Make way for a new kind of historical drama
Father Comes Home from the Wars Royal Court Theatre Downstairs
They like to think big in the States. First seen to acclaim at the Public Theater in New York two years ago, Suzan-Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 and 3) is a very full standalone evening in itself – a threehour slice of brutal life set in the first half of the American Civil War. But it’s also the start of an intended nine-part opus that will take its audience through to the post-Iraq present day.
Parks was the first African-American woman to get the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, in 2002. Despite her accolades, her monumental aspirations, plus the implied grandeur of “Parts 1, 2 and 3” (each is actually more like a long act), the piece, restaged at the Royal Court by Jo Bonney with a largely British cast, is remarkably accessible.
It draws on Greek antecedents: a chorus of slaves, a protagonist called Hero (later Ulysses), a rival to him in a fellow slave called Homer. You might even detect shades of Agamemnon returning to Argos when “Ulysses” finds his way home after doing battle, unwillingly, on the confederate side for his white colonel “Boss-Master”, his affections altered.
Yet the piece is more “street” than scholastic: the language playful, contemporary-poetic, witty, too. Parks passes her mythic-feeling story through a modern-day lens, reflected in costuming that encompasses period detail and modern-day casual-wear. The characters deliver asides and addresses straight at us.
Set in front of a Texan slave cabin, Part 1 is the most satisfying hour of the trio even though Hero (Steve Toussaint, magnificently intent, oakstrong and grizzled) has yet to decide whether to head off for war with his master or stay put. Go and he might earn his freedom, or die; stay and he will suffer punishment and shame. He toys with mutilating himself – poises a knife over his foot. His aged adoptive father (Leo Wringer, terrific) urges him to fight; his wife Penny (Nadine Marshall, just right, too) wants him to save his skin. Jimmy Akingbola’s watchful Homer, already hobbled, wryly sums up the negligible choice: “Two sides of the same coin/ And the coin ain’t even in your pocket.”
A similar dilemma ensues in Part 2 when Hero and his white master (John Stahl, all arrogant self-possession and insinuated cruelty) preside over a captured, wounded unionist captain (a wincing Tom Bateman) who urges Hero to grab hold of freedom. Yet the latter can hardly see past his conditioning: “Where’s the beauty in being worth nothing?”, he asks.
The triptych then veers towards the surreal in the final section, with the nakedly theatrical device of an actor playing a talking dog called Odyssey (a panting, very funny Dex Lee).
A bit much? Perhaps. Overlong? Yes. But Parks does have something to say, and has found a loose-limbed and lyrical way of saying it. She thrillingly leads the charge for a new kind of “historical” drama.