Theatre in Review: Little Children Dream of God (Roundabout Underground)Little Children Dream of God begins with a very, very pregnant woman floating on a tire in the middle of the ocean. A refugee from Haiti, she soon turns up at a downmarket apartment house in Miami. Her name is Sula and she has been told that a man named Joel will help her start a new life in America. But Joel is in the hospital, dying, and instead she encounters Carolyn, a nurse and single mother of 11 who helps deliver Sula's baby. (And not a moment too soon; in her determination to have her child in the US, Sula says she has managed to hold onto the baby past term, carrying it for 11 months.) Carolyn puts Sula together with Joel's son, also named Joel, who promises to help her. But all is not right: Sula is haunted by nightmares in which she is menaced by a grown man who claims to be her baby. Also, as Carolyn quickly points out, Sula's baby doesn't cry; it merely stares in a fixed manner. And Carolyn, who claims to be married to God, announces that He has suddenly, swiftly departed for parts unknown. As you can probably tell, the first two or three scenes of Little Children Dream of God are quite a jumble of naturalistic and magical realist elements, and it would be inaccurate to say that playwright Jeff Augustin successfully juggles them throughout. But Augustin, a new name (to New York, anyway), is an original. He gives us characters and situations we haven't really seen before and, even when it stalls or jumps the rails, his play has an engaging quality that keeps us eager to find out what happens. Sula sets up housekeeping with Carolyn, and Joel gets her a job as a nanny working for his cousin Madison, who is married, assimilated, and a bit of a boozer. But Sula's existence is precarious, to say the least. Joel's father originally set up the apartment house as a kind of informal home for refugees, for whom he acted as a one-man aid agency. But now that he is dying, Joel's uncle has possession of the building, which is located in a gentrifying neighborhood, and he intends to redevelop it for a much better-heeled clientele. And, as Sula reluctantly reveals, she had plenty of reason to flee Haiti, including her past as a practitioner of the indigenous religion known as vodou, and her relationship with the baby's father, a government torturer who has come to retrieve her. The best thing about Little Children Dream of God is the gallery of distinctive characters that Augustin has dreamed up, all of whom are done justice under Giovanna Sardelli's direction, which goes a long way toward providing a solid foundation for the halfway house -- part fantasy, part naturalism -- that the playwright has constructed. Sula is both highly vulnerable and surprisingly tough-minded -- a combination that keeps us guessing about her, and Carra Patterson deftly captures both elements, especially in her first tentative steps toward romance. Her would-be lover is Joel, a good man whose attempt at living up to his father's legacy becomes increasingly difficult, given the rush of events; Maurice Jones lends him considerable charm without losing sight of his many flaws. The character of Carolyn barely makes any sense; how and with whom she managed to bear 11 children, all of whom are kept offstage, is never addressed. (She claims God is the father, but then she would.) But Deirdre O'Connell -- for my money, one of the finest character women in New York -- turns her into a believable fount of wisdom; she even makes halfway plausible the awkwardly inserted and never-explained device of Carolyn's intimate relationship with the Deity. There is also good work from Crystal Lucas-Perry, who is willing to use Sula to assuage her loneliness, but won't stand up to her father to help save Joel's building; Chris Myers, in the play's most clichéd role, as the in-house flamboyant gay; Gilbert Cruz as a mean, dying old codger who exists largely to help Augustin engineer a happy ending; and Carl Hendrick Louis as that menacing man from Sula's past. As mentioned above, Augustin manipulates his plot too obviously, and in several scenes he lets the characters gab for too long, making and remaking points that are already obvious. The play's more fantastic elements stick out like unhammered nails and they tilt the play in the direction of preciousness. But he is a real playwright, with a solid dramatic sense and theatrical ideas that, at least in this production, his colleagues make good use of. Andrew Boyce's set places a minimal number of furnishings in front of an agreeably garish street mural; it is transformed time and again by the carefully wrought palette of Gina Scherr's lighting. Boyce and Scherr also collaborate beautifully on two scenes that vividly depict Sula floating in the ocean at night. Jennifer Caprio's costumes are well suited to each character. M. L. Dogg's sound design blends a number of effects, including ocean waves, vodou drums, and squabbling children, which add a great deal to the overall atmosphere. In many ways, Little Children Dream of God is exactly the kind of play Roundabout Underground should be doing: a new work by a talented writer who perhaps hasn't quite hit his stride yet. Augustin is a name worth remembering, and whatever he does next will be well worth seeing.--David Barbour 
|
