Slave Play

A-

Jeremy O. Harris certainly qualifies as this season’s hot young playwright. In addition to this work at New York Theatre Workshop, he has a second play, Daddy, coproduced by The New Group and Vineyard Theatre, coming up in February. He was a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has been commissioned by both Lincoln Center Theater and Playwrights Horizons. The current play has already won the 2018 Kennedy Center Rosa Parks Playwriting Award and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award. Not bad for someone in his second year at Yale School of Drama. 

This is a difficult review to write because to tell you too much about the play would be to spoil much of the pleasurable surprise I hope you will experience seeing it. I can say that it involves interracial sex and is not just sexy, but also hilarious, provocative and highly theatrical. The setting is specified as MacGregor Plantation in Virginia. The play has three acts performed without a break. In the long first act, we meet Jim (Paul Alexander Nolan; Escape to Margaritaville), a white tenant farmer on the plantation, and Kaneisha (Teyonah Parris; A Free Man of Color), the slave who is cleaning his shack. Next we meet Alana (Annie McNamara; The Sound and the Fury), the bored mistress, and Phillip (Sullivan Jones; The Winning Side), the studly mulatto house-servant/musician. Finally there are Gary (Ato Blankson-Wood; Lysistrata Jones), a black overseer, and Dustin (James Cusati-Moyer; Fire and Air), a white indentured servant whose work Gary is supervising. Things happen. After an abrupt ending, we are in the extended second act, which has an entirely different tone and casts everything we have seen so far in a new light. This act includes two new characters, Tea (Chalia La Tour; The Danger) and Patricia (Irene Sofia Lucio; Love and Information). The short dramatic final act combines elements of the previous two, but features only one of the couples. I realize this description does not give you much to go on, but trust me that it’s better not to know a lot in advance. The cast is uniformly strong. The scenic design by Cllint Ramos (Once on This Island, Torch Song) includes an astroturf stage backed by eight large mylar panels that reflect not only the audience but a painting of the plantation house on the auditorium’s back wall. The costumes by Dede Ayite (American Son, School Girls), especially Alana’s gown, are a treat. The lighting design by Jiyoun Chang adds a lot to the production. Director Robert O’Hara (Wild with Happy, Bella), whose direction of his own plays has not always been optimal, does a smooth job here, capturing the play’s many moods. I assure you that you won’t be bored, although I do feel that the long second act could use a trim. It’s not for those offended by nudity or sexual situations. Others should find it both entertaining and thought-provoking. Running time: two hours five minutes, no intermission.

Fire and Air

D

It is sad to think that this amorphous mess came from the pen of four-time Tony winner Terrence McNally. How the mighty have fallen! If there was any point to this Cliff Notes version of the career of ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, I failed to grasp it. If you arrive knowing the reasons for his importance to the arts of the early 20th century, you will disappointed by the needy man-child portrayed here (by the miscast Douglas Hodge; La Cage aux Folles). If you don’t know his importance beforehand, you will wonder why you should waste two hours with this unpleasant man. At least his entourage includes some interesting characters played by topnotch actors — his cousin and long-ago lover Dmitry Filosofov (John Glover; Love! Valour! Compassion!), his longtime friend and patron Misia Sert (Marin Mazzie; Bullets Over Broadway, Carrie) and his nurse since childhood Dunya (Marsha Mason; The Goodbye Girl). We also meet his great love, the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (James Cusati-Moyer; Six Degrees of Separation), whose career he obsessively molded, and who broke his heart. Finally, we are introduced to his next protege Leonide Massine (Jay Armstrong Johnson; On the Town). To hold the interest of at least part of the audience, Cusati-Moyer and Johnson remove their shirts as often as possible. Periodically Diaghilev spouts something pretentious when he is not kvetching about his boils or his fear of water. At intermission, I could not imagine that it could get worse, but I was wrong. The second act is excruciating with embarrassing surrealistic touches. It was a thoroughly dispiriting experience. Costumes were by Ann Hould-Ward (Allegro, Pacific Overtures). CSC artistic director John Doyle (Allegro, Pacific Overtures) designed the set and directed. Running time: two hours including intermission. NOTE: Seats in Row A are armless.