Philadelphia Theatre Company presents Mickle Maher, Merel van Dijk, and Anthony Barilla's Small Ball

The mood inside the theater was energized and ebullient—a welcome sight for a company that has faced economic and artistic instability over the past decades. Matters went downhill when the performance actually began.

Previously produced at theaters in Houston and Denver, Small Ball is the brainchild of Daryl Morey, president of basketball operations for the 76ers. The musical materialized after Morey and his wife gave a six-figure donation to PTC and signed on as co-producers. While I can’t say for sure that correlation equals causation, it’s hard to view the work as anything other than a tedious, inept vanity project.

One joke in search of a punchline

Morey developed a somewhat clever premise for the piece: in a world where the lines between fantasy and reality blur, the residents of Lilliput—the fictional island from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, where the residents are all six inches tall—fall in love with basketball. Their former emperor, who now calls himself Coach Phil Jackson (Rob Tucker), recruits an American minor-leaguer to juice the team as it competes in a newly formed fairy-tale division. His name: Michael Jordan (Jordan Dobson).

Of course, we’re not talking about the legendary Chicago Bull, just as Tucker isn’t playing the celebrated former coach. The character names suggest the islanders’ fascination with the sport and also include Pippin (Adam Chandler-Berat), the off-kilter assistant coach, and other teammates Magic (Josh Totora) and Bird (Lexi Thammavong).

The entire endeavor is a one-joke set-up in search of a punchline. The material occasionally dabbles in moments of deeper resonance—like a burgeoning romance between Jordan and Jackson’s daughter Lilli (Nadia Hassan), or the rocky marriage between the Coach and his wife Mrs. Horton (Sarah Gliko)—before reverting back to the same tired gags. A humorless bit about the Lilliputians failing to understand the sport because they have no comprehension of the number five long outlives its welcome.

Rather than delve into the scenarios that could flesh out these fantastical characters, the authors—librettist Mickle Maher and composers Merel van Dijk and Anthony Barilla—spin their wheels instead. The show is inelegantly structured, with long stretches of time passing between songs and dialogue that seems tentative and repetitive. The music by van Dijk and Barilla lacks any sense of graspable melodies, leaning instead into staccato note clusters and near-constant underscoring that sounds like a burlesque vamp.

No courtside excitement

The production, helmed by PTC co-artistic directors Taibi Magar and Tyler Dobrowsky, feels static and low-energy—the polar opposite of a satisfying night spent courtside. The cast either overact or give halting performances, and while the material is largely to blame here, a stronger directorial vision could make the endeavor run more smoothly. It’s disappointing to see both talented imported actors (like Chandler-Berat and Hassan) and local favorites (like Dobson and Gliko) pressed into the service of such flimsy material. (Here’s a BSR Podcast conversation about the show with Chandler-Berat and Jordan Dobson.)

Christopher Ash’s set design aims for whimsy but simply looks cheap—ditto Olivera Gajic’s costumes. The production comes alive, briefly, through Thom Weaver’s lighting design, where shadow play against black scrims occasionally suggests the size contrast between Michael Jordan and his Lilliputian teammates with striking specificity. But these moments are too fleeting in an evening that lasts too long.

Expensive follies

In theatrical lore, you often hear tell of the apocryphal “Curse of the Bambino”: the supposed story that Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees so that he could finance the musical No, No Nanette. Morey’s folly might not have lost the Sixers a star player, but it’s a classic case of throwing good money after bad.