Review Roundup: THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS at Little Island

Little Island is now presenting the reimagining of Lee Breuer and Bob Telson's Pulitzer Prize-finalist The Gospel at Colonus, directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury, with soloist performances by American opera singer Davóne Tines, American gospel singer and songwriter Kim Burrell, and R&B singer serpentwithfeet.

The complete cast of performers for The Gospel at Colonus includes Davóne Tines, Kim Burrell, serpentwithfeet, Stephanie Berry (Staff Meal at Playwright’s Horizon), Kevin Bond, Little Charles, Samantha Howard, Ayana George Jackson (MJ), Brandon Michael Nase (Watchnight at Perelman Performing Arts Center), Jon-Michael Reese, and Frank Senior. Members from James Hall’s Worship & Praise based in Flatbush collectively represent the traditional Greek chorus: Jaqwanna Crawford, Schanel Crawford, JacQuetta Fayton, Angie Goshea, Robyn McLeod, TJ Riddick, Vischon Robinson, Lenny VanCooten, Eugene Marcus Walker, and Darlene Nikki Washington.

In The Gospel at Colonus, the epic myth of Oedipus is reborn as a Pentecostal ritual that remakes prophecy as testimony and brokenness as transcendence. A man condemned from birth searches for grace. A choir lifts him up. The congregation – the audience – bears witness to his tale. But here, tragedy is not an ending – it's the road to deliverance.

Let's see what the critics are saying...

Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review: Production credits are first class. Melding modern and classical shapes, designer Montana Levi Blanco dresses everyone similarly in lilac shades yet accents their individuality by jewelry and different headgear; the usually billowy clothes look comfy for summer weather wear. Cookie Jordan created the complimentary hair and wigs. Stacey Derosier’s lighting design is practical, richly colorful and dramatic to the point when at times, like Oedipus, some viewers may feel as if their eyes were being stabbed out by the glaring luminaires. In spite of the acoustic support provided by sound designer Garth MacAleavey, some lyrics get lost in the singing, but the work’s essential story of refuge, sanctuary and redemption remains clear.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: The Gospel at Colonus is the perfect sort of summer theater experience and one of the city’s genuine entertainment bargains. (Tickets are just $25; a tenner for a standing-room spot.) It’s a jubilant blend of the traditions of the Greek theater and the Black church, delivering a kind of Christian parable of redemption. How long must we live with the weight of our past transgressions? The struggle of tragedy is real, but here it soon gives way to a get-on-your-feet celebration of gospel music. That is perhaps best expressed in the scene-stealing performance of a tambourine-wielding spitfire named Pastor Charles D. Bond, a 4-year-old boy who delivers a single line of dialogue but who embodies the spirit of the entire production with his evangelically-charged enthusiasm. As the Good Book says, a child shall lead them. 

Jonathan Mandel, New York Theater: It is a glorious gospel concert beneath the darkening skies along the Hudson River, and that’s all one needs to know to thrill at “Gospel at Colonus.” But the experience is deepened by its history – its two histories, one going back millennia, the other decades. In 1983, Lee Breuer, the avant-garde theater artist who co-founded Mabou Mines, collaborated with the brilliantly eclectic composer Bob Telson on this musical retelling of Sophocles’ “Oedipus at Colonus,” transposing the tragedy to an African-American Pentecostal church service. It debuted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and has been performed somewhere in the world ever since – including in 2018 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, which used some of the original cast members.

Matthew Wexler, 1 Minute Critic: The Acting Company, including jazz vocalist Frank Senior as the cursed Oedipus on a mission of salvation, Davóne Tines as his younger self (with a vocal range wider than the expanse from the underworld to heaven), Samantha Howard (Antigone) and Ayana George Jackson (Ismene) as Oedipus’s sister-daughters, and Stephanie Berry as the preacher who stitches the incestuous tale together with the power of a master storyteller, are nothing short of transcendent.