Some plays look at the world with a semi-engaged gaze, as if the playwright is already wondering what his characters’ troubles and longings will look like to critics watching a revival of the show twenty years hence. Other plays take the temperature of the times and, when things are burning, come away white hot and ready to shatter. American Son, by Christopher Demos Brown, falls into the second category. It’s an “issue” drama, so If some subtleties are pushed aside in favor of impassioned arguments and hot-button ideas, that certainly didn’t hurt such other works as The Normal Heart, Angels in America, and Doubt.
The story is simple: late into a stormy night, an African-American woman waits in a police station for news about her son, who hasn’t returned home from an evening out with his friends. As per protocol, a newbie white police officer stonewalls the woman until more details of a traffic stop involving the 18-year-old’s car can be released. By turns fearful and choking with resentment, Kendra (Kerry Washington) is soon joined by her estranged husband, a white F.B.I. agent who stresses calm and placating the nearly useless cop. Tables turn when a senior officer finally arrives (a terrific Eugene Lee) —as does a social-media video that may hold a tragic truth.
Whatever flaws the production has — on-the-nose speechifying, a competent but chemistry-free understudy in the role of the husband— the depressing sense of dread starts with minute one and holds all the way through. Not only do we sense the outcome, but (spoiler alert) the outcome has occurred before the action even begins, which only adds to the situation’s overall cruelty and hopelessness. This one stays with you.
