Theater Review

At Boston’s Old North Chuch, “Revolution’s Edge” Time Travels to the Start of the American Revolution

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“Revolution’s Edge.” Written by Patrick Gabridge. Directed by Alexandra Smith. Produced by Plays in Place. Commissioned by Old North Illuminated. Staged at The Old North Church, 193 Salem St, Boston through August 10.

By Shelley A. Sackett

“Revolution’s Edge,” a site-specific play by the award-winning playwright, producer, novelist, and screenwriter Patrick Gabridge, packs a lot into 45 minutes.

It is set on the evening of April 18, 1775, a turning point in both the history of the Old North Church (then Christ Church) and the history of America. The church played a pivotal role in the nation’s fight for independence. It was in its steeple, after all, where two lanterns were hung on that very night to signal that British soldiers were heading across the Charles River.

The event has been immortalized by the line, “One if by land, and two if by sea,” in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1860 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.”

Gabridge’s inspired drama is set in the North Church in real time during a moment that is almost invisible in history books. It was mere hours before the signals were hung. Three men whose lives intersect and diverge meet in the church’s vestry as altercations between British troops and American patriots threaten to boil over just outside its doors. The imagined conversation among three real people on that historic afternoon is the subject of the play.

Christ Church’s second rector, the Rev. Dr. Mather Byles, Jr., remains loyal to the British crown. Vestry member John Pulling, Jr. is a fervent Patriot and one of the men who will later hang the lanterns in the bell tower. The two have been friends for decades. Their children have grown up together; their families even share the same pew. (Be sure to look at the pew where both Byles’ and Pullings’ families have plaques).

Cato, a slave, has just been baptized by Byles, his owner. Fearing for his family’s safety, Byles recently resigned as minister and plans to move his family to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

All three characters are based on real people, and thanks to Gabridge’s fastidious research, they are as historically accurate as archival materials permit. The dramatic and personal details that transform them into three-dimensional characters are all thanks to Gabridge’s uncanny ability to dig deeply beneath the surface of his research and plumb the hearts and minds of his characters. “Revolution’s Edge” is no mere reenactment; it pulls back the curtain and lets a modern audience witness what really made these men tick.

That that audience is also sitting in the very place where the events of the play took place is nothing short of sublime.

As the conversation unfolds that tense day in 1775, Gabridge first focuses our attention on the characters’ commonalities. All three are fathers who value family above all else. They want the best lives possible for their children and are willing to sacrifice their own happiness to achieve that goal. They have all suffered profound losses and setbacks in their lives. At their cores, they are decent, practical and honest men, strongly opinioned yet respectful and compassionate.

The playwright then teases out all the ways in which they differ. Byles is an ardent supporter of the King of England and may have been colluding with the British troops. Pulling is just as ardent a Patriot, ready and willing to launch the attack that will finally set America free from tyranny.

Byles has his blind spots. For example, he can’t see the inhumanity of his assumption that, because he owns Cato and because he and his wife have five children they can’t care for on their own, Cato not only must leave his own family in Boston and accompany them to New Hampshire, but he also should be grateful for the opportunity. He is tone-deaf in his paternalistic attitude toward Cato, whom he sees as needing (and wanting) his master’s protection.

Cato, who was kidnapped in Africa as a child and brought to America as a slave, just wants to raise his family among the friends he has made during his many years in Boston. When Pulling asks Cato whether he wants to accompany Byles to Portsmouth or stay in Boston, Cato is stunned. No one had ever asked him what he wanted before. Yet he is comfortable and confident enough to point out the absurdity of asking that moot question now.

Instead of answering Pulling’s question, he poses one of his own. “Did they ask if I wanted to come to this country when I was seven years old?” he counters.  

The play raises many thought-provoking issues in understated but effective ways. Pulling argues that he and his fellow Patriots refuse to be slaves to the King, yet he can’t make the connection that Cato might feel the same way about his enslavement. Byles insists that “all this” is God’s plan, but when pressed by Pulling, he can’t say which part he means. Is it taxation? Occupation? Slavery? “There’s not much subtle about the times we’re living in,” Pulling observes.

Finally, they address the elephant in the room: in a land where no one is native, who is a true American? Is it the English settler (and his fellow loyalists) who may live in New England but whose allegiance is to the original version across the pond? Or is it the colonists (and fellow Patriots) who have embraced their new homeland and no longer consider themselves English immigrants but full-blooded citizens of the autonomous and independent America?

The splendid cast of three last Thursday (two casts act in rotation) included Joshua Lee Robinson as Cato, Tim Hoover as Byles, and Kevin Paquette as Pulling. Most of the action takes place in the front of the pews, although the actors walk up and down the aisle from time to time. While they both bring style and authenticity to their characters, Hoover and Paquette might do well to temper their deliveries. Their rapid fire, loud, angry vocalizations rendered many of their lines incomprehensible, which is particularly unfortunate with such a dialogue-driven script.

As Cato, Robinson was much easier to understand. His even, clear, calm enunciation added much to the audience’s ability to relate to his character.

Gabridge is the founder and Producing Artistic Director of Plays in Place, which develops site-specific plays tailored to helping an audience find new meaning in the places, topics, and people at the heart of the piece. He hopes “Revolution’s Edge” enables its audience to appreciate that the people in our past were real people who led complicated lives that required them to make hard decisions.

“Sometimes we look back in history and we feel like it was easy for them to make their choices. You know, ‘It was so much simpler back then.’ But I think when we look at them as real complex humans, we realize that just like us today, they didn’t know what was going to happen next, just like we don’t,” he said.

For more information, go to www.oldnorth.com/revolutions-edge/

“Yellow Face” Raises Difficult Issues About Race at the Lyric Stage Company

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Cast of “Yellow Face” at Lyric Stage. Photos by Mark S. Howard

By Shelley A. Sackett

Some plays are just good for you. Like drinking a peanut butter, kale, bone meal, and flax seed smoothie, the benefits outweigh the temporary discomfort. With the smoothie, its promise of increased vigor and decreased ailments offset its taste and texture. With “Yellow Face,” David Henry Hwang’s Obie award-winning play presented by The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, its thought-provoking and post-theater-conversation-inducing messages outweigh the lackluster nature of its two-hour theatrical experience.

Hwang has a lot to share. Wading through the weeds of his self-deprecating, semi-autobiographical plot is a bit of a slog. It all started in 1990 when the white Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce was cast as the French-Vietnamese star of the smash Broadway hit, “Miss Saigon.” (Note: Hwang’s 1988 Tony award-winning hit, “M. Butterfly” was inspired by the same Puccini opera, “Madame Butterfly.”)

