For the uninitiated, Barry Bonds is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time (according to Google) thanks to his record-breaking career from 1986 to 2007. Garry Bonds’ Balanced Breakfasts is a tongue-in-cheek homage to this baseball great told through time travel, loud laughs, and a surprising amount of ketchup. This “American tragedy”, written by student Rishi Sharma and directed by William Want, is an ambitious attempt at grappling with the themes of unrealised potential and lifelong regret that are surely plaguing most Cambridge students in this exam term. 57-year-old Ned Burger (Phoebe Deller) is visited by the ghost of baseball star Lou Gehrig (Oscar Hudson), who promises Ned a chance to turn back time and prove his baseball greatness against old classmate-turned-pro Garry Bonds. The show toes the line between comedy and drama, asking what Ned is willing to sacrifice in order to achieve his childhood dream of greatness.

“While a great step for accessibility, it did, unfortunately, expose the weaknesses in the cast’s line-learning”

Upon entering the Corpus Playroom, I was delighted to see that this show would be captioned. While a great step for accessibility, it did, unfortunately, expose the weaknesses in the cast’s line-learning, and multiple actors found themselves turning round to the captions in moments of forgetfulness. Although the cast mostly managed to play these moments off as comedically meta-theatrical, it did eventually wear thin, it’s easily fixed, though, with a few more run-throughs. Luckily, the show benefitted from some strong acting talent. Hudson was electrically charismatic as the famous Lou Gehrig, and his endless energy propelled every scene forward. Ned’s alternate universe self was beautifully played by Felix Elliott, and Jasmin Thien gave a magnificent performance as Ned’s girlfriend Skyler. The accents were, on the whole, hit and miss, but the misses paled in significance compared to the compelling performance moments.

“The plot structure was tight, but the actors seemed to struggle with the switches between comedy and drama”

I can’t help but feel, however, that the performers sometimes failed to do the writing justice. The plot structure was tight, but the actors seemed to struggle with the switches between comedy and drama, making some of the emotional arcs lose focus. Again, this is nothing more rehearsals or stricter direction can’t fix, but it was unfortunate to see such clearly talented actors occasionally missing the mark. Coby O’Brien’s hilarious performances of the light-hearted incidental music, however, helped to correct the emotional course a little.

The sparse set – consisting of only a bench, armchair, keyboard, and some immaculately trimmed Astroturf – lent itself perfectly to the various scene changes, and I appreciated the subtle lighting choices. Tayo Adewole’s production design was evocative without being overbearingly “baseball”, although it was rather green (I didn’t mind; green is my favourite colour). The simplistic design allowed the show to progress without cumbersome scene changes which, together with the writing and performance, made its pacing spot-on.

Presiding over the play with a T. J. Eckleburg-esque presence, Garry Bonds became more than Ned’s high school nemesis: he became, if you’ll allow me a moment of pretension, a metaphor for the play itself. The play, like Ned, was reaching for greatness, and was so close to achieving it. The acting, the writing, the design, and the music were all there, they just couldn’t quite fit together. Perhaps on something other than its opening night, Garry Bonds could reach its true potential.

Home from the play, I couldn’t help but research the origin of the titular “balanced breakfast”. Apparently, the phrase originated when sports journalist Jon Bois attributed the real Bonds’ late-career peak to “eating a balanced breakfast” as a euphemism for performance-enhancing drugs. This show reminded me of Bois’ own creative project 17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future, which is a multimedia narrative exploring the human propensity for playing sport, even in the far future. Although Garry Bonds’ Balanced Breakfasts looks to the past, not the future, the works share the same tenderness for humanity and appreciation of the beauty of life at their core. With a little more training, Garry Bonds could have hit a home run.

Garry Bonds' Balanced Breakfasts by Rishi Sharma is on at the Corpus Playroom from Tuesday 3rd – Saturday 7th May.