Victor Williams and Amber Reauchean Williams play father-daughter journalists in the Primary Stages production of Amerikin. This photograph and banner photo by James Leynse.
For all the theater community’s opposition to Donald Trump, there have been relatively few stage works taking on Trumpism. Amerikin, by Chisa Hutchinson, looks like it could be one during its first half, with its portrayal of “just your white supremacists next door,” but the story heads in a different direction when new characters and themes are introduced in Act II. Though her first act is definitely stronger, Hutchinson overall has crafted an absorbing look at life in these United States.
Amerikin’s main character, Jeff Browning of Sharpsburg, Md. (a couple of miles from the West Virginia border), seems like a good guy. He just became a father for the first time and beams at the sight of his son. He gave up booze in “solidarity” with his wife, Michelle, during the pregnancy and picks up the slack caring for the baby when she suffers postpartum depression.
Poot (Tobias Segal, left) is a loyal friend to Jeff (Daniel Abeles) in Chisa Hutchinson’s Amerikin. Photograph by Justin Swader.
Yeah, Jeff’s a good guy—except he named his dog N---er and is awaiting acceptance in the World Knights, the local white supremacist club. Jeff (Daniel Abeles) wants to join the Knights to give his son a sense of belonging and a support system. “I don’t actually believe all the stuff they believe,” he claims. To seal his membership, Jeff has to take a genealogy test—to prove his “purity of lineage,” as Dylan (Luke Robertson), the friend who recruited him for the Knights, puts it.
Instead, Jeff discovers he has 14 percent African ancestry. The only person he shows the test results to is his non-Knight friend Poot (Tobias Segal), who makes a living hacking into men’s email and Facebook at the behest of their suspicious wives. Jeff asks Poot to use his tech skills to doctor the report. But somebody finds out the truth, and then the racist attacks on Jeff’s home—by brick, graffiti and worse—begin.
In the second act, Gerald Lamott (Victor Williams), a Black journalist in Washington, D.C., gets wind of this “White Supremacist Hopeful Becomes Target of His Own Hate” story and heads up to Sharpsburg to interview Jeff. Gerald is accompanied by his daughter, Chris (Amber Reauchean Williams), a college student majoring in journalism, who’s much more incensed than he is by the whole saga, and by all the Trump signs and Confederate flags they see once they get off the interstate.
“Act I seamlessly unfolds a fictional, character-driven story that happens to have real-life resonance. ”
“You don’t have to do that, you know—pretend to sympathize with them,” Chris tells her father. “You don’t have to play Martin to my Malcolm, do that whole compassionate crusader thing with me.” He responds: “This is not an act. I firmly believe in the power of understanding. To understand something is to know how it works. And once you know how it works, you have the power to disable it.” By the end of his visit to Sharpsburg, however, Gerald is saying, “I cannot forgive Jeff Browning.”
That second act features some blatant stating of sentiments and sociopolitical ideas, whereas Act I seamlessly unfolds a fictional, character-driven story that happens to have real-life resonance. But the story Hutchinson wants to tell only works with the change in perspective that comes in the second act. Now the main characters are Gerald and Chris, and the plot’s focal point is their trip to interview Jeff. The denouement is concerned with what they, not Jeff, experience in Sharpsburg.
And Gerald, in his published article that he reads aloud, reaches a different conclusion about Jeff than the one the audience is left with after the first act, when the only characters are the white residents of Sharpsburg and Jeff looks like a hapless victim of racism and not a racist himself.
A rare happy moment for unhappily married new parents Michelle (Molly Carden) and Jeff. Photograph by James Leynse.
It’s a clever tack to switch perspectives like that in order to interrogate these communities where white supremacy flourishes. The second act does feel much more conspicuously plotted than the first, though, and it goes off on a somewhat unconvincing tangent in drawing parallels between Gerald’s protectiveness of his daughter and Jeff’s protectiveness of the secrets he’s keeping from them. In addition, the audience may get confused by the flashback scenes interspersed with Jeff telling his story to Chris and Gerald—they depict incidents Jeff describes, but some truly happened and others are fabricated.
Director Jade King Carroll has cast the show well, as the actors all fit comfortably in their roles. With strong performances and rapport among castmates, Amerikin’s scenes run a gamut of emotions, from a chilling episode when Michelle sings a hateful lullaby while nursing her newborn, to the wistfulness in Jeff’s interactions with Alma (Andrea Syglowski), his ex-girlfriend and next-door neighbor, to an especially lovely moment between Gerald and Chris in the car.
Amerikin runs through April 13 at 59E59 Theaters (between Madison and Park Avenue). Performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Saturday, with matinees at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; primarystages.org.
Playwright: Chisa Hutchinson
Director: Jade King Carroll
Sets: Christopher & Justin Swader
Costumes: Jen Caprio
Lighting: Carolina Ortiz Herrera
Sound & Music: Lindsay Jones
