[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of the award-winning Actors Co-op Theatre Company’s Trouble in Mind written by Alice Childress, directed by Kimberly Hébert Gregory and produced by Crystal Yvonne Jackson.
To say this play is timely is rather an understatement. But then it’s been timely since well before it was ever written and first produced Off-Broadway in 1955. The play revolves around Wiletta Mayer, a Black actress working in the fifties. She finally gets a lead role in a Broadway play, along with a fine group of black actors. It’s a new play about a lynching in the South. Hopeful, she arrives early on the first day of rehearsal, ready to work, excited to create a strong female character, only to be met by the same narrow view of who a Black mother should be. After days of struggling to connect to the role the director wants her to play and how, through her own lens, she sees this mother’s heartache, she reaches her limit despite the rest of the cast’s pleas and the director’s ire.
The entire play is set in a theatre, on a bare stage set only with a few chairs and a table or two. We watch the cast as they rehearse, their white male director, although familiar with many of them through theatre is, of course, unable to truly relate. He has his own story to tell and it is not theirs. His interpretation of the material is limited by his experience and bias and although he maintains he is not prejudiced. How could he not be…even a little, given the times they all lived in? It’s the unintentional bias, the naïve racism maintaining the status quo that is more dangerous than white supremacy in that it normalizes and excuses and ultimately makes a deal for a tolerated peace as if that is the best that can be done.
This is an extraordinary play produced by a company that regularly exceeds the highest of expectations. The cast is utterly sublime. Each inhabits their roles as if they were born to play them…or perhaps because what seems like ‘play’ is reality still.
I’m always blown away by what the Actors Co-op presents. Not just because of the caliber of the work, but also in the choices they make in the plays they produce. Trouble in Mind is so epic in subject and yet it still so specific centering on one woman battling within herself, deciding not to settle for what everyone else thinks she should. She has reached her limit. She has chosen ‘no.’ Which, as we know all too well, can be the hardest thing we have ever done.
Trouble in Mind is a phenomenal, beautiful, intense, and ultimately revelatory play. We see ourselves in every character. The bullying director, his naive down downtrodden nephew assistant, the beloved doorman, the fresh face ingenue nervous and innocent and falling in love with the young Black leading man. And the veteran actors are all thrilled to still be working and yet the saddest victors you have ever seen.
It’s a truly excellent production and I can’t recommend it enough. Please, please go and see this play. See it for the writing. See it for the performances. See it for the story it tells. But see it.
Tickets:
https://ci.ovationtix.com/35603
When:
October 4-November 10
Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 2:30pm
Additional Saturday matinees at 2:30pm on October 12 and October 19
Where:
760 North Gower St., Hollywood, CA 90028
The Cast
The cast features the talents of Rodrick Jean-Charles (Sheldon Forrester), John Marzilli (Bill O’Wray), Larry Eisenberg (Henry), Freedom (John Nevins), Sophia Kalugin (Judy Sears), Spencer Rowe (Al Manners), Brendan Shannon (Eddie Fenton), Lorinda Hawkins Smith (Millie Davis), and Kimi Walker (Wiletta Mayer).
The Team
The production team includes Kimberly Hébert Gregory (Director), Crystal Yvonne Jackson (Producer), Chloe Babbes (Technical Director), Joel Daavid (Set Designer/Builder), Martha Carter (Lighting Designer) and Fernando Gonzalez (Assistant Lighting Designer), Wendell C. Carmichael (Costume Designer), Marc Antonio Pritchett (Sound Designer), Emmett Lee Merritt (Prop Master), Judy Lewin (Hair/Wig/Make-up), Jessica Woehler (PR Director), Zarah Ferrer (Stage Manager) and Kira Daehlin (Assistant Stage Manager).