Review: THE COFFIN MAKER Deftly Blends Genres at Pittsburgh Public Theater

Folks, this is a first. I've been writing reviews for BWW for about ten years now, and rarely have I seen a new work that so deftly and fearlessly blends genres and tones together. Director Monteze Freeland and playwright Mark Clayton Southers have achieved the impossible: The Coffin Maker is an exercise in theatrical flexibility that truly must be seen to be understood. I was reminded again and again of two modern auteurs: Quentin Tarantino, for his love of violent and subversive neo-westerns and bottle drama; and Ryan Coogler, for his unflinching looks at race and injustice within "genre" conventions. The Coffin Maker is the play you'd get if those two visionaries collaborated.

Lawrence Ebitt (Garbie Dukes) is a freedman who works as an undertaker with his still-enslaved wife Eula (Robin R. McGee) on the outskirts of Indian Territory. The two of them are getting older, and have all but given up on the thought of purchasing Eula's walking papers, when a chance encounter with bounty hunter Hollister (Randy Kovitz) brings the body of a well-known outlaw and serial killer (Brandon St. Clair) to their slab. The trouble is, the so-called Dead Man isn't as dead as he seems. Let's just say, "chaos ensues."

After about the halfway point in Act 1, the play begins to shift genre not only scene to scene but sometimes page to page. It alternates rapidly between comedy and tragedy, social commentary and slapstic, horror and domestic drama. For one brief, glorious moment (thanks to fight choreographer José Pérez IV), it even turns into the densely-choreographed prop-heavy chaos of professional wrestling. Despite this ever-shifting tone, there is no sense of mood whiplash or unevenness; rather, Freeland runs his actors through Southers's text with confident assurance that the audience will gladly go along for the ride.

Garbie Dukes and Robin R. McGee anchor the play as the Ebitts, blending a good-humored warmth with genuine emotion. They have the chemistry that typically only comes with long-running sitcom couples; you feel as though you know them inside and out, and still want to spend all your time with them. Both of them have excellent comic timing, and yet can instantly turn around and break your heart when the tone shifts under them. Randy Kovitz, as bounty hunter Hollister, is clearly playing the villian, but this is no two-dimensional melodrama: he gives us just enough glimpses of humanity that we hesitate to cheer outright for his demise. (The moral quandry of "he who fights monsters is in danger of becoming one" is a HUGE part of this show's headspace.) Connor McCanlus provides great comci relief in Act 2 as a daffy, bubbleheaded photographer. He seems to be the very definition of innocent bystander, but the play is intent on interrogating whether there is such a thing as an innocent bystander at all. 

And then there's Brandon St. Clair, as the Dead Man. From the minute he rises from the slab, the whole play belongs to St. Clair. Saddled with an extraordinarily demanding series of speeches, monologues and grand declarations, St. Clair embraces the genre conventions just enough to live up to the material without chewing scenery. The Dead Man walks the fine line between vigilante and serial killer, between antihero and outright villain. There are shades of Killmonger in Black Panther in the way the Dead Man makes his case for extreme-measures violence; in St. Clair's chilling, galvanizing potrayal you are as afraid to endorse him as you are to condemn him. 

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