Hwang condemns this casting choice as a form of “yellowface.” He becomes the standard-bearer of the New York Asian-American theater community’s protest, demanding that Actors Equity join them. After much public waffling, Actors Equity backs the choice of Pryce and the play goes on to be a smash hit.

Outraged, Hwang pens the colossal flop, “Face Value,” a hard-edged comedy about casting white actors as Asians. In an oversized karmic boomerang twist, Hwang commits the ultimate ironic faux pas — he casts a white actor, Marcus G. Dahlman, to play its Asian lead.

Rather than admit his mistake, eat crow and move on, Hwang compounds the error by revisioning Dahlman’s ancestry and giving him the more Asian last name, Gee. In a fit of twitchy pique, Hwang then fires Gee, who earns praise and fortune playing other Asian roles, including the King in “The King and I.”

Hwang, a “real” Asian, is, by contrast, broke and eking out a tough existence as a playwright. To his later detriment, he even accepts a position on the board of directors at his father’s bank.

We witness a metamorphosis in Gee as he emerges from his “fake” Asian cocoon to spread his butterfly wings. Gee genuinely identifies as a member of the Asian American community and longs to be accepted as a full-fledged member. He becomes an activist and supporter of Asian American values. He even dates an Asian American (Hwang’s ex, no less). He wears his Asian identity so effectively that when the U.S. Department of Justice and various congressional committees charge Asian Americans with aiding the Chinese government in election interference, Gee is among those named.

Michael Hisamoto

Act II is where Hwang exercises a little more self-discipline, honing in on the rabbit hole of weighty philosophical, political, moral, and semantic issues that surround discussions about race. He abandons Act I’s “poor me” tirades and tackles meatier topics. Like the health effects (vs the taste) of that muddy smoothie, it is worth the wait.

Hwang is unafraid to ask the big questions. What, for example, is “cultural authenticity?” What does it mean? More importantly, what does it matter? Is the very idea of cultural authenticity racist? Where exactly is that tipping point between artistic legitimacy and discrimination?

“The face you choose to show the world determines who you really are,” Gee says, quoting an ancient Chinese saying. Yet, when that face is Caucasian — no matter how much the heart beats as Asian — who are we looking at? Which is more ambiguous, the truth or the fiction?

Throughout the play, snippets of an American “ethnic tourist” are played on a screen above the stage. Turns out it is Gee, who Hwang sends to a remote Chinese village so he can have a first-hand immersion experience in the culture he so desperately wants to be part of. These villagers have never had Chinese outsiders visit, let alone a white American. Yet, after several months, they accept Gee into their community, sharing their most sacred treasure — music — with him.

Jenny S. Lee

Is Gee now Asian “enough?” Hwang uses this question as a powerful platform from which to launch many ideas and the soul searching queries they inspire.

What is the true litmus test — DNA ancestry or community acceptance? Is it what’s on the outside or inside that really matters? Is it how you see yourself or how others see you?

And how does this compare to religion, where there is no definitive physical barrier to joining a community and where its members can look like anyone and everyone? Is the logical extension of Hwang’s point about cultural appropriation an argument that religious conversion is impossible too? Although “Yellow Face” has its dramatic problems (a script in need of editing, actors in need of crisper direction, and a set that almost, but not quite, works), when a theatrical experience leaves me with a head full of ideas that linger long past curtain call, that’s a play I’m glad I saw.

“Yellow Face.” Written by David Henry Hwang. Directed by Ted Hewlett. Scenic Design by Szu-Feng Chen; Projections Design by Megan Reilly; Lighting Design by Baron E. Pugh; Costume Design by Mikayla Reid; Sound Design by Arshan Gailus. Presented by The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Clarendon St., Boston. Run has ended.

GBSC’s “Guys and Dolls” Is A Cool Glass of Summer Refreshment

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Jared Troilo, Lisa Kate Joyce in Greater Boston Stage Company’s ‘Guys and Dolls’
Photos by Gillian Gordon

“Guys and Dolls.” Book by Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling. Music and Lyrics by Frank Loesser. Directed/Choreographed by Ceit Zweil. Musical Direction by Dan Rodriguez. Presented by Greater Boston Stage Company, 395 Main Street, Stoneham, through June 30.

By Shelley A. Sackett

When it comes to bubbly, breezy, musical fare, Greater Boston Stage Company is as reliable as it gets and “Guys and Dolls,” in production through June 30, is further proof.

Even before the show starts, a usually boilerplate announcement is anything but. “Turn off your phone. It’s a small theater. Everyone will know it’s you,” a vintage radio announcer-type warns.

Hailed as the perfect musical romantic comedy, this award-winning classic is set in 1920s “Runyonland,” a mythical New York City. Based on Damon Runyon’s short stories, the two-and-one-half-hour play (one intermission) is a potpourri of slapstick, glamorous cabaret showgirls, gamblers, gangsters, and Salvation Army missionaries.

There’s even a quick trip to pre-revolutionary decadent Havana.

Twenty-four musical numbers, backed by a seven-piece orchestra, are the glue that connects the dots and provides both a vehicle to showcase the cast’s formidable talent and a layer of joyful merriment.

The story is fairly straightforward.

Gambler Nathan Detroit needs to find financing to set up the biggest craps game in town. He faces more than a few obstacles. First of all, the authorities are breathing down his neck, Lt. Brannigan of the local police force watching his every move. Second, the only place he can find to hold the game requires $1,000 security deposit. Third, Nathan is broke. And fourth (but hardly last), Adelaide, a nightclub performer and his fiancée of 14 years, has made him promise to give up running craps games. When she finds out he’s still at it, she kicks him out.

Undaunted, Nathan contrives a way to get the money by making a bet with fellow gambler Sky Masterson, known for deep pockets and an inability to resist any wager that crosses his path.

This one? That Sky can’t get Sarah Brown, one of the straight-laced missionaries, to have lunch with him in Havana.

The rest of the play revolves around con men conning and being conned, unrequited love being requited, and an unlikely group of missionaries who yield more influence than they could have prayed for. The plot twists and turns are cute, light, and hilarious — perfect summer fare.

All this is told through top-tapping familiar songs (“Luck Be A Lady,” “A Bushel and a Peck,” and “Guys and Dolls” among them) and exuberant choreography performed with the caliber of singing and acting we have come to expect from GBSC.

Stephen Markarian, Mark Linehan, Christian David

And —best of all!!! — the orchestra complements the actors rather than drowning them out. Kudos to Sound Designer John Stone and his engineers for ensuring that the audience can hear – and understand – the lyrics.

