Sizwe Banzi vs. The Rant

First published at the Broad Street Review:

Last week I saw both the Lantern’s and Interact Theatre’s respective productions of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Rant. While both were expertly directed and featured formidable performances of plots driven by moral-issues, one of them felt dated and of little consequence, while the other found continuing and universal relevance.

I saw the Lantern’s production of Athol Fugard’s play first, which portrayed the young worker Sizwe Bansi (Lawrence Stallings) imprisoned inside the machinations of South Africa’s apartheid system. The stamps in his government-issued passbook restrict him to work in Port Elizabeth, where he’s supposed to live with his wife and four children. But there’s no work there, so he has journeyed to New Brighton, where he can’t work because the local bureaucrats won’t give him a permit. While he’s out drinking with Buntu (Forrest McClendon), they stumble upon a recently murdered corpse, and the situation presents the innocent Sizwe with a rogue dilemma: either steal the dead man’s passbook and find work, or continue to live as a fugitive from the state.

Andrew Case’s The Rant appears less straightforward. Denise Reeves, an African-American woman (Kimberly S. Fairbanks), claims to have seen the white police sergeant Clark murder her autistic teenage son on her front porch, with the assistance of the black cop Simmons (Aldo Billingslea). The New York Police department buries the investigation, so Reeves turns to Lila Mahnaz (Elena Araoz), who heads a civilian review board that handles complaints and oversees internal police investigations. Mahnaz believes Reeve’s version and launches a personal crusade against Simmons, sensationalizing the case with the assistance of Alexander Stern (David Ingram), a cynical crime reporter. In a post-modern era, where truth is considered “another type of bias,” the question of “Who’s watching the watchmen?” takes on considerable moral significance.

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Review of Interact's "House with No Walls" published at PhillyTheaterReview.com

Thomas Gibbons’ “A House with No Walls,” is a very ambitious new play, dealing straightforwardly with many subjects that “no one wants to be reminded about.” Starting with George Washington’s ownership of slaves, Gibbons attempts to present not only the problem of how to talk about this today, but he does so primarily through the voice of a prominent black conservative author. His play opens on Afro-Centrist activist Salif Camara and historian Allen Rosen interrupting the building of the (fictional) Museum of Liberty being constructed on the site of Washington’s former Philadelphia residence, including his slave’s quarters. Enter Cadence Lane, the aforementioned conservative historian turned pundit, who happens to sit on the museum’s board, and an ideological battle over how to commemorate slavery’s legacy for the African-American community begins.

What Gibbons wants to do with this play, Interact does magnificently, presenting one of the finest productions I’ve ever seen on their stage.

As Cadence, Tracey Conyer Lee gives the kind of performance that makes you wish she did all of her acting in Philadelphia. She moves effortlessly from a quiet strength to a subtle portrayal of a self-doubt and longing that nags at her pride and convictions, all the while keeping a resilient calm against an onslaught of insult and criticism. As the activist hoarding “cultural ammunition,” Johnnie Hobbs alternates between accused huckster and impassioned defender, suggesting both while avoiding a demagogic caricature. And Seth Reichgott, playing the deeply liberal, deeply guilt-ridden Rosen, provides much of the humor while making the entire audience uncomfortable with his portrayal of their reluctant and resentful shared guilt. When he cringes over one of the many “damned no matter what you do dilemmas” of political correctness, you cringe with him, because his portrayal makes you feel what his character’s experiencing, and he makes you feel why.

Moreover, Seth Rozin’s direction seamlessly overlays multiple time periods, places, and narratives, enabling faultlessly timed debate and even a few dashes of humor, while never letting the production devolve into the senselessness and anger that too often surrounds these issues. And Andre Harrington’s costumes are perfectly tailored to both periods and attitudes (right down to the Egyptian ankh on Salif’s necklace), while Pete Whinnery’s lighting superbly highlights the sense of longing for resolution and identity.

However, the production constitutes the real success, giving Gibbons far more than he earns, as his ambition ultimately weakens his play. From a very strong premise of how to represent the past in order to enable a future, he widens the play’s scope until it eventually extends into an attempt to deal with every problem (he can think of) that affects and divides African Americans. The issue of reparations, what to make of the growing black professional class, college admissions, if “white liberal guilt” is more a hindrance than a help (Cadence calls it “the black community’s other plague), all work their way into the debates between Cadence and Salif. Unfortunately, this turns what could have been a long, fruitful discussion about black identity and the legacy of slavery into a series of sound-bytes, offering little more than an hour spent watching Hannity and Colmes. As a result, his play must end on a political compromise to the initial problem, with neither side speaking past the other, but with neither side (nor the audience) achieving any greater enlightenment either.

This production is undoubtedly worth seeing, but Gibbons, who is “done writing about race,” should have saved some of these ideas, and given us more in another play.