In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024), Part 3

 

[When I received the regular e-mail from American Theatre, it included a link to an article by Phylicia Rashad.  It was a memoir about her work with James Earl Jones on the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in which she played Big Mama to his Big Daddy. 

[This was in the evening of the day that I posted “In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024), Part 2.”  I immediately decided to add a third installment to the brief series so I could republish Rashad’s interesting memory piece.  Because the memoir is fairly short, I decided to accompany it with a few other pieces I though would be interesting and informative: two reviews of the production and a New York Times article from 1974 which was quoted in Part 1.

[The details of the 2008 revival of Cat, which premièred on Broadway in 1955, are laid out in Part 2 of “In Memoriam,” posted on 25 September (Part 1 was posted on 22 September), so I won’t repeat them here.  Many of Jones’s plays, films, and TV shows mentioned in the articles below are also detailed in Parts 1 or 2 for your reference.] 

Me and Mr. Jones
by Phylicia Rashad 

[Rashad’s memoir was posted on the American Theatre magazine site (AMERICAN THEATRE | Me and Mr. Jones) on 23 September 2024.]

A longtime admirer and colleague remembers the man and the questions that drove his work. 

James Earl Jones, the acclaimed actor who made his name onstage in The Great White Hope, Boesman and Lena, Fences, and countless other plays, including Othello, died on Sept. 9. He was 93.

[The U.S. premiere of Boesman and Lena by Athol Fugard (South African; b. 1932) opened Off-Broadway at Circle in the Square Downtown in Greenwich Village on 22 June 1970 and ran until 24 January 1971 for 205 performances. Jones, as Boesman, starred opposite Ruby Dee (1922-2014) as Lena under the direction of John Berry. The production won Obie Awards for Best Foreign Play, Distinguished Direction, and Best Performance by an Actress.]

It was in the spring of my sophomore year at Howard University [historically black private university in Washington, D.C., chartered in 1867; Rashad is a magna cum laude alumna of the class of 1970]. As I was leaving class, I heard a group of female students in a flutter. “He’s here!” “Did you see him? I’d heard that he was coming, but I didn’t think it was today!” “Well, it is today! He is here and he is magnificent!”

I had no idea of who had caused such commotion, but as I approached the exit, peering through the glass doors, I saw him: Mr. James Earl Jones.

The Great White Hope was in its pre-Broadway performance run at Arena Stage [1967-68]. He had taken time out of his theatre schedule to visit this historic institution of higher learning; and yes, he was magnificent! Statuesque, handsome, and strong, with an air of gentleness about him.

Fast forward to post-graduation, living in New York City. A friend had tickets to see the Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs [Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, 1970]. Following the performance, we were allowed to visit Mr. Jones in his dressing room. He was very kind to receive us. My friend asked all the questions. He noted that, and with a smile turned to me and said, “You don’t speak much.” “Well,” I said, “my mother taught me that there were two times when one should be silent: When you have nothing to say, and when it’s not your turn.” He laughed at that.

More than 30 years would pass before we would perform in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Playing Big Mama opposite his Big Daddy, under the direction of my sister, Debbie Allen Nixon, had been beyond my dreams. But there we were in the rehearsal space, working it out together.

When I am asked, “How was working with James Earl Jones? What was his process? What was he like?” I pause before answering. My first observation was his interest in the “sinews” of thought. Pondering and probing the complexity of human behavior, asking questions of himself that few artists would consider, he’d come to one thought or question that he deemed most important in understanding who the person/character was; he would pursue that thought or question throughout rehearsals and performances. He had to be in the heart of the character. I would learn more about this later when we would speak about August Wilson and his portrayal of Troy Maxson in Fences [46th Street Theatre on Broadway, 1987-88].

His focus was relaxed, his level of concentration was astounding. Of everyone involved in the production (Tony, Golden Globe, and Emmy winners and an Oscar nominee among them), Mr. Jones was clearly the most seasoned and the most gracious. This was Debbie’s Broadway directorial debut. He adored her, and listened with rapt attention to everything that she had to say, eager to explore her suggestions while offering his own. Debbie enjoyed improvisation as a means of discovering “what lies beneath the written page.” Mr. Jones said, “I don’t know. I don’t do well with improvisation. I’ve never been good at it, but okay, I’ll try it!” He tried it and he liked it.

Mr. Jones was a “living legend,” and we all knew it. But this iconic status—well deserved by virtue of decades of sustained excellence in performance onstage, in film, and on television—did not preclude normal interactions with people. Being with Mr. Jones was easy because of his genuine interest in each person that he met. He was present, kind, and accessible.

During the time of our work together, through casual conversations, James Earl (as I had come to call him) would share life experience and reflections: the trauma of separation from his parents at the age of 5 years old, which resulted in stuttering; the embarrassment and anguish at being mocked that was the reason for several years of self-imposed silence; the study of poetry that led to discovery of his capacity for clear, unobstructed speech [see “Stage Unites Two Jones Generations” by C. Gerald Fraser, below].

His high school English teacher gave an assignment for students to write a poem. James Earl wrote “Ode to a Grapefruit.” Students were required to read their poems aloud to the full class. The inevitability of being mocked for stuttering was terrifying; but there was no way out. He stood before the class to read his poem, knowing that it would be a disaster; but to his surprise, there was no stutter. His speech was free! Speaking the written word aloud became a pathway forward.

We spoke about many things. Our conversations were always interesting. One centered around Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences. We spoke about the language of the play; how Wilson had captured rhythmic speech. James Earl said that in his early years as an actor, it was his father, the actor Robert Earl Jones, who told him to remember his Southern roots, because “the time will come when people forget this way of speaking and you won’t be able to teach them.” When I asked about his approach to developing the character, he simply shared this reflection, “Lord, forgive me for wanting so much; but I am so wanting.” He continued by saying that the most important thing for him to know about Troy was if he was really capable of killing his son. He never answered that question—not to me, at least. If Troy Maxson had been capable of murdering his own son, it would have been completely antithetical to James Earl’s thinking and way of life.

What mattered most in life to James Earl Jones was his family. He treasured his wife, Cecilia, and his son, Flynn Earl. He was passionate about his work, relished the creative process, and valued his friends and professional associates. He was compassionate, non-judgmental, knowledgeable about many subjects, well-versed in literature, critically acclaimed as an artist, revered as a human being.

