Hype Man
Reviewed by Stephen Fife
The Fountain Theatre
Through April 14
Hype Man, a West Coast premiere written by Idris Goodwin and directed by Deena Selenow at The Fountain Theatre, comes to Los Angeles trailing prizes and pedigree.
Workshopped at the Lark playwriting center, the Kennedy Center and La Jolla Playhouse, and recipient of the 2018 Elliott Norton Award (among others), it feels very much like a product of our current new play development system. Translation: it’s an interesting idea that’s been developed to death. In fact, Hype Man often seems to have been written by dramaturges, with the playwright’s voice muted to the point of non-existence. The title cries out for a critic to comment: “Hype Man is way over-hyped, man.” And yes, I will be that critic. Because it is.
Goodwin’s play, which takes place in the world of hip hop music, introduces us to front man rapper Pinnacle (Chad Addison), his hype man Verb (Matthew Hancock), and their beat maker Peep One (Clarissa Thibeaux), who is very light-skinned black – or is she? As with so much in this play, this question of her heritage is raised but not really answered.
First the back story. Pinnacle and Verb went to public school together and have become “brothers” in their pursuit of hip hop stardom. Even though Pinnacle is white and Verb is black, their credo has been that “there is no race in music,” and hip hop has been their refuge from an often hostile world. But it is only after Peep One joined the group that their careers have taken off. A college dropout, she has a way with the beat machine, which Ms. Thibeaux believably treats as an extension of herself, connected to her pulse.
So now these performers are on the verge of a big breakthrough — they are going to perform on The Tonight Show.
When the play opens, Pinnacle is upset with Verb for bringing too many outsiders into their studio, and especially for forcing him to engage in a rap battle with a black rapper named Kenan. Defensive at first, Verb ultimately backs down, and agrees that they need to focus on their music. Then Peep enters, blaming her tardiness on a police shutdown of the freeway in their high-speed chase of a suspect.
Verb checks social media and discovers that the suspect was an unarmed 17-year-old black youth who’d been shot 18 times by police. He feels that their music must make a statement about this atrocity, but Pinnacle disagrees. “I’m not political,” he says. “It’s not part of my brand.” But Verb disregards this: when the group performs on TV, he wears a T-shirt memorializing the dead black teen, igniting the play’s central conflict.
The best work in Hype Man occurs during the musical performances, which capture some of the excitement of hip hop, while also establishing a credible example of the genre. But the acting in general is below the usual standard at The Fountain, and Hancock in particular seems handcuffed and muted. The best work comes from Ms. Thibeaux, who captures the vulnerability and rising self-confidence of a young woman in this male-dominated world (though she too is undercut by the script, which continually raises intriguing questions of race, gender and social justice without really exploring them).
The playwright provides each of the characters with a monologue, but none is particularly memorable, nor do any reveal aspects of the character that surprise us or change the play’s dynamics. The best monologue belongs to Verb, who explains what a “hype man” is and what makes him so crucial to the success of the act. But why give this information near the end of the play when we could really have used it at the beginning?
Under Selenow’s direction, the production hovers on the same level throughout, which makes the scenes with extended dialogue lethally tedious. Her approach also tends to emphasize the play’s flaws rather than mask them. For instance, in The Tonight Show sequence, why not provide a TV voiceover to introduce the act, thus establishing a contrast between the private conversations among the group and their public moment in the spotlight? Absent this, I was confused at first as to whether this was indeed the “big moment” we’d been building up to. More importantly, the consequences of Verb’s act of rebellion would have seemed more momentous with such an introduction. This heightened moment would have been so easy to pull off, but instead the event becomes one of many missed opportunities.
In the end, though, it’s the play that lets everyone down. Not much more than a contrivance to begin with, it sojourns on the surface of its themes, offering only a glimpse of something that could have been powerful if explored in any depth.
This is the third of Goodwin’s “break beat” plays, so — maybe next time. It’s just a shame that he didn’t break loose here, as great hip hop does, to take us on a journey to someplace unknown, into the violence of our own contradictions, where we didn’t expect to end up.
The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., East Hollywood; Fri., Sat., & Mon., 8 p.m.; Sat. & Sun., 2 p.m.; through Apr. 14. (323) 663-1525 or www.fountaintheatre.com. Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.
