Peterson Townsend as Jeffery, Kalyne Coleman as Leigh, Jordan Barrow as Grant, Ansa Akyea as Donovan; photo: Daniel Rader

We are in a "secured family entertainment theater" near you, and in its backstage area, in the not too distant future. A quartet of entertainers are seen in silhouette. They are about to perform a four-part musical melodrama about the history of the American Negro, a species now long gone. These four versatile actors will play all the parts, present a negative image of black history in the U.S. with an emphasis on famous moments in time. And though the script maintains that this show is about the demise and disappearance of all black people, all brown people, the cast of players are brown and black.

This not a contrivance. This is the way things are in a future America. The subject of race is of such universal interest to Americans of this future that the company does its show as many as twelve times a day. Headed by Donavan, a 45ish man, the leading duo are Leigh and Grant (a metaphor,get it?) and the quartet is completed by a relatively new participant, Jeffery, who has been taken away from his wife and child to enjoy this career opportunity. It's a wild ride for the quartet who know their roles and play them, sometimes with regret, to their conclusions. The show(s) within the show are not what the play is about, but it (they) are what this show is really all about: the abuse and mishandling of the Negro race, from its Afrique existence to its American peril.  

There is a fifth character in the play, The Voice, played with panache by Peggy Pharr Wilson. This person, clearly white from her vocal quality and her commanding nature, is in control of Donovan and the others, often ordering one of them up to the "office" clearly a disciplinary station. Wilson takes over the psyche of the other four people every time she speaks, whether to announce "places" for the troupe or talking politics. She remains unseen, but what a tour-de-force is this role.

Her chief antagonist is also her most loyal and dependent actor, Donavan, played by Ansa Akyea. He is expected to lead the troupe, work with them, attest to their loyalty and oversee their individual ambitions. On this particular afternoon his tasks are impossible. Akyea is both a delightful performer and a dynamically entrancing human being. He brings physical and psychological strengths to the role. His ultimate choice or destination is devastating. This is a remarkable performance..

Ansa Akyea as Donovan; Jordan Barrow as Grant, Kalyne Coleman as Leigh; photo: Daniel Rader

Jordan Barrow has an incredible singing voice which must extend upward three octaves. He is a sensitive actor with many emotional colors which he presents physically while keeping his musical tone unswerving in his vocal delivery. As Grant he makes a perfect acting match for Leigh, played by Kalyne Coleman.

Coleman plays the youngest character, but one with enough worldly experience to know what is wrong and what is right in the life-path she leads. In no way a shrinking violet, she does pull back from the romantic tasks she has been assigned, tasks that could guarantee that the title of the play is wrongly written. Her belligerence is beautiful and her movements are graceful making her an ideal representative of the larger human race rather than a significant representative of just one facet of mankind.

Jeffery, a difficult role, is wonderfully played by Peterson Townsend. The first one to suffer the Voice's wrath, he is the representative victim of the old South's hardness played out in the play's real time America. Jeffery is the symbol of everything that is, and has been, wrong with the relationship between the races. Townsend endows his man with all the humanity the others attempt to hide, an action that Jeffery is not capable of maintaining.