Through October 31
AMERICAN SON Lorna C. Hill Theatre/Ujima Company
Ah, The System.
You know: the criminal justice system, the social services system, the Deep State system which stole the re-election.
“The System” is the heart of Christopher Demos-Brown’s “American Son.”
It’s the tale of a Mom seeking her missing son.
It’s only a few hours since he went out, as teens do.
Mom Kendra Ellis-Connor (Tanika Holmes) goes to some office connected with Miami Dade-County P.D. to seek help.
The officer in this office is new to the police and clueless, Officer Paul Larkin (Mike Benoit).
He manages to continually make a bad and cross-racial situation worse because he keeps saying “the system” will eventually figure out what’s going on.
His continual dribbling out of information aggravates the situation because whatever is going on is slowly falling into place as situations do and letting out each bit and byte makes Mom angrier, as time drags on.
Then, a White FBI agent, Scott Connor (Christopher Guilmet) appears.
Officer Larkin makes yet another bad assumption, that this FBI agent is the missing Lt. John Stokes, the police PR guy, (Tuhran Gethers) and tells him what he isn’t telling Mom.
Gradually, he realizes this FBI agent is the missing boy’s Dad, something which hadn’t occurred to him because Mom is Black.
From here on, Demos-Brown probes America’s racial nightmare and it is a nightmare and this is a nightmare for all four of the cast members.
Let’s skip what happens because this play hasn’t been done here before and it’s important that it’s getting a strong performance in this Ujima production.
The general premise of the plot is accurate, these stories do happen and these stories do unfold in fits and starts as those involved figure out what happened and start filling in the blanks.
It’s not a TV show where everything is resolved within an hour.
Sometimes, they take days or weeks or years.
Sometimes, it takes only until the live images can show up on social media or until a cop body cam can be uploaded to the police computer system.
“American Son” is about life and how it can go so completely wrong so quickly, with the best of intentions.
It has strong direction from local native Aaron Mays.
It’s absolutely worth seeing.
A.W.
© Copyright 2023 - Speakupwny.com
hosted by Online Media, Inc
Buffalo Web Design and Web Hosting
Top of Page
