The venerable Negro Ensemble
Company seems, at least, to
be showing the signs of a company in trouble. No permanent home, bare-bones
production values, tiny casts, short runs and bewilderingly unadventurous fare.
Its latest, The Picture Box, by
Cate Ryan is a case in point. On the
eve of Obama’s election, Carrie (Jennifer van Dyck), a young middle-age white woman is about to close
on selling the oceanside Florida house she grew up in. The buyers are a not
very appealing couple: Bob (Malachy Cleary) an arch conservative whose bigotry toward blacks (he’s concerned
about the neighborhood ad etc.) is so thinly veiled there’s barely any fabric
to it at all; and his wife Karen (Marisa Redanty) who occasionally tries to speak up for good but
has also settled into a routine of being bullied. They actually don’t hang
around onstage much. They kind of frame the real substance, which is the sort
of random arrival of Mackie (Arthur French) the old black caretaker, and his wife Josephine (Elain
Graham) who pretty much, you know, raised
Carrie from a pup. He’s there to take a last look at the house, his wife is
there to look after him; and Carrie, in clearing the house, has found a box of
photos: memories of growing up.
And
the three of them—Carrie, Mackie and Josephine—go through the
pictures and reminisce. And that’s pretty much it until the Bickersons return
for one more spot of abuse before Carrie shows them the door. The play runs
maybe 60, 65 minutes.
If
it all sounds woefully undramatic, well, you have indeed grasped the
essentials. No mistake, there’s a certain aw-shucks sweetness to it all, I mean
the white girl who never saw the black surrogate parents as any different from herself
and the elderly black couple who see her as one of their own and oh, if the
world were like this always. But there’s no dramatic tension in the reminiscing
(notwithstanding one or two unpleasant memories, but nothing that serves as a
trigger to spark present dynamics) and about ten minutes into the pleasantries
you’re suddenly struck by the thought: Oh, I see. This is it. This is what
the play is going to be. We’re never going to lift off. I’m just going to
listen to these nice people be nice to one another until it’s time to go home. And sure enough…
Director
Charles Weldon seems not to have paid
too much attention to much more than efficient traffic patterns, so the actors,
left to twist in the wind on their own, have made strong choices just to have something
to hang onto, thus there’s not much in the way of nuance. As old
Mackie, the venerable Arthur French (himself a genuine old-timer and a founding
member of the NEC) is agreeable—but a little spiritless owing to the
clear slowdown of age; which also, I hate to say it, sometimes makes him evoke
the shuffling demeanor of an unfortunate archetype. The again, archetypes are,
in a sense, the order of the day: As the white buyers Redanty and Cleary are
mostly noisy symbols (who might as well be cymbals). Jennifer Van Dyck has the
thankless task of sustaining the enlightened good girl, reminiscing pleasantly
with people she loves, in a situation that presents nothing in the way of
threat or risk (just the melancholia of saying goodbye to the old house), so,
while she avoids over-acting, she works very hard to keep the bubble afloat,
spinning variations on a very limited theme. Somehow Elain Graham manages to
anchor her surrogate mom character without visible effort or the indicia of an
actor at work; but the character provides no fresh insights, nor a fresh
approach to the familiar.
Indeed,
the most fascinating thing about the play and production is how its gentle and
unassuming nature bespeaks—what seems to me at least—the NEC’s desperation. And that,
kids, is dramatic irony…
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