Envy, racism and pure evil explode in “A Soldiers Play”

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The cast of “A Soldier’s Play” just rolled off the baseball field. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Created Off-Broadway by the Negro Ensemble Company at Theater Four in late 1981, Charles Fullers A Soldiers Play won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 – and had enough stamina that the original screenplay, with its electrifying closing line, made finally on the Broadway stage 39 years later, just before the pandemic shut it down. Now the touring production, with more than the usual cast of actors who appeared on West 42nd Street in the Tony Award-winning revival, is on stage for a two-week run at the Knight Theatre.

Set in 1944 in Fort Neal, Louisiana, this military thriller still sizzles. Bigoted white officers rule over rightly resentful black recruits, who are valued only for their baseball skill and saddled with the nastiest grunt work as soon as they triumphantly leave the diamond. It turns out that these baseball players’ deepest ambition isn’t to go undefeated and play against the New York Yankees. No, they are even more eager to be deployed to fight in Europe, where they will crush Hitler’s Nazi army and prove themselves – and their race.

And if you didn’t already know: All these beautiful athlete-soldiers can sing and dance.

Into this typical Deep South cauldron – stiffened with military spit and varnish, flavored with Jim Crow contempt and bitterness – Fuller dropped his nuclear core, inspired by Herman Melvilles Billy Budd.

Sergeant Vernon C. Waters and Private CJ Memphis are the counterparts of Melville Navy Petty Officer John Claggart and Foreman Billy Budd. Even more than Othello’s treacherous Lieutenant Iago, Claggart’s hatred of Billy was pure and unprovoked. Sergeant Waters, Fort Neal’s highest-ranking black soldier and manager of the impressive ball club, is a unique type of racist. Seeing himself and his subordinates through the eyes of his white superiors – and America in general – Waters reserves his deepest hatred for his own race.

Eugene Lee as Segréant Vernon C. Waters in “A Soldier’s Play”. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

In particular, Waters despises lazy, bowing and scratching, singing, clowning, and geechy Negroes whom he views as holding his race back. Waters applies the N-word to these soldiers with as much contempt as a white man would and makes it his mission to hunt them down diabolically. While greener envy is also at the heart of their shared DNA, Waters could be said to overshadow Claggart and Iago’s villainy, as Memphis is only the most recent of the Sergeant Kills.

By the time Captain Richard Davenport — also black, envoy from DC — arrives in Fort Neal, Memphis and Waters are dead. The mystery Davenport must now solve is who killed the sergeant? We have moved away from the tragedies of Billy Budd and Othello into the modern realm of murder mysteries and police procedurals. Murder victims must make as many enemies as possible so that Agatha Christies Hercule Poirot, Erle Stanley Gardners Perry Mason, SS Van Dines Philo Vance and all their novel and TV series descendants have as many suspects as possible to glean with brio.

Captain Charles Taylor, who is waving an all-white West Point graduation ring to welcome Davenport to the base, is amazed, suspicious and downright skeptical that this black officer is the right man for the job. Yet Taylor also has doubts about the widely held assumption that the KKK is responsible for Waters’ murder, which only multiplies Taylor’s skepticism. If white officers are to blame, how will Davenport get to the truth? Worse, if Black DC’s alien gathers enough evidence to indict a white man or white men – Waters was shot twice – how can the charge be expected to stand?

So the suspicion, skepticism, and open antagonism between Taylor and Davenport gradually turns out to be quite rational on both sides as it becomes increasingly clear that Taylor really wants to get rid of his bad apples. Whenever Norm Lewis as Davenport and William Connell are alone together, the tension between them crackles, culminating in Act 2 when they are nose to nose, ready to rumble.

William Connell as Captain Charles Taylor (left) and Norm Lewis as Captain Richard Davenport in ‘A Soldier’s Play’. (Photo by Joan Marcus’

The same goes for Eugene Lee as Waters, whenever he appears in flashbacks during Davenports’ interrogations. Unlike captains, Waters seems to relish matchups, not only to show who’s boss, but also as a go-to tool for trapping geechies he’s targeted for takedowns.

Aside from a fight with Tarik Lowe as PFC Peterson and his demonic taunting of Sheldon D. Brown as the persecuted Memphis, there are numerous episodes of cruel disrespect, scornful reprimands, arrogant orders and slander. stone-faced bullying for Lee to bend over.

