Theatre in Review: Forever (New York Theatre Workshop)

	Dael Orlandersmith. Photo: Joan Marcus

Forever begins with Dael Orlandersmith making a pilgrimage to the famous Paris cemetery Père Lachaise. Clearly, not the Eiffel Tower - Louvre tourist type, she has come to commune with the spirits of the many great artists buried there: Piaf, Chopin, Colette, Proust, Signoret, and Wilde. Surveying the scene contentedly, she says, in the blank verse that constitutes text of Forever, "I am seeking these people/These living resting people/These people who are really my family/Who I really want to be my family."

Indeed, most of Forever consists of Orlandersmith's search for a family, a community to which she feels she truly belongs. To get there, however, she must first disinter the skeletons of her blood relations, in particular her mother, a malign and needy presence who haunted her childhood, leaving a trail of psychological chaos in her wake. Forever is remarkable for many reasons, but its pitilessly detailed maternal portrait is sure to be its most-talked-about feature. As her mother often told her, "I want you to look good because you're a reflection of ME/You have to be a reflection of ME." In Forever, she gets her wish, in a manner likely to leave her spinning in her grave.

Orlandersmith recalls growing up in a squalid Harlem apartment, her mother devoted to liquor and useless men. "She would tell me -- especially when drinking -- that she loved me," she says, "A ninety-proof, scotch-filled, chain-smoked kind of love." She isn't much better when sober: Determined to beat into her daughter the details of her mathematics homework, "She slaps my head/Face from side to side/She punches me on my arms/Pulls my hair, yelling 'Learn this/You are gonna learn this/I'll beat you till you're bloody as a bull." This combination of beyond-the-pale tough love and drunken acting-out leaves the young Orlandersmith with a visceral distaste for physical contact between them: "Skin touch was scotch/cigarette-filled and rumbling, loose-fleshed women like her and her men, the Saturday night men she chose that looked me up and down/their snake tongues darting in and out, touching themselves when her back was turned or when she was scotch-drenched or both. Skin touch, dank, evil, dark, dangerous, that's what skin touch is/was."

The horrific nadir of Orlandersmith's youth comes when one of those "Saturday night men" materializes on the edge of her bed, raping her and leaving behind a pool of urine next to her bed -- all of this with her mother in a nearby room. ("You don't yell," he tells her. "If you yell, I'm a kill you/You hear me." When he is finished brutally using her, he says, "I wanna see you again/Do you wanna see me," before slipping away into the night.) This passage is not for the faint-hearted; every detail of the rape -- the stink and soreness and pools of semen left on her body -- is presented in words so savage and yet so controlled that they seem to claw at the air of the theatre. Her mother's reaction to these events is to become hysterical and wish both of them had been killed; as Orlandersmith coolly notes, "My rape gives her an excuse to marathon-drink." The police detective who arrives on the scene calls out her mother for her self-serving behavior and treats Orlandersmith to some unaccustomed kindness; as a result, she says, "I kept his card for 20 years."

Even in the midst of all this horror, escape routes were visible, if one was willing to look for them. Giving credit where it is due, Orlandersmith notes that, when not besieged by her demons, "It was my mother who first unconsciously introduced me to art. This confused/full woman reached for Bach, Puente, Rodgers and Hart, Dickens, Dunbar." A family friend who served in World War II raves about Paris, planting a seed in the young Orlandersmith's mind. Soon, she is in listening to Jim Morrison and The Doors, reading Richard Wright, and hanging out in the Greenwich Village alternate rock music scene. But the more she learns, the more she becomes independent of her mother, and the more rancor grows between them. When she announces she is moving out, a horrific confrontation follows, laying bare the Gordian knot of dependency and rage that must be cut if Orlandersmith is to survive. This is followed by a scarcely less scalding face-off, in hospital, with her dying parent; as always, nothing is resolved.

Orlandersmith and her director, Neel Keller, seem to understand that a low-key approach is best; the words are stunning enough, and too much emoting would cheapen them. Thus, she relates her tales in a largely conversational manner that proves more devastating than tears and rage could ever be. Similarly, the production design is beautiful in its austerity. Takeshi Kata's set consists of a raised platform at center stage, with a narrow band of wood that stretches across three sides of the theatre, on which are placed Orlandersmith's family photos, which the audience is invited to inspect after the show; some of the space is reserved for members of the audience to leave personal notes about the people who shaped their lives. Mary Louise Geiger's lighting consists of a series of carefully wrought washes that melt seamlessly from one to another, shifting to match the moods of the text; at times the light is also remarkably precise, as when a single beam picks out a photo on the upstage wall of Orlandersmith's mother as a young woman. Geiger's mastery of color, angle, and light levels is superb. In my experience, this is her finest piece of work. Adam Phalen's sound design takes in excerpts from The Doors and Patti Smith, among other effects. Kaye Voyce dresses Orlandersmith appropriately and flatteringly.

Following her mother's death, Orlandersmith begins to approach a kind of peace. Seeking out the details of her past, she learns about the young and vital woman she was before life had its way with her. She also discovers some shockers about her father and another, unknown relative, information that is barely dealt with here but could, one imagines, provide the basis for another show. Becoming a writer herself, she acquires the wisdom to know that, wherever she goes in life, she carries her mother with her -- and perhaps that is fitting. After the terrors visited on her, her embrace of such a terrible heritage seems like the stuff of sanity itself. -- David Barbour