Sure, we're still reeling, but we can't say "too soon" forever. Chris Durbin
During Theatre Three’s The Trade, a new original play that parodies the Luka Doncic trade, there are moments where you look around and wonder to yourself, “who is this even for?”
Those moments are found in the farcical margins of a homoerotic conversation between Nico Harrison and Rob Pelinka, or a minutes-long bit about Chandler Parsons, or the entire play’s framing of NBA drama as classical Greek tragedy. But then you look around the room at Theatre Three’s blackbox stage in-the-round, where a makeshift basketball court, concession stand and hoop have been erected for tonight’s proceedings, and you see a room of people howling with laughter. Only a few minutes in, it’s clear that The Trade is one of the greatest productions to ever see the light of day in Dallas.
And it’s that exact note that took us by the most surprise as we attended The Trade’s opening night on Monday.
Playwrights Matt Lyle and Matt Coleman have penned something so extravagant, so absurd and so impossibly niche, that we’re shocked it really got made, and even more shocked that it’s as fantastic as it is. Last month, we got a peek at what the two had in store when we attended the first full cast readthrough of the play. It was there that we met Quintin Jones, who somehow only learned who Nico Harrison was when he was cast as the man himself. And Chad Cline, who added a Dracula-esque accent to his tattooed frame in his portrayal of Doncic.
The Trade’s first crowd pop happened seconds after the lights went down, during a cold open recreating the now-infamous beer can incident, where Mavericks assistant general manager Michael Finley took a beer out of the hands of a celebratory Doncic after winning the western conference finals.
The reference to the beer incident is the first of many set pieces in The Trade that are plucked from the deep recesses of NBA culture. Even in this maximalist stage production, the jokes and references remain so niche that it almost added to the comedy with each escalating deep cut. It’s as if the absurdity of the play itself was only undercut by the real-life absurdity of high drama sports fandom, which is sort of profound if you think about it for long enough.
Side note: as much as we recommend going to check out The Trade for yourself, we also implore anyone reading this who might know a player or member of the Mavericks organization to please convince them to attend the show. The aim of Lyle and Coleman’s ridicule knows no bounds, and we’d love to see and hear how someone in those circles reacts to their parody depiction of NBA life.
Just hearing the cast interact for the first time last month, we likened The Trade to a Dallas Mavericks-themed episode of South Park. It’s brought to life with an outstanding comedic cast of Jeff Swearingen (who particularly steals the show as both Mark Cuban and Adam Silver multiple times), Davian Jackson, Brian Gonzales and Elizabeth Evans, each of whom oscillate between numerous roles like their own one-person ensemble. On top of playing so many roles each, each cast member is given the leash and trust to interact with the audience around them a bit, which made for a few hysterical moments of improv.
We don’t want to give too much away outside of that, but know that the show is an audacious and (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime stage experience that no true MFFL can miss. The Trade runs through Nov. 2 and serves as the perfect primer for next week’s NBA tip-off.