When The Revival theater opened its doors in 2015 at the corner of 55th Street and University Avenue, its intent was to pay homage to improv’s earliest roots. Paul Sills formed the Compass Players in that exact spot, bringing his knowledge of his mother Viola Spolin’s theater games (outlined in her seminal work Improvisation for the Theater) to the stage for paying audiences. This season, they have traveled far from their roster of improv shows, classes, jazz, and comedy by welcoming two plays from Definition Theatre. The second is the Chicago premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Fairview (opening April 27), and the first is Alaiyo, which is playing now through February 26.
Alaiyo Through 2/26: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Sun 2/12, 7:30 PM; no show Thu 2/9; The Revival, 1160 E. 55th St., definitiontheatre.org, $20
The play, written by Micah Ariel Watson in the most literal sense, tells the story of an idealistic African American college student who has a crush on her classmate, who is from Africa. Watson frames the unrequited romance as a metaphor for the loss and longing left within African Americans for Africa after the Middle Passage. African American history in relation to the reclamation of lost African identity is summarized at the opening of the play in a projected slideshow, like a Black CliffsNotes, outlining the continued desire to un-orphan the community from the Motherland, reconstructing memory by donning scraps of kente cloth, shedding slave names in favor of African names, wearing natural hairstyles, and in this era, exploring our DNA through 23andMe.
A spectacular Felicia Oduh plays Ariel—Young, Gifted, and Black and brimming with book knowledge about her history, yet still remaining unmoored with a gnawing feeling of not being “Black enough.” Enter Kofi (brilliantly played by Patrick Newson Jr.) onto whom she projects the embodiment of “real Blackness” due to his birthright. As Ariel desperately pursues Kofi, her hope is that their love will somehow provide her with spiritual communion, transmuting her perceived faux-Blackness into the “real” thing. One wonders if the character name “Ariel” is not only a nod toward the playwright’s middle name but also to the Disney version of The Little Mermaid, in which the title character gives up her own voice for legs, every step she takes as painful as walking on glass just to be “Part of Your World,” as the Disney song goes.
Ariel’s vision of Blackness is largely fueled by the 1961 film version of A Raisin In The Sun. She identifies with the romance between Beneatha Younger (Diana Sands) and Joseph Asagai (Ivan Dixon) in which Asagai proposes to Beneatha and asks to romantically whisk her away to Africa. As clips from the film play upon the stage, they serve to underscore the limitations of Ariel’s worldview and her naivete of playing out this fantasy on her unwitting classmate. Oduh is delightful as the lovesick Ariel, mooning over her crush, vacillating between plots to catch his eye and half-hearted attempts at finishing her homework.
Unsurprisingly, Kofi promptly friend zones Ariel, which only serves to heighten her obsession. Watson’s dense text is structured in a rapid-fire poetic way that drops references to Black culture or other imagery every few seconds, which serves several purposes. One is to outline how Ariel uses her academic knowledge to construct a facade of “authentic” Blackness as an armor to shield against her own deep insecurity over her identity. The repetitive cadence also serves to heighten our sense of the degradation of Ariel’s obsessive mental state, evoking feelings of stress and being overwhelmed. This method works effectively, and Oduh masterfully navigates the tongue twisters and dense, unwieldy monologues in a way that feels easy and natural.
Unfortunately Watson’s writing relies too heavily on this particular device, creating two drawbacks. One, the audience is set at a remove, attention split between watching the play intellectually, part of the brain working overtime to identify and dissect every reference, every allusion, every bit of symbolism and alliteration, etc., leaving little opportunity for silence, reflection, and full absorption of emotional impact. The other is that profound conclusions and parallels are often spoonfed and repeated ad nauseam, the text desperately overexplaining and pleading, like Ariel, to not be misunderstood. The play is telling a story instead of being a story.
The small black-box theater space has turned its orientation from lengthwise to longways, adding risers for the chairs, which from an audience perspective presents challenges. For the play, a significant part of the action happens on the floor level and was not visible at all from my vantage point. A person in front of me who was considerably taller occasionally stood up to gain a better view. A walkway that runs directly behind the stage, separated only by a transparent pink backdrop, makes you part of the show should you have to make a bathroom run. Other than those quirks, the new look works fairly well.
And despite the problems with the text, Alaiyo works. Director McKenzie Chinn provides some exquisite direction, heightening Ariel’s obsessive cycling with punctuations of humor and embodying the depths of her despair with poignant movement pieces choreographed by Victor Musoni, chilling lighting choices by Eric Watkins, and haunting sound design by Willow James. Oduh and Newson sync perfectly, creating the illusion of the perfect pairing for us that Ariel sees in Kofi, who remains an unwitting participant in her vision regardless of his own intent. Newson masterfully balances the easy, self-assured charm of his college-student persona with the darker, complex manifestation of the shadows of Ariel’s psyche.
Alaiyo is a play that offers an intimate and unique perspective on Blackness, history, gender, love, and identity that packs a powerful punch. In A Raisin In the Sun, Asagai nicknames Beneatha “Alaiyo” which means “One for Whom Bread—Food—Is Not Enough.” This play is recommended for everyone—but especially for Colored Girls Who Have Sometimes Felt Simultaneously Too Much—and Not Enuf.
