Baby Steps with “Baby Foot”

It’s 3 a.m. in the dayroom of a recovery center where heroin addicts and other similarly afflicted gather to take their best shot at finding a new lease on life. A few pieces of well-worn furniture clutter the small room. Meeting schedules and sobriety slogans hang limply from the walls. To one side sits a much-used foosball table—some places known as a “baby foot” table.

In this drab setting, “Baby Foot”—written and directed by Tim Venable—brings together three addicts who will wrestle with the demons that have pulled their lives into the gutter. Adroitly balancing humor and pathos, the late-night display sheds light on the forces at play with addiction, especially apt today with so many addicts are sleeping on LA’s streets.

Fred, the facility’s long-time janitor, comes in to check the schedule, straighten up a few chairs, and make the day’s first pot of coffee. Played by Paul DeBoy, Fred has seen it all in the 30 years he has worked there. A Vietnam War veteran who picked up a “nasty morphine habit in Khe Sanh,” Fred had no place to go after completing his 90-day treatment years ago and so became something of a permanent handyman.

In the mid-1980s, when I ran a halfway house for addicts and alcoholics, I knew a couple fellows like Fred. Endlessly helpful in keeping our place running, they’d seen everything a halfway house had to show them, could recite long passages from the AA Big Book from memory, and exhibited evident compassion for their fellow addicts—and yet were leery themselves of venturing more than a few steps back into the real world. Better safe than sorry was their motto, though they never said it.

Joining Fred is Alexis (Hope Lauren), up early to catch a ride to the airport. Now that she’s completed her 90 days and her insurance coverage has expired, she’s eager to take her guitar and find a new home in New York City, a full continent away from all the heartache and headache her life as an addict has presented her on the West Coast. A talented musician, she puts up a brave front for her new adventures—and Fred assures her that she’s on the right track—but she’s clearly anxious about leaving the newfound safety afforded by the recovery center’s four walls.

His middle-of-the-night chores complete—or so he thinks—Fred departs, leaving Alexis to study the Big Book for the promises she hopes her new “clean and sober” life will bring. Soon, in comes Blackie, played by Daniel Dorr, a smart-assed heroin addict dragging himself into his first attempt at sobriety after using some kind of drug every day since he was 12, or so he claims.

Himself 20 years into recovery, Playwright Tim Venable has said he wanted his play to humanize addicts and their afflictions to people who aren’t necessarily familiar with alcoholism and drug addiction. The cleverly acted “Baby Foot” does give a clear insight into some of the pains and fears and dysfunction that drive people into destructive behaviors.

Indeed, some of the ways Baby Foot’s characters interact and act out—emotionally, psychologically, even sexually—are eerily reminiscent of my days at that halfway house decades ago. Halfway through, I wanted to go grab a cup of Fred’s coffee.

As we discussed when we reviewed “Blue”, a play that premiered several months ago at the same theatre, the Henry Murray Stage also plays a potent fourth character for “Baby Foot.” Upstairs from the main Matrix Theatre in what we’re told used to be the green room, this cozy venue puts an audience of a couple dozen or so all around the action as if we’re right there in the dayroom with the recovering addicts, making for quite an up-close-and-personal way to absorb a play. And absorb it you should.

“Baby Foot” plays through November 20, 7pm Fridays, 5pm Saturdays and Sundays, 8pm Mondays (No performances on Monday, October 16th and 30th). Rogue Machine, in the Matrix Theatre, is located at 7657 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Tickets are $35 (Students $20/Seniors $30). Pay-What-You-Can Fridays: Oct 20 ($10+), Oct 27 ($15+), Nov. 3, 10, 17 ($20+). Reservations here or for more information 855-585-5185.