2-1-08
Great Acting, Directing Give Unblinking Look at Racism
Frequently theatre, in the course of telling a story, confronts something that’s impossible to comprehend. A horrendous crime. An inescapable truth. And in discussing these issues, a playwright can take one of two paths. On the one hand, he or she can offer a solution. (How often have we seen a play or movie positing that, if only a racist could really get to know a black person, those terrible thoughts would just melt away?) Or, the playwright can actually try to grapple with the undefinable.
J. T. Rogers has chosen the latter approach. His play White People introduces us to three characters who, with varying degrees of awareness, are forced to face the seeds (or in some cases the lush orchards) of racism within themselves. First we meet Dr. Alan Harris (an earnest Paul D’Addario), who, most likely, speaks with the playwright’s voice. He marvels at a brilliant African-American student who presents a stereotypical front. But we gradually learn of a violent mugging of him and his wife that caused him to confront his own instincts towards racism. We also hear from Mara Lynn Doddson (Anna Carini), who could easily be stereotyped herself as white trash. She faces a son with a terrible form of epilepsy, and an Indian doctor whom she simultaneously needs and resents because she feels he’s gotten ahead of her and her husband in line. Finally, Martin Bahmueller (John Kelly Connolly) first pontificates on his theories of successful business, disguising his racist thoughts behind a thin veil of classism, but then reveals the terrible hate crime his teenage son has recently committed.
It’s a truly interesting exploration of the seeds of racism that exist inside all of us, and the dangers those seeds present. Rogers suggests that we must recognize those seeds and grapple with them to fight racism within ourselves. There are no easy answers here.
However, White People is not a perfect evening of theatre. Its problems lie more with the structure of the script than with any fault of the production. Monologue plays are difficult, forcing actors to work without the comfortable rhythm of dialogue. D’Addario, Carini and Connolly each find a strong natural rhythm. Director Michael Patrick Thornton’s staging has a few awkward moments, but he has done an exceptional job of integrating Miles Polaski’s sound design—most present early in the evening. Scott Pillsbury’s light design features some occasionally jarring moments, but these are minor quibbles.
While Rogers’ script grapples effectively with an impossible issue, it lacks many of the traits that the average theatre-goer might be looking for on an evening out. White People is unrelentingly serious and not an easy production to sit through. This will not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Still, The Gift’s production of White People offers a surprisingly effective discussion of racism. It’s more likely to be described as interesting than entertaining, but this is a strong production of a very worthwhile piece of theatre.
White People, The Gift Theatre Company
Kerry Reid, Tribune—“If this sounds a bit like a diversity-training seminar, that’s not far off the mark. But as directed by Michael Patrick Thornton, Gift Theatre’s production builds in intensity over the course of 90 intermissionless minutes. What seems at first to be an expanded riff upon the closeted racism Rebecca Gilman explored in Spinning Into Butter takes on richer meanings, and even the more contrived segments feel fresh and vital, thanks to the engaging performances of Thornton’s dynamic cast.”
Tony Adler, Reader—“Deny it all you like, if you’re a white American then, yes, you do have a racist bone in your body. J.T. Rogers’s script demonstrates this truth with terrible efficiency, braiding together three monologues wherein white folk discover the hate in their marrow. None is an ideological racist or vigilante. But alienated? That, and much more. Rogers’s situations are formulaic, but his characters’ voices, and these actors’ anguished performances, carry the truth of thoughts most of us want to renounce even as we think them.”
Nina Metz, New City—“America does not talk openly or easily about matters of race, and it is no surprise that this play-in-monologues by J.T. Rogers falls into a trap of good intentions and obvious choices… Otherwise, the Gift Theatre production, directed by Michael Patrick Thornton, elevates the material beyond its limitations—the play is getting a better show than it deserves. Even the white-on-white American flag draped on stage says more than the script itself.”
Christpher Piatt, Time Out—“Director Thornton’s production of the play—which is a great vehicle for actors but a used CTA pass for audiences—features probably two of the Gift’s most mature performances to date. D’Addario, deftly convincing as an uneasy Brooklyn academic, and Connolly, unsettlingly good as a proud, suit-wearing member of the legal establishment, take the best, nondidactic passages of Rogers’s literal material and squeeze everything they can out of them. Meanwhile Carini is saddled with the less subtle ‘Southern poverty’ delegate, and struggles to find the subtlety within it. If you share Rogers’s ‘surprise’ that prejudice lurks within each of us, you might also be surprised, like a lot of late-bandwagon media, that Barack is doing well.”
Brian Kirst, Free Press—“Director Michael Patrick Thornton simply and sturdily directs the trio of performers. Most importantly, he effectively helps them discover the multiple layers of their characters, allowing them to create realistic personages. Scenic designer Brendan Donaldson also industriously delineates individuality by creating very specific environments for each character. It is his subtle touches, like a toy kicked beneath a table in the kitchen of a struggling young mother, that truly help each actor create their specific realities.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—“White People doesn’t reveal anything I don’t already know. Every sentient American surely has examined many times the latent and/or blatant racism that affects our thoughts and actions almost daily. Still, this powerfully written and forcefully acted play is a bracing and disturbing refresher course on the fragile equilibrium of civil life and the thin fabric of social order… Seen at a preview, White People already was ready to rock, with strongly voiced yet nuanced performances by Paul D’Addario, John Kelly Connolly and Anna Carini, under the thoughtful direction of Michael Patrick Thornton. The Gift Theatre has brought another provocative winner to its Jefferson Park storefront.”
