3/28/2015 MARCUS; OR THE SECRET OF SWEET Actors Express
****½ ( A )
BAYOU MYTHOS
Back in 2008, the Alliance Theatre staged Tarell Alvin McCraney's "In the Red and Brown Water," a fiercely poetic piece that took archetypes and myths from Yoruba traditions and applied them to a contemporary story set in the Urban South. I remember being seriously impressed with the first half, then not a little disappointed when the myth proved to be an uncomfortable fit with the contemporary story. Mr. McCraney has since written two more plays in what he calls "The Brother/Sister Plays," and one, "Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet" is enjoying a marvelously beautiful production at Actors Express.
We are in the bayous of Louisiana, and a hurricane is coming. Marcus Eshu is a young man at a crossroads -- he is determined to learn the nature of his long-lost father, afraid that he may have inherited his father's "Sweet," his penchant for preferring men to women. Haunted by dreams, Marcus is given solace by his friends Shaunta and Osha, who have conflicted reactions to his quest. Marcus’s mother, Oba, is blind to him, and does what she can to protect him from himself. Stir into the gumbo a mysterious stranger from the Bronx, an older spell-caster named Elegua, an uncle with secrets of his own, and a "dream figure" who may or may not be a trickster from legend. It all bubbles and brews and swirls with liquid lyricism and concludes on a (mostly) satisfying note that is fair to the characters and to the archetypes they embody.
The real star here, is Mr. McCraney's dialogue and structure and plotting. Stage directions are spoken, subtexts are made not-so-"sub," dreams and prophecy and memory blur into one, friendship and betrayal dance in a cruel waltz, seduction is wet and sloppy, and the bayou forest emerges as an enchanted realm, a place for growing, for regression, for discovery, for sanctuary. Credit Kat Conley's marvelously evocative set with its silhouettes and matching shadows, with its bodies of water (yes, the cast will get wet on this ride). Credit Rebecca M.K. Makus' lighting design with its pools of light and shadow, with its blue-and-green world of fantasy and memory. The production looks great, sounds great, and rests warmly in the mind days after the final bows.
Credit especially Terry Guest for giving us a compellingly attractive Marcus, a kid who is experiencing an every-man yearning for who-am-I certainty, a quest older-us recognize as fundamentally doomed. Mr. Guest is wonderful at finding that just-adolescent innocence, that fear-of-the-next-step that wages war with all the desires that take root, that wonder at the new-complexity of what-were-once simple friendships, that frustration at the strictures put on him by a mother-who-can-never-really-know-him. He has a number of epic soliloquies that drift into the bayou like drowsy butterflies, only to land in our minds like crossbow bolts.
He is supported by a dream-ensemble including Enoch King (Ogun), Ashley Tate (Shaunta), Bernadine Mitchell (Elegua), Falashay Pearson (Osha), and Tiffany Mitchenor (Oba). Shon Middlebrooks is sly and enticing as Shua, the object-of-desire of more characters than one, and Avery Sharpe and Olubaja Sonubi fill the cast in smaller but still-distinctive parts.
"Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet" never lets us forget we are watching a play, never lets us forget we are watching the modern incarnation of a primal story, lets us rediscover the awe of sitting in a group as the story-tellers weave their ritual, pull us into their fire-and-water-lit world.
It is a stunningly beautiful play, a profoundly moving experience. And what could be sweeter than that?
-- Brad Rudy (BKRudy@aol.com @bk_rudy #DramaturgsRule)