Richmond’s own Black VA Theatre Alliance brings this month’s second outing of a Dominique Morrisseau play to a local stage, following Firehouse Theatre’s excellent production of Detroit 67. Like Detroit 67, Sunset Baby explores the living room dramas that persist against the backdrop of social unrest, activism, and disenfranchisement.
We are dropped into this story as our protagonist, the streetwise and self-reliant Nina, played by Chayla Simpson, gets ready for an evening out – doing what is left ambiguous to the audience. She is visited by her father, a person for whom she clearly has little patience. He’s a famous civil rights activist who has spent time in jail and even more time away from his daughter besides, ginning up resentment with no room for nostalgic love. Nina sits on a trove of letters penned by her mother, the revisioned-into-legend activist turned crack addict and eventual tragic casualty, Ashanti X. These letters were intended for her father Kenyatta originally but are bequeathed to Nina in Ashanti’s will. The action of the play revolves around the monetary value those letters represent crashing upon the shreds of sentimentality Nina still has for literally anything in her world.
Chayla Simpson sank into this character deeply. She carries an indomitable will to change and transcend her continuous predicaments. Her “privilege” as the daughter of two respected icons has never materialized. Her life is squarely lived on the unlit sides of the evening streets, where she and her doting boyfriend Damon (played naturally as rain by Mo Cuzzo) hustle unsuspecting East New Yorkers, selling drugs and “robbing people.” Chayla gives her Nina edges sharp as overused and thinned knives. You can almost hear her soul’s belted screams emanating silently behind derision, mistrust, and rage. There is a naturalism in her character that requires a little bombast, the loud bravado of insecurity, and Chayla nails it.
Larry Akin Smith, who plays Nina’s father Kenyatta, conjures a man who knows his best efforts to create change have resulted in some honor to his name, but little benefit to his community, and quite possibly the destruction of his family. He brings a stilted, halting stoicism to his performance that I felt compelled to study closely. The nuance in his performance could easily be lost to those who don’t relate to the shame of absence, and the hard-to-articulate justifications required to continue living with it. His recordings into a camcorder for the benefit of his daughter (and his ego), are proud and sad at the same time, revelatory and desperate in equal measure.
Mo Cuzzo’s Damon breaks the tension like any smooth, charismatic, neighborhood dealer needs to. He loves Nina but is classically trained in selfishness. Mr. Cuzzo keeps his character seamless. I believed every moment he was on stage, except for a brief wordless hunt through Nina’s apartment that seemed a bit overdone. Otherwise, he reminded me of all the ‘hood’ dreamers I’ve ever known that wouldn’t know what to do with a win should they ever actually have one. He is a reminder of an entire class of people whose most enduring quality is losing gracefully. Resilience sounds noble until you understand the horrors of scrapes on scars on bruises on fractures, never healing, always scabbing. Nina’s kettle boils with a hypersonic whistle. Damon’s cools as fast as it warms, creating a stasis of opportunity and failure mistaken as confidence.
Dee D. Miller’s loose direction gives the much-needed space for her cast to just be, to react, and to move naturally about the stage. Her approach gives us emotional permission to absorb these characters like neighbors whose conversations are reluctantly overheard through too-thin apartment walls. Miller’s confidence in her cast is evident, giving her players everything they need to truly inhabit their avatars.
Tariq Karriem, the wunderkind Artistic Director for the Black VA Theatre Alliance, is making a case for leadership in our constantly evolving theatre scene. This level of quality from even the youngest talent is inspiring.
Black Virginia Theatre Alliance’s production of Sunset Baby is on stage from April 4–13 at the Theatre Gym at Virginia Rep, located at 114 W. Broad Street. Buy tickets to Sunset Baby HERE.
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