“Slam Dunk”
Something blood-thumpingly stirring is going on at Theater B
at 59E59 Theaters. I’m talking about a remarkably tense, brilliantly acted,
amazingly well-staged, and socially compelling play about basketball and race called
Separate and Equal, written and directed
by Seth Panitch (Alcestis Ascending).
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| Adrian Badoo, Will Badgett, Steven Bono, Jr., Ross Birdsong. Photo: Jeff Hanson. |
Stills and video clips are sometimes used to overcome the
problem, especially in plays about complex sports with multiple players, like
baseball, football, and basketball. Most such plays look to the drama of off-the-field
situations, in locker rooms and elsewhere, rather than to creating the visceral
excitement of athletes engaged in extended person-to-person conflict. Even
Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, praised
for its depiction of a women’s soccer team, focused its rigorous physicality on
warmup sessions, not an actual game.
But with Separate and
Equal you get equal measures of thrillingly choreographed basketball and powerful
human drama about race relations in Jim Crow Alabama, 1951, its inspiration
coming from the Oral History Project at the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum. By
no means a documentary, this uniquely exciting work comes to us from the heart
of Dixie, the University of Alabama, which is coproducing it with the
aforementioned museum and the Birmingham Metro NAACP.
Theater B, normally arranged end-stage style (proscenium
orientation without the proscenium), has been cleared out by production
designer Matthew Reynolds so that its oblong shape can be converted to a small
basketball court, with the audience seated in one or two rows around its
perimeter.
Overhead, at either end of the court is a video screen on
which, at appropriate moments, images of Jim Crow history are projected,
including, on one side, a water fountain labeled “white,” and on the other, one
labeled “colored.” That fountain will play a significant role in the course of
Panitch’s drama.
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| Company of Separate and Equal. Photo: Jeff Hanson. |
Most of the time, during the pickup game that occupies much
of the action, each screen shows a hoop. Although no actual ball is used during
the game, when a player makes a shot, a perfectly timed image of a ball enters
the screen (kudos to Maya Champion’s media design) and either rebounds or
swishes through the hoop, sometimes only after hitting the rim or backboard.
Six teenagers play the game, three black and three white.
The former are Calvin (Adrian Badoo), Emmett (James Holloway), and Nathan (Edwin
Brown III); the latter are Edgar (Ross Birdsong), Jeff Forrest (Steven Bono,
Jr.), and Wesley (Dylan Guy Davis). They differ widely in manner and size,
Jeff, for instance, being short and wiry, Nathan very tall and slim, and Wesley
fat.
The three black boys are warned in no uncertain terms by Lt.
Connor (Ted Barton, in one of several roles), a sadistic, racist cop in the
mode of the similarly named Bull Connor, to vacate the court, where they’re only allowed to play for a few hours each week. Faced by
the officer’s authority, and that of his slightly more congenial partner, Lt.
Dixx (Jeremy Cox), the boys behave submissively. Even more painfully
instructive is the groveling on their behalf of Two Snakes (Will Badgett, also
covering several roles), an elderly black man, whose Uncle Tom-ism clearly
comes from experience.
Soon after, three white boys arrive to use the court and,
following the expected taunting by the whites, especially from the hateful
Jeff, the boys gradually engage in a full court game, hoping to be able to
finish before the cops come round again. During the game, the action
occasionally stops, with the actors taking a knee, so to speak, as flashback scenes
appear in which we learn a bit about a few characters and the influence of the local KKK.
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| Adrian Badoo, Ross Birdsong. Photo: Jeff Hanson. |
Among them are Wesley and his lawyer father (Barton), an
alcoholic whose clients include local blacks, and Calvin, whose mother, Viola
(Pamela Afesi), is a maid working for Edgar’s mother, Annabelle (Barbara
Wengero), prominent in racist circles. There’s also a vignette about a black
Korean War vet (Badgett), lynched by crackers (Barton and Cox) for wearing a
U.S. military uniform.
During the game, there’s lots of snarling, race baiting, and
other nasty stuff—including bending the rules in favor of the whites on fouls—but
the two groups gradually do find relatively common ground and a sprinkling of mutual
respect. A violent incident, however, interrupts the emerging equilibrium and
reminds us of the time and place. Melodramatic as it might appear, history supports the viability of the disturbing conclusion.
Panitch’s unusually well-honed production has each cast
member playing at fever pitch. Most remarkable are the basketball sequences, choreographed
in awesome detail by Lawrence M. Jackson, and as gripping as anything on the E.
4th Street court in Greenwich Village. Panitch’s script even includes references
to online sources showing the styles of basketball greats like Magic Johnson,
Lew Alcindor, Bob Cousy, and Larry Bird, each to be used for a particular
character.
The game, accompanied by an original jazz score by Tom Wolfe, is
a complexly choreographed feast of dribbling, passing, possession (signaled by
clapping one’s hands), blocking, leaps, twists, fakes, falls, fouls, and shots that
recreates, purely in mime, the relentless pace and activity of the real thing.
It’s a tribute to their well-drilled skill that the six actors, working in such
close quarters, don’t crash into each other (or us).
For equal measures of visceral theatricality and racially
sensitive drama, Separate and Equal is
an 85-minute, NBA/NAACP-worthy show that scores a slam dunk against Jim Crow and the KKK.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
59E59 Theaters/Theater B
59 E. 59th St., NYC
Through September 30
