Lighting out for the territory: IRT's 'Flyin' West' puts real feet under the dream of black freedom

Sophie waxes eloquent about Nicodemus as skeptical Leah listens.

When Huckleberry Finn resolves to light out for the territory at the end of his book, he does so to escape the limitations of civilized life as conceived in mid-19th-century Missouri. Mark Twain's story makes it clear Huck has also learned much about white-skin privilege along the way, and despite its daunting and frequent use of a now-banned word, the novel has much to teach us still about the heavy toll racism takes on all Americans, even those who endorse it.

Seen from the present day and with a setting somewhat later and to the west, Pearl Cleage's "Flyin' West" is an explicit drama about the damage to the souls of black folk (W.E.B. Du Bois' phrase) in the post-slavery decades, as Jim Crow laws increasingly gripped the defeated Confederacy. The playwright holds up the historical example of 1890 Nicodemus, Kansas, through the fictional stories of three sisters and an elderly "aunt," refugees from Memphis, Tennessee. Their mission in their new home is to live among their own and resist the break-up of the young all-black community in the face of manipulation by speculators.

Indiana Repertory Theatre is bringing back the play in a new production as part of its 50th-anniversary season. The victory finally achieved through the characters' collective efforts has the suspense and lurid development of classic melodrama. The outcome is similar to the denouement of another Southern family play, Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes," but with a happier result.

Helpful neighbor pitches woo to middle sister.

The script is rich in perspectives on race, including "colorism" and the multifaceted checks on black achievement by persistent discrimination and oppression. The displacement of the prairie's original inhabitants is a shadowy part of the story, hanging fatalistically over the transitory nature of minority-group thriving. And though "Flyin' West" only hints at it, white settlers as well were to be headed for ruin and displacement by capitalist machinations: As the Dust Bowl bard Woody Guthrie noted decades later, "some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen." 

Director Raelle Myrick-Hodges draws from her cast performances that are vivid and dramatically telling. The style is of a heightened realism that recalls the tone and rhythms of melodrama. It makes sense, for instance, for Dwandra Nicole Lampkin to come downstage to tell Miss Leah's chilling story directly to the audience. The fourth wall is not often broken in this play, though audiences are prepared for it by some brief narrative guidance as the two-act production gets under way.

Proud poet and adoring wife are welcomed by Fannie.

An elderly woman deeply scarred by slavery, Miss Leah is yet a resilient older inhabitant of the small town, to which three sisters, led by the feisty Sophie (LaKesha Lorene), have come with fierce dreams of independence. 

The  youngest, Minnie (Kayla Mary Jane), has been away, living as a newlywed in London, where she has been effectively brainwashed by visions of black freedom in the larger white world. She and her husband (Allen Tedder), a stuffy, "dicty" poet with a commanding manner, come to town hiding a troubled history as a couple. Thanks to Frank's ambitious vanity, they see their lighter complexions as passports to a life away from racial limitations. 

In a middle position, with a genuine but naive dignity and self-possession crucial to her survival, is Fannie (L'Oreal Lampley), smitten with the bashful attentions of a neighborly suitor, Wil Parish (Enoch King).

Pearls of wit and wisdom, resolve, and conversational adeptness characterize the acting, with crisp delivery and well-modulated emotion and intelligence the norm. I thought that in the first act some slight pauses between the more arresting thoughts would have suited Sunday's performance. Then, at intermission, I read Cleage's clear statement that "I purposely people my plays with fast-talking, quick thinking black women since the theatre is, for me, one of the few places where we have a chance to get an uninterrupted word in edgewise." Fair enough: Myrick-Hodges' direction is unmistakably consonant with the playwright's purposes. In a modern political context, I thought from an old white man's perspective of the style of Shirley Chisholm, whose fast talking and quick thinking were admired by many Americans, white as well as black. 

View of the homestead suggests prospects for growth.

I saw IRT's first production of "Flyin' West" in 1994, and believe through the haze of a fading memory that the new one is better. The visual elements, including the clarity and smoothness of scene changes (thanks to the use of a revolving platform for different sides of the women's home) were admirable. The distant view of the wooded parts of the prairie reinforced the attractiveness of the setting for the milieu of agricultural fertility and civic peace. Junghyun Georgia Lee's scenic design, complemented by the warmth and variety of Thom Weaver's lighting, made an indelible impression throughout. Levonne Lindsay's costumes helped characterize the very individualized women who drive the action, as well as the two vastly distinctive men. 

The performances stood out for the high degree to which they were embedded in the melodramatic style. Complementing this achievement was the wonderful ebb and flow of audience response that the Sunday matinee attendees displayed. There was almost a well-distributed "amen corner," apt for the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth. This was a consistently engaged audience, never disruptive but in total rapport with the action. To its credit, I might add semi-facetiously, it resisted the temptation to hiss the villain at the curtain call: Tedder was as deserving of the ovation as everybody else taking a bow.  

[Photos by Zach Rosing]