O’Donnell: ‘Ted Lasso’ and Paul McCartney come together in Brendan Hunt’s one-man show
AND IN THE END, all sports are loaded with assorted degrees of live theater.
Legitimate plays — from “Hamlet” and its groundlings forward — demand the three sequenced stages: context, crisis, resolution.
If wit on the fly, cathartic channeling and recurring memories of sweet home Chicago sports also matter, Brendan Hunt nets “Goaaaaaallll!” in his one-man “The Movement You Need,” playing through Mother's Day at Steppenwolf's Downstairs Theater in Chicago.
HUNT, FOR THOSE BEYOND the reach of Apple TV (rebranded from Apple TV+ late last year), plays Coach Bridges in the megahit streamer “Ted Lasso.”
The Illinois State graduate (“Steppenwolf U.,” he deadpans) also cocreated the concept that became the title character with close chum Jason Sudeikis more than 20 years ago.
Hunt is also an executive producer of the series and was part of the guiding group that received consecutive Primetime Emmys for “Outstanding Comedy Series” out of the gate in 2021-22.
TEAM “LASSO” WAS DETHRONED by FX on Hulu's “The Bear” in 2023 and ended its 34-episode run, much to the chagrin of its passionate fan base.
“We went in with a three-season story arc that we completed,” Hunt told media. “That could have been it.”
But the show's groundlings have now been buoyed for more than a year with anticipation of a fourth season.
That 10-pack will premiere Aug. 5 on Apple TV with new episodes every Wednesday through Oct. 7.
FOR THOSE WHO AREN'T INTO “LASSO,” it's about an American football coach (Sudeikis in the title role) who accepts a cynical offer from a British widow:
She's inherited a bad U.K soccer team (the fictitious Richmond Greyhounds) and wants it to fail to spite her dead husband.
The coach is all too human — vulnerable, curious and questing.
Hunt's Coach Bridges is more than merely a faithful sidekick. He's comrade / confessor, guardrail and reliable corner quipper.
A REFINEMENT FOR SEASON FOUR — and a grand window for producers and writers to reboot — will be that Lasso and Bridges enter attempting to elevate a British women's professional soccer team just as they breathed new success and perspectives into AFC Richmond.
Analysis of the program has gone far beyond the purview of mere sports & media writers.
A common thought has been than when the show debuted on Apple TV+ in August, 2020, it ran so counter to prevailing American dispirit over a bizarre pandemic and bitter presidential politics.
On an increasingly arctic social terrain, some observed, “Ted Lasso” offered hope and the potential for thawing universal humor.
HUNT'S CURRENT STEPPENWOLF SHOWCASE MAKES scant mention of “Ted Lasso.”
He clearly wants to flash a very different kind of wit's end up.
Some serious theater critics, while praising “The Movement You Need,” have cited that as a conscious oversight not certain to go down well with all fans of Coach Bridges and fictional crew.
What's unquestionable is that Hunt's solo stand is markedly well-crafted and crisply paced.
The 90-minute production had its genesis when he was in the midst of a five-year run doing improv with a troupe called “Boom Chicago” in the Netherlands.
THE TWO PROPELLING VECTORS ARE a real-life meeting that Hunt, Sudeikis and two other TV mates had with Paul McCartney in 2022 while filming “Ted Lasso” in England and Hunt's long and winding relationship with his mother.
She was a bartender, ultimately divorced from a Vietnam vet husband with PTSD, from Chicago's Beverly neighborhood who had a drinking problem. He was a son as dutiful as circumstances would allow.
Their one ongoing source of mother-and-child bonding became Beatles music, beginning with a rerun of the animated “Yellow Submarine” (1968).
THE TITLE OF “MOVEMENT” IS TAKEN FROM one of the most curious “placeholder” lines Sir Paul ever left in a Mac-Lennon tune.
That's a payoff tucked deep in “Hey Jude” — “The movement you need is on your shoulder.”
Hunt affectionately mockles it. But McCartney left it in.
Maybe he was on deadline. Maybe he was making notes at a piano when Linda McCartney looked out on the drive and said, “Oh my God, it's John and he's got that Yoko with again.”
Whatever, Brendan Hunt — playwright and star — utilizes it seamlessly as he carries the valedictory weight Downstairs at Steppenwolf.
HE ALSO MAKES IT CLEAR THAT he has left much of his heart with the Bears over the years — what stadium-fearing local hasn't? — and was of an appropriate age to revel in the six NBA championships of the Bulls.
His humor and stagecraft have multiple gears. A fine line came when he was asked offstage about the pluses and minuses of persevering through the demands of a one-man show in an iconic venue:
“Well,” Hunt said, “the cast parties aren't really very much.”
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.