It’s worth the wait for this howl of rage
Trouble In Mind (National Theatre, Dorfman) Verdict: Worth the trouble ★★★★✩
HAD ALICE Childress been willing to cut the bits of her 1955 off-Broadway hit attacking white entitlement and racism, she would have been the first black woman playwright to have a play staged on Broadway.
She refused. More than six decades later, Trouble In Mind has premiered simultaneously on Broadway and at the National Theatre. Better late than never. Nancy Medina’s revival reveals a work that has lost none of its power. Such is its relevance, it might have been penned yesterday.
Black actor Wiletta’s thrilled inhalation of breath as she walks into the theatre, in this play about the making of a play, is the sound of someone coming home.
As the company gathers for the first day of rehearsals, she advises John, the black youngster, to laugh at everything the white folks say as ‘it makes them feel superior’.
Too right. Rory Keenan’s white director thinks he is fearlessly liberal and egalitarian but hasn’t noticed that in this clunky melodrama, by a white playwright, the interesting characters are white while the black ones are grotesque stereotypes.
For Wiletta, a lifetime of professional humiliation combined with the idiocy of being told to find the ‘truth’ in a poorly written ‘mammy’ role — in which she bows and scrapes to her white betters — proves too much. ‘I want to be an actress!’ she cries, eyes glistening with rage. The argument that ensues exposes the extent of prejudice and white privilege she faces.
In the play’s final scene, Tanya Moodie’s blazing Wiletta bends and pushes the stage forward and then stands in the centre, owning the space she deserves and also the taped applause, which is then taken up by the live audience.
It is a potent metaphor. Wiletta is both herself and Moodie, and all those who have taken up this cause and changed the face of theatre. Moving and triumphant.