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Theatre in Review: Stick Fly (Cort Theatre)

Mekhi Phifer, Rosie Benton, Tracie Thomas, and Dulé Hill. Photo: Richard Termine.

The best thing about Stick Fly is that it introduces us to a talented new playwright named Lydia R. Diamond. The bad news is that Stick Fly may be not quite ready for Broadway.

Even so, Diamond has a distinct voice as a writer, and in Stick Fly she can chalk up the very rare achievement of putting members of the black upper middle class on a Broadway stage. The setting is an extremely posh Martha's Vineyard summer house where the members of the LeVay family are gathering for their summer sojourn. Given the number of secrets and controversies ready to pop out of their hiding places, it promises to be a real corker. First up is Kent, aka Spoon, who is defying his family's wishes to become a novelist. (His soon-to-be-published opus has a distinctly autobiographical tone-not likely to be a big hit with this crowd.) He's accompanied by his fiancée, Taylor, an entomologist with massive father issues and a pronounced tendency to go nuclear in the middle of a friendly argument. Spoon's brother, Harold, aka Flip, has a family-approved career as a plastic surgeon, but he shows up with Kimber, his white girlfriend --who, despite a degree in black studies, is an unreconstructed WASP right out of a script by A. R. Gurney. Oddly, Joe, the patriarch, appears without his wife (also the mother of Flip and Spoon); her absence becomes more glaring as the play unfolds. Just to make things interesting, Taylor and Flip, who once spent a night together, are thoroughly mortified to meet up again under these circumstances.

Clearly something -- and not just one thing -- is up, and, for all of Act I and part of Act II, Diamond has good fun probing the insecurities and entitlements of her distinctly overprivileged characters. "I had Dad's old Saab," says Flip, defensively, in response to a remark about Harvard boys and their BMWs. "Okay, did I say that out loud?," wonders a deeply embarrassed Taylor after she has unloaded a lifetime's worth of fury on Kimber during an argument about racism, feminism, and educating the underclasses. (Taylor's father was a Pulitzer-prize-winning social historian, but she was the product of his first, unsuccessful marriage, and spent her childhood on the far fringes of his glamorous life. Kimber responds by trapping Taylor into a guilt trip with a completely manufactured account of a family tragedy.) Even Cheryl, the daughter of the family housekeeper -- she's filling in for her ailing mother -- gets into the act. Commenting on the Flip-Kimber romance, she snaps, "I dated white boys, and I even liked some of them."

Cheryl, who, despite her relative youth, is nobody's fool, turns out to be harboring the biggest secret of all. Treated by the LeVays as something of a social engineering project, she's been sent to an exclusive private school in Manhattan and is poised for success in college. But there's the little matter of her true paternity, which, when revealed, sends shock waves through the household. In all likelihood, you won't be too surprised by the revelation -- it can be seen coming from a mile away -- but it marks the point where Stick Fly stops being a lively and observant comic character study and turns into a slick and mechanical family melodrama. Cheryl's news should be enough to blow the LeVays to smithereens; instead, it's an authorial device, used to wrap up the plot and bring down the curtain in rather disconcertingly tidy fashion.

Still, for three-quarters of its running time, Diamond's characters are a pleasure to be with. Joe is something of a professional bully, but he's surprisingly -- and convincingly -- ready to offer Taylor important insights into her troubles. Flip is a professional smoothie, but we get more than one glimpse of the unhappy man underneath, especially in a late-night kitchen encounter with Taylor that turns into a post-mortem for their brief romance. Writing with a facility that, oddly enough, reminded me at times of Alan Ayckbourn, Diamond has a deft hand at the comedy of embarrassment -- capturing her characters at moments of unplanned honesty -- skillfully juxtaposing scenes and using overlapping dialogue to good effect.

Kenny Leon's direction, aided by an impeccable cast, keeps the action humming along nicely. Dulé Hill captures Spoon's prickly nature -- the way he anticipates his father's disapproval -- as well as his confusion over Taylor's outbursts. There are telling traces of regret in Mekhi Phifer's Flip, despite his chic wardrobe and way with the ladies. Tracie Thoms is especially attractive as the volatile Taylor, still smarting from the way she was treated by her father 20 years earlier. Ruben Santiago-Hudson's Joe keeps you guessing, revealing a different side of himself every time you think you've got his number. Rosie Benton's no-nonsense manner is put to good use as Kimber, especially when she quietly informs Flip that she knows about him and Taylor. Best of all is Condola Rashad as Cheryl, strugging to keep the lid on while caring for the LeVays, and finally letting them know exactly what she thinks of them.

The action unfolds on David Gallo's gorgeously detailed setting, depicting the LeVays' living room -- a 19th-century New England beauty, covered with paintings by Romare Bearden -- kitchen (complete with sky light), and a bit of the backyard. Beverly Emmons' lighting fluently reshapes the space as needed, adding little grace notes such as the shadows of fluttering leaves on the house's exterior. Reggie Ray's costumes draw any number of subtle distinctions between the characters. Peter Fitzgerald's sound design is solidly done, but somebody should rein in the incidental music by Alicia Keys (one of the show's producers); it is too loud and is frequently allowed to go on too long.

Diamond has a number of interesting things to say about race, class, fathers and children, and male-female relationships -- especially when they are complicated by all of the above. This time, however, she may have taken on a bit more than she can handle. Stick Fly has the scope of a novel, but is structurally faulty; the curtain falls on an ending that feels overly manufactured. Still, it may be unsatisfying, it's never a bore; my guess is Diamond is a play or two away from writing something remarkable. --David Barbour


(15 December 2011)

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