SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The New York Yankees - you love them or you hate them. Douglass Wallop is one of the latter. He's the writer whose 1954 story about dreams of beating the Yankees became a beloved American musical.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL, "DAMN YANKEES")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS #1: (As characters, singing) We've got heart, miles and miles and miles of heart.
SIMON: "Damn Yankees" is a fantasy about making a deal with the devil to win the pennant against all odds. A new production at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., is getting rave reviews and hopes to move on to Broadway. But is this 70-year-old musical still relevant in these times? NPR's Elizabeth Blair takes a look.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: There have been a lot of different adaptations of "Damn Yankees" over the decades, but they all include Lola, the character who made a deal with the devil to become beautiful. Now she works for him, seducing men to the dark side.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL, "DAMN YANKEES")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Lola, singing) Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets. And, little man, little Lola wants you. Ah.
BLAIR: "Damn Yankees" was adapted from "The Year The Yankees Lost The Pennant," a 1954 novel by Douglass Wallop.
DOUG WALLOP: My uncle was a huge baseball fan.
BLAIR: Doug Wallop is the writer's nephew. In the story, the devil offers to turn Joe Boyd, a middle-aged man with a paunch, into a young stud, a star ball player who can help his favorite team beat the Yankees. Joe knows this Faustian bargain is wrong but justifies it to himself. This is from the Audible version of "The Year The Yankees Lost The Pennant."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
STEVE HENDRICKSON: (Reading) Could an aim so worthy as denying the Yankees a tenth consecutive pennant be evil? Furthermore, it was flattering, in a sense, to have been chosen.
BLAIR: The devil's flattery does the trick. Joe leaves his wife and his job without warning. Wallop says his uncle would not have done that in real life.
WALLOP: He pretty much lived his life kind of on the straight and narrow.
BLAIR: His baseball story is pure fantasy. But critics have also noted that Wallop captures some of the fears of the 1950s, like the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Suspected communists were being blacklisted, and people were naming names. His nephew says this fictitious story is also something of a commentary on human nature.
WALLOP: You know, people's integrity tends to get maybe tainted, shall we say?
BLAIR: Tainted because the temptations the devil offers can cloud a person's judgment. In "Damn Yankees," Joe and Lola end up regretting it.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL, "DAMN YANKEES")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS #2: (As Lola and Joe, singing) We're two lost souls on the highway of life, and there is no one with whom we would rather...
DOUG WRIGHT: We're always interested in people who sell their souls and why they do it.
BLAIR: Because, says Doug Wright, it cuts to the very heart of our impetuous natures. Wright co-wrote the Arena Stage version. One of the small changes they made to the original is to tease out how Lola breaks her deal with the devil, meaning gives up her beauty to help Joe get out of his. She tells him love is the only thing that can defeat the devil.
WRIGHT: I found working on the piece cathartic. And I'm a cynical soul, but to be in a room every day that was celebrating notions like decency and sportsmanship and the power of compassion - these weren't always controversial values. And more emphatically, there was a time when they weren't loser values.
BLAIR: Co-writer Will Power says "Damn Yankees" is about a man who misplaces his soul.
WILL POWER: It's almost like a story of us, in a way - you know, as a nation.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL, "DAMN YANKEES")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Joe, singing) A man doesn't know what he has until he loses it.
POWER: We haven't lost our soul. Like, it's not gone, but it's misplaced. And we're trying to, like, recapture what that is.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL, "DAMN YANKEES")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Joe, singing) I didn't know what I had when I had my old love. I didn't know what I had till I said goodbye, old love.
BLAIR: "Damn Yankees," an old story about beating the devil with decency, seems almost futuristic.
Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL, "DAMN YANKEES")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Joe, singing) What a happy thought is - whatever it is he's lost. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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