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Kerry Washington and Steven Pasquale, the separated parents of a missing teenager, go down to a Miami police station in the middle of the night, desperately searching for answers in this drama-themed race.
Contemporary problem-oriented dramas rarely reach Broadway today, but American son vibrates with the urgency of a necessary conversation, providing a heartbreaking glimpse of fears that almost every parent of a black child in the country must face daily. Mothers in particular. As a vector of this alarm in a situation of uncertainty and frustration, Kerry Washington gives an intense performance that exposes the anguish of his character without smoothing his sharp edges.
The director Kenny Leon is never as good as his material, and in this case, he works on a drama more captivating than the execution. Christopher Demos-Brown's four-character play reduces its power with a schematic writing a little too heavy with speech. Nevertheless, he remains involved and provocative throughout his short span of 85 minutes, staged by Leon with unfailing concentration and growing terror.
Even without reference to the names of young African Americans like Eric Garner, Philandro Castile and Tamir Rice, killed by the police in cases where the justification for lethal force remains questionable, it would be a hot topic. The hustle and bustle of Kendra (Washington) will seem very real to even ephemeral audience members, as will the possibility of violent conflicts during police interactions, such as stopping traffic night on which the room rests. This seems especially true in widely used places like Florida.
Demos-Brown addresses this explosive situation with fairness, acknowledging the disproportionate suspicion of black American men and boys, as well as the pressure exerted on the police in a racial atmosphere where the forces of order can be considered hostile to the justice. marginalized community members.
The play opens shortly after 4 am and takes place in a semblance of real time in a waiting room at the Miami-Dade County Police Station, with large bay windows revealing the rain that fall and fall all night. Kendra has been pacing for nearly an hour, leaving repeated voice messages to her missing son, Jamal, and receiving little information from rookie police officer Paul Larkin on duty. (Jeremy Jordan) Jamal, a high school student who has just turned 18, came out earlier in the evening and, although his Lexus was identified during an incident, no details about the driver are available.
Larkin insists that the police protocol prevents him from searching for a missing person for 48 hours, advising Kendra to remain seated until the Public Affairs Liaison Officer goes into service in the morning. But she continues to harass the cop to find out if her son is being held somewhere. While Larkin reluctantly agrees to check back into the system, his preliminary interrogations – he seems to assume that Jamal has a criminal record and a street name – raise the strings of Kendra, a professor of psychology at the university, more and more impatient.
The arrival of Jamal's father, Scott (Steven Pasquale), a white FBI agent separated from Kendra for four months, instantly changes the temperature of the room. Demos-Brown succinctly explains how women are "managed" in such situations, compared to the more obliging way men are treated. This is all the more true because of Scott's insignia and Larkin's blinding claim that working for the FBI is his dream job.
While Jordan gives a solid performance, Larkin is the least convincing character, his lack of control too often serving as a bald way to create friction and make Kendra more confrontational. Even the most clumsy and inexperienced cop will really feel the need to mention to a black woman that the police station has two water fountains because the building is prior to desegregation?
There are also problems with the way Scott is written, although Pasquale brings a lot of punch to the role, making him a decent guy, but insignificant and a little cautious. Much of the play follows the lively back and forth between Scott and Kendra, revealing the vast gulf that separates his intrinsic trust in law enforcement from his well-founded mistrust. She says filming cops with their cameras is the only backup available for kids like Jamal. This gap between husband and wife is already achievable, but it is difficult to absorb some of the conversations about race-based preconceptions that are taking place here between a Métis couple, apparently for the first time after almost 20 years of marriage.
What emerges with force is the bitter disillusionment of Kendra, who has spent her life trying to keep her son in a safe and nurturing environment, only to see Jamal pushed in a dangerous direction by the feeling of helplessness that has followed the departure of his father. Scott unworthy of the sudden change in the image of their heterosexual student son – they spent a fortune for his prestige education in white majority preparatory schools – for the benefit of men, their families, and their families. baggy pants and a fanfaron of "gangsta". But Demos-Brown encourages us to consider the psychological motivations that shape the identity of young black men too easily stereotyped as "thugs".
The dramatic author's hand is particularly visible in some prose-shaped Kendra descriptions describing the fears that have long remained awake, or the possible scenarios that prevented it from allowing Jamal to cross the Great South by car until Bonnaroo. But that does not diminish the sobering arguments.
The piece picks up speed with the eventual arrival of the Liaison Officer, Lieutenant John Stokes (Eugene Lee), a force veteran who happens to be also black. As flexible and imposing as Washington is in its transition from anger to calm reasoning, from desperation to exhausted emotional exhaustion, Lee is the outstanding performance of the whole. In a few short scenes, it presents the vision of the lucid world of a man who sees the picture from every angle, with what reads as an internalized sorrow under a strictly professional front. His frank observations add texture and weight to the drama.
Although the storm on the outside may seem like an obvious metaphor, it is undeniably effective: Jamal's parents cast worried glances beyond the windows at each flash. The design contributions of Derek McLane's dull institutional ensemble and Peter Kaczorowski's corresponding lighting are first-rate.
One may wonder whether the inevitability of such a punitive end was inevitable and whether the piece could have become more complex without diluting its message by subverting public expectations with a different, less predictable outcome. But it is a tense theater designed to shake our complacency and make us think. For this purpose, it succeeds.
Location: Booth Theater, New York
Distribution: Kerry Washington, Stephen Pasquale, Eugene Lee, Jeremy Jordan
Director: Kenny Leon
Dramatic author: Christopher Demos-Brown
Sets: Derek McLane
Costume Designer: Dede Ayite
Lighting Designer: Peter Kaczorowski
Sound designer: Peter Fitzgerald
Combat Director: Thomas Schall
Presented by Jeffrey Richards, Simpson Street, Rebecca Gold, Will Trice, Stephen C. Byrd, Alia Jones-Harvey, Nnamdi Asomugha, Dominick Laruffa Jr. & Co., Greenleaf Productions, Van Kaplan, Willette and Manuel Klausner, Jada Pinkett Smith, Lu-Shawn M. Thompson, Act 4 Entertainment, Gabrielle Palitz, Caril and Robin Washington, Bruce Robert Harris and Jack W. Batman, Shonda Rhimes, Bellanca Smigel Rutter, Salmira & Son, Jayne Baron Sherman, Steve Stoute for Miami, United States of America, Steven Toll, Dwayne Wade, Union-Wade Gabrielle, The Shubert Organization
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