Directed by Linda Kouzes 

Assistant Director Joan Hay  

Performances:  February 7-8-9 and 14-15-16, 2003

Friday and Saturdays:  Dinner, 6:30 p.m.; show, 8 p.m

Sundays:  Dinner 1 p.m.; show 2 p.m.

Those damn Yankees!  Every baseball season the New York Yankees break the heart of diehard Washington Senators’ fan Joe Boyd.  Then one fateful night, Joe wishes aloud that he would sell his soul to help his team win….and guess who overhears and proposes a trade to give Joe his dream.  Now Joe gets his chance to lead the Senators to the pennant, but is love more powerful than the devil or the Yankees? 

 And what music!  This comedy has crowd-pleasing songs such as “Shoeless Joe From Hannibal, MO,” “You Gotta Have Heart,” “Six Months Out of Every Year,” and “Whatever Lola Wants…Lola Gets!”

SYNOPSIS

Damn Yankees, which is based on Douglass Wallop's Book-of-the-Month selection The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, tells the story of Joe Boyd, a plump and balding, middle-aged real estate salesman in Washington, D.C., who is an avid fan of his hometown ball team.  

In a rash moment he murmurs that he'd "sell his soul to see the Washington Senators win the pennant from the damn Yankees."  At this moment the Devil appears, in the guise of a personable gentleman called Mr. Applegate, who offers to make a pact with him:  in return for his soul, he will transform him into a young and unbeatable ballplayer.  The real estate agent agrees but insists on an "escape clause," whereby at a certain date he will be restored to his former self to rejoin his wife and live out his years normally.  The Devil agrees.

The phenomenal young player, now known as Joe Hardy, joins the Senators, and the team moves right up to second place in the American League.  But, Applegate has other plans:  he is secretly on the side of the Yankees and is plotting to whet the hopes of the Senators and then to wrest the victory away from them at the final hour.

When young Hardy learns this, he asks to exercise his option and to be returned to his former status at the wide of his faithful wife.  But, Applegate employs the services of Lola, a ravishingly beautiful witch, to tempt him into staying on the side of the Devil.  However, Hardy remains true to the wife he left behind him.

Lola breaks precedent by falling in love with her victim and aids him in defeating the Devil.  For her trouble she is converted again into an ugly old crone.  The Washington ball club emerges victorious, and the real estate agent is restored to his loving wife.

(Photography courtesy Terry Mayer, The Week newspaper)

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