Challenging “Trouble in Mind” Moves At Moxie

Article by Rebecca Romani

Moxie Theatre, located in the College area on El Cajon Boulevard, may be one of the smaller companies in town, but it is celebrating its 10th season with some powerful fare that even a larger company would find challenging.

Over the years. Moxie has built a reputation for smart, sharp stagings of work by women playwrights that challenge the status quo and re-define what women are writing about.

Moxie’s current play, “Trouble In Mind,”opening January 31, 2015, is easily one of their most dynamic and powerful productions of the season. Even though the production is currently in previews, “Trouble” promises to be one of the top, must-see productions of the San Diego Theatre season.

Although “Trouble in Mind,” was actually written in the 1950’s, its frank discussion of race and representation still resonate today, especially in light of the recent Oscar nominations.

“Trouble” takes its name from an old 1920’s piece and its content from the reality its playwright, Alice Childress, a ground breaking African-American actress, writer and director, saw working in the American theatre during the early days of the Civil Rights movement.

The play centers on a Broadway Production, “Chaos in Belleville,” struggling to get the production to gel during rehearsals. “Chaos” is ostensibly a liberal plea for understanding between the races, including an anti-lynching message, perhaps in reference to Emmitt Till, the 14 year old boy from Chicago who was lynched in Mississippi earlier that year.

However, the mostly African-American cast continually come up against the paternalistic, condescending positions of the White director, Al Manners (the masterful Ruff Yaeger), who, in some cases, treats the women like sweet children and the African American cast in general like artists barely able to think for themselves. And when Wiletta, an older actress who plays a maid, reads the director the riot act over his stereotyped characters, the play lays raw and bare the questions of stereotype and representation that plague American popular culture to this day.

Wiletta (a strong performance by Monique Gaffney), who plays a maid, has enough experience in film to know when she’s playing a Mammy character. But she is so in need of an acting job, that she is willing to see it as “the Man’s theatre and the Man’s play and you do what the Man says,” as she tells a young newcomer, John Nivens (a dashing Vimel Sephas), who isn’t quite sure whether to be appalled or take her advice.

As Manners tries to guide his cast through a ghastly Southern scenario of somewhat enlightened Southern Belle, loyal servants, and a boy in danger of being lynched because he dared to vote, the tension on stage grows.

The older experienced African-American actor, Sheldon Forrestor (played with smoldering restraint by Victor Morris), at first is willing to play the simpleton, advocating for staying within the system, just to keep his job, However, the two younger actors, John and the well-intentioned but somewhat clueless Judy (nicely handled by Samantha Ginn), who plays the White Southern Belle, are uncomfortable mouthing terms and sentiments that sound more like Gone With the Wind than a nation being swept by the winds of civil protest.

But Manners keeps at them, pushing them to feel, to speak as stereotypes, to reach into the lynching scene where Wiletta is supposed to give up her son to appease to mob to achieve a greater good.

When Wiletta explodes at what she feels is undeserved compromise and Sheldon tells the story of a real lynching, the stage fairly crackles with repressed rage, frustration and hurt feelings on all sides.

But Childress saves her genius for human nature for the final surge. As Wiletta and the pompous Manners warily circle each other, both have had their eyes opened- he to her lived limitations as an African-American and she to his bumbling but well-intentioned efforts at raising social awareness of the need for social change.

“Trouble” is a powerful play no matter what the time period, but given the 60 year remove, its is an especially challenging piece that looks both forward and back.

You can hear echoes of the rhetoric that drove Martin Luther King, Jr, wild in the words of Manners on change, “moderation is the key,” and aspects of “The Help” when Wiletta points out that the plays “uses a White person” to fix things.

It’s a fine line to walk but director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg deftly keeps the play balanced, allowing the tension to soar and the lighter moments to linger.

Preview night delivered a strong but still evolving production. The period costumes were right on the mark without feeling too period piece and the women’s dresses, always a hard fit, moved well. The cast seemed to still be feeling out the stage and gaps between some of the lines were noticeable.

However, as the company moved through the play, connections tightened and it was easier to see the fault lines between the characters, their private moments and public faces.

Exceptional moments can be found in Cashae Monya’s beautiful singing and snappy delivery as Millie Davis while Tom Kilroy’s Henry, although wanting in the Irish brogue, offers an interesting foil to Wiletta as the Irish immigrant remembering a similar struggle as Ireland strove to throw off its British version of Jim Crow. Justin Lang as Eddie Fenton, the director’s and Nick Young as Bill O’Wray the older white actor who prefers not to lunch with the rest of the cast, give solid, wall-balanced performances.

Alice Childress received an Obie for the play and nothing but trouble for its attempted Broadway debut. But “Trouble in Mind” has aged well and this production gives it the depth and wit it deserves.