[Phylicia Rashad is an Emmy- and Tony-winning actor and director.  Like my experience with Jones, I saw Rashad on stage twice, both as replacements for the originating actresses: in April 1988, as the Witch in Into the Woods at the Martin Beck Theatre (now the Al Hirschfeld) and in June 2009 as Violet Weston in August: Osage County at the Music Box.]   

*  *  *  *
“BLACK CAST SIZZLES ON B’WAY IN ‘CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF’”
by Linda Armstrong

[I chose two reviews of the 2008 revival of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to post with Phylicia Rashad’s memory article.  This one’s from the New York Amsterdam News of 6 March 2008.  I thought it would be good to spotlight the notice in New York City’s premier African-American weekly considering the historic nature of the production.]

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” sizzles with sexuality, frustration, guilt and anger. This historical production—which, for the first time on Broadway, is being performed by an all-Black cast—features powerhouse performances by Anika Noni Rose, James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Terrence Howard, Giancarlo Esposito and Lisa Arrindell Anderson.

It also has the innovative direction of Debbie Alien, who saw fit to have each scene of the three-act production introduced by a saxophone player belting out the blues.

From the time that the production starts, the audience is taken on an emotional rollercoaster. Emotions are vividly expressed by Maggie (Rose), as she speaks to her husband Brick (Howard). Maggie is an attractive woman, who has to endure being married to a man who will not touch her, a man who is disgusted to look at her because of a single act of betrayal she committed. The act she committed was so heinous that it also contributed to Brick beginning to drink alcohol. His alcoholism is so extreme that he has to drink until he hears a click in his head—a signal that his body has enough alcohol in it to escape from the problems in his life.

Maggie does most of the talking as the production begins, and she talks fast. She has to keep talking since Brick tends to give short responses. Maggie is a character who one feels a great deal of sympathy for because all the cards are stacked against her. She is a victim on so many levels. Her husband will not touch her. She is childless and the butt of cruel words by the family.

When most people think of the character of Maggie, they probably think of the movie version of “Cat on a hot Tin Roof” that starred Elizabeth Taylor in the role [MGM, 1958]. But, as you sit in the Broadhurst Theatre on W 44th Street, you won’t have time to reflect on Taylor’s performance, because Rose makes that character her own from the time that she takes the stage. She has such an energy, frustration and desperation about her that she clearly and brilliantly makes sure that the audience experiences everything that this character is going through.

In the opening scene, as I mentioned, she does a lot of talking and has opinions to share on everything from her brother[-in-law (he’s Brick’s brother)] and sister-in-law, to their five “no-neck children.”

There is simply not enough that one can say about Rose’s riveting and captivating performance in this role. An actress who most people associate with musical roles, such as her performing in “Caroline, Or Change” [2004; Rose won the 2004 Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical and the Theatre World Award], and in the movie version of “Dreamgirls” [DreamWorks/Paramount, 2006], Rose has without a doubt, proven that her training as a dramatic actress has not been wasted.

What just makes this production so wonderful is that you have a cast of Black all-stars who just click on stage. Each person holds their own with their character. Tony Award-winner James Earl Jones is absolutely hilarious at times and a bit shocking, as he does more than dabble in the expletives as his character of Big Daddy lets everyone know how he feels. Big Daddy is insulting and mean to everyone, except for Brick. He is horribly cruel to Big Mama (Rashad)—a woman he admits to disliking for 40 years.

As always, Phylicia Rashad, also a Tony Award-winning actor [2004, Best Actress in a Play for A Raisin in the Sun; 2022, Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for Skeleton Crew], plays her character of Big Mama to perfection. She is clearly hurt by the cruel things that Big Daddy says and is very vulnerable to his verbal attacks. She is also someone who loves him despite of how he treats her.

Terrence Howard couldn’t have picked a better vehicle in which to make his Broadway debut. He handles the character of Brick very well. He plays the character pretty low-key and is only upset when anyone brings up his friend Skipper, who committed suicide. Howard’s delivery of the character is very smooth and he seems to have a good time on stage.

Giancarlo Esposito (Gooper) and Lisa Arrindell Anderson (Mae) are absolutely perfect in their roles as the money-grubbing son of Big Daddy and his money-hungry wife. Mae shoots pure venom whenever she speaks about Maggie being childless or Brick’s alcoholism and Gooper does not care if Big Daddy is dying, he just wants to make arrangements so he can get the 28,000 acres of rich land that Big Daddy has amassed in Mississippi.

Supporting cast members who give brief, but memorable performances include Lou Myers and Count Stovall, who play Reverend Tooker and Doctor Baugh, respectively.

There are many powerful emotions expressed throughout this play and one emotion that Alien makes sure to interject, just at the right moment, is humor. Just about each time there is a very tense moment, Alien allows a character to be comic relief and break the tension. She does a masterful job directing this production, which can be emotionally draining for an audience.

I’m not going into a lot of detail about the story line. This family’s problems are something you need to experience for yourself. Due to a lot of cursing however, this production would be inappropriate for viewing by someone younger than a teenager.

[Review-writer Linda Winer of Long Island’s Newsday reported: “For the record, those naughty words were the ones Williams wanted but couldn’t use in the ’50s” (“It's good to cross black 'Cat's' path,” 7 Mar. 2005).  That would have applied to Elia Kazan’s 1955 stage production and Richard Brooks’s 1958 film version. (Kazan also famously made Williams change the ending.)]

What kept going through my mind sitting in the audience this weekend, was that this production is brilliantly performed and such a pleasure to experience. It is just so important to show that our people can bring these classic works to life as vividly as any other actors can. I am so glad that producer Stephan Byrd pursued getting the rights for this play for 14 years. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is a masterpiece by Tennessee Williams that needed to be presented with our spin. It opens tonight [6 March 2008]!!! For tickets call (212) 239-6200.

[Linda Armstrong has been a theater reviewer for over 36 years, writing for New York Amsterdam News, Harlem News (A&E Editor), Headliner Magazine, Playbill Online, Theatre Week Magazine, Show Business Weekly Newspaper, Network Journal Magazine, Our Time Press (Column: “From The Aisle”), Neworldreview.net—Theatre Editor, and Broadwaysbestshows.com.] 

