Resurrection
Resurrection, the season opener at Arena Stage's Crystal City space in Arlington, Virginia, uses poetry, dance, music, and six riveting performers to illuminate a panorama of contemporary African-American men coping with life. Playwright Daniel Beaty has created a dramatic experience that can be seen as a rejoinder to Ntozake Shange's 1970s "choreopoem" for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, and the two works share a director, Oz Scott.
Resurrection concerns six boys and men at different stages of life. Mr. Rogers (Michael Genet) is trying to run a health food store in an inner-city neighborhood while raising a precocious son, Eric (Thuliso Dingwall). Recent high school graduate 'Twon (Turron Kofi Alleyne) is headed to Morehouse College, alma mater of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with the help of Isaac (Alvin Keith), a music industry executive who has trouble connecting with his own father, a megachurch pastor known as the Bishop (Jeffery V. Thompson). Dre (Che Ayende) is starting over after a prison sentence. All six are searching for ways to communicate with the (offstage) women in their lives and with each other.
Rather than following a linear plot, Resurrection revolves around issues of addiction, questions of faith, and the needs of the soul, which all take flight through the musical score by Daniel Bernard Roumain and the work of musical stylist Elan Vytal/DJ Scientific. From rhythmic interplay among the speakers to choral recitations and moments of song, the effect is a spoken-word jam session in which each performer gets a solo chance to shine.
Resurrection is not just a symbol of religious redemption in Beaty's view; it is a personal experience where people who have been brought low can rise up in hope and a vision of the future. Scott serves in the role of orchestra conductor, balancing the moments of joy and sorrow in an exquisite counterpoint.
While the entire cast works brilliantly as a unit, special mention should be made of young Dingwall's refreshingly natural performance and Thompson's interplay of broad humor and despair. Genet is touching as a man whose mission involves nurturing the health of both body and spirit, and Keith and Ayende get dramatic individual moments.
— Susan Berlin, Talkin' BroadwayResurrection
The first thing you see at Arena Stage's production of Daniel Beaty's deeply moving Resurrection is a stage-filling backdrop featuring two stylized pathways converging into a tilted and roughly t-shaped form against a dark background. Is it a cross or is it a crossroads? Beaty's answer is that it is both, signaling redemption as well as choices that need to be made.
Blending dramatic vignettes with music and poetry, Resurrection takes us into the lives of six African-American males, one 10 years old and the other men at ages 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60. Each is struggling to survive and thrive in a difficult world, and each has a choice to make. We see their stories unfold mostly separately, until they simultaneously undergo a mystical phenomenon that Beaty frames as a call for unity. In doing so, the play examines the links between individuality and community in a way that ultimately transcends race.
At the center is keenly intelligent, 10/Eric (Thuliso Dingwall), the son of 50/Mr. Rogers (Michael Genet), a health food store owner. Eric is a scientific prodigy, mixing herbs from his father's store "to find a cure for the aching heart of black America." His father, meanwhile, is on the verge of losing the shop under grinding financial pressures. 60/The Bishop (Jeffrey V. Thompson) is overweight and struggling with food addiction. His son 40/Isaac (Alvin Keith) is a closeted, successful executive. 30/Dre (Che Ayende), recently out of prison, is determined to build an honest life with his pregnant, HIV-infected girlfriend. 20/Twon (Turron Kofi Alleyne) has overcome dyslexia, graduated high school, and is on his way to college.
Each character tells his story in short snippets, addressing the audience in a continuously shifting collage featuring both drama and comedy. Director Oz Scott's pacing is dynamic, allowing each actor considerable range in intensity and energy, and that helps the individual characters come alive as the stories are woven into a cohesive theme.
Added to the mix is the music of Haitian-American composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), who combines classical violin with a range of jazzy soundscapes. Citing difficulties in accurately reproducing the score on stage, Arena has recorded it for playback, as performed by DBR collaborator Elan Vytal. The music is seamlessly integrated into the drama and evocatively enhances its emotional impact.
Still, the work's theatricality sometimes intrudes as characters break away from "reality" to chant fragments of poetry in unison, often sounding forced and artificial. The poem/song which may be titled "Dance, Mama, Dance" (no information on songs/poems is listed) is the most compelling piece as a character imagines his late mother in heaven, pulling joy out of deep sorrow.
Its flaws aside, Resurrection is ultimately a satisfying journey that tells us things we probably already know, but can always benefit from with a reminder.
Coming of Ages
Progress and peril for black fathers and sons
Playwright Daniel Beaty is an extraordinarily compelling performer in his own right. He's a slam poet of real repute — the 2004 Grand Slam Champion at the Nuyorican Poet's Café — and a trained operatic singer with a special gift for spirituals. He's performed as an actor in a number of New York theaters and at both the Kennedy Center and the White House. Beaty himself will perform his newest play — based on the life of Roland Hayes, son of slaves and a ground-breaking African-American concert singer — in the Brand:NEW festival at Hartford Stage on November 8 at 2 p.m. That will be a bare-bones reading, but chances are good it will be rousing.
The full production of Beaty's Resurrection at Hartford Stage is worthy and polished, but delivers less impact than Beaty does when he performs his own material. He wrote the piece after reading the Urban League's Report on Black America 2007: Portrait of the Black Male. Less a conventional play than a collage of issues, it's loosely held together by a narrative centered on the youngest character, a precocious 10-year-old boy who wants to use herbal remedies to heal the hurt in the men around him.
The 90-minute show is performed by six actors without intermission. Solidarity and humor keep the show just this side of didacticism as the men confront a checklist of issues: finding work as an ex-con, overcoming dyslexia and discrimination to get an education, seeking acceptance as a gay man, contending with HIV/AIDS, battling obesity and diabetes. Snatches of song enliven the piece. I wished particularly for more singing by Jeffery V. Thompson as the Bishop, and more dance from Thuliso Dingwall, the youngest member of the ensemble. Each character is identified by his age, from 10 to 60. We see three different father/son relationships, and these provide some of the most intricate, complex and therefore most moving aspects of the piece. The centrality of the church in black communities and pride in distant African traditions both surface as survival strategies.
Women are never seen on stage, though they are revered as breadwinners and celebrated for their feistiness. In one explicit sex scene, a seductive girlfriend's voice is represented by a solitary string instrument, part of a fine original score created by Daniel Bernard Roumain. Jazz-inflected, alternately lyrical and percussive, the music functions as a character. G.W. Mercier's proscenium set provides a variety of levels and features glass jars in a skewed cross shape that suggests a city skyline when backlit. Director Oz Scott, who debuted on Broadway in 1977 with For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow was Enuf, invents good ensemble staging but climactic moments are too static and too prolonged.
Because there's a character for every age cohort except the very young and very old, this show will have wide appeal. It provides plenty of food for conversation across generations. Selected performances are followed by community conversations presented in partnership with the National Conference for Community and Justice. And in this historic electoral season, it broadens our awareness of the state of our union for black men. The picture isn't simple, but it does offer hope.