‘ LETTHERE BE LOVE’
British playwright Kwame Kwei- Armah plumbs the minefield of yearning and resentment that can rot family ties over time. Anchored by a bittersweet performance by Carl Lumbly, this is an intimate and tender drama directed by Maria Mileaf in its regional premiere at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater.
Alfred ( Lumbly) is a bit of a curmudgeon. A graying West Indian immigrant living alone in London, he’s on the outs with most of those he should be holding dear.
In a blazing- fast digital world, Alfred clings to the old ways. He cherishes jazz, which blares from his gramophone, but he has little fondness for his feisty daughter, Gemma ( Donnetta Lavinia Grays). He scolds her for wasting opportunities an immigrant like himself could never dream of.
Lumbly shows off his signature quiet intensity as a man losing his moorings to society. He has sealed himself off from dreary, gray London weather within the colorful walls of his crumbling row house ( evocative set by Daniel Ostling).
Stubborn and bitter to the core, Alfred seems to take pleasure in pushing loved ones away. When his weary daughter asks, “Do you like anyone, Dad?” he replies, “Yes. Me.”
Only when a new caregiver, Alfred, a reclusiveWest Indian man living in London ( Carl Lumbly, left) finds his cloistered world opened when caregiver Maria ( Greta Wohlrabe) enters his life in “Let There Be Love.” a recent Polish immigrant named Maria ( Greta Wohlrabe), breaches his walls does he realize how cut off from life he has become.
Her willingness to listen to his stories draws the old man out, and in the buried memories of his past, he begins to glimpse redemption. One of his principle salvations is Lillie, his gramophone. Music is his last and most enduring connection to the thrill of being alive.
“You have a problem in this world,” he advises Maria, who has an abusive boyfriend, “Nat King Cole and Lillie guaranteed to have the answer.”
Indeed, it may be seem a little too good to be true when Maria’s hope and exuberance begin to coax Alfred out of hermit mode. There are certainly times when the playwright edges out of insight and into sentimentality, the first act drags a bit, By Kwame Kwei- Armah, presented by American Conservatory Theater Through: May 3 Where: Geary Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes, one intermission Tickets: $ 20-$ 105; 415- 749- 2228, www. act- sf. org and there should be more fire in the conflicts between Alfred and Gemma.
But this drama has the power to move us. Wohlrabe exudes warmth and vivaciousness with such sincerity that the bond that forms between Alfred and Maria is quite disarming.
For his part, Lumbly, who has long been a stalwart of Bay Area stages ( and is also known to many for his roles in TV’s “Cagney & Lacey,” “The Returned” and “Alias”), invests the character with such rich detail and emotion that you can’t help wanting to see Alfred find a way out of his self- imposed exile. The actor finds a lyricism in Alfred’s rants, even in his offensive tirades about other immigrants, that makes his racism seem all too human. He also finds a way to make Alfred’s frailty, the adversity of his aging, palpable.
All of that nuance lends weight to the drama as Kwei- Armah explores the unsettling territory of endoflife issues so sensitively that Alfred’s journey leads us to ponder our own.
Contact Karen D’Souza at 408- 271- 3772. Read her at www. mercurynews. com/ karen- dsouza, and follow her at Twitter. com/ karendsouza4.