*  *  *  *
“‘CAT,’ FRESHLY SKINNED”
Terry Teachout 

[The second review I selected was from the Wall Street Journal of 7 March 2008.  The late Terry Teachout, the Journal’s chief theater reviewer, was considered a “conservative” critic.]

If you want to behold a great actor giving of his very best, the show to see is “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” James Earl Jones has turned his back on Broadway in recent years—his last appearance there since the 1987 premiere of “Fences” [1987] was in a short-lived 2005 revival of “On Golden Pond,” a synthetic weeper that was unworthy of his towering talent [Pond was a limited run that was further shortened when Jones, 74 at the time, contracted pneumonia]—and so it is a pleasure to welcome him back to town in a role that puts him to the test. Needless to say, Mr. Jones plays Big Daddy, the cancer-ridden plantation owner whose greedy children can barely wait to gobble up his estate, and watching him tear through that giant-sized part is like standing in the path of a cannonball. Alas, you’ll have to pay a high price for the privilege of seeing Mr. Jones strut his stuff, because much of the rest of this unfortunate production borders at times on the downright amateurish.

The amateur-in-chief is Terrence Howard, the erstwhile star of “Hustle & Flow” [2005, Paramount Classics] who is making his stage debut—not his Broadway debut, mind you, but his stage debut—in the role of Brick, Big Daddy’s favorite son. Mr. Howard is the latest in a long line of inexperienced innocents from Hollywood who have been offered up as burnt sacrifices to the gods of the box office, and the best I can say about his vain attempt to make an impression is that he must have had a lot of nerve to think that he could get away with sharing a curtain call with Mr. Jones. His performance is slack, flat and underprojected, and it leaves a yawning hole at the center of Tennessee Williams’s play that nothing could possibly fill.

So far as I know, this is the first all-black professional production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and it’s easy to imagine how well such a concept might have worked had it been executed by a first-rate director. Instead we get Debbie Allen, whose experience at the helm of various sitcoms and musical comedies did not prepare her for the challenge of making sense out of a grossly overwritten melodrama whose verbal extravagance approaches the operatic. Ms. Allen’s way of putting a black spin on “Cat” runs more to such condescendingly on-the-nose directorial details as having a saxophonist wander across the stage at the start of each act, playing hot licks in order to reassure the audience that this production will be racially correct.

Not only is Ms. Allen’s staging ludicrously broad, but I assume that she is at least partly to blame for the caricature-ridden acting of Anika Noni Rose as Maggie and Lisa Arrindell Anderson as Mae, both of whom made me cringe. (Not so the always satisfying Phylicia Rashad, whose Big Mama is a bit overdrawn but still affecting.) As for Ray Klausen’s dull set and William H. Grant III’s crass lighting, both are more like what you might expect to see at a second-tier regional theater rather than in a high-profile Broadway show.

Even so, you’ve got to catch this “Cat,” for Mr. Jones’s colossal performance is the stuff of stage legend. No sooner does the second act get under way than he strides into Brick’s bedroom, puffing on a 50-buck cigar and ogling Maggie from eyebrows to toenails, and from there to the end of the act you won’t want to waste a second looking at or listening to anyone else. Mr. Jones gets Big Daddy—the pride, the contempt, the half-concealed terror—and lines that in anyone else’s mouth might sound stilted come rolling out of him like lava from a volcano. As long as I live, I’ll never forget the way that Mr. Jones spit out his shocking condemnation of Big Mama: “I haven’t been able to stand the sight, sound, or smell of that woman for forty years now!—even when I laid her!—regular as a piston.

What to do? You might want to consider skipping the hour-long first act and showing up at intermission, just in time to see Mr. Jones make his entrance. You’ll still get your money’s worth.

[Terry Teachout (1956-2022), the Wall Street Journal’s drama critic from 2003 until his death, blogged about theater and the other arts.] 

*  *  *  *
“STAGE UNITES TWO JONES GENERATIONS”
by C. Gerald Fraser 

[This article, which, among other topics, touches on the estrangement and reconnection of James Earl Jones and Robert Earl Jones, his father.  It ran in the New York Times of 11 February 1974.]

Nineteen years ago, James Earl Jones, then a 24‐year‐old fledgling actor, came to New York from Michigan and watched his father, Robert Earl Jones [1910-2006], play the role of Joe Mott — a secondary character in “The Iceman Cometh.” He had come seeking two goals. One was work in the theater, the other was to get to know his father, from whom he had been separated since birth.

[The production of Eugene O’Neill’s Iceman in which Robert Earl Jones played Joe Mott was staged by José Quintero (Panamanian-born; 1924-1999) at the Off-Broadway Circle in the Square Theatre Downtown (in Greenwich Village) from May to December 1956 (256 performances). Jason Robards played Hickey, the role James Earl Jones played in 1973.

[The production of Iceman in which James Earl Jones performed was staged at Circle’s theater district house from 13 December 1973-24 February 1974 (14 previews and 85 performances). It was directed by Theodore Mann (1924-2012), co-founder of Circle in the Square, with a scenic design by Clarke Dunham, costume design by Carrie F. Robbins, and lighting design by Jules Fisher. Mott was played by Arthur French and Hugo Kalmar was played by David Margulies—one of my acting teachers at the time.]

Today, James Earl Jones is playing Hickey—the lead—in “Iceman,” and there has been an interweaving of the goals in James Earl Jones's life. He found his father through the theater and found the theater through his father.

Robert Earl Jones, who turned 64 a week ago yesterday (“I was horn in 1910, the year Jack Johnson [1878-1946; the real-life boxer on whom was based James Earl Jones’s character in The Great White Hope] won the title”) begins the story of the father‐son relationship in late 1930 or early 1931 in Mississippi. His wife was then pregnant with James, and Robert Earl Jones left his family to go north—to Memphis.

He worked in Memphis for the railroad until the Depression [1929-41] cut out his job and he moved to Chicago “to seek my fortune as a prize fighter.”

In Chicago, he said, “I paid $50—it was a lot of money in that period—to Evangeline Adams [1868-1932], who was on the radio as an astrologist. I believe in astrology. And she said ‘you'll find it better before the masses.’ She said ‘you have something, and I don't know what it is, and you'll do it before the masses.’”

After Chicago, Robert Earl Jones moved to New York, where in the early thirties he got a job with the Federal Works Progress Administration working with youths in recreation.

