Review: ‘Confederates’ — Civil war, culture war
Three Bone Theatre’s “Confederates” runs through Feb. 24 in The Arts Factory at West End Studios.
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on February 11, 2024. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. And check out this link for Toppman’s archive of reviews in the Ledger.
Questions abound in Three Bone Theatre’s thought-provoking ‘Confederates,’ which shines with solid casting
Nonye Obichere (left) and Jess Johnson play Sara and Luanne, who work on a southern plantation in “Confederates.” (Courtesy of Three Bone Theatre)
by Lawrence Toppman
“Confederates” begins with a small mystery: Who tacked an image of an enslaved woman suckling a white baby on a black professor’s door, with the professor’s head photoshopped onto the woman?
The play at Three Bone Theatre ends with a larger mystery: What, if anything, can be done to uproot racism from American culture and relieve both black and white people from the pressures it applies?
The first mystery never gets solved. The second may be insoluble. But Dominique Morisseau’s play shows us why we can’t quit trying.
This appealingly dense drama digs deeper than her “Detroit ’67,” which Theatre Charlotte did last season, but they share a theme: Black characters must decide what they owe members of their community (if anything) at the risk of their own comfort or safety.
The two protagonists of “Confederates” are bound 160 years apart in ways I can’t fully reveal without giving away a key element of the plot. Most crucially, they are prisoners of other people’s expectations and, in certain ways, powerless to obtain justice.
Sara (Nonye Obichere) works on a plantation in the South, trying to aid a brother (Daylen Jones) who has escaped and joined the Union Army, fend off a nosy house servant (Jess Johnson) and decide whether the new abolitionist sentiments of the master’s daughter (Holli Armstrong) can possibly be true.
Sandra (Valerie Thames) holds a tenured position at a modern-day college. There she’s plagued by a student (Jones) who feels she punishes him for being a black male, an office assistant (Armstrong) whose sense of white guilt reaches absurd levels, and a black colleague (Johnson) who wants tenure and believes Sandra may keep her from getting it.
Morisseau occasionally tries too hard to link the two main characters: Both are barren, and neither is married. (In the play’s least characteristic line, divorced Sandra laments that she broke the glass ceiling but couldn’t keep a man.) We don’t need to be told that each is a whole woman without a spouse or child.
Most of the play more subtly asks us to double-check our preconceptions. And the characters follow so many entertaining byways in their rapid conversations that I couldn’t always be sure which ones spoke for the author.
Do Malik’s complaints about Sandra arise from a persecution complex, or does she really treat him more harshly than fellow class members? Does plantation daughter Missy Sue really have sexual designs on Sara, or are those imagined by nosy Luanne because the master has taken Luanne to bed so often? We can take sides without always knowing or having to know who’s “right.” Maybe they’re all right on some level.
Obichere and Thames top a generally good cast with note-perfect performances, hanging onto hard-won dignity with grit and surprising humor. Obichere, who’s making her Three Bone debut, convinces us she really belongs to the 19th century — not easy for an actor to do — and Thames suggests the exasperated professors of both genders and races I suspect I irritated in college.
The director — Donna Marie McMillan on the website, DonnaMarie in the program — also makes her Three Bone debut and uses the cramped Arts Factory stage intelligently, putting Sara at one end and Sandra at the other on Zachary Tarlton’s compact but versatile set. Audience members, who face each other throughout the action, inevitably strain a bit to hear what Morisseau has to say when actors turn away from them, but the effort pays off.
➡️If You’re Going: Three Bone Theatre’s “Confederates” runs at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 24 in The Arts Factory at West End Studios, 1545 W. Trade St. Tickets: $15-$30.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews about two times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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