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Writing for Us
A CurtainUp New Jersey Review
The History of Light
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I don’t need you or your consolation prize piano. You can put it in your consolation girlfriend’s apartment. I’ve got my own. God bless the child who’s got her — Soph
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Chandra Thomas and Steve Kuhel
(Photo: Michael Goldstein) |
Unfortunately, the way they have been scrambled together and presented does not add up to a satisfying dramatic experience. There is not only too much plot pushed into the light in this story of two entwined inter-racial couples who grew up a generation apart, but there is too much that is left in the dark. This is not fault of the visual production or more notably the fine lighting and projection design by Charles S. Reese, or the excellent performances by the four actors.
Although the play is directed with earnestness by Jade King Carroll, it is egregiously florid and messy and its structure is unnecessarily meandering. Possibly even more detrimental is the fact that the characters are more inclined to rhetorical posturing than they are to honest speaking and real behavior. This makes it almost impossible to become empathetic to what is going on.
These faults, however, don’t make it hard to watch, only hard to swallow. The play’s central character is Soph (Chandra Thomas) a 30-something black singer/musician/composer who is thrown a curve while she is singing and playing one of her own songs on the piano in a nightspot. Thomas is an appealing and engaging actress, but her singing is certainly not of the caliber that would necessarily get her a gig even in a dive. Nevertheless, she sings an interminable droning song (original I presume) in its entirety (example of lyrics: “When we met I wasn’t feeling good, My heart lay still, in a coffin made of wood”) that mercifully ends as an ex-lover the tall, good-looking 30-something and white Math (Steve Kuhel) appears unexpectedly at the nightspot. He is back after leaving her ten years ago to go overseas to study on a Rhodes Scholarship. The intimacy between Soph and Math was evidently sparked as much by their mutual physical attraction as it was by their being passionate music majors at the same college.
Soph's reveries about rekindling this relatonship also bring on Suze (June Ballinger) a white American woman living in France who apparently had a long and committed relationship with Soph’s father Turn (Peter Jay Fernandez), a charismatic black political activist whom she met while they both attended college in the early 1960s.
What is not necessarily confusing, but simply dramatically confounding is the frequency of Soph’s not particularly substantive daydreams. The play, however, is flush with flash-backs prompted by the revelatory letters that detail Suze’s long-standing and carefully-plotted affair with Turn, one that was more than simply frowned upon by her father (played by a bespectacled Kuhel so we don’t get confused).
Reconnecting with Soph is something that Math, who is no longer a musician but now a well-healed corporate type, would like to do. But is it what Soph wants after finding out, as she had once before, that Math is inclined to be more committed to a more permanent relationship with a white woman? Although Soph has been estranged from her father since early childhood (for reasons we never find out), the play concocts a convenient reason for them to re-connect.
Ultmately, this is a play that is as much of a challenge for the audience as it for the actors who, nevertheless, move back and forth through time and morph occasionally into different characters with aplomb. It is unquestionably a socio-political message play, but playwright Davis’s attempts to balance the protracted pontificating in the text with pretentiously integrated stretches of lyricism is forced and awkward. As Turn, Fernandez makes a reasonably effective case for an activist who is as comfortable with political rhetoric as he is with romantic treacle.
Soph becomes the play’s most poignant character and Thomas makes this character quite disarming in a fantasy flashback in which she does a stand-up as the wonderfully politically incorrect comedian Dick Gregory. As Suze, Ballinger slips in and out of the decades with grace and with the help of some youthful wigs. If there is anything that is ultimately admirable about Math it is that Kuhel is in synch with the basic preposterousness of his character’s behavior.
Playwright Davis, a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Bulrusher (produced at Urban Stages in New York in 2006), obviously loves to play with time as much as play with language. In her defense, Davis has a lot to say about the socio-political implications of interracial relationships and the challenges that men and women face when thrown into its light. Unfortunately in the harsh light of the playwright’s politicized pulpit, the play’s message is altogether too glaring, making me wish that I had watched it through a pair of dark shades.
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The History of Light By Eisa Davis Directed by Jade king Carroll Cast: June Ballinger (Suze), Peter Jay Fernandez (Turn), Steve Kuhel (Math), Chandra Thomas (Soph) Set & Props Design: Matthew Campbell Lighting & Projection Design: Charles S. Reese Costume Design: Robin I. Shane Sound Design: Karin Graybash Running Time: 2 hours 25 minutes including intermission Passage Theatre, in the historic Mill Hill Playhouse, located at the corner of Front and Montgomery in downtown Trenton. (609) 392 – 0766 Tickets: ($25) Performances: Thursday, Friday at 8 PM; Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM. From: 11/03/11 Opening: 11/05/11 Closing: 11/20/11 Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 11/05/11 |
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