Neighbors

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Neighbors

at the Public Theater as part of Public LAB

Reviewed by Erik Haagensen

March 08, 2010

Photo by Ari Mintz

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was a member of the 2009 Public Theater Emerging Writers Group. Well, he's not emerging anymore. Jacobs-Jenkins has arrived with a big old bang with "Neighbors," a grandly theatrical, highly subversive, and immensely intelligent play that takes a long hard look at our supposedly post-racial society. It's easy to understand why the Public suddenly extended the run of this Public LAB workshop offering and opened the show for critical review. When you've got it, flaunt it.

Set in "a distorted present," "Neighbors" tells the story of what happens when the Crows, a family of black minstrels--Mammy; her gay brother, Zip Coon; and her teenage children, Sambo, Jim, and Topsy--moves into an upscale neighborhood. They find themselves next door to an uptight African-American academic named Richard Patterson; his lonely stay-at-home white wife, Jean; and their hormonal 15-year-old daughter, the whip-smart Melody. Richard takes one look at the Crows, all in full blackface makeup and caricatured clothes, through his backdoor window and mutters, "Niggers," to well-meaning liberal Jean's shock. Soon enough, the kindly Zip is bonding with Jean over herbal tea and poetry while misfit teenagers Jim and Melody are falling in love. The increasingly infuriated Richard comes more and more unhinged, fearing that his carefully planned future will be upended when his university bosses see his family associating with such trash. Jean, in turn, is bewildered by her husband's attitude and becomes obsessed with racial issues she's never considered. Meanwhile, the Crows blithely go about their business of preparing for their next minstrel show, though young Jim, heretofore the act's stage manager, resists stepping into the parts once played by his now-deceased father.

Jacobs-Jenkins combines vivid character writing and potent monologues with ambitious metatheatrics that include outrageous minstrel interludes, highly conceptual stage pictures, and a spectacular use of symbolism. It's no accident that Richard's specialty is Aristotle. Jacobs-Jenkins clearly knows his "Poetics" well, even peppering his dialogue with references to "penultimate scenes" and "soliloquizing," but he uses that knowledge to free himself from constraint, creating a unique and highly satisfying way to tell his story and dramatize his themes.

He appears to have an ideal collaborator in director Niegel Smith, who paces the nearly three-hour proceedings beautifully and whose imaginative staging supports the text at every turn. Smith gets crucial aid from Mimi Lien's highly creative and fluid set-on-a-shoestring, Gabriel Berry's wonderfully go-for-broke costumes, Peter West's laser-sharp lighting, and Ryan Rumery and Christian Frederickson's invaluably mood-enhancing sound design.

The talented company grounds its work in emotional truth while never shying from the larger-than-life aspects of the writing. Eric Jordan Young stands out as the courtly Zip, who may not be quite as friendly as he seems. He and the earnestly sympathetic Birgit Huppuch as Jean give their scenes together an arrestingly loopy awkwardness and charm. Huppuch also scores big in her hilariously desperate second-act monologue about white women's sexual fantasies regarding black men. As Mammy, Sambo, and Topsy, Tonye Patano, Okieriete Onaodowan, and Jocelyn Bioh enthusiastically embrace caricature without sacrificing humanity. Danielle Davenport and Brandon Gill make a fetching pair of young lovers, each convincingly in the throes of adolescence. Chris McKinney probably has the hardest job as the stuffy, unlikable Richard. The actor unravels well, finding just enough vulnerability in Richard to keep us from dismissing him. McKinney's subtle work leads to a devastating final scene that is quite simply one of the most original things I've encountered in a lifetime of theatergoing.

It's always exciting to welcome a bracing new voice to the American theater. I hope we'll be hearing a lot more from Jacobs-Jenkins, and for a long time to come. We need him.

Presented by and at the Public Theater as part of Public LAB, 425 Lafayette St., NYC. March 7& 11;14. Tue. and Sun., 7 p.m.; Wed.& Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 2 p.m. (212) 967-7555 or www. publictheater.org. Casting by Jordan Thaler, Heidi Griffiths, Amber Wakefield.