Review: DUTCHMAN Takes a Journey on a New York Subway Train with Two Lost Souls

Folklore tells us The Flying Dutchman is a legendary ghost ship that can never make port and is doomed to sail the oceans forever. Amiri Baraka's thought-provoking play DUTCHMAN, directed with a sure hand by Levy Lee Simon at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica, takes this concept into 1964 when Lula, a young white woman waiting on a New York subway platform, spots Clay, a black businessman, through the passing train's window and decides to join him for no other reason than to entice him to succumb to her physical charms.

I found myself wondering at the end of this intensely intellectual 45-minute one act if Lula is real or just the wandering soul of a siren-type woman looking to move from train to train in her search for men to overpower with her ever-present lustful sexuality, then toss them aside when her mission is accomplished - a ghostly personification of a deadly black widow spider. Perhaps she just like the doomed ship, condemned to sail from train to train forever with her life a series of repetitive deadly encounters with men.

Lula is magnificently played by Tanna Frederick as a woman ruled by her libido and the need to prove her power over this unsuspecting man. Frederick certainly knows how to flaunt her sexual allure and animal magnetism, powerfully playing with the mind and body of poor Clay, at first totally incredulous that this overtly sexual white woman is really interested in him until her emotional and intellectual taunting causes him to take a stand an blast her ill-conceived notion of who he really is. Of course once he challenges Lula, we know the end is near and she is ready to move on.

Siaka Massaquoi portrays Clay, morphing seamlessly from a "buttoned-up" middle class businessman into an angry black man with street cred ready to strike back at whatever forms of oppression cross his path, standing up for who he knows he is rather than Lula's stilted perception of him and black men in general. Given the year it was written, the racial, social, and political turmoil of 1964 certainly fueled Baraka's breakthrough play with its fast-paced accusatory dialogue between Clay and Lula as she tempts this man into doing something he knows is wrong but cannot resist. For Clay, it's a power struggle of epic proportions taking place in the cramped isolation of a subway car speeding through a tunnel into oblivion rather than on the unforgiving streets of the Deep South.

First produced off-Broadway in 1964, DUTCHMAN won the Obie Award. Amiri Baraka's breakthrough play, co-produced by Edward Albee and presented and published when Baraka was still known as LeRoi Jones, launched the prolific African American writer into the front ranks of American public intellectuals. At the current moment, when race relations and related violence are once again commanding headlines, the play feels as timely as ever. Perhaps the real lesson is that time, like the lost ship or soul, is doomed to repeat itself. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Performances are followed by a Q&A session with the cast and director, moderated by theatre critic Sheryl Aronson with special guests knowledgeable in the history of race relations in 1964. I guarantee if you were alive that year, memories will come rushing back of the social upheaval and turmoil that changed the world and is still going on today. Must it always be true that as soon as we take a stand and speak up for ourselves that our lives are threatened? Listen and learn, then walk away thinking about your encounter with the DUTCHMAN.

Actors Frederick and Massaquoi as well as director Simon are graduates of the University of Iowa, where the trio met. After just three performances at the Edgemar Center for the Arts, they are thrilled to be taking the current production the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, NC, where it is a Festival selection this August. I sincerely hope many more performances will be added so that others across the country can experience its thought-provoking ramifications.

DUTCHMAN is produced by The Rainbow Theatre Company in association with Kilpatrick/Cambridge Theatre Arts and Jazz Lion Productions. Starring Tanna Frederick and Siaka Massaquoi, directed by Levy Lee Simon, at Edgemar Center for the Arts, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica, CA 90405. Performances on Wednesdays at 7:00pm on July 15, 22 and 29, 2015. Admission: $10. Reservations: (310) 392-7327. Online ticketing: www.edgemar.org

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