GAME. SET. NOT QUITE MATCH.

Tennis great and feminist icon Billie Jean King gets the biography treatment in Billie Jean by Lauren Gunderson. Opening the new season of Chicago Shakespeare, this crowd-pleasing world premiere follows Billie Jean from her childhood in the 1950s through to the US Open in 2006 when the USTA National Tennis Center was named the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in her honor. In that duration, she won thirty-nine Grand Slam championships, successfully battled for equal pay for female athletes, won the “Battle of the Sexes” against Bobby Riggs, helped form the Women’s Tennis Association, came out as a lesbian, and championed queer causes, frequently suffering financially as a result. That’s a lot to cram into two odd hours of stage time but playwright Gunderson manages.

Chilina Kennedy

Chilina Kennedy as Billie Jean King and Callie Rachelle Johnson as Ilana Kloss

Wilson Chin‘s simple, but elegant set design is a promising start: it’s a stripped down version of a tennis court with the net facing the audience, against a backdrop of lights, each one evoking the famous Wimbledon Rosewater Dish (the trophy that King would hoist four times), and dominated by a giant screen displaying a vintage Wimbledon scoreboard. Through the course of the play, this screen is raised and lowered, and the net rotated, creating different settings and locales for the action. In combination with Jen Schriever‘s stellar lighting design, the overall effect is remarkable.

The Cast

As Billie Jean King, Chilina Kennedy (of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical fame) is fantastic. She wisely chooses to channel Billie Jean’s spirit and personality rather than resort to mimicry, and it pays off in a fierce, hypnotic, high-wire performance over two hours — she’s on stage for all but the first few minutes of the play — that is captivating.

Murphy Taylor Smith, Chilina Kennedy, Lenne Klingaman, and Carolyn Holding

Director Marc Bruni keeps the action going at a frenetic pace that’s necessary to hit every landmark in an illustrious life, and while the effect of this is to keep the audience riveted, it does no favors to the rest of the talented cast whose performances are not given time to register. Scenes are so short — some less than a minute long — that everything goes by in a blur. Dialog leans heavily on sports clichés (“one ball at a time”), and there’s a tortured metaphor built around the tennis scoring system (“love-all” being the start of every game) that doesn’t land. Kennedy, being on stage without interruption can work with it, but the rest of the cast, through no fault of their own, cannot. It is telling that the two quietest moments of the play are the most powerful, and Jürgen Hooper (Randy Moffitt, Billie Jean’s brother) and Wynn Harmon (Bill Moffit, her father) make the most of their brief opportunities delivering two small but emotional moments that are simply lovely. Harmon’s scene, in particular, is wonderful.

Chilina Kennedy and Dan Amboyer as Larry King

Elena Hurst as Rosie Casals, Chilina Kennedy, and Jürgen Hooper

The biopic, or in this case a bioplay, is my least favorite genre of entertainment. With a few notable exceptions, it forces its subject’s lives into a pattern, turning inspiring lives of grit, talent, and accomplishment into predictable plodding narratives. And yet because of its subject matter it sometimes still works. It’s hard not to be awed by great achievers, and this well-oiled machine of a play hits all its marks in that regard; crash follows peak, love follows heartbreak, the plummet to the nadir, and finally, the triumphant rise from the ashes. And regularly sprinkled throughout with sentimentality. It works. I may roll my eyes but it works. The formula exists for a reason. But Billie Jean stood apart from her peers not just by virtue of her once-in-a generation talent but also by refusing to accept the status quo, by flouting convention, and by taking risks; she deserves a biography that does the same. Until that one comes along, this will have to do.

Chilina Kennedy

photos by Justin Barbin

Billie Jean
Chicago Shakespeare Theater
The Yard on Navy Pier, 800 East Grand Avenue
ends on August 10, 2025
for tickets, call 312.595.5600 or visit Chicago Shakes

for more shows, visit  Theatre in Chicago