A good sports argument — say, over who’s the greatest basketball player of all time — is bottomless, passionate and impossible to resolve. Only friends conduct such disputes at the highest level because this kind of fight takes obsession and respect. In Rajiv Joseph’s rich 2022 comedy King James, strangers Matt and Shawn become friends when their hometown basketball team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, is finally in NBA contention thanks to the arrival of LeBron James. Sports is the bridge that connects them.
The Northern Stage production of the two-man play is an acting masterwork, showcasing the emotion that men channel into sports and quietly allow to stand for all their feelings. The play marks time by events in LeBron’s career, but it’s a story of two Cleveland guys, one white and one Black. In four scenes set over 12 years, they start their adult lives while LeBron progresses from rookie to championship winner.
Like LeBron but at a human scale, Matt and Shawn face success and failure, loyalty and betrayal, abandonment and forgiveness.
Matt and Shawn have been Cavs fans since childhood with nothing to show for it. But in 2003, Cleveland won the draft lottery and picked the obvious No. 1, from nearby Akron, no less. LeBron James would thrill the city but abandon the team as a free agent, bravely rejoin it in 2014, and lead it to a championship in 2016.
Joseph doesn’t overplay the parallels between the characters’ lives and LeBron’s career but does explore the play’s large themes in both frames. Like LeBron but at a human scale, Matt and Shawn face success and failure, loyalty and betrayal, abandonment and forgiveness. LeBron infuriates them and astounds them; they do the same for each other and, along the way, reveal themselves.
The play opens in a Cleveland Heights wine bar. Matt, the bartender, is alone when Shawn arrives to close a deal on the Cavs tickets Matt is selling. “You’re never gonna get to see LeBron’s rookie year again,” Matt tells Shawn, a sales pitch that defines what he’s about to lose himself. Matt needs the quick cash, but these season tickets have been in his family for years. And Shawn is shaky on the price, so the haggling isn’t exactly all-pro. The herky-jerky dealmaking ends when they prove to each other they’re true fans. Now all Shawn needs is someone to take to the games. He looks at Matt.
We see Matt and Shawn at the ages of 21, 27, 31 and 33, in the bar and at the curiosity shop Matt’s parents run. Each scene is about how they’ve adapted to major changes in their lives. They’re not especially good communicators, and Joseph is a bit of a genius at writing ineloquence eloquently. We know what the characters mean and sense why they have trouble expressing it. And we see how friends listen to each other. The laughs are often wonderfully surprising, as Joseph spears truths out of realistic awkwardness.
Shawn wants to be a writer and has been hiding his feelings since childhood, a façade that Matt sometimes punctures. Matt has been wounded by his parents’ low expectations for him but maintains the ambition to open a bar of his own. Both yearn to sound sure of themselves while the world they want to enter is still scarily far away. They agree to disagree on a lot, but when Matt complains that LeBron doesn’t know his place, Shawn hears the white privilege beneath it. The friendship almost cracks, and the tension ripples through the theater.
Joseph’s big themes work because humor brings the characters to life. Matt and Shawn try to top each other in indignation over LeBron’s move to the Miami Heat, but the cynicism they’re trying on is less a mark of maturity than a feeble bandage for misery. No way is Shawn swearing off sports, as Matt proves in a funny exchange.
A sports fan can feel betrayed or have his identity strengthened by a connection to a hero, a god wearing the same color jersey he can buy. Joseph is from Cleveland and knows firsthand the impact a star such as LeBron James had on the city. Matt and Shawn experience the pain of desertion and the joy of connection through their relationship to LeBron and to each other.
The emotional clarity of the two performers is the show’s highlight. Credit director abigail jean-baptiste as well as Andrew Gombas, playing Matt, and Darius Wright, playing Shawn. The performers have located every shade of meaning in what seem to be casual remarks, and they know how to surround speech with silence to reveal thought.
The wide stage may honestly be a little too big for this intimate story, but scenic designer Chika Shimizu ornately details it, and jean-baptiste lets the majestic space keep the characters small and human. She emphasizes simple, realistic movement. The characters often stay still, and this static quality increases the viewer’s concentration on what’s said.
The production is rich in contrasts. Dialogue is quiet and realistic, but between scenes sound designer DJ Potts fills the theater with jock jam hip-hop, and lighting designer Amina Alexander throws in flashing lights that imitate a basketball arena.
What happens onstage is every bit as physical as sport. Acting boils down to two people who trust each other enough to make a fight look real or emotion feel alive. When Matt and Shawn play stylized basketball, Gombas and Wright drop into stances and make their best moves. We’re watching a real competition. But throughout the show, the actors make the same vivid, athletic connection in every line.
Matt and Shawn need each other, but not sentimentally. They embody the rock-bottom truth of companionship. They shift in power and accomplishment, even in their capacity to care for each other. Humor balances loss. They forgive, metaphorically, every missed free throw; they celebrate, literally, every way they’re champions.
The original print version of this article was headlined “One on One | Theater review: ‘King James’, Northern Stage”
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2025.
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