Can’t say what I’ve been up to while Roger Guenveur Smith’s career was emerging. He’s got more credits than you can shake a stick at—and it’s a mighty big stick, a good deal of it having taken place in Spike Lee movies.
But here he comes into view with something he’s presented here before but which I also missed, the extra-special In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat. And at least I’m able to say I am long aware of Jean-Michel Basquiat, although the famous contemporary artist—deceased in 1988 at 27 from a drug overdose—now goes for prices way beyond my collecting budget. (Debbie Harry bought a very early JMB for $200.)
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
What the playwright offers us here—after, among others, his acclaimed A Huey P. Newton Story— monologue isn’t so much a play as it is a poem (sometimes rhymed, sometimes off-rhymed, sometimes not rhymed at all), and all of it in honor of his late pal.
Yes, it’s a poem, but In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat is something else again. Because Basquiat was known to favor bebop, Smith shapes this opus as a jazz riff, undeniably as a jazz riff.
To make certain his intention is clear, he refers more than once to, among other icons, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy as he verbally scats along—well no, not literally scats, but the closest thing.
The eventual implication, of course, is that Basquiat’s canvases are the painting equivalent of audible jazz. It’s been said that Jackson Pollack always seemed to be splashing his brush to the tune of a silent jazz waltz. The same could be said of Basquiat: a different waltz or, more accurately, a jitterbug or even the Twist.
Smith spouts the Basquiat biography birth to death, starting with parents Gerard and Matilda Andrades. Then, he seems not to leave much out along the way. He declares of Jean-Michel:
“Little did I know/ He was incognegro numero uno/ writing acrylic poems and philosophy/ on concrete walls and canvas/ and refrigerator doors”
Through the work, he refers to different canvases, one called “Skull.” That’s to say, Basquiat didn’t often assign his works titles. Others have done that. It’s how they’ve come to be known: e.g., “Untitled/Skull.” A specific jazz-rap Smith scene has an auctioneer rousing enthusiastic bidders on a painting finished when the artist was perhaps barely out of his teens up to a gaveled $110.5 million. (Note: Anyone wanting a home museum visit can easily do so on YouTube.)
(Basquiat was a critical favorite, but not all critics. Far right Hilton Kramer at Criterion was definitely not a follower.)
As Smith musicians on—often suggesting a trombone more than any other instrument (OK, maybe a clarinet, too)—he talks about himself and his devotion to his friend but mostly focuses on the friend. He remembers Basquiat starting out by performing with childhood buddy Andy Diaz as part of a dual called Samo, which is a truncated version of “same old shit.”
Subsequently, the pair formed a band named Gray after Gray’s Anatomy, a gift Basquiat’s mother gave him when he was a child recovering from an illness, a gift that became a tool. Learning meant much to him. He spoke three languages, French quite well.
Smith frequently refers to Basquiat as the “radiant child,” to which he apparently had become known among the Manhattan art gang. What’s interesting here is that the phrase conjures Keith Haring’s renowned radiant-child image. Basquiat and Haring were friends. Perhaps the connection came about as a recognition of that.
Basquiat had other prominent friends is his short life. One was the much older and venerated James Van Der Zee, who chose to photograph the handsome young artist early on. Nothing to sneeze at in those days.
Before getting to Smith’s irresistible performance, attention must be aimed at sound designer Marc Anthony Thompson, who constantly underscores the action from a stage left arrangement of apparatus.
It might be asked: what action? For the entire 60 minutes Smith stands in one concentrated light at a microphone just a few feet off downstage stage center. (Arlo Sanders, the “live sound designer.”)But placed there, he doesn’t stand still. Nothing like it. With no director credited, he uses his entire body throughout as if he’s boneless. That loose, he might be dancing in place. No. More precisely he is dancing in place. Doing so, he memorializes his late friend honorably.
In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat opened September 14, 2026, at New York Theatre Workshop and runs through October 4, 2026. Tickets and information: nytw.org