Jon Savage’s set makes efficient use of a compact stage. He has built a neon shadow box to house the orchestra, bringing them into the mix in an organic way. Unobtrusive props change the scene from mission meeting to street corner to cabaret to Havana club. Ceit Zweil’s direction and choreography keep the action flowing and interesting.

The play’s opening number (“Runyonland”) is upbeat and happy, setting the tone for what is to follow. “Fugue for Tinhorn,” about betting on the races, follows, introducing us to three loveable gamblers: Nicely-Nicely (Stephen Markarian), Benny Southstreet, and Rusty Charlie. Markarian is a standout, bringing warmth, physicality, and self-deprecating humor (and a great voice) to Nicely-Nicely.

Sara Coombs as Adelaide is an adorable knockout. Everything about her performance is impeccable, from her exaggerated facial expressions to her dancing to her fabulous voice. Plus, she has a terrific sense of timing and a comedic flair that is a true pleasure to behold.

Jared Troilo imbues Sky Masterson with sensitivity beneath his worldly criminal carapace. His dancing and singing are superb, and his duets with Sarah are among the show’s highlights.

Of which there are many. There are double entendres and double-crossers.

Joyce, Sarah Coombs

There are the corny, Henny Youngman-esque laugh-out-loud jokes (“I kinda like it when you forget to give me presents. It makes me feel like we’re married,” Adelaide tells Nathan). There are even a barbershop quartet, an a capella number, and an operatic aria (Lisa Kate Joyce has a voice that could shatter glass).

Most of all, there is a light, entertaining story that surprises us with a serious takeaway. As Nicely-Nicely succinctly puts it, “Life is one big crap game, and the Devil is using loaded dice.”

For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://www.greaterbostonstage.org/

The Vilna Shul and “The Dybbuk” Are A Match Made in Heaven in Arlekin Players’ Must-See Production

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Cast of Arlekin Players’ “The Dybbuk” at the Vilna Shul. Photos: Irina Danilova

‘The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds’ — Written by Roy Chen. Based on the original play by S. Ansky. Adapted by Igor Golyak and Dr. Rachel Merrill Moss with additional material from the translation by Joachim Neugroschel. Directed by Igor Golyak. Scenic Design by Igor Golyak with Sasha Kuznetsova. Presented by Arlekin Players Theatre at The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture, 18 Philips St., Boston, through June 23.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Igor Golyak, the peerlessly talented founder and award-winning artistic director of Arlekin Players Theatre, has done it again. Known for his innovative approaches to traditional and virtual theater, his production of “The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds” takes the audience on a magic carpet ride straight into the beating heart of a turn-of-the-century Eastern European shtetl.

Set in the iconic and authentic 105-year-old Vilna Shul, Boston’s only surviving synagogue built by and for late 19th/early 20th century immigrants, Golyak creates an otherworldly environment that sucks the audience right in. We are greeted by tiers of metal scaffolding that rise almost to the ceiling in the center of the building, towering above the pews, which have been pushed back along the perimeters. Animated sheets of opaque plastic hang from the frames, dancing ghost-like as strobes, disembodied voices and the sound of dripping water create a multi-sensorial microcosm.

Even if we’re not sure exactly where we are or exactly what is going on, one thing is clear: this will be an extraordinary evening.

The play’s plot is tricky for 21st-century theatergoers to intuit, yet it is essential background to fully appreciate Golyak’s extraordinary vision and interpretation.

In a nutshell, S. Ansky’s 1914 play relates the story of Leah, a young bride possessed by a dybbuk (a malicious spirit believed to be the soul of a dead person stuck between earth and heaven). Yet this dybbuk is anything but malicious; he is Khonen, a poor Yeshiva student who grew up with Leah and loves her.

Yana Gladkikh, Andrey Burkovskiy

Only alluded to at the end of the play is a critical piece of backstory (the 1937 Yiddish-language Polish film adds this as an introductory scene). Sender, Leah’s father, and Nisan, Khonen’s father, were close friends whose wives gave birth on the same night. They made a pact that if one had a girl and the other a boy, the two would be betrothed. Nisan drowns shortly after his wife gives birth. Sender, whose wife dies during childbirth, goes on to become a wealthy rabbi.

Years later, Khonen shows up at Sender’s house as a poor yeshiva student, and Sender offers him hospitality. Neither is aware of their underlying connection. Leah and Khonen fall in love, but Sender rejects Khonen, betrothing Leah instead to Menashe, a wealthy nincompoop.

Beside himself, Khonen studies Jewish mysticism (Kabballah) in an effort to alter events by way of magic, even beseeching Satan to help him. He dies before the wedding, returning as a dybbuk who haunts and eventually embodies Leah, possessing her as she stands on the bimah (the altar from which the Torah is read) at her wedding. The ceremony is postponed, and Sender does everything in his power to repossess Leah and unite her with Menashe. After much drama (including a religious exorcism), the two are reunited.

Golyak uses every square inch of the Vilna to astonishing effect. The space behind the pulpit becomes a tiered choir where ghosts (interestingly, all female) act like a Greek chorus. The bulk of the action takes place on and around the Vilna’s bimah, as it does in Ansky’s original script. Strip lighting, handheld firefly-like mini lights, industrial hanging caged bulbs (lighting design by Jeff Adelberd), and spot-on costumes and makeup (Sasha Ageeva) add to the ethereal ethos.

Staging and site notwithstanding, however, it is the extraordinary cast — especially the two leads — who blow this production out of the water.

As Khonen, Andrey Burkovskiy, the expatriated Russian actor, is riveting. His lithe physicality belies his large size as he leaps and pirouettes across the scaffolding, barely but intentionally missing hitting his head on the hanging lights and metal beams. The Beetlejuice makeup is extremely effective at imbuing him with a heartbreakingly sad yet potentially menacing demeanor.

Yana Gladkikh, the Russian actress and film director, is equally spellbinding as Leah. A cross between Pierrot and a floppy ragdoll, she runs the gamut from Tinkerbell lissome to Princess Leia fierce. The chemistry and synchronicity between Burkovskiy and Gladkikh is delicate and subtle, and watching them together is a true theatrical treat.

Deb Martin, as Frade, Leah’s paternal grandmother and caretaker, is as opposite an energy as possible. Screeching, cajoling and imperious, she dominates every scene she is in, bringing a countervailing element of melodramatic hysteria and humor to an often somber tale. Like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, she is hunch-backed, skeletal and a force to be reckoned with. You can actually hear her gnashing teeth as she literally chews up the scenery during the exorcism scene. Kudos to Golyak for letting Martin strut her stuff.

