The Cast
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Robert Breuler (Omar Carlyle) is celebrating his 35th year as a member of Actors Equity Association. From his first role at Joe Papp's New York Public Theatre where he played Kress in David Rabe's The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel to the recent Mornings at Seven at Drury Lane-Water Tower he has played over one hundred roles. Some of them are: his Apple Tree performance as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; at the Goodman, Moe in Riverview, and Dean Strauss in Spinning Into Butter. Bob is a member of the Steppenwolf acting ensemble where he has performed in some 37 roles over 20 years. Some favorites: Botvinnic in A Walk in the Woods also by Lee Blessing, Father Lux in Our Lady of 121st Street , Pa Joad in the Grapes of Wrath, Charlie "Blackie" Blackwell in John Olive's Killers which he recently directed at the Mary Archie Theatre. Favorite plays: Cherry Orchard, A Lesson Before Dying, The Time of your Life, Mother Courage and Her Children, Uncle Vany, The Infidel and Molly Sweeney.Television credits: Prison Break, Early Edition, NYPD-Blue, The Untouchables, Angel Street and in made-for-TV movies such as Open Admissions, The Father Clements Story and Keeper of the City with Lou Gosset Jr. Films include The Crucible, Trial by Jury, The Company, Love and Action in Chicago, Miles from Home, A Piece of Eden and Suspended Animation. He recently performed at Millennium Park where he was in Studs Terkel's Will the Circle be Unbroken? One of his favorite roles was with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra where he played The Devil in Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale. On Broadway he has been in The Grapes of Wrath, The Song of Jacob Zulu, Carousel and Death of a Salesman. He is a recipient of the William and Eva Fox Fellowship Grant. His wife, the beautiful Suzanne Petri who has put up with him for twenty years, sings every other Saturday at Cyrano's Cafe Simone on Wells Street in Chicago.
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Matthew Brumlow (Ry Davis) is an member of the ATC ensemble. Favorite roles include Long in The Hairy Ape, the Mercenary in Kid-Simple, and Rodolpho in A View from the Bridge, for which he received a 2005 Joseph Jefferson nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In Chicago, Matthew has worked with Writers' Theatre, Apple Tree Theatre, Northlight, Chicago Dramatists, Organic/Touchstone, About Face, PROP, Aardvark, Azusa Productions, and the premiere of the first American Girls Revue. Matthew also has five credits with Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and three credits with Shakespeare on the Green. He is particularly proud to have been in playwright Brett Neveu's first Chicago production The Last Barbecue as well as G. Riley Mills' world premiere of Raising Blue. Regional credits include work with Peninsula Players, Door Shakespeare, five productions with the marvelous Montana Shakespeare in the Parks where favorite roles include Tartuffe and Shylock, and a national tour of A Streetcar Named Desire with Montana Repertory Theatre in which he played Stanley. Matthew has been an acting mentor in Steppenwolf's Arts Exchange, he has studied with the Royal National Theatre in London, and he is a summa cum laude graduate of Lee University and Northwestern University.
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Press
Pioneer Press feature
Chicago Sun-Times review
Daily Herald review
Chicago Reader review
NPR 848 Dueling Critics review
Windy City Times review
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Highlights from the Pioneer Press feature by Myrna Petlicki Omar Carlyle and Ry Davis are total strangers, yet they are linked for life.
Ry is Omar's son -- the product of a brief fling. The two know nothing about each other until the day Ry shows up at Omar's door, determined to connect with his father.
Robert Breuler and Matthew Brumlow play the father and son in "The Winning Streak" by Lee Blessing, at Apple Tree Theatre in Highland Park, under Brian Russell's direction.
Omar initially has no interest in his illegitimate offspring, but the former umpire is an obsessive, superstitious baseball fan. When his favorite team begins a winning streak coinciding with Ry's visits, Omar keeps meeting with his son, hoping that will keep the streak alive.
Russell revealed that when he first read the play two years ago, it resonated on a personal level.
"My natural father left the family when I was three," he said. "I tracked him down when I was 14 and had a lot of similar questions that Ry has for Omar in this play."
Russell was also attracted to this project because of his admiration for the playwright's work.
"I find the play to be very rich and multilayered," he said. "It deals with a lot of critical questions that relate to all of our lives, especially how we tell stories about ourselves and what maybe didn't actually occur the way we tell the story. But we've been doing it so long that it's become the central truth."
Brumlow added: "It's a tough play because there's so much deception."
Breuler, who played the Russian in the Steppenwolf Theatre production of Blessing's "A Walk in the Woods," said he and the playwright have been good friends for a long time -- and even played softball together.
Breuler said the reason baseball is so important to Omar is that "he doesn't have much in life." What he has is a bad temper--a trait he shares with his long-lost son. And, "they're liars," Breuler added.
