I’m shook.
The level of performance I saw tonight was top notch without being over the top. My only quibble was that Kerry Washington (for a few lines) went into a TV mode, where she was lasered into the show so much that it was hard to understand her unless I was up close.
The play starts off a bit slow and you can feel a little bit of palpable tension, but not much. The microaggressions in the interplay between Jordan and Washington felt a bit forced. When Pasquale enters in, he enters with a vengeance and everything comes very much alive, and he and Washington have a fantastically raw chemistry. Lee also comes in with a vengeance on his end and drives the entire play home. There’s a lot of discussion about quite a few different things related to the current state of racial affairs (privilege, appearance, police relations, biracial identity to name a few) and it sometimes threatens loss of focus a bit, but it always came back to the main point before seeming entirely tangential. There were also a few times and lines that I chuckled, but also felt uncomfortable when I did, which made me think more about my own privilege and how my ability to laugh such a tense subject off is a byproduct of it.
By the end, emotions are at an all-time high and, without spoiling (though someone may have already), it will take me a few days to get Kerry Washington’s hoarse, bone-chilling final screams out of my head.
Go see this, because it it one of the most important plays you will see all year.
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