Review: ‘Billie Jean’ tells a powerful, rousing story of tennis icon Billie Jean King in warp speed

Playwright Lauren M. Gunderson has been among the most produced playwrights in the country for a decade now. That’s due in part to her work on the “Christmas at Pemberley” plays, a trilogy of staged Jane Austen fan fiction — in the best sense of that phrase — filled with joyful wit and reverence for the original.

Now she has written “Billie Jean,” receiving its premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater with a director (Marc Bruni) and a cast heavy on Broadway credentials. You might call it “fan fact,” bursting as it is with affection and admiration for Billie Jean King, who won 39 Grand Slam titles, effectively created professional women’s tennis and became an inspirational voice and embodiment of female empowerment.

This is a powerful show, but not really in the emotional sense. It has its rousing and feel-good moments, some of them on the sappy side, but it’s also an expression of female physical power. In a compelling performance, Chilina Kennedy brings a convincing muscularity to the role and also captures the power of King’s personality, expressing a relentless dynamism that not only explains Billie Jean’s competitiveness but also make her a convincingly natural leader.

There is a mini grass tennis court on Wilson Chin’s set, but instead of racquets and balls, the tennis scenes involve hitting at air to represent serves and volleys. This is where Bruni and the ensemble theatricalize strength and determination as well as tennis. The swings are performed with sharp force and attitude and confidence, with Steph Paul’s movement direction punctuated by Jane Shaw’s sound effects that need to be, and are, exceptionally well-timed.

The production moves very quickly, both because it has a full biography to cover and because there’s clearly a desire to represent propulsion — the sense of time, and women’s rights, moving forward.

There’s an ensemble chorus of mostly women who share the narrating in a staccato rhythm, repeating some of King’s most famous phrases, such as “Pressure is a privilege,” throughout.

The speed may have a purpose, but it also emphasizes a weakness, which is the narrative sprawl.

Gunderson resists the frequent choice of narrowing in on a particular moment in a bio-play, opting instead to go for the epic sweep. I get it: the “Battle of the Sexes” match between King and Bobby Riggs has come to define her life too much. It was a peak cultural moment — 90 million viewers in 1973! — and has been the subject of at least two star-cast movies (Holly Hunter in one, Emma Stone in the other) where Riggs’ outrageous performative chauvinism and parasitic publicity-seeking makes him the showier role.

Gunderson, however, decides not to even give Riggs a presence on stage at all, which says a lot as it’s clearly so purposeful. But she never finds something else that can serve as a narrative focus, so the play comes across a bit like a Wikipedia entry invested with occasional, stirring moments of triumph. We move from Billie Jean as a young teen taking up tennis (a humorously insistent Julia Antonelli) in Long Beach, California, battling from the start against the expectations of being properly “lady-like” when the point is to win.

Kennedy, who played more than 1,000 Broadway performances as another King, as in Carole, in the Bruni-directed “Beautiful,” takes over the Billie Jean role from then on, showing us King winning the doubles championship at Wimbledon at just 17 years old. Then she goes to college, meets her husband Larry King (Dan Amboyer, pulling off a tricky part), becomes the No. 1 women’s tennis player in the world, beats Riggs, and fights, for the next decades, for women’s equality and respect and then, less intentionally, for gay rights as she deals with being outed as a lesbian.

There are complications and tensions, particularly her marriage and her fear of losing her ability to be an effective change agent if her sexuality is exposed, but the whizzing pace makes them feel superficial.

Even King’s role in founding the Women’s Tennis Association has several interesting, even dramatic, details that are rushed through in a way that makes them a check mark on a long list of accomplishments.

In the end, what’s on stage feels highly polished and energetic, and does inspire cheers from the audience, but it also feels lacking. It’s all drive and energy, when a bit more thoughtfulness and a few more theatrical surprises would help it cohere into something more.

Then again, maybe that’s the point, another means of reflecting a boundary-breaking athlete constantly on hyperdrive.

“Yeah,” says King at one point when called out for always being “on,” “I really only have one setting.”