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The Best of Enemies
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
At The Colony Theater
Through October 18.
PICK OF THE WEEK:
C..P. Ellis was a local leader of the Ku Klux Klan when he was drafted to serve on a committee overseeing school desegregation in Durham, North Carolina in 1971. His nemesis on the committee, Ann Atwater, was a militant African-American civil rights activist. The two despised each other – that is, until they began to understand that the issues they had in common were more numerous and pressing than the hatred which kept them apart. Ellis and Atwater ended up friends, and when Ellis died in 2005, Atwater spoke at his funeral.
This story – unlikely but true – is chronicled in Osha Gray Davidson’s 1996 book subtitled “race and redemption in the new South,” and it’s the basis for Mark St. Germain’s 95 minute play of the same name. Directed by David Rose at The Colony Theatre, with Larry Cedar as Ellis and Tiffany Rebecca Royale as Ann, it portrays with effective stage eloquence the bonding of these two volatile people.
When we first meet Ellis, he’s standing on a podium in full KKK garb, inciting his fellow Klansmen to action and vilifying the heritage of “Martin Lucifer Coon.” Later, he shows up at the first committee meeting brandishing a shotgun. Atwater flashes a Bible.
One of the play’s funniest moments evolves when the task of stapling and collating pamphlets – assigned to them by a federal mediator overseeing the project, Bill Riddick (Shon Fuller) – degenerates into clutter and chaos as the pair compete to best sabotage the other.
Gradually, however, the recognition of their shared status as struggling parents and as members of the underclass who cannot walk away from the problems they face shaves the edge from their animosity. When Ellis starts getting flak from fellow bigots (“nigger lover!”) he finally understands what Atwater and other black people deal with their whole lives through.
Director David Rose underscores the drama’s “aha” moments and compelling shifts with sensitivity and skill, injecting the ever-so-slight pregnant pause after each one and underscoring these moments with lighting designer Jared A. Sayed’s nuanced touch. The two leads are well cast, and though at first they register as polar opposites in a didactic drama, by play’s end these characters have blossomed and transformed.
Though we never see much of Atwater’s personal life, the drama encompasses scenes between Ellis and his wife Mary (Holly Hawkins) that lend insight into his way of being and thinking. Hawkins’ fine performance as the vulnerable Mary adds an additional layer of truthfulness to this inspiring story.
The Colony Theatre, 555 North Third Street Burbank, Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m.;, Sat., 3 p.m.;, Sun., 2 p.m.; through Oct. 18. (818) 558-7000, ext. 15, www.ColonyTheatre.org
