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Theatre in Review: Sweat (The Public Theater)

James Colby, Carlos Albán, Miriam Shor, Michelle Wilson. Photo: Joan Marcus

This fall, The Public Theater provides you with all the election coverage you really need. I don't mean the day-to-day reporting of who is up or down in the polls, nor the steady drip-drip-drip of scandal, real or imagined. But, in certain recent productions, the company has dug deep, getting at the disaffections, resentments, and cavernous cultural divides that have brought our country to this fraught, even frightening, place. As he did with his Apple Family plays, Richard Nelson's Gabriel Family cycle explores the fading hopes of middle-class liberals and creative artists, who feel lost in county dominated by the superrich. Now comes Sweat, in which Lynn Nottage probes the economic shifts that have gutted American industrial cities, transforming them into moonscapes littered with empty buildings, homeless shelters, and addiction treatment centers. If you want to understand why Donald Trump is within shouting distance of the White House, a visit to the Public is mandated.

The play begins on a dark, angry note, in 2008: Evan, a parole officer, is seen counseling two of his clients: Jason, who is white, is clearly in a bad way, even without the evidence of his racist attitudes and facial tattoos. He is struggling to find a home and job, can't stay off drugs, and has enormous anger-management problems. Chris, who is black, is also seeking work, so far without hope; it kills him to admit to his prison record. Currently, he cleans up at a church in exchange for a place to sleep. He clutches his Bible like a life preserver. Both Jason and Chris, not yet 30, are broken men, and a single incident caused them both to spiral down.

The action flashes back to 2000, to a working-class bar in Reading Pennsylvania. We are introduced to Cynthia, Tracey, and Jessie, best friends since forever, who work the floor at Olstead's, a steel tubing manufacturer. As young women, they followed their parents into the plants, where, they were told, good union jobs would provide them with steady livings. The work is hard and repetitious, and all three are entering middle age. As Cynthia notes, "I go home and my hands are frozen, I can't even hold a frying pan. I gotta rub 'em together for an hour before they even move." Still, the promise has held; all three ladies are doing more than all right, and Jason and Chris, whose mothers are, respectively, Tracey and Cynthia, constitute the latest generation to hit the factory floor.

But signs of change are on the horizon, many of them the result of structural changes to the economy wrought by NAFTA and other agents of globalization. Cynthia's marriage to Brucie has crumbled, thanks to his addictions, which have been egged on by unemployment: The local textile plant has been locked out to union workers for ninety-three weeks, following their refusal to take a fifty-percent pay cut. As Brucie bitterly notes, at 49, his life is all but over: "My pop didn't go through this shit. I mean, he...he clocked in every day until he didn't, and went out with a nice package. He went on an 18-day cruise through the Greek Islands last October. Me, shit, I run the full mile, I put in the time, do the right thing, don't get me wrong, I had some good years...But, dude, tell me what I did wrong, huh?"

In addition, Chris is making plans to attend the local college, get a degree, and become a history teacher, an ambition that fills Jason first with scorn and later with fear at the thought of being left behind by his best friend. And when the announcement comes that the company is looking at floor workers for the position of warehouse supervisor, Cynthia is quick to apply -- and she urges Tracey to do the same. After all, if either of them gets the job, it will be better for everybody, right?

Tracey is skeptical, but goes along with the plan, partly as a lark, partly to appease her friend. But when Cynthia gets the job, tiny, but real, fault lines begin to appear. "I betcha they wanted a minority," Tracey says. "I'm not prejudice [sic], but that's how things are going these days. I got eyes. They get tax breaks or something." She airs her anger to Oscar, the bar's Colombian-American kitchen busboy, adding, "C'mon... you guys coming over here, you can get a job faster than...." Oscar tersely notes he was born in the US, but Tracey is unimpressed: "Yeah? Well, my family's been here since the '20s, okay? They built the house that I live in. They built this town."

This atmosphere of simmering discontent boils over when management starts requesting major cuts to salaries and benefits and, suddenly, Cynthia is the woman in the middle, caught between her bosses and friends. She argues, vigorously, that Tracey and the others are better off with a friendly face arguing for them -- she even indiscreetly shares with them information about management's intentions -- but it's no good. The friendly atmosphere turns rancid; the little bar becomes a minefield of varying alliances. When the point of no return is reached, Cynthia is the hatchet woman. "I locked out my friends," she says, in anguish. "I explained, I fought, I begged. But those cowards upstairs still had me tape a note to the door telling 'em they weren't welcome." By this point, Tracey's suspicions are eating away at Cynthia: "I can't help wondering whether they gave me this job on purpose. 'Dump the shit on her,' so they can stay in their air-conditioned offices."

In less than a year, the fabric of a functioning, even prosperous, community is torn to shreds, and an entire class of people who played by the rules all their lives find that not only has the game been changed, they aren't even considered players anymore. ("It's like the whole place just shut down for business," Cynthia says, talking about the town.) Thrown out of work, their cash quickly disappearing, faced with few if any opportunities for retraining, and still clinging to the dream that somehow their jobs can be taken back -- even after the company removes half of the factory's machinery in cloak of night -- once-fast friends turn on each other, exposing racial and class resentments that only prove self-destructive. From here, it's easy to step to a situation that spirals into violence, maiming Jason and Chris' lives.

Nottage has a real feeling for these people -- how they talk, how they drink, and the memories and social myths that underpin their lives -- letting us enjoy them just enough so we will feel their pain as things fall apart. Under Kate Whoriskey's direction, Johanna Day, tough and wisecracking as Tracey, and Michelle Wilson, canny and confident as Cynthia, make a perfectly matched pair of leads, their growing enmity a terrible thing to behold. Equally fine are Will Pullen as Jason, his flippant attitude marking him as Tracey's son, and Khris Davis as Chris, his earnest self-improvement plans marking him unmistakably Cynthia's offspring. Carlos Albán is affecting as Oscar, whose decision to take a non-union job at Olmstead's triggers the climax. (Fed up with making peanuts at the bar -- and taking abuse for it, he tells the others, "I been trying to get into that shop for two years. And each time I asked any of 'em, I get nothing but push back. So now, I'm willing to be a little flexible and they ain't.") And solid contributions are made by Lance Coadie Williams as Evan; James Colby as Stan, the bartender, who tries to keep the peace among his customers; and John Earl Jelks as Brucie, his lost, wasted appearance a harbinger of things to come.

John Lee Beatty's set whisks us from the minimally rendered local jail to the stunningly detailed bar in a matter of seconds, the transitions facilitated by Jeff Sugg's deeply evocative video images of steel-town cityscapes. Peter Kaczorowski lights both sets with his usual meticulous attention to naturalistic detail. Jennifer Moeller's costumes are both accurate for the times and place and in terms of each character; note, for example, the subtle changes in Cynthia's wardrobe after she takes on that supervisor job.

Sweat only confirms what should have been obvious all long, that Nottage is one of the most accomplished -- perhaps the most accomplished -- playwright working in America today. It's difficult to think of another writer who has, in succession, turned out a quartet of plays as varied and as mordant as Intimate Apparel; Ruined; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; and now Sweat. This time, she scores a direct hit on one of our society's most exposed nerves. The message of Sweat is a powerful one -- and we ignore it at our peril. - David Barbour


(4 November 2016)

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