The Last Match
Opening Night: October 24, 2017
Closing: December 24, 2017
Theater: Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
You’ve given it all to reach the top of your game. Now where do you go from here? That’s the question at the heart of Anna Ziegler’s new play The Last Match. It’s the semifinals of the US Open, and two tennis greats are facing off in the match of their lives. Tim Porter, the aging all-American favorite, wants to prove to the world, his wife and himself that he’s still a champion. Hot-headed rising star Sergei Sergeyev struggles to believe he truly deserves to beat his lifelong hero.
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October 24, 2017
The “whiz” — or is it the “whoosh,” or maybe “sh-sh-sh-sh-sh”? — of an ace being served is described (competitively, of course) by rival tennis players in the opening moments of Anna Ziegler’s “The Last Match.” The speakers concede, though, that an onomatopoeia doesn’t do the job of explaining what it’s like to have a meteoric ball hurtling past your ears, shattering your hopes if not the sound barrier.
And besides, there’s another, graver noise that fills the heads of Tim (Wilson Bethel) and Sergei (Alex Mickiewicz) as they face off in the semifinals at the U.S. Open. That’s the roar of what Tim describes, in an agonized rush, as “the pressure and the failure and the death and the ambition and the coming up short.”
In other words, don’t you dare say it’s only a game. It’s not just a shiny cup that’s at stake in the ominously titled “The Last Match,” which opened Tuesday night at the Laura Pels Theater. It’s life itself.
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