Deb Martin

The rest of the cast (especially Robert Walsh, the former artistic director of the Gloucester Stage Company, as the overbearing Sender) is splendid. 110 intermission-less minutes is an eternity at some productions; at “The Dybbuk,” they fly by.

“The Dybbuk” is considered a seminal play in the history of Jewish theater, and played an important role in the development of Yiddish theater and theater in Israel. Based on years of research by Ansky, who traveled between Jewish shtetls in Russia and Ukraine, it documents folk beliefs and stories of the 19th and early 20th century Hassidic Jews, who lived during a time of nonstop pogroms in specific areas, outside of which their residency was forbidden.

Ansky’s account of these times and the two suspended, displaced souls trapped between two worlds and tethered to each other and their community is as relevant today as it was over a century ago.

For Golyak, a Ukrainian refugee, the tale is particularly pertinent.

“Isn’t this where we live? As Jews, as immigrants? It’s where we so often have lived as Jewish people for centuries: between worlds. It’s our story – ancient and mystical, the story of our ancestors, but also our story of living in America today,” he said.

Burkovskiy, Gladkikh

It is impossible to recommend it highly enough! Don’t miss it!

For more information and to buy tickets, go to www.arlekinplayers.com

A.R.T.’s “Gatsby” Is This Summer’s Blockbuster

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Cory Jeacoma, Solea Pfeiffer, and the cast of A.R.T.’s ‘Gatsby.’
Photo Credits: Julieta Cervantes

“Gatsby.” Book by Martyna Majok based on the novel, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Directed by Rachel Chavkin. Music by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett. Lyrics by Florence Welch. Choreography by Sonya Tayeh. Orchestration and Arrangements by Thomas Barlett. Scenic Design by Mimi Lien. Lighting Design by Alan C. Edwards. Presented by American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge, through August 3.

By Shelley A. Sackett

“Gatsby” is a tour-de-force chockful of bells and whistles. A.R.T. spares nothing for its world premiere of the musical adaptation of Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age chronicle. Two colossal heaps of metallic sculpture reminiscent of the infernal “Hadestown” underworld are a Jenga/“Where’s Waldo” of identifiable automobile parts and crumpled rubble (set by Mimi Lien). Draped in gleaming tinsel and expertly lighted by Alan C. Edwards, these gloomy twin towers are a continual reminder of the dangers of decadence and the debris it leaves in its wake.

Like “Moby Dick” and other inventive re-tellings of familiar tales, it’s clear from the get-go that A.R.T. will once again raise the bar on production values.

In preparation for seeing “Gatsby,” I reread the novel both to refresh my 9th-grade memory and to better understand where (and guess why) Martyna Majok had chosen to be faithful to and stray from the original in her adaptation. While hardly necessary – the storyline is short on subtlety – it was fun when I recognized a line that had struck us both as particularly poignant.

At its heart, however, this “Gatsby” is a musical, and the tale is told through its 25 musical numbers. (Unfortunately, the 13-piece orchestra often drowns out those lyrics, leaving the frustrated audience to fill in the blanks). In the exciting first number, “Welcome to the New World,” we meet our narrator, Nick Carraway (Ben Levi Ross), who fills us in on time, place, and tenor. It’s 1922, and the influenza plague and World War I, although in the rearview mirror, left emotional, physical, and financial wreckage in its wake. As if awakening from a nightmare, Jazz Age America has emerged, revving its engine and ready to roar.

Ben Levi Ross

Underscoring the headiness of the era, the 15-member ensemble bursts on the stage clad in flapper period and contemporary non-cis costumes. Costume designer Sandy Powell cleverly introduces us to the main characters by dressing them symbolically. George and Myrtle, the have-not couple, are dressed in hellish red. Daisy, Tom and their friend Jordan, the silver-spoon gentry, wear heavenly white. And Jay Gatsby, our eponymous protagonist, appropriately wears an in-between pink.

As the plot unfolds, so do these characters’ backstories. Each harbors longings, secrets and disappointments that propel them towards disaster while attracting and repulsing them to and from each other. Majok exercises editorial discretion (and keen perception) in adding a richly nuanced focus on these relationships that are lacking in Fitzgerald’s novel.

Nick is just back from the war. While he presents as the affable, “aw shucks” mid-Westerner, his baggage includes heavy loads of PTSD and grief. He has sought the diversion of Long Island high society and the company of his cousin Daisy to reset the trajectory of his life. He rents a cottage for the summer and is immediately invited to join the Fellini-esque world of ultra-rich navel-gazers.

Daisy (Charlotte MacInnes), a former Louisville belle, is married to scion Tom Buchanan (Cory Jeacoma) and lives in a fairytale mansion with her loutish, philandering husband. She and Gatsby had met and fallen in love years ago, right before he was shipped off to war. Her childhood friend and famous golf pro, Jordan Baker (Eleri Ward), provides the stability and affection so sorely lacking in her marriage. She is also the play’s flapper Pied Piper, flamboyantly hedonistic and desperate for everyone to follow her reckless lead.

Isaac Powell, Charlotte MacInnes

Tom is as spoiled and obnoxious as they come. He wears his entitlement as a badge of honor, helping himself to whatever suits his fleeting fancy, including Myrtle Wilson (Solea Pfeiffer), the blue-collar wife of a gas station owner who yearns for the sparkling trinkets Tom dangles before her. Her voracious appetite for excess and risk are sated in the short run, but the long-term damage is one of the play’s underlying themes.

George Wilson (Matthew Amira), Myrtle’s husband, is outnumbered and outmaneuvered. Honest, hard-working, decent, and loyal, he doesn’t stand a chance.

This brings us to Jay Gatsby (Isaac Powell), the mysterious epicenter of the action who throws parties reminiscent of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Personifying a corrupted version of the “American Dream” where wealth is the sole solution to all of life’s challenges, his obsession with Daisy and maniacally detailed plan to win her back are the ill-fated coattails onto which every other character’s fate hangs.

To her great credit, playwright Majok has managed to both plumb the intricacies of these individuals and their various romantic liaisons and dalliances and create a rip-roaringly entertaining almost-three-hour evening of outstanding song and dance.

Under Rachel Chavkin’s talented direction, the cast hits that sweet spot between virtuoso solo and ensemble performances. There are ample opportunities for each to shine in words, song, and dance. MacInnis brings a needed self-awareness to Daisy, who could easily become a cardboard character. She is as disconsolate a victim in “I’ve Changed My Mind” as she is scheming perpetrator in the duet with Tom in “The Damage That You Do.” Both feature her amazing voice.

