"Locker Room Talk"
Welcome to Theatre’s Leiter Side’s first
review of 2019. Things have been slow over the past couple of weeks but they’re
finally starting to pick up again. Upcoming reviews for January will cover such
shows as On Blueberry Hill
at 59E59, Blue Ridge at the Atlantic, Maestro at the Duke, Trick or Treat at 59E59, the LaBute New Play Festival at
the Davenport, About Alice at TFANA, Intelligence
at Next Door at the NYTW, a Yiddish Waiting for Godot at the 14th Street Y, Awake at TBG, The Convert at A.R.T., Behind the Scenes at
EST, The American Tradition at the 13th
Street Rep, True West on Broadway,
and To Kill a Mockingbird, also on Broadway.
We begin with Choir Boy.
When the Manhattan Theatre Club’s first production
of Choir Boy opened Off Broadway (following its hit premiere
at London’s Royal Court Theatre) to mostly solid reviews five and a half years ago, in the summer of
2013, its young author, Tarell Alvin McRaney,
had not yet come to international prominence.
Since then, among other achievements, he’s won an Oscar for his screenplay for
the Academy Award-winning Moonlight (cowritten
with director Barry Jenkins on the basis of a McRaney play), received a MacArthur
Fellowship, and become head of Yale’s playwriting program. After nearly half a
decade, Choir Boy has made it to
Broadway, again under MTC auspices, with several of the original actors recreating
their roles, its cast augmented by additional actors to fill out the
schoolboy choir, and with several other alterations, including the elimination
of a standout gospel number, noted below.
The show continues to make an impact but I was even more impressed by the 2013 production, presented in the
intimate environs of City Center Stage II. The following adapts my earlier
review to reflect the current production.
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| Jeremy Pope, Chuck Cooper. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
When Tarell
Alvin McRaney’s Choir Boy, at the Samuel
J. Friedman Theatre, opens, Pharus Jonathan Young (Jeremy Pope, repeating his outstanding 2013
performance, and soon to appear in a Broadway jukebox musical about The Temptations),
a vocally gifted but markedly effeminate student at the Charles R. Drew Prep
School for Boys, is singing the school song, “Trust and Obey,” backed by the
school choir. Suddenly, a fellow chorus member hisses a homophobic slur (“faggot
ass Nigga”). Pharus, taken by surprise, takes a four-second pause before he
continues.
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| J. Quinton Johnson, Jeremy Pope. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Drew is a
school for African-Americans, the only boys we see being members of the school
choir, which concentrates on spirit. David Zinn again dresses the boys neatly
in traditional prep school uniforms, with blazers and yellow ties, worn with close-cropped,
regulation haircuts. They also undress to take showers although the frontal
nudity I noted in my original review is now thankfully replaced—at least from
where I sat—by bare butts and toweled torsos. These scenes, by the way, provide the inspiration for the evening's biggest laugh, when Pharus delivers a line about "locker room talk"
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| John Clay III, Jeremy Pope. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
In addition to Pharus and Bobby,
there are AJ (John Clay III), the star athlete, who is Pharus’s mature and
understanding roommate; Junior (Nicholas L. Ashe, another returnee), a
baby-faced baritone who follows Bobby around like a puppy; and David (Caleb
Eberhardt), 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, repeating his 2013 role in a
character seemingly named for him), an older white man who marched with Dr.
King 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 Mr. Pendleton in charge of the choir, hoping the teacher 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, verbally deft, and creatively
resentful. (Given what has become a thread in McRaney’s writing, it’s probably
not a stretch to suggest he has an autobiographical basis.)
Pope, an outstanding tenor making
his Broadway debut, 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 40-minute play engages with sexual and racial
issues in a number of ways, not least the habit some young black men
have of tossing around the “N- word,” 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 Pharus is, for
example, his 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 have become even more common today than when I made this point in 2013.
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| Jeremy Pope, Caleb Eberhardt. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
What many 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 with occasional choreography by Camille A. Brown. 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.
In my
2013 review, I wrote that, 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.” This song was presumably eliminated because it made little sense to give the
headmaster such a musical centerpiece. Cooper must employ only his considerable acting skills and not his great singing
ones.
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| Company of Choir Boy. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Trip Cullman again
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’s a theatrical overlay that makes the boys seem more
like they’re performing than being; I watched and listened with deep interest
but couldn’t engage on a deeper emotional level. This was true in 2013 and even
more noticeable in the current production (J. Quinton Johnson being a prime
example), where some of the performances seem more overwrought than necessary. It’s
an approach that serves to highlight not so much the play’s drama but its
melodrama.
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| Company of Choir Boy with Austin Pendleton (right). Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
For pure
acting dynamics, the palm goes to Cooper. Austin Pendleton
is the Austin Pendleton we have seen so often before, with his rumpled
clothing, uncombed hair, irregular rhythms, and other Pendletonian mannerisms. However, when he blows the roof off with his attack on the n-word, or when he discourses
with his students, he reveals the kind of idiosyncratic realism that has given
him such a long and distinguished career.
David Zinn recreates
his 2013 set, which originally surrounded by the audience on three sides, by
confining it within the proscenium, with its red, wood floor and red brick wall
on which hangs a large blackboard. The wall’s lower half can disappear, revealing the interior of AJ and Pharus’s bedroom or a simple landscape
background, while two side openings also allow for rapid shifts of locale.
In my 2013
review, I said that Choir Boy had a
great deal to offer, and, in a rare Nostradamus moment, added that I wouldn’t
be surprised to see it given an extended run or even moved to another venue. Truer
words . . . The play didn’t work for me then on every level, nor does it now, but there
should definitely be a large choir out there for it, ready to be preached to.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Samuel J. Friedman
Theatre
261 W. 47th
St., NYC
Through February 24
