ADEkoje was inspired by the death of a college friend, who was murdered. Here he makes the character a boxer, Ace, who gets himself killed trying to settle a worthy old score without the lethal old weapons. He’s dead from the beginning, as indicated by a shrine trimmed in flowers and boxing gloves. But as the play progresses, various characters — Ace himself, the embittered older brother who holds him responsible for the six years he spent in jail, the absent alcoholic father, Ace’s feisty sister, his white soulmate — step into the ring to spar with grief and disappointment while darting around in time to tell a story that’s made the more interesting by not being strictly chronological. In that respect, ADEkoje, abetted by the ebullient DJ punching through the fourth wall, makes a sadly familiar story new.
The writer has a solid, seasoned director in Lois Roach, who never lets all the metaphor — the story is unfolded, though not as schematically as the title infers, in “six rounds” and “six lessons,” which include the admonition to “take care of family” and the maxim that “the past informs the present” — get in the way. There are some good performances, too, from a non-Equity cast; the standouts are Jason Bowen, whose wheedling ex-con brother in a wheelchair is possessed by an effectively quiet anger, and Keith Mascoll as “DJ Bubbles,” prodding the action with a mix of good-natured on-air bravura and sage advice. Wesley Lawrence Taylor and Juanita Rodriguez are calmly convincing as disappointing dad and unmovable mom; as Ace’s sister, Karimah S. Moreland supplies enough spark to power, not just dance to, the soundtrack.
Race is the more overt subject of the powder keg called White People, with which New Repertory Theatre concludes the first season of its Downstage @ New Rep series of edgier works put on in a small black box (at the Arsenal Center for the Arts through April 1). Playwright J. T. Rogers’s 2000 orchestration of three monologues by non-redneck Caucasians is intended to show that racism is endemic in American culture, especially when backs are pushed to the wall. Although less chilling, it calls to mind Neil LaBute’s bash, in which all of the white people are Mormons. Here they’re more diverse: a liberal New York college instructor shattered by a mugging; a smug lawyer transplanted from New York to St. Louis in search of homogeneity and safety; a Southern high-school prom queen whose “possibility” has seeped away.
The piece is directed by Diego Arciniegas on a set by J. Michael Griggs that allows the stories to interweave, turning the monologues into more of a play. And the performances are expert, particularly Georgia Lyman’s as the dethroned high-school royalty turned lower-middle-class mother of a child with a rare, severe form of epilepsy. I have known this actress all her life and have followed her performances from BU to Showtime’s Brotherhood. But nothing prepared me for the combination of wilted, shattered flower and fishwife she brings to this role. Stephen Russell, too, nails the authoritative Brooklyn transplant who thinks he understands the “rules” of life and business — proper “uniform,” exacting language — until a hate crime knocks the stodgy pinions from beneath him. As the young instructor yakking about New World tough ass Peter Stuyvesant and his own changing attitude toward a bright black student, Robert Kropf is a bit too affectedly casual, but his earnestness is manifest.
