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.
But even if Leon hasn’t stretched Home to fill the space, there’s a poignancy to spotlighting this playwright at this moment: Williams passed away on May 13, four days before preview performances began. If this revival doesn’t quite constitute a homecoming parade, it’s a cozy, unflashy tribute, perhaps just the way Cephus Miles would have dreamt it.
As he did with the superbly energetic and irreverent revival of Purlie Victorious last year, director Kenny Leon maintains a galloping pace. Home is such a verbal dynamo it could be performed on a bare stage, yet Leon has assembled a valuable design team: Arnulfo Maldonado’s homely yet mythic sets of porch, tobacco field, and a cutaway silhouette of a house; earth-toned and soft-textured costumes by Dede Ayite; and sunny daytimes and jazzy night shades conjured by Allen Lee Hughes. The acting trio makes gorgeous music. Kittles ages up from hellraising teen to weathered old man by graceful degrees, and Inge and Ayers do magnificent character work with dozens of supporting parts—preachers, drug dealers, prison guards, bus drivers. We should mourn the fact that Williams never got to see this luminous production, but it seems he had plans to join that fellow in Miami.
1970 | Broadway |
Broadway |
2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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