Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
A Noise Within
Through April 28
RECOMMENDED
With King Hedley II, A Noise Within extends its commitment to producing August Wilson’s American Century Cycle plays, Wilson’s towering effort to track the African American experience throughout the 20th century, decade by decade, beginning the first decade of the 20th century. Like past productions — Gem of the Ocean, Seven Guitars, and Radio Golf — the current offering is directed by Gregg T. Daniel who unerringly taps into the wellspring of Wilson’s genius. Once again, the powerlessness of the Black male is front and center, as well as the effect of that powerlessness on Black women, who are caught up in the toxic, often fatal atmosphere, that it engenders.
As with all these plays — with the exception of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom — Hedley is set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District where Wilson was raised, and takes place during the 1980s Reagan era that sped America’s pernicious progression into economic inequity. Characters from previous plays recur while mysticism underscores the proceedings. The offstage Aunt Ester, a woman who has lived [on the Hill ] since the earliest slave times and is assumed by all to have supernatural powers is an unseen but powerful presence. Ruby, the title character’s mother, was a major character in the 1940s-era Seven Guitars. Stool Pigeon (Gerald Rivers, in a beautifully comical/poignant turn) is a Bible-quoting, half-mad neighborhood seer, who echoes the wise fools of whom Wilson is so fond.
The eponymous King (a touching and commanding Aaron Jennings) scrabbles for a financial foothold after completing a seven-year prison stretch for murder — an act for which he is defiantly unapologetic. His crime was to kill a man who slashed him with a razor, an attack that left a distinctive scar on both his face and soul.
King and his best friend, Mister (Christian Henley), a minimum wage worker fed up with his employer’s false promises, are bankrolling their cherished dream of opening a video store by selling hot refrigerators, an activity that infuriates King’s wife Tonya, (Kacie Rogers), who fears that her husband will once again land in prison. Already the mother of a pregnant 17-year-old, she has just learned that she is pregnant, too. To King’s fury and sorrow, she is determined to terminate the pregnancy rather than have her child grow up without ever knowing his incarcerated father.
There are few who haven’t served time in this blighted inner-city milieu, where most men carry guns and casual violence is a constant. Elmore (an alternately jaunty and intimidating Ben Cain), a lifelong hustler and the former lover of King’s mother Ruby (Veralyn Jones), coolly comments that, although he only used his gun once, he has “cut” many a man. He is hoping to get back into Ruby’s good graces after abandoning her decades earlier. But Elmore, now terminally ill, is also determined to get an old secret off his conscience — the divulgence of which will precipitate tragedy.
Despite the perfunctory use of a scrim, Efren Delgadillo Jr.’s set, with its rattletrap clapboard house and poignantly desiccated yard, artfully conveys the straitened means of these marginalized inhabitants. Brandon Baruch’s lighting and Mylette Nora’s costumes complete the setting for Daniel’s lapidary staging, as does Jeff Gardner’s subtle sound, with its effective musical underscoring and distant barking of dogs. (And when it comes to sound, the cellphones blaring during opening night were a persistent distraction. Theatergoers, get a clue!)
Among the superb cast, Jones, who previously appeared as Aunt Ester in ANW’s Gem of the Ocean, captures the world-weariness of the battered but unbowed Ruby, a former big band singer who is trying to reconcile with her alienated son. Rogers also shines as Tonya, the offspring of generations of incarcerated men, who is nowdesperately trying to break that cycle. Mindful of impending disaster, Tonya and Ruby repeatedly caution the headstrong King, but he travels a darkening path. Contemporary Cassandras, unheard and dismissed, they are doomed to reap the whirlwind.
See interview with director Gregg T. Daniel
A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. Thur., 7:30 p.m. (Dark Thur. April 18.); Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m. (No matinee April 6 and no evening performance April 27); Sun., 2 p.m. Ends April 28. (626) 356-3100. www.anoisewithin.org 2 hours and 50 minutes with intermission.
