Review: THE PARCHMAN HOUR at The Guthrie Theater

Since 1901, and still today, the Mississippi State Penitentiary is known as Parchman Farm. In 1961, it was the eventual detention site for the Freedom Riders, mixed race and mixed gender groups of activists, who were beaten, firebombed, and eventually arrested and jailed for challenging the illegal practices of segregation on buses and in waiting rooms and public restrooms across the South.

To keep their spirits up, and to withstand the deliberate humiliations meted out by prison officials who'd been instructed to break their spirits without doing them permanent bodily harm, the Freedom Riders sang in their cells. Some Riders recall creating an unofficial evening variety show, with each cell expected to come up with an act for the evening: a song performance, a parody of a commercial for the required prison garb, and so forth. It's that practice that gives this ensemble piece its name.

Aided by four onstage musicians, an excellent ensemble of 12 actors who can really sing take us through two uplifting acts of music and solidarity, with occasional forays into contentious questions of strategy and leadership. The singing is glorious and varied: spirituals, sure, but also folk and freedom songs and blues and gospel. There are some solo passages that are hauntingly beautiful; a female quartet performs "If I Had a Hammer" in a way that makes that anthem new again; and there are great swelling choruses, with a finale fronted by the forceful Zonya Love, who has a voice that brings down the house.

Director Patricia McGregor worked with movement director Carl Flink to create staging that is dynamic and fluid. Historical photos projected on the large white back wall help ground the production. Actors cross race and gender lines to depict a variety of characters: a black man plays Bob Dylan; a woman portrays Robert F. Kennedy, etc. So, though THE PARCHMAN HOUR stands squarely in the genre of documentary theater, it is neither overly talky nor particularly didactic.

In fact, the chronology is confusing and some of the repeated sequences seem oddly chosen and placed. Various well-known historical figures who were freedom riders, like John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael, and CORE Director James Farmer, are brought together in the ensemble, though whether they were actually incarcerated at the same time is unclear. Important questions are raised but not pursued. For instance: sure, they're a 'beloved community,' but can they bridge the gulfs of privilege born of their dramatically diverse backgrounds? Do they really need to maintain a hunger strike? Can the Kennedy Brothers (President and Attorney General) be counted on to be of use, or not? What should they make of DR. Martin Luther King, Jr., declining to join them?

Playwright Mike Wiley has chosen, wisely in my view, to raise these issues but not to get lost in them, in favor of tying the events of 1961 to present-day issues of race and justice. He stands in the tradition of the griots: history keepers common to many African tribal peoples who used song, drum, and story to keep their communities connected to the ancestors and to past events, so as to be smart in the present. Based in North Carolina, he performs a number of his own one-man shows related to America's racial history. This ensemble piece was developed with help from Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Guthrie's production of THE PARCHMAN HOUR ends with the company reciting names of recent victims of racial violence, including Philando Castile, who was killed this past July just a few miles from the stage on which they stand. Moreover, the Guthrie is making efforts to have this production serve as a musical call to action, connecting people to the Million Artist Movement through talkbacks, urging individual activism, and hosting an Open Mic style response to the show called "Stop Policing My Person" featuring high school students performing original spoken word poems on November 11.

THE PARCHMAN HOUR runs through November 6 in the largest of the Guthrie's three performance spaces. Violence is depicted; there is brief nudity in the sequences about the strip searches conducted on the Freedom Riders when they arrived at Parchman. Families with middle school or high school students who seek ways to talk together about race in America might well find this production worthwhile.

Photo credit: Dan Norman

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