Out of a great mess of a family, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has fashioned a new play dealing with a celebratory birthday dinner at the very conventional looking home of Claudine Jasper (played by Latanya Richardson Jackson) and her husband, Solomon (played by Harry Lennix), a prominent civil rights hero. Claudine is in full command of the event, and her older son (visiting fresh from prison with his morose wife who is about to go to prison) and younger son (who defines as asexual) accompanied by a friend (who defines as queer lesbian) are all visiting to join in the fun. As the first of two very long acts labors on, it becomes clear there isn’t going to be any real fun, but instead we are going to spend three hours living with a mad family that is not whimsically nutty as in other family farces this mirrors. No–these family characters are angry, frustrated, bitter, and deeply unhappy. As the play unwinds, we are privy to secrets of past indiscretions, mental illness, and lies that could have caused chaos for Claudine and her nationally iconic husband.
Jon Michael Hill and Glenn Davis (Marc J. Franklin)
The play has fine actors who seem to agree that their sharp-tongued mutual insults are hilarious, off-the-wall funny; and they were greeted by lively bursts of wild laughter from the audience who felt the same. Poppa Solomon Jasper, when he let loose on his own, found his clan sadly abnormal and stupid as well.
Alana Arenas, Kara Young, Harry Lennix, Latanya Richardson Jackson, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill
Phylicia Rashad’s direction of this talented cast was firm and consistent. It would seem that the early rehearsal talks arrived at an agreement to play it in the old fashioned sitcom manner of George Abbott– zippy, loud and fast. Oddly, the setting designed by Todd Rosenthal suited that type of approach. It was safe, comfortable, unthreatening which is what the world must have seemed to us then. Perhaps that’s the point Ms. Rashad was making. That was then, and this is now; and the characters who lived in those cozy, tidy houses are all gone with the wind.