The poet‐playwright Langston Hughes [1901-67; part of the Harlem Renaissance (1920s-1930s)] asked to use the group to put on a one‐act play. After three months' rehearsals, the protagonist got a job, Mr. Jones said, and he was asked to take over the role. “It was kind of natural. Langston Hughes's aunt, Mrs. Toy Harper, taught me how to read my first poem: ‘I am a Negro black as the night is black/Black like the depth of my Africa’ and several other poems. It was poetic drama, put together by several of his poems.

“We linked them together by a narrative and I was that narrator.” From that start he began a theatrical career that has kept him active on stage and in television and the movies. (He can currently be seen in two new pictures “The Sting” [1973, Universal Pictures] and “Willie Dynamite” [1974, Universal Pictures].)

James Earl Jones, meanwhile, left Mississippi as a child and went to live in Michigan with his maternal grandmother, who raised all of her three daughters' children. He had not ever seen his father.

“I knew of him as an actor,” he said. “But, you see, being told about dad being an actor is one thing, but being in the high school library one day and opening up and seeing it right there in print had a big impact on me. He was in the production of “Strange Fruit” by Lillian Smith, with Mel Ferrer and Jane Wyman [Broadway; 29 November 1945-19 January 1946; credited as Earl Jones]. That impressed me.”

Sitting in his subterranean dressing room at the Circle in the Square Theater he sipped tea and talked about how he got into acting.

“There are two things, I'll say aside from the old legendary thing of following in the father's footsteps. One is that from the age of 8 to 14, I guess, I was practically incommunicado, literally, because of being a stammerer. Once I got to high school and through reading poetry, starting with my own poetry, which I realized I didn't stutter or stammer at, and my professor, Donald Crouch [1891-1982], would encourage me to read poetry, just discovering the joy of communicating set it up for me, I think. In a very personal way, once I found out I could communicate verbally, again, it became a very important thing for me, like making up for lost time, making up for the years that I didn't speak.”

James Earl Jones continued: “Being a country boy, it wasn't easy for me to think about making a living in the world of business. It was very difficult to think about making a living in the world of science, as I sort of entertained when I wanted to he a doctor. None of that was easy.

“But the idea of making one's way as an artist did make some sense to me. I remember enjoying—aside from writing poetry—reading poetry. I enjoyed drawing, painting, that sort of thing.

And so it was that after graduating from the University of Michigan, and serving as an Army officer he came to New York to work and to get to know his father.

[Jones matriculated at UM in 1949, but in 1953, he left school without getting a degree. He’d joined the university’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and left to join the army, where he remained for two years, reaching the rank of first lieutenant. In 1955, he returned to UM, finished his degree, and graduated. At that point, he went to New York City, where he reconnected with his father and started a career as a professional actor.]

Since then the two have gotten to know each other and have performed in the same production three times: in “Moon on a Rainbow Shawl,” “Infidel Caesar,” and “Of Mice and Men.”

[Moon on a Rainbow Shawl by Errol John (born in Trinidad and Tobago; 1924-88) opened on 15 January 1962 at the East 11th Street Theatre in the East Village; James Earl won an Obie for his performance. Gene Wesson’s (1921-75) Infidel Caesar closed at the Music Box Theatre after one preview on 28 May 1962; it never officially opened. In 1967 Jones père et fils performed together in Of Mice and Men, adapted from his own novel by John Steinbeck (1902-68), at Purdue University's Experimental Theatre in West Lafayette, Indiana. James Earl later played Lennie in a production of Of Mice and Men (18 December 1974-9 February 1975) at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre (now the Lena Horne).]

Looking back over the years, James Earl Jones wondered, “What's the legend?” (thinking about the story of Telemachus's search for his father [Odysseus] in “The Odyssey.”) “It's probably a basic human need . . . to follow in the footsteps especially when one doesn't have a clear identity of one's own.

[C. Gerald Fraser (1925-2015) was a reporter for the New York Times for 24 years, one of only two black reporters on the staff at that time he was hired.  He left the Times in 1991 and joined Earth Times.  At the start of his journalistic career, Fraser reported for the New York Amsterdam News from 1952 until 1956, then edited a hotel workers union newspaper and covered the United Nations for West Indian periodicals before being hired by the New York Daily News.]

'Our Lady of 121st Street'

In my last play report, I wrote that I liked subscribing to the Signature Theatre’s seasons because it afforded me the opportunity to see plays by authors whose work I either didn’t know or hadn’t seen enough of.  That report was on Dominique Morisseau’s Paradise Blue (posted on Rick On Theater on 2 June), a play by an author whose work I hadn’t seen yet.  This time, I’m catching up with a playwright a couple of whose plays I have seen before, but whose work I don’t yet have a handle on: Stephen Adly Guirgis.  Coincidentally, the play on which I’m reporting here is one of the two I’ve seen previously, Our Lady of 121st Street; I saw the début production after it moved to the commercial venue, the Union Square Theatre, in 2003.  Oddly, I didn’t remember much about the production or, arguably more importantly, my response to it.  (2003 was years before I started writing performance reports, both the e-mail versions I sent my out-of-town friends and my ROT reports, so, alas, I have nothing in writing on that production.)

Pulitzer Prize-winner Guirgis (for 2015’s Between Riverside and Crazy), as readers of my reports will know, was the 2017-18 Residency 1 playwright at the Signature Theatre Company (succeeded by Morisseau); Our Lady is his second play (following the revival of 2000’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train last fall) of the three he’ll have at the company during his year-long term.  (Guirgis’s third residency play, a new one, was supposed to be produced at STC during the 2018-19 season, but the script isn’t ready so the unannounced new play will be presented in a later season.  I hope it will  be because I’d like to see where he’s gotten to since 2000 and 2002.  For a brief bio of Guirgis, see my report on Jesus, posted on 6 November 2017.) 

Our Lady of 121st Street had its world première Off-Off-Broadway from 20 August to 12 October 2002 at Center Stage, NY (on W. 21st Street in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood).  Produced by the LAByrinth Theater Company (of which Guirgis was a member), it was directed by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, the company’s founder and artistic director.  It moved to Off-Broadway and reopened at the Union Square (with the same director and cast) on 6 March 2003 (after starting preview performances on 18 February); the production ran until 27 July, collecting a passel of 2003 award nominations, including the Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Director, Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Director of a Play, and the Outer Critics Circle’s John Gassner Playwriting Award (unfortunately, taking home none).

