Playwright: Mia McCullough
At: Chicago Dramatists
Phone: ( 312 ) 633-0630: $20 & $25
Runs through: April 17
True story you may know: thousands of Sudanese boys fled the 1980's civil war in Southern Sudan, many after seeing their families slaughtered. Dubbed the Lost Boys, some as young as six, they walked hundreds of miles through three African nations before finding refuge in Kenya. In 2001, U.S. immigration authorities permitted 3,600 Lost Boys to settle in America, 100 of them in Chicago. This play revolves around fictional Lost Boy Ater Dhal, a twentysomething young man newly arrived here.
Since Africa revolves around Ater, but isn't ABOUT him. Ater's not the hero, but the catalyst for interactions between his principal mentors, a Catholic Church deacon and a secular volunteer. The deacon is an assimilated African-American who doesn't know his African roots and chooses not to find them. The volunteer is a middle-aged, well-to-do, recently widowed, non-religious white woman who has issues with her twentysomething daughter. All four characters have been changed after they—or their ancestors—were in Africa, hence Since Africa.
Author Mia McCullough has a lot on her plate in this world premiere, especially considering there only are four characters. For all the skill of its construction, intelligent dialogue and large heart, the play has a schematic, sometimes didactic quality; an urgency to move from statement-to-statement, from thematic point-to-point at the expense of character depth. Sometimes their behaviors don't ring true, such as arguing in front of Ater mere moments after meeting him.
The audience wants the play to be about the appealing, naive and soft-spoken Ater ( especially as satisfyingly played by Abu Ansari ) who has such a dramatic story. However, we are told he is emotionally disassociated from his sometimes-horrific past, and the play's aim is not to delve into it. The play's focus is the emotional journey of volunteer mentor Diane Hudson MacIntyre, as she comes to terms with her husband's death and with her daughter. McCullough contrasts Diane to Deacon Hudson and both to Ater. She makes telling comparisons between Western Christian rituals vs. the animistic practices of Ater's native culture, with a particular emphasis on scarification and rites of passage. The focus on Diane is not entirely fulfilling but may be what McCullough knows best, since she herself is neither African-American nor male nor a refugee.
The play is warmly and earnestly interpreted by director Russ Tutterow and a fine, likeable cast who make Since Africa more subtle and gracious than it might read ( although the unproduced script was a finalist for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn playwriting prize ) . Without question it plays beautifully, even if the characters are more superficial than they deserve. Joining Ansari are Morgan McCabe as Diane, Anna Carini as her hair-matching daughter and Michael Edgar Myers as Deacon Hudson.