BWW Reviews: Jacobs-Jenkins' GLORIA, A Fight For The Public's Collective Memory

One of the most interesting aspects of playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' masterful dark satire, Gloria, is the page in the script where he designates his characters as "white," "Asian," "white," "anything really," "black" and "unclear."

He adds, "You could toy with masks/facepaint/raceface if you think it'll pay off but I don't know...."

This is the playwright who, five years ago in Neighbors, a play about racial identity, had black actors in blackface performing horrifically vulgar and racist minstrel comedy routines. Since then he's won acclaim, and Obie Awards, for his racially-based plays, Appropriate and An Octoroon.

Aside from a quip or two, race isn't a part of the conversation in Gloria, and perhaps that omission is the playwright's most meaningful point.

Director Evan Cabnet's sharp and crisply-acted production begins at a quartet of cubicles at a magazine where the competitive twentysomething assistants claw for recognition from the unseen editors ensconced in their glass-walled offices.

Dean (Ryan Spahn), fast approaching thirty, has been on the low rung long enough to be pitching a book about his disillusioned dreams and though his strength lies in schmoozing more than in productivity, there's a sense that he blames his white maleness for his stalled career.

Tart-mouthed Kendra (Jennifer Kim) is no more dedicated, but she plays her status as an Asian woman as a career-advancing privilege. ("I will die before I turn thirty in a cubicle.")

Younger Ani (Catherine Combs) is satisfied with where she is now, but Kendra insists that'll wear off once she outgrows being regarded as a pretty, educated nerd. Twenty-year-old Miles (Kyle Beltran), on the last day of his internship, doesn't pay much attention to their caustic banter, some of which involves the previous night's housewarming party thrown by the introverted editor Gloria (Jeanine Serralles), but frustrated fact checker Lorin (Michael Crane) keeps coming in from the neighboring room to ask them to please keep the noise down.

Though less than twenty years separates the oldest from the youngest characters, there is a clear contrast expressed regarding the 21st Century's increased lack of human communication and cynicism about the value of hard work.

A violent act occurs; the kind that makes national headlines. The play then skips to eight months later where the profit to be made by telling the story of what happened comes into question. Books are written, a screen adaptation is in the works and the event glides from being a current event to a part of our pop culture, with different participants and witnesses competing to have their personal experiences gain a place in the public's collective memory.

To say more would be giving away too much, but with this subtly-humored social commentary, the 30-year-old Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is solidly emerging as one of American theatre's most provocative and challenging voices.

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