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'Emmett Till' is a triumphant retelling of familiar tragedy
THEATER REVIEW | We know his fate, but play has more to say
Taken from the May 6, 2008 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times
By Hedy Weiss
The story of Emmett Till is such an intrinsic part of Chicago history—and such an emblematic moment in the entire civil rights movement in this country—that any new play about the subject has to be met with this question: What is left to say about that 14-year-old black boy who traveled from Chicago to rural Mississippi to visit relatives in the summer of 1955, who unthinkingly whistled at a white woman in a candy store and became the target of a hideously brutal lynching?
Of course that is like asking: What else can be said about Oedipus? We know that ancient Greek king will meet his terrible fate, and yet we are compelled to hear his story again and again.
That same sense of inevitability is never far away in playwright Ifa Bayeza's "The Ballad of Emmett Till," now in a fluidly spun, character-rich world premiere at the Goodman Theatre. Bayeza's telling of the familiar story is infused with such beautiful language, such a fine ear for the very individual voices of her characters, such a rich and detailed sense of the nature of the racial divide in the North and South of the time and such a biblical feel for the whole notion of resurrection that the story remains riveting. And director Oz Scott has cast the production expertly, and captured the musical tone of Bayeza's "ballad" style.
The first act—recounting the lead-up to Emmett's trip, his alternately comic and poignant adventures in Mississippi and the terror of his abduction from his uncle's house—is exceptionally powerful. And the radiant Joseph Anthony Boyd is altogether remarkable as Emmett—the irrepressibly exuberant and naive boy-man who beat polio, learned to compensate for his stutter by whistling, engaged in nonstop patter and had a flair for fashion and the good life. Emmett was just beginning to "wake up" as he escaped the clutches of his doting mother, Mamie (a deftly understated Deirdre Henry), and discovered the realities of his farmer uncle Mose Wright (ideal work by John Wesley), who will betray him, and loving aunt (Karen Aldridge).
Bayeza gives us some uncomfortable truths, too, showing how blacks were used to do most of the beating and hinting at the nature of Emmett's father. If the play's second act is weaker it is only because the brutality and injustice are so numbingly familiar by now.
Theater Review
'The Ballad of Emmett Till'
Highly Recommended
When: Through June 1
Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn
Tickets: $23 - $70
Call: (312) 443-3800
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