Review: STEAL AWAY at Black Theatre Troupe

How else to begin this review of Ramona King’s STEAL AWAY (on stage at Black Theatre Troupe (Click Here) through October 1st) than by referring to the legend of Robin Hood! There is a morality tale embedded in both narratives that speaks (allegorically, for sure) to the remedies required to correct for injustice.

For the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest, “taking from the corrupt rich and redistributing to the poor” was a last resort and a righteous path to correct economic injustice.

Fast forward from the 12th Century and Nottingham to the 1930’s and a Chicago living room where a band of five merry church ladies consort and resort to rob a bank for a parallel purpose…but not without some heavy coaxing.

The normal m.o. of the members of the Negro Women’s Organization for Youth Education involves baking and selling pies, the proceeds of which support a college education for black women.

One of the beneficiaries of their largesse is Tracyada (Amanishakete Anacaona), who has returned home with degree in hand and a plan to get restitution for the sins visited upon her race and her community. Because of a pivotal encounter ~ an epiphany, so to speak ~ with a stranger, Tracy gloms on to the concept and feeling of empowerment. She has changed her major to equip her with the skills required to travel the pathway to empowerment. She carries the blueprints for a foolproof heist and a scheme for avoiding capture.

She just needs to persuade her very reluctant grandmother Stella (Cherylandria Banks) and skeptical friends that robbing a bank is a piece of cake.

In an impassioned speech, Tracy echoes what, in the offstage world, has been a decades-long chorus of calls for economic justice ~ W. E. B. Du Bois’s The World and Africa (1946); Yale professor Boris Bittker’s The Case for Black Reparations (1972); and African-American scholar and activist Randall Robinson’s The Debt (2000). Each understood the connection between the economic impoverishment. of African-Americans and the enrichment and prosperity of American society over the course of four centuries. Each understood the broken promises that followed that of forty acres and a mule. Robinson accentuates the point, contending that if “African Americans will not be compensated for the massive wrongs and social injuries inflicted upon them by their governments [and, by corporations], during and after slavery, then there is no chance that America can solve its racial problems.”

The straw that breaks the sisterhood’s resistance is the local bank manager’s humiliating rejection of the NWOYE’s loan application. That and Tracy’s persuasive powers have succeeded in getting the team on board.

Once the church ladies resolve to join the caper, all bets are off and an uproarious comedy is on, filled with twists and turns and sparkling moments of hilarity. The sight of six women clad in black gangster suits, stealing in the dark of night, will not soon be forgotten, nor will Tracy’s final words in the play. Success breeds success.

Under the direction of Walter Belcher, a spirited ensemble of actresses (Cynnita Agent, Lydia Corbin, and Sylvia LaVonnte) joins Anacaona and Banks for what is, in every element of production, a finely tuned tale of justice that does justice to Ramona King’s vision.

Each performer has defined her character with precision ~ from Anacaona’s effective portrayal of Tracy’s mix of naivete, idealism, and determination to Agent’s sharp turn as a cigarette-smoking and outspoken smartass to Banks’s demeanor as a protective and stern grandparent.

When the members of the sisterhood free themselves from their inhibitions and trepidation in the name of justice, they are singing the spirit of the hymn for which the play is named.

STEAL AWAY runs through October 1st at the Helen K. Mason Performing Arts Center in Phoenix.

Black Theatre Troupe ~ Click Here ~ Helen K. Mason Performing Arts Center ~ 1333 E Washington Street, Phoenix, AZ ~ 602-258-8128

Graphic credit to BTT