Detroit ‘67
Dominique Morisseau
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| Halili Knox & Akilah A. Walker |
Last year, many celebrations and exhibitions packed the San
Francisco calendar to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of 1967, known here
and beyond as “The Summer of Love.”
While so-called hippies roamed with peace signs and tie-dyes the streets
and parks of The City with their music-filled pleas for free love and no war,
the summer of 1967 was also when the one of the worst, deadliest urban riots
occurred in U.S. history. In a city –
not unlike many cities in America where white-dominated police forces had
lashed out against their black residents with fierce force and hatred for
decades -- an after-hours party filled with the sounds of homegrown, Motown
music was the ignition point for a conflagration in Detroit that led to 43
deaths, 2000 buildings destroyed, and thousands of National Guard and federal troops
with scores of tanks invading the city.
Dominique Morisseau recalls that deadly summer which scarred
Detroit for decades afterwards in her funny and frightening, heart-warming and
heart-stopping play, Detroit ’67, the first of a trilogy about her hometown. Opening its season with Detroit ’67, Aurora Theatre Company continues the Bay Area’s growing love
affair with Ms. Morisseau that began last year with Berkeley Repertory’s
staging of her Ain’t Too Proud and a
co-production earlier this year by Marin Theatre and TheatreWorks Silicon
Valley of her Skeleton Crew.
Directed with uncanny timing, bold touches, and much
humanity by Darryl V. Jones, Aurora’s Detroit
’67 rocks with Motown sounds that soothe and soar, teases with humor both
rich and raw, and shakes to the core with historical events serious and
shattering. And all along, Mr. Jones and
the incredibly talented cast ensure that we know and remember that headline-grabbing,
street-filled events like the Detroit riots are in the end really about the
individuals who were safe and happy one day in their homes -- until suddenly they
were not.
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| The Setting Designed by Richard Omsted |
Back-wall steps lead into a basement room that is filled
with touches of a family’s history including wall drawings both cute and
striking, a colorful afghan probably knitted by a mother at some point, and
furniture slightly worn but definitely comfy (all designed with as astute eye
to the late ‘60s by Richard Olmsted and with the aid of prop master, Christina
Bauer). Chelle (short for Michelle) is
having a frank conversation with her record player where the 45-disc of David
Ruffin keeps sticking just as he so beautifully tries to croon, “Please don’t
leave me girl.” “Don’t go scratching up
on David,” she warns with a mixture of fun and frustration as she tries to
untangle another string of Christmas lights to add to those already hanging
around the room with its small bar in the corner. Chelle and her brother, Lank, are turning later
in the week the home they just inherited from their recently deceased and
much-adored father into a late-hours dance hall (something quite common at the
time in this African-American section of Detroit at 12th and
Clairmont).
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| Akilah A. Walker & Rafael Jordan |
Tall and with perfectly permed hair full of big, fluffy
curls, Chelle (Halili Knox) exudes a strong sense of determination and is
clearly the firmly rooted, more conservative of the brother-sister
pairing. When we meet Lank (Rafael
Jordan), we soon learn he is a happy-natured, young man who has ambitions for
him and his sister and is tired of the way the whites in power outside this
house treat him and others like him. (“I’m tired of being treated like trash.”) He especially detests the much-despised
“pigs” who are apt as not to stop him on the street, telling him “to get my
nigger ass home and not come out again tonight.”
Lank is ready to be “above ground, just like them white
folks.” For him, “above ground” starts
with the 8-track player he has just brought home (“This is changing how we hear
music, and we get to change with it”) to use tonight for their party – a device
Chelle looks at in disdain as she also eyes longingly her old, but definitely
flawed, portable record player.
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| Myers Clark & Rafael Jordan |
Lank also has more plans, including using the a good portion
of the $15,000 their parents have left them to buy a neighborhood bar with his
best friend Sly (Myers Clark), a smooth-moving, sweet-talking pal who is also a
big dreamer. Together, they want to open
“Sly and Lank’s Feel-Good Shack,” something Chelle vehemently opposes. To her stern looks and piercing eyes that say
“no,” Lank responds in unbounded optimism and excitement, “Life is not just
about keeping what you got ... It’s about making something better.”
