Theatre in Review: ToasT (The Public Theater)Playwright Lemon Andersen's poetic drama is set in the days leading up to the Attica prison riots in 1971, days that he fills with lively, if sometimes opaque, conversation. Andersen is a spoken word artist -- the Public presented his solo piece, County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle, in 2009 -- and this would appear to be his first play. There's no question that he is in love with words, almost to a fault. ToasT is loaded with talk, bushels of it, fresh, colorful, and loaded with vinegar, but much of it consists of street and prison slang, and, as spoken by a company whose diction is not all it might be, in a room with only fair acoustics, trying to keep up with it is something of a challenge. Sometimes you're caught in one of several very tense scenes; at other times, you're simply trying to figure out what they're talking about. The play unfolds in D Block, named for Dolomite, the convicted pimp who rules over it with the air of a benign despot. Thanks to his skill at "muling," or smuggling in cigarettes and other forms of contraband, Dolomite has done very well for himself, and he and his cellmates exist under the relatively lazy eye of G.I. Joe, the officer in charge of them. The population of the block includes Hobo Ben, who deals out their card games; Stackolee, who is full of mordant observations ("The correctional institute ain't correcting a damn thing."); Jesse James, the house Puerto Rican, who gets no respect from the other inmates, all of them black; Annabelle Jones, Dolomite's prison lover; and Hard Rock, part of the "Attica Liberation Faction," who is trying to peacefully organize the prisoners to negotiate better conditions. Over the course of a leisurely two-and-a-half-hour running time, this structured existence breaks down, as, bit by bit, the men are stripped of dignity and hope. Hard Rock's planned meeting with the prison commissioner is called off at the last minute with a flimsy excuse, and no attempt is made to reschedule it. Jody, the ugly, bigoted sheriff in charge of the prison officers, sees an opportunity and moves swiftly and brutally to re-establish full control over D Block. And when the news gets out that Dolomite is to be freed, the others correctly see that they will suddenly and starkly be without protection. Much of the dialogue is written in a kind of blank verse that vibrates with electricity and humor. Hard Rock, trying in enlist Annabelle in his improvement efforts, says, "Hey Annie, when are you going to sign these letters/So I can get more real books/Instead of all the Spoon River bullshit/They feeding us?" "Child," Annabelle replies, "I ain't reading no books if it ain't Vogue." Joe, trying to be avuncular with Jesse, reveals his casual racism, saying "You don't want to get involved with that liberation shit. That's not for you, that's for them, the blacks." Dolomite, suddenly terrified of being returned to the world, says, "I still see the ghosts/Of those people I murdered, every night/I know nothing/Nothing about being a free man/And now they gonna set those demons/Back out to the free world." Certain scenes are powerfully evocative of prison life, for example, when the group gets together to read the daily newspapers with half of the stories censored or cut out. Others are taut with tension, as when Jody toys with Annabelle, threatening him, flirting a bit, and unexpectedly striking out at him, laying bare how terrifyingly vulnerable he is to official abuse. (Jody calls the prison the "animal kingdom," but some of the worst animals are dressed in official blue uniforms.) Jody tells Annabelle about Dolomite's upcoming release, leading to a confrontation that sizzles with the fury of losing a lover and protector. Still, Andersen so generously gives reign to his characters' tongues, letting them hash out every point time and again, that the script is dramatically diffuse; the play doesn't build as powerfully as it might, because everyone is too busy having his say. Furthermore, certain plot points aren't clearly elucidated. We never see how Dolomite's muling operation works. Dolomite's release comes across as a fairly arbitrary development; even Ben says, "How in the world you got paroled/And they sentenced you to max out?" (No explanation is forthcoming.) Other details feel slightly false; would one of Dolomite's women really send him an outrageous electric blue pimp suit, complete with outrageously feathered fedora, for his return to the outside world? Following the riots, Hard Rock meets a horrible fate, not to be described here, that seems excessively melodramatic. I'm not questioning that such things could happen; the trouble, I think, is that Andersen hasn't built his drama on a solid enough foundation. As a result, it's hard to feel fully confident about his handling of such details. There are also times when the dialogue turns frankly purple, as when Dolomite, trying to butter up Annabelle, says, "Can a brother get a little air time on the radio play of your heart?" Still, under Elise Thoron's direction, a number of fine performances go a long way toward giving a sense of verisimilitude to Andersen's script. Keith David's Dolomite is a figure of Shakespearean complexity, presiding over D Block with his natural authority, yet experiencing night terrors at the thought of being free. He is especially powerful when brutally telling Annabelle that their relationship wouldn't exist outside the prison walls. The fast-rising Phillip James Brannon is fine as Annabelle, a complicated, proud figure who walks through a deeply hostile environment with uncommon grace. F. Hill Harper is such a sweet voice of reason that his ultimate fate seems doubly shocking. Dan Butler's Jody is a smiling sociopath who gets his kicks exerting power over his prisoners. The production design has the advantage of the exceptionally wide space of the Susan Stein Shiva Theater, using two sets of sliding prison bars to reconfigure the space as needed. Jen Schriever's lighting uses a variety of color temperatures and angles -- particularly some striking sidelight looks -- to evoke an array of emotional states. Dede Ayite's costumes look authentic. Robert Kaplowitz's sound design is fairly solid, although the use of hip-hop music seems a tad anachronistic for a play set more than four decades ago. The second act of ToasT, which tracks the fallout from the announcement of Dolomite's release and the beginning of the riots, is much more gripping than the first. Anderson is a talent to note, but he is still on the way to mastering the details of dramatic construction. Still, there is passion and poetry here. The Public is wise to place a bet on him. -- David Barbour 
|
