Stage Reviews : ‘Shooting Stars’ Shines in the First Half

“Shooting Stars” is a women’s basketball team, touring the hinterlands during the Christmas season, 1962. It’s also the name of Molly Newman’s amusing little comedy about the team, currently in its West Coast premiere at the Redlands Theatre Festival.

The women are a comedy act more than a bunch of athletes. Their paternalistic coach (Eric Morgan) instructs the members of his team to get laughs by poking each other with a giant powder puff, or to elicit personal fouls by pretending to be pinched by male opponents. He also chooses what his players eat, what they’ll get for Christmas, which of them will clean the latrines.

Worse, if any player has enough real athletic promise to be noticed by outsiders, the coach makes her feel guilty about the effect that her individual recognition might have on the rest of the team. And, yes, he takes most of the team’s earnings for himself.

In short, his racket is symptomatic of the sexism that gripped America in 1962. Newman (who co-wrote “Quilters”) doesn’t climb on a soapbox, and she retains a sense of humor. But her message comes through loud and clear.

Halfway through the play, though, something happens to the coach (let’s leave it vague), and the women have to fend for themselves. Some of them want to play real basketball.

Here is where the Redlands production stumbles. We’re supposed to believe that the Stars could play a mean game of real ball if only they had the chance, that they might actually be the best women’s basketball players in the world. Yet only a couple of these women (Claudia Lake and Frances Regal, with Shelley Toreson a long shot) look as if they might qualify for such a team.

The others look as if they would be much better at the coach’s comic shenanigans than they would be at bona fide basketball. Buxom,5-feet-4-inch Moira McCarty, for example, has sure-fire comic timing, but she should not be advised to consider basketball as a profession.

Lake and Jeannie Brzovic also handle the comedy--and the lines--with ease, but some of the others have problems. The cast is non-Equity. Michael Sundquist’s staging would have benefited from access to Los Angeles’ enormous professional talent pool.

Still, Redlands can take a bow for tackling a new play (in repertory with “The Miser,” “Picnic,” “Drood” and “Pump Boys and Dinettes”) that Los Angeles hasn’t yet seen.

Craig Steenerson designed an authentically seedy set (no explanation, though, for the big table in the middle of the locker room). The sound track (designer: Kristi Schermerhorn) of ‘60s pop tunes is lively and appropriate, especially the concluding sounds of Aretha Franklin in “Respect.”

And anyone should enjoy the experience of walking (or riding a tram) up a lush hillside to the alfresco theater (and picnic lawn) in Prospect Park at sunset.

The park is at the corner of Highland and Cajon in south Redlands. “Shooting Stars” plays Thursday and next Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. Tickets: $10; (714) 798-7277.