Now a successful author, middle-aged Suzanne Alexander (Audra McDonald) has returned to alma mater, Ohio State University, at the school’s invitation to speak on the subject of violent imagery in her work. Just being on campus shakes her. Her story, part ostensibly presented, partly privately recalled, begins in 1949 when she enters the school only one of six “Negro” students.
Racism is horrific, rampant, unaddressed. Suzanne understandably winces as she describes a situation restricting every move which includes having her room rummaged through by a housemistress and being unjustly accused of theft. Her only friend is timid violinist Iris Ann (Abigail Stephenson). Down the hall we hear White girls playing the pop song “Don’t Go Away Mad.”
Abigail Stephenson (Iris Ann), Audra McDonald (Suzanne Alexander)
The heroine finds herself drawn to English Literature. She apparently writes with articulate insight acknowledged by the White professor. As Negroes are not credited with sufficient intellect for the course -“It was thought that we were not able to master the program,” and she’s clearly given no special recommendation, Suzanne is denied her chosen major.
Somewhere along the road, she naively gets entangled with “Bobbie” i.e. Professor Robert Hampshire (Bryce Pinkham). When his student becomes pregnant, he denies responsibility and distances himself. She’s then expelled. Her humiliated, college educated parents turn their backs. Suzanne goes to New York in the charge of a sympathetic aunt (Lizan Mitchell). She has twin girls. Unfathomably, she returns to Ohio where she stays with a friend of her parents, gets a job as a stock girl, and eventually rematriculates.
Audra McDonald (Suzanne Alexander)
“Robert captured, kidnapped and murdered our daughter Cathi,” only begins the tragedy from which the violence in her work stems. There’s more. Suzanne does meet a good man (Mister Fitzgerald), but stubbornly remains, failing to escape a second calamity in hopes of discovering the perpetrator of the first. Headlines are successively made.
It’s difficult to know to whom one should attribute the persona McDonald so successfully plays that she irritates instead of evoking sympathy and presents only a single continuous state of anxiety, suppression, brittleness, and despair. (Intermittent manic laughter chills.) Though Kenny Leon is the director, the actress’s status and involvement in the production might suggest this was greatly in her purview making it all the more incomprehensible. Earlier productions have employed two actresses in the younger and older sections of the heroine’s life. That might’ve been more advantageous.
Mister Fitzgerald (David), Audra McDonald (Suzanne Alexander)
As audience files in, a rambling interview with the playwright Adrienne Kennedy is played over speakers. McDonald successfully mimics Kennedy’s abrasive, start-stop vocal delivery making monologue literally difficult to listen to, removing us from the immediacy of what might have been an affecting portrait.
Representation of Professor Robert Hampshire (the usually fine Bryce Pinkham) can, I think, be blamed on the author and Leon. Not only is the important character without appeal, he’s without personality. Monotone reading from literature he teaches – apparently captivating the otherwise timid Suzanne – might put any lecture hall to sleep. Nor is there a dramatized moment of real connection between him and his prey.
This is the Broadway debut of a 75 minute piece first produced in 1991. Like her protagonist, 91 year-old Kennedy attended Ohio State in the early 1950s undoubtedly suffering some of what Suzanne endures. Like Suzanne, she has so distanced herself the piece seems numb.
Beowulf Boritt’s hugely distracting set takes away from a truly intimate story as well as destroying the effect of several projections (Jeff Sugg). Evidently Kennedy dictated a conceptual set. The babies are oddly depicted by two pink blankets which may indicate their ephemeral time, but also makes them less than real.
Costumes by Dede Ayite are effectively character specific.
Photos by Richard Termine
Opening: Audra McDonald (Suzanne), Bryce Pinkham (Professor Hampshire)
Ohio State Murders by Adrienne Kennedy
Directed by Kenny Leon
James Earl Jones Theatre
138 West 48th Street
