Esperanza

A Musical of Hope

In a rundown sports bar, about to be foreclosed at midnight, three fallen stars find themselves waiting for a phone call that will change their lives.  Each is coming fast on forty and can only look back on lost glory, lost fortunes and wasted years.  Pearl, the Latina barmaid, once a teenage tennis phenom, is expecting a call from the publisher of a Chilean sports magazine.  Stick, whose major league baseball career was cut short by a wicked fastball, is waiting on a call from his ex-agent. And Street, the great NFL running back, whose game abruptly ended with a shattered knee, is hoping his high school sweetheart will forgive his years of betrayal.  As they anxiously wait for the phone to ring, each athlete faces their own follies and mistakes.  “I Played the Game” is the anthem of their fall from grace. But fate has a way of making amends, even defying the mob-connected lawyer who owns the joint.  Through a series of whimsical events, often comic and bundled in surprising twists, hope casts its light across the bar, and love trumps despair minutes before the midnight hour.