One of the playwright’s missions—perhaps the signal one—is to express what others would like to express but haven’t the means. That’s unmistakably what Donja R. Love achieves with Fireflies but not without some considerable hitches.
Yet in light of the explosive (in a couple ways) material with which he concerns himself, I’m inclined to wave away a reviewer’s standard concerns. His dire authorial concerns are that pressing.
Love is urgently writing about the fathomless depth of national racism. Were he asked, he’d probably admit that progress has been made over the last several decades but not nearly enough. So he’s engaged himself in the important, necessary Fireflies. He’s addressed a formidable problem that, I’m tempted to say, black audiences will understand in a manner that white audiences may only begin to comprehend.
Fireflies begins on September 15, 1963—not randomly. Although the program indicates only that the drama takes place “Somewhere down south, where the sky is on fire,” Love surely has Birmingham, Alabama in mind. That’s the day the 16th Street Baptist church was bombed and four young girls were killed.
The bombing is so much occupying the thoughts of minister wife Olivia Grace (DeWanda Wise) that she constantly hears bombs detonating in her head. (Sound designer Justin Ellington has the audience hearing them as loudly as she does.) She’s thrown but, alone in her tidy home, she’s not kept from writing a letter pointedly dated September 15, 1963. It’s meant for an as yet unidentified recipient.
Olivia is also not above sneaking a cigarette that she hurriedly snuffs out when she hears her husband, Reverend Charles Grace (Chris Davis), arriving. Although he’s only been away on a preaching assignment for a day, he declares he’s missed her, and she returns the sentiment. Whereupon they exchange warm greetings that get warmer as they head toward the unseen bedroom.
They’re so in love, it seems, that for some time the only wrinkle in this marriage appears to be his disliking her continuing to smoke. Certainly, her pregnancy, despite her lighting up when he’s away, appears to be an increasing joy for them.
Olivia and Charles are so enamored of each other—or so it looks—that spectators may start wondering what could possibly go wrong between them to make way for a meaningful play. Seductively dancing together to Jackie Wilson’s “A Woman, A Lover, A Friend” further underscores their being so into each other. (Raja Feather Kelly is the choreographer.)
But just as the question as to where this is all headed could be floating through the audience, Love begins unraveling the solemn answer. That’s to say, the solemn answers. He lays them on thick. The truths that surface about the Olivia and Charles relationship are so damning that they may strike the ticket buyers as overwrought contrivances. That’s how determined Love is to send his impassioned message.
But I take the position that if Love is overdoing it, it’s because he wants to be certain that no one is tempted to dismiss his conviction that the wages of racism remain too high to be paid by contemporary society. How Olivia seems to betray Charles and how Charles appears to betray Olivia won’t be revealed here. That would be spoiling the particulars of Love’s plot.
Perhaps it may not be completely unfair to say that involved in the unraveling are letters Olivia has been writing to the above-mentioned unidentified individual. Also involved is a tape recording Olivia receives that conjures up the memory of tapes Coretta Scott King is widely reported to have received. (Love undoubtedly wants the connection to be made.)
The effects of the emerging stories and the resulting battered feelings are devastating for the characters. (They’re just as heart wrenching for the audience.) It can easily be said that Love is excessive in his intentions, but the explanation is his insisting that no one misses the profundity of what might be termed a more widespread racial disintegration.
His dilemma extends right through to the 90-minute-play’s finish. Or should I say the play’s finishes? I may be wrong, but I count two. There’s the downbeat conclusion that may be where Love suspects the play should conclude if its logic is followed. Then, after a lengthy pause there’s the upbeat ending that may reflect Love’s sensing he has to give the emotionally assailed ticket buyers some glimmer of hope as they leave.
I get it. Love is responding to times in which, although gains in tolerance have been logged, they’re currently in undeniable retreat. Love’s anger, his frustration, his despair at the turn of events in the era of Trump—emotions broadly shared daily—is palpable.
As directed fiercely by Saheem Ali and played with mounting ferocity by Davis and Wise (pay full attention to her final speech wherein the title is clarified), Fireflies packs too much in. As things are going nowadays, though, an additional worry is that it’s not enough. In today’s frightening circumstances, is anything?
Fireflies opened October 15, 2018, at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through November 11. Tickets and information: atlantictheater.org
