Berta, Berta evaluate: Black Out efficiency opened my eyes unexpectedly

“Berta, Berta,” a two-character play by Angelica Chéri, was impressed by a jail work tune from Parchman Farm, the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary whose harsh situations and historical past of pressured labor prolonged the nightmare of antebellum slave plantations into the twentieth century.

The play, which is receiving its West Coast premiere in an Echo Theater Firm manufacturing at Atwater Village Theatre directed by Andi Chapman, is ready in Mississippi in 1923. The motion takes place within the residence of Berta (Kacie Rogers), a younger widow who’s woke up in the midst of the night time by a customer from her previous.

Not simply any customer, thoughts you, however the love of her life. Leroy (DeJuan Christopher) arrives on the threshold of her small, well-cared for residence in a clamorous uproar. He’s filthy, his white shirt is roofed in blood, and Berta can’t inform if he’s possessed by the satan or out of his thoughts.

It seems that he’s killed a person who claimed, falsely, to have slept together with her. Berta is horrified that Leroy has executed one thing so rash and violent. He holds it as proof of the depth of his love for her. However why, Berta needs to know, did he not get in contact together with her after he was launched from Parchman? The crime he’s dedicated will solely ship him again to the place, in Leroy’s personal pained phrases, “they take the coloured man to kill him from the within out.”

Berta and Leroy change grievances over the futility of their love. He can’t perceive how she might have married; she’s bewildered that he might have anticipated her to attend indefinitely for a ghost. Their ardour, nonetheless, gained’t be denied, regardless of how offended they make one another.

The play is pitched for max depth, and Chapman’s course encourages a mythic scope — an entirely acceptable method for a drama that leaps over the security of realism. Amanda Knehans’ fantastically designed set, as comfortable as it’s interesting, grounds the motion in a clear and comfortable domesticity. However that is simply an phantasm, because the manufacturing makes clear via the expressionistic wildness of the lighting (Andrew Schmedake) and sound design (Jeff Gardner).

The couple has been granted a short reprieve from their separation. Leroy, observing an outdated superstition, made an oath to the awakening cicadas that he’ll flip himself in if he’s given the prospect to make peace with Berta. She has made her personal pact with the bugs, asking them to revive the lifetime of her stillborn child, whose corpse she has held onto within the hope that the cicadas will reply her prayer.

The pressurized, supernatural stakes in such tight quarters generally encourage Christopher to push somewhat too vociferously. Berta’s residence is simply too small to include Leroy — and Christopher’s efficiency by no means lets us overlook it. However the turbulent cost of Leroy’s voice and physique language serves one other goal: conserving the character’s historical past as an oppressed Black man cruelly reduce off from his soulmate ever in sight.

Rogers’ Berta, comfortably located in her home nest, scales her efficiency accordingly. She is our anchor into the world of the play, reacting to Leroy’s tumultuous intrusion with suspicion and alarm. However because the intimacy grows between the characters, the performers grow to be extra relaxed and playful with one another. The Wagnerian nature of Berta and Leroy’s love settles down with out dropping its miraculous thriller.

The Sunday matinee I attended was a Black Out efficiency — a possibility for a Black viewers to expertise the play in neighborhood. Playwright Jeremy O. Harris championed this idea through the preliminary Broadway run of his groundbreaking drama “Slave Play.” There was backlash to the concept in London, the place some critics discovered the apply racially exclusionary. However something that promotes the communal embrace of artwork, significantly amongst traditionally underrepresented teams, must be celebrated.

I wasn’t the one white individual within the viewers at “Berta, Berta” on Sunday, however I used to be one among only a few. After I had initially realized from the present’s publicist that the efficiency was specifically designated, I provided to return at one other time, not wanting to sit down from a neighborhood member. However I used to be assured that there was room and that I used to be most welcome.

Listening to the play on this particular surroundings, I used to be extra alert to the via line of historical past. Though set within the Deep South through the Jim Crow period, there seemed to be little distance between the characters and the viewers. Berta and Leroy’s tempestuous love video games have been met with amused recognition. And the threats going through the couple, to evaluate by the audible response to the work, have been acquired with realizing empathy.

At a unique efficiency, I may need been extra impatient with a few of the strained dramatic turns. However the manufacturing’s residing bond with the viewers opened my eyes to the realism inherent on this folktale romance, laden with historical past and floating on a tune.