I Go Somewhere Else
Reviewed by Bill Raden
Playwrights’ Arena
Extended through January 27
RECOMMENDED
“The future’s a funny word,” says one of the heroines of I Go Somewhere Else, speaking across the years to her younger, eight-year-old self of 1978. “Since time is a flat circle, it’s happening all the time.” Which is not a bad way to explain to a still-innocent, African-American child how the intractable trifecta of race and gender and inequality will one day flare up into Donald Trump’s America.
The surprise and the tragedy in Playwrights’ Arena world premiere of Inda Craig-Galván’s ultimately affecting, autobiographical memory play is the degree to which that ideological contagion of white supremacy is internalized by the girl’s mother as she attempts to literally beat those deeply rooted biases into her uncomprehending if resistant daughter. If that sounds a bit bleak, I Go Somewhere Else is anything but; this is a deeply personal show with a big heart, and a superb ensemble under the sensitive direction of Jon Lawrence Rivera discovers all of its winsome charm and winning theatricality.
Foremost is Cheri Lynne VandenHeuvel as the religious eccentric and single mother, Reda Pike. A Chicago cosmetologist obsessed with the idea that her daughter Lanny (an effervescent Kita Grayson) somehow embodies her racially tinged class aspirations, Reda subjects the hapless girl to borderline abuse as she attempts to tame Lanny’s unruly African locks into something straighter and more Caucasian-appearing. Though her harsh beauty regimen and bizarre superstitions earn Reda a humorously apt comparison to the mother of Sissy Spacek in the 1976 horror classic Carrie, VandenHeuvel’s exquisitely clouded portrayal poignantly connects the emotional dots between Reda’s increasingly delusional behavior and the all-too-familiar maternal yearnings that have been distorted by bitter disappointment and the traumas of her own coming of age in a pre–civil rights Deep South. She is a woman far more wounded than wounding.
But Reda’s transgressions are also softened by Craig-Galván’s narrative coup: splintering Lanny’s point of view into three different characters at three different ages and having them interact across time as they collectively reminisce about this fraught relationship. In addition to Grayson’s circa 1978 Lanny, there is Langree (the fine Donna Simone Johnson), Lanny’s recently married adult self from 1998 — a new mother whose swaddled infant (presumably the playwright herself) quickly becomes the focus of Reda’s now explicitly deluded hopes. And there is Tabitha (an effective Inger Tudor), the mellower, middle-aged version of Lanny, whose act of self-rechristening with a name that no longer “rhymes with angry” serves as the story’s best evidence that the daughter has broken the chain of ideological inheritance that victimized Reda. Kevin Coubal provides able support as the Alabama white boy whose caddish betrayal lights the fuse of Reda’s consuming obsession.
Lily Bartenstein’s vintage pop-ephemera video projections, Mylette Nora’s wry costumes, scenic designer Austin Kottkamp’s minimalist, slatted-wood platforms, Derek Jones’ understated lighting and Matt Richter’s haunting, nostalgia-inflected sound all contribute valuable atmospherics. But it is ultimately Craig-Galván’s insight into the determining role that time, age and shifting memory play in any relationship that taps into something profoundly universal.
Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.; Mon., 8 p.m.; extended Jan. 12-27. (800) 838-3006 or playwrightsarena.org. Running time: one hour and 20 minutes with no intermission.
