Playwright: E. Patrick Johnson At: About Face Theatre at The Viaduct, 3111 N. Western. Tickets: 773-296-6024; www.aboutfacetheatre.com; $25. Runs through: May 29
A vast, thick-trunked live oak tree dominates the low stage, its massive moss-draped branches swooping towards the audience while framing Greek-Revival peristyle of some plantation house. You know you're in the South even before E. Patrick Johnson speaks a word. When he does, Johnson begins with a chanted invocation that invites the audience to meet a baker's dozen of fascinating individuals, all Black gay men of the South: "They're my fathers' stories when I rise, circle must be unbroken! They're my brothers' stories when I rise, circle must be unbroken!"
Writer/performer Johnson draws his fellow 12 from a much wider cross-section of men he interviewed for his 2008 oral history book, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South. They range from a gay New Orleans patriarch of 92 years known as "The Countess" to a Unitarian minister to twentysomethings to Johnson himself, who shares his own experiences. The play's two acts are divided into chapters beginning with boyhood memories and continuing through coming out, church, family, sex, HIV/AIDS, love/relationships, etc. Not every figure speaks in each chapter, but that's OK because what Johnson is out to achieve is a collective portrait—a community rather than a series of parallel but separate histories.
Johnson himself is unprepossessing, neither young nor yet old, shaved head and doughboy-ish around the middle. He doesn't look graceful, so when he cuts some dance moves or inhabits a younger man's persona, it takes you by surprise. His charisma is that of the storyteller rather than the actor as he engages the audience in a playful way that lets everyone know he's in charge of the evening.
Of course, it's the men Johnson channels that compel. Aided by director Daniel Alexander Jones, Johnson portrays individuals ranging from gentle to hostile to fierce ( in the popular sense that originated within the Black community ) , yet even at their most fierce they are soft-spoken and disarming. The material is mostly free of "isms," such as racism or ageism, perhaps because Johnson, as anthropologist, is from and of the communities of his subjects. Johnson has created a positive group portrait of out and proud men that accentuates wit and lessons learned over disappointments or anger. As one of them puts it, "If you don't like my packages but you want my gifts, you shall be granted neither."
Grant Sabin's scenic design creates an almost spiritual ambience for Johnson's presentation, lit with muted elegance by Kathy A. Perkins, and including red, green and yellow bottle lamps dangling from the tree branches. ( Props designer Joel William Lambie and master electrician Jill Norris no doubt helped in this, too. ) If you like your tea dark and strong and sweet, this is a show for you.
