L-R: Eliza Simpson, McKenna Fox, Jennifer Laine Williams, Cristina Marie, Chudney Sykes and Samanthan Strelitz are the “Yankee Wives.”
Those Bronx-based boys of summer have had their share of drama this season — on and off the field. But year in and year out, some of best action happens behind the scenes, as the players on a “team-within-a-team” experience the rivalries and partnerships that come with being one of the “Yankee Wives.”
This Group Theatre Too production has novelist, screenwriter and playwright David Rimmer (a Pulitzer finalist for 1980’s “Album”) directing a revised version of his sexy and irreverent 1982 play. Inspired to pen a fictional account of Yankee wives after watching the real Bronx Bombers on TV in the 1970s, Rimmer recalls how he “realized they were an alternate family. They spend more time with each other than with anybody else because no one else is there for them. It’s a cloistered society — no one else knows what it’s like.” Audiences seem to disagree with that last assessment: Over the years, Rimmer’s been told by more than one real-life baseball wife that the play’s fly-on-the-wall observations are right on target.
Aug. 29-Sept. 15. Thurs.-Sat. at 8pm, Sun. at 2pm (except Aug. 29 at 7pm & Sept. 12 at 6:30pm). At The Hudson Guild Theater (441 W. 26th St., btw. 9th & 10th Aves.). For tickets ($18, $15 for students/seniors), call 212-868-4444 or visit yankeewives.com. Also visit grouptheatretoo.org.
