PTC's "Resurrection' (1st review)

Daniel Beaty's Resurrection rests on an original concept: It seeks to examine the black male psyche through the stories of six individuals spaced at ten-year-intervals, from age 60 down to ten. The Bishop (Jeffery V. Thompson) is an overwhelming and overweight 60-year-old clergyman addicted to sweets. His 40-year-old son Isaac (Alvin Keith) is a business-suited picture of confident financial success who trembles to tell his father's he's gay. Dre (Che Ayende), age 30, is a recovering drug addict and dope dealer who's HIV positive. 'Twon (Turron Kofi Alleyne), 20, is a kid from the projects, now heading for college even though, as a child, he was pigeonholed in special-ed classes.

To reverse the "negativity all around," Mr. Rogers (Keith Randolph Smith) has launched a quixotic new career at age 50: He has opened a health-foods store in the heart of the ghetto to offer the community an alternative to soul food and junk food. "Vegan children have more brain power," he maintains, and his own son Eric (Thuliso Dingwall) seems to prove his point: Eric is a bright and ambitious ten-year-old, not yet beaten down by life. In a world where adult male role models are in short supply, Eric carries the hopes of his elders— a heavy burden for any age.

A new take on soul food

This scenario offers us ample food for thought. I was struck, for example, by the script's implied subtext that a man is defined not so much by the color of his skin as by what enters his body, whether it's junk food, Ho-Ho's (chocolate cake with cream inside), drugs, sexual fluids, the magic potion that Eric hopes will cure "the aching hearts of black folks," or soul food— the ham hocks, chitterlings and collard greens that have somehow been embraced as black gourmet cuisine but that Beaty condemns as "what was fed to slaves."

These notions are delivered by a capable six-man cast against a dazzling modernistic set designed by G.W. Mercier: When the light shifts, the glass containers for the herbs in Mr. Rogers's shop appear to be glass skyscrapers hovering over the ghetto.

Too many monologues

Unfortunately, all this talent and insight is wasted on a script that lacks any dramatic arc. Resurrection is almost all tell and no show: Its characters spend most of their 90 minutes delivering monologues but rarely engage with each other. A black audience might react to these monologues with a lively call-and-response; but in the context of a white theatrical audience of the sort that was present the night I attended, Resurrection comes across more as a lecture than a play— make that six lectures. No surprise, then, that I found myself constantly nodding off, notwithstanding my interest in the subject.

This is the second straight season that Philadelphia Theatre Company has served up a well-meaning all-black production that would work effectively as a master's thesis but is downright excruciating to sit through. (Last season's PTC entry was Being Alive, which sought to meld the songs of Stephen Sondheim to the works of Shakespeare, wrapped up in a soul/rock sensibility.) Whoever chooses and/or bankrolls these shows is assured of a bright future— not in theater, but in social work.



To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.