Theatre in Review: Rasheeda Speaking (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Theatre Center)

	Dianne Wiest, Tonya Pinkins. Photo: Monique Carboni

It is no exaggeration to say that Rasheeda Speaking is the trickiest new play in town. Looked at one way, it's the story of a small, rather squalid, human resources issue in a doctor's office. If that sounds a little dull, let me add that it plays like a psychological thriller and offers a mordant, and deadly accurate, comment about the state of race relations in America just now. Playwright Joel Drake Johnson has constructed a cagey cat-and-mouse game that is both very funny and a cry of despair.

Dr. David Williams, a surgeon with offices in a large hospital, has just promoted his assistant, Ileen Van Meter, to the position of office manager. It's not as big a deal as it sounds, as there is only one other employee, Jaclyn Saunders. And for all of the doctor's honeyed words and the cozy mutual appreciation he shares with Ileen, the promotion comes with a stiff price. Williams is unhappy with Jaclyn -- he thinks she has an attitude problem -- and, guided by the HR department, he wants to build a case against her. Ileen is to keep a notebook filled with evidence of any perceived misbehavior; after protesting that Jaclyn is really an excellent worker, Ileen very reluctantly agrees.

Then Jaclyn enters, after five days' sick leave, and the situation instantly comes into sharper focus. She is a collection of live electric wires in human form, a big, brassy presence who is blissfully unaware of her many irritating qualities. She bullies Ileen about the unwatered state of the office greenery, and complains vociferously about the three-hole punch left on her desk. She corrects Williams when he calls her "Jackie," reminding him -- not for the first time -- that she prefers her full name, thank you. (And, as he has already noted, she doesn't look him in the eye.) She blames the bad air in the office for her illness, producing a small fan and healing crystal to keep her well, along with the Bible that she ostentatiously unwraps and leaves on her desk.

The instant Jaclyn hears about Ileen's promotion, her antennae go up. Later on, she goes on high alert when Williams tells her that she can skip their ritual morning patient meetings -- Ileen will tell her anything she needs to know. By now, she is bluntly telling Ileen, "He doesn't like to socialize with black people." Ileen tries to smooth things over, but already she's feeling the debilitating effects of her own bad faith. Jaclyn, who can smell a lie at fifty paces, begins to batter the increasingly guilt-ridden Ileen with her suspicions. She also gaslights her, rearranging the contents of her desk drawers and pretending to know nothing about it. Before long, Ileen is collapsing under the pressure; at her husband's advice, she comes to work with a gun in her purse.

The cunning thing about Johnson's play is that every bit of information that he offers forces you to consider the situation anew. Jaclyn can be hard to take -- a few minutes with her and I was ready to call human resources -- but, early on, her affection for Ileen seems real. She is hyperefficient at some tasks, such as data entry, her immaculate desk making a stark contrast to the mess proliferating in Ileen's area. Then again, Jaclyn's people skills are perilously lacking, as we see when she humiliates an elderly patient with a worrisome tumor. This scene is a small masterpiece of passive-aggression; by following the rules to a T -- in a totally tonally incorrect way -- she nearly reduces the poor woman to tears.

On the other hand, Williams is a pretty skilled manipulator, forcing Ileen to do his dirty work, and is sexist, to boot. (He refers to Ileen, who is old enough to be his mother, as "my right-hand girl.") And Ileen, who is terrified of conflict, keeps on lying, making herself ill in the process. Nothing can be addressed because no one can speak candidly; because race has been added to the agenda, such communication is impossible. Then again, Jaclyn isn't entirely free of prejudice, herself; she is forever complaining about her Mexican neighbors and their shifty ways, terrorizing Ileen with stories of the little girl next door's sexual abuse and suicide. Or, given the way the details of the story keep changing, maybe Jaclyn is making the whole thing up.

Johnson will keep you guessing up until the final scene, in which Jaclyn triumphs over her antagonists in what will surely prove to be a pyrrhic victory. The author applies a technique similar to John Patrick Shanley's Doubt -- telling you only so much about the characters, and daring you to make a judgment -- to a racially charged situation, with results that provoked both shocked laughter and gasps at the performance I attended.

And, guided by Cynthia Nixon -- who here demonstrates considerable skill as a director -- the entire cast delivers acutely sensitive performances in which the tiniest gestures and shifts of tone serve as alarm bells signaling ugly conflicts to come. Tonya Pinkins has always been a formidable presence on stage, but nothing she has done can quite prepare you for her Jaclyn, a woman brutally toughened by a lifetime of standing up to injustices large and small. The sound of her fingernails furiously hitting the computer keyboard is faintly alarming -- like Madame Defarge with her knitting needles -- as is her furiously breezy way of dealing with others and her willingness to fight the most minor battle to the bitter end. And, in what is surely a career highlight, she bares Jaclyn's anguish in a volcanic monologue describing the fury and humiliation she experiences on the bus to work, listening to white middle-management types refer to any working-class black woman as "Rasheeda."

Dianne Wiest proves an ideal partner as the motherly, conflict-averse Ileen, who, as Jaclyn correctly intuits, has a slight crush on the doctor. At first, it's easy to feel for Ileen as Jaclyn makes her life hellish, even as she slips into a terrible decline from which she emerges with a menacing new persona. She all but implodes in front of us, until you wonder what she won't do to escape Jaclyn. Darren Goldstein is equally stellar in the smaller role of Williams, whose deeply entitled, casually dismissive attitude sets the whole disaster in motion. And Patricia Conolly has a perfectly judged cameo as one of Williams' patients, a sweet old lady who unthinkingly stuns Jaclyn with a grotesquely racist remark.

Nixon has also obtained first-rate work from her design team. Allen Moyer's office setting is photographically exact, down to the last detail, matched by Jennifer Tipton's institutional lighting. Toni-Leslie James' costume designs for Pinkins prove to be a reliable index of Jaclyn's moods, especially her attention-getting transformation in the final scene. David Van Tieghem's sound design provides fine reinforcement for his percussive incidental music.

It's not every day that a playwright is willing to lay bare the long-held assumptions and festering wounds that poison our national conversation about race, let alone do it with such wit and mastery of theatrical craft. Not since Clybourne Park has anyone managed it, in my experience. Like that play, Rasheeda Speaking is likely to make many people uncomfortable; it's a real conversation starter. Let the discussion begin.--David Barbour