Golf is a funny game, Lyle the greenskeeper tells us at the start of Next Stage’s “18 Holes.” But you’d barely know it from this surprisingly hostile character study penned by artistic director Gene Kato.
Lyle is no Carl Spackler, and “18 Holes” is no “Caddyshack.” It’s an awkwardly structured and unconvincingly performed exercise in bad behavior and acrimony.
Kato deserves credit for ambition. As an artistic undertaking, “18 Holes” is the equivalent of a par 5. Golf is fertile ground for the kind of lowbrow comedy that made “Caddyshack” a classic. But following that model would be a chip shot for Kato. He’s driving for something far more thought-provoking here as we follow 13 duffers around a Texas golf course.
But the play slices from the first tee box, starting with its arguable premise that golf is about conversation, not competition. My four years as a caddie would argue that golf, which Mark Twain famously labeled “a good walk spoiled,” can turn ordinary pacifists into diabolical cheaters, which in itself would make for an interesting dramatic study.
But tonally, “18 Holes” wavers indecisively from folksy to dyspeptic, making it hard to get a fix on whether Kato loves or hates the game. He seems to harbor antipathy for his menagerie of unpleasant characters: a bad dad who forces an unhappy 10-year-old to play on. A shrew who churlishly taunts a husband to the point of a heart attack. Three generations of snooty “Orange” Hat Society women who snipe, snipe, snipe. In a desperate attempt at comic relief, two overcompensating, bickering buffoons pursue a Scottish beer girl.
There’s not much cumulative likability in this group, save for a caddie with a crush (and an unrealistically sharp tongue).
The bigger problem is with the play’s construct: 18 scenes set on 18 greens. Each offers brief interaction, after which one offers a character-revealing soliloquy as others freeze.
This is a problematic conceit. First, golf is all about keeping up with the next group, so it’s the last place you’d expect ruminative or confessional monologues. Second, it appears the writer didn’t trust his interactive scenes to communicate the requisite information by themselves. They’re writing shortcuts. Last, you never want to lock your audience into a predictable structure in which every scene plays out exactly like the one preceding it.
As Lyle marks each transition by changing the flag to a number ascending slowly toward 18, watching the play progress turns into an exercise in numbing sameness.
When a play is not working, it can be difficult to pin down whether it’s the acting or the material. Here, it’s a little of both. It’s easy to appreciate Patric Call as the caddie who’s forced to carry four (!) bags while maintaining a nice flirtation with cute debutante Sydney (Robin Litt). She rightly calls out her nasty grandma (Rosey Waters), but she’s clearly cut from the same stripe. Most are just nasty. The play is particularly difficult to watch whenever jerky Doug (Joey Santos) berates a miserable boy who’s also about to learn his parents are divorcing.
The second act, of course, must pursue reconciliation, but because the establishing tone has been so antagonistic, it feels machinated. One story’s absolving twist is a blatant rip-off from a recent Pulitzer-winning play. Another tidily wraps up with the revelation of a family secret. But it makes no sense why it ever was a secret in the first place.
Kato is a warm and gifted comedic actor, making it all the more surprising that his play about a subject so rife for sentiment and romanticism would come across so confrontational and angry.
And what are we to make of Lyle, that anachronistic narrator channeling Will Geer? By story’s end, he is the gopher. And as Carl Spackler might say, “Au revoir, gopher.”
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“18 Holes” *1/2 (out of four stars)
Presented by Next Stage at the Aurora Fox Studio Theatre, 9900 E. Colfax Ave. Written by Gene Kato. Directed by Jessica Clare. 2 hours, 30 minutes. Through Aug. 23. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. $15-$20. 303-364-9998 or
Read a script sample
To read a short sample from Gene Kato’s “18 Holes,”
