Revivals and adaptations are proving startlingly relevant on and Off-Broadway. Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind premiered Off-Broadway in 1955. The play centering on an African-American actress’s confrontation with racial stereotypes in the theater was all set to transfer to Broadway, but the playwright refused to tone down the controversial subject matter and the production was cancelled. Now, 66 years later, Trouble has finally made it to the Main Stem, and Childress’s fiery words are just as pertinent as the day they were written. Charles Randolph-Wright’s production for Roundabout Theater Company is too broad in places but still captures the author’s unflinching portrait of race relations through the lens of the stage.
Like her protagonist Wiletta Mayer (a brilliant LaChanze), Childress was a performer unsatisfied with the roles available to black women. So she wrote her own, and it is chockful of juicy, multidimensional parts. In Trouble, Wiletta has just been cast in a new play with the cumbersome title of “Chaos in Belleville,” a work by a white writer that Childress uses as a parody of the well-intentioned melodramas that proliferated on Broadway and in Hollywood in the 1940s and ’50s. Set in the Deep South, “Chaos” is an anti-lynching tract which treats its African-American characters with condescension. Cast as a noble, but unrealistic mother of a rebellious son, Wiletta must negotiate such obstacles as a martinet director (appropriately creepy Michael Zegen), the script’s simplistic depictions, and the new-fangled “Method” acting.
Much of the humor derives from rehearsals of “Chaos” which Randolph-Wright has staged like a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. But the powerful moments of conflict and Wiletta’s climactic showdown with her narcissistic director ring true.
Another stirring sequence is delivered by Chuck Cooper as a cast member recounting a youthful and horrifying encounter with a real-life lynching. The monologue is staged so simply (Kathy A. Perkins’ subtle lighting creates the perfect solemn atmosphere) and delivered with such understated vibrance by Cooper, it provided a shocking dose of reality in sharp contrast to the theatrical showiness of the play-within-a-play.
LaChanze skillfully conveys Wiletta’s conflict between her convictions and hiding her true feelings from her white employers. When she finally rips off her mask of acquiescence, LaChanze sets the stage on dramatic fire.
In addition to Zegen’s nasty helmer and Cooper’s pragmatic stage veteran, valuable contributions come from Jessica Frances Dukes’s flashy character actress, Brandon Micheal Hall and Danielle Campbell’s eager newcomers, Don Stephenson’s befuddled leading man, Simon Jones’s lovable Irish doorman, and Alex Mickiewicz’s put-upon assistant director. Though set in the 1950s, Trouble’s sharp insights still hold true for today’s theater and society at large.