As Jordan, Ward adds a sophisticated cynicism and “been there, done that” breeziness to the unbridled frenzy that surrounds the other characters. Willowy and lithe, she is a pleasure to watch as she glides around the cabaret party settings.

Jeacoma (Tom), Powell (Gatsby), and Amira (Wilson) stay in character in less shaded roles. Ross brings a slightly tinted palette to Nick, making him more mysterious and less pathetic than he at times seemed in the novel.

It is Pfeiffer as Myrtle and Adam Grupper as Meyer Wolfsheim, Gatsby’s mentor and syndicate boss, who really stand out. In addition to her outstanding voice, Pfeiffer easily transitions between the grief, rage, and despair she feels in her trapped marriage to a gas jockey and the giddiness of being wildly out of control in the sybaritic world to which Tom gives her the key. I only wish the orchestra didn’t drown out half of her songs.

MacInnes, Powell

Grupper, a Sydney Greenstreet of a presence, could not be drowned out by a 20-piece brass band (thank goodness). “Feels Like Hell,” his solo, brings down the house.

Lien’s flexible set is a presence of its own. Spanning the entire proscenium, the wide staircase, balcony, and stage allow three small scenes to play simultaneously, adding interest and challenge. And last but hardly least, Welch’s music and lyrics turn Fitzgerald’s 200-page novel into an operatic dramatic feast. While there are no tunes that stick in your head after the curtain falls, the actors’ universally extraordinary voices and Welch’s spot-on lyrics (when we can hear them) are the backbone of this summer extravaganza.

For more information and to buy tickets, visit: https://americanrepertorytheater.org/

Huntington’s “Toni Stone” Tells the Story of One of the Best Baseball Players You Never Heard of

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The cast of Toni Stone at The Huntington Theatre. Photos by T. Charles Erickson.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Toni Stone, the subject and title of playwright Lydia R. Diamond’s new drama, has one helluva story to tell. As played by the pitch-perfect Jennifer Mogbock, she is also one helluva terrific storyteller and more than up to the task of narrating the events of her remarkable life.

Which is a good thing, because “Toni Stone,” now at the Huntington, ran almost three hours (with a long intermission and delayed start) on opening night last Wednesday.

Even before the house lights have dimmed, Collette Pollard’s exciting set has placed us smack in the middle of a baseball field, surrounded by bleachers, scoreboards and night lights. Mogbock, a spitfire of energy and physicality, practically leaps onto the stage. A ball rolls slowly on the ground towards her, and she bends down to pick it up.

“The weight of the ball in the hand and the reach,” she announces matter-of-factly as she tosses it in the air. “What this is is what boys are to that girl. This is what I need.”

This — baseball in all its statistical, scientific, and athletic glory — is also what she knows, “maybe better than that girl knows boys.”

Disarming, genuine, and boundlessly enthusiastic, Stone shares her life’s highlights, from her birth in West Virginia to growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, to becoming the first woman to play baseball in the Negro Leagues. Every step of the way, her single-minded determination to achieve her dream of playing professional baseball lit her path. Overcoming daunting racial and gender barriers, she landed the second base roster spot with the Indianapolis Clowns, taking Hank Aaron’s place when he moved up to the majors in 1953.

Mogbock (front) and team

Stone’s job, she tells the audience, is to tell her story so history doesn’t forget. The audience’s job, she implies, is to remember it. And to pass it on.

With that, the rest of the team bursts onto the stage. Stone introduces them one by one, and then they perform the first of several fabulous dance/acrobatic acts (choreographed by Ebony Williams with original music from Lucas Clopton). These top-notch numbers are a welcome break from the sometimes long stretches of dialogue and give the cast a chance to break loose and shine.

Mogbock is the only woman in the 11-member ensemble, and the ten actors take on individual characters as well as Clown teammates. As Millie, a prostitute who befriends Stone and tries to instill some femininity into the baseball-statistic-obsessed tomboy, Stanley Andrew Jackson is a sublime showstopper. Others play Stone’s parents, manager, coach, and husband. With a simple announcement (“He’s white”) and hand gestures, the all-Black cast also takes on white racist characters in subtle but dramatically powerful ways.

Stanley Andrew Jackson, Mogbock

Through sometimes chronologically disjointed scenes, Stone connects the dots of her personal timeline and, along the way, emotionally connects with the audience. By the end of the play, we don’t just know Stone; we adore her.

She is a complex character, as insecure and flighty socially and intellectually as she is confident and down to earth about her knowledge of and ability to excel at baseball.

As an athletically gifted kid in St. Paul, she excelled at every sport she tried. When her mother steers her towards more “ladylike” sports like figure skating (cute skirts), she easily wins the top city-wide competition and then begs to go back to the sport she really loves. She hated school both because she was bored and because the teachers pigeon-holed her as mentally impaired, misunderstanding her inability to process social cues and making her feel even more isolated and alone. (“When someone tells you there’s something wrong with your mind, you believe them,” she explains).

Yet, there’s nothing wrong with her mind when she’s thinking about a topic that interests her. As she argues with coaches about strategy, spouts baseball card statistics like an AI app, and describes baseball in terms that are poetic and metaphysical, she more than holds her own as confident, shrewd, and articulate.

While Diamond keeps the story light and focused on Stone’s journey, she by no means avoids the harsh realities of racism and misogyny in the 1950s. Stone was shunned and harassed by many of her teammates and was deliberately trampled when defending second base by opposing team members who wanted to “take out that woman.”

At the same time, she and her teammates share more than the same uniform. They are keenly aware that white team owners are using them both to make money and to make the white teams look superior by having them lose in rigged games. After all, and lest they forget their place, the team’s name, “Clowns,” is branded on their uniforms.

Like the Reconstructionist era blackface minstrel “entertainment,” they are supposed to, above all else, entertain. “They know we know what they’re doing to us,” Stone says just as Act I ends. “But we still make them laugh.”

Because that’s the only way a Black person or woman could play baseball in a white male world: by playing “their” game by “their” rules. And at the end of the day, the player’s desire to play ball is greater than their pride.

Jonathan Kitt, Mogbock

The second act (thankfully shorter and tighter) covers a lot of ground. Stone marries and retires from baseball when she ends up spending more time sitting on the bench than playing. She spends a year being a good housewife and then becomes a nurse. Although Diamond drops the ball on dramatic pacing and content at the end, Stone’s words (and Mogbock’s flawless performance) leave the audience with a semblance of closure. 

“There it is,” she says, summing up her life’s story. “I did a thing. Between the weight of a thing and the reach, there is breath. And in that breath is life.” She pauses, looking straight at the audience and melting the proverbial fourth wall. “I reached.”

