THEATER REVIEW:’Rounding Third’ hits a double

This isn’t actually the first time around the bases for “Rounding Third,” a two-man show about life, love and Little League baseball, currently earning new fans at Burbank’s own Colony Theatre.

Here in California, “Rounding Third” spent its 2003 season at the Laguna Playhouse with the same director (Andrew Barnicle) and one of the same cast members before hitting the road to Off-Broadway. All of which explains how a good script can look like a great script when a winning production team adopts the show.

The premise isn’t the problem. “Rounding Third” is about the sparks that fly when pitting a “Win at any cost” coach up against his new “Gee, aren’t the kids supposed to have fun?” assistant. It’s about how maybe success means taking home a trophy for the entire season, or maybe success means just catching one fly ball a year.

As playwright Richard Dresser tells us, when it comes to defining what it means to be a winner in society today, both dads are right. By the end of the play, they each learn to look at each other with a new respect, if not with the slightest amount of understanding.

The directing isn’t the problem. Director Barnicle clearly knows and likes these characters, and he has found new and original ways to show the audience that they should care as much as he does.

The acting isn’t the problem. Jerry Kernion hits a half-dozen home runs as Don, a Little League coaching fanatic who keeps his clipboard full of statistics, and thinks there are only two kinds of boys — the ones who want to play baseball and the ones who’d rather be in “Brigadoon.” And Kevin Symons is heart-wrenchingly delightful as Michael, a somewhat older version of sweet, honest, little Opie Taylor from Mayberry, assuming Opie ever grew up and joined the coaching staff of his own son’s baseball team.

So what’s the problem?

First, ladies, take warning: “Rounding Third” is a male-bonding thing. It’s about male coaches and their male children playing a masculine sport.

The women in their lives seem to be either dead or adulterous. This leaves a large portion of the female audience with very little that they can directly relate to.

Second, “Rounding Third” is billed as a comedy. It isn’t a comedy, it shouldn’t be called a comedy and it shouldn’t even try to be one. It’s a serious play, about a serious issue, that happens to have some very good laughs in it.

Third, far too much time is spent in the first act setting up the two main characters and their respective life problems. So the splendors of the second act come about when they are least expected. Included in the list of second-act splendors is Michael’s earnest prayer, suddenly suspended in slow-motion, as he begs God to help his troubled little boy be part of the game, just once. This leaves the audience wondering why they weren’t given a few more moments just as special as that one a little earlier on.

Technically, David Potts’ set design is unobtrusive and A. Jeffrey Schoenberg’s costumes are unassuming, just as they should be.

Even if the Colony Theatre had never given “Rounding Third” quite as smooth and professional a production, it would still have been a good show. The question is, how good?