Review: World-Premiere: BUST, Makes Meaning Out of Madness at Alliance Theatre

BUST, the Alliance Theatre and Goodman Theatre world-premiere co-production written by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Zora Howard is "a revelatory and genre-defying exploration of community, conflict, and the far-reaching impacts of historical racism." Directed by Tony Award nominee Lileana Blain-Cruz, BUST premieres on The Coca-Cola Stage at Alliance Theatre, February 13 – March 16, 2025, and in the Goodman’s Albert Theatre, April 19 – May 18, 2025.

"...oh...it's a cult..." I hear the revelatory from the seat next to me. So far, Matt Saunders's traveling Soma-cube-set narrows and expands in conjunction with each scene as we alternate through equal parts comedy, horror, and the surreal. I've guffawd and cried through all of the locations enough to feel emotionally shaken loose. However, the audience member to my left sparkes my analitical side when describing Howard's police force so precisely as the Huntsville headquarters set slides on stage with actors-as-cops ready to highlight interpersonal coersion, bullying, threatening and abusive tactics within the evil antagonists' lair itself. The police, while there are mild attempts to do good, do so much wrong in Howard's snapshot of a few days-in-the-life of a community ravaged by monsters with badges and rescued by mentors with atomistics.

Howard explains, “Growing up, my mother, my aunties, or whomever, would come home with whatever mess they dealt with throughout their day, and they would talk about it. The way they told their stories – sparing no ugly detail and still, somehow, cracking jokes throughout; it was a healing practice I learned early on.” And that is exactly how the play begins.

The entirety of the all too devastatingly familiar acrimonious arrest encounter by power-poisoned and militarized officers, an initial "bust," and thus incitement, is viewed only by the characters on the stage. Described in perfect real-time, eye-witness broadcast with beautiful acuity, humor, and precision, we "see" this bust. We smell it. The looks on the faces of our newly beloved "everyperson" protagonists react with such genuine expression and, as our world has unfortunately programmed us, terrible expectation, there is almost no surprise when the unimaginable happens. 

Blain-Cruz says, “There's a real invitation at the center of the play to experience something new. There's this kind of really amazing, thrilling, complicated emotional journey that happens at the center of this play, and I hope audiences are on the ride to encounter something that they had never considered before.” 

By the time a bust takes place before our eyes, we experience the painful reminder that systemically excluded lives who are exploited on the news or in social memes is a traumatic reality for many of our young. It's enough to create a collective explosion. And it does.

The exceptional BUST cast includes Mark Bedard, Cecil Blutcher, Renika Williams Blutcher, Caroline Stefanie Clay, Bernard Gilbert, Caitlin Hargraves, Jorge Luna, Victoria Omoregie, Ray Anthony Thomas, and Ivan Cecil Walks. The creative team includes Costume Designer Dominique Fawn Hill, Lighting Designer Yi Zhao, Sound Designer Mikaal Sulaiman, Special Effects Designer Jeremy Chernick, Dialect Coach Jacqueline Springfield, Sonic Dramaturg DJ Reborn, and Fight Choreographer Rocio Alexis Mendez.

Howard explains, “It takes a lot to be Black and walk this life. There is some real ugly stuff that we have to navigate. And yet there is an artfulness to how we move through it – with humor, with deftness, with style. BUST is a meditation on and an homage to that movement." 

In BUST, the hero's journey manages to satisfy a small, dreamy, imaginary offering of...justice? A vanquishing? Howard strategically offers the Western world a bit of relief in BUST while simultaniously experiencing the continued fall-out from colonization and humanity's greatest tragedy. This happens especially through our favorite family's instinctual, ancestral ritual ignited by love, joy, a deep respect for the power of a mother's calling and the rhythmic inspiration of a high school step team.

Get your tickets now, before it's too late.

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