In the quiet, concluding moments of Reggie D. White’s Fremont Ave. at Arena Stage, characters who have been at odds strike a moving spiritual connection. Sentiment, staging, and composition sit in gentle balance, as director Lili-Anne Brown and company close the often hilariously rowdy family dramedy on a graceful, and still forceful note of well-earned peace.
Brown guides many such delicate moments to fruition in her beautifully layered production of the world-premiere work by writer-actor White, also Arena Stage’s senior director of artistic strategy and impact.
White supplies a virtual minefield of sensitive topics for the characters to carefully navigate, from religion and sexuality, to addiction and loss, all reflected through the experiences of three generations of a Black family and their friends.
The family tree takes root in 1968 with the will-they-or-won’t-they dance between straitlaced music therapist George (Brandon Gibson) and Audrey (Jerrika Hinton), the forthright woman he hires to be his housekeeper. Around his upright piano, and his dinner table, they forge a sweet bond, based on mutual curiosity and respect.
Gibson and Hinton produce a sparkling, infectious sense of romance in scenes of George and Audrey peeling back layers of formality to see each other more clearly.
Hinton clearly shows us what a force Audrey is, plain-talking and fast on her feet. In her bravura delivery of one blistering speech in particular, rebuffing George’s advances, she plants Audrey’s flag firmly in the heart of this drama, securing her place at the center of the family she and George will build.
Marking the passage of time with crowd-pleasing audio montages of classic Soul, R&B, and hip-hop, the production advances from the ’60s to the ’90s to today over three acts (and one intermission). Tim Mackabee’s cleverly convertible set for George’s neat, modernist home in L.A. accrues different knick-knacks across the years, but the decor remains mostly the same, lit with precision.
While Hinton evolves Audrey into an older, more sternly devout Christian, Gibson takes on different characters in each successive generation, first as Audrey’s young adult son Robert, then as Robert’s son Joseph.
Managing to distinguish both completely from each other, and George, Gibson keeps the plot moving, combining lithe physicality with sharp timing, and a fine singing voice. He and the entire cast get a great assist from the spot-on period wardrobe.
Yet, it’s not just about the clothes or hairstyle — Gibson achieves the necessary range between buttoned-up George and, decades later, his grandson Joseph, who, it so happens, is gay. We can detect in the performance hints of Joseph’s forebears, another note of well-calibrated acting, and smart direction.
Both apply as well to Galen J. Williams’ entertaining turn as family friend Damon, who shares a secret with Joseph, as well as Wildlin Pierrevil portraying Robert’s friendly voice of reason, Frank, among a circle of friends who aren’t always reasonable.
During raucous games of Spades at George’s table, all the men, and occasionally Audrey, give voice to the troubles that plague them, the hopes that inspire them, and, to no small degree, all the bullshit that pisses them off.
But it’s not the anger and indignation, or the homophobia Joseph confronts that lingers after the curtain. And it’s not the struggle of every generation to live up to the expectations held above them, but the delicate peace that can only be reached by navigating past all that pain.
Fremont Ave. (★★★★☆) runs through November 23 at Arena Stage, 1101 6th St. SW, with an HBCU Night performance Oct. 21. Tickets are $49 to $118, with discount options available. Call 202-488-3300, or visit www.arenastage.org.
Everyone is entitled their own opinion, but is everyone entitled to their opinion of your opinion? Furthermore, is your opinion a reflection of who you are in a greater scope as a person?
Those questions lie at the heart of Art, a starry play on Broadway that has been revived since its initial 1998 run, for which it won a Tony. Back then, it starred Alan Alda, Victor Garber, and Alfred Molina. Now, Neil Patrick Harris, Bobby Cannavale, and James Corden step into the work from French playwright Yasmina Reza, translated from its original language by Christopher Hampton.
Even in our era of short-form entertainment, the 100-minute comedy feels much too long. It evolves around a trio of three longtime friends who debate a $300,000 painting. As Porky Pig so succinctly stated, "That's all, folks!" Much like an artist and their sycophants who believe that a pretentious artpiece is masterful, theatergoers will also delude themselves into thinking that they have witnessed a show of great import. In fairness, they aren't totally wrong. Art does have more to offer than what it offers at first blush.
Matthew López felt detached. While reading E. M. Forster's classic novel, Howard's End, in New York's Central Park several years ago, the Tony award-winning playwright was inspired to write his own version of the twentieth-century tale of three British social classes intertwining during Europe's Edwardian era.
Using the essence of Forster's famous mandate from the novel, "Only connect!" López would set his version, The Inheritance in contemporary metropolitan life, replete with themes of young love, politics, sexual escapades, friendship, substance abuse, redemption, and haunting memories of the AIDS epidemic, all of which would be discussed between various generations of gay men.
"Friends, Harlemites, countrymen, lend me your ears." The Folger has brought the Bard uptown, courtesy of Al Letson's Julius X, a deft reimagining of Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar as a depiction of the last days of Malcolm X.
As the playwright points out in the production's program notes, Shakespeare's drama of the betrayal and assassination of the political leader in ancient Rome overlaps pretty effectively, plot-wise and thematically, with an account of the betrayal and assassination of the civil rights leader in Harlem 1965.
Accordingly, for Letson's modernized mashup, stylishly staged by Nicole Brewer, the conspirators carry daggers not pistols to slay Julius X inside the Audubon Ballroom. Instead of robes and togas, they rock natty suits, courtesy of costume designer Danielle Preston, who keeps the cast dripping in Harlem swag.
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