'Thoughts' a dramatized mosaic of Black male experience
Three Bone Theatre presents “Thoughts of a Colored Man” at The Arts Factory at West End Studios through May 19
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on May 10, 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.
Review: In ‘Thoughts of a Colored Man,’ 7 men embody pieces of Black life in America
Characters in “Thoughts of a Colored Man” are identified by their named traits, like Anger, Happiness and Wisdom. (Photo courtesy of Three Bone Theater)
by Lawrence Toppman
I think, after 95 intense and intermission-free minutes at Three Bone Theatre, I know why Keenan Scott II called his Broadway debut “Thoughts of a Colored Man.”
“Thoughts” because words fly at light speed, especially under the crackling direction of Sidney Horton; the verbal images move as fast and sometimes as randomly as thought itself.
“Man” because it covers only half of the Black experience: There are no female characters, and mothers and girlfriends appear only briefly through the eyes of the seven men onstage.
“Colored,” as opposed to “Black” or “African-American,” in tribute to the all-female “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide” — which also has seven unnamed characters telling harrowing and funny stories — and “The Colored Museum,” a play in 11 sketches that range from satiric to horrifying.
“A” rather than “the,” because you can consider the seven men as embodying small pieces of the collective Black experience. It’s the playwright’s version of our national motto, “e pluribus unum” — “out of many, one.”
And “of” just means “of.”
Scott began to write the play in the mid-00s, when he was a college student, and worked on it up to a 2021 Broadway premiere. Some sections have the angry energy of a young man, some the respect for divergent views that comes en route to middle age. Every character becomes eloquent, however crude or colloquial his speech, and none let us dismiss them easily: Even the horndog Lust (Dionte Darko) finally reveals a back story that helps us understand him.
These men identify themselves by their named traits but aren’t defined solely by those. Anger (Devin Clark) remembers his NBA hopes crashing to the court with a busted knee, but he channeled his skills into a job as a high school coach. Love (Daylon Jones) seems a giddy dreamer but has a pragmatic side. Wisdom (Graham Williams), who runs a barbershop, reminds his employee Passion (Jonovan Adams) of stupid decisions made as a youth.
Happiness (Nehemiah Lawson) frets a lot for someone with that moniker. As a wealthy gay newcomer to a gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood, he worries that white and black acquaintances will stereotype him in different unhelpful ways.
Sometimes the situations aren’t color-bound. Depression (Marvin King), who earned an engineering degree at M.I.T. but now works at Whole Foods, could be any dutiful son who gave up a career to care for a decrepit mother. Passion’s joy in fatherhood applies to all incipient dads. (The Talk, as Black parents call it, is a long way off.)
Most critics who didn’t respond to Scott’s play had two negative responses: He hasn’t said anything new about Black lives in America, and he has tried to encapsulate so much of those lives that he doesn’t dig profoundly into any facet of them.
Neither argument resonates with me. His handling of speech, a mixture of prose and slam poetry, gives him a unique voice. If the scenes about a barbershop as a sanctuary or the mania for overpriced sneakers don’t probe new territory, they’re still amusing or pointed. His broad-but-not-deep approach works in the same style as the “colored” predecessors mentioned above: Every Black playwright needn’t emulate August Wilson.
And Scott has the ability to convince me, when the backchat in the barbershop runs at full steam, that I’m hearing the truth. Like any sentient white person, I have sometimes wondered how Black characters speak when Caucasians aren’t around. I’m never going to know, of course. But after “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” I feel like I do.
If You’re Going: Three Bone Theatre presents “Thoughts of a Colored Man” at The Arts Factory at West End Studios, 1545 W. Trade St., through May 19. Shows are at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
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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