Change is hard. Social change is especially difficult. But changing people's attitudes—especially those involving race— is exceptionally challenging, given that they are usually long-held and emotionally based.
The conflict about desegregation in the Southern states is a case in point. While most states below the Mason-Dixon line grudgingly implemented the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ordered school integration, it took 17 years for the community of Durham, North Carolina, to finally get around to implementing a plan! That it took the cooperation of two sworn enemies to accomplish this seemingly insurmountable feat is the topic of Mark St. Germain's powerful drama about prejudice and redemption, The Best of Enemies, now receiving its New Jersey première at George Street Playhouse where it runs through December 23.
Originally produced at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and inspired by the best-selling book of the same name by Osha Gray Davidson, The Best of Enemies is the true story about the relationship between C. P. Ellis, a Grand Cyclops of the Durham chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, and Ann Atwater, an African-American civil rights activist. Charting the course of their unlikely collaboration on the Save Our Schools committee, The Best of Enemies exposes the poison of prejudice in the hearts of both Ellis and Atwater who, by working with each other, are forced to face the worst—and the best—in themselves.
Director Julianne Boyd, founder of Barrington Stage, has brought that company's production to George Street Playhouse to replace a play starring Marlo Thomas, which had to be scrapped when Thomas was given a recurring role in a television sitcom. Boyd helms the explosive proceedings with a firm hand, keeping the tension taut through a myriad of scene changes over the 95-minute course of the play (there is no intermission). Plus, the quartet of exceptional actors who tell this stirring tale enhances St. Germain's crisp, no-holds-barred script.
The production team of David M. Barber (set), Kristina Lucka (costumes), Scott Pinkney (lighting) and Brad Berridge (sound) recreates the world of the play so that the events unfold smoothly before our eyes. Photographs projected on sliding screens add verisimilitude, and the sounds of crowds responding to speeches make us feel as though we are in the midst of the chaos. Too, the many scenes that involve meetings (the KKK, the SOS committee, the Durham Town Council) effectively draw the audience into the play and makes them participants in the action—and not too comfortably, either!
John Bedford Lloyd's C.P. Ellis is a man who hates black people so much that "if looks could kill, there would not be a black face left in Durham." He convincingly spouts racist invective yet, as the action progresses, he reveals the man's vulnerabilities to give us a glimpse of the sources of his hatred. Thus, when his moment of redemption arrives, it is the result of a process and not just a playwright's gimmick. Ellis's adversary, Ann Atwater, is played by Aisha Hinds as a loud-mouthed woman so fearless that she is known as Roughhouse Annie. Her very posture and gait telegraph the life of a woman who has performed demeaning labor (she works for a white family in town) for years, and that chin stuck way out from her body almost screams, "I dare you to hit me." She is a force to be reckoned with, but her journey to redemption is as natural as Ellis's, making her equally sympathetic and human as well.
Dan Guillory exudes optimism as community organizer Bill Riddick, sent to Durham to initiate the formation of a charrette, the French name for a "collaborative session in which a group of works to find a solution to a problem." He uses guile and boyish exuberance to bring these two enemies together to co-chair the charrette, but his youthful pride (for which Atwater reproaches him) is as evident as the nose on his face. He has a wonderful moment when, as Atwater and Ellis call each other names, he interrupts to recite a long list of nasty racial epithets, and then asks, "Are there any more," to which Atwater replies, "There are always more." Rounding out the cast is Susan Wands as Ellis's long-suffering wife Mary. Tired of her husband's endless meetings, long days home alone with a blind, retarded teenage son, and far from the woman she'd hoped she'd become, Wands compellingly conveys Mary's weariness and becomes the most sympathetic character of the lot, especially when she visits Atwater to deliver food to the now-unemployed black woman.
The trajectory of this relationship is so unusual that one might be tempted to quip, "They couldn't make stuff like this up," but that would be an underestimation of the ability of human beings to change and be redeemed. The Best of Enemies, while rather episodic in construction, is a compelling piece of theater. It reminds us of the worst and the best that people can display and gives us hope for the future. Although it contains strong language, I urge you to take your teenagers to see it, for The Best of Enemies is a history lesson, a psychological study and a powerful drama all rolled into one! You'll have plenty to talk about with your teen and/or spouse/significant other/friend/relative after the theater lights have come down.
The Best of Enemies will be performed at the George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, through December 23. Tickets start at $28 and can be purchased at the box office (732.256.7717) or online at www.GSPonline.org.
Photos by T. Charles Erickson.
