Northwestern University - Syllabus Yearbook (Evanston, IL)

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• w CHrfRL€Y9 RGVJIGW The Northwestern Athletic Department has a reputation for producing some great tragedies. In fact, it is possible that the 1974-75 season is the most tragic yet. There were times when the two latest plays, Pal Johnny, and The Winter of Discontent, were so much like their predecessors, that audiences might have thought they were watching productions from the past two seasons. Both shows were about losers, as are most of the Athletic Department produc- tions these days. Their common theme was the hopelessness of trying to make a winner out of a loser at a semi-prestigious midwestern university. It takes time, repeated John Pont, during the first act of Pal Johnny. Yet his teams got worse instead of better. The theme was the same old tired one which has been batted around the Northwestern Athletic Department stage for the last three years. The last time the Northwestern Athletic Department stray- ed from its meat and potatoes produc- tions was fall of 1971 when the bouncy musical Maurie and His Friends, starring quarterback Marie Daigneau and Alex Agase as the coach, depicted a winning football team which sang and danced its way into second place in the Big Ten with a 7-4 record. Although the theme was redundant, both Pal Johnny and The Winter of Discontent were perceptive pictures of what losing can do to men as they attempt to combat its degrading affects on their careers. Pont was brilliant as the frenzied paranoid, Jeckyl and Hyde football coach of ' ' Pal Johnny who hadn ' t had a winning team in five years. Tex Winter surpassed Pont ' s performance in the leading role of The Winter of Discon- tent, the story of a once great coach humiliated by his team ' s clumsy defeats. Pal Johnny began with charming John Pont, despite his five year losing streak, trying to convince everyone that his team would be a winner. The next week his team, the Wildcats, went out and lost its first game 41-7. I was surprised at our inefficiency, said the Wildcat quarterback, played by Mitch Anderson. It is one of the many lines which provoked more laughter than sym- pathy for the characters. Anderson delivered a strong perfor- mance as a one-time great quarterback, twice Big Ten passing leader, whose career went down the drain during his senior vear. Anderson ' s characterization of an athlete down on luck was good, but it fell short of making him a tragic hero. Anderson was bitter at the end of the play, never understanding why things happened the way they did in his team ' s 3-8 season. Don ' t ask me what hap- pened, I don ' t want to talk about it, the Quarterback said at the end of the play. One of the strength ' s of Pal Johnny was the brilliant performances of four actors in minor roles. Paul Hiemenz, Larry Lilja, Carl and Joe Patrnchak stand out in the huge cast of over 100 actors, as seniors who couldn ' t cope with the agony of defeat anymore. They performed well in the action sequences and were especially good in the post game locker room. Carl Patrnchak held the crowd in the palm of his hand when he delivered his soliloquy after the Wildcats lost the final home of the four seniors ' careers. I just hope the younger guys see this, shouted Carl Patrnchak as he stripped the pads off his battered body. I just hope they learn from this and do something about it. We seniors won ' t be around, I know, but well, I just hope they see this and try to turn it around. It hurts to have never played on a winner. While the audience was moved by the tragic plight of Carl Patrnchak, his twin brother Joe, Hiemenz, Lilja, and other players, no one could really feel sorry ior Pont. The tragic situation of some of the Wildcats was clearly demonstrated, but the audience came away at the end of Pal Johnny feeling somehow that Pont deserved his fate. After Pont ' s team ' s losses began to pile up, (his team lost its first three games by a total score of 139-17) , he degenerated into a raving maniac, who desperately tried to maintain a calm exterior to the outside world. He screamed at his players on the sidelines, then soft peddled his actions after the game. He snarled his answers to repor- ter ' s post-game questions on Saturday, but smiled optimism by Wednesday. While Pont ' s characterization was fas- cinating, it lacked depth. No motivation for his actions was ever given. What he is really like never surfaced in the play. If there was a weakness in Pal Johnny, this was it. And while it was fascinating to watch Pont ' s antics, the question remains: what makes Johnny run? The depth of character was never a problem in The Winter of Discontent , as Tex Winter turned in a virtuoso performance as a once great coach mired in a losing environment. Winter played « basketball coach recently hired by the Wildcats to rejuve- nate their dismal program. He came with a fantastic success record as a college coach, having had only one losing season in his 20 year career. In the first scene it was revealed that Winter ' s first year with 148

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the Wildcats was a mild success, as he brought them out of the Big Ten cellar for the first time in three years and achieved a 9-15 record in 1973-74 without two of his best players who missed the season because of academic ineligibility. The action of the play began with hope for the coming season as the ineligible players returned and the others players had a year to learn Winter ' s system. Then Winter ' s world collapsed around him. His bumbling team threw away game after game, losing two games in overtime, one in double overtime, and a total of seven games by four points or less. The play worked best during the game scenes. While his team put on a slapstick show which had most of the audience in stitches, Winter stood in the background watching. But after a while, the audience ' s attention was drawn to Win- ter. He dominated and took over the scene as he agonized and bemoaned his team ' s stupidity. In these scenes Winter showed himself to be an actor of great animation and range. The audience felt his pain and frustration. Winter ' s performance transcended the comic scene in front of him and turned it into high drama. Winter managed to sum up all his frustration and embarrassment in the third act of the play during a game with Michigan State before the home crowd in McGaw Hall. Unable to tolerate the dumb mistakes his team continually made during the game, Winter finally broke. He grabbed a folding chair at court side. The chair tipped over and Winter landed on his back, his legs stuck up in the air for a minute until an assistant helped him up. The audience didn ' t know whether to laugh or cry and Winter was a joy to watch as he milked the scene for all it was worth. Reminiscent of Casey Stengel ' s im- mortal line, Can ' t anyone here play this game, in the long running broadway production of The Amazing Mets in the early 1960s, Winter, too, had his own moments when he realized the hopeless- ness of his plight. Sometimes I feel like we ' re batting our heads against the wall, Winter said in the beginning of the third act. No matter how many times we work on correcting them in practice, in a stress situation, they ' ll (his players) often go out there and revert to the same old bad habits. . .What does it take to be a good college coach? It ' s complicated, and it ' s certainly not enough to be a good teacher. No matter how well or how often I blow the whistle and demonstrate the funda- mentals in practice, I can ' t go out there and do it for them in a game. As a critic once said, Great acting is not the portrayal of character but the development of character. Winter ' s disintegration was clearly mapped in this evenly paced tragedy as he tried every possible recourse to avoid another defeat. After looking in vain to his bench to find better players, Winter looked to the future. In the end Winter admitted what he knew all along, that his team didn ' t know how to win. I ' m no miracle worker, Winter said to the audience in a moving scene in the third act as he braced for another losing effort. Finally the season ended for Winter as his team lost its last game 94-70 to Wisconsin, a team it beat earlier in the season. The Wildcats clunked into last place in the conference. The season produced the worst record in Winter ' s career, 6-20. And as if the coach had not suffered enough, the play ended without hope for the future. Winter was frustrated in his attempts to get a top high school basketball player into Northwestern because the school ' s admission ' s department wouldn ' t let him into school here. Now he ' ll go to Michigan and score 30 points against us next year, said one of Winter ' s players at the end of the play. Winter wandered off stage in the last scene, seeing his status as one of college basketball ' s winningest active coaches slip away. The future looked bleak for the coach, and perhaps he realized what the audience did: that his tragic mistake was coming to Northwestern in the first place. cmrlgv NCkenrw 149