Theatre in Review: Rodney King (Under the Radar/Public Theater)

	Roger Guenveur Smith. Photo: Patti McGuire

Some performers shout to get one's attention; Roger Guenveur Smith barely has to raise his voice to make one spellbound. Smith understands that outrage is all the more compelling for being held in check, carefully coiled, ready to pounce at any minute -- a technique that he puts to tremendous use in his new performance piece. Assuming the persona of a contemporary rap artist, he turns the long, sad, twisting saga of Rodney King -- small-time criminal, victim of police brutality, all-around trouble magnet, and flashpoint in a race riot that gripped the nation -- into a rough, raw urban poetry that grips and dismays in equal measure. The tragic story of a man who could never transcend his own circumstances becomes a powerful reminder of the poison that continues to lurk beneath the surface of race relations in this country.

Speaking into a microphone, rarely allowing his voice to rise above a hush, Smith traces the story of King, the accidental symbol, whose plaintive expression, "Can't we all get along?", entered the national lexicon. He was introduced to violence at an early age by a father who whipped him with an electric cord; as a young adult, he did two years for assault, having brutalized a Korean store owner. Later, out of prison and on parole, he tried to escape a police car while driving under the influence. The high-speed chase ended with King's being brutally beaten by a quartet of officers, an incident that was videotaped by a bystander. Seen on television over and over, the video ignited a national outpouring of indignation and soul-searching; when King's attackers were acquitted in court, Los Angeles erupted in a riot. (Smith doesn't say so, but even the first George Bush went on record saying that King had been denied justice.)

Smith tells this tale in a torrent of evocative words, with a sharp eye for the improbable detail. He notes that in prison King shared a cell block with Ike Turner, who kept a pair of pet rats he called his "Ikettes." When the prosecution of King's attackers is moved from LA to Simi Valley, where their fate was determined by an all-white jury, he notes that a production of Driving Miss Daisy was playing at a local community theatre. He comments that the video of King's beating "went viral before viral was viral," and he calls King "the first reality TV star." When King speaks to the press, his lawyer asks him to don a colorful sweater, which, he is told, will make him seem unthreatening, like Bill Cosby and his television family.

At the same time, the text is suffused with a sorrowful sense that violence begets violence. The beating of King is harrowingly expressed, with Smith uttering a powerful grunt into his mic for each body blow. A lengthy sequence recounting the riot lists some of its many victims -- not least of whom were Reginald Denny, a white man savagely beaten by four blacks (a mirror image of the King incident), and Fidel Lopez, who had his genitals spray-painted black by a mob -- and the odd hero, such as the Reverend Bennie Newton, who dispersed the crowd single-handedly and saved Lopez's life. There is also an allusion to the death of King's father, who drowned in the bathtub, foreshadowing his son's death in his backyard swimming pool. Dogged by his notoriety, his addictions, and a lifetime of making bad choices, King was gone by the age 47.

Not everything above is made totally clear in Rodney King; at times, Smith's text is more allusive than explanatory, and if one isn't familiar with the history of King, it can be a bit confusing. (He doesn't go too much into the long afterlife of King's peculiar fame, which included a stint on the MTV freak show Celebrity Rehab.) But Smith's way with words and his outsized stage presence carry the day. Even if the details of Rodney King seem a little vague, its overall intent comes through loud and clear.

Smith's regular sound designer, Marc Anthony Thompson, is on hand, creating a compelling soundscape of news reports, hip-hop music, police sirens, and other effects. His lighting designer, José López, works effectively with surprisingly low levels of illuminance to create a noirish atmosphere. But it is Smith who, with his superb control of his subject, makes Rodney King such a memorable experience. As he makes painfully clear, King's question to the world remains glaringly unanswered. --David Barbour