‘Toni Stone’ — Written and Directed by Lydia R. Diamond. Inspired by “Curveball: The Remarkable True Story of Tony Stone” by Martha Ackmann. Presented by the Huntington, in an arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French. At the Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston, through June 16.

For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/

‘Bluey’ Comes to Life in Boston

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Bluey’s Big Play at the Boch Wang Center. Photo Credit: Darren Thomas

“Bluey’s Big Play” — Story by Joe Brumm. Music by Joff Bush. Presented by BBC Studios and Andrew Kay in association with Windmill Theatre Co. at the Boch Center Wang Theatre. Run has ended.

By Shelley A. Sackett

It’s true what they say about grandparenthood — there is nothing like it. There are so many things you didn’t even consider doing when childcare duties sucked your days dry of time and energy. But now that those children are grown and have children of their own (and are willing to drive them to meet you at the theater!), the opportunity to not just attend but actually enjoy such events as “Bluey’s Big Play” are the payoff.

Which I cashed in last Saturday with my Bluey-obsessed three-year-old grandson. We had a blast.

The theatrical adaptation of the Emmy® award-winning children’s television series follows the Heeler family through a full day from sunrise to bedtime. Bluey and Bingo work to keep their dad, Bandit, from reading on his phone. Bluey and his mom, Chilli, talk about his being a good example as a big sister to Bingo.

The 45-minute show is approximately as long as six regular “Bluey” episodes, which, although it seemed short by adult standards, was the perfect attention span bandwidth for the preschool crowd.

When the lights first went down, a short section set to the familiar music of “The Weekend” with marionette bird puppets was a delight. A family of three birds enchanted with their charming dances and interactions. It was, frankly, magnificent. The puppetry was terrific, and the ambiance was magical, especially when a flock of smaller birds swept across the stage, creating shadows in the sky and on the walls.

The audio track for “Bluey’s Big Play” was prerecorded by the voice actors from Bluey, and each character in the show was represented onstage by human-sized puppets. Each puppet requires at least one puppeteer to operate its facial expressions (eyes and eyebrows) and arms, while at times, a second puppeteer is needed for actions that control its legs and tail or to add and remove props from the puppet’s hands.

Unfortunately, the puppeteers were very obvious, unlike the recent Daniel Tiger live show, where adults donned life-sized costumes. My grandson’s first comment was, “They’re stuffies (stuffed animals).”

There was no mistaking this Bluey show for the real McCoy.

Nonetheless, the plotline was easy enough to follow, the lessons important ones to take away. And the swag and free pre-show ice cream added a special touch. But the most special treats came after the story ended. Giant balloons were tossed into the audience and they made their way from row to row as kids (and their parents and grandparents) did quick catch and releases. The final extravagance were bubble cannons that shot geysers of bubbles into the air. Not one child — or adult — left the theater without a wide smile on their face.

Apollinaire Theatre Company’s ‘Touching the Void’ Reaches for the Moon

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Cast of Apollinaire Theatre Company’s ‘Touching the Void’

‘Touching the Void’  — Based on the book by Joe Simpson. Adapted by David Greig. Directed by Danielle Fauteux Jacques. Scenic and Sound Design by Joseph Lark-Riley; Lighting Design by Danielle Fauteux Jacques; Movement Choreography by Audrey Johnson. Presented by Apollinaire Theatre Company at Chelsea Theatre Works, 189 Winnisimmet St., Chelsea, through May 19.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Touching the Void is special on so many levels. Presented in the intimate Chelsea Theatre Works theater, director Danielle Fauteux Jacques has done a brilliant job of creating multiple settings (including the side of a mountain in the Peruvian Andes!) with minimal fuss and to maximum effect. The four actors (Patrick O’Konis as Joe, Kody Grassett as Simon, Zach Fuller as Richard, and Parker Jennings as Sarah) are equally stellar, and David Grieg’s script is meaty and engaging.

The real star of the play, and an unfortunate rarity these days, is the plot-driven narrative. It is based on climber Joe Simpson’s memoir of his near-death climbing experience, a thrilling and engaging story. There is even a surprise twist ending, which Jacques reveals in a deliciously sly and clever fashion after the curtain falls when the audience least expects it.

Even before the play officially starts, the mood is set. A blond, sullen woman, clad in a leather jacket and boots strolls onto the stage. Her mouth is down-turned. She holds an unlit cigarette, sits alone at a booth in a casual pub, gets up to put a song on the jukebox, and sits down again. She nods, looks at the table, and sighs.

Jennings is captivating; it’s not easy to stay in character in a vacuum. The effect, thanks also to Jacques’ spot-on lighting, is like a Hopper painting come to life.

We learn she is Sarah, Joe’s sister. Joe, we also learn, is presumed dead. She has just come from his body-less wake.

Enter Simon, who survived the climb, and Richard, the base camp manager. She insists on hearing the entire story of the climb, from its planning phase in this very “climbers’ pub” to the moment when Simon cut Joe loose, leaving him to perish in a crevasse.

Kody Grassett, Patrick O’Konis


She wants to understand what drew her brother to take such a risk. She has to experience the climb as he did to do that because she doesn’t believe he is really dead.

Simon and Richard agree to relive the journey with her, and their story, relayed through Sarah’s non-climber eyes, is an enormous one, packed with insight, triumph and peril. It’s also a golden opportunity for director Jacques and sound designer Joseph Lark-Riley to strut their stuff by turning the small stage from the pub to an Andean peak — complete with crunching snow and howling winds that whip the climbers like flags— and back to the pub again.

We witness all this in hindsight and by the end, we share Sarah’s doubt about whether Joe really perished. (No spoilers, but the answer awaits over snacks and drinks in the lobby).

Simon accommodates Sarah’s need to know how her brother lived, not just how he died. He shows her how to climb, painstakingly using chairs and tipped tables to improvise the feeling and rush of the climb. Only after she can relate on a visceral level does the storytelling begin.

Back in 1985, Simon and Joe were experienced Alps climbing buddies who wanted to be the first to climb the West Face of the Andean Siula Grande mountain. Alpine style, which means without extra gear or yuppie brand name accoutrements. “Two men, a rope and the abyss. It’s beautiful, but it’s dangerous,” Joe explains.

Parker Jennings, O’Konis


Accompanied to base camp by their site manager, the amusing and irritating navel-gazer, Richard, the two set off on their impossibly low-tech journey. They make it up, but on the descent, Joe shatters his leg and then disappears over a cliff. With rescue an impossibility and faced with freezing winds and certain death if he didn’t immediately begin his own descent, Simon makes a gut-wrenching decision. Act I ends with him cutting the rope that tethers him to his partner.

