The most common and deadly pitfall of any drama that attempts to address social ills \u2014 as <\/span>American Son <\/span><\/i>so bluntly does with racism and police brutality \u2014 is the failure to root polemics in believable human drama. A noble-minded Broadway debut from Miami playwright Christopher Demos-Brown, directed by Broadway vet Kenny Leon, <\/span>American Son<\/span><\/i> is an Issue Play with as many holes in its center as the box of donuts on the table (because, yes, police just really like them!). It is a blunt, and frankly unsophisticated, primer on a deeply urgent crisis that blandly panders to those without skin in the game. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n When lights come up on a black woman<\/a> in a police station, the pit in her gut is one any mother can imagine. But there is particular chill to the dread felt by a mother whose son is 6\u20192\u201d, 185 lbs, with cornrows and even fair-black skin. She fought with him earlier that evening; he drove off and hasn\u2019t returned home. A phone call<\/a> to the police revealed his car had been involved in \u201can incident,\u201d so here she is pleading for details and continuing to fill his voicemail box. <\/span><\/p>\n Nearly every turn the story takes from here is grossly overdetermined, starting with the glib young officer (Jeremy Jordan) who patronizes her and spews casual racism as soon as she\u2019s out of earshot. That Demos-Brown describes this character in the script as someone who is \u201calways trying to do the right thing\u201d but \u201coften says the wrong thing at the wrong time\u201d betrays the playwright\u2019s keen lack of insight, disguised behind an epigraph by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It may feel unfair to point to the limits of his subjectivity as the white, 54-year-old male<\/a> author of a play about race, but what does it say that he preemptively excuses his own character\u2019s racism before the play even begins?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Totems of their skin colors, Washington\u2019s character and the missing boy<\/a>\u2019s father (Steven Pasquale) engage in a fraught tug-of-war that casts their unseen \u2018American Son\u2019 as a nexus of the country\u2019s struggles with racial difference and class disparity. Never mind that it\u2019s never really clear what happened to their marriage or why they haven\u2019t talked about it until now. Instead, rudimentary arguments about respectability politics and the pressures of being \u201cthe face of the race\u201d take up any air that might have signaled living, breathing characters.<\/span><\/p>\n A more adept stage actress might have had a better chance at lending dimension to Demos-Brown\u2019s flat central figure, but Washington\u2019s performance strikes the only note that\u2019s called for with a numbing monotony. Pasquale, whose character also just so happens to be an officer of the law described as having \u201cobvious contained power\u201d that \u201cwhen pushed can explode,\u201d fares a bit better. It doesn\u2019t help. Did I mention that it\u2019s also a dark and stormy night?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Perhaps some Broadway patrons will feel as though they\u2019ve been awakened here, by alarm bells that somehow escaped their ears until now. For this, and for having witnessed something vaguely suggestive of black pain, <\/span>American Son<\/span><\/i> also gives its audience a pat on the back. But anyone prepared for a deeper understanding of the truth need only open their eyes once they step back outside.<\/span><\/p>\n Recent theatre features\u2026 Follow Naveen Kumar on Twitter: @Mr_NaveenKumar The post Broadway\u2019s \u2018American Son\u2019 Starring Kerry Washington Is the Most Vacuous Kind of Race Play: REVIEW<\/a> appeared first on Towleroad Gay News<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/em>(photos: peter cunningham)<\/p>\n