There’s apt literary start (Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool”) and end (Richard Wright’s “Native Son”) to the “Pipeline” that affects young Black men in a racist society. But their families aren’t usually uninvolved, as Dominique Morisseau emphasizes in her prescient play of that title. It particularly binds Nya, a teacher in a community school, and her son Omari, whom she’s placed in an upper class boarding school to give him much greater than local opportunities. But now he’s lashed out at what he thinks is hypocrisy that causes possible expulsion and his reaction of running away!
Renata Eastlick’s Nya is almost overwhelmed by Omari’s situation. She tries to listen impartially to how he feels about how he’s been raised to guard what he says and does, no matter his feelings. She’d burdened by her care about her school, still upset about her colleague Laurie (a wonderfully feisty Emilia Sargent), just recovered from a knife strike by a parent. She hopes to avoid anything personal with Isaac Essau Gay’s Dud the security guard’s perhaps too-great interest in teachers’ safety.
A parallel to Omari, Jasmine (played appealingly by Emerald Rose Sullivan) is full of defiance at school. Yet she refuses to be bogged down by how the authorities treat challengers. That she may not always be right seems not to matter to Omari. He may be admiring and at a stage of defiance. no matter what. It’s apparent in his confrontation with his father Xavier (Joel P. E. King, deftly manifesting Xavier’s know-it-all attitudes), who tries to be authoritative but easily retreats. His divorced but still loving wife Nya needs him to rescue in a particular way their son’s chance for a good future. But does she confidently go into the future of all?
Director Callender nicely designs how so many close relationships unfold not only emotionally but graphically, despite spatial and other Covid restrictions on the actors. All of the work of the technical crew supports well the intimate nature of the action. Not a misstep in either onstage blocking or videographer editing! Altogether, a fine WBTT achievement, and one that is of dramatic-literary value. Especially timely too.
