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Masthead
A CurtainUp Review
every tongue confesses
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The devil is busy tonight.— An elder describing the burning of his church in Alabama, in 1996.
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Autumn Hurlbert as Benny Pride and Phylicia Rashad as Mother Sister
(Photo: Joan Marcus) |
Set against the burning of churches in Alabama in the mid-1990's, the piece takes on many issues relating to race and prejudice. It begins with three church elders (Crystal Fox, Eugene Lee, E. Roger Mitchell) singing their guts out. Their gospel songs come through loud and clear. Glorious voices, would that they had kept singing. What follows after that first rousing number is a play whose parts are greater than its whole. More a series of character-driven vignettes than a play.
There is a widow (played magnificently by Phylicia Rashad, a graduate of Washington's Howard University) and her son Shadrack (Jason Dirden, excellent) who's ambition in life is to go to Nashville and have a career in music, playing spoons. Their dialogue on this subject owes much to The Cosby Show and Rashad's character Claire Huxtable, because it is highly amusing in a sit-com way.
The cast of characters also includes a girl (gifted singer Autumn Hurlbert) who becomes aphasic after the death of her mother (Leslie Kritzer). Her father, (played with great flair by Jim Ireland) is a redneck with a complicated DNA. Miscegenation is another theme.
Blacksmith, the stranger who comes and goes, but not before singing beautifully. He delivers the line that explains the title with his back to the audience while making an exit, so some of us missed the meaning of the title.
Playwright Marcus Gardley has a wonderful ear for dialogue. However, he works in many not-necessarily-consistent styles abd many of his characters lack depth. Although his many themes are intertwined they seem to have come from a tv script template rather that a cogent play. There's prejudice in all its forms, not just white against black but also black against white, parent/child conflict, hypocrisy and gossip, drugs and faith healing. It's all in there. Like a gumbo. What's missing is a through line. But it's a noble effort and we should look forward to more works from this promising writer.
Perhaps the most praise should go to Molly Smith for creating a place where new writers and new plays can be heard and seen and to architect Bing Thom, whose oval-shaped theatre, lined with dark wood, woven like a basket.
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every tongue confesses By Marcus Gardley Director, Kenny Leon Set Designer, Tom Lynch Lighting Designer, Allen Lee Hughes With Jason Dirden (Shadrack), Crystal Fox (Missionary/Tender Meeks), Autumn Hurlbert (Benny Pride), Jim Ireland (Stoker Pride), Leslie Kritzer (Bernadette), Eugene Lee (Elder/Jeremiah), E. Roger Mitchell (Brother, Bobby), Jonathan Peck (Blacksmith), Phylicia Rashad (Mother Sister). Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes The Mead Center for American Theater/Arena Stage/Cradle, 1101 Sixth Street, SW, Washington, DC; 202-488-3300; www.arenastage.org. From November 9, 2010 to January 2, 2011. Review by Susan Davidson, based on November 18, 2010 performance. |
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The Scottsboro Boyse
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
