Theatre [502]’s ‘River City’ has spectacular characters

“River City,” by Diana Grisanti, which opened last week in a moving, richly-entertaining local premiere by Theatre [502] production, is a journey of discovery.

Mary (Angela D. Williams) has recently lost her father. In the course of sorting through the detritus of his life, she comes across a scant handful of fascinating, mysterious artifacts. The questions they raise are so powerful that she disrupts her comfortable, well-planned life to set out on a quest that is at once both intensely personal in its details and grandly epic in its scope.

When we meet Mary, she’s living in Chicago with her husband, Javier (Lucas W. Adams, a near-celebrity chef). The couple is excited about things on the horizon, a baby on the way and the upcoming opening of Javier’s new restaurant. But for Mary, this promising future merely highlights her ignorance of the past. It turns out that she’s the dark-skinned daughter of a mixed-race marriage. After her white mother and African-American father divorced, Mary lived in an affluent Louisville suburb and maintained a friendly — but always distant — relationship with her father.

Papers and photographs offer hints about her father’s heritage and raising. They reveal that he was raised in an orphanage; old photos (including one of Muhammad Ali) hint at a life Mary can’t imagine but yearns to comprehend. So against her husband’s wishes, she heads to Louisville to investigate.

Grisanti’s script plays out in quick, clear tableaus that shift back and forth through time, tracing personal stories against the backdrop of political and social change in Louisville (in particular, a May 1968 incident in which Louisville police officers were first suspended and then reinstated, after being charged with the use of excessive force in the arrest in The West End of two African-Americans — neither of whom had committed a crime). We meet Mary’s father Edward (Jared Giles) as a strapping, happy confident youth. In the parlance of the time, he’s the only Negro in the orphanage, and Father Schroeder (Remy Sisk), a buttoned-down authoritarian thinks he “doesn’t fit in” and ought to be transferred. But in Edward’s corner there is the formidable Sister Alice (Rena Cherry Brown), a fierce, idealistic, fighting nun who has endured enough discrimination in her own right as an Italian immigrant that she knows how to resist.

Through Sister Alice’s machinations, Edward finds work in a West End radio-repair shop, where he’s taken under the wing of Whitney (Robert Thompson), a principled business man and organizer with a wonderful back story and a grand vision of the future.

Rather than venture into plot spoilers, I will observe that Grisanti has written some spectacular characters here. Each role is deftly and efficiently constructed, and even when they serve as archetypes for important ideas, they are deeply-imagined humans full of quirks and foibles that are entertaining in their own right.

Director Amy Attaway elicits glowing performances from this cast. As a couple, Williams and Adams veer from unabashedly giddy joy to deep mutual concern as they navigate through Mary’s troubled quest. Brown and Sisk (who ably play double roles) bring enormous conviction to their struggle for power over the young Edward — and Brown’s portrayal of Sister Alice is as inspiring as it is wickedly funny.

As Edward, Jared Giles is equally at home playing the happy innocence of a youngster and forceful power of a young man starting to think for himself. And Robert Thompson plays Whitney with extraordinary grace, calm and wit. There are excellent technical contributions from Hannah Allgeier (set design), Jesse Alford (lighting), Maggie McGrann (costumes) and Alex Cooper (sound). •

‘River City’ Through Oct. 15
Kentucky Center MeX Theatre
501 W. Main St.  |  566-5111
theatre502.org  |  $17-$22

‘Macbeth,’ unbridled theatrical genius

Under the direction of Les Waters, Actors Theatre of Louisville’s production of “Macbeth” offers a soaring, provocative take on one of the most powerful scripts in the canon. In the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Andrew Garman and Jessica Frances Dukes bring a majesty that only heightens the tension as they unearth the lurking kernels of corruption and madness that will eventually bring them down. The text spills over with images and ideas, but these two performers revel in the physicality of the roles. Earlier in this campaign cycle, a New York Times reporter was assigned to watch the first Trump-Clinton debate with the sound turned down and report on his impressions — which turned out to match what was transpiring. If you were to watch a silent version of this production, the visuals, too, would tell the tale. Extraordinary performances come from the entire cast. Especially noteworthy are Nicholas Hormann as the ingratiating doomed Duncan, King of Scotland; Che Ayende as Macbeth’s wronged companion Banquo; Laakan McHardy and young Vaughn Ramirez as the slaughtered wife and child of Macduff (Conrad Schott).

This is a production filled with memorable visuals and sounds. Some of those are created by Andrew Boyce (scenic design), Kristopher Castle (costumes), Mark Barton (lighting) and Christian Frederickson (music and sound).

But much of the impact of this production stems from Waters’ vision of the play, which employs unexpected devices to jolt our understanding of the supernatural elements in the production. Here, the supernatural is embodied in images of chilling power. He uses arrays of screaming witches; gives voice to evil portents through the tongues of innocent children; and creates a stunning procession that illustrates the prophecy that Banquo will father a line of kingly heirs.

And it is, I suppose, the collaboration of Waters with Fight Director Ryan Bourque that produces some of the most powerful (and for some, controversial) images in this production. Much of the violence is unbridled theatrical genius, as when after a battle blood drips from Macbeth’s fatal sword. One moment of surgical violence evoked gasps and laughter from the audience. Were they laughs of shock or mockery? I don’t know, but for me they brought an unexpected impact to a scene I’ve seen and read plenty of times before. •

“Macbeth” Through Oct. 26
Actors Theatre of Louisville
316 W. Main St.  |  584-1205
actorstheatre.org  |  Prices vary

This article appears in October 12, 2016.