Two area theaters opened their 2024-25 seasons this weekend with modern plays based on persons and events of the past mid-century. Both evoke the sensibility of a long-gone America, with values and expectations mostly likely to resonate with older adults.

Stagecrafters

At Stagecrafters, "Lombardi" (2010) by Eric Simonson celebrates the life of legendary Green Bay Packers football coach Vince Lombardi. In the play based on the book "When Pride Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi" by David Maraniss, Look magazine journalist Michael McCormick (Jonathan Barger) lives with Lombardi for one week during the 1965 football season.

Lombardi inherited a team in 1958 that was the doormat of the NFL. He immediately led the Packers to successive winning seasons, (losing to the Eagles in the 1960 NFL championship game), and won three straight NFL championships from 1965 to 1967, including the first Super Bowl games.

Look magazine asks McCormick to unlock the secret behind Lombardi's success. As an outsider, McCormick sees a coach whose screaming demands are tyrannical and is surprised no one is offended. As linebacker Dave Robinson (Jae West) puts it, 'When Lombardi stops yelling at you is the time when you should be worried.'

The Stagecrafters show is carried by the energy Tom Libonate brings to the starring role. His full-bodied Lombardi is never at rest, always on the move, always dominating the attention of those around him. You swear you are watching Lombardi himself.

His wife Marie (Jennifer Lear) is the only character who portrays no fear of his presence. Hard-drinking Marie is his match. Speaking in colorful Brooklynese, Lear conveys that only another oddball could marry a man like this. You sense a tacit respect between the two and Director Bridget Dougherty is spot on in never letting them display open affection.

Lombardi inspired a love of football in his players: Dave Robinson, Jim Taylor (Jamie Dougherty), and Paul Hornung (Greg Kwoka). He had a special affection for Hornung, whose scandalous off-the-field antics became tabloid fodder. You suspect Lombardi and Hornung share an unspoken bond in that neither had the power to behave in any other way.

Lombardi's notorious quote sums him up: "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." To his players, his apparent abuse was the surface expression of a deeper belief in the honor of football and in the ideal that you should never give in.

Old Academy Players

Playwright Kenneth Jones read a New York Times obituary of Emily Wheelock Reed in 2000 that described the persecution of the Montgomery Alabama head librarian in 1959 over a book by Garth Williams. It inspired Jones to write the 2015 drama "Alabama Story" which opened at Old Academy Players this weekend.

Garth Williams was an acclaimed illustrator of children's classics such as "Charlotte's Webb" and "Little House on the Prairie." He also wrote a series of books using cuddly, fuzzy animals. One was "Rabbits' Wedding" involving the forest frolicking of black and white rabbits. 

Williams was mainly interested in chromatic illustration. But in the Jim Crow South "Rabbits' Wedding" was seen in a distinctive light. Alabama State Sen. Edward Oswell Eddins accused librarian Reed of fomenting interracial marriage by allowing the book to remain in circulation.

Lorraine Barrett plays Emily Wheelock Reed as a complicated woman of shifting sentiments. We see her relationship with a troubled fellow librarian Thomas (Connor Patrick). Her only fixed passion is the belief that reading sets you free and she is irate that the American Library Association refuses to back her up.

Mort Paterson plays Senator E. W. Higgins, a fictionalized version of Senator Eddins. Higgins never becomes a true nemesis because, in Paterson's hands, you are more impressed with Higgins' courtly charm. And his exchange with Congressman Bobby Chrone (Clint Cleaver) at the play's end is affecting.

Garth Williams stands on the side stage to make periodic commentary. Douglas Tague relishes his role as the bemused craftsman who is estranged from the controversy over his book and feels more comfortable discussing Chinese calligraphy.

Director Carla Childs makes good use of Sarah Swearer's economical stage set, which gives the actors room for the many library scenes. It doubles as a public park with its "Whites Only" bench. Its iron gates are locked up, presumably to prevent the people of Montgomery from emulating those rabbits. 

Playwright Jones tosses a verboten interracial romance between Joshua (Marc Johnson) and Lily (Nicole Gerenyi) into the mix. The menacing presence of a few local yokels helps flesh out a sense that this was a physically dangerous time and place.

Yesteryear

Both of these scripts have evident flaws. "Lombardi" is an engaging 90-minute play that works well if the key actors can rivet your attention. The Stagecrafters show gives you a memorable portrait of Lombardi. But the palsy bonding between Lombardi and McCormick over the supposed shared values of football and writing is muddled.

Kenneth Jones' play is well over two hours and imitates the dramaturgy of "Our Town.” The side stage commentary of Garth Williams mimics the role of The Stage Manager in the Thornton Wilder play. In both dramas, the moderator character introduces the principal players who proceed to act out separate dramas.

But "Alabama Story" lacks the tragic, overarching metaphor of the Wilder classic. There is no connection between the librarian-politician story and the romance story other than both kinds of events are archetypal occurrences of a particular time and place.

Still, the two shows work well together in glimpsing aspects of yesteryear that only older people may recognize. Race relations are still a major problem, and the adulation of football is more fanatical than ever. But neither find expression in the way you see here.

"Lombardi" will run through Sept. 29. Tickets are available at 215-247-8881. Stagecrafters is at 8130 Germantown Ave. 

"Alabama Story" will run through Sept. 29. Tickets are available at 215-843-1109. Old Academy Players is at 3544 Indian Queen Lane