It's a convoluted title that may tell you everything you need to know -- that C. W. Nevius and director David Ford are fishing for a center to this show. Nevius, for years one of our favorite sports writers for the San Francisco Chronicle, is a new performer. He is engaging and likable, with an ear for dialogue and comedy. But we can't really tell you what the purpose of the show is, except to listen to a man tell a few enjoyable stories about the years he covered the Oakland Raiders, as well as a rather obscure sexual misconduct case against a basketball player with the University of San Francisco. The very best parts are Nevius's lookbacks on the Oakland Raiders he once knew, and what has happened to them as time passed. Nevius knows touching stories about these men, several of whom died quite young.
But if the center of this story is Nevius himself, he needs to make us care a little more. We get no insights into his upbringing or how or why he came to love sports, so we are not particularly involved with him as a sportswriting adult. His experiences are interesting to a local audience, and I am one of these who remembers with pleasure the Raiders' glory years, but the performer seems to have learned little from them except to always go for the scoop.
We love this advice, given by his editor: "Go the game, see what happens, and then write that." Every writer ought to pay attention to that one.
Our guess is Chuck Nevius is a really nice guy. He comes off that way. He can come to my house anytime to talk about the Raiders. But if he is going to have a solo show, he has to come up with a reason to be on stage, aside from talking about himself.
RATINGS: ☼ ☼
"C.W. Nevius: "The Oakland Raiders, True Crime and Coming of Age in San Francisco"
The Marsh
1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco
Through Dec. 15
$20-$35 (sliding scale)
