In the Tony Award®-nominated play The New York Times calls “an uplifting folk ballad about the pure in heart,” Cephus Miles has the whole world in his callused hands—until his sweetheart Pattie Mae goes off to college and marries another man. Originally staged by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1979, and featured in the first year of Roundabout’s Refocus Project, Samm-Art Williams’ Home is a muscular and melodic coming-of-age story that gives voice to the unbreakable spirit of all Americans who have been searching for a place to belong. Kenny Leon (A Soldier’s Play) directs.
Kenny Leon’s bare-bones staging fails to deliver much in the way of vibrant theatricality, making the intimate play feel somewhat lost in the Todd Haimes Theatre. There’s not much visual stimulation either, with set designer Arnulfo Maldonado providing little more than backdrops depicting a field of corn and an urban landscape, the latter accompanied by a fire escape. Dede Ayite’s costumes and Allen Lee Hughes’ warm lighting design can’t be faulted, however.
It may take a while for audiences to tune in to the play’s rollicking rhythms. Mr. Williams’s language is a dense, clipped, sometimes incantatory vernacular that can be hard to parse, particularly when flung at dizzying velocity in the early going. Trying to appreciate the language’s richness and lyricism is challenging enough; teasing out the thread of the narrative from the onrushing tides of words seems at times nearly impossible, especially as the chronology jumps back and forth. While one can appreciate the desire to bring heated life to Mr. Williams’s vigorous language, which almost seems to prefigure rap, Mr. Leon would have been wise to allow a few pauses for everyone to breathe.
1970 | Broadway |
Broadway |
2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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