Every once in a while, shoptalk among reviewers turns to how often we know, within the first two or three minutes of a production, whether it will or won’t be worthwhile. I bring this up because the impressive worth of Sunset Baby, Dominique Morisseau’s 2013 play now at Signature Center — which I did not see back then — is established within seconds.
Kenyatta (Russell Hornsby) enters from one side of the stage and, standing still in profile, faces the other side. Simultaneously, he’s projected full face on an upstage screen intoning the following speech:
“Fatherhood. Complex. Complicated. An abstract concept. Not clearly definable. Stages. For sure there are stages. Levels of its affectiveness. Affectionless. Manhood. Confusion. Preparedness. Lack of preparation. Funding. Resources. Instructions. No instructions. Child support. Life being run by child support. Drama. Suffocation. Lots of suffocation. Guilt. Lots of guilt. Incompetency. Freedom. Freedom lost. Freedom of suffocation. Guilt. Lots of guilt. Incompetency. Freedom. Freedom lost. Freedom never acquired. Fear. Lots of fear. Decades and decades of fear. Lifetime of fear. Lifetime of fear. Fear. Fear.”
Morisseau is one of those rare playwrights who never lets an audience down. She doesn’t mar her record here. Listening to Kenyatta’s free-association outpouring as it introduces a character in barely contained quiet desperation, I was hooked — and stayed that way, or even more so, for the rest of the 100 intermissionless Sunset Baby minutes.
Not too further on, who Kenyatta is becomes apparent. He’s a proclaimed revolutionary whose definition of “revolutionary” includes the belief that true revolution is the ability to change oneself while laboring to change society. Newly released from prison, he’s on a determined mission.
Revolution, however, is not the reason he shows up at a rundown East New York apartment (exposed slat walls, designed by Wilson Chin) in the early 2000s. (Morisseau usually writes about Detroit, where she was born, raised, and subsequently handed the key to the city. She’s left Detroit behind for this outing.)
The shabby Sunset Baby apartment belongs to Kenyatta’s estranged daughter Nina (Moses Ingram), who, as she puts it succinctly, “sells drugs and robs niggas” for a hardscrabble living. He’s on the premises intending to retrieve letters written to him but never sent by his deceased wife and Nina’s mother Ashanti X, letters known about widely and sought by many others as important historical reflections on her and political prisoner Kenyatta.
Morisseau’s emotionally fraught work revolves around Nina’s refusal to relinquish the letters. Ashanti X, dead after descending into terminal substance abuse, willed the letters to Nina. Now, despite at one point, Kenyatta’s handing over $15,000, Nina refuses to relinquish the letters, declaring in a hard-bitten moment, “The only thing I value is money. Everything else breaks, wears off or dies on you.”
Sometimes tough, suspicious Nina is gaudily garbed in familiar hustler’s get-up — short dress, shiny thigh-high blue boots, long red wig. (Emilio Sosa is the costumer, J. Jared Janas the hair and wig designer). Otherwise, she dresses down, long, tight braids dangling. Those are times when boyfriend Damon (J. Alphonse Nicholson) visits — or more than visits for sessions where Nina and he interrupt their quarreling over her insistence that neither of them outranks the other in the relationship.
At one point when telling Kenyatta about Damon, Nina says he’s “book and street smart.” She goes on, “What you look so surprised for? You think books is free? You think college tuition just falls from the sky? Not when your mama is addicted and your daddy’s in jail. Nah. You want an education, you do what’s necessary to stay in the game.”
As it happens, Nina’s description of Damon — who has a seven-year-old son by an ex-wife — could serve as a description of everyone in the highly charged three-hander. And their complex characteristics will dismiss any stereotypical assumptions observers have prematurely attached to the trio. Morisseau is surely aware of this as a powerful fooled-you-didn’t-I? part of the Sunset Baby impact. So is Steve H. Broadnax III, who has directed with insistent nuance.
Several times during the action pistols are produced — “carrying” in the vernacular of these mean streets. For many theatergoers this will prompt thoughts of Chekhov’s Rule: Guns introduced must be fired before curtain. Does Morisseau honor the rule? Some savvy ticket buyers will wait for it to kick in, but no giveaway here.
By the way, the name Nina wasn’t plucked willy-nilly from the air. It was Kenyatta’s choice, for which he’d like thanks from his daughter but doesn’t get. A Nina Simone fan, he hoped his daughter would grow up to emulate his idol’s fortitude.
That has happened. Street habitué Nina regularly listens to Simone, toward the end playing a plangent “Don’t Make Me Be Misunderstood.” The Bennie Benjamin-Sol Marcus-Gloria Caldwell anthem could serve as a Sunset Baby theme song. Earlier, Nina programs the Billy Taylor-Dick Dallas “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free,”” which is a way of saying Morisseau emphatically programs another Sunset Baby theme, the frightening elusiveness of freedom. Thanks to Morisseau for demanding that attention must be paid to these intriguing characters.
Sunset Baby opened February 20, 2024, at Signature Center and runs through March 10. Tickets and information: signaturetheatre.org
