THEATER REVIEW : ‘Coach’ Tackles the Fanaticism, Fun of Football

Any show that starts with strobe-lit overkill can’t be all good. But John Posey’s solo performance at Santa Monica Playhouse, “Father, Son & Holy Coach,” survives that initial misstep and becomes a funny and absorbing chronicle of a fanatical father’s attempt to rear a gridiron superstar.

Posey’s show is billed as “semi-autobiographical.” The characters are named Sanford, not Posey, and some of the material sounds as if it were shaped to emphasize the punch line, not the absolute truth. Still, Posey has his own sports credits, and more important, he looks and moves like a jock. There is reason to believe he knows what he’s talking about.

Playing a variety of characters, Posey creates the football-driven world of Tupelo County, Ga. The sense of a whole community caught up in football madness is reinforced by frequent samples of the chatter on a sports talk show on the local radio station.

But Posey never strays too far from Ed Sanford and his son Johnny. When the boy is 5, Ed bullies him into entering the Easter egg hunt that’s reserved for boys aged 6 to 10; it’s all part of early football training. Ed’s god is Knute Rockne, and Rockne’s autobiography is his gospel.

There are a few curious gaps. There isn’t much about Johnny’s middle childhood, from 6 to 15. And we don’t get much sense of the son’s gradually growing resentment over his father’s excesses, until he suddenly stops playing after an injury in a college game.

Posey is better at presenting anecdotes than he is at examining their consequences, and his play is more forgettable than it might have been if he had dug a little deeper. A final revelation attempts to explain all that went before, but it sounds contrived. Surely it would have been impossible to keep such a secret in a town as football-crazy as this one.

Nevertheless, this is a story that both jocks and those who can’t stand the jock ethos might enjoy. Stephen Rothman directed.

“Father, Son & Holy Coach,” Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 Fourth St., Santa Monica. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Ends May 23. $17.50. (310) 394-9779, ext. 1. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.