'Let Me Down Easy' Uplifting

Let Me Down Easy (a play in evolution)

Conceived, written, and performed by Anna Deavere Smith

Directed by Eric Ting, Music by Joshua Redman

Set Design, David Rockwell; Costume Design, Ann Hould-Ward; Lighting Design, Michael Chybowski; Sound Design, David Remedios; Projection Design, Jan Hartley; Project Photography, Diana Walker; Stage Manager, Shannon Richey

Performances through October 11 @ American Repertory Theatre

Loeb Drama Center Box Office 617-547-8300 or www.amrep.org

The evening begins with Anna Deavere Smith casually seated downstage to address the audience regarding the program we are about to witness. It is one of the few moments during the two-hour show when she does not inhabit the skin of one of her characters, and it shows a little glimpse of her. She is the captain, navigator, and tour guide for this journey and we are the willing passengers along for the ride. Without us, she cannot share her important stories; without her, there is no viable connection between the disparate voices of Let Me Down Easy (a play in evolution), Smith's latest entry in her ongoing series called On The Road: A Search for American Character.

The culmination of eight years' effort and approximately 350 interviews, Let Me Down Easy is still a work in progress, as the parenthetical phrase would suggest. However, rather than feeling incomplete, it is infused with a life force allowing it to breathe, change, grow, or shrink as the artist determines what works and what doesn't. While it began as an exploration of the human body and mortality (earlier versions featured people with extraordinary bodies, such as models, dancers, and athletes), Smith gradually changed her perspective to focus on what gets us through our pain: grace and kindness. I would be loath to call it a play in the typical sense of that word, but it is an intelligent theatrical piece with a theme that entertains, even as it educates and, at times, discomfits. If it has a shortcoming, it is that it contains such a wealth of material that it borders on being too much to take in and absorb, resulting in emotional overload. Yet even that feeling breeds further empathy with the people whose tragic circumstances the artist reenacts on the stage.

As a journalist, Smith investigates and reports on the conditions she finds in many corners of the world; as a writer, she takes the words of her subjects and molds them into cogent, dramatic form; as an actress, she represents, nay becomes the people who clamor to be heard beyond the boundaries of their own existence. Her work is political and personal, creative and provocative, but most of all, it is compelling. Smith challenges her audience to bear witness as she has done, so that the oft-repeated phrase "Never again," spoken in reference to the Holocaust, takes on new resonance. By putting a human face on the genocide in Rwanda or hard-working healthcare practitioners treating cancer patients, the actress lifts the veil from our eyes and we can no longer pretend that we don't know what is going on in the world. She is willing to start and maintain a dialogue about the elephant in the room with a level of profundity that is jaw dropping.

There are more than two dozen participants in the conversation on the bare bones Loeb Drama Center thrust stage. Each is identified by an overhead projection, but made easily distinguishable by Smith's body language, voice inflection, and minor costume changes. Many in the audience got a chuckle out of her take on Reverend Peter Gomes, Pusey Minister at Harvard University, as she entwines her hands across her protruding belly and speaks in an authoritative tone. She turns into opera singer Jessye Norman by rising to her full stature and donning a flowing, floor-length purple wrap around her shoulders, and does a spot on Ann Richards, the late former Governor of Texas, with a twinkle in her eye talking about conserving her chi as she battles esophageal cancer. The nuance that Smith brings to each character is astounding.

Structurally, Let Me Down Easy consists of six segments with an intermission in the middle. In the opener, Gomes, Norman, and theologian Reverend James Cone dissect and analyze the hymn "Amazing Grace" to try to define and get a handle on the word grace. "Running Against the Boys" and "Disgrace" feature some unsettling images from horse racing and war zones, but the latter has two of the most moving vignettes in which Smith introduces us to Henriette Mutigwarba, a Tour Guide at the Rwandan Genocide Memorial, and Ingrid Inema, one of the survivors. Their tales of the abhorrent acts committed against families are riveting, yet very difficult to hear, and it is surprising when Inema asserts that even in the face of these circumstances, grace is "releasing."

After the break, it is a relief to learn about the grace of a garden and the Buddhist view of the world. It isn't much of a breather, however, as the two remaining sections focus on the shortcomings and disparities within our healthcare system and end of life issues. To Smith's credit - or perhaps more to the credit of the people she chooses to voice - there is a good deal of caring, hope, and positive energy represented while talking about these difficult subjects. In the end, the message of Let Me Down Easy is uplifting. No matter how difficult the state of affairs, the human spirit is indomitable, and grace and kindness may be found in the unlikeliest of places.

While this is undeniably a one-woman show, it is also a wonderful collaboration as directed by Eric Ting. The performance is artistically augmented by musical interludes composed and recorded by Harvard alumnus Joshua Redman, rear and overhead projections designed by Jan Hartley, and effective lighting of the many faces of Anna Deavere Smith by Michael Chybowski. 

 

 

 

 

 

  

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