52. CHOIR BOY
When
the Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s CHOIR BOY,
at the City Center Stage II, opens, Pharus Jonathan Young (Jeremy Pope), a vocally
gifted but markedly effeminate student at the Charles R. Drew Prep School for
Boys, is singing the school song, “Trust and Obey.” Suddenly, a student in the
auditorium hisses a homophobic slur (something like "faggot-ass-sissy"). Pharus, taken by surprise, takes a four-second
pause before he continues. Soon he is being questioned by Headmaster Marrow
(Chuck Cooper), very disturbed about his performance, but Pharus, citing the
school’s code of not snitching on his classmates, refuses to name names. Pretty
soon, however, he exacts vengeance on his tormenter, Bobby Marrow (Wallace
Smith), the headmaster’s nephew, by kicking him out of the school choir. The
tensions created by Bobby’s virulent reaction to Pharus’s sexuality (possibly
because of his jealousy of Pharus’s talent) and Pharus’s response create the
play’s thematic through line.
Drew is a school for African-American boys, and the
only five boys seen are the members of the school choir, which concentrates on
gospel music. The boys all dress neatly in traditional prep school uniforms, with
blazers and yellow ties, and wear close-cropped, regulation haircuts. (They
also undress to take showers, allowing for a bit of full frontal nudity.) In
addition to Pharus and Bobby, there are AJ (Grantham Coleman), the star
athlete, who is Pharus’s mature and understanding roommate; Junior (Nicholas L.
Ashe), a baby-faced baritone who follows Bobby around like a puppy; and David
(Kyle Beltran), a thin, eternally serious, bible-carrying divinity student. The
only adults are Headmaster Marrow, relatively new to his job and somewhat
insecure in it, and Mr. Pendleton (Austin Pendleton), an older white man who
marched during the Civil Rights movement, and who has been hired to teach a
required course in Creative Thinking; even though he has no musical ability,
the headmaster puts him in charge of the choir, hoping he can somehow heal the
fractious relationships among the boys. One of his first lines after making his entry caused a burst of laughter: "It's not just black people who are late."
Pharus offers a strong fulcrum around which the drama
revolves, although he does bring to mind Chris Colfer's Kurt on TV’s GLEE. He’s extremely bright and well read, extraordinarily talented, aggressively
defensive, and creatively resentful. (Is he, perhaps, autobiographical?) Jeremy
Pope plays him on multiple levels, showing his deep insecurities as well as his
overt self-confidence. He’s able to mine the character’s limp-wristed effeminacy
for both comedy and pathos. In one of the play’s most powerful moments, taking
place in Mr. Pendleton’s class, he engages in a provocative debate about the
meaning of spirituals, arguing against some historians’ belief that they are coded
messages to slaves about flight,
advocating for them instead as still relevant tools for achieving
spiritual healing.
McRaney’s intermissionless, hour and forty minutes play, which premiered in a hit production
last year at London’s Royal Court Theatre, engages with sexual and racial
issues in a number of ways, not least the habit some young black men have of tossing around the
word “nigger,” a proclivity that detonates an explosive response from
Mr. Pendleton, who categorically rejects such thoughtlessness. These subjects
are always interesting and well conveyed by McRaney’s dialogue, although its crafting
sometimes seems too carefully
designed for dramatic effect and not what boys of this age would normally say. Smart as he is, for example, Pharus's speech about spirituals sounds more like an academic paper than an impromptu outpouring during a class discussion. Also,
plays and movies that dramatize a gay boy’s victimization and consequent coming
of age are becoming overly common, even when handled as creatively as in CHOIR
BOY.
What many spectators will take away from CHOIR BOY,
however, are its musical interpolations, sung acapella in exquisite harmonies
and solos as memorably arranged by Jason Michael Webb. Each boy has a terrific
solo, but when the choir sings as a group, especially “Sometimes I Feel like a
Motherless Child,” it’s almost as if you never heard the songs before. Despite
the enormous ability of the young actors, the number that stood out for me was
Chuck Cooper’s giving voice to “Been in a Storm So Long.”
Trip Cullman does a fine job of staging CHOIR
BOY, giving it a definite rhythm and precision; everything is well timed and
fluid. On the other hand, there is a theatrical overlay that makes me feel that
the boys, in particular, are not so much being as performing; the effect was to
have me watching and listening with deep interest but not engaging on a deeper
emotional level. For pure acting honesty, the palm goes to the marvelous Chuck
Cooper. Austin Pendleton
is the Austin Pendleton we have seen so often before, with his rumpled clothing, uncombed hair, and irregular speech rhythms, but when he blows the
roof off with his attack on the n-word, he reveals a facet of his talent very
rarely on display.
David Zinn’s set (he also did the costumes), surrounded by the audience on three sides, consists
of a red floor and a red brick wall on which hangs a large blackboard. The wall
is built so that its lower half can come down, revealing the interior of AJ and
Pharus’s bedroom. This is clever and effective, as are the nicely choreographed
scene changes using the actors and eschewing the need for visible stagehands.
CHOIR BOY has a great deal to offer, and I wouldn’t
be surprised to see it given an extended run, or even to be moved to another
venue. It didn’t work for me on every level, but it did on enough for me to
recommend it. Given all its laudatory reviews, of course, that may simply be
preaching to the choir.
