City's first black Equity company debuts with 'Detroit '67'

 Events that turned Detroit into a war zone in the summer of 1967 resonated with me as a Michigander in

far-away Cambridge, Mass., where I was a graduate student.  I went to a newsstand in Harvard Square known for its stock of newspapers from major cities, only to find the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press sold out. I had to play catch-up with the cataclysm in an era that now seems so remote when it comes to the way news is disseminated. I caught up with TV news on the fly, but typically for a student, I had no TV of my own.

"Detroit '67" is an imaginative look into the ways in which the summer turmoil wrenched from its moorings family life in the inner city. Attempts to restore civil order slid into violations of civil rights, continuing a pattern that has scarred African-American life to this day, as it had from emancipation on. In 1967 indignities that seemed matters of Motor City habit became both intensified and concentrated.

Dominique Morisseau's lengthy two-act drama has been mounted on the Russell Stage at Phoenix Cultural Centre as the first multi-performance production of the Naptown African American Theater Collective.  It's the first black-directed Equity company in the city, and it's a small personal pleasure to see "Naptown" used positively in the offhand way the nickname for Indianapolis  emerged in the early 20th

 century. The label, to my understanding, was never derogatory, though to some it has suggested the city was a sleepy burg.

My previous acquaintance with the playwright in Indianapolis centers mainly on two shows presented almost simultaneously in 2018.  In that review, I called attention to the verbosity of her characters: They do go on! But, as with the equally elaborate character studies in the plays of August Wilson, the extended delving into Morisseau's people doesn't wander off course, even when it's prolix. There's a dramatic core at the center of "Detroit '67," though the play, as I saw it on opening night Friday, envelops that core with too many words — especially in the second act.

The question that vexes a brother and sister  seeking to solidify their hold on the middle class through a wise use of inheritance money goes beyond disputes about making their after-hours club attractive to a clientele that wants more fun after  licensed places close up at night. It has to do with how much ambition needs to be reined in by prudence. Lank has the former quality; Chelle, the latter. 

Ennis Adams Jr. and LaKesha Lorene ably present the conflict in the first act: Play 45s or 8-track for recordings of the emerging Motown sound. That may seem trivial, but the choice involves investment and honoring their deceased parents' hard work. That lies at the crux of the sibling conflict. Chelle's view is "what we have is enough; let's hold on to it." But Lank's manner of earning a living is apparently illegitimate, and he would like to go into the bar business. He gets together with Sly, a neighborhood friend, played with winning vivacity by Daniel A. Martin.

Chelle's older, street-wise friend Bunny comes by to help out in preparing for the regular Saturday-night party. Dena L. Toler played the role with a maximum of sass, frequently drawing laughs from the capacity audience. The broad comedy in her portrayal accommodated with difficulty indications  in the second act that Bunny is more than superficial. But Morrisseau hesitates about leaving audiences on the surface of any character, and Toler was true to the need to reach deeper in her opening-night performance. 

Sara Castillo Dandurand completes the cast as Caroline, a white woman Lank and Sly find disoriented, bruised and battered on the street and bring home out of a compassion that's tested in the days she spends in the household. Out of gratitude she helps out, and gets a share of party proceeds as she recovers. From there, the complications of her presence are too intricate and revealing to share here. But the role believably manages the transition from a crime victim to a sympathetic character getting her bearings with her hosts' help.

D'yshe Mansfield's direction is sympathetic to the struggles of the brother and sister and to Caroline's unintended involvement in them, triggered by the destruction in the streets outside and the heavy-handed response to it. I wish the sound design had been more revealing and more consistent with the dramatic insights. Early Motown hits that are part of the characters' identity and are played at the beginning and during a crucial scene between Lank and Caroline sometimes vary in volume levels (which wouldn't happen of course if no one was touching the knobs). 

And the music is sometimes used to lend atmosphere with no indication that one of the characters is playing records. I get it insofar as the music is intended to make us feel that this is the soundtrack of the characters' lives, but it's a little confusing when onstage music playing blurs into the sound design as creation of atmosphere. And in the second act, only when the use of tanks was mentioned onstage was it clear what the occasional, brief rattling noise was supposed to be. But it would have been more fitting  if that ominous intrusion had been set in context with other distant noises: sirens, shouts, gunshots, window-smashing and so on.

Makeup and costuming are consistent and apt. Bunny's dress is considerably less revealing in the second act, just in time for the audience to take her character more seriously. Caroline's appearance is believably varied from her freshly battered appearance when she's first brought in, then a little more reflective of physical recovery and self-possession as time elapses. And, oh what a time that was, as America wrestled with still underaddressed problems of identity! Are we the nation of the New York Times' 1619 Project or of 1776? The jury's still out.

NOTICE SENT BY LAKESHA LORENE SATURDAY

Detroit ‘67 

Due to a medical emergency we will need to reschedule performances for Saturday, August 26 and Sunday August 27.

Please contact the Phoenix Box office at boxoffice@phoenixtheatre.org to get your tickets changed to another date or refunded.

Thank your time and understanding.