They don't write them like they used to: three acts in real time, exposition, complication and explosion, fueled by alcohol and simmering passion. Gaps aside, "That Championship Season" is a pretty well-made version of that seldom-seen archetype, the well-made play.

As such, the professional Playhouse Rep show directed by Ronald Allan-Lindblom depends a lot on its setting in 1972, looking back to 1952, because four members of a high school basketball team are gathering with their charismatic, aging coach for the 20th anniversary of their Pennsylvania state championship. Those dates are essential to make sense of the open bigotry and such attitudes as incipient environmentalism.

The physical setting is a small city like Scranton, where playwright Jason Miller (1939-2001) grew up. When I reviewed the 1981 professional production at the Playhouse, I'm sure I quoted John Updike's insightful description (from "The Centaur") of "the small ugly cities of the East ... the great Middle Atlantic civilization" of which Updike was fond. Miller is more ambivalent, but his familiarity gives the play a kind of authenticity.

"Championship Season" won the 1973 Tony and the Pulitzer. But as I recall, I was severe with it in 1981, thinking its characterizations cliched and its action melodramatic. All these years later, I've softened. But in 1981, the play was practically contemporary. Now, I think it benefits from being seen as a period piece, which makes it odd that the theater program omits that 1972 date. Perhaps in compensation, the Playhouse adds a brisk audio-visual prologue with references to Watergate, Vietnam, Woodstock, etc.

Approaching mid-life at 38 or so, the four teammates have taken different paths. Phil Romano is a rich mining magnate and George Sikow­ski is the mayor, but one is running afoul of pollution laws and the other faces a stiff re-election battle. The other two are relative failures: James Daley is an assistant school principal and his brother Tom is a drunk, but one has greater ambitions and the other is alert to hypocrisy.

They still come to Coach (who has no other name) for guidance, and he talks a good game, a litany of respect, loyalty and discipline. They're admirable values, but the preacher himself doesn't measure up, witness his idolizing Joe McCarthy and the fascist Father Coughlin. That the players are obviously Italian, Polish and Irish in origin just underlines Coach's bigotry toward blacks and Jews.

The alcohol flows and along with it revelations political, sexual and financial. This is a Long Night of the Soul play, although nowhere near the great American archetype of "Long Day's Journey Into Night." It's also a midlife crisis play, although it has no great insight to offer.

What it does have is juicy (if superficial) roles. Daryll Heysham shines with both swagger and self-contempt as Phil, and a deadpan Jarrod DiGiorgi lands just about every wisecrack as the sodden Tom. Phil Winters, looking like a cross between Charles Durning and Foghorn Leghorn, is properly pitiable as the hollow mayor, and David Cabot gives dimension to the equally hollow James.

Playing Coach is Bob Haley, a fine, feeling actor, but it's questionable casting. It isn't that his height emphasizes the others' lack of it, but that even when he rages, he seems more like their choir director than an intense warlord. The main problem is his voice, from which you expect to hear sensitive poetry more than Coach's rasping command.

Lindblom's direction is solid, anchoring the play pretty much in its time, although he can't dig any deeper than Miller's script allows. Michael Thomas Essad provides a handsome period set. "Championship Season" is perfectly at home in the Playhouse's mid-size Rauh Theatre.

Note that the run has been shortened to avoid the G-20 summit.

By the way, for those interested in revisiting ancient memories, the cast of that 1981 Playhouse production was Bud Mellott (Coach), Ray Laine (Phil), Robert Spanabel (George), Hugh Rose (James) and Richard Rauh (Tom).