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"Do not cry Mom … it's just that God takes pictures of the rain."
This is what Jamal Connor, when he was a boy, told his mother Kendra Ellis-Connor (Kerry Washington) that lightning would explode in the night sky.
Kendra recalls this memory as the rain fell under soft, wet sheets and lightning formed outside the windows of the Miami Police Station in which she was at the opening of Christopher Demos' room. -Brown. American son, which opened Sunday night on Broadway.
Jamal is now 18 and missing, and Kendra wants to know where he is. It is almost 4 o'clock in the morning. he has disappeared since 20h.
It does not look like a police station at first; This space, designed by Derek McLane, could be a chic and chic lounge with modern furniture.
But then we see a policeman, Paul Larkin (Jeremy Jordan), who does not help much. It is clear from his rudimentary questions about Kendra's son that agent Larkin, if not racist, has a simple and lazy mind imbued with stereotypes.
Kendra is also a black woman and a professor of psychology. He despises her, she is upset, her questions, her demands for responsibility, her very presence.
This piece, led with nervousness heated by Kenny Leon, is strangely locked on itself. It lasts 90 minutes and is stuck rigidly in the grooves it installs at the very beginning. These furrows are essential and topical themes – racism, police brutality and injustice – but American son cancel their impact thanks to clumsy narration and flat characterization.
This is a frustrating cul-de-sac of a play, stitched after too many tragedies, too much news programming, too many opinions, with characters offering points of different view.
Kendra is naturally angry and potentially helpless; any mother would be. But Washington's performance equates to almost 90 minutes of screaming. Shouting may be more than plausible under the circumstances, but it creates a monotonous drama and does not connect Kendra to the public, or give Washington a colorful emotional territory to occupy.
Washington is a coiled and passionate performance. We feel his frustration and his anger, but the play always seems to radically change the character and the actor.
Kendra's relationship with her white husband, Scott (Steven Pasquale) does not seem plausible. She seems far too smart to have met someone so indifferent (as Scott seems to be) about the meaning and lived reality of the black race and racism.
The two are separated now (and him with a white woman, which is particularly bad for Kendra, she says).
Her return to be with her as this terrible night unfolds is already a tense reconnection. The play questions his own attitudes towards the race towards his son. As for Scott, they spent a fortune on Jamal's education. He would not have problems with the police as other black "young people" do. Kendra's eyes roll towards her indifference, just like ours.
The play first addresses the lazy racism of the police and its equally careless and dismissive treatment of black loved ones in search of help.
Kendra insists that Jamal's Larkin says, "He never tore the label of a new mattress, OK?" Jordan embodies Larkin's stupidity and prejudices with a seemingly straightforward, seemingly non-malignant appearance; Larkin wants to know more about "street names", scars and tattoos.
Larkin does not get angry when Kenda sums up her son like this: "The sign of Jamal is Taurus. With the Virgin rising. He is shy and looks away when he smiles. He plays guitar and particularly likes blues and rock. He walks like a jock, but he can recite almost every poem from Emily Dickinson. "
Larkin mixes Dickens and Dickinson and calls Jamal, Jerome; and then directs Kendra to the fountains, a hangover from the time of segregation; and too late realizes his total insensibility and his sudden march into a minefield.
Even worse, when Scott comes in, Larkin assumes that he's the main detective, Stokes (he's wrong, Stokes is black, played by the excellent Eugene Lee), and starts talking without saying anything about Kendra.
"The more he said sneaky things, the more it seemed (to this critic anyway) absolutely improbable that he and Kendra met in the first place. She would surely have rejected it soon enough as soon as he would have opened his mouth"
The game becomes even more frustrating with Scott's introduction, which really serves as deferred padding before we discover what happened to Jamal. Kendra and Scott have never married. they do not have chemistry and oppose it from the first moment.
Scott is essentially the white guy with the bone head who married the black woman. The more he said sneaky things, the more it seemed (to this critic anyway) absolutely improbable that he and Kendra met in the first place. She would have surely rejected it soon enough as soon as he opened his mouth.
He wanted to call Jamal something "less" black, like Aidan. "The last time he stayed at my house, he looked like a damned gangster," he says grumpily. That will not work well with his next West Point interview.
Scott tells Kendra of the privileged education that Jamal has received, "You and I have worked hard to make my world. We spent almost a quarter of a million dollars getting this kid to the best private schools in the city … He had every possible benefit.
