The
hum of anticipation is great. The space smells and feels new, fuzzy felt on
walls (and seats) as yet unruffled by hands and feet and rear ends, and not a
bad seat in this newly refurbished house. The historical and renewed Biograph
Theater provides
a shiny new performance space for the Chicago community and a fabulous new home
for the Victory Gardens Theatre resident company. The world premiere of Denmark by Charles Smith, directed by Dennis
Za_ek, and
fabulously performed by a stalwart troop of actors provides a grand opening
salvo.
Denmark
Vesey (Anthony Fleming III) is haunted by his past as a slave serving Captain Vesey
(Raoul Johnson),
while imprisoned and convicted for inciting a rebellion. One of his first
speeches, foreshadowing the great arc of the story of follow, contains the
sentiment "unexpected windfalls are meant to be exploited". This
interpretation of the possible use and abuse of a sudden access to resources
through a winning lottery ticket and the potential for changing his life
provides the impetus for the morality tale, historical object lesson, and dream
play that unfolds on the beautiful new Biograph stage.
The
first moments of the play take place in 1822, behind a scrim which then opens
to us as Denmark unveils to us his version of past events, his stories, the
people in his life, and the decisions he has made. Direction by Zaek, lighting
by Robert Shookand
set by Mary Griswold strongly underscore this sense of the action as a dream play.
Several platforms serve multiple purposes from the front stoop of a house to a
podium from which a sermon is delivered to a prison cell. Characters move
stiffly and one could initially blame direction for awkward staging. Yet this
entire play is a flashback (think "Sunset Boulevard" and the initial
scene of our narrator face down in pool providing the back story for two
hours). This man's story is full of angry dreams and memories of the evolution
told in often luscious worlds. This is not a visual spectacle (though it is
visually pleasing) but rather a staging that focuses delightful on the story
and the words. The words and speeches resonate long after you have left the
theatre.
The
themes of the play run the gamut from the personal to the political, and all
are successfully intertwined thematically, structurally, and in performance.
The role of religion in American life in general and in the lives of Americans
specifically in the 1800s is evoked by dueling Reverends: white Canker (Gregory
Lush) who
represents the establishment formal order, and African American Brown (A.C.
Smith), who
tries to negotiate a connection between the wants and needs of his African
American constituency (freed and enslaved) and the established order. Market
pressures and capital are addressed continually: we never forget for a moment
that slavery was both a moral wrong and a capitalistic venture - without the
market for human lives to labor in the fields and run the households of
residents of the American South, the slave ships would and could not have
sailed. Debates between Denmark and his compatriot Omar Sewell (Kenn E. Head) evoke the strains of
emancipation philosophical debates that have endured for centuries: do we focus
on the individual's betterment (as argued by Sewell) or on the needs of the
community and the group, and Denmark attempts to do by purchasing the freedom
of as many slaves as he can rather than focus on the freedom of the woman he
loves, alone. And resonantly and powerfully, in this context, we have a love
story between two strong characters testing the parameters of their lives: the
house slave Beck Monroe (the beautiful Velma Austin), who belongs to and serves
Colonel Monroe (Joe Van Slyke) on all possible dimensions, and our hero Denmark, who
struggles to free himself from his own bondage of slavery, then makes a series
of personal and social choices that destroy his personal life.
The
personal is the political. This story of one man's struggle in a particular
time in a particular place, as dramatized beautifully by Charles Smith and
staged so lusciously by the team at Victory Gardens, is a lesson in history. At
root for this viewer, this is perhaps most powerfully a lesson in love. The
relationship between Beck and Denmark is the human road of this story, and some
of the speeches can break your heart. At one point, Beck says to Denmark,
"Your words get inside me, and leave a hole." This is a love story in
addition to all else. Lovely.