It could be argued that White Noise is Suzan-Lori Parks’ best work to date, and I’d be happy to lead the argument. In the current Town and Country, Parks is quoted as saying during a joint interview with the Public Theater’s artistic director Oscar Eustis, “The play isn’t black-and-white; there’s a lot of complexity.” Figuratively, that’s so. It’s the rare top-drawer play that is black-and-white. Complexity just about always rears its intriguing head.
In another sense, though—the literal sense—White Noise is quite markedly black and white. Merely start with the “white” in the title. It’s a pointed pun and not simply a reference to the tape the insomniac Leo (Daveed Diggs) uses in an attempt to get past his longtime affliction.
As a matter of cogent fact, White Noise is an addition to Parks’ list of probes on American racism, a piercing look into the unending battle among the races. Moreover, it’s such an unexpectedly offbeat take—Parks is, of course, often commandingly offbeat—that writing about it in detail is a reviewer’s challenge.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★★ review here.]
The prolific author springs a weighty surprise on the action not that long after she’s begun her two-act, three-hour tale—an inspired conceit that has to be described in order to explain what she’s up to. Therefore, anyone eager to watch Parks expound on incessant national inequality and unfulfilled civil rights may want to stop reading now and accept that White Noise is eminently worth seeing for any number of the production’s pluses.
They start with Oscar Eustis’ masterful direction and extend to the full-out acting by Diggs, Sheria Irving, Thomas Sadoski, and Zoë Winters; Clint Ramos’ sleek and very mobile set design; Toni-Leslie James’ costumes; Xavier Pierce’s lighting; Dan Moses Schreier’s sound; Lucy MacKinnon’s projections; and the intimacy direction by—more on this later—Michael Rossmy and Kelsey Rainwater.
Okay, all that having been said: In White Noise two couples rule in one way or another. Sometimes they’re mixed-race couples, sometimes not. At one time and before Parks brings them out, Leo and Misha (Irving) were together and unmixed. So were Ralph (Sadoski) and Dawn (Winter). But now the four—longtime friends—have changed partners and become Leo with Dawn and Ralph with Misha. Not that the current pairings remain forever etched in stone.
What precipitates the crisis Parks slyly hands them (and the audience) begins with artist Leo recovering from a set-to with the cops, where, in an apparent case of profiling, he was assaulted, fell to the sidewalk and sustained head injuries. Reporting it to lawyer Dawn, he’s not certain he wants to follow her advice: to sue. He has a different response in mind.
At the same time Leo is confronting his dilemma, Ralph is outraged at being passed over for a school promotion he was promised. Complaining to Misha, who doesn’t sympathize with him entirely, he reports that the man selected is a less qualified minority colleague. Incidentally, Misha narrowcasts a call-in show called “Ask a Black” that’s good for plenty of laughs.
Anyway, both men’s setbacks become the focal discussion when the palsy-walsy four gather, as they usually do, at The Spot, a bowling alley they have to themselves as a result of Ralph’s father being some sort of bowling-alley mogul and, thanks to dad, Ralph becoming an heir.
Only after the four pals have talked friendly-like and not-so-friendly-like about other recent developments does Leo pop the idea he’s gotten for abusive police enforcement recourse. Flash!—here comes the big-as-life spoiler. Because Ralph believes that white men get off easier than black men in situations such as his recent kerfuffle (who’s to say him nay?), he suggests that he’d fare better when facing penalties were he simply to say he’s owned by a white man.
He proposes that, for accepting $89,000 from Ralph, he enslave himself to his rich buddy for 40 days! Yes, his notion earns that exclamation point. It’s too outlandish not to. Still, Parks scripts the request so deftly that not only do Ralph, Sheria and Dawn buy it—after, to be sure, some vociferous initial resistance—but audience members also do.
With the deal in place, the results, will likely occur to the spectators as inevitable when they’re revealed through scenes covering the nearly six-week contemporary enslavement. And remember, this is Parks writing about what she knows is increasingly rampant, if still an inch or so under the country’s fragile civilized surface. Needless to say, she exaggerates to punch her message across, but all the same.
So the question becomes: How do Ralph and Leo behave now that they’re no longer buddies but are instead master and slave? The answer is one almost any sentient observer might expect—and it isn’t pretty. But so often in plays it not’s the final destination that’s significant. It’s what happens during the journey there.
For the many ensuing sequences Parks comes up with startling specifics, and here’s where spoilers won’t crop up. Maybe a few hints. Leo and Ralph are tested, but so are Dawn and Misha. Racist attitudes that are practically DNA-ingrained surface. Sexual desperation emerges. Partners undergo further switches. For much of the included verbal and physical exchanges, intimacy directors Rossmy and Rainwater were evidently called in. (Reviewer’s note: On-stage sexual intercourse is trending upwards these days, and White Noise doesn’t blush and cover its eyes. Far from it.)
There will be those who maintain that White Noise is far-fetched. It is. But not so far-fetched that it’s not painfully believable. Aren’t there white supremacists these days who might applaud the horrific nature of Parks’ the proposition? That’s where the prolific playwright brings her genius to bear on the matter.
During White Noise, Leo, Misha, Ralph and Dawn hit The Spot more than once, and the bowling is accomplished with much stagecraft ingenuity. Leo’s the best of the competitors. For him it’s strike after strike. For Parks, too, it’s an all-pins-flying strike.
White Noise opened March 20, 2019, at the Public Theater and runs through May 5. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
