Theatre in Review: While I Yet Live (Primary Stages/The Duke on 42nd Street)

	Elain Graham. Lillia White, Larry Powell. Photo: James Leynse

As a star of Broadway musicals, Billy Porter is at the head of his class. As a playwright, however, I'm afraid he's in need of a little remedial instruction. The premise of his initial effort, While I Yet Live -- a young gay black man growing up in a household of assertive and troubled adults -- promises to be a juicy family melodrama, but his characters are practically drowning in soap suds. Child abuse, pedophilia, extramarital affairs, mental illness -- name a dysfunction and somebody in this crowd is dealing with it. And we haven't even started on the physical ailments.

In fact, one of the unintentionally risible aspects of While I Yet Live is the notion that Calvin, the play's gay protagonist, might bring scandal or trouble to his family, so steeped are they in assorted sins and syndromes. Maxine, Calvin's mother, waves her Bible proudly despite the fact that she is knowingly married to a pedophile and suffers from "a disability so rare that the medical community doesn't have a word for it." (For the record, it looks like multiple sclerosis; her mobility declines with each subsequent scene.) Vernon, her husband, enjoys taking a strap to Calvin (his stepson) when he isn't using him for other purposes. (There's another child-sex episode hidden in the family's past, which doesn't surface until Act Two.) Upstairs, in the guest room, is Eva, Maxine's best friend, who, despite the fact that she is wasting away with cancer, is having an affair with the local minister. Then there's Aunt Delores, who psychologically tortures Maxine because of a family secret involving adultery and paternity. And we can't leave out Uncle Arthur, although we never see him; it appears that he came back from the war damaged beyond repair. He stays in his room, watching Sanford and Son reruns, opening the bedroom door only wide enough to accept a plate of food. Next to them, Calvin, who eventually has a steady boyfriend and regular employment on Broadway, is a pillar of society.

You can't even say that this family is suffering from secretiveness, because most of these troubles are in plain view. Calvin squabbles with his mother about his sexual identity. Eva bares the details of her forbidden affair. When Calvin recalls being sexually used by Vernon, he adds, for all to hear, "And I liked it!" Maxine calls out Vernon for his abuse -- which she has mysteriously tolerated for years -- a decision that sends him packing, seemingly forever. This brings up another problem with While I Yet Live: The action unfolds over a series of Thanksgiving dinners, and even as characters die or depart, they remain on stage, offering commentary. After a while, it is difficult to tell who is alive and who is a spectre at the feast.

Complementing the narrative muddle is the near absence of psychological reality. Any one or two of the issues mentioned above would be enough for an effective drama, but here there are so many of them they crowd each other out. The characters are so thinly drawn that they can only be defined by the problem that has been affixed to each of them like a Post-It note. We never learn what Maxine saw in Vernon. We are told that Tonya, Maxine's daughter, is dying to get out of the house and live a life of her own, but Porter neglects to give her any interests. It's not at all clear how Calvin manages to go from runaway youth to full-fledged member of Actors' Equity.

Eventually, the play narrows its focus to Calvin, Maxine (who by now needs round-the-clock care), and Tonya. Among them, there are terrible wounds to be aired and ugly truths to be spoken: There is also the wrenching issue of whether or not to put Maxine into an assisted living facility. But, after a surprisingly placid encounter -- filled with Oprahfied maxims about loving yourself and letting go of the past -- the action ends much too easily, in hugs and tears and no practical resolution. Utterly missed is the opportunity to explore how members of some black church communities preach the mercy of God while keeping gay members of the congregation in the closet and shunning them if they come out. Any discussion of this boils down to the repeated mantra, "God don't make mistakes."

There was probably no way to make this ungainly script work, and the director, Sheryl Kaller, a real pro, is largely reduced to moving actors around both levels of James Noone's attractive two-level set. The cast mostly seems hamstrung by their characters, but S. Epatha Merkerson -- who, I strongly suspect, is constitutionally incapable of dishonesty on stage -- works wonders with the role of Maxine, actually making the case that she has achieved a hard-won serenity and forgiveness even as her body fails her. She is positively harrowing when struggling up the stairs or giving herself over to Tonya to be dressed. And she also has a nice bit where she snatches Calvin's phone in order to sweetly interrogate his boyfriend. Tonya, who also acts as narrator, is played by a newcomer, Sheria Irving, who lends plenty of sparkle to her underwritten character; she is especially persuasive when she takes Calvin to task for his infrequent visits and lack of empathy for Maxine's plight. Irving also plausibly ages from adolescence to full adulthood.

Otherwise, Larry Powell's Calvin, who is supposed to be crippled with rage, never manages to raise much more than a mild snit. Sharon Washington is interesting as Eva, but the character doesn't have enough to do. Similarly, the great Lillias White is criminally underused as Gertrude, the family matriarch, who is largely oblivious to the fact that she is presiding over something of a mental ward. Elain Graham is suitably crusty as Delores and Kevyn Morrow strikes sinister poses as Vernon.

Noone's forced-perspective house interior effectively crams a number of playing areas into a relatively small space, but Kevin Adams' lighting could do more to separate out the living from the dead, and to account for the script's jumps in time. ESosa's costumes are solid, especially in helping to mature Tonya. Leon Rothenberg's sound design -- a mix of ambient effects and music from the ghostly piano in the living room -- is also fine.

While I Yet Live is the latest example of a tyro effort by a name performer given a first-class production. Having sat through it and similar efforts by Zoe Kazan and Amanda Peet, I feel compelled to offer a gentle suggestion: Just as it takes years of study and hard work to build a professional acting career, one becomes a playwright only after plenty of effort. I'm not saying any of these fine artists are merely dabbling in writing, but I question the wisdom of major theatre companies exposing their work when it is clearly not ready to be seen.--David Barbour