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Stanley Ann: The Unlikely Story Of Barack Obama’s Mother
Reviewed by Pauine Adamek
LGBT Center’s Davidson/Valentini Theatre
Through July 26
RECOMMENDED:
If you’re anything like me, you’ll go into Mike Kindle’s one-act drama knowing nothing about the mother of Barack Obama, but come out with a healthy respect for the progressive woman who, virtually single-handedly, raised the man who became the President of the United States.
In a captivating performance, Ann Noble inhabits this complex and remarkable character, bringing deep conviction and passionate expression to her solo performance.
Through a series of monologues and chronological scenes (dates and locations are discreetly projected high on the upstage wall) we observe Stanley Ann as she evolves through an eventful and determined life cut short by cancer in her early 50s. First, she’s a love struck teenager, brimming with girlish enthusiasm and aspirations, and smitten with the ambitious foreign high schooler from Kenya, Barack Obama Sr. “Hawaii’s first African student!” she marvels, ruefully adding, “We would be criminals on the mainland…” Indeed, in 1960 miscegenation was illegal.
Next she’s a young mother, wisely opting not to follow her husband to Harvard and thereafter to Kenya, but instead pursuing her undergraduate studies. Driven and optimistic, she articulates her desire to have the courage and daring to pursue an “amazing life” but also frets about the obstacles her son faces, given his mixed race and the absence of his father.
By the late 1960s Stanley Ann falls in love with another visionary named Lolo, marries him in Hawaii and eventually follows him to Indonesia. There she bears a second child, becoming a foreign wife, raising Obama and his step-sister Maya while teaching English to indigenous politicians at the American Embassy in Jakarta. She soon becomes disenchanted by the local corruption, as expressed in a bitter and angry soliloquy, giving us a horrifying history lesson. Gulping wine while attending an Embassy party, and expressing disgust, profound grief and controlled hysteria, in this pivotal scene Noble’s performance is enthralling.
Kindle’s play goes on to illustrate Stanley Ann’s later years as an activist and ambassador, attaining a Ph.D. in anthropology and instigating and developing micro financing programs for impoverished women.
All her monologues are presented as one-sided conversations, though occasionally they shift into expository soliloquies as her focus turns to us, the audience, rather than her unseen companion.
The staging by director Mark Bringelson is subtle and inventive; the latter especially evident in a haunting scene that uses the theater’s backlit fire exit to represent a village doctor’s door. Additionally, Noble beautifully exploits the limits of the small space, at one instance peering into a wall mounted fuse box as if casually inspecting a cupboard in her son’s New York apartment.
By the play’s conclusion, it’s evident Stanley Ann did not live to see her son’s glorious achievement; she died before Obama even entered politics. But what is apparent is the impact of the honorable values she instilled in him.
Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Davidson/Valentini Theatre, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through July 26. (323) 860-7300, www.lalgbtcenter.org/theatre
