Black Diamond. Image by Liz Lauren_________
Playwright: J. Nicole Brooks
At: Lookingglass Theatre, 821 N. Michigan
Runs through: Through May 20; $20-$50
Contact: 312-337-0665
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
Black Diamond is a visually stunning production of an emotionally involving drama rich with compelling performances. It is also, in the end, an intensely frustrating new work that brings its audience deeply into several worlds and then fails to fully mine any of them.
Written by J. Nicole Brooks, who co-directs with David Catlin, Black Diamond has everything it needs to be a riveting, timely drama—everything, that is, except focus. This is a piece that goes in too many directions, and vacillates between centering on a woman warrior caught up in the Liberian civil war and an American reporter whose own demons rise to the surface as he covers the war.
What work, gorgeously, from the start are the production's uncompromising intensity and harsh, vivid images. Amid piles of sand bags and bleak concrete walls that look like they've survived bomb blasts, the audience is confronted with the awful specter of a woman, bruised and in her underwear, trying to crawl away from a masked pack of gang rapists. She's saved when the ferocious Black Diamond ( Alana Arenas, a firebomb of rage and charisma ) and a quartet of armed-to-the-teeth young women burst onto the scene. It's a scene of unexpected beauty, as the women—empowered by AK-47s and a brazen, absolutely unapologetic sexuality—send the thugs whimpering into the night.
But we don't stay with Black Diamond and her girls. The story shifts to Jim Fox ( Jason Delane, a gifted young actor making a welcome appearance since his relocation to Los Angeles a few years ago ) , a BBC journalist, and his camera man, Tristan ( Thomas J. Cox, a wiry shapeshifter who also plays several smaller roles ) . The two have an incendiary scene together where each winds up hurling accusations of racism at the other. And then Tristan disappears for the rest of the production. His sudden absence is jarring—he's been set up as a major supporting player but, as it turns out, his presence serves no other purpose than to insert a provocative discussion of race and—in a flashback—to further illustrate the viciousness of the war.
There's a similar problem with Black Diamond: She disappears toward the end, as Black Diamond abruptly abandons Liberia for upper Manhattan and the story becomes all about whether Jim will take a cushy post doing feature reporting. Also getting short shrift is the civil war itself. Jim provides exposition via broadcast segments and a host of clever cameos by caricatures of Thomas Jefferson, George Bush ( both of them ) and Pat Robertson provide superficial, if amusing, context. It's not enough: As is the case with too much TV news, gloss supersedes substance.