Cloud Tectonics, Halcyon Theatre
Jack Helbig, Reader—“In Juan Castaneda’s simple, unaffected, yet perceptive staging, the Halcyon Theatre folks neither heighten the surrealism of the play’s time warps nor overplay the characters’ psychology. Aimee Bravo as the woman excels at speaking Rivera’s poetic dialogue without forcing it, and she’s adept at playing both the naturalistic and archetypal aspects of her character—she’s at once an abandoned, wounded pregnant woman and an earth mother who could redeem her lover if only he weren’t so blind. Playing the young man, Miguel A. Morales subtly follows the woman’s emotional lead, as the script demands.”
Brian Nemtusak, Time Out—“Stuck with doing a lot of nothing on stage, the actors acquit themselves well; Bravo’s innocently eroticized portrayal of Celestina is especially natural and direct. Castaneda teases out a few soaring moments, particularly in the closing scene, and a steady string of inventive, intricate sound/set/lighting interactions concretely (if also a little haltingly) evoke the thoroughgoing dreaminess. But the mythic inexplicability of the supernatural elements eventually goes from wondrous to numbing, as the basic idea just gets reiterated more or less unchanged.”
How I Spent My Last Night on Earth, Griffin Theatre Company
Zac Thompson, Reader—“A mismatched couple and characters who lack a proper sense of proportion can be effective in comedy, but William Massolia’s script gets bogged down in chatty philosophizing, which reduces the story’s urgency and distances us from the characters. The cast members in Richard Barletta’s production are likable, but it would have been nice to see them experience something rather than just talk about it.”
Requiem for a Heavyweight, Shattered Globe Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune—“It’s not a great play. And not only did [playwright Rod Serling] create a sweet, less-than-credible angel to minister to the Mountain in his hour of need, he even named her character Grace. But I doubt much of that will bother you as you watch Lou Contey’s rich, compact and deliciously entertaining production for the Shattered Globe Theatre, which has a long and passionate history of excellence in intense American works from this period. Concisely designed by Kevin Hagen, this is one of those only-in-Chicago shows in which so many rough-hewn, follically challenged, middle-age, wholly authentic actors keep emerging from the back of the stage, you think there must be a factory back there churning them out.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Serling, the genius behind ‘The Twilight Zone,’ was a sterling writer who could pierce the heart and conscience without ever turning sappy. His Requiem—part morality play, part surrogate father-and-son drama, part beauty-and-the-beast romance, part tale of innocence and experience—still has powerful legs. Best of all, under Lou Contey’s pitch-perfect direction, the actors, who seem lifted right out of the 1950s prizefighting subculture, possess an uncanny knack for casting a vintage spell while making every moment fresh and immediate.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald—“Contey and lighting designer Mike Durst bring a cinematic quality to the production. That’s especially true of the opening scene, a bracing, gasp-inducing fight with punishing choreography by Nick Sandys, spot-on sound by Mike Tutaj and prosthetics by Ora Jewell-Busche, whose aptly unappetizing makeup makes a cauliflower of a fighter’s ear and raw hamburger of his cheek. As for the ensemble, it’s top-notch, with a towering (in every sense of the word) performance by Sean Sullivan as the self-aware, unschooled yet unfailingly honorable prizefighter Mountain McClintock, an aging pro who never took a dive and who, after 14 years and 111 fights, finds himself on the ropes.”
Kerry Reid, Reader—“Rod Serling may be best known today for ‘The Twilight Zone,’ but in 1956 he raised the bar for live TV drama with this tough-minded, unsentimental piece about prizefighting before it was glamorous. A decrepit yet honorable boxer faces the end of his career while his manager schemes up ways to continue feeding off the talents of others. Shattered Globe Theatre’s deeply satisfying production and strong ensemble give the lie to the poetry of pugilism so often advanced by present-day writers and filmmakers.”
Dennis Polkow, New City—“The rise or fall of a good Heavyweight is how much heart is displayed without becoming maudlin, and Sullivan is remarkably convincing, never letting his guard down on being too ‘punchy.’ But the rest of this first-rate ensemble cast is no less convincing, from the sadistic seediness of the promoters to the guys already in the prizefight ‘graveyard,’ sitting around the bar reliving their best fights blow by blow, beer by beer.”
Kris Vire, Time Out—“Contey’s strong production downplays the script’s weaknesses. Fine performances from the cast, particularly from Sullivan as the almost-was boxer struggling to understand what’s happened to him, cover Serling’s chinks. A thoroughly convincing boxing match at the start (credit to fight designer Nick Sandys) announces the quality of the production we’re in for, and a sequence with Sullivan and prizefighter portraits is terrifically evocative of a classic film montage. But that’s just it: When a film adaptation makes us think of film, we start to wonder why it’s on stage at all.”
Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“Sean Sullivan’s hulking palooka is, despite his bulk, also achingly vulnerable, especially when Paula Steven’s Grace offers Mountain utterly unexpected affection. A hard-boiled, scenery-chewing portrayal that never stoops to lie, Bill Bannon’s Maish is anguish personified, matched by Brian McCartney’s equally larger-than-life gusto as Mountain’s protective trainer. The ensemble could have come straight from a Brooklyn gym in 1956, losing nothing in the time trip, as authentic as the fight posters that surround the canvas square in Kevin Hagan’s well-focused set.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“This is gritty realism at its grittiest. We are introduced to our environment at the outset, the final round of McClintock’s last fight finishing less than three feet away from us in a welter of blood, canvas burns and the slap of gloves on flesh. It doesn’t stop there: Director Lou Contey has assembled a platoon of players whose appearance invokes a Boschean inferno inexplicably transposed to a shabby corner on the edge of despair, featuring a total-immersion performance by Sean Sullivan as the broken pug, along with sturdy support from veteran character actors Bill Bannon and Brian McCartney.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“If Miss Julie makes sense again, we might all be fucked.”—Christopher Piatt reviewing The Hypocrites production of Miss Julie in Time Out.