USA TODAY International Edition
New musical offers Mo Cheeks anthem moment
Adaptation of ‘Dave’ includes ballpark scene
Arena Stage in Washington morphs into nearby Nationals Park for a dandy sequence of a scene in the new musical “Dave,” based on the 1993 movie of the same name.
President Bill Mitchell comes to the ballpark to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. Well, it’s not really the president; it’s Dave Kovic, his impersonator/doppelganger. (In the musical, as in the movie, the news isn’t fake, but the president is.)
The ballpark scene centers on the national anthem. Theater patrons spontaneously stand, as if in the crowd at the game. A pop singer tortures the anthem with dreadfully hilarious vocal affectations. As she loses her way, and her lines, Dave steps up and helps her recover. And when she does, the audience sings along.
The feel-good moment echoes the time in 2003 when Mo Cheeks, then coach of the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, famously stepped in to help a 13year-old girl who lost her place as she sang the anthem. Cheeks put his arm around her and helped her remember the words. Natalie Gilbert regained her footing and her voice. She’d later call Cheeks her guardian angel.
Type “Mo Cheeks” into Google, and the first thing that comes up, even before “hall of fame,” is “national anthem.” The clip has roughly 750,000 views on YouTube, including one from Nell Benjamin, the “Dave” lyricist who watched it for the first time in July when USA TODAY called to ask if Cheeks had been the scene’s inspiration.
It turns out not, though Benjamin understands why some might think so.
“Yeah, oh totally, now that I’ve seen it,” she says. “I think it’s just a beautiful moment. And even though they’re not linked, it’s certainly a nice synchronicity.”
A crucial difference is Gilbert lost her place innocently while the musical’s pop star loses hers by making the anthem about herself.
“You are tempted to laugh at her and say, ‘Oh, that’s what you get,’ ” Benjamin says. “But our hero, who is uniquely generous, saves her with kindness. He brings us all together. That’s why we have a national anthem, right? To bring us all together.”
Except, of course, that the anthem is recently a point of division at NFL games, where some players kneel as protest against social injustice and racial inequity and the current president rails against them and discredits their cause.
Benjamin says the scene was written before the controversy so it isn’t meant as any sort of comment on it. She understands it could be in the audience’s mind and thinks the scene is probably more powerful for that context.
“As a lyricist, I think of the actual lyrics of the national anthem,” Benjamin says. “It basically says bombs and rockets going off in the night only serve to illuminate the flag: ‘Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.’ And maybe the (NFL) flashpoint — the fights and the protest — just serve to illuminate the greatness of what we’re arguing over. Right? They give proof through the night that the anthem stands for all Americans who want more citizenship. And that’s a beautiful thing.”
The musical is a fable not set in our fraught political moment. And the anthem scene, set at a ballpark just a few fastballs from the theater, is an on-yourfeet crowd pleaser.
“At a game, you know what the proper ritual is,” Benjamin says. “It’s the national anthem: ‘Please rise.’ At the theater, you could stand or not. We’re not going to judge you. So you get beyond the proper ritual, and you get beyond the symbol, to this moment of unity. People cry and they’re moved and they feel patriotic — and they feel good about feeling patriotic.”