Beyond Contempt
In certain company, my low opinion of Denzel Washington’s acting or Toni Morrison’s writing would inspire mutiny. But does calling Washington a one-note movie star and Morrison a superfluously mystical hack — not to mention those potentially coded words certain company — make me a racist?
Of course not. Give me 50 Cent over John Mayer any day. Still, a chasm exists between blacks’ and whites’ definition of artistic merit, which is the intriguing subject of Thomas Gibbons’ Permanent Collection at the Unicorn Theatre.
Sterling North (Walter Coppage), a well-heeled black man, opens the show with a challenge: “Put yourself in my place.” He relays the infuriating experience of being pulled over (in his Jag, no less) for “DWB.” — driving while black. But he tells the cop to memorize his face and license plate number now that he has a new job in that very upscale suburb.
He’s the new director of the Morris Foundation, an arts organization that exists mainly to show off the late namesake’s dizzying collection of Impressionist art, with no fewer than 60 Cézannes. The staff North inherits includes Paul (Dean Vivian), a white curator with 26 years at the foundation, and Ella (Lynn King), a black woman who has 20 years’ tenure. North’s novel ideas about the place (and his place) include Kanika (Angela Wildflower Polk), the assistant he has imported from his previous job in the corporate world.
The first encounter between North and Paul the curator doesn’t go well. Paul suggests that a black man’s appointment to head the Foundation fits with Morris’ lifelong “contempt” for the art establishment. It says more about Morris (whose ghostly presence, via actor Richard Alan Nichols, hovers throughout the play) than it does Paul or North. Yet when I first heard Paul say “contempt,” however impolitic he meant it, I knew it would come back to haunt him.
Later, after a shaky and tense start to his tenure, North insists that 8 pieces of African-American art come out of the basement storage area and into the gallery. But because Morris had insisted that the gallery never be altered, Paul vetoes North’s plan. What starts as a debate about social change and inclusiveness escalates into dueling lawsuits between the two. Paul’s is a fight for his career. North’s hinges on that damnable word contempt.
Used as a pawn for both sides is Gillian (Sarah Crawford), a plucky reporter. (Are there any other kind in plays or movies?) She oozes objectivity, but her bitterness about being stuck in the paper’s suburban bureau compels her to stir up shit. When her stories sensationalize the charges of racism at the foundation, big protests form outside. Unfortunately, the play then begins to suffer from melodrama.
But if the play has an unsurprising outcome, along the way it raises a great question for after-performance discussion: Doesn’t anyone have the right to decide what makes good or bad art? Kanika tells Paul late in the play that, even though she’s a proud black woman, on her trip to a black-art expo at an area shopping mall she considered everything she saw cheesy. She questions whether it’s a sign that she’s selling out, but many would simply accuse her of good taste.
Ina Marlowe’s direction errs at odd yet obvious intervals in both pacing and blocking; some of the characters’ movements just don’t make sense. Gary Mosby’s set, Jeffrey Cady’s lighting and Rebecca Martin’s props fare much better, though.
The cast seemed to be searching on opening night for a cohesion that eluded them. But I have a feeling it will gradually come to them. Coppage, Crawford, Nichols and Polk need to stop playing types rather than embodying living, breathing people. (Several of their scenes have a static, phony air.) King uncharacteristically struggled with her lines. Dean Vivian was excellent, though. Nebbishy Paul believes to his core that his old boss had an unwavering vision. And soon, this play might as well.
