Kenyatta (Russell Hornsby, right), a revolutionary who spent significant time in prison, meets his estranged daughter’s boyfriend, Damon (J. Alphonse Nicholson), in Dominique Morisseau’s early play Sunset Baby.
Sunset Baby begins with Kenyatta (Russell Hornsby), a legend of the Black liberation movement who has spent time in prison for robbing an armored truck, speaking hesitantly into a camcorder—the video feed is projected above the stage—about the uncertainties of fatherhood: “Fatherhood. Complex. Complicated. An abstract concept. Not clearly definable.” Just how complicated it is in his particular case is soon revealed when he tries to reunite with his estranged daughter, Nina (Moses Ingram), a woman who has built a hard, protective shell around herself and does not want to hear a whiff of nostalgia from a man she barely knows. She doesn’t even want Kenyatta to say her name: “Do not say my name as if you’ve said it a hundred times. As if we have this familiarity between us. We are not familiar. We are not close.”
Nina (Moses Ingram, left) tries to get out the door for work, but her father is eager for a conversation.
Sunset Baby is an early play of Dominique Morisseau’s, first staged by LAByrinth Theater Company in 2013, now being revived by Signature as part of Morisseau’s Premiere Residency. It is a story of activism and generational trauma, and a meditation on the intersection of capitalism and racism that is grounded in three characters having a series of one-on-one conversations. Steve H. Broadnax III directs, the action all unfolding in Nina’s run-down East New York apartment (designed by Wilson Chin).
Nina’s mother, Ashanti X, also a famous activist, was troubled by addiction and a seemingly unrequited love for Kenyatta; she has died and bequeathed to Nina a collection of unmailed love letters. The letters are the play’s MacGuffin, driving the plot and the characters’ motivations. Kenyatta is desperate to see them, and Nina suspects that he envisions dollar signs when he thinks of those letters, as she has been getting generous financial offers for them.
“Morisseau’s characters speak with poetic awareness, fully tuned-in to the larger situation, their personality traits, and even the words they use.”
Nina, in a purple wig, thigh-high “hooker boots,” and a tight dress designed by Emilio Sosa, isn’t a prostitute, but rather pretends to be, in order to lure men for her drug-dealing partner, Damon (J. Alphonse Nicholson), to rob. Kenyatta tries to tap into the past, but Nina is having none of it: “I sell drugs and rob…. Ashanti X died with an addiction. And your ass is coming back here to be sentimental. Ain’t nothin’ sentimental about a dead revolution.”
When Damon finds out about the letters, he sees the opportunity to cash out and fulfill his and Nina’s fantasy of getting away from their violent and precarious lives. Though Nina indulges in Travel Channel–influenced dreams of where to live, what she really wants is a “simple” life, away from the political movement that devoured her parents and the hustle that she and Damon do every day. Damon is the kind of person who can remark that he should have killed someone instead of just robbing them but can also discourse on the academic theories of sociologist Steven Spitzer (on “social junk” versus “social dynamite”). He’s sufficiently cold-blooded for his line of work, and Nicholson is able to convey Damon’s vulnerability alongside his ruthlessness.
Morisseau’s characters speak with poetic awareness, fully tuned-in to the larger situation, their personality traits, and even the words they use. Nina says about Damon that he is “a hard hustler. Book and street smart…. But he knows his place in the world. He knows if you come into this world at the bottom, you gotta get your hands dirty in order to survive.” When Damon, speaking with Kenyatta, refers to Nina as a “bitch,” he is prepared with an exegesis of how he understands the term is problematic. The writing is sporadically exhilarating but also falls victim to having the characters sound like they are in a play; it can seem as didactic as Nina accuses Kenyatta of being.
Nina and Damon, who work together as drug-dealers and robbers, unwind in her apartment. Photographs by Marc J. Franklin.
The play appears to be building toward some major reckoning, hinging on a final confrontation between Kenyatta and Nina, but Kenyatta remains stubbornly opaque, and even his video monologues (designed by Katherine Freer) don’t offer more than the platitudes he’s willing to say to Nina’s face, that it somewhat peters out instead. Some of the metaphorical conceits—how could it be possible that Nina has never seen the colors of a sunset?—feel strained and wither under scrutiny.
Ingram’s excellent performance as Nina is fiercely affecting and lends depth to a character that might seem one-note in less capable hands. And while Sunset Baby doesn’t fully come together—its dramatic force blunted by its overly telegraphed intellectual concerns—there are flashes of brilliance that foreshadow Morisseau’s estimable later work.
Sunset Baby runs through March 10 at Signature Theatre (480 W 42nd St.). Evening performances are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday–Friday and Sunday, and 8 p.m. Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are available by visiting signaturetheatre.org.
Playwright: Dominique Morisseau
Director: Steve H. Broadnax III
Sets: Wilson Chin
Costumes: Emilio Sosa
Lighting: Alan C. Edwards
Sound Design: Curtis Craig & Jimmy Keys
Projections & Video Design: Katherine Freer
