A Florida police station in the middle of the night. Two parents searching for answers. AMERICAN SON is a gripping tale about who we are as a nation, and how we deal with family relationships, love, loss, and identity.
So you have to get past all that schematic writing to get to the deeper point, which is that racism poisons everything: marriages, justice, economic progress, decent black police officers, even hope for the American future. The two ex-spouses fight as proxies for their identities: Scott argues Kendra has encouraged the kid to be 'too black'; Kendra says the kid was mad at having been abandoned by his rich, white dad. The African-American cop is caught in the middle. The piece wrestles with crucial issues, and it's performed with enough intensity by Pasquale and Washington under Kenny Leon's theme-based direction that they effectively collide with your own prejudices, whoever you might be. You feel everything the characters feel, and, given the crisis we're all in, that has worth.
Playwright Demos-Brown is a clever phrase-maker, and he delights in using language that vividly illustrates the social and educational gulf between Larkin and Kendra. Lacking a common language, they fail to communicate on even the most basic level. The cop's awkward efforts to find out if Jamal goes by any other names is a sad but funny example of that lack of communication: 'If he was taken into custody under a different alias... Gave a different... you know... different from some other time... is all I'm sayin'...' The concept of a street name is so totally foreign to Kendra that she honestly doesn't understand what Officer Larkin is asking her.
| 2018 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Kerry Washington |
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