Donja R. Love, the author of one in two, derived its title from a passage in a 2016 study released by the Center for Disease Control that projected “one in two Black gay and bisexual men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime.”
In his program note, Love recalls how he felt such a dire statistic was absurd, and so he decided to craft his semi-autobiographical one in two as an absurdist work regarding black queer men living with HIV today.
Three black men in a white room await the audience as they take their seats for one in two.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★ review here.]
The men soon debate who will perform the central role and decide to leave that choice up to the audience. In this meta-theatrical process, audience applause determines which actor will play the protagonist, while the remaining two performers go through a rock-scissors-paper bit to divide up the character tracks they will enact over the next 85 minutes.
Love’s unconventional and seriocomic approach—with its self-conscious, often funny, interactions among the actors and their direct addresses to the audience—enlivens a somewhat familiar story about a young black writer’s struggle in the aftermath of being diagnosed with HIV. Fluently composed in brief scenes, the 85-minute play witnesses the writer grapple with depression and the usually unsupportive people in his life.
“Sometimes the hurt is a bigger virus than the HIV,” a nurse tells him.
He drinks to excess. He recklessly hooks up with strangers. He neglects to take his medicine. His downwards spiral appears to be diving towards a fatal ending.
Thanks to the absurdist nature of the play, one in two neatly avoids just such a bitter ending. Instead it concludes with a direct appeal to the audience to be empathetic and work to end the epidemic. When the audience finally leaves the auditorium, the men remain standing in that white room.
Their continuing presence when the show is over intimates that life stories typical of this one are likely to keep recurring. And all the while that the play progresses, a row of numbers projected on the rear wall ceaselessly multiplies, racking up the many thousands of individuals who will be infected with HIV.
While the playwright’s message remains serious, a sly sense of humor often infuses his writing and prevents the proceedings from becoming grim, while director Stevie Walker-Webb’s pacing moves everything along at a quick clip.
The studied simplicity of Arnulfo Maldonado’s white-on-white setting evokes a dream-like limbo to accommodate the play’s rapid succession of scenes and possibly also comments upon the situation of black people existing in a white America. It is lighted with precision by Cha See.
Solid acting by Edward Mawere in the leading role (at the performance I attended), deftly supported by versatile performances from Jamyl Dobson and Leland Fowler as everybody else, animates the play considerably. Various bits of apt clothes provided by designer Andy Jean enable the actors to quickly take on and off the identities of their assorted characters. The fact that these actors are prepared to tackle their roles in the play depending upon the audience’s choice is laudable as well.
Produced at the Pershing Square Signature Center by The New Group with its customary excellence, one in two is a lively and smartly crafted look at an abiding critical issue that unfortunately needs to be constantly addressed.
