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Playwright/author’s spirit imbues his beloved city
Reviving ‘That Championship Season’ on Broadway is a cast that includes Brian Cox, Jim Gaffigan, Chris Noth, Jason Patric, who is the son of playwright Jason Miller, and Kiefer Sutherland.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Agnes Cummings and Bob Shlesinger, both of Scranton, pose by a bust of their friend the late Jason Miller, which is on the Spruce Street side of Courthouse Square in Scranton.
RICH HOWELLS/FOR THE TIMES LEADER
Seized by sudden inspiration when he was crossing Courthouse Square after a night out with friends, Jason Miller once struck a dramatic pose and recited Shakespeare right there, in the dark.
“It was absolutely beautiful, at 2 o’clock in the morning,” Agnes Cummings remembered.
A lover of words and a lover of Scranton, Miller was equally comfortable talking to “the biggest bum in the world or the biggest CEO,” said Bob Shlesinger, who, like Cummings, counts himself as a long-time friend and theater colleague of the late actor/playwright.
As for his craft, Miller approached theater with reverence, “like it was a sanctuary,” Shlesinger said, recalling his friend’s advice: “You must always work your hardest, because it can always be better.”
Miller’s own hard work paid off notably in 1973, when he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award and New York Drama Critics Circle Award for his play “That Championship Season.”
“In my opinion, it’s one of the best American plays ever written,” Shlesinger said firmly.
The play is enjoying a Broadway revival this spring at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater in New York City and stars Miller’s son Jason Patric as Tom Daley.
It’s a role Miller based on himself, Shlesinger said.
“Tom Daley is the brightest of them all and has the most substance,” Shlesinger said, describing the character, one of four men who reunite at the home of their former basketball coach, 24 years after a high-school triumph.
Rounding out the cast are Chris Noth, Jim Gaffigan and Kiefer Sutherland, with Brian Cox as their coach.
“We’ve bonded,” Patric recently told The New York Times. “Like a sports team.”
Miller grew up in Scranton and died there in 2001, though he did spend some intervening years in New York and Hollywood. He set “That Championship Season” in his hometown and based it on his own experiences playing basketball at the former St. Patrick’s High School.
So what kind of things happened there? If you listen to Miller’s characters reminisce, you’ll learn there was at least one time when someone applied a numbing agent called wintergreen to another player’s jock strap.
“That’s a true story. That’s guy stuff,” Shlesinger said with a laugh.
But the play is about much more than youthful hijinks. There’s a theme of teamwork and loyalty strong enough to survive such betrayals as the affair successful businessman Phil Romano has with the wife of George Sitkowski, running for reelection as mayor of Scranton.
The businessman and the mayor were played by Paul Sorvino and Bruce Dern in the 1982 movie version, which was produced by Columbia Pictures and directed by Miller himself in Scranton. Martin Sheen was Tom Daley, Robert Mitchum played the coach, and Stacy Keach was James Daley, Tom’s responsible yet bitter older brother, the junior high-school principal.
It was quite an event when the film crews arrived, Shlesinger remembers.
“Everybody and their mother wanted to get a part,” said Shlesinger, who, then 31, became the local person with the biggest role – a minute or so of screen time in which he portrays a teacher getting a stern lecture about lesson plans from Keach’s character, the principal.
That scene was completed earlier than expected, so Shlesinger and Miller had free time to shoot some hoops at Riverside High School, one of many Scranton-area locations recognizable in the film.
“It was me and Martin Sheen against Bruce Dern and Stacy Keach,” Shlesinger said. “With Jason and a guy from the crew, it was three-on-three.”
Riverside High School still stands, as do many locations clearly recognizable in the film. The town’s train station on Lackawanna Avenue, for example, is now the Radisson Hotel. Nay Aug Park on Mulberry Street, where the Sitkowski character has a campaign rally, is still a place you can take a stroll or have a picnic.
The bus station where Tom Daley arrives in the movie is now a restaurant named Kildare’s. And the private home that was used as the coach’s house, complete with rose trellises along the porch, still stands on Main Street in Taylor.
Cummings and Shlesinger pointed out that house on a recent afternoon as they drove around Scranton, reminiscing about Miller’s life and times.
The home where he lived as a child still stands on South Fillmore Avenue in Scranton. Nearby are St. Patrick’s Church, where Miller was an altar boy, and his alma mater, the former St. Patrick’s High School.
In downtown Scranton you’ll find the Brooks Building on Spruce Street, where Miller lived in his later years, and Farley’s Restaurant on Adams Avenue, where Miller collapsed with a fatal heart attack in a booth near the door at age 61.
“I think we added years to his life,” Shlesinger said, reflecting on Miller’s return in 1986 to his roots in Scranton, where he worked with Shlesinger and Cummings in the Scranton Public Theater and helped launch its Summer Theater Festival.
“He got refocused into what he loved,” said Cummings, whose eyes filled with tears as she pulled out a copy of a speech Miller gave at a Keystone College commencement.
“Nobody could wrap their tongue around words the way he could,” she said, reading aloud part of his advice to the graduates.
“Cultivate in your lives, the sacredness of your life’s work,” he told them. “Have hope in the glittering promise of your future. Have charity in your love of yourself and your fellow man. And never abandon the belief that through your efforts you can illuminate with grace and dignity a darkening world.”
Miller himself had grace and dignity, Cummings said, as well as generosity.
“One Christmas he gave me a coat,” she said. “He literally would give you the coat off his back or just give you a coat because he wanted you to be warm.”
He also had a cheekiness to him, something she called “the little elf-dimple in his eye.”
Laughing, she recalled a story about Miller and his future wife Linda Gleason, daughter of the famous Jackie Gleason, both planning to work in summer stock in Vermont.
Jackie Gleason didn’t like Miller, Cummings said, and pressured the theater not to let the two perform together. Miller simply took another summer-theater position at a nearby college – so close it was within easy walking distance of Linda’s job.
“Jason could walk over to St. Michael’s,” Cummings said. “Isn’t that just like him?”
“Jason was full of the devil,” Shlesinger said.
He was also full of talent, writing the play “Nobody Hears a Broken Drum,” directing the documentary “A Mother’s Courage: The Mary Thomas Story” and appearing on many stages and in several movies.
His friends say his first love was the stage, but the public likely remembers him most clearly as the beleaguered young priest in the 1973 horror flick “The Exorcist.”
Miller was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actor for the role of Father Damian, but Shlesinger said, “He would have preferred to be recognized for ‘That Championship Season.’ ”
IF YOU GO
What: ‘That Championship Season’
Starring: Chris Noth, Brian Cox, Jim Gaffigan, Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland
Where: Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, 242 W. 45th St., New York City
Tickets: www.thatchampionshipseason.com