Finding sense of hope in ‘A Soldier’s Play’
Broadway star Norm Lewis says show, set in 1944, has themes parallel to today
Charles Fuller’s “A Soldier’s Play,” a murder mystery set on a segregated U.S. Army base in 1944, had an unusually long path to Broadway following its premiere by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1981. After winning a Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1982 and being adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film in 1984, the show finally debuted on Broadway in January 2020 in a Roundabout Theatre Company production that won a Tony Award for best revival of a play.
A Black playwright and screenwriter from Philadelphia, Fuller lived long enough to see his work on Broadway but died in October 2022, two months before the national tour of Roundabout’s production began performances. This tour comes to the CIBC Theatre for two weeks in April with the lead role played by Norm Lewis, a Broadway star whose lengthy resume includes “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Misérables,” “Once on This Island” and “Porgy and Bess.”
Speaking to the Tribune ahead of the show’s Chicago run, Lewis said Fuller is “underrated — very much so.” When presented with the opportunity to appear in this play, under the direction of his longtime friend Kenny Leon, his answer was “a definite yes.” He considers the tour to be in honor of Fuller: “I never got a chance to meet him, but I’m so proud and honored to be saying his words.”
“A Soldier’s Play” opens with the murder of Sgt. Vernon C. Waters, a Black noncommissioned officer on an army base in Louisiana. Lewis plays Capt. Richard Davenport, a lawyer who graduated from Howard University and now serves in the military police. When he is assigned to investigate the homicide, Davenport represents the first Black
officer that most of the men on base, Black or white, have ever seen.
Structured as a police procedural, the show centers on Davenport’s interrogations, which are interspersed with flashbacks to the events leading up to Waters’ death. But the play is much more than a crime drama; it sheds light on the history of segregation and racism — both on a systemic and individual level — in the U.S. Army and broader American society. An army veteran himself, Fuller often focused on African American history in his works; some are based on actual events while others, including “A Soldier’s Play,” are fiction with deep historical roots.
“The story itself is told through Black eyes,” Lewis said. “I think that that’s one reason why it’s so important to get this message out around the country, because it is telling our story.”
Without giving away too much of the plot, he noted that there are many parallels between the play’s themes and current events. “History repeats itself,” he said. “You have to understand the history to move forward. People right now are trying to erase our story, which is upsetting. And also, there’s a lot of self-loathing that’s within this story — trying to be what someone thinks they should be in order to be accepted — so this show goes really deep within many different elements of what Black people go through in our society.”
Lewis hopes bringing this show around the country will increase understanding and spark important conversations. He recalls that when he was in college, many of his white classmates had never spoken with a Black person until they met him. “They’d seen people in their community, but they’d never gone up to them and talked to them, and they were shocked by how I spoke or how I acted.”
“A lot of people are still going through that,” he continued. “There are pockets around this country [where] people down’t experience each other culturally. This show will give you just a little sense, just a little taste, of
what people have gone through — what they continue to go through.”
Lewis also shared a quotation from Eugene Lee, who plays Sergeant Waters on the tour
and was also part of the original Negro Ensemble cast, alongside a young Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson. “One of his most quotable lines is that ‘You can’t hate anything that you understand,’ ” Lewis said. “So, if you come to this show with an open heart and an open mind, hopefully, you will understand a little bit better.”
The cast feels the weight of sharing this history onstage, and they have bonded through the process. “In theater, you open your whole soul and your heart on that stage and during the rehearsal period,” Lewis explained. “You become close very quickly.” Offstage, the ensemble continues to develop a strong sense of community, and they pray before going onstage. “There’s a sense of responsibility of telling the truth and honoring these men,” he said. “We hold each other accountable to do that.”
Leon’s “beautifully crafted” staging features more music than the original production, said Lewis. The script calls for one of the enlisted men, Private C.J. Memphis (Sheldon D. Brown), to sing and play the guitar, but Leon’s ensemble of soldiers also sings work songs that were typically sung by imprisoned Black men. This music reflects the nature of Black soldiers’ status in the army during this period, noted Lewis. Instead of being properly trained in preparation for combat, they were assigned to clean up details and other menial tasks. “It was kind of like being a prisoner,” he said.
Leon helped the cast push through some difficult moments in rehearsals, particularly the white actors who play racist characters. When they rehearsed offensive lines — one actor has to say a racial slur nine times per show — Leon encouraged them to “use every privilege that you have because that’s how people were at that time,” Lewis recalled. “You have to bring the truth to this audience and to this story,” Leon told them.
Ultimately, Lewis would like audiences to come away from “A Soldier’s Play” with a sense of hope. Despite the virulent racism and tragic events depicted in the play, “there’s still a lot of hope,” he said. “And the way that Kenny ends the show — he melds the two worlds together of 1944 to 2023. It’s wonderful. It really is.”
“A Soldier’s Play” runs April 4-16 at the CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St.; tickets start at $35 at 800-7752000 and broadwayinchicago.com