PicksInSix Review: The Nacirema Society - Goodman Theatre

A Powerful, Laugh-Out Loud Triumph!
PicksInSix® Review | Guest Contributor | Kaitlyn Linsner

Expect the unexpected in the Chicago premiere of Pearl Cleage’s extravagant and absurd comedy, “The Nacirema Society.” The play shines as the opener of Susan Booth’s first curated season as Goodman Theatre’s Artistic Director and as a joyous and nuanced exploration of how class, family tradition, honor, privilege, young love, ambition and social responsibility all present in everyday life. These themes mixed with over-the-top drama sets the stage for big gasps and even bigger laughs. Grab a glass of sherry, sit back and welcome to the lavish home of Grace Dubose Dunbar. 

“The Nacirema Society” drops us into the world of a prosperous, aristocratic Black family, the Dunbars, in 1964 Montgomery, Alabama. The mighty and entitled matriarch of the family, Grace Dubose Dunbar (E. Faye Butler), is also the grande dame of the Nacirema Society, a social club for affluent Black women in the South. The Society is preparing for the centennial year of its annual debutante ball, and Grace expects perfection in everything and everyone around her including her effervescent granddaughter Gracie (Demetra Dee) who is making her debut at the centennial ball. 

The plot weaves in another family—the working-class single mother Alpha Campell-Jackson (Tyla Abercrumbie) and her daughter Lille (Felicia Oduh)—who dig up Dunbar family secrets and rattle Dunbar family skeletons. The juxtaposition of these two families during the Civil Rights Movement illuminates the impacts of class and generational expectations in navigating change and legacy. The two families collide with great hilarity in the second act. 

Cleage’s remarkable writing and dialogue are brought to life under the superb direction of Lili-Anne Brown and the outstanding cast of powerhouse talent. Butler and Abercrumbie command the stage. Oduh and Dee are so honest and charming in depicting teenage eagerness, and the ensemble works beautifully together on stage to elevate each scene. 

Plus, the physical comedy is inspired. Ora Jones has a stand-out comedic performance as Grace’s nervous-wreck of a friend lurking on stage at the epicenter of a blackmail scheme. Shariba Rivers as the maid also had the audience buzzing as she collects coats, listens in from the stairs and eventually indulges in a glass of sherry herself as everything unravels.

Perhaps the best part of “The Nacirema Society” is as you find yourself belly laughing from start to finish, you are also deeply moved. This play stands strong as a delightful piece of theater that connects us through its content and characters all while creating an exuberant community in that experience.  

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR | KAITLYN LINSNER is a Chicago-based attorney practicing construction and surety law.

PHOTO|Liz Lauren

GOODMAN THEATRE
presents
The Nacirema Society
EXTENDED through October 22
Albert Theatre
170 N. Dearborn St.

(312) 443-3800

WEBSITE

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PICKSINSIX Review: FLYIN' WEST

SO DELICIOUS IT WILL KILL YOU.

There is a riveting moment deep within Chuck Smith’s American Blues Theater production of the 1992 Pearl Cleage play “Flyin’ West,” now playing at Stage 773, when Fannie Dove (Sydney Charles) chides her older sister, Sophie Washington (Tiffany Oglesby) for taking matters into her own hands. As unhinged rage spews out from Oglesby, tears well up in the eyes of both women. Smith has already allowed us to see firsthand what they can only imagine, witnesses to the raw fear and inhuman reality of physical abuse. Now it is our heart pounding turn to feel the sister’s pain and anger.

It is then that Miss Leah, the extraordinary Joslyn Jones in a powerhouse performance, steps up to calmly talk the women away from their first option to protect and defend their younger sister, Minnie Dove Charles (Tiffany Renee Johnson) from her abusive wretch of a husband, Frank (Wardell Julius Clark). We already know that another option is to have the well-meaning neighbor Will Parish (Henri Watkins), who is sweet on Fannie, deliver some ‘plains justice’ to Frank. The third option, however, offered up in one of Miss Leah’s many empowering recollections of her harrowing life experience, is so delicious it will kill you.

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As background to this play set in 1898, the Homestead Act of 1862 offered large tracts of land in the western frontier that provided opportunities for tens of thousands of African American men, women and children to resettle by the late 1870s and the decades that followed. While many of the first settlers were ill-prepared for their new lives, the women at the heart of Cleage’s “Flyin’ West,” each represent a unique cultural heritage. They have settled in Nicodemus, Kansas, a boom town for those African Americans who escaped the oppression of the post-Reconstruction South. The free and safe haven the women have created and relentlessly protect is being threatened by land speculators who are moving in. The most urgent concern is the safety and well-being of a family member who is the victim of domestic violence.

An unseen character is brought to life in searing detail by Miss Leah, the 70 year-old former slave, in brilliant images of sorrowful indignity and uplifting grace that, as she states, can’t be written down. Scenes of inexplicable rage and violence, however, churn this emotional drama. The suffocating Jim Crow bias that riles up in Frank’s vile attitudes are challenged by Sophie’s strength and Fannie’s resolve to stamp his kind out of their family.

Cleage has expertly embodied an unwavering strength of will in Miss Leah and Sophie, hopefulness in Fannie, and decency in Will, but Minnie’s soul-soaked anguish and survival is truly heartwrenching.

Grant Sabin’s western plains interior design is well-suited for Lily Grace Walls period-perfect costumes and the rich lighting design by Jared Goodling. American Blues Theater has produced a fine online Backstage Guide which provides resources for victims of domestic abuse, background history and information about the production development, and a feature on the cultural movement #BlackGirlMagic.

PHOTOS|Michael Brosilow

AMERICAN BLUES THEATER
Presents
FLYIN’ WEST
Written by Pearl Cleage
Directed by Chuck Smith
through November 3rd
Stage 773
1225 West Belmont
(773) 327-5252

WEBSITE
TICKETS
BACKSTAGE GUIDE

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