Lookingglass’ ‘Mr. Rickey’ delivers a grand slam

Not a single ball is pitched or batted in Ed Schmidt’s play, “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting,” the story of Jackie Robinson and the breaking of the color barrier — that unwritten but seemingly immutable “law” — in Major League Baseball. Yet it’s a good bet you will never witness a fiercer, more competitive championship game on any field than the one now unfolding on the stage of Lookingglass Theatre.

That is where Robinson, along with an irrepressible teenage bellhop by the name of Clancy Hope, and three iconic black celebrities of the time — Joe Louis, the champion boxer; Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the maverick tap dancer, and Paul Robeson, the former athlete-turned-actor, singer and “commie” political activist — gather in a large hotel room, and where Rickey gives Jackie his No. 42 jersey, and prepares to announce to a crowd of sports writers that he has moved the 28-year-old player up to “the varsity team.”

The basic story, of course, is an American classic. Although the event chronicled in Schmidt’s play is about a meeting that never actually took place, it very well might have — and its characters and their arguments ring true in both substance and fiery, combative spirit. Meanwhile, fans of the groundbreaking event, as well as theater fans, can loudly cheer the playwright (whose drama first arrived onstage more than two decades ago, but has been deftly tweaked for this new Chicago edition), as well as director J. Nicole Brooks, who has recruited a galvanic “all-star” team of six actors, each worthy of a special pennant all their own.

Set in April 1947, Rickey, the president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers (Larry Neumann Jr., in a portrayal that captures the shrewd, determined and unblinking personality of a man making a bold and highly controversial move), has called Jackie (a tightly coiled Javon Johnson, who finally has his moment) to his hotel room to give him the news of his promotion. He also firmly reminds him that for the next three years, he must live like a monk, and refrain in every way from responding to what surely will be jeers, threats and assaults.

Rickey, who explains the roots of his own particular passion regarding this move toward integration, also has invited the three celebrities to the room, hoping they will attend the press conference alongside him and present a much-needed unified front. But each of these men has his own scar-laced racial history, priorities and ego concerns. So the meeting turns into quite the blistering ideological battlefield.

The impatient, mostly silent, yet tempestuous Louis (Anthony Fleming III, ideal as a man who can be brooding one moment, and then fly off the handle the next) is willing to go along with Rickey, as is “Bojangles” (the peerless Ernest Perry Jr., who moves like a dream as the aging but still impossibly fleet dancer, and has the lingo down pat). But it Robeson (the ever-bravura James Vincent Meredith, in an altogether riveting turn as the angry, politically charged intellectual), who rages against what has been left unsaid (that Robinson’s ascent will mark the destruction of the Negro Leagues, with no just compensation provided, and that Rickey could have acted years earlier). He also launches into devastating personal attacks against Louis (who, despite his fame, is broke and desperate), against “Bojangles” (who also is penniless, and who he accuses of being an Uncle Tom) and Jackie (whose talent he questions and who he accuses of selling out).

Wide-eyed Clancy Hope (Kevin Douglas, an actor of irresistible charm, grace and brilliant comic timing) has his eyes opened even wider as a witness to the meeting. He also is just young enough so that he will be there as the civil rights movement of the 1960s unfolds, and as many equally complex arguments come to the fore.

But in 1947, it was Rickey and Robinson who set the parameters for change: They hit a home run in their time.

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