March 24-30, 2005

theater

Hearty Boys

by David Anthony Fox

"Write what you know" is standard advice, but black poet and playwright Dael Orlandersmith has paid it no heed in Raw Boys, her tale of an Irish family transplanted first to London and later New York. I imagine Wilma audiences are glad she didn't. Watching a production immeasurably aided by Blanka Zizka's superb direction, the group reaction was as enthusiastic as any I've seen in Philadelphia this year.

My own feelings are more mixed.

There's no denying Orlandersmith's skill with language, or the compelling interest of her narrative. Shane and Billy are brothers born to a working-class Irish couple — "shadow" people, as Shane describes them. Parents Rose and William have creative interests (she reads, he's a blues musician), but they are insufficient to overcome a descent into alcoholism (her) and violent rage (him).

In twig's-bent fashion, the brothers follow the parents. Billy is a hellion, hanging out on the King's Road with his mates, stirring up trouble and snorting coke. He is also an aspiring actor. The quieter Shane turns to poetry, falling in love with Kerouac and Ginsberg. What becomes of the two young men is the substance of Raw Boys.

Act 1, with the family living in London, works well on its own terms. Still, this is very familiar territory, covered by playwrights from O'Casey and O'Neill onward, and Orlandersmith hasn't anything particularly new to say about the doom-laden Irish family. I'm more intrigued by her theme of how some children can transcend their environment while others succumb to it; but while Orlandersmith is thought-provoking, she ultimately has no answers (not her fault — nobody does).

Act 2 loses focus. Shane and Billy are now in New York, and two other characters are introduced: a Puerto Rican poet and his daughter. Superficially drawn, they seem tacked on in a quest for Thematic Universality, and merely slow things down.

Most problematic is a structure that has the characters telling the story to the audience more often than they interact with each other. This now-commonplace strategy is dispiriting shorthand, an easy way out. It moves the action along sleekly, but robs us of the combustion we're looking for.

In any case, the Wilma has certainly given Raw Boys a fine production. Klara Zieglerova's set is a mix of platforms where one character's floor is another's table — quite a metaphor for this world! There is exquisite lighting by Russell Champa. Blanka Zizka lets the power come as it should — from her cast — and the family is quite superlatively played by James Gale (William), John Keating (Shane) and especially Nancy Boykin (Rose) and Jamie Harris (Billy). If their accents initially seem an odd assortment, in fact they're just right for a peripatetic bunch with varying class aspirations.

Raw Boys Through April 10, Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., 215-546-7824