In the Berkshires, a Powerful Play and a Classic Musical About Prejudice
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Version 0 of 1. WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Theater seasons rarely have a theme; they come together too haphazardly for that. But there’s something in the Berkshires air right now, even aside from humidity. Last weekend, I saw three productions that all dealt, at least in part, with the life-destroying effects of prejudice. Together, they seemed to be engaged in an accidental conversation with our own time and world. Two were at the Williamstown Theater Festival here. On the smaller Nikos Stage, I attended a matinee of Jen Silverman’s “Dangerous House,” a harrowing play about violence against lesbians and gay men in South Africa. That evening, on the larger Main Stage, I caught the festival’s revival of “The Member of the Wedding,” in which, as my colleague Ben Brantley has noted, Roslyn Ruff’s uncompromising performance shifts the center of the classic Carson McCullers story from a white girl’s tween anxiety to a black woman’s unanswerable sorrows. The night before, 20 miles south in Pittsfield, Mass., I saw the Barrington Stage Company’s solid and satisfying, if slightly bumpy, revival of “West Side Story,” the classic 1957 musical about gang warfare between self-proclaimed Americans and recent Puerto Rican migrants. (As Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics point out, the Puerto Ricans are American, too.) Its familiar pleasures — like those of “The Member of the Wedding” — heightened the unexpected ache of its continued relevance. But it was “Dangerous House,” the play set furthest away, that spoke most urgently. In 14 swift scenes, Ms. Silverman deftly explores, from several perspectives, the horrifying practice of “corrective rape,” in which lesbians and gay men are sexually assaulted, tortured and sometimes murdered with the stated goal of “fixing” their homosexuality. That this is happening in the first African country to legalize gay marriage makes the subject almost cosmically ironic. Ms. Silverman keeps a tight grip on her story, mostly rooting it in the particulars of character. Pretty Mbane (Samira Wiley, of “The Handmaid’s Tale”) is a flirty, boyish lesbian who has courted danger by turning her home into a safe house for victims of sexual violence. Her ex-girlfriend, Noxolo (Alfie Fuller, of “Is God Is”), is a promising soccer player who has left South Africa to play for England. When Pretty disappears, having gone into hiding or worse, Noxolo returns to look for her. In the process she realizes she must face her country’s problems instead of running away from them. The longing for homeland, however imperfect, is a common enough trait. “Every child here is born with a magnet instead of a heart,” Pretty says. Ms. Silverman, who grew up “in a bunch of different countries” and says in a program note that she has “a complicated relationship with the United States,” handles that material beautifully, not only with Noxolo but with another South African émigré, a London bar owner named Marcel (Phillip James Brannon). Nothing would ever make Marcel, who is gay, return to the country that spat him out half dead. Still, approaching a story about black lives, let alone black-on-black violence, is tricky for a white playwright. Perhaps that’s why Ms. Silverman throws that hoary device, a journalist desperate for a new angle, into the mix. Having come, like many reporters, to write about “the new South Africa” during the 2010 World Cup games, Gregory (Michael Braun) happens upon Noxolo’s story through his guide, Sicolo (Atandwa Kani), who, as luck would have it, is her brother. Stumbling around in a world he can’t quite grasp, Gregory mostly comes off as a projection of Ms. Silverman’s doubts about writing this play. She needn’t have worried. Though it has problems — as the noose around the characters tightens, some of the action seems awfully contrived — “Dangerous House” is passionately engaged in the struggle to understand the responsibility we bear for terrible things going on around us. In letting its main conflicts grow outward from character instead of inward from plot necessity, it also represents a big advance for Ms. Silverman. Her plays “The Moors” and “The Roommate,” produced in the years since an early version of “Dangerous House” had its premiere in 2015, feel far less organic. Best of all, “Dangerous House” gives the actors, under the direction of Saheem Ali, the chance to bring those conflicts to vivid life, while not incidentally bringing us a sexy if tragic love story. “Sexy if tragic love story” has pretty much been the calling card for “Romeo and Juliet” since the late 16th century. In 1957, “West Side Story” added “hummable” to the tale’s résumé, though not everyone thought so at first. Back then, Leonard Bernstein’s music was considered longhair for Broadway. Now it is so deeply embedded in our ears it’s almost impossible to distinguish it from the rest of the soundtrack of our lives. Even the 2 train sings “Somewhere.” But Barrington’s lean and conventional production helps us hear it again. (For an unconventional “West Side Story” we’ll have to wait until December 2019, when Ivo van Hove and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker have a stab at it on Broadway.) That there are fewer Jets, fewer Sharks, and fewer instruments in the orchestra — only 11 instead of the original 28 — makes each one count more, and reveals the bones sometimes hidden in the strings and schmaltz. Those bones are excellent. The book by Arthur Laurents not only updates Shakespeare but also, in terms of plot efficiency, tops him. (“West Side Story” condenses the timeline from four days to 31 hours.) Having done that, Laurents then let Bernstein and Sondheim swallow most of his work to feed their score; the result is one of the shortest (and best) books of a Golden Age musical. The Barrington version — staged like a punch in the stomach by the company’s artistic director, Julianne Boyd — takes that speed as its cue, delivering the show, uncut, in barely 2 hours and 15 minutes. All of the Jerome Robbins choreography, here recreated by Robert La Fosse, is intact, and creditably performed by dancers impetuous enough to render it believable. In that context it takes only the slightest underlining to make certain themes stick out. I heard, as I hadn’t quite before, how a police officer calls the Puerto Rican men “trash.” How, after her first night “as a young lady of America,” Maria (Addie Morales) already knows to tell Tony (Will Branner) that he must “come to the back door” when visiting her at the bridal shop where she works. And how even that life force Anita (Skyler Volpe, sensational) is defeated by the grinding force of hatred. A homely banner hanging over the action during the dance at the gym proclaims the virtues of “Justice, Liberty, Good Neighbors.” That touch of directorial comment is enough to shove this production fully into the present. A grander, more polished “West Side Story” might not have entered the summer’s conversation so vigorously — asking, like “Dangerous House” and the distant 2 train, if there’s really “a place for us.” |