Act II opens with Joe, alive, incredulously realizing his situation. He is as devastated by his physical problems of having a shattered leg and being at the bottom of a snow abyss as he is psychologically by the reality that his partner cut him loose to save himself.

Suddenly, Sarah is by his side, coaxing him on, helping him inch his way out of this Dante’s frozen circle of hell. Is Joe hallucinating? Is Sarah imagining herself by her brother’s side? While the agony of Joe’s navigating his slow descent sometimes feels tedious and overdrawn, trust me — it will all make sense in the end.

Touching the Void is an abundance of theatrical pleasures, most notably the performances by the four actors. As Joe and Sarah, Jennings and O’Konis are simply perfect. Fuller imbues Richard with just the right balance of goofiness and competence, and Grassett brings an arm’s length sang froid to Simon that leaves us guessing whether there might not be a few nefarious skeletons in his closet.

Zach Fuller, Patrick O’Konis

If you enjoy theater that makes you think and inspires post-show conversation and debate, then this play is a must. Besides marveling at an inspiring production, you are guaranteed to leave wondering how this story could possibly be true.

For more information, visit apollinairetheatre.com

‘The Dybbuk’ showcases how throughout history, Jews have lived ‘Between Two Worlds’

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By Shelley A. Sackett

‘The Dybbuk’ has been adapted from a 1914 play by Igor Golyak, founder and artistic director of Arlekin Players Theatre.

Igor Golyak, founder and artistic director of Arlekin Players Theatre, was an 8-year-old growing up in Kyiv – then part of the Soviet Union – when his family gave him news that would change the trajectory of his life.

They told him that he was Jewish.

Because the practice of Judaism was suppressed by the state, Golyak had never even heard of Jews. His family moved to Boston in 1990 when he was 11 and – other than returning to Moscow to study theater after graduating from high school – he has called the area home since.

In 2009, he founded Arlekin Players, a Needham-based company of mostly Jewish immigrants from the former USSR. It has risen to national and international acclaim, especially since the pandemic and the launch of its ground-breaking Virtual Theater Lab in 2020. The New York Times recently cited Golyak as “among the most inventive directors working in the United States.”

Although Golyak has said he never thought he would be a “Jewish theater director,” the company has increasingly presented works that underscore themes of immigration, antisemitism, displacement, and Jewish cultural and religious identity.

“It’s what’s happening in our world and in my community. I’m Jewish. These are things that I’m trying to understand. These ideas and questions have captured my attention, my imagination and, at least right now, is what’s compelling to me,” he told the Journal by email.

Right after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Arlekin Players launched its Jewish Plays Initiative with the goal of shedding light on voices and stories that aren’t being heard; on pain points that are misunderstood; on ideas that are silenced; and on the “beautiful culture of a people that needs to be shared and celebrated.”

“The Dybbuk,” its latest project, was adapted by Golyak and Rachel Merrill Moss and will celebrate its U.S. premiere in partnership with the Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture, from May 30 through June 23.

Steeped in Jewish tradition, folklore, and mysticism, “The Dybbuk” – also known as “Between Two Worlds” – is one of the most widely produced plays in the history of Jewish theater. It was written in 1914 by the Russian S. Ansky and is based on the mystical concept from Hassidic Jewish folklore of the dybbuk, a disembodied human spirit that wanders restlessly until it finds a haven in the body of a living person.

In Ansky’s work, a young girl’s father refuses to let her marry her lover, betrothing her to another more worthy suitor. The rejected suitor dies of heartbreak, and his spirit enters the body of his beloved. The two eventually reunite supernaturally.

It is the account of two suspended souls trapped between two worlds, tethered to each other yet also displaced. To Golyak, the tale of these disoriented young people is particularly pertinent.

“Isn’t this where we live? As Jews, as immigrants? It’s where we so often have lived as Jewish people for centuries: between worlds. It’s our story – ancient and mystical, the story of our ancestors, but also our story of living in America today,” he said.

While researching “The Dybbuk,” Golyak learned that its original production in Poland was performed by the Vilna Troupe. When he visited the Vilna Shul in Boston for the first time last fall, he was struck by its history, architectural details, and layers of paint, murals, and Judaica. He could feel the company of several generations, from those Eastern European immigrants who built the shul at the turn of the last century to those who use the space today.

As the only surviving landmark of Boston’s immigrant Jewish past, he knew it would be the perfect space to share “The Dybbuk.”

Elyse Winick, director of arts and culture at the Vilna, hopes the audience will gain a deeper sense of the 1919 shul that is both a performance venue and a living museum. “This is a rare opportunity to synthesize those two aspects of our identity, deepening both the power of seeing the play and the significance of this extraordinary piece of Boston’s Jewish history,” she said by email.

“For us, it is as if the souls of the Polish Vilna Troupe have taken refuge in the Vilna Shul and then come forward to share this tale,” Golyak added.

Golyak’s professional and personal lives overlap, his Jewish identity informing both. In an October 2023 article for WBUR, he wrote in support of Israel and expressed shock at the silence from others in the theater world. “I don’t know if I am an American, or a Ukrainian, or if I am somehow an Israeli, but I know that I am a Jew,” he wrote. “The more we are hated, the more I feel I am a Jew.”

He believes the theater is important as a place where people can experience others’ truths and wrestle with that exposure. “With war, brokenness, displacement, and a rise in antisemitism happening around us, I want to do plays that help us see each other and untangle how we do what we do as human beings,” he said.

In a world where unexplainable hatred exists, he is concerned about his children and the future they may face. “They should be proud of their identity. They are part of a people who feel deeply, think wisely, laugh abundantly, innovate and invent, and will always gather and share food, music and stories,” he said. “They belong wherever they are. And no matter what, they can survive and thrive.” Θ

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit arlekinplayers.com.

The Wheels Go ‘Round and ‘Round and ‘Round in SpeakEasy Stage/Front Porch’s ‘A Strange Loop.’

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Kai Clifton (center) and the company of A STRANGE LOOP at Speakeasy Stage. From left: De’Lon Grant, Davron S. Monroe, Jonathan Melo, Aaron Michael Ray (background), Grant Evan, and Zion Middleton (kneeling). photos by Maggie Hall Photography.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Playwright Michael R. Jackson, a heavy-set Black queer man, has brought the concept of sharing to a new level in his Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning musical, “A Strange Loop.” The compulsively introspective show, which runs at 100 intermission-less minutes, spelunks into the deepest crevices of the anguished mind of its hero, Usher, a fat, Black, queer man writing a musical called “A Strange Loop” about a fat, Black queer man who’s writing a musical about a fat Black queer man.

