It’s that time of year: They’re oiling up their mitts in Tucson, and Annie Dwyer is oiling up her jowls at Heritage Square.
Baseball and summer are on the way.
The Heritage Square Music Hall is tuning up (get it?) for both with “The Baseball Show,” its returning, lighthearted spoof of America’s favorite pastime. This fan favorite, last staged in 2003, is about an inept, small-time gangster who doesn’t want his star player to advance to the big leagues. It’s also casually known as “The Bubblegum Show,” for the salivational antics of Dwyer, a longtime cast member who has won awards (seriously!) for her bubble-gum tricks in this show.
Heritage Square is that rare amusement that’s more fun the more often you go back. You find yourself laughing a few beats before every pun- infected punch line. You start singing along to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” before you’re even asked to join in. You hear random crowd outbursts like, “Here it comes!” even before Dwyer has begun to twirl that mound of oral adhesive around her finger like it’s a rodeo lasso.
Hey, I just figured it out: “The Baseball Show” is “The Rocky Horror Show” for 60- year old suburbanites!
The show is funny in that “I can’t believe I’m laughing at this” kind of way. But don’t underestimate the talent it takes to make people laugh at bad jokes. “Dumb and Dumber” grossed $247 million, after all. But “The Baseball Game” is strictly G-rated — clean as a cleanup-hitter.
Heritage Square is comfort food, during and after dinner. The entertainment portion is split into two halves: the throwback baseball story, penned by longtime star T.J. Mullin, followed by a baseball-themed comedy and music revue (during which ragtime maestro N. Randall Johnson’s boogie take on “Flight of the Bumble Bee” warrants the price of dinner and dessert all by itself).
The story plays out in light, melodramatic form, nicely underscored by Johnson. Our setting is 1954 Beloit, Wis., that innocent period when baseball was tainted not by steroids and asterisks — but by good old-fashioned gangsters!
In comically age-inappropriate fashion, Rory Pierce plays naive, rising baseball star Bill “The Bomber” Dawson, whose legal-eye fiance and manager (the ever-adorable Kira Cauthorn) looks out for his interests against a nefarious team owner (Mullin) who is plotting to keep him by using every bad malapropism at his disposal. Alex Crawford, Vanessa Bowie and Scott Koop add to the silliness.
Dwyer, channeling her inner Audrey (from “Little Shop of Horrors”), plays the ditzy, lisping moll with a mouth of bubbly gold. Seriously, this Method actor begins working her bubbles into a wad a full hour before the show begins. But it’s worth every chomp. Audiences ooh and ahh as she wraps the slimy stuff around her nose, blows bubbles inside bubbles, and more.
Theater gets no more casual than it does at Heritage Square, where the actors enter as vendors selling you real popcorn and Red Ropes. Where you go for the theater, and an impromptu Nerf baseball game breaks out, right in the middle of the house. Truth. Excited kids run down base hits and offer high-fives, all of which makes the evening feel more like a sandlot pickup game or your family reunion.
The kid who took over as “the pitcher from Row J” will be in the majors one day, if he ever gets out of middle school. The game ends in a funny slow-mo instant replay that’s quintessential Heritage Square comedy.
It’s a fun and populist amusement, whether you’re elbow to elbow on a Saturday or spread out among 40 people who surely must be distant relatives on a Wednesday.
By the time this run ends in May, it’s estimated that Dwyer will have chomped 1,000 sticks of the juicy stuff. Oh, the sacrifices we make for our art. I just hope employment at Heritage Square comes with a dental plan!
“The Baseball Show” *** (out of four stars)
Baseball spoof Heritage Square Music Hall, 18301 W. Colfax Ave., Golden. Through May 18. 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays (dinner 90 minutes before). $23.50-$36.50 303-279-7800 or .