Revivals and regional premières of Our Lady have been staged all over the United States, including Chicago (Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 5 February-28 March 2004; Eclipse Theatre Company, 14 July-21 August 2016), Washington, D.C. (Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 8 December 2004-5 January 2005), San Francisco (San Francisco Playhouse, 4 March-22 April 2006), Los Angeles (Matrix Theatre, c. 23 November-30 December 2006; Burbank – Victory Bare Bones Ensemble/Zubber Dust Players, 1 May-7 June 2015), Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Playhouse, 4-13 December 2015), Miami (Ground Up & Rising, 2-11 September 2016).  (The play is also very popular in school theaters, including, despite the language, high schools.)  Signature’s two-hour, one-intermission revival, the first in New York City since the première, began previews in the Pershing Square Signature Center’s Irene Diamond Stage, the company’s 294-seat proscenium house, on 1 May 2018 and opened on 20 May.  My theater partner, Diana, and I caught the 7:30 performance on Friday evening, 25 May; the production is currently scheduled to close on 17 June (after an extension from the original 10 June closing).

Since there’s almost no discernable plot, synopsizing Our Lady is a hard task.  Essentially, a diverse gathering of characters (sort of Grand Hotel-ish), each struggling with his or her own problem(s), comes together at the Ortiz Funeral Home in their old (East) Harlem neighborhood to mourn the death of Sister Rose, a severe but dedicated nun who’d been the teacher of many of them.  (She wasn’t averse to taking a “shillelagh” to her charges who “loved her, even when we didn’t.”)  Sister Rose, known to “any kid who grew up ’round a hundred twenty-first” as “Our Lady,” drank herself to death.  On the day of her wake, her former students, ranging from 30-somethings up to 50-somethings (plus a few hangers-on), discover that her body’s been stolen from her casket.  One ex-pupil, Balthazar (Joey Auzenne), who has his own issues, is an NYPD detective and is investigating the bizarre theft.  This extends the funeral schedule and all the . . . ummm, mourners (I can’t think of a more precise word—though there’s little mourning in evidence, just some recollecting), who’ve returned from all over the country, stick around longer than they’d planned. 

Our Lady’s apparently—according to the theater’s promos and several reviewers—about what happened when these mismatched folks, with only two things in common—the nabe and Sister Rose—come together after several decades and their old feelings, beefs, and attitudes resurface.  I’m not convinced that that’s actually what Guirgis had in mind when he composed (or assembled) Our Lady, but in any case, nothing is resolved from all the sound and fury (not even the theft of Sister Rose’s body, despite a gruesome revelation at the end of the play).  The characters don’t actually develop over the course of the play, but remain the same throughout the play, just more intense (like TV characters in sitcoms over a season or more).  The play doesn’t actually end . . . it just stops.  (I fall back on my unsubstantiated impression that the playwright sampled chance exchanges and sundry characters and then stitched them together with the Sister Rose contrivance.)

In addition to Balthazar, Sister Rose’s former students who’ve gathered for her funeral are Rooftop (Hill Harper), a popular Los Angeles DJ who got his nickname for his habit of taking “every Jordache bubble-butt from Ninety-sixth on up” onto the tenement roofs for sex, looking to reconcile with his ex-wife, Inez (Quincy Tyler Bernstine); Flip (Jimonn Cole), a closeted gay lawyer who arrives from Wisconsin with his needy lover, Gail (Kevin Isola), an amateur actor in denial about his effeminacy and who finds Flip’s return to his hetero high school persona frightening; fiery, foul-mouthed, eternally furious “Nasty” Norca (Paola Làzaro), with a wicked wit, who slept with her best friend Inez’s husband, Rooftop, but still expects Inez to forgive her; and Edwin (Erick Betancourt, who played one of the prison guards in Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train at STC), a local building super and caretaker for his brain-damaged brother, Pinky (Maki Borden), who was injured as a child when Edwin threw a brick out a window, hitting his little brother on the head.  There’s also an older former student, Victor (John Procaccino), who makes his appearance in the very first scene without his pants . . . because they were stolen while he slept at the funeral parlor when Sister Rose’s body was taken.  (There’s a bit of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in this turn—a man in underpants standing before a coffin.)  In addition to Gail, who wasn’t one of Sister Rose’s students, are Father Lux (John Doman), a wheelchair-bound priest at the church to which the school was attached who lost his legs in the Korean War and who may be losing his faith; Marcia (Stephanie Kurtzuba), the nun’s allergy-plagued niece; and Marcia’s friend Sonia (Dierdre Friel) from Connecticut, who’s a little lost in this world and whom Norca insists is a hated former schoolmate—Norca even assaults her—though Sonia was never one of Sister Rose’s pupils.

The characters are mixed in age from the mid-70’s (Father Lux) to early 50’s (Victor) to mid-40’s (Rooftop) to mid- and late 30’s, as well as race and ethnicity (Hispanic, black, white).  The time is unstated in the program (one published script puts it as “The present”), but there are indications in the script as well as Rashad’s staging that suggest the early 2000’s, when Our Lady of 121st Street was written (mentions of “if Rudy [Giuiani] were still in office”—his term expired in January 2002; New York City newscaster Bill Buetel, who retired in 2003 and died in 2006; and actor Gail getting work on Law & Order, which was cancelled in 2010; the characters carry “flip” cell phones, which were outdated by the mid-2000’s); furthermore, if the play were set in 2018, Father Lux would be 10 years too young to have fought in Korea. 

Like Neil Patel’s set for Signature’s Paradise Blue, Walt Spangler designed an acting environment for the Diamond stage that incorporates multiple areas: sections of the Ortiz Funeral Home (up center) towering over which is a huge sign with the business’s name, the neighborhood church (predominantly the confessional, down right), and a local bar and grill (down left and center) while accommodating incidental locations as the script requires.  (This design choice leave a large empty chasm in the center of the bar and grill set that’s a large void when not in use for a street scene or some other action.)  As a result, Rashad’s staging flows among the many short scenes much like a movie or TV show.  Given the discontinuous structure of the script, this decision is necessary—though not sufficient.

