Zoren: Ray Didinger’s second play to debut on stage in the fall

Once the theater bug bites …

In 2016, topnotch football commentator Ray Didinger wrote a play, “Tommy & Me” about his childhood and adult association with Philadelphia Eagles receiver, Tommy McDonald.

Didinger, retired from a long stint at WIP (94.1 FM), expected the show to be a one-off when it premiered at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

So much for expectations.

“Tommy & Me,” in its original production directed by Joe Caruso, has played several of the region’s major theaters, appearing at least one season in one or another Delaware Valley venue.

It’s set for an October reprise at Malvern’s People’s Light Theatre, with PLT veteran Tom Teti once more starring as McDonald.

It will be Didinger’s second production of the fall 2025 season.

In September, a new play of his, “Spinner,” based on the real-life triumphs and tragedies of NHL star Brian “Spinner” Spencer, debuts at Wilmington’s Delaware Theatre Company, where it runs from Sept. 17 to Oct. 5.

People who remember the Flyers’ Stanley Cup drives from the mid-’70s will recall Spencer as a productive member of the Buffalo Sabres, a strong rival to the Flyers.

Spencer had come to the Sabres after stints with the Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Islanders.

He was strong on offense and defense and his overall hustle. These made him popular in Buffalo and a good foil for 1975’s victorious Broad Street Bullies.

As Didinger vividly sees, Spencer’s life was as dramatic off the ice as on.

His father, Roy, is killed while demanding, at gunpoint, a television station to pre-empt a nationally-aired NHL game to broadcast the first Maple Leafs game Brian Spencer will play on television, one in which Brian, known as “Spinner,” is scheduled to be interviewed at halftime.

The younger Spencer’s life also takes a violent turn when Brian is accused of murder and after being acquitted, goes on a crime spree.

Didinger, in telling me about his play when we met at a wonderful cabaret show performed by Julie Benko at Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Grill, says like “Tommy & Me,” “Spinner” is not so much about sports as it is the human side of an athlete and what he faces as he finds success in one aspect of his life and difficult challenges in another.

“Spinner” examines the risks, rewards, and regrets that come when someone strives for and chases for something bigger. Ray stressed the human aspect of his story.

Just as Joe Caruso provided support for “Tommy & Me,” the Delaware Theatre Company provides Didinger with a fine director in Matt Silva and an excellent lead in actor Scott Greer, whose role before “Spinner” will be as Max Bialystock in the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival production of “The Producers,” which runs June 11 to 29.

Diatribe stinks

Some of my biggest laughs while listening to WIP (94.1 FM) come when I hear the commentators, particularly the younger ones, give their views on social behavior or general lifestyle issues.

The naïveté and spouting of bad, unworldly opinion is hilarious in its juvenile foolishness.

Thank goodness there’s often an Ike Reese or Hugh Douglas to lend some maturity to the matters at hand.

On Thursday, I could barely believe what I was hearing. It was too dumb and out of nowhere to rate airtime.

Somewhere during at 6 to 10 p.m. broadcast in which host Tom Kelly (T.K.) was reviewing a range of topics touching on all four of the five of the region’s major sports teams — all but the Union — came an episode of a young ‘IP-er thinking he knows what life is about.

Following a break, Kelly, as host, began berating his producer, Buzz — I don’t know his last name — for going to into a room off the studio, called at WIP “the hub,” without putting on his shoes.

Kelly railed that Buzz was in a workplace and that out of respect for other workers, he should have taken the time to put on his shoes and not go around barefoot with his “smelly-ass feet.”

Discussion between Kelly and Buzz revealed Buzz was not barefoot, but wearing “black socks.” As for the odor of Buzz’s feet, Kelly had no grounds for comment because he wasn’t in the “hub” to know of they smelled or not.

The silliness of Kelly’s outrage escalated when he lectured Buzz on decorum, then asked listeners to call in and give their opinion about whether Buzz was an outright boor or if walking from one room to another in stocking feet is within bounds, especially after regular business hours.

I reached my destination before I could any caller response, but my vote is decidedly with Buzz.

No harm done to grab some water, a cup of coffee, or a snack without bothering to put on shoes.

Where did Kelly think Buzz was, the Vatican? Or about to walk in some glass-strewn alley?

Kelly’s uproar was ridiculous. It didn’t even make for a good debate or good radio. It was a case of misplaced values or moralism of the kind most of us today are tired.

Like most actors and sports figures, Kelly has to know when to let a moment go and shut up. Or have his fit with Buzz in private.

In general, I like Tom Kelly’s work. He is one of the more articulate personalities on WIP.

I find that he is a bit fair-weather and takes any Phillies or Eagles loss as a sign of disaster that requires some urgent and drastic action.

When he can avoid high dudgeon and visions of doomsday, he is worth listening to. When he doesn’t get overexcited, he seems to know his stuff.

When he does blow steam, there’s Nicole Sweeney at WRTI (90.1 FM) for refuge.

Buzz is always admirable. Like many of the ‘IP producers who chime in, especially at solo host’s requests, Buzz is clearer-spoken and more even in perspective than most of the hosts.

Regarding the matter at hand, shoes or no shoes, he did what most people would do: go safely to a break room for some exercise and refreshment without worry what, if anything, was on his feet.

I hear Buzz sometimes on overnight and enjoy his commentary.

This listener’s judgment: Point to Buzz; lay off the lecturing, to Buzz and the front offices, T.K.

‘Endlings’ playing at Hedgerow

John Harvey, whose morning drive radio show, “Harvey in the Morning,” was tops in the market for several years in the ’70s and ’80s, began acting after leaving radio.

