What impresses me most about Fires in the Mirror—other than its profound resonance nearly 30 years after its premiere—is that playwright Anna Deavere Smith assembled such an affecting, inquisitive, and multilayered piece so quickly. The Fires debuted at the Public Theater in May 1992, not even a year after the series of August 1991 events now known as the Crown Heights riots, and incorporates the viewpoints, personalities, and reflections of 25 people—an astonishingly varied group ranging from playwright Ntozake Shange and Ms. magazine founder Letty Cottin Pogrebin, to the Rev. Al Sharpton and Rabbi Shea Hecht to local Lubavitcher and black residents. (Smith interviewed them all, and countless others.)
A tiny part of me wished that the current Saheem Ali–directed Signature Theatre revival—featuring the virtuoso Michael Benjamin Washington (The Boys in the Band) in all the roles originally played by Smith—would feel dated in some way. But then you hear Jewish Community Relations Council’s Michael S. Miller talk about hearing cries of “Heil Hitler” and “Throw them back into the ovens again”: “The hatred is so deep seated and the hatred knows no boundaries.” And as Robert Sherman, head of New York City’s Increase the Peace Corps, says: “I think you know the Eskimos have seventy words for snow? We probably have seventy different kinds of bias, prejudice, racism, and discrimination.” Today, would Sherman still put our bias count at 70—or would the number be higher?
If you don’t recall the specifics, Rabbi Joseph Spielman and the Rev. Canon Dr. Heron Sam will fill you in, each giving his (community’s) own take on the car, driven by a Jewish man, that killed 7-year-old black Gavin Cato; the uproar over the private Hasidic ambulance that came to the scene; and the stabbing and eventual death of Australian rabbinical scholar Yankel Rosenbaum.
The second half of the show delves into the still-raw emotions raging in the streets of Crown Heights. The first half, however, is a little more reflective, broken into topics including “Identity,” “Race,” and “Rhythm” and weaving in voices that weren’t necessarily directly affected by the riots. After giving her take on Clarence Thomas (you can guess what that was), Angela Davis offers her opinion on community: “I’m not suggesting that we do not anchor ourselves in our communities.… But I think that, you know, to use a metaphor, the rope attached to that anchor should be long enough to allow us to move into other communities to understand and learn,” she explains. “What I’m interested in is communities that are not static, that can change, that can respond to new historical needs.” Shange’s sense of self has nothing to do with place: “I am not necessarily what’s around me.” Rather, identity is “everything that’s ever happened to us as well as our responses to it.”
Washington slips in and out of these roles almost imperceptibly. A white button-down shirt proves the perfect costume canvas: Open it up for more artistic and younger characters; button it high and roll down the sleeves for the conservative types. Add a jacket here, a bowtie there. A medallion and an imperious wide-legged, stiff-backed stance suggests Al Sharpton; a housecoat and a tilted head conveys a Lubavitcher woman. With an Australian accent and his heart in his throat—“My brother’s blood cries out from the ground”—Washington is Norman Rosenbaum, eulogizing the slain Yankel. And in the final scene, shrouded in an unremarkable trenchcoat, he’s the grieving Carmel Cato, Gavin’s father. Bathed in Alan C. Edwards’ bleak lighting, Washington suddenly looks like he’s aged 20 years.
Fires in the Mirror opened Nov. 11, 2019, and runs through Dec. 15 at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Tickets and information: signaturetheatre.org
