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Base player
Nobody Don’t Like Yogi comes to Boston
BY SALLY CRAGIN

In an era when the mutterings of A-Rod and Derek Jeter are headlines, one longs for a sports star with linguistic style as well as athletic prowess. But the post-season brings hope in the form of veteran actor Ben Gazzara, who stars in a one-man show about baseball’s most quotable player, Yogi Berra. Tom Lysaght’s Nobody Don’t Like Yogi debuted in 2003 in Sag Harbor and Off Broadway, where it earned mostly approving reviews. Now, directed by Paul Linke, it comes to the Wilbur Theatre, marking Gazzara’s first on-stage appearance in Boston since appearing in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Colleen Dewhurst in 1976.

Speaking over the phone from his home in New York, in a voice with more gravel than an unpaved road (he’s been lauded for capturing Berra’s unique articulation as well as the former Bronx Bomber’s diction), Gazzara, now 73, explained, "I didn’t want to be an actor. I wanted to be a ballplayer. I knew Joe DiMaggio’s average every day, and when he batted under .300, I got depressed. Now, you bat under .270, you get $17 million. If Ted Williams was alive, they’d have to give him Fenway Park, they couldn’t pay him enough." Well, as another great man once remarked, "The future ain’t what it used to be."

Nobody Don’t Like Yogi takes place on October 18, 1999, when Berra returns to Yankee Stadium. It’s his first visit since 1985, when owner George Steinbrenner fired him as the Yankees' manager just 16 games into the season. Steinbrenner and Berra remained separated for years, an estrangement exacerbated by Steinbrenner’s verbal abuse of Yogi’s ballplayer son Dale. Yet despite Berra’s famously fractured comments ("It’s déjà vu all over again," "We made too many wrong mistakes"), Gazzara says, "The play is not about his aphorisms. It’s the story of a man and his family, and George Steinbrenner. It’s not a monologue — these people appear to him and he interacts with him." And Laght’s play makes it clear that Berra is fully aware of his own "Yogi-isms," though he thinks the press makes too much of them.

So, has Steinbrenner come to see the play? Gazzara gives a laugh that’s both rich and nervous. "He’s a friend. I’ve seen many a World Series in his box. I hope he’s not offended." He adds that in real life, Berra and Steinbrenner " ‘buried the ax,’ as Yogi would say, ‘not the hatchet.’ "

Gazzara at first thought he should do full make-up to portray Berra, who had "a gangly frame, and seemed awkward when he played the game, but he was so entirely intelligent he was very surprising." But he decided against using "a prosthesis, phony nose and ears. Instead, I do it from the inside out, and you have no idea how many people come up and say, ‘You look just like him.’ What you try to do is the best you can to get a sense of the man — how he moves and talks."

And Berra, despite his unlikely physique, achieved heroic stature on more than one occasion. "You remember Elston Howard? [He was the first black man to play for the Yankees.] They replaced Yogi with him, and Yogi went out to right field because at a certain age, the legs go. And when they honored Elston Howard, Yogi broke down in tears and couldn’t go on. This was the man who took his job, but he loved the man, and supported the man. Yogi was a man of deep feeling and compassion, and that’s what comes through in the play."

Nobody Don’t Like Yogi plays March 8 through 13 at the Wilbur Theatre, 246 Tremont Street in the Theater District. Tickets are $27.50 to $67.50; call (617) 931-ARTS, or visit www.broadwayacrossamerica.com.


Issue Date: March 4 - 10, 2005
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