Every year from 1989 through his retirement in 2017, Congressman John Conyers Jr. unsuccessfully proposed a bill to study whether reparations should be paid for slavery. In 2014, journalist Te-Nehisi Coates published an article, The Case for Reparations, renewing demands for compensation on a national stage. On the 400th anniversary of slavery, James Sheldon’s new play Reparations is being presented at The Billie Holiday Theatre.
This company has been located in the heart of Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood for 47 years. Its long history has enabled diverse voices to create storytelling for, by, about and near people of African descent. This particular world premiere play is the first one they have produced by a writer of non-African descent. “In 2019,” Artistic Director Dr. Indira Etwaroo notes, “theater remains a predominately racially segregated experience.” Here, then, is an opportunity to “see one another anew” and “discover ways to ask new questions of one another and ourselves.”
Her program notes conclude with: “Isn’t that, after all, why we are here… breathing the same air, sharing the same space? Even if only for a moment.” This play has been given a mighty introduction for thought provoking discussion and timely consideration. With this production, the mission has been accomplished.
The beautifully detailed Upper East Side apartment designed by Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay announces restrained and tasteful elegance. When the door opens, Ginny and Reg stumble in tipsy from a book launch party. Ginny is a white woman who is older than her guest. He is a black man who has been writing freelance travel pieces and has penned a new novel. The beginning is awkward flirtation combined with somewhat forced cliches.
Ginny’s husband died seven months ago. Her therapist recommends curing her grief by seeking out intimacy and integrating it into her old life. Reg is clearly networking. His book is about an African American police officer who is “Obama with a badge and a gun.”
Conversation between the two is flirtatious and stilted. They came back to her apartment because she assumed he lived in a “fringey part of town.” He accuses her of making a racist statement by assuming he lives in a poor neighborhood. She knows what freelance writers earn. The play meanders through social climbing rom-com with racial zingers and socioeconomic factoids.
Things get much more interesting when Ginny comments that “we all want to overcome the superficial differences that keep up trapped in our own silly little boxes.” These include blacks, gays, transgender, Muslims and even white working class Americans. Each is crying for help with their slogans “Black Lives Matter” and “Make America Great Again.”
In the second act, Ginny will prepare a paella for a dinner party. Paella can be many different things and is often a combination of various meats, seafood and vegetables. This play is the wordy embodiment of that dish. Many disparate elements will be presented and consumed as “silly little boxes” are opened. Ginny asks, “What happens when we confront realities outside our little boxes?”
There are numerous twists and turns in Reparations. They dangerously teeter on the edge of soap opera revelations and stock situations. Amazingly, however, the paella cooks long enough to bring a very satisfying dish to the table. Reparations are more than a conceptual idea. They have deep personal meaning and will be aggressively tackled before the play’s end. Every character is a living breathing individual bringing their own experience and world views into a difficult debate.
Director Michele Shay has staged a high quality production for this intense and uncomfortable story. Kamal Bolden is a mesmerizing Reg. He is utterly charming, vengefully angry, cleverly calculating and, in my mind, a consummate survivor. Alexandra Neil plays Ginny who embarks on her new life with trepidation and, in many respects, fearlessness. Both share excellent chemistry. Their early scenes nicely mask the fireworks which will follow.
Pompous Englishman and publisher Alistair (Gys de Villiers) and his wife, Nigerian born Millie (Lisa Arrindell, superb), will join Ginny and Reg for the luncheon party. Both couples are of mixed races but their thoughts on reparations dig far deeper than the surface color of one’s skin. The way the onion gets peeled open in this play may seem manipulative and it is certainly that. However, the volume of stuff contained in all our little boxes – when thrust into the spotlight – allows us to test our humanity and our own character’s ability to rise up.
Reparations was an excellent addition to a fine month of theater. I’ve been in a conservative Catholic box in Heroes of the Fourth Turning. I spent time with LBJ as he attempted to forcefully open boxes wide with his civil rights agenda in The Great Society. I walked through The Black History Museum and was, literally, put in a box. In the epic The Inheritance opening this weekend, gay men come together to scream for their own escape. Listening has never seemed more vital and important as we steer our country and its painfully confused moral compass to a better future.
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