This 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning thriller has rocketed back into the spotlight, thanks to this 2020 Tony Award®-winning Best Revival from Roundabout Theatre Company. “This is a play that deserves to be staged regularly all over America—though it’s hard to imagine that it will ever be done better than this. It keeps you guessing all the way to the final curtain” (The Wall Street Journal).
In 1944, on a Louisiana Army base, two shots ring out. A Black sergeant is murdered. And a series of interrogations triggers a gripping barrage of questions about sacrifice, service, and identity in America. Broadway’s Norm Lewis leads a powerhouse cast in the show Variety calls “a knock-your-socks-off-drama," directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon.
When “A Soldier’s Play” was first staged in the 1980s, playwright Charles Fuller took heat for highlighting how racism-at-large infected relations among his Black characters. Some critics charged that the play perpetuated stereotypes that needed burying. Fuller argued that all communities suffer from a wide range of emotions and behaviors and that his characters also lived in a context where the dynamics of hate, self-hatred and resistance demanded exploration. Four decades later, with the help of a strong production and fantastic cast, Fuller (who died last year) seems on firmer ground than ever. This is a story about Black soldiers in a certain time and place, but the issues for Blacks and whites still manifest. The ousting of two African American legislators from the Tennessee Statehouse was unfolding the night I saw this show. Black people certainly are not the only ones who must mediate complicated power relations that can work against what others might see as common cause. Kindred stories can be told of prisoners, refugees, concentration camp populations and many others. Indeed, “A Soldier’s Play,” is adapted, in part, from Herman Melville’s unfinished classic “Billy Budd,” set in the class-riven British Navy of the eighteenth century. “A Soldier’s Play” has a depth all its own, however.
A SOLDIER'S PLAY is a solid and well-structured play by Charles Fuller that explores the deep-seated roots of American racism. Centered on a Black regiment in 1944 Fort Neal, Louisiana, the play takes the form of a murder investigation when Captain Richard Davenport arrives on the scene following the death of Sergeant Vernon C. Waters. While Fuller's 1981 play is no doubt an indictment of the racist systems embedded in the American military-and the country as a whole-the piece now feels prescient, rather than revelatory. I imagine that it must have been quite radical when it debuted over forty years ago, but now it reads like a reinforcement of the truth. It's an effective one, and audiences who enjoy the procedural format will appreciate the play's series of interviews and flashbacks. Director Kenny Leon's production keeps it moving at a brisk pace, but neither material nor staging are groundbreaking.
1981 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2005 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2020 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Company's Original Broadway Production Broadway |
2022 | US Tour |
North American Tour US Tour |
Videos