Theatre in Review: American Son (Booth Theatre) American Son takes one of the most persistent and vexing social problems of the day and makes it seem unreal. The lights come up on Kerry Washington as Kendra, a psychology professor, sitting in a Miami police station in the wee hours of the morning, becoming increasingly frantic. Her son, Jamal, has gone missing, and all she knows from the police is that his car has been impounded; no more information will be forthcoming until the public affairs liaison officer shows up -- and it is anyone's guess as to when that will be. The playwright, Christopher Demos-Brown, swiftly sets up an undertone of racial conflict as Larkin, the officer on duty (played by the white actor Jeremy Jordan), yields to Kendra's demands for immediate help, only to increase the tension between them by asking if Jamal has a street name or distinguishing markings like tattoos or gold teeth. (She has already made the point that Jamal has a very important internship for which he must show up that day.) He compounds the offense when giving her directions to the water fountain down the hall, noting that there are two, side-by-side -- an inadvertent admission that the police station is a relic of the Jim Crow era. Demos-Brown manages a nifty twist when the actor Steven Pasquale shows up: Larkin instantly mistakes him for the public affairs officer, baring his frustration at having to deal with that "bitch" Kendra. Big mistake: Pasquale plays Scott, an FBI agent who is Kenda's estranged husband and Jamal's father. We also learn that the couple has raised their biracial son in a bubble, sending him to an expensive prep school where he is the only black student, insisting that he speak standard English, and encouraging his ambitions; in three months, he is to enter West Point. Because Jamal, at eighteen, is legally an adult, his parents have no right to information about his situation, and most of American Son consists of them stewing and agonizing while they attempt to find out what has happened to him. This gives the audience plenty of time to notice the contrivances and bald devices that are employed liberally throughout. Kendra has a lengthy aria about the years she has spent worrying about Jamal, knowing how much trouble a black kid -- especially one who is six foot two -- can get into with cops. It's powerful stuff, but have she and Scott never discussed this in the twenty years they've been together? What on earth have they been talking about all this time? Despite his closeness to Kendra's family, especially her mother, Scott seems remarkably clueless about race, feeling that he has done his part by raising Jamal in a virtually white world. They have been separated for a short time, but it's difficult to see what brought the two together in the first place. Oddities abound. Larkin leaves twice to get coffee, each time for so long that Kendra and Scott have plenty of time to engage in additional confrontations; one begins to wonder if he walked to Palm Beach to fetch those cups of joe. A disturbing video, taken on a smartphone, is clumsily introduced, and Jamal's presence in it is instantly identified, no matter that such impromptu recordings, taken in the heat of the moment, are often notoriously hard to make out. And we are asked to believe that Jamal, a high school senior, is so upset by his parents' marital problems that he has gone ghetto, dressing in baggy pants, sporting cornrows, hanging out with drug-dealing street characters, and affixing to his car's bumper a provocative message about shooting the police. None of this is impossible, but American Son is notably bad at explaining itself; Jamal, particularly, never comes into focus. Rather than being portrayed as a bright young man caught in a web of conflicting assumptions about race, he is, basically, a McGuffin, a device needed to set the plot in motion. Kenny Leon's direction maintains a brisk pace, but both of his stars struggle with their one-note roles. Washington taps into Kendra's anguish, but her performance lacks vocal variety; she always seems to be making a speech. (Given much of her dialogue, this isn't surprising.) Pasquale has some good moments -- when admitting that he isn't in love with his new girlfriend, his face collapses into sadness and self-recrimination -- but he often seems to have dropped in from another planet. Jordan is convincing as Larkin, who is new to the job and not quite ready for larger-than-life types like Kendra and Scott. Eugene Lee makes the most of his appearance as Stokes, the public affairs officer, who, ticked off at Kendra's attitude, reminds her that not all cops are white, and that black officers don't like patrolling the ghetto any more than their white colleagues -- notions that never seem to have occurred to her. The production looks good: Derek McLane's vast, impersonal waiting room set is outfitted with floor-to-ceiling windows through which we can see a storm, which is effectively lit (including lightning effects) by Peter Kaczorowski. Dede Ayite's costumes are on target; she is especially good on the way FBI agents like to dress. Peter Fitzgerald's sound design includes thunder, rain, and the noise of that video link, which incorporates the dismaying sound of gunshots. American Son may be the first Broadway play to grapple with the fraught relationship of young black males and the police, but it has plenty of forebears. James Ijames' Kill Move Paradise and Antoinette Nwandu's Pass Over delve into the terror felt by young black men dealing with officers of the law. Geraldine Inoa's Scraps features a notably tense encounter of this type, as does the film Blindspotting. (The newly released The Hate U Give, which I haven't seen, hinges on such an incident.) Demos-Brown's script adds little to the conversation started by these works, and the awful conflicts at its heart are diminished by a series of mechanical twists and slick manipulations. It's both highly professional and not good enough. -- David Barbour 
|