If this is true, then the missing puzzle is why Kendra accepted it. He is never declared or chewed. Instead, she now rejects her ex-husband's suggestion that Jamal, going out with other black children, "takes a stupid risk."
If it seems easy now, why did not it seem easy for their marriage? How did she endure this endless stream of white drivel titled out of Scott's mouth? What was Kendra's own complicity, and did she wake up now that their marriage is over? It's a fascinating personal question in this relationship and it's not posed by the piece.
Also: why the hell did this marriage end? We never find out, except that Scott puts everything on Kendra.
She says that she sometimes touches Jamal's shoulder as he sleeps, worried about his safety, worried precisely for what is happening that night. She named Philando Castile, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice.
We discover that Jamal is wearing a sticker on the back of his car: "Throw cops with your phone every time they make a bust."
The problem is font sizes: "Shoot Cops" is much bigger than other letters. Kendra tells Scott that Jamal, one of three black students, has the impression of being the "face of the race" in his classy school. Cases of police brutality related to the race were an "awakening" for him.
"Make sure that he understands that for us, there is no "American dream""
Scott begs her not to give the police a "lecture on Black Lives Matter". Kendra rightly says that the cops could get away with it.
Kendra's encounter with Stokes is the most intriguing part of the play. She wonders why she should teach her son to keep his mouth shut. Stokes says that's exactly what she should do; this is the only way, with regards to the stops of the circulation, that the black lives can be secured. "Make sure he understands that for us there is no" American dream, "" says Stokes. She calls Stokes an uncle Tom.
It is impossible to fully criticize why American son feels so manipulative and rude not to mention his end.
No spoilers here, but this ending and the way the ending is formulated and treated (like a cliffhanger soap opera) instead of feeling real and raw, which, I'm sure, was the only thing I could do. intention, feels rushed and horribly exploitative. This criticism is later struck by how the play could be started more effectively before separating the layers of this "American son" and his parents' marriage, and the police brutality and racism that the play seeks to break and to dismiss.
In the current state of things, we barely know Jamal, or Kendra and Scott, or anything deeper than the problem we would do with a multi-voice cable group, at the end. The piece is both a waste of important material and a talented cast.
American son is at Booth Theater, NYC, reservation until Jan. 27.
Waiting for Godot
Far away from Star Broadway, there is a beautifully performed and directed production of Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot play at the Lincoln Center's White Light Festival at John Jay College's Gerald W. Lynch Theater.
This druid play, directed by Garry Hynes, makes just as much sense as a beginner or experienced spectator of Godot could wish. If you are lucky enough to have recently seen Bill Irwin's master class at Beckett, it will be a second additional vehicle of exploration and enlightenment.
Before raising unreasonable expectations, no, you will not know who Godot is; you will not know what Vladimir (Marty Rea) and Tarragon (Aaron Monaghan) are doing, or Didi and Gogo, and why they are waiting.
But we wait with them and understand it, or we rejoice in its perversity, and we see the coming and going of friendship, the coming and going of despair and hope, as well as as the mystery of time and relationships when their visitors appear.
There is Pozzo (a fleshy, absurd and threatening Roy Nolan) who drags Lucky (Garrett Lombard) along a rope; and there is Boy (Jaden Pace and Nathan Reid in different executions), who brings provisional news of Godot's presence himself. Lombard delivers Lucky's amazing monologue as a commentator for horse racing on television.
The staging is as simple as any other Godots you will have seen; a slightly inclined ground in rough soil with an isolated tree (without leaves, then with leaves) and a background screen with stains and marking to indicate the continuation of the sandy landscape, beautifully lit by James F. Ingalls (oranges, violets and blue ink)) day and night).
Didi and Gogo consider suicide (but the tree is far too fragile to support their weight), the mystery of their position and the reason for their presence and their rise, their fall and their fall. They are laughing. They correct each other. And they are inseparable, a forced intimacy that both frustrates them but they can not consider giving up.
Vladimir is the most eager to keep up morale, and Tarragon is more inclined to ask questions and get closer to the void. They clown as Beckett wanted with their hats, and they lean, jump, sleep and tidy their bodies echoing the curves and shapes of each other; Rea and Monaghan are perfect Beckett conduits: perplexed, perplexed, clear, maddening and seductive.
Rea and Monaghan both provide a clear summary of Beckett's complicated and sometimes impenetrable treatise on existential desperation, as well as comic weapons needed to avoid it for as long as possible. The audience looked in a striking silence.
Waiting for Godot is at Gerald W. Lynch Theater of John Jay College until November 13th.
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