Howard Overshown as Private James Wilkie gets as close to Waters’ confidant – and minion – as he can get, but only after the cruel monster strips Wilkie of the three stripes he earned in 10 years in the military. He can offer Davenport insight into Waters’ true feelings about his men.

There’s a certain sweetness, polish and deceptive acceptance to Overshowns’ portrayal as Wilkie seeks to win back Waters’ favor and those lost stripes, but we also catch a glimpse of the grudge and his seething resentment as the sadistic sergeant demands more and more of him. Little sympathy stems from Wilkies’ housemates, and certainly no love.

Norm Lewis as Captain Richard Davenport in “A Soldier’s Play”. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

And as he disintegrates late in life, Waters is watered down enough in a few flashbacks to return to base disheveled and drunk, ranting and delirious in the presence of white officers and, worst of all, ignoring their orders. So it’s a role that offers Lee a wide range of personal corruption to embody, from steely ferocity to weak-kneed drunkenness, with a few moments where we can sympathize a bit with the sergeants’ twisted point of view. .

Lee is nothing short of gorgeous. The only release we need to cut it is when Waters challenges Peterson to settle their clinch differences. It should be axiomatic for us, as it is for Peterson, that Waters is going to beat him, but Lowe is significantly younger and taller than Lee. Unlike the 1984 film adaptation (A Soldiers Story, screenplay by Fuller), where nothing less than Denzel Washington as Peterson clashes and loses the fist fight, the action here at The Knight draws no flashback, relegated backstage when Peterson follows Waters offstage.

Directing A Soldier’s Play here and on Broadway, Kenny Leon points out the advantages of the stage version over the film. In a way, Leon makes Fuller’s acting more classic than Melville or Shakespeare. Coming and going from their interrogations, the black soldiers observe a military regimentation so strict that it gradually becomes ceremonial. Each of them carves perfect perpendiculars entering and exiting Davenport’s office: left face entering twice, turning around once when the interrogation is over, and right face exiting twice. They all seem to be on exactly the same track, and they all greet so religiously that Davenport sometimes seems pissed off about it.

Whether these actions are proof of their respect for the higher ranks or a reverence reserved for the first black officer they have ever seen, we can easily recognize the difference when soldiers are out of uniform or under the command of the Waters. Discipline relaxes and these perpendiculars vanish. These differences are subtly taken up by the contrasts in the scenography by Derek Malones and the lighting by Allen Lee Hughess, bright and official for the captains’ offices, dark and gloomy for the barracks and camp beds.

The action is so engrossing and intense that we easily overlook Fuller’s plot flaws. There’s so much infighting on the base that it seems almost natural that a defining World War II moment should occur right in the middle of Davenport’s three-day investigation. We’ve also been so captivated by Lees’ ferocity, Connell’s reluctant evolution, and Lewis’ cool charisma that we fail to step back and realize Captain Taylor could have cracked this case even before Davenport didn’t. arrives from DC saying five simple words: Perform a full forensic examination.

Sheldon D Brown as CJ Memphis (far left) plays blues for his roommates, played by Branden Davon (middle) and Lindsay Will Adams, in A Soldier’s Play. (Photo by Joan Marcus.)

Of course, forensics wouldn’t have helped Memphis when a murder weapon was planted under his bed – unless some fool left his fingerprints there. Strumming a guitar and singing sweet blues, Brown is so powerfully carefree that we have no trouble believing he’s a unique talent on the baseball field, capable of hitting home runs with equal nonchalance. Even when Waters provokes him, Brown has the serenity of Memphis that gives way to spontaneity. There is an almost stammering misunderstanding towards Memphis at this peak that ties him to Billy Budd.

This primitive gloom we find in shoddy soldiers’ barracks helps us forget that scientific crime-solving dates back to the era of Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, not to mention Perry Mason’s forensic dramas born in the 1930s. , where ballistics experts have often testified. After Davenport’s diligent process, we were guided through a set of harrowing truths that remind us of how far we have come from the days of Jim Crow to Integration and beyond.

Yet, we were reminded of how the oppressors of old spawned descendants who still struggle to maintain control over non-whites and non-Christians. Their desperate efforts to fortify institutional racism and uphold white privilege keep full equality out of reach – even as it appears more clearly.

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