Theatre in Review: Detroit '67 (The Public Theater)The fall of Detroit -- once a thriving industrial metropolis, now a bankrupt, burned-out shell -- is one of the great American tragedies; it's also the stuff of drama, but so far no playwright has dared to take it on. Now comes Detroit '67, in which the playwright Dominique Morisseau looks at that moment in the mid-1960s when a city known for its bustling automotive industry and happening music scene began to fall apart, thanks to rancid racial politics. Detroit '67 -- which is presented in association with The Classical Theatre of Harlem and The National Black Theatre -- focuses on Chelle and Lank, adult siblings who have returned home after the deaths of their parents. Chelle, a widow, plans to use their inheritance for her son's education at the Tuskegee Institute; for income, she will run an informal after-hours bar (known as a blind pig) out of her basement. Lank has other plans for the money; he wants to purchase a local white-owned bar in partnership with his friend Sly. "Detroit could be some kinda Mecca," Lank says. "Colored folks moving this city forward. Get us some business of our own -- make them stop treatin' us like trash to be swept away." It's a classic conflict -- Lank's dream is similar to Walter Lee Younger's liquor store in A Raisin in the Sun, and the brother-sister conflict over a family legacy recalls the battling siblings of The Piano Lesson -- but Morisseau gives it a few twists of her own. The trouble begins when Lank and Sly bring home Caroline, a young white woman who, in Chelle's mordant summary, is "lookin' like a wild animal that done went astray," wandering the streets disoriented and with a nasty scar on her right cheek. She moves in with Lank and Chelle, temporarily working as their waitress/bartender -- and she proves to be the novelty that keeps business booming. "Folks can't wait to get served by a white girl over here!" notes Bunny, a friend and neighbor. Caroline refuses to reveal anything about herself, however, and as the truth of her troubled past begins to spill out, she becomes an unaffordable risk, especially when the city erupts in flames following a police raid on another blind pig. Suddenly, the characters' problems are seen in a new and alarming light when set against a background of police corruption and race riots; the ground beneath Chelle and Link is shifting, and it threatens to swallow their dreams whole. Morisseau is gifted with a talent for sharp, flavorful dialogue and a solid sense of construction; each scene ratchets up the tension neatly. Seeing Caroline on her sofa, Chelle lets loose: "What you think gonna happen when this white girl wake up in a house full of colored folks in the ghetto? You think she gonna be thankful and happy you saved her when she see all these gashes on her face?" Bunny, snooping around Caroline's past, tells Chelle, "I done put out to my fishes and somethin' done bit back. I got some news 'bout your lil' hired help." Sly, defending the purchase of the bar to Chelle, says, "I just know we both tired of all this hustlin'. Dough that comes fast one day and don't come at all the next. Got you dressed nice enough to smile at some fine woman this day and dressed like a wino on Woodward the next." It's only in the last couple of scenes, when she lets her characters give way to a little too much speechmaking, that Detroit '67 starts to slacken a bit. Under the direction of Kwame Kwei-Armah, a solid cast makes the most of their opportunities. Francois Battiste and Michelle Wilson are perfect temperamental opposites as big-dreaming Lank and security-seeking Chelle. De'Adre Aziza is a thoroughly sassy Bunny and Brandon J. Dirden is a genial, teasing presence as Sly. He even does well by a not entirely believable late-in-the-play development when Sly starts to romance Chelle. As Caroline, Samantha Soule keeps you guessing with her pleasant, friendly, and smoothly evasive manner. In addition, Neil Patel's basement set, its cement block walls covered with paintings from the family's past, feels thoroughly authentic. Even with only two tiny windows at stage left, the lighting designer Colin Young is adept at creating various time-of-day looks. Esosa's costumes, including some eye-popping miniskirts, are thoroughly of the period. Shane Rettig's sound design is especially important, with plenty of examples of the Motown sound in addition to more disturbing effects, such as police alarms and the sound of National Guard trucks passing by. It's no small irony that Detroit '67 is opening just as the city of Detroit is facing a takeover from the state of Michigan. The story that begins in Morisseau's play has many subsequent chapters. The author says that this is the first of a trilogy; bring on the next two installments.--David Barbour 
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