It might be a pleasure to report that Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play, which is set in 1943-44 and deals with “the madness of race in America,” has reached the point where the play falls into the category of treasured period piece.
No such luck. The drama premiered at the Negro Ensemble Company in 1981 and was handed the Pulitzer Prize in 1982. The first-rate Roundabout Theatre Company revival, opening as the fourth (and final?) year of the Trump administration begins, is every bit as pertinent as its debut was then—perhaps, given the divisiveness now afflicting the country, even more so.
If anything is at all dated, it’s the use of the word “negro,” which has faded into disuse and might even be considered nowadays as inappropriate. Otherwise, A Soldier’s Play registers as high on the Shock-o-meter as it did 39 years ago when it first shattered the air with a many-perspectives look at what happens when a black officer, Captain Richard Davenport (Blair Underwood), is sent to a segregated Army camp to handle a murder investigation. The dead enlisted man is Sergeant Vernon C. Waters (David Alan Grier), shot and killed off the base and further mistreated in what initially is assumed to be a Klan incident.
[Read Jesse Oxfeld’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Captain Davenport isn’t exactly welcomed by white Captain Charles Taylor (Jerry O’Connell), who, if he is expected to work with a new officer of his rank, is startled to meet—for the first time—a black officer. His hardly disguised prejudice is only one of the prejudices clogging Fuller’s atmosphere.
As for the deceased Sergeant Waters, as tough a sergeant as these men usually go, he has charge of a platoon populated by privates (one recently stripped of three stripes), who are such proficient baseball players that they’re in contention to win a competition that will have them play an exhibition game against the New York Yankees.
For the most part Waters, seen throughout in flashbacks, takes pride in his men, making an exception of Private C. J. Memphis (J. Alphonse Nicholson). Not because Private Memphis is a less accomplished player—he’s a reliable home run hitter—and not because he’s insubordinate. Insubordination is relative for Waters. Platoon newcomer Private First Class Melvin Petersen (Nnamdi Asomugha) is regularly insubordinate and earns Waters’ respect, not despite his attitude but because of it.
Waters is a drinker. He’s drunk the first time he’s seen, putting himself in the sights of his murderer. Waters’ racial hatred is on full regard then and is only displayed in its complete power as the two acts unfold, as the victim becomes the focus of Captain Davenport’s interviews with the Waters’ platoon members.
Fuller has constructed A Soldier’s Play with impressive intricacy. As it proceeds, it even takes on something akin to film noir: what could be dubbed stage noir. Waters’ death isn’t the only one that crops up. There’s a suicide, which is linked to Waters and to aspects of racial hatred.
So Captain Taylor’s ingrained prejudiced behavior, when introduced to Captain Davenport, may be the first glaring instance of unexamined bias but maybe not. Drunk Sergeant Waters bellowing about whites hating blacks just before he’s murdered in Klan territory is the introductory instance of Fuller’s screed on American madness. That kneejerk assumption already establishes the severely compromised atmosphere. But Waters brings yet another bias to bear on the subject: hatred Northern blacks have for Southern blacks. Waters is a Northern black. (Does that particular form of prejudice no longer persist in 21st century America? Or is it only better masked?)
One of the most brutal speeches in a drama overflowing with brutal speeches has Waters fulminating about the obsequious nature of Southern blacks. He insists to another platoon member about Private Memphis’ upbringing, saying (only in part): “My daddy told me we got to turn our backs on his kind….Close our minds to the chittlin’s, the collard greens—the cornbread style. We are men—soldiers, and I don’t intend to have our race cheated out of our place of honor and respect in this war because of fools like C. J.”
Waters’ foul opinion is at least in part attributable to being shaped by white treatment of blacks, which is to say the threads of racism so knotted as to be impossible to untangle. Therein lies the beauty of Fuller’s work, if “beauty” is a word that can be applied. Actually, it can be: the terrible beauty of unflinching honesty.
Honesty is certainly what director Kenny Leon presents. While being true to Fuller’s script, he makes a couple irresistible alterations. As background music for A Soldier’s Play, the author asks for snippets of “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” at the start of each act. It’s a perfectly sensible request. The 1942 Andrews Sisters hit was as much a World War II emblem as the Oscar Hammerstein II-Richard Rodgers Oklahoma!, but Leon just as meaningfully replaces it with the men in the platoon preceding Waters’ entrance with a rhythmic gospel song. Leon kicks off the act-two opening with a fancy-footed parade of platoon members across the stage.
Leon’s demands of the cast are met in full. It’s as if every member is a stick of just-lighted dynamite. Grier and Underwood detonate the brightest and account for the most emotional damage inflicted, but everyone is outstanding. The same goes for Derek McLane’s set, Dede Ayite’s costumes, the Allen Lee Hughes lighting and the Dan Moses Schreier sound.
Underwood as Captain Davenport speaks Fuller’s devastating statement about “the madness of race in America.” Just after he’s said it, he does something that has the effect of an entire blighted union exploding in tragic frustration. It may be the most heated moment currently on any local stage. For its reflection of a case of national despair, it’s not to be missed.
A Soldier’s Play opened January 21, 2020, at the American Airlines Theatre and runs through March 15. Tickets and information: roundabouttheatre.org
