![]() ![]() “Thoughts of a Colored Man” shares clear lineage with another restless and expressive probing of Black interiority and outward entrapment, Ntozake Shange’s 1975 “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” a revival of which is aiming for Broadway this spring. ![]() A scene at Wisdom’s old-school barbershop gathers the guys in a rare group interaction, more toward the purpose of traversing a roadmap of pressing social issues - redlining, the tyrannies of Black consumerism, homophobia - than generating character-driven drama. Scott favors language - verse, rhythm, rhyme - over action, and the men expound on their interior lives more often into the middle distance than in dynamic relation to one another. On a set by Robert Brill featuring a giant billboard as a kind of blank canvas, our primary encounters with each man come in the form of direct address, through which their backstories and resulting perspectives are mostly spelled out rather than illustrated. © 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc.Most of the men know each other from around the neighborhood (Fort Greene or nearby, for eyes trained on Sven Ortel’s projections), and Scott hangs the play’s chronology on quotidian happenstance: a morning jog, a midday work break, coaching after-school basketball. It makes sense that a show about scrappy, lovable people got a scrappy, lovable production. Many a sleek, ultra-bright British import is guilty of that offense. But - you know what? - too many shows these days are being polished by auteurs until they’re indistinct, textureless blobs. Characters’ entrances and exits feel arbitrary and the stage could be used more dynamically. Believably handled? No.Īnger’s later speech about his own failed b-ball career, part of a crescendo to an emotional ending, is more powerful and fleshes out the character better.Īt times I wished director Steve Broadnax III’s staging, set in the shadow of a billboard on which many locations are projected, was a tad more polished. Anger, for instance, is a college basketball coach and delivers a monologue in which he’s frustrated that one of his players already has an endorsement deal - and a diamond-studded watch - per the new NCAA rules. Some scenes feel hastily written and don’t connect full-throatedly to the big picture. Wisdom, meanwhile, is an African immigrant in his 60s who runs the block’s barbershop, and the magnetic Pritchett lends the play a grounding moral authority. ‘Six’ finally opens on Broadway - and it’s a royal good time ![]() In an instant, he’s mad, shy, tickled or piercingly awkward. The performer, who was last on Broadway a decade ago in the shattering Kander and Ebb musical “The Scottsboro Boys,” jumps from emotional extreme to emotional extreme like a kid stomping in puddles. McClendon is an especially fascinating actor to watch. The character stocks fancy grocery store aisles to help support his brother, and all day he’s forced to act chipper for whiny customers who can’t find the kombucha. Left to right: Tristan “Mack” Wilds, Dyllón Burnside, Forrest McClendon and Da’Vinchi in “Thoughts of a Colored Man.” Julieta CervantesĪs Depression, McClendon hits home the hardest. “Why is struggle synonymous with being black?” he asks. ![]() Happiness just moved to a fabulous high-rise apartment with his boyfriend and feels ostracized from his community because he’s gay and makes good money. Scott also makes the point that not every person’s life experience in this nabe is the same. Find me a 35-year-old who can’t relate to debt and purposelessness. The 20-year-old is obsessed with no-strings sex, while the lost man in his mid-30s finds life increasingly hard to bear as bills pile up.Īnd that’s what’s most successful about Scott’s writing - his ability to be both street-corner specific and universal at the same time. The men’s names in the script are Passion (Luke James), Love (Dyllón Burnside), Lust (Da’Vinchi), Happiness (Bryan Terrell Clark), Anger (Tristan “Mack” Wilds), Depression (Forrest McClendon) and Wisdom (Esau Pritchett) - don’t worry, they don’t call each other that - and their monickers pair with their ages. With its contentious BK setting and poetic language, “Thoughts” can come across as a Spike Lee joint that has no affiliation to Spike Lee. ![]()
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