how many characters you thought were on stage.