It’s a crawl through a wormhole rigged with armed psychological and emotional IEDs, self-loathing, and regrets. It’s also a raucous and playful musical, full of humor, harmony, colorful characters, and even more colorful (potty) language.

The play opens on Jon Savage’s effective, slick set of eight cubes lit in Broadway blue neon. (The only guidance Jackson’s script offers is to describe the setting as “A loop within a loop within a loop inside a perception of one man’s reality.”) Characters meant to represent Usher’s thoughts stand inside each cube. They dance. They sing. The effect is a cross between “Shindig” and “Hollywood Squares.”

We meet Usher (Kai Clifton) as the Thoughts dress him in his professional usher’s uniform. Usher works to make money in a theater where “The Lion King” reigns while he tries to write his play, a “big, Black, queer-ass, American Broadway show.” As he externally prepares to deal with the patrons who will soon flood the theater’s aisles, his mind is busy writing his play. He eagerly shares this work-in-progress with the audience.

““A Strange Loop” will have black shit! All thoughts. And white shit! It’ll give you uptown and downtown! With truth-telling and butt-fucking! There will be butt-fucking!” he belts out with gleeful forewarning.

It’s as if Jackson and Usher want to tip off their audience, “This ain’t no Disney musical, and make no mistake, we aim to deliver,” which they do, especially on the last item.

Usher leads a complicated inner life. His mind is a six-lane highway where Thoughts criticize, intimidate, denigrate, and insult his every move. Every time he resolves to dig himself out of his miserable routine, his thoughts disrupt and derail his plans.

The supporting cast of Thoughts #1-6, donning eye-catching costumes (Becca Jewett), are a vicious gang representing Usher’s agent (Fairweather), his inner cynic (Your Daily Self Loathing) and a host of other unhelpful characters, most notably Mom and Dad.

Through these inner/outer conversations between Usher and himself, Usher reveals his quest to peel back the layers of labels (Black, queer, etc.) and discover who he really is. We learn about all the issues he struggles with, including family pressures to ditch his sexual and professional preferences and embrace the Lord and style of Tyler Perry’s gospel melodramas; trying to figure out what it means to be a Black playwright writing a Black play; and struggling with what today’s world requires if one is to be “Black enough” and “gay enough.”

He also is coping with the bull’s eye homophobia, fatphobia, racism, and a white theater industry painted on his back.

All this should (and does) sound heartbreaking and overbearing. Yet, Jackson manages to pull off a musical that infuses humor and sincerity into a story replete with sadness, desolation, and rejection.

Through seventeen songs, Jackson’s lyrics tell a multilayered story of Usher’s angst-ridden life.

He longs for the unhampered freedom white girls have, yet also feels obligated to fulfill Black boy stereotypes (“Inner White Girl”). His doctor tells him he’s not gay enough because he’s only having sex once a year, but when Usher starts using dating apps, the result is predictably humiliating. He meets an engaging, flirtatious stranger only to discover he is a figment of his imagination.

The list of disappointments and rejections grows longer. His mother calls him on his birthday to remind him homosexuality is a sin, and his father asks if he’s contracted AIDS yet.

The best scenes, dramatically and musically, are those that have anything to do with Gospel music. When Usher’s agent tells him Tyler Perry is looking for a ghostwriter for his next gospel play, Usher turns up his nose in disgust. His Thoughts accuse him of being a “race traitor,” and in a hilarious scene, historical Black figures persuade him to take the job (“Tyler Perry Writes Real Life”). The full replication of a Tyler Perry set and lyrics that skewer Usher’s parents and parody Tyler (“Precious Little Dream/AIDS Is God’s Punishment”) are a welcome break. The actors’ voices (especially Clifton’s) awaken and strut their range and vibrancy. The lyrics are edgy and funny, the tune snappy and toe-tapping.

With the exception of distracting and annoying technical problems with the sound mixing (the actors’ voices were frequently not mic’d) and muffled lyrics, the production is effective, from Maurice Emmanuel Parent’s thoughtful direction to David Freeman Coleman’s music direction and conducting. The six Thoughts shine individually and blend seamlessly as an ensemble.

But it is Clifton as Usher who literally carries the weight of the show, and he is more than up to the task. Despite the temptation to wash our hands in frustration with this character who can’t seem to get out of his own way, his unfortunate circumstances notwithstanding), Clifton brings an underlying earnestness and likeability that make it impossible to abandon him. Plus, Clifton lets loose a powerful set of pipes during certain numbers (notably the gospel songs).

It’s hard to understand Jackson’s real purpose in writing “A Strange Loop.” It takes its title from a Liz Pfair song and from Douglas Hofstadter’s scientific concept that when a person only moves up or down, they’ll end up where they started. In other words, no matter how far or fast they think they’re going, they are essentially marching in place.

Jackson, now 43, said that although his play is not formally autobiographical, he began writing it as a monologue in his early 20s when he was experiencing himself as “nothing more than a mass of undesirable fat, Black gay molecules floating in space without purpose.”

He wrote Usher as a 26-year-old under unimaginable pressure. He is full of self-doubt and self-loathing, yet compulsively writes about himself in the belief it will magically change him. The more he plumbs his inner self, the more guilt and shame he dredges up. If writing “A Strange Loop” was meant to be Usher’s psychological catharsis, it misses its mark.

After all, Usher’s closing words are:

“Someone whose self-perception is based upon a lie,

Someone whose only problem is with the pronoun “I.”

Maybe I don’t need changing

Maybe I should regroup

’Cause change is just an illusion.

If thoughts are just an illusion, then what a strange, strange loop.”

And maybe that is Jackson’s point, after all. Inside his endless, strange loop of destructive thoughts and desperate hope that he can change who he is, Usher is his own worst enemy. Not only does he see himself as a failure, he assumes that everyone sees him as he sees himself.

His illusions are negative delusions.

It takes someone outside the loop—an impartial audience, for example—to appreciate that underneath this angsty, meek gay Black man beats the heart of a brave, creative person full of caustic wit and laser-sharp insight. We can only hope that Usher and all those suffering as he does can jump off the treadmill of self-doubt and fear, take a deep cleansing breath, and learn to love and accept themselves.

‘A Strange Loop’ — Book, Music and Lyrics by Michael R. Jackson. Directed by Maurice Emmanuel Parent. Music Direction by David Freeman Coleman. Choreographed by Taavon Gamble. Co-produced by SpeakEasy Stage and Front Porch Arts Collective at the Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont Street, through May 25.

For more information and tickets, visit https://speakeasystage.com/