REVIEW: A sterling revival of “A Soldier’s Play” at Roundabout Theatre Company

David Alan Grier, Blair Underwood, and Billy Eugene Jones in “A Soldier’s Play”. Photo by Joan Marcus

“A Soldier’s Play” starts with a murder. 

Army Sergeant Vernon C. Waters is shot twice in the chest and head by an unidentified assailant.  What follows is a thrilling and tautly constructed procedural as the Army launches a quest for the truth amid a flurry of flashbacks and interviews with the privates in his platoon.

Of course, it’s not that simple. 

It’s 1944—the height of World War II.  Sergeant Waters (David Alan Grier) is a black commissioned officer serving in a still-segregated Army.  At the fictional Fort Neal in Central Louisiana, the deep South, Waters is responsible for an all-black regiment that just so happens to form a championship-worthy baseball team, that’s when they aren’t busy doing the most undesirable tasks on base foisted upon them by their white counterparts.

Was Waters lynched?  Is his murder the all-too-familiar work of the Ku Klux Klan?  Who wanted him dead?

When Captain Richard Davenport (Blair Underwood), a black lawyer and military officer, arrives to conduct the investigation under the watchful eye of his equal and opposite, Captain Charles Taylor (Jerry O’Connell), a skeptical and resentful white officer, their clashes escalate as Davenport coolly proceeds to unpack the mystery of Waters’ murder.

Lying at the intersection of race, racism, justice, military history, and still burning questions of black identity, equality, and community in America, Charles Fuller’s “A Soldier’s Play”, which opened January 21st at Roundabout Theatre Company’s American Airlines Theatre on Broadway, is a complex and piercing story told with breathtaking precision and eye-opening humanity. 

This dazzling new production under the helm of director Kenny Leon easily marks one of the best presentations by Roundabout in recent years, as well as a long-overdue Broadway debut for the piece.

“A Soldier’s Play” premiered at the Negro Ensemble Company in 1981, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1982, and went on to run an impressive 468 performances Off-Broadway before being adapted for the big screen as “A Soldier’s Story” in 1984, picking up a handful of Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations.

Jerry O'Connell and Blair Underwood. Photo by Joan Marcus

Among Mr. Fuller’s many achievements with this play is his ability to construct a police procedural that remains unpredictable till the very end while simultaneously touching on a host of contentious political and social questions without ever becoming didactic or strident.

Resurrecting this gem of a play now, nearly forty years since its debut and in a moment awash in burgeoning conversations about race in America, is a brilliant programming decision for which the audience is the true beneficiary.

Mr. Leon, a master at managing space and bodies, reimagines the piece with musical and kinetic gestures that result in a captivating and fluid production that traverses time—both internally, through flashbacks, and thematically, as a 1940s period piece written in the 1980s that is still vividly speaking to us in 2020.

His work is matched by a terrific ensemble, led by Mr. Grier and Mr. Underwood, who individually paint compelling and poignant portraits of the servicemen.  Nnamdi Asomugha, McKinley Belcher III, Rob Demery, Jared Grimes, Billy Eugene Jones, Warner Miller, and J. Alphonse Nicholson play young black men serving in a segregated institution on behalf of a deeply racist country, each navigating their own past and present amid a fraught milieu, code-switching for survival.

Under Mr. Leon’s keen direction, each actor graces his character with their own sense of personality, dignity, and humanity, exploring the complexities of their varied identities.  Most intriguing, at the heart of the story is an examination of Sergeant Waters’ own internalized prejudice toward his fellow black men whom he sees as embarrassments to their race.  Before being shot, he shouts, amid drunken laughter, “they still hate you!”—chilling words that take on added meaning as the mystery of his murder is solved.

Rob Demery, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and McKinley Belcher III. Photo by Joan Marcus

While seeing this play, and watching a very specific dynamic unfold between Davenport and Taylor—a black officer asserting his power and position in a space historically if not presently dominated by white men resentful and dismissive of his power and position—two recent events came to mind.

The seething indignation I observed on the faces and tongues of now-Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Attorney General Bill Barr—two white men of privilege and power—as they were questioned in U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings by California Senator Kamala Harris, a black and Indian woman, tracked almost moment-for-moment with scenes involving Davenport, Taylor, and other white characters disdainful of their black brethren.

The memory of those hearings is just one of the myriad, striking ways in which “A Soldier’s Play” remains in conversation with the present, alongside seemingly-daily examples of racist behavior toward African Americans, in addition to ongoing episodes of police violence and a national crisis of incarceration of black men.

I wish it weren’t the case that Mr. Fuller’s extraordinary play felt so relevant, but Roundabout Theatre Company’s sterling revival proves what the Pulitzer Prize Board presciently observed in 1982, and I doubt a better production will be seen on the boards for some time.

Bottom Line: Roundabout Theatre Company presents a sterling revival and Broadway debut of Charles Fuller’s 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Soldier’s Play”, a thrilling and tautly constructed military murder mystery set among the segregated barracks of an Army base in 1944 Central Louisiana.  Kenny Leon directs a terrific ensemble, led by David Alan Grier and Blair Underwood, in one of the best productions Roundabout has presented in recent memory.
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“A Soldier’s Play”
Roundabout Theatre Company
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036

Running Time: 1 hour and 50 minutes (one intermission)
Opening Night: January 21, 2020
Final Performance: March 15, 2020
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