Forty-four years after Samm-Art Williams‘ wonderfully affecting Home first opened on Broadway (in a Tony nominated production), the playwright and his signature play were finally about to get a long-hoped-for Broadway revival from the Roundabout Theatre Company.
With the acclaimed director Kenny Leon at the helm and a three-actor cast that all but channels the author’s voice and the groundbreaking intensity and rhythms of his ’70s-era work for the Negro Ensemble Company, the revival promised to be a testament to the tenacity of the play and a well-deserved splash of late-career recognition for a once celebrated playwright who would become far better known for producing a trio of 1990s sitcoms (Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Martin).
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Williams didn’t live to see the revival, dying peacefully in North Carolina last month at 78. Roundabout and Leon have kept their end of the bargain. Home opens tonight on Broadway at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre in a top-notch production that serves as a fitting and heartfelt tribute to the author.
Featuring a cast that couldn’t be better – Roundabout newcomers Tory Kittles, Brittany Inge and Stori Ayers – Home, after all these years away, remains a powerful depiction of a seemingly ordinary life in an extraordinarily cruel time and place: Cephus Miles is a Black, dirt-poor farmer in the Jim Crow South, his hopes for happiness wrapped up in a school sweetheart who’s about to go off to college. Life, as they say, does not go according to plan.
In the country scenes – Cephus later moves to New York City – the telling of this life story is played out on a sparse set gorgeously designed and beautifully lit to present a golden-hued depiction of a perhaps romanticized rural past. A humble, homey rocking chair takes center stage, backed by a bed of cornstalks and a projected backdrop of never-ending fields that seems to promise a security as durable as the soil.
In fairly quick, seamless transitions, the cast, with Inge and Ayers playing a number of roles including a sort of Greek chorus-slash-chorus of Black ancestors, telling tales and pointing the way, Home presents the important and crucial moments in Cephus’ long life. From childhood whippings, the early loss of the only two family members who had taken any real interest in the child, through first love, and first heartbreak.
A five-year jail stint for refusing to fight in Vietnam will follow Cephus like a tireless hound, and results in the loss of his family farm and builds a near-insurmountable barrier to employment and any semblance of financial stability.
With his land gone, Cephus leaves prison for New York City, a place that doesn’t keep its promises. Dead broke and with growing drug and alcohol addictions, the country-boy-at-heart manages to make an unlikely friend or two but ends up homeless and relying on the kindness of a neighborhood wino.
Reaching rock bottom on the streets of New York – the backdrop projections have shifted from golden harvest to noirish black & white shapes and shadows – Cephus receives a lifeline from back home, if, that is, he can shape up enough and summon the courage to return to better climes and the undying judgments of a hometown that never forgets.
Cephus’ plan to return home – signaled, of course, by the title and confirmed in the play’s opening moments – will make all the difference, or it won’t. It’ll save him, or trap him.
Through it all, the cast of three portrays more than 40 characters, with Kittles absolutely convincing in all ages of this man. Inge, whose roster of characters includes that high school sweetheart Pattie Mae, and Ayers, who charms with touching and funny portraits of an end-of-the-road streetcorner alcoholic and a genial, elderly bus driver, keep the play’s careful balance between three actors who are called upon to do very much indeed.
Williams provided an ending to Home that’s as generous and hopeful as it is satisfying. Back in ’80 it must have seemed like the author was closing a troubled chapter not only in Cephus’ life but to a nation’s shameful history. Today, it seems like a parting wish for the journey ahead.
Title: Home
Venue: Broadway’s Todd Haimes Theatre
Written By: Samm-Art Williams
Directed By: Kenny Leon
Cast: Tory Kittles, Brittany Inge, Stori Ayers
Running time: 90 min (No Intermission)
