Playwright: Reginald Edmund. At: Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Ave. Tickets: 312-633-0630 or www.chicagodramatists.org; $32. Runs through: March 13
The stakes are raised from the start of Southbridge, Reginald Edmund's award-winning world-premiere drama now playing at Chicago Dramatists.
An angry lynch mob is braying for Sheriff Ward (Gene Cordon) to hand over Christopher Davis (Manny Buckley), an African-American suspect in the violent murder of his employer, the wealthy widow Lucinda Luckey (Wendy Robie), in 1881 Athens, Ohio. Davis, who is also feared through the town for his mystical ability to have disturbing visions of the future, proclaims his innocence.
What follows in Edmund's Southbridge is a series of flashbacks that artfully meld into Davis' current life-and-death situation. Background context and clues are revealed via Davis' past interactions with the sheriff, his employer, his new wife, Nadia (Ashley Honore), and his ambitious business associate, Edwin C. Berry (Lance Newton).
It does become fairly obvious who the real murderer is long before the end of the play. Yet Edmund isn't in the business of just presenting a whodunit. He's more interested in presenting the racial and power dynamics between Davis, who also goes by the nickname of "Stranger," and his relationships with those who alternately fear, love and advise him.
Yet Southbridge doesn't entirely convince, what with a blunt plot twist that sees Davis starting up a passionate adulterous affair with widow Luckey. Also, the slick character of Berry, who dreams of becoming a prominent Black hotel owner, doesn't feel as vital to the mechanics of the mystery—he's there more to provide wry counterpoint for Davis rather than be a suspect.
Perhaps the melodrama and artful symbolism of Southbridge might appear in better context with the other nine plays Edmund is working on that will ultimately make up the series titled The City of the Bayou Collection. By itself, Southbridge contains lots of juicy and poetical writing for the characters, but it doesn't fully satisfy in terms of justifying their actions and motivations that build to the play's disturbing conclusion.
Chicago Dramatists artistic director Russ Tutterow stages a largely compelling production with lots of well-acted performances. Buckley (Hit the Wall) especially gets to show off a wide range as Davis/Stranger, giving a performance that succeeds at showing the conflicted contours of his character who starts out wanting to do good, but ultimately gets compromised.
Set designer Michael Mroch offers up a stylized playing area, featuring a large tree stump center stage and strands of multi-color wires dangling down from the ceiling. Whether these wires are supposed to represent broken branches or hanging roots isn't entirely clear, but it does create a space that allows for memory and the fraught present to coincide.
Southbridge certainly starts with lots of suspense. Too bad it doesn't live entirely up to its promise.
