The Fires

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Raja Feather Kelly, an award-winning choreographer of recent Broadway musicals A Strange Loop and Lempicka, as well as Teeth, the recent Playwrights Horizons success imminently getting a commercial Off-Broadway run, makes his debut as a playwright with The Fires, a work drenched in sorrow. The play examines three, actually four, Black men who inhabit the same third floor South Brooklyn railroad apartment in vastly different eras: 1974, 1998 and 2021.

We meet these men in scenes that happen for the most part simultaneously across the length of the entire railroad apartment. Jay and his lover George (1974) could be in the bedroom while Sam (1998) is found reading at the kitchen table and Eli is making his Grindr connections on the couch in the living room (2021). This is not to say there isn’t the considerable crossover of actors into the various spaces. Aside from the unused fireplace used as a library in 1974 and the artificial fireplace in 2021, the apartment looks the same over the course of the 47 years.

Jay, age 40, is a writer/poet, focused on finishing a new work about love with the goddess Aphrodite as his heroine. He is somewhat “unwell” in that people did not speak as freely about mental illness as they do now. His lover George, 30, unbeknownst to Jay, has abandoned a young wife to live with him full-time. George loves to be in love and is being truer to himself in his relationship with Jay than he could have ever been with his wife Leslie. Unfortunately, Jay is committed to ending his own life once he completes the piece that he is writing. True romantics will wonder why George’s love and devotion can’t be enough for Jay to hang in there and work on being a happier person, but therein lies the mystery of the inner workings of a mind that is set.

Sam, 20, is George’s son 24 years later. He now lives alone in the apartment that Jay shared with George. Upon Jay’s death, the apartment was left to George. It is unknown how much time George actually spent in the apartment, and for what purpose, once Jay died. It may have just laid there but it is probably more correct to assume he used it as a place to write. Sam is an aspiring writer who feels he is completely misunderstood. We meet Sam’s sister Rowan, age 14, who is funny, precocious and loves to dote on her brother, and their mother Leslie, 50, who loves her family and is faithful to the memory of her husband. They check in on the agoraphobic Sam every day while he is still grieving over the death of his father.

Eli, 34, is an aspiring writer, currently employed by blogs that discuss male culture. He is always horny, turning tricks with the pizza delivery boy as often as he hooks up with men on Grindr. Maurice, an artist also in his 30s, has a reputation for being everyone’s “goodtime boy” for lack of a better term (their mutual friend Billy speaks candidly of the one time he “had” Maurice), yet Maurice is a romantic at heart and has his sights set on Eli if only they could be on the same page.

Kelly works wonders of moving actors seamlessly through the set with the audience not having to think twice about characters from two different decades sharing space on the bed or the couch. The suspension of disbelief is easy. The only difficulty at times is keeping focus as two scenes are played at the same time and sitting centrally in the room may be akin to watching tennis from the vantage point of the net. Thankfully the actors are blocked in such a way that actors dimmed are rarely if ever blocking audience view of other scenes. This forethought comes from Kelly’s experience as a choreographer.

The play is rich in its characters. They are all people we can care about even as we may grow impatient with an expected denouement. As Jay, Phillip James Brannon plays up the complexity of a person who even though he is happy now has already planned how he will end his own life. There are moments in his scenes with Ronald Peet as George that we actually have hope that their love will see them through this, but Brannon’s inner unhappiness is underlined by how many times the character lays his head down on the table while writing. In comparison, Peet may have fun in his two cameos: as Sean, the sexy pizza delivery boy, and Kayne, the hot Grindr guy, both in the Eli scenes, as a relief from George’s energy which must always be up as he needs to keep up the spirits of two people. The moment when he finally confesses that he has abandoned a wife to be with Jay is utter heartbreak. Peet is convincingly torn between two duties, each situation leaving him still a little incomplete as a whole person. Jason Veasey, as Jay’s older brother Reggie, is effective as a sibling who would rather his brother wasn’t this way…not just gay, but damaged as well.

Sheldon Best is touching in his portrayal of Sam. Perhaps understanding who his father was would have given him the impetus to get on with his life. We see Best grasping at George’s secrets while canvassing the journals. Janelle McDermoth is delightful as Rowan, and her moments alone with her brother paint a young adult wiser and kinder beyond her years. McDermoth returns in the Eli scenes as the friend that lets Eli stay at her late brother’s apartment. Her upset at Eli moving furniture around is poignant as it moves her that much further away from the memory of her brother.

Michelle Wilson as Leslie is the quintessential steel magnolia who holds it all together. We detect that little bit of doubt as she confirms her husband wasn’t gay on more than one occasion, but it is a performance for her children keeping the memory of their father untarnished regardless of the hints laying all over the apartment he once shared with another man. This was more than just a once “on the down-low.” Reading her son’s letter in the final scene is something she has prepared for yet the tears rip the façade to shreds.

As Eli, Beau Badu gives what at first seems a slick heel performance of a man who has allowed his looks and his body to call the shots his entire life. We are allowed in as he peels away the layers of a man who despite the sexual exploits walks away from each assignation feeling more bitter and lonelier than ever. As Jay and George’s journals have never left the apartment he discovers their content quite by accident. A quick reprimand from Rowan prevents him from coldly making the journals fodder for his blogs. We see the gradual effect of the content awakening in him a resolve to get his emotional life back on track.

Enter Maurice…who everybody has had. A recent hookup of theirs has left an imprint for both of them that they just can’t ignore. Jon-Michael Reese gives a beautifully nuanced portrayal of Maurice, a man who just wants to run away with someone, away from all the pretense and negativity that keeps people from truly falling in love. His sights are set on Eli as he sees another creative soul that can inspire him as he can in turn inspire Eli.

A fun moment has Reese, while on the phone with Eli, climb into the audience (as we have now become a movie theater) to watch the ending of a film…an ending he has never been able to withstand before. In essence, the performance he is watching is that of George and Jay’s closing moments sometime before Jay takes his own life. He provides an explanation for why he feels he needs to see this through to the end all the while being urged by Eli to come over (with or without the pizza). Veasey provides a hilarious cameo as Billy whose detailing when Maurice came over provides the linchpin for Eli to make his move for a future with Maurice.

Raphael Mishler’s scenic design for this production is breathtaking. It goes the full length of the auditorium in a deep scarlet. Even the journals buried in the depth of the bedroom fireplace and those sitting all over the apartment share that color. Bryan Ealey’s lighting design creates depth even when there is none as the actors can almost reach across and shake hands with the audience. Ealey is sensitive to the palette he is working with and creates beautiful effects throughout the performance. The costume design of Naoko Nagata and Enver Chakartash is careful to remind us of the eras the characters live in. Salvador Zamora’s sound design is attentive to the eras as well with Eli’s shoutouts to his various Alexa playlists getting the big laughs of the evening.

Kelly has created a vibrant and provocative piece that takes the wraps off buried homosexuality amongst black males as well as the stigmas of mental illness and depression. One would hope a piece like this that has so much to say gets a longer run, bringing its valuable message to a larger audience.

The Fires (extended through June 30, 2024)

Soho Rep

46 Walker Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.sohorep.org

Running time: one hour and 55 minutes with no intermission