The Broadway Theatre Review: Roundabout Theatre Company’s Home
By Ross
A sigh and a song are what draw us into Roundabout Theatre Company‘s emotionally engaging and tenderly produced revival of Home, forty-four years after this deliberate play, written by Samm-Art Williams (The Montford Point Marine), first opened in a Tony-nominated production on Broadway. With blisters on his feet and the sun burning down their backside, the central figure of Williams’ signature play gets a-rocking and a reminiscing, taking us through a powerful depiction of an ordinary Black man’s life in the rural lands of Jim Crow’s South. Sadly, Williams, at the age of 78, died peacefully in North Carolina weeks before this stellar production opened on Broadway. But he would have been proud of this top-notch production, directed with a fast-talking spirit by Kenny Leon (Broadway’s Purlie Victorious).
It’s a quick pulled-in engagement, that tries hard to hold us tight in its fast-talking soul. The play, masterfully written by Williams, shines its detailed soul outward in this beautifully produced production, thanks to the fine work done by set designer Arnulfo Maldonado (Broadway’s A Strange Loop), with sharply defined costumes by Dede Ayite (Broadway’s Hell’s Kitchen), scorchingly tuned-in lighting by Allen Lee Hughes (Broadway’s Ohio State Murders), and a sharp sound design by Justin Ellington (Broadway’s The Cottage). But it truly is the cast, made up of Broadway and Roundabout newcomers: Tory Kittles (Old Globe’s Richard II; “True Detective“), Brittany Inge (Actor’s Express’s Father Comes Home…; “Atlanta“), and Stori Ayers (Kennedy Center’s Blood at the Root; “The Last O.G.“), that deliver the framework that holds us tight throughout, guiding us through the story of Cephus Miles, a poor Southern farmer from a long line of farmers, working the land that they love with all their heart.
It’s an exceptionally cruel time for this open-hearted soul, but the play finds poetic beauty in the unpacking of this ordinary and extraordinary man’s life, as he shines and stumbles his way through the golden sky of his youth, centered around a humble rocking chair and a Greek chorus that unpacks his upbringing with powerful insistence. There is the hope of a forever kind of love in the arms of his school sweetheart, backed by an endless field of cornstalks and open skies, fueled by romantic illusions that are soon thrown under when the woman he loves with all his heart leaves him for higher learning and a new life up North. A war then ends his romanticized rural existence, forcing him to declare his resistance backed by his religious upbringing. But that framing is dismissed as traitorous when he, citing the commandments, refuses to kill another soul. That stance gets him thrown in jail, tarnishing his name and following him around the country, up and down the country lanes and the harsher streets of New York for pretty much the rest of his life.
In quickly trod pathways made up of addictive tendencies and treacheries, the cast tells the tales of his journey with sharpness and determination. It’s a story of its time, presenting loss and despair alongside almost insurmountable obstacles that would break almost any human being. From a five-year jail term through addiction and homelessness to a return to grace and to Home, this well-meaning unraveling is tender in its unpacking and told within a relevant framework that brought kindness and care to the forefront, even in the unlikeliest forms and in the most surprising of twists.
Through the portrayal of more than 40 characters, the two Greek-chorus-like actors deliver convincing formulations, from the clear-minded Pattie Mae to the elderly bus driver who drops the man off near the end of his road towards Home. Kittles’ portrayal of Cephus is the shaky hand and heart that holds it all together with a steadfast performance that illuminates on its deeply determined pathway. It’s not exactly an earth-shattering production, but this tale is worthy of its return with a balance that lives strong and centered on that Broadway stage, finding compassion for this man in America’s shameful past, and a tenderness that breaths a sigh and a song inside Roundabout‘s 90minute Home.
