By SHARON EBERSON

The sports analogies, as you might imagine, are a sure thing. It’s all about teamwork when you are talking to the stars of King James, a play that explores the bond between superfans of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The two-hander by Raviv Joseph quickly became a favorite of regional theaters after its New York debut in 2023, and the play makes its Pittsburgh debut starting this weekend, as a co-production of City Theatre and the Cleveland Play House.

Their production of King James first held court in Cleveland last month, directed by Monteze Freeland and featuring a set designed by Tony Ferrieri. Pittsburgh actor Michael Patrick Trimm plays Matt and Cleveland native Robert Hunter, Shawn, the two characters who start from a mutual love of LeBron and the Cavs, to form a lasting if sometimes rocky friendship. 

After a few weeks’ separation as King James moved across state lines, Hunter joined Trimm on a recent Zoom interview, having just arrived for his first-ever extended stay in Pittsburgh.

The Cleveland run received positive reviews, with the Akron Beacon Journal saying, “ ‘Joseph, the playwright, isn’t subtle about the power of sports to unite people from across all walks of life. But by setting the story in Cleveland, a city bound by decades of collective sports suffering, he makes an even stronger point: these bonds can be meaningful, long-lasting and powerful enough to overcome our differences. The result is funny, poignant and deeply resonant.”

It may help to know something about “King” LeBron James, among the greatest to play the game and still at it, at age 40. James is from Akron, and started his career with the Cavs, then twice broke Ohioans’ hearts by leaving. With the King on the roster, the team won its only NBA Championship, in the 2015-2016 season, defeating the Golden State Warriors in dramatic fashion, as the Cavs became the first team to overcome a 3-1 deficit in the Finals. With James now in Los Angeles, the Cavs are currently the top seed in the NBA’s Eastern Conference Playoffs.

With no pro basketball team to root for in Pittsburgh, Trimm has become a convert to the Cavs, showing off his hat with the team’s logo. 

“It is funny because I hate bandwagon fans in Pittsburgh, but I pretty much immediately started to fall in love with the Cavs,” he said. “It started off just being like, ‘OK, this is the role …’ And now I’m really excited for what they’re doing. Being in Cleveland for [their recent success] was a really happy accident. It made it a lot easier to buy into the persona in the show.”

Despite a focus on Cleveland fandom, Trimm notes that the story is universal. For example, in the City of Champions, Pirates fans, in particular, can relate to any long-suffering fanbase. 

Trimm, with Hunter nodding along, said, “If I could speak to my yinzer fellow sports fans who may be like, ‘Well, I don’t know, man, it’s about LeBron. It’s about Cleveland. That’s not me.’ Without giving too much away, this play uses LeBron as an allegory, where you could easily insert other transcendent sports figures who’ve meant so much to their city … Sidney Crosby, Tom Brady, some of these other larger than life legends.”

The thrust of Joseph’s story is a bond that evolves between two men, one White and one Black. Trimm’s Matt is a Cleveland bartender who needs to unload his Cavaliers season tickets after making a bad investment. Shawn shows up, offering Matt a lot less than the asking price, but both men realize they are keen on the team’s rookie phenom – LeBron James. A deal is struck, and the play checks in on how they are progressing over the course of James’ career. 

“This is an actor’s play. … I’m going through all types of emotions, from excitement to sadness, to bitterness to rage,” Hunter said of Shawn. “And both characters are dancing around those multilayered emotions throughout the entire play.”

As he spoke, the actors were on the verge of heading over to the South Side, to reunite with their director and go over the now familiar lines, but mostly, to adjust the technical aspects of the play. 

Trimm noted that City’s Main Stage will maintain the thrust configuration that was in place for Birthday Candles.

“They’ve done a great job of calibrating the set to both spaces,” Trimm said, meaning in Cleveland and Pittsburgh. “For the first time in a long time, City Theatre has adjusted the back half of their season to be in thrust, which is so cool. And this play in thrust, I think, is really awesome. A lot of theaters are doing it in a proscenium, and I think we add something unique.”

Most of the tech work will be lighting in the new space, he added, with a nod to lighting designer Jakyung C. Seo. 

 For Hunter, it’s a new city, a new theater, and but not entirely a whole new ballgame, so to speak. 

