All tagged Kenny Leon
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.
“American Son”, a gripping new play on Broadway, is piercingly of the moment, thunderously bleak, written in all caps, and indulgently depressing. Kerry Washington gives a devastating performance as a black mother living the nightmare of her son interacting with the police, but blunt writing provides shorthanded dialogue and characterizations that are unrealistic and convenient—tooled for the sake of advancing arguments, and provoking the audience, rather effectively serving a coherent social or political mission.
“Children of a Lesser God” is one play whose sell-by date has definitely passed; even given embers of a still burning debate about deaf culture and identity, this plodding and clinical revival is dull, stale, unremarkable, and problematic in its treatment of a relationship between a deaf student and her teacher. Despite strong performances by TV’s Joshua Jackson and deaf actor Lauren Ridloff, skip this one.
