black odyssey

Finally.

Regular visitors to this virtual space will know Theatre Companion and I have been sorely disappointed with the new plays mounted by the Denver Center Theatre Company this season. Our most frequent question following these productions has been "Why?" Why, of all the new plays being churned out by all those MFA-holding playwrights throughout this great land of ours, produce these mediocrities? Why, if these mediocrities are the best a producing artistic director can find, not revive one of the classics from the great American stage canon? Why subject a hopeful theatre-going public to works which make a strong argument against any public funding for the arts?

Why, oh why?

It was thus with some trepidation I escorted Mrs. Curmudgeon, who holds a master's degree in  the classics, to the world premiere of black odyssey (now through February 16 at the Space Theatre). In Marcus Gardley's new work,

Classic Greek characters and themes meet modern African-American culture in this twist on Homer’sThe Odyssey. Centered on a black soldier’s homecoming, this compelling new play fuses modern reality, humor, and song with ancient myth.

One can easily imagine how this might go badly wrong: the Odyssey's narrative stretched to the breaking point along with the audience's patience for overly wrought Negro spirituals. Instead, the playwright and cast nailed it. Gardley's Ulysses, as did Homer's, tries to make his way home after a war only to find himself manipulated by the gods ("Deus" for Zeus and "Paw Sidon" for Poseidon) and faced by traps at every turn. (An actual chess board hangs over the stage and is lowered for the gods' debates.) By making his Ulysses Lincoln an orphan, Gardley superimposes on the quest for home a simultaneous quest for identity and personal history, a history which is interwoven with the African-American experience in these United States. In this way, Gardley makes Ulysses Lincoln a black everyman as the staging of his journey becomes an appeal to the African-American community at large to hold on to and perpetuate its historical memory.

The cast is stellar, drawn from across the country: nearly every actor has a deep background on stage and screen, and all have marvelous singing voices. (This probably reflects the fact there just aren't that many all-black professional stage productions around the land.) The play does have weaknesses: the symbolism of the statue from the Lincoln Memorial, which came on stage in the second act, was entirely lost on me, and while Ulysses Lincoln served in the U.S. Navy, he was involved in land combat operations and consistently refers to himself as a "soldier." As Mrs. Curmudgeon pointed out, Nella Pee's vacillating loyalty to Ulysses toward the end of his odyssey was a disappointing departure from the steadfastness of Homer's Penelope. (However, this vacillation was motivated by a desire to provide a father figure to her son, Malachi; sadly, the struggles of single motherhood are a common theme in the modern African-American experience.) Also, Homer managed to work in a dog.

Nonetheless, this production delivers the goods. Here's a new play which tackles a big, big American subject through the frame of an ancient and universal narrative and makes the mystifying particulars of both Greek myth and African-American culture accessible and pellucid to a broad audience. It's a triumph: finally, a new play worthy of many more productions. I look forward to taking my black daughter to see one someday.