“As an actor, you always have a lot of work to do. You have a lot of homework. Every time I run a scene with Michael, it’s like, ‘Alright, we’re about to start this rollercoaster, and for two hours, it’s me and him,” Hunter said. “We’re barely off stage, and we’re jumping through every possible human emotion. …  It’s an actor’s dream, and it’s also an audience dream because they get to think about sports and a time where they can remember. There’s not too many plays like that, that could be actors’ medium-type plays, but at the same time, affect the audience as well. That’s what makes this very unique for me.”

Just to be clear, Hunter is “a huge Cavs fan – that’s just what it means to be a Clevelander. So, Cavs fan, Browns fan –  I don’t even like baseball, but I’m an Indians fan. It’s just like that.” 

Not unlike being born and raised in Pittsburgh. However, Hunter said, Trimm did “an amazing job being a Clevelander,” including “learning how to eat like a Clevelander.” A self-proclaimed foodie, he’s looking forward to digging into the food scene while he’s here.

“I am just excited to travel and do what I love,” Hunter added. “I think that’s the coolest thing ever,” and a dream that’s been 10 years in the making. Now, “I look up and it’s like, ‘Wow, I’m doing it. I’m getting paid to go outside my city to act, doing what I love to do, and I’m doing this full time. So this whole production has just been me riding a wave of blessing.”

He and Trimm hit off from the start. 

“You don’t always get lucky enough to have a scene partner where you really connect, you vibe with from day one,” Trimm said. “And that’s where I think magic kind of happens. And with Robert, we sat down at the table read on day one in Cleveland, and we’d never met, we hadn’t read together, we hadn’t exchanged a single text or anything, and we were like, ‘Hey man, are you ready to do this thing? And it was very much like two rookies on a sports team being like, ‘Alright, we’re going into camp. Let’s see what we’ve got. Let’s see if we can make this team.’ And then we dropped into the table read, and it was like we had known each other for months, at least. There’s a real special rare thing being an artist, getting to find a kindred spirit artist that you connect with.”

Director Freeland is a Baltimore native who settled in Pittsburgh after attending Point Park University. It’s here that he launched a career as a performer, director and soon-to-be artistic director of the Alumni Theater Company, following his stint as co-artistic director of City Theatre.

“He came to play on day one,” Trimm said of Freeland, who made a point about how integral sports was in his life in Baltimore, as it was to his actors’ in their respective cities, and having done a deep dive into James’ legacy within pro basketball and beyond.

“It was really awesome, him leading this ship,” Trimm said, “and not just having done that research and coming from that world of sports, but his understanding of the fragility that comes with having a male friendship. We always think of male friendship as this very kind of stoic, fun sort of masculine thing. But what this play investigates is that men aren’t allowed to have the same sorts of vulnerability, the same sorts of elasticity in their friendship that women sometimes are.”

The playwright visited the cast during previews in Cleveland, and told them the idea for the work came while he was walking to a Cavs game, during the season that they won the NBA Championship. 

Part of the inspiration was about the perception of masculinity in American society, and how accessing emotions is often thought of as taboo, except perhaps when it comes to sports fandom. 

Seeing the characters develop over a period of time allows for growth in self-awareness. Hunter noted that Shawn finds himself asking, “On what level do I really care about sports? How much is it really affecting my entire life?”

“Having to ask those questions is very pivotal,” he said, “because sometimes we all have something that feels like home for us, but it’s not necessarily giving us the growth that we actually need and deserve. And we need to reflect and take time to look at ourselves and say, ‘Okay, is this really helping me?’ ”

As serious as some of those questions are, and as spirited as zealous sports fandom can be, there’s also a lot of comedy in the full-court press of themes, which, said Hunter, is a result of “Rajiv’s genius,” leaving the actor “blown away” by the experience.

Like teammates, Hunter and Trimm continued to trade compliments about working together, as they prepared to present the local premiere of King James. There were no Cleveland jokes to be heard during the conversation, and the Pittsburgher had one more note for the hometown crowd. 

Said Trimm, “This play is as much about a town like Pittsburgh as it is about a place like Cleveland. And I can vehemently say you will not walk away feeling like this doesn’t speak to you as a sports fan.”

TICKETS AND DETAILS

City Theatre’s production of King James opens April 19th and runs through May 11th, 2025 at City’s Mainstage Theatre on the South Side. Tickets at https://citytheatre.culturaldistrict.org/production/94451/king-james

Categories: Our Posts, Show Previews

Tags: City Theatre, Cleveland Play House, King James, LeBron James, Pittsburgh premiere