Jitney by True Colors: Review

I saw Jitney by August Wilson last night at the Southwest Arts Center. It is finishing it's run there and will be at the Alliance starting June 5th. It was not flawless, but in general I loved it.

The performances were all quite good, but I was particularly impressed by LaParee Young who played Doub. He was such a well crafted character on August Wilson's, and Mr. Young was up to the task of filling his character. As Becker's second in command, he was something of the peacemaker, trying to keep the men from being at odds with each other, but equally impatient with their pointless bickering. More than any other character in the play, Doub was a root for the station. While Becker was responsible for running things and laying down the law, it was often Doub who's presence returned things to equilibrium. Mr. Young played this part and embodied the characteristics of the character with his consistency in movement. In even the most intense situations, Young seemed unflappable. He was truly brilliant.

Also, impressive (and the favorite of my fiancee and our friend Felicia) was Ellis Eugene Williams who played Turnbo and did so with a comic intensity that strongly increased every person in the room's enjoyment of the play. But in the more intense moments in the play he demonstrated an ability to hold his own as well. His character was the busybody of the car service station, and he was constantly at odds with Youngblood his youthful colleague who was often enraged by Turnbo's nosiness. I was truly impressed with Williams who made an otherwise despicable character.

Now, I thought Anthony Chisholm, the subject of all of this play's marketing, was good in terms of realistically interpreting the character, but I could not understand many of his words because he was so over the top with his "drunk speak." I understand that he was trying to be the character in as realistic a way as possible, but he went too far because you could not understand many of his words.

Cedric Young who played Becker was excellent, but I often felt his performance was a bit too controlled because it seemed as if his dramatic moment would continuously go to the same sort of emotional place over and over again. I think he could have pushed a little further with his character.

Geoffrey D. Williams was excellent in the role of Shealy. The part was quite small, and clearly there for comic relief purposes, but Williams stole every scene he was in. A truly nuanced performance that provided further evidence of the truth of that hackneyed line about small actors.

The scenic design by Leslie Taylor was almost great. I say almost because there were several major issues (many of which were production issues not design issues). First of all, the set was raked and the perspective was forced. This would have worked really well except for the fact that the rake was elevated about 18 inches above the stage floor at its lowest point. The theatre where the play was performed had a fairly high stage and very little slope to its house so that if you were sitting in the first five or six rows, you could only see the actors from the waist up if they were standing all the way upstage. It was annoying to the point of being distracting.

I also thought that a few of the scenic touches demonstrated a lack of attention to detail. For some reason, one of the magazines that the characters used as a prop looked very new. That took me out of the play for an instant. There was a shelving structure in the play that was built of cinder blocks, and while the piece struck a nice note as far as defining Becker and the other men as characters, it was literally in the way of people sitting in the front of house right. One gets the distinct impression that the set was designed with the Hertz stage in mind, but that does nothing for the people who saw the play at the Southwest Arts Center. The only other major complaint that I had about the set was a production issue not a design problem. The front door of station was used very frequently. The wall that this door was attached to was built in so flimsy a manner that the whole wall shook when someone used the door. There is a very simple solution to that problem, and the technical director clearly just got lazy. If I had designed the set, and saw that, I would not be pleased.

All of these complaints are not to suggest that the set had no positive characteristics. I felt that the design was very accurate to what one might think a taxi station might look like at this time. More or less bare with a few pieces of furniture chosen for functionality not design, and a great big sign trumpeting Becker's Rules for all to see. The street outside was quite accurate looking as well with old signs of flaked paint on decaying brick buildings. It was just so impressive from a details perspective which made the "mistakes" all the more mind boggling.

The lighting design Joseph Futral really stole the show from a technical perspective. beyond being just plain well lit from a was perspective, there were moments when the play would briefly escape reality, and the stage was suddenly transformed through light into some kind of noir, jazz-saturated painting. I also loved how he used light break up gobos in order to texture the space.

All in all, this was one heck of a performance.