Our Lady isn’t a rookie play, coming two years after Jesus, a much better script, but Guirgis displays a shaky grasp of dramatic structure here.  The play has characters and scenes that are clearly juicy for actors—remember that Guirgis trained and started as an actor (he regards himself as “primarily an actor who writes,” says Leslie (Hoban) Blake in an interview with the playwright) and LAByrinth is basically an actors’ theater (Hoffman was also first and actor).  While Guirgis’s writing in Our Lady still has some (street-) poetic notes (albeit with a lot of F-bombs!), that’s not enough to compensate for the fragmented structure.  It’s probably supposed to have been a string-of-beads structure, but the string—the characters’ relationship to Sister Rose, her death, and the theft of her corpse—hardly exists; it’s a phony construct that means nothing and leads nowhere—an excuse for this unintegrated group to come together. 

Our Lady of 121st Street turns out to be a collection of disjointed scenes about a disparate group of characters who are near-clichés—and the script never coheres.  You could label it a portrait of a community, or a slice of life, or a snapshot of a time and place in a corner of New York City, but though I call it a “play”—because actors stand on a stage and speak lines before a live audience (and I don’t have another adequate word)—in the end it’s not a drama.  I said to Diana that it felt to me as if Guirgis had eavesdropped on snippets of random conversations on the streets and bars in Harlem and transcribed them, then decided to assemble them into a “play” without ever finding a common theme.  The separate scenes, many of the them two- or three-handers, are terrifically actable serio-comic pieces, wonderful material for scene-study classes, but they don’t add up to a satisfying evening of theater.  

The acting is fine, with the caveat that no one breaks away from the stereotypes Guirgis contrived—and they probably couldn’t have, given the script.  Standouts include Doman’s Father Lux, combining world-weariness, sympathetic toughness, and impatience, especially for Rooftop’s narcissism (his long peroration in the confessional kept reminding me of the joke that ends with the priest scolding, “You’re not confessing.  You’re bragging!”); Làzaro’s Norca, with her mercurial volatility and sharp tongue; Borden’s Pinky, a simple man-child in constant need of reassurance and acceptance, and Betancourt’s Edwin, expressing his love and concern for Pinky through gruffness and apprehension.  The whole cast, though, acquits themselves well, even if they never come together as a true ensemble but remain a gathering of quirky individuals.  I’m not sure director Rashad, an award-winning actress who makes her New York directorial début here, could have melded them into a whole any more than she managed.

Based on 29 published notices, Show-Score, the review-survey website, gave Our Lady of 121st Street an average score of 79, with 83% of the reviews being positive, 14% mixed, and 3% negative.  The site included five top scores of 90 (Hollywood Reporter, Gotham Playgoer, Daily Beast, and two notices on New York Stage Review), backed up by an 89 for Front Row Center and nine 85’s (including Theatre’s Leiter Side, CurtainUp, and Talkin’ Broadway); Show-Score’s lowest score went to the website Reclining Standards with a score of 40.  My round-up will cover 17 published notices.

In the Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout declared that Rashad’s directing, “if uneven, [is] mostly pleasing,” and said the same of the play itself, which  “comes through with all sails billowing.  It isn’t perfect, but it’s smart and touching—and fun.”  In fact, whether despite or because of Guirgis’s liberal use of expletives (that Teachout can’t quote in the Journal), the reviewer states, “‘Our Lady’ is one of the funniest plays I’ve ever seen—or, rather, one of the funniest acts, since things get serious after intermission.”  He added, however, “The problem with “Our Lady of 121st Street” . . . is that it’s essentially plotless.”  As Teachout knows, “No matter how funny you are, it’s tough to keep a plotless comedy in motion—especially a serious one.”  The Journalist felt, though, “It’s a tribute to [Guirgis’s] inborn talent that he manages to make ‘Our Lady’ work in spite of its aimlessness,” and continued that “it’s no less a tribute to this well-cast revival that everybody in it . . . makes a sharp and strongly flavored impression.” 

Max McGuinness of the U.S. edition of the Financial Times observed, “It’s the oldest trick in the theatrical book.  Kill someone off.  Then round up family and friends for the funeral, where they can settle scores and rekindle old flames.”  Then the FT reviewer continued, given the circumstances of Our Lady of 121st Street, “It’s as if Guirgis is sending up the emptiness of his own plot device.”  He reported, “The loosely connected scenes . . . mostly serve as vehicles for Guirgis’s bawdy, rapid-fire repartee and colourfully sketched characters.”  Despite Rashad’s staging, which “keeps the comic tempo humming along nicely, . . . Guirgis’s text has a narrow, overly boisterous emotional range.”  Barbara Schuler’s “Bottom Line” in Long Island’s Newsday was “An entertaining study of some crazy, mixed-up characters” in a play made up of “brief scenes that director Phylicia Rashad keeps moving right along.”  Schuler declared, “This is a character study, pure and simple” and “offers no resolution whatsoever.” 

The New York Times’ Jesse Green posited that “drama is about people behaving badly” and there are a lot of “whiners and wastrels to be found on New York stages . . . .  But undoubtedly the most enjoyable screw-ups you can catch right now are those hanging around the Ortiz Funeral Parlor in ‘Our Lady of 121st Street.’”  He called the STC production “a raucous, rough-edged revival” and asserted that it’s been a long time since “dialogue so laced with profanity [has] been so gorgeously employed to define and distinguish character” by “a dirty dozen of unpublishable grievance.”  The Timesman observed that “even without curses the back-and-forth is biting.”  He assured us, though, “Cutting they may be, but Mr. Guirgis’s characters are never merely indulging in insult comedy.  They are groping toward the core of conflicts that are hard to put into words otherwise.”  In Our Lady, Green explained, the “scenes . . . don’t drive forward so much as accumulate. . . .  This is not the stuff of pointed drama; Balthazar the detective doesn’t even solve the crime.”  The Times reviewer continued, “But these aren’t failings so much as expressions of Mr. Guirgis’s overall despair that humans, however well intentioned, are not equipped to repair the damage they cause.  Really, they are only equipped to keep causing it.” 

