Crivello is treetops in ‘McGuire’
Actor plays coach in Rep production
Longtime Notre Dame basketball coach Digger Phelps once said that Al McGuire “did for Milwaukee in college basketball what Vince Lombardi did for Green Bay in pro football.”
Like Lombardi, McGuire was a tough-as-nails New Yorker and a winner. Like Lombardi, McGuire was also complicated.
And as with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s 2011 production of Eric Simonson’s “Lombardi,” its just-opened production of Dick Enberg’s “McGuire” reflects how hard it can be to plumb the depths of a man whose public persona was larger than life.
One of the many McGuire lines within Enberg’s script throws down the gauntlet on getting beneath the surface. “Never undress until you die,” actor Anthony Crivello tells us early on in a show where he is on stage alone as McGuire for 80 intermission-free minutes. “Keep ’em guessin’. Be mysterious. Don’t let anybody see how you really feel until you’re outta here.”
This McGuire insists he can now come clean, since he’s speaking to us from the great beyond. And aided by script doctor and director Brent Hazelton, he occasionally does, giving us a bit of the backstory on just what McGuire meant when admitting he’d broken all the commandments except the one against murder — and would need a deaf priest for his confession.
But for the most part, “McGuire” is focused on celebrating McGuire’s life, reflecting Enberg’s obvious love for his longtime broadcast partner — and all the great stories McGuire told during their years together. This show will exercise enormous appeal for Marquette fans. It should.
Kristin Ellert-Sakowski’s evocative scenic design — supplemented by video projection — outlines the story we’ll be told, from the bar at stage left recalling the McGuire family saloon through the locker room at stage right. They’re joined by a stained-glass mosaic suggesting McGuire’s Belmont Abbey years. Marquette memorabilia abounds.
We hear plenty about McGuire’s love for his players, supplemented by profiles featuring some of them. His hatred of zebras. And his legendary courtside antics.
But while “McGuire” largely steers clear of the McGuire who could be both cold and ruthless, it isn’t all treetops, seashells and balloons.
Credit Crivello for some of that: Despite a few minor hiccups, he already owns this script. More important, he channels something of the existential McGuire behind the courtside jester, who knew that much of what the world saw was an act — and who simultaneously wondered who he was and why he’d been so lucky.
This McGuire rounds things off at the end by telling us it’s because of the people around him; there’s truth to that. But even as he hopes he’s wrong, Crivello’s McGuire also gives us glimpses of a man wondering whether we don’t in fact die alone, after all.