Arden Theatre Company presents Kash Goins's 'V to X'

The play opens on the last day of 2012 — the year, we are told, that “black lives finally started to matter.” But the black lives of the half-dozen prisoners sitting before the audience are of little consequence to most people. The majority of inmates depicted in V to X will be locked up “all day and a night,” a colloquialism for life without parole, and they understand with weary resignation that the outside world has largely forgotten them.

They create families behind bars to compensate. Wolf (Monroe Barrick) rules the roost on Cellblock D, offering jokes, jabs, and plastic cups of homemade liquor to lift the spirits of his compatriots. These include Strawberry (Alisha Dominique), a transgender prisoner and Wolf’s sometimes girlfriend; M.P. (James Tolbert III), a recovering sex offender who’s found religion; and Young Fish (Ronnie Baker), a first-timer pressured to accept a plea bargain for a crime he didn’t commit.

"Abandoned souls"

Dustin Pettegrew’s immersive set design creates the world in which these abandoned souls exist. An austere row of gray-barred cages dominates the playing area, but most of the action takes place on a raised platform that bisects the audience. This puts viewers in the thick of it as the prisoners play cards, shoot the shit, or receive a rare visit from a loved one. A dark cell sits in the rear of the auditorium, from which near-steady cries of anguish can be heard.

Those cries come from Bitch Baby (Jaron C. Battle, in a shattering performance), a 16-year-old held in segregated housing without formal charges. Bitch Baby (real name: Kareem) sits in jail, his mental health deteriorating, because his family cannot raise the relatively paltry bail required to free him. Goins based the character on Kalief Browder, a New York City teenager who committed suicide after being imprisoned more than 600 days, mostly in solitary confinement. He stands as a living, breathing monument to the failures of the legal system.

Goins clearly has messages to convey, but V to X refreshingly never sinks to didacticism. Even the character of Warden Jenkins (Steve Connor), who occasionally interrupts the action to deliver a lecture on “the incarceration trade,” remains free of bad-guy stereotypes. Connor plays the warden as a clear-eyed businessman who understands that his quotas must be met.

Likewise, the prisoners are not treated as mouthpieces for political ideologies. Instead, they are simply people whose lives reflect a culture that values revenue above humanity.

Pros and cons

Goins draws assured performances from his cast. Barrick particularly distinguishes himself as a man who’s spent most of his life on the inside and worries that his teenage son, whom he’s never met, will follow in his footsteps. Tolbert delivers a wrenching monologue detailing a cycle of childhood sexual abuse. Carlo Campbell makes a menacing Reefy, the resident drug pusher.

The dramatic waters get muddied in an overlong second act that moves away from political theater and into familiar, clichéd territory. This shift zaps some of the momentum built by the tense, crackling first half. A skilled dramaturg could help Goins focus his perspective and trim the running time. The denouement is appropriately devastating but getting there sometimes feels like a chore.

The production also overuses musical cues to underscore large emotional moments (sound design by Lyell Hintz). The effect is cinematic but ultimately superficial. Similarly, Andrew Montemayor’s lighting often feels remarkably unsubtle, which seems at odds with Goins’s artful depiction of prison life.

Yet even with its flaws, V to X tells an important story, and it confirms Goins’s reputation as a dramatist to watch. His relationship with the Arden is ongoing — they will mount a full production of his play Seventy IV Seconds… to judgment next season — and Philadelphia theatergoers should look forward to discovering what he has to say.