Steve H. Broadnax III

Sally & Tom

April 29, 2024

In the very first scene it becomes apparent that we are watching "The Pursuit of Happiness," a new play from the Good Company, an indie theater group that has been known for radical and experimental work that no one came to see but now wants to reach a wider audience and find a producer who will foot the bill. African American playwright Luce is in an unmarried relationship with her director and costar Mike, similar to that of Sally and Tom whom they are playing, and just like Sally Hemings who bore Jefferson six children, Luce discovers that she is pregnant. The play alternates between scenes backstage among the actors in their dressing rooms and onstage as they rehearse the play with opening night only two days away, making changes as they go along. [more]

Sunset Baby

February 20, 2024

"Ain't nothin' sentimental about a dead revolution." Wearing a too-short, too-tight dress, shiny thigh-high boots, and a long fuchsia wig, the twentysomething Nina (Moses Ingram) attempts to plunge these words like a dagger straight into her estranged father's idealistic heart, which has survived a long prison stretch for an armored truck robbery committed decades ago to aid the Black liberation movement. Coming early in Signature Theatre's revival of Dominique Morisseau's "Sunset Baby," it's obvious Nina's flinty declaration will never be genuinely up for debate--at least not for Nina--nor should the audience get even passingly optimistic about a dewy-eyed mending of the broken familial bond between Nina and the recently freed Kenyatta (Russell Hornsby). It's a lot to so quickly take off the dramatic table, but the unrelenting Morisseau does it forthrightly and thoroughly to serve the play's one overriding objective: being true to Nina. [more]

Thoughts of a Colored Man

October 20, 2021

Keenan Scott II’s engrossing Broadway debut play, Thought of a Colored Man, appears to be a masculine version of Ntozake Shange’s 1976 "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf" updated to 2021. Both plays have seven unnamed characters all the same gender, take place in 20 scenes, and mix poetry, prose and dialogue. However, Scott’s play develops characters that each have a through line and they encounter each other as members of the same Brooklyn community. Set on one Friday from 6 AM to 1 AM the next morning in a Brooklyn community experiencing gentrification, we meet seven African American men in various combinations each given a monologue addressed directly at the audience to tell us part of their stories. In the final scene, they announce their names (Love, Happiness, Wisdom, Lust, Passion, Depression and Anger) but by then most of these appellations have become obvious. [more]

The Hot Wing King

March 6, 2020

“Spicy. Cajun. Alfredo. With Bourbon Infused. Crumbled. Bacon” is the hoped-for path to victory for the pivotal Memphis cooking competition in award-winning playwright Katori Hall’s uplifting "The Hot Wing King," where comedy and drama deftly converge. Strained relationships, personal despair and camaraderie among gay and straight black men are all dramatized in this rewarding contemporary work that has echoes of the wit and pathos of Mart Crowley’s "The Boys in the Band." [more]

Travisville

October 21, 2018

Mr. Harper’s taut construction, solid plotting and detailed characters all yield to a suspenseful, emotionally shattering and entertaining experience. As in the works of Henrik Ibsen, Arthur Miller and August Wilson, Harper makes valid rationales for both sides of the arguments that are being fought. [more]