Review: THE AFRICAN COMPANY PRESENTS RICHARD III at Soul Rep Theatre

A year or so ago, two DFW theaters in neighboring cities both performed the same play, on the same days, at the same times.  If you were willing to pay to use the Tollway, and depending on traffic, they were about ten minutes aways from each other.  I chock that up to bad timing and poor coordination (although local theater directors tell me that the vast majority of their audiences are exclusive – they don’t go to other theaters – so these kinds of scheduling issues aren’t a big deal), and both groups handled it well (at least publicly).

The same cannot be said for what happened two hundred years ago in New York City, when a marquee theater brought in the famed British actor, Junius Brutus Booth (two of whose sons would later eclipse him: one for his acting, the other for a stage-related, but wholly infamous act) to play the title role in Richard III.  You see, in another part of town (and the city wasn’t that big, back then), an upstart theater (The African Grove) was also performing Richard III.  What’s more, the cast at The African Grove were free blacks, as was the majority of its audience (not-fun fact: slavery wasn’t fully illegal in New York until the end of the 1820s – it had to be abolished incrementally).

It was from this history that playwright Carlyle Brown based his play, The African Company Presents Richard III, which Soul Rep Theatre is performing (or, shall we say, presenting) at Bryant Hall. 

I knew nothing of this incident (or the play) prior to their season announcement, but was interested just by the title alone – and I was not disappointed.  In fact, it far exceeded my expectations.

The play starts out in medias res (that is, in the middle of things), at showtime on Booth’s opening night.  We never see the famed Mr. Booth in the play, but we really don’t need to, as he’s more than adequately represented by the theater’s owner, Stephen Price (played by Stephen Miller), who makes what starts out as a reasonable curtain speech about the chaotic situation outside, but soon descends into outright race-baiting and an odd declaration about who should, and who shouldn’t, be able to perform Shakespeare’s work.  I doubt you’ll need three chances to guess his answers (Shakespeare from me, not from thee, as it were).

We then jump backwards to about a week earlier, where we meet five members of the African Company, our joint protagonists.  First we encounter the women: Sarah (Kelley Smith), who escaped slavery in the south, and works for an old, lonely widow, who just that day taught her to waltz – she plays Queen Elizabeth (no neither of those two Queen Elizabeths, but the wife of Edward IV); and Ann Johnson (Zariyah Perry), who works for multiple families – and plays Lady (soon to be Queen, although she gets disappeared at that point) Anne.  Then we get the men.  William Henry Brown (Sinclair Freeman), known as Willy, is both a performer and the owner of the theater.  Originally from the Caribbean, he was taught to read by an overseer, while working with his family in the cane fields.  Papa Shakespeare (Jerrold Trice) is also from the islands, but knows the old rituals from Africa.  His last name was given to him contemptuously because he was knowledgeable, but illiterate.  He clearly has a thing for Sarah, which she is aware of – he plays several roles, but focuses on Catesby (or maybe it’s Ratcliff – they are fairly interchangeable (like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or Salario and Solanio)).  And then, finally, there’s the star of the Company, James Hewlett (Emir Price), who in this telling developed his acting skills while working as a manservant for a great Shakespearean performer.  He plays Richard III, is somewhat full of himself, and is oblivious to the affections of Ann.

Price conspires with the Constable (Michael Michel) to shut down the Grove (there were legitimate fire hazards, but they wouldn’t have been enforced without Price’s prodding, which, while not as bad as trumped-up charges, is still an unacceptable abuse of power), causing Brown to rent the hotel ballroom next door to Price’s theater.  In other words, as in so many tragedies, Price’s machinations end up creating a situation far worse than the one he was trying to avoid; he’d have been much better off had he done nothing at all (a course of action I always recommend).

The acting was top notch all the way around, as both the actual characters and the Richard III characters they’re rehearsing.  I want to see their production of Richard (although by necessity I’m sure they cut more heavily than I’d have liked – actually, with that play, there’s very little I think should be cut).  Moreover, Ann’s disgust over the infamous wooing scene (while perhaps a bit anachronistic for the early 19th century) echoes exactly the complaints one hears today. Personally, I’ve always been impressed Richard was able to get away with it – but then, I’m looking at it from a male perspective (I mean, talk about a guy fighting above his weight class).  There is the problem that Ann thinks Anne was the daughter of Henry VI, not his daughter-in-law, but this is Shakespeare’s fault (for using the wrong word), and has caused similar misunderstandings ever since.

Kiera Powers’s costumes were excellent, looking exactly like I expect early nineteenth-century dress to look, both the fancy and otherwise.  Set designer Ashley Oliver added wings to Bryant Hall to make the many exits and entrances work better for director Lisa Cotie, while Charlton Gavitt’s lighting was unobtrusive and effective.  All that I really noticed about Hayden Elliot’s sound design were the crowd noises that helped set the scene for the tumultuous moments in the theaters.

The story here is fascinating and infuriating.  It’s a part of American history (and Shakespearean history) that oughtn’t to be forgotten, but it’s also important to remember that it took place 200 years ago.  Hewlett is right to rage at the indignity of being prevented from playing Othello (although the actor in this production, Price, is way too young for that role), but at the same time, it hadn’t been that long since women were forbidden (by law) to play Desdemona.

It's also worth noting that while the white theater owner is a racist, there’s nothing remarkable about that: in 1820s New York, even the most enlightened people were racist.  It’s quite conceivable that had it been an upstart white theater, rather than The African Grove, performing the same show he was, he’d have done pretty much the same things, only changing his public justifications.  After all, there was a great deal of money (and reputation) on the line.  This in no way justifies or excuses his actions, but it’s always important to judge historical events in the context of their time, rather than our own.

It's very difficult to dramatize a historical event, even when there’s considerable written record of it.  That Carlyle Brown was able to make a compelling story out of a single newspaper review and a few fragments of evidence is a wonder.  That Soul Rep, director Lisa Cotie, and this cast have brought it to life for us is a marvel.

If I have any complaints (besides the chairs at Bryant Hall – bring a cushion), it’s that the play’s run is so brief: it opened this past weekend and closes this coming weekend.  So go see one of the final four performances: it runs Thursday through Saturday, at 7:30, with a Saturday matinee at 2, at Bryant Hall (on the Kalita Humphreys’ campus) in Dallas.  

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