‘Skeleton Crew’ an engaging, human tale of downsizing
Detroit is no longer half a country away. We’re neighbors now.
In the past eight months, Connecticut has seen productions of each of the three plays in Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit Project. These were at three different major regional theaters in the state, with three different directors and completely different casts and design teams.
So what have we learned? That Morisseau adapts well to different circumstances, and so do her plays. The playwright — who’s also responsible for “Sunset Baby,” which had an excellent production at TheaterWorks a couple of years ago — as found pivotal moments in the history in her home city Detroit and brought these times to vivid life without historical mustiness or we-must-learnfrom-the-past preachiness.
The Detroit Project plays are all set in rather ordinary corners of special places, during the downtime following intense events that the audience does not happen to witness. It’s in the relative calm before and after the storms that the real drama happens.
“Paradise Blue,” staged at the Long Wharf Theatre this past fall, was set during afternoons at a 1940s jazz club that hopped all evening. Likewise, “Detroit ’67,” done by Hartford Stage a few months ago, shows what happens before and after some raucous parties in an afterhours basement club, while another out-of-sight event, the Detroit Rebellion of 1967, is beginning on the streets above.
Those shows were partially about gentrification, about how the plays’ African-American characters would soon be displaced from their communities, about how their neighborhoods would soon be unrecognizable.
“Skeleton Crew,” set in 2008 at an auto-stamping plant, is about how workers will soon be displaced from their jobs. We don’t see assembly line workers actually at work, but we do hear continually about the
pride they take in that work, and how good they are at it. Sitting in the break room before and after their shifts, they complain about their bosses, their union and each other. They feel they hear ghosts. They also are worn down: “My mind is numb,” one says, “listening to that stamping sound all night long.”
The Westport Country Playhouse production — which runs through June 22 and is directed by LA Williams with a scenic design by Caite Hevner, lighting by Xavier Pierce and sound by Chris Lane — opens with the break room’s neon lights flashing on and off to a techno beat. But that’s the only abstract element of an otherwise hyper-realistic rendition of a deeply human drama about self-worth and the sense of accomplishment.
The line workers, Faye (Perri Gaffney), Shanita (Toni Martin) and Dez (Leland Fowler), and one of their bosses, Reggie (Sean Nelson) have all done things to screw up their lives outside work, but they care about their jobs and each other. Morisseau masterfully uses basic structural elements of any drama, like the seemingly random small-talk that helps establish a character’s general mood, and subtly infuses them with major themes that build gradually as the play goes on.
When Shanita delivers a diatribe on the bad driving she sees others doing on her way to work, it provides comic relief but also fits into the special perspective of these characters. They know cars from the inside out. They know the care it takes to make them. They resent how blithely others treat them. Most of all, they’re concerned with how blithely they themselves are being treated by their corporate overlords, who are firing workers and closing plants.
“Paradise Blue” and “Detroit ’67” were grounded in music. “Skeleton Crew” is too, but in a less overt manner. Music, and meditation, are among the ways the workers relax in the break room. It’s one of the bonds that strengthens their relationships.
There is romance and rhythm and a great deal of good humor in “Skeleton Crew.” The mood, and the stage, is often dark, but there are many laugh-out-loud lines of dialogues, and those neon lights bright some brightness and create some interesting shadows.
Gaffney brings a lot of detailed emotion to Faye, the oldest and longest-serving of the workers, whose personal troubles have made work her main home. She’s both strong and vulnerable, and much of the suspense in “Skeleton Crew” is about whether she falls or rises.
Martin has the difficult task of portraying mood swings and casual aches and pains, since Shanita is visibly pregnant; she is entirely convincing, down to facial glow the flirting Dez comments on.
Fowler gives Dez a cheery disposition that masks the skepticism and suspicion he’s really feeling. Similarly, Nelson is all business as Reggie, until he’s suddenly not.
The characters grow and change, and these skilled actors don’t telegraph those coming changes. They’re believably set off by events as they occur.
The 2018-19 theater season had many bright spots, but the chance to see all three of Morisseau’s Detroit Project plays, in such different yet uniformly fine productions, was a special thrill. You certainly don’t have to have seen all three plays to enjoy or learn from any one of them, but experiencing them all is a heady theatrical high.
Morisseau’s dramas about the flashy ’40s, the turbulent ’60s and the destructive ’00s have much to tell us about how we live now and what we should care about in times of great change and consternation.
SKELETON CREW runs through June 22 at Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court, Westport. Performances are Tuesday at 7 p.m.; Wednesday through Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $40-$70. 888-927-7529, westportplayhouse.org.