Under Rashad’s direction, reported the review-writer, “the cast offers a very rich, primary-color rendition of a complicated group of people.”  But Green found that “good as they are, they too often seem to cut corners rather than hug the curves of the play’s twisty contours” and he blames Rashad’s staging, “blurry and amorphous,” for that.  “It is often difficult to tell where the action is taking place, and even where to look. . . .  And when scenes end, they do so awkwardly or indifferently, with an abrupt change of lights (by Keith Parham) or music (by Robert Kaplowitz), as if under-rehearsed.”  Saying that “no contemporary playwright is better at the long game of setting up jokes, and making them pay unexpected philosophical dividends” than Guirgis, Green went on:

I hesitate to say that the play, too, might have benefited by some rethinking. . . . .  And especially in the second act you can feel Mr. Guirgis’s dramaturgical anxiety mount as he tries to juggle too many stories.  Some he just drops, or tosses offstage when he hopes no one is looking.  The ending is a sheepish shrug.

Sara Holdren, in New York magazine/Vulture, labeled Our Lady of 121st Street “a play full of combustible energy that would benefit from compression and claustrophobia.”  “The production,” Holdren found, “is a curious creature:  It’s powered by a number of individually gutsy performances, yet, taken as a whole, its punch doesn’t quite hit the gut.”  She explained:

It rails and rants and gets characteristically raw—Guirgis is a playwright of the every-other-word-is-fuckin’ school—but in the Diamond, under the actor-friendly direction of Phylicia Rashad, its energy can feel diffuse and its trappings noticeably un-gritty.  It doesn’t need an intermission, but it’s got one.  All in all, it often feels weirdly comfortable, like a downtown street cat that’s moved uptown and indoors, where its claws get regularly clipped and there are always Friskies in the bowl.

In her direction, “Rashad seems most at home working with Our Lady’s cast in these individual moments of outsized emotion, connection, and indignation,” Holdren found, “but the arrangement of scenes in space feels static and tableau-ish, and the transitions—conventional music-plays-while-the-lights-go-dark affairs—fail to add meaning or movement.”  The reviewer blamed Spangler’s set, “a bit like a series of dioramas.”  As a result, “the characters of this Our Lady of 121st Street—all scrappy, surly fighters—have too much breathing room.”  Holdren found, “Some of their anger, which should bounce off the walls and smack us in the face, floats off into the air, or gets absorbed in the carpet that covers the stage.”  She concluded that “the vigor and power of this Our Lady belong to its actors, while the play itself feels a little defanged.”

The reviewer for the New Yorker’s “Goings On About Town” section warned us that “tight storytelling is not the point here, and neither is Sister Rose.”  The unnamed review-writer pointed out, “Plot strands are brought up and abandoned; people come and go for no good reason.”  Still, “the play does have memorable characters spouting memorable dialogue,” acknowledged the New Yorker writer.  “Few contemporary playwrights have Guirgis’s sense of rhythm or his flair for telling, grounding details.”  The reviewer’s estimation of the STC revival was: “The Signature’s cast is firing on all cylinders under Phylicia Rashad’s direction, even as it battles a sprawling set, by Walt Spangler, that creates problems rather than solving them.”

Frank Scheck of the Hollywood Reporter wrote in his “Bottom Line”: “Superb performers do full justice to blisteringly funny material” and recommended, “Acting students would be well advised to head immediately to the off-Broadway revival of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Our Lady of 121st Street.”  The play’s “procession of darkly hilarious scenes providing a ready-made series of indelible audition pieces for male and female performers of varying ethnicities.”  In his high-scoring review (one of Show-Score’s 90’s), Scheck effused, “This superb production, staged to perfection by Phylicia Rashad, provides a master class in how it’s done.”  The HR reviewer warned, “To say that not much really happens in the course of the play is an understatement,” adding that the ostensible missing-corpse plot “proves merely a springboard for the characters to unveil their hopes, fears and disappointments in a series of confrontations that are frequently as moving as they are riotously funny.”  Rashad, reported Scheck, “delivers an assured staging that fully allows the actors to flower in their roles while resisting the temptation of going over the top” and “all the performances feel fully lived in.”  “While it might benefit from being presented in one of the theaterplex’s smaller spaces,” observed Scheck, the STC revival of Our Lady “makes a strong case for the playwright as one of our most essential theatrical voices.”

“I’ve been struck by how often Stephen Adly Guirgis . . . is praised for the authenticity of his street vernacular,” remarked David Fox on Reclining Standards, which scored Show-Score’s sole 40 (as you’ll soon see why).  “Maybe, but since the comment most often comes from critics (which I mean here to be taken as code for mostly affluent and white), how exactly would they know?”  Fox continued his argument:

I freely admit I’m not in a position to judge its accuracy, but what I hear is dialogue that feels highly constructed, with flashes of cleverness and wit, heavily laced with Guirgis’s signature barrage of expletives. It doesn’t suggest “authenticity” to me so much as the sassy cousin of funny TV writing, deliberately made racy for shock value.

Fox’s objection to Guirgis’s playwriting is that “although he’s an exceptionally good craftsman—adroit at telling a story and keeping a lot of (forgive the expression) balls in the air—his plays only intermittently go deeper than their surface shock tactics.”  As for Rashad’s “flashy, shallow” revival of Our Lady of 121st Street at Signature, asserted Fox, “You certainly won’t find much depth” there, “though Guirgis doesn’t help.”  The RS reviewer felt that “from the get-go, Guirgis signals that seriousness will be consistently undercut with humor,” and the production becomes “a rollercoaster ride, veering from comedy to tragedy”—except, Fox lamented, “Rashad’s direction inserts an unwelcome sense of jazz-hands flash into the short scene-lets, which here look more like the kind of miniatures specifically designed for acting showcases than part of a long, thoughtful story arc.”  He also complained of “the awkwardly wide performance space of the Irene Diamond Stage, which further compounds the artificiality.”  His ultimate analysis was that “a production meant to celebrate Stephen Adly Guirgis’s importance and influence paradoxically reveals his faults.  As seen at Signature, Our Lady of 121st Street is perilously close to TV comedy, with the addition of a lot of dirty words.”