He can currently be seen at Delaware County’s Hedgerow Theatre, where he is in the ensemble cast of “Endlings,” a play by Celine Song, who earned an Oscar nominations for screenwriting for her 2023 movie, “Past Lives.”

The romantic comedy was also nominated for Best Picture.

“Endlings” is set on two islands, Man-Jae in Korea where elderly sea women without heirs dive daily in the ocean to harvest food, and Manhattan, where a Korean-Canadian writer living and working in the United States wrestles with expectations that she compose “authentic” stories about her identity.

Basically it’s a play that delves into self-discovery with Song having fun dealing with what she want to say and other people’s perceptions of who they think she must be.

Harvey plays two roles, one for each island. He acts the part of stage manager and also a clam.

“Endlings” runs at Hedgerow through June 1.

1 thumbs-up, 1 down

Two Netflix mysteries were the shows chosen for sampling this week.

One, “The Residence” has potential. The other, “Sirens” may have been the No. 1 show viewed on Netflix this weekend, but I tuned out after about 45 minutes.

“The Residence” is about a murder in the White House and a clash between the people who run the presidential mansion, the president’s administration, and the local Washington police.

This is a mystery with a comic air. You look forward to find out more and working the clues along with the D.C. force’s lead detective, Cordelia Cupp, played by Uzo Aduba with her usual mixture of sincerity and playful wit.

Aduba is the main reason to watch the series, although there’s also a funny turn by “Saturday Night Live” alumna Jane Curtin as the president’s mother-in-law and jaunty “Murder, She Wrote”-like style, only naughtier, by creator Paul William Davies and director Liza Johnson.

“Sirens” tries too hard to be dark and pithy.

From the less than an hour I was willing to watch, my finger on the stop button for the last half of the sampling, it wants to comment wryly on a class system among women.

Julianne Moore plays Michaela, or Kiki, the uber-wealthy and powerful doyenne of a resort that caters to well-to-do who join her for incantations and some form of charity work.

A posh weekend get-together at her seaside resort is rattled by a surprise guest. It’s the sister Devon, played by Meghann Fahey, of Kiki’s invaluably efficient personal assistant, Simone (Milly Alcock), who came to confront her sibling and bring her backto Buffalo to help her take care of their dementia-addled father.

To give some perspective, Devon leaves Buffalo to track down Simone after spending a night in jail and resenting her sister’s flight from family responsibility.

Everything I saw was superficial and way too self-conscious in its approach.

Devon’s behavior is unbelievable. Michaela’s is too contrivedly eccentric to have any effect. Simone evokes some sympathy for having her cushy life interrupted by her crude, demanding sister.

In general, the fun is more in writer Molly Smith Metzler’s mind than on the screen.

About the best line in the scenes I watched was Devon commenting on the guests, male and female, to Michaela’s get-together by noticing their pastel outfits and asking why everyone looks like an Easter egg.

Kevin Bacon plays Michaela’s successful husband, who finances her whims.

One coincidence in the shows is both Aduba’s Cordelia and Moore’s Michaela have an avid interest in birds.

Cordelia is a student of them while Michaela rescues them and releases them back in the wild.

One other fun fact is Al Franken, a comedian who became a senator and resigned in a “Me Too” incident, plays a senator on “The Residence.”

Memories of George Wendt

The lasting memory of an interview I had with George Wendt in 2017 is how quick-witted and naturally droll he was.

It seemed a fitting combination for his long-running role as Norm, the wise-cracking guy who everybody knew and liked on “Cheers.”

Wendt talked about going into acting because he enjoyed he improv work he saw at Second City in his native Chicago. He lived in a suburb, but Chicago was his town.

He told me he finished his education and could not figure out one thing he could do to make a living.

He thought he’d try improv, took classes at Second City, joined the troupe, and found his calling.

Among the people he met there was one destined to become NBC’s head programmer, Brandon Tartikoff, the guy who cast “Cheers.”

Wendt denied that Norm and he shared personality traits even as I heard Norm’s style of quipping as he spoke.

Our interview was about Wendt playing J. Edgar Hoover in a play about the man who coined the term, “rock and roll,” Cleveland deejay Alan Freed, “Rock and Roll Man” at Bucks County Playhouse.

I asked if he studied Hoover and worked on a way to present him. He said the lines in the script told him everything he needed to know, and he would depend on those to guide him.

“The best thing an actor can do is deliver the lines as the playwright intended. There is no character, only lines. An actor doing anything more than concentrating on lines is like a pilot of a 747 flapping his arms in the cockpit to make the airplane fly better.”

George Wendt died on Tuesday at age 76. He liked working and did a lot of theater in his days after “Cheers.”

Kevin Bacon charity event starts Wednesday

“Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon” became such a popular game in recent years, the actor started the Six Degrees Foundation to highlight the work of grassroots nonprofits.

On Wednesday, six local craft breweries and banding together for a 6 to 8 p.m. fundraising event called Six Degrees of Fermentation to support Bacon’s charity and demonstrate the spirit of collaboration in the brewing industry.

Six Degrees of Fermentation will be held at the Yards Brewing taproom at 500 Spring Garden St. in Philadelphia. The five breweries teaming with Yards are Attic Brewing Co., Evil Genius Beer Co., Human Robot Brewery, Sacred Vice Brewing Co., and Wissahickon Brewing Co.

It will feature live music, some trivia, and a Kevin Bacon costume contest. It’s also a chance to become acquainted with local nonprofits.

Admission is complimentary — as in free — but a $6 donation to Six Degrees is requested to receive a souvenir.

Following the event, participants can spend June acquiring a collectible can from each of the cooperating breweries. You’ll get a punch card and when it’s completed, you’ll be entered to win tickets to a Bacon Brothers concert.