The Best of All Possible Intentions: Yellow Face and Good Bones
7 / 10
Generosity is also a key ingredient in the mortar that holds together Good Bones, the new play from James Ijames now debuting at the Public after a run last year at Washington, D.C.’s Studio Theatre. Like Hwang, Ijames is concerned with questions not only of race and bias but of how Americans are perhaps more shaped by the idea of Americanness than shapers of it. Good intentions, hero complexes, defensive individuality, susceptibility to certain ideas of progress — on these fronts, DHH and Aisha, Ijames’s protagonist, might have much to discuss. It’s prickly territory, but, in their different ways, Hwang and Ijames both navigate it with humor and humanity. Fundamentally, and despite plenty of reasons to throw in the towel, they like people.
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