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| Emily Radosevich, Akilah A. Walker & Halili Knox |
The clearly strong but currently strained relationship of
the siblings becomes further tested when Sly and Lank – after a night on the
town and clearly both a bit tipsy – bring home a surprise that further
infuriates but also frightens Chelle.
Asleep on the basement couch she finds a woman – a white woman -- asleep
with multiple bruises on her arms and a face full of dried blood. On their way home from the bars, Lank recounts
how they found the young woman staggering around and then saw her
collapse. Feeling sorry for her and scared
as two black men to take her to the hospital or (worse yet) to the police, they
brought her home.
Caroline (Emily Radosevich) comes with many secrets of her
past but also with an ability quickly to fit into the household and to be a hit
at the successful dance party. As
Chelle’s best friend, Bunny (Akilah A. Walker) notes, “White girls can get the
party going ... and are some kind of aphrodisiac.” But then the full-of-pizzazz,
mini-skirt-wearing Bunny is one who over-flows with zest for life and is most
liable to say anything on the more outrageous side (“Don’t look at me like I
got some titty in my forehead”). Along
with Sly, she is part of this extended family of the siblings where love is
evident even when there are plenty of pointed jabs and moments of tensions that
erupt into full-on shouting matches.
And after all, even with the invasion into their lives of
Caroline and of Lank’s ideas for a new business, things are pretty normal in
the Poindexter household. That is, until
3:15 a.m. on July 23, 1967. The events
of that night and the next few days become cataclysmic both outside and inside
of the small basement in ways that make everything else seem almost trivial.
This ensemble of actors – individually and collectively --
could hardly be more engaging, more gripping, or more affecting in a wide range
of emotional responses from hilarity to heartbreak. Each captures a personality that is uniquely
portrayed in every respect – vocally and physically. Twists and turns of voice and body leave
lasting impressions while ensuring immediate audience response.
Supporting their efforts is a creative team that together
also plays a starring role in this must-not-be-missed production. Besides the aforementioned ‘60s-detailed
scenic design of Richard Olmsted, the costumes of Kitty Muntzel are a show onto
themselves with the designs, colors, materials, and (at least in terms of
Bunny) shortness of skirts of the 1960s becoming an encyclopedia of the hip
looks of Motown, U.S.A.
Cliff Caruthers’ sound design is also a major factor in the
play’s powerful impact from beginning to end.
Those scratchy sounds of the 45s of yesteryear and the distinct tones that
could only be from anything but an eight-track both emit from their respective
players (themselves museum pieces today).
The sweet outdoor sounds of birds early in the play give way to the
increasingly disturbing sounds of sirens, firebombs, angry mobs, and
penetrating helicopters as the riots begin – to the point of literally shaking
us in our seats.
When sound effects couple with the outstanding lighting
design of Jeff Rowlings where startling red flashes and explosions from the
streets outside find their way into the darkness of the basement, the fury of
those riots of fifty years ago plays out in real fashion to the point of being
sweat-producing. Topping it all off are
fascinating, educating, and ultimately horrifying film clips showing everything
from home-based dance parties to the atrocities of police brutality in streets
full of burning buildings.
There are many reasons that Aurora Theatre’s Detroit ’67 is a must-see
production. Dominique Morrisseau’s
brilliant script is a captivating story full of genuine love of and devotion to
family; of an entrepreneurial, can-do spirit that has made this country the envy
of the world, and of the seething hate that has too long been etched into too
much of the majority race for those not of their white skin. With that script and under the inspired
direction of Darryl V. Jones, this cast and creative team score a hit that is a
history important to recall and to remember.
Rating: 5 E, “Must-See”
Detroit ’67 continues
in extended run through October 7, 2018, at the
Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA. Tickets are available online at https://auroratheatre.org or by calling 415-843-4822.
Photo
by Darryl V. Jones
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