| . | 10/26/2009
The Emperor Jones
By: Victor Gluck
John Douglas Thompson as Brutus Jones
(Photo credit: Carol Rosegg)
John Douglas Thompson, who won raves last season for his Obie and Lucille Lortel Award-winning performance in Theater for a New Audience’s Othello, has returned with a towering portrayal in the title role of Eugene O’Neill’s tragedy, The Emperor Jones. Director Ciarán O’Reilly has followed up his acclaimed revival of O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape in 2006 with a rare look at the playwright’s expressionist 1920 drama, famous for its use of tom toms and references to a silver bullet. Using puppets and masks to make this play even more expressionistic than written, this is a Jungian nightmare that restores this seemingly dated play to the first rank of the O’Neill canon.
Suggested by an incident in Haitian history, O’Neill’s portrait of an African-American would be politically incorrect if written today with its repeated use of the “n” word, Black dialect and racial insults. However, in this character study of the rise and fall of an ex-Pullman porter and jail-breaker who has achieved the status of emperor on a West Indian island, O’Neill’s protagonist reaches the breadth of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. As Brutus Jones tries to flee into the nighttime forest from revolt begun by his conspiring subjects whom he has victimized, his fears get the better of him. He hallucinates first his personal past that he is also running away from (the killing of a partner at craps, his time on a chain gang) and then his racial past (a slave auction in 1850, a slave ship crossing the Atlantic, and finally a Congo witch doctor casting a spell.)
Director O’Reilly has cleverly added to the play’s expressionistic elements by having the creatures that Jones meets in the forest played by actors in masks and by using puppets (all designed by Bob Flanagan) to add to the eeriness of the hallucinations that Jones’ own psyche conjures up. In addition, designer Antonia Ford-Roberts has created realistic yet magical costumes that allow actors to portray the trees, vines and vegetation of the forest, a dancing, ever moving, breathing wall that entraps Jones as well as makes him lose his way. Ryan Rumery and Christian Frederickson’s original music and sound design, including the ever-present drumming, is suitable but unimaginative. However, Brian Nason’s inspired lighting plot becomes a constantly changing character in the play’s eight scenes.
It is Thompson’s over-sized performance that makes this production work. When he enters he fits O’Neill’s description perfectly: “tall, powerfully built.” His military bearing also reveals his “underlying strength of will, a hardy, self–reliance in himself that inspires respect.” As his Brutus Jones descends from royal arrogance to cowering fear, like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, he straddles a range of emotions. In his mouth, the archaic “Negro” dialect becomes a kind of hypnotic poetry which he has used previously to impress his subjects and now he uses to allay his fears of the “haunts” which are every where he looks in the forest. Thompson’s classical and repertory training serves him well and he is at all times commanding, fascinating and thrilling to watch.
Aside from Rick Foucheux’s excellent Cockney trader, Henry Smithers, formerly Jones’ partner and now his jealous subject, the rest of the cast is mainly hidden by masks and costumes. They are asked to play soldiers, an auctioneer, a witch-doctor, and natives as well as handling the many Balinese-style puppets that represent the “haunts” that beset Jones in the forest. This talented ensemble is made up of Sameerah Lugmaan-Harris, Jon Deliz, Michael Akil Davis, Sinclair Mitchell and David Heron. Coach Stephen Gabis is responsible for the authentic sound of the various dialects from Southern Black speech, to Cockney and Caribbean.
Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones which is rarely performed today due to its special requirements and its problematic racial depiction still packs quite a punch. Like The Merchant of Venice and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it is a work of historical, sociological and psychological importance. This Emperor Jones would be worth seeing just for John Douglas Thompson’s extraordinary performance. However, under Ciarán O’Reilly’s forceful direction, it is also a haunting experience, touching on nightmares that are common to all human experience.
The Emperor Jones (through November 29)
Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22nd Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-727-2737 or http://www.irishrep.org
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