Jonathan Mandell of New York Theater found STC’s revival of Our Lady of 121st Street “a production smartly cast and competently directed by Phylicia Rashad.  The script,” he continued, “exhibits some of Guirgis’s familiar street energy, full of harsh, foul-mouthed humor; it even touches on some of his usual themes (living with sorrow and regret; betrayal; spiritual redemption.)”  Mandell reported, however, that “‘Our Lady of 121st Street’ is less substantive and less satisfying than many of his other plays.”  The play’s opening scene “promises . . . a farcical mystery,” then “quickly swerves in a different direction—or, more precisely, loses direction.”  Our Lady unfolds “mostly in two-character or three-character scenes that amount to little more than darkly comic vignettes.”  Each of the play’s characters (as I noted earlier) has a roster of serious personal problems, “but these are largely undeveloped,” explained Mandell, “told in throwaway lines.  The comedy dominates. (I’m not sure if any director could bring the poignancy more to the fore; this one doesn’t.)”  The NYTheater reviewer found, “Some of the scenes, though, are not so much funny as just odd, or incomplete,” while “[o]thers get by on the force of the acting.” 

Howard Miller labeled the Signature production of Our Lady a “snappy revival” of a “scary-comic” play on Talkin’ Broadway.  “Don’t go looking for much of a plot,” warned Miller.  “Our Lady of 121st Street is a character-driven play.”  The TB review-writer reported that “the entire first act is made up of short scenes that serve as introductions,” continuing, “Every encounter seems like the ultimate non sequitur, most of them hugely funny though seemingly unrelated to the others, until the jigsaw puzzle starts to assemble itself piece by piece in Act II.”  Guirgis, “the excellent cast,” and director Rashad “deliver the goods.”  Miller concluded, “The permeating dark humor of Our Lady of 121st Street masks a great deal of pain, and Stephen Adly Guirgis uses it smartly to turn over a lot of rocks.”

On Broadway World, Michael Dale dubbed the STC revival a “crackling production” which “hits the ground running” in “a series of touching and funny interactions between everyday souls getting through their own personal struggles.”  In his final assessment of the performance, Dale asserted, “Skillfully gliding from sharp, scatologically-expressed humor to realistic pathos, OUR LADY OF 121ST STREET is a terrific collection of genuine New York stories.”  Sandi Durell of Theater Pizzazz characterized Our Lady as an “all too funny, poignant and earthy story about the down-trodden.”  Durell found “the characters are rich and ripe” and Rashad “takes the reins and willingly lets go allowing her cast to fly untethered.”  In her final word on the production, the TP reviewer advised, “Be prepared for the unexpected and enjoy the ride! Guirgis is a genius when it comes to dark irreverent comedy.” 

On TheaterScene,net, Joel Benjamin recalled the 2003 première of Our Lady of 121st Street “as a dark tale of troubled characters, not without an edge of humor.  I didn’t come away laughing, but trembling partly in anger and partly in disgust.”  However, he found that the STC revival “magically now comes across as an addled, profane sitcom.”  Benjamin affirmed:

It’s entertaining and at times moving, but the real magic is that the very same words can be tended by a solid director—this one obviously experienced in sitcoms [readers will recall that Rashad played Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show for eight years]—and refresh a theatrical experience so completely.  Rashad has shown that scathing can be scathingly funny.  This time I left laughing.

“Scenes switch quickly” with a “parade of characters.”  All the characters have “neuroses and social issues, few of which are dealt with when the play ends on an abrupt, breathless note.”  Benjamin felt. “It’s Guirgis’ . . . talent to make these different elements coalesce into a wonderfully rich crazy quilt of humanity on the lowdown.” 

Elyse Sommer emphasized on CurtainUp that the missing-corpse scenario is “a device for initiating a series of verbal pas-de-deux or trois character-defining scenes for a big cast of terrific actors.”  Guirgis, she affirmed, “did weave all those episodic interchanges into a memorably hilarious very dark human comedy.”  Rashad has “assembled an excellent top to bottom ensemble and competently guided them.” 

On Theatre’s Leiter Side, Samuel L. Leiter labeled Our Lady of 121st Street a “black comedy” that’s “essentially plotless” with a first act that is “hilariously potty-mouthed.”  Leiter described Our Lady as, “rather than a conventional play, an episodic, dramatic concert in which the songs have been converted to acting arias, including solos, duets, and choral numbers.”  The play’s structure is a “series of scenes . . . with rippling, sinewy dialogue that commands attention and ignites raucous laughter, introducing us to a succession of pulsing livewires whose connections with others create fiery sparks.”  The TLS blogger confirmed that “Our Lady has loose ends [and] several vaguely drawn characters,” but “[d]espite the play’s structural problems, its characters and language are so electric that, even when the laughs subside in the more serious Act II, you remain invested in these damaged souls.”  Leiter had problems with the set design, which “is too spread out on the wide stage, dissipating focus, and creating problems that Rashad’s directing doesn’t fully resolve.”  Still, the blogger concluded that “even with its flaws, Our Lady, of the nearly 20 plays I’ve reviewed since the 2018-2019 began, is (by a hair) the best.”

On New York Theater Guide, Donna Herman observed, Our Lady “is missing several elements that are usually vital to a play—like a plot and an ending. But the biggest thing it’s missing is . . . more.”  She explained, “When the lights came down on the revival of Our Lady of 121st Street currently playing at the Signature Theatre, I didn’t want it to end.”  In a unique comparison, Herman offered, “What Our Lady of 121st Street really resembles is an uptown version of Seinfeld.  Not a lot really happens in terms of plot.”  Furthermore,

Mostly everyone sits around talking to each other.  But the characters get under your skin, and their quiet and not-so-quiet struggles to stay afloat in a hostile world, and their ability to see the humor in the darkness, is like water in the desert. You thirst for more

In the end, the NYTG reviewer declared, “Hats off to a superb cast, insightful and powerful script by Stephen Adly Guirgis and deft direction by Phylicia Rashad.”

Hayley Levitt of TheaterMania proclaimed that director Rashad has built “a vibrant yet subtle energetic network within her brilliant ensemble of actors” for STC’s Our Lady of 121st Street.  In contrast to most reviewers, Levitt found that “Walt Spangler’s sectioned scenic design perfectly accommodates the play’s vignettes, which begin as their own mini-plays but bleed together into the single space of the funeral home waiting room by Act 2.”  The set “also gives a semblance of structure to an amorphous narrative where conflicts are left unsettled, crimes are left unsolved, and goals are left extremely undefined.”  The TM review-writer felt that “if after Our Lady of 121st Street we feel somewhat unsatisfied, that means we’re hungry for more.”