"I'm a huge baseball fan," Brumlow said. "Not that Ry is. He doesn't know anything about it nor does he really care much about it. He just wants to get to know this dad he's never known. But I think the metaphor of baseball is so important. He learns to appreciate it because that is how his dad is able to communicate with him."
Omar's decision to continue meeting with Ry goes beyond any winning streak, director Russell believes.
"On a deeper and more truthful level, he's curious. What's this little piece of him like?"
Breuler added, "He wants to see how he's represented by a child in the world."
It's a very touching play, Brumlow said: "Here are two characters who are completely at odds and yet they find a way to connect."
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Highlights from the Chicago Sun-times review by Hedy Weiss
In Lee Blessing's play "The Winning Streak," which received its Chicago debut Sunday night at Highland Park's Apple Tree Theatre, a thirtysomething man, Ry Davis (Matthew Brumlow), finally confronts Omar Carlyle (Bob Breuler), the man he believes to be his father. As it turns out, Omar might just need to know his son as much as the son needs to know his father. On the other hand, maybe it would have been better to have let sleeping dogs lie.
The two men reluctantly bond through baseball, but on a deeper level, they begin to communicate because they each need to know certain things, and they become willing if tense hostages to each other over the course of the three weeks they spend together.
Under the direction of Brian Russell (who did such a fine job at Apple Tree recently with "Three Tall Women"), Breuler (who manages to be admirably unlovable) and Brumlow (an actor who is radically different from play to play) grow just enough connective tissue to make you believe they share some DNA.
They make you wonder what Ry might have been like, for better or for worse, had his father been around.
SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED
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Highlights from the Daily Herald review by Barbara Vitello
Apple Tree Theatre put together a solid team for "The Winning Streak."
Brian Russell, who directed the company's fine production of "Three Tall Women," and actors Bob Breuler and Matthew Brumlow have major-league talent.
Both actors do an admirable job, with Breuler revealing the shame and regret beneath Omar's gruff exterior and Brumlow perfectly capturing Ry's wounded heart filled with a "hunger so immense ... nothing can fill it."
Russell also deserves credit for tempering the play's sentiment with his restrained direction, which in lesser hands would have reduced "The Winning Streak" to the minor league.
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Highlights from the Chicago Reader review
As a commercial commodity, Lee Blessing's play is pure Tuesdays With Morrie: a heart-tugging, easily tourable star vehicle about the bond between two men of different generations...
Omar's boozy white-trash proclivities wouldn't work for Morrie star Harold Gould, but they suit Robert Breuler fine...
Breuler turns his breathy, drawn-out pronunciation of "Milwaukee" into an occasion for comedy, deep sadness, and not a little medical concern. Critic's Choice
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Listen to the NPR 848 review by dualing critics, Jonathan Abarbanel and Kelly Kleiman
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Highlights from the Windy City Times review by Mary Shen Barnidge
None of this would make any difference if Robert Breuler did not make Carlyle a character so cozy and congenial that we warm to him immediately, even as we recognize his less-charming real-life counterpart in the daytime gaffers, nursing tap beers at the sports bars. Matthew Brumlow's Ryland is also a familiar figure in our modern society, his anomie expressed in the impatient petulance of a disillusioned child not yet ready to accept disappointment. Blessing's always-articulate dialogue provides them the fuel with which to generate a chemistry that softens the baselines of this well-worn genre, bringing us home safe and satisfied.
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Photos
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Background
In 1998, the San Diego Padres did what no one expected them to do: they secured their second Division title in three years as well as the World Series, all while winning a club record 98 games in the process. In that same year, playwright Lee Blessing was told that his father was diagnosed with lung cancer and had only six months left to live.
Blessing began to notice how quickly the disease was disabling his father, causing the playwright to spend more and more time in San Diego to be with him. Blessing also saw how the San Diego Padres were helping his father to get up and see another day, if only to watch them continue in their winning streak. “It gave him a lifeline as it also gave me the idea for my play,” Blessing said.
It was during this time that Blessing wanted to confront and work out certain issues with his father before it was too late. While Blessing made it clear the characters and issues faced in The Winning Streak were not the same as those he faced with his father, there are certain similarities in how the characters reunite and come to know and understand each other. “The reason that I love this play, about two men who were going to forge a bond that lasts, is that it gets farther down the road in that regard than I was able to go with my father,” stated Blessing, though he admitted he was determined that his characters would have the kind of resolve he was not fortunate enough to have with his father.
Though the play deals with serious and sometimes dark themes, in the end Blessing promises, “You don't have to be a baseball fan to love The Winning Streak. It's very funny. You'll laugh a lot.” cast | press | photos | background | tickets
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