May in the pitching ranks of the New York Yankees went pretty much the way of April. Most of the starters struggled – Michael Pineda was the obvious exception. The bullpen began to look tired: the inevitable result of overuse, caused by sub-standard starting.
April 2015 was a bizarre month for the New York Yankees. They started with a 3-6 record and were bottom of the table. From there, they sprinted to 10 wins out of their next thirteen games, ending April one game ahead of the American League East and setting a pace which meant they should then relentlessly open up a gap ahead of all-comers.
And indeed, by the 11 of May with 8 wins out of their next 11 games, they opened up a 4 game lead. Journalists, experts and pundits were staggered as the Yankees’ bullpen and offense led them to performances that were far beyond anything that was predicted or anticipated — or even imagined by the most rabid fan.
And then the team returned quietly to the form of the early weeks of April as they crumbled against opposition from outside the division. The four game lead disappeared as they won 5 of their next 18 games. Will the real New York Yankees please stand up?
Who: 10CC
What: Sheet Music and Greatest Hits Live
Where: Royal Albert Hall, London
When: 28th May 2015
When I was a boy, 10CC were often referred to, in the UK music press, as the British Steely Dan. I’ve never really understood that myself but given that I’ve recently been writing promotional material for some of the Steely Dan dates on their forthcoming U.S. tour, it seemed really appropriate that I should be sat in the second row of 10CC’s Royal Albert Hall gig writing a review of their show.
What: The Merchant of Venice
Where: The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
When: 21st May 2015
A writer in the UK newspaper “The Telegraph” pointed out how far short of the production at the Globe in London, the current RSC version of “The Merchant of Venice” falls. It is indeed unusual for two parallel productions to be running like this. It is, if you will, a surfeit of Merchants.
I cover only the RSC’s productions so I do not have the benefit or disadvantage of comparison. I, therefore, can only point out how the RSC’s production fails on its own merits. The audience were enthusiastic. The cast were spirited but bad directorial and staging decisions doomed it from the start.
The starting rotation has, probably, been less than the Yankees wanted it to be in April. And it has lost one very notable player through injury. However, it has been bolstered by a stellar bullpen which has done very little wrong.
Let’s look over the pros and cons in the second half of our monthly survey…
The Yankees have got off to a surprisingly good start to the season with a 14-8 record in April. This becomes doubly surprising when we consider that they got off to a 3-6 run in their first nine games. Both the bullpen and large sections of the offensive line-up have done better than we had any reason to expect and whilst there are more than a few weak links, there is good reason to think they can at least stay with the pace of a division which doesn’t have a clearly outstanding team.
Let’s survey who is doing well and not so well…
vWhat: Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller
Where: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
When: 24th April 2015
There are more stage directions at the beginning of Arthur Miller’s “Death of A Salesman” then there are in an entire play by William Shakespeare. And that is before you get to the first spoken line in the script. The stage directions continue throughout the play – in not such an elongated way – but still extremely detailed. Even the way the actors are to deliver their lines are specified by the playwright. It is clear that there has been a theatrical revolution since Shakespeare’s day and by Miller’s early period. The question is how that revolution is applied now to theatre nearly 70 years after “…Salesman”‘s debut
Presenting Shakespeare for ages 10-14 (i.e. the ages before they start formally studying the writer for exams in school) is not an easy task but it is a challenge that I have set myself over these last six years and I have to say with some degree of success.
This year was our largest project to date. With 1600-1700 young people signed up to attend and with our troupe now firmly esconced in our own theatre at Ravenscourt Arts, we decided to strip back to basics and bring in a new cast to work with a new script. Time to take some risks.
Well, in our last two part article, I made my predictions (just a few days before the start of the season) about the Yankees’ opening day roster and their performance in the 2015 season.
Wouldn’t you know that there would be an injury that would change quite a few things before we even got to that first game!
We continue our survey of the Yankees who have done well and not so well in Spring Training:
twilightdawning 