“Ain’t Nothing Sentimental About a Revolution.”

--Sunset Baby

“Sunset Baby” begins quietly. Baldheaded and creamy voiced, Kenyatta (Tony Award­­­-nominee John Earl Jelks), a former political prisoner and member of the Black Liberation Movement, stares into a camera and tells us about fatherhood.  Cryptic, repentant, and stripped, he tells us how “it’s complicated”. This is the last of the silence in Dominique Morisseau’s gutted “Sunset Baby”, a play that has found its home with Labyrinth Theater Company’s Bank Street Theater.

I will be the first to admit I was excited about this production. Dominique Morisseau is a writer and actress, heralded as a tour de force in the changing face of American theatre. This is not Broadway we are coming to on this night.  This is East New York, Nina Simone, Black Power; this is child support, crack addicted revolutionaries.  It's political, downtown theatre we are witnessing here -- and yes, it gets ugly.

We meet Nina in her East New York apartment, a squalid home, painted pink with good intentions and sullied by reality. Lee Savage’s fitting set transports us with the old appliances and the hodgepodge of cheap couches. Nina (DeWanda Wise) is a linebacker in hooker chic -- the wig, the lashes, the requisite red dress and faux leopard fur -- altogether selling serious sex and a whipping.

Don’t let the red dress fool you: Nina is a poetess, a Rough Rider dreamer. Morisseau’s genius lies in luring you in with the familiar and defying the very conventions she sets up. Nina is estranged from her father, Kenyatta, who comes knocking in search of letters that his former partner and Nina’s deceased mother left behind. These letters are not a lover’s long forgotten whispers; they hold academic, worldly, and financial power, and many suitors.  Nina, a drug dealer and robber, barks at her father as he shows his face after years of estrangement. They dance their guilty angry dance for a while before Kenyatta must enlist help, which comes in the form of Nina’s fast-talking hustler boyfriend, Damon (Harvey Gardner Moore), who has his own schemes and methods.

Director Kamilah Forbes pulls combustible and provocative performances from her cast in this three-hander. DeWanda Wise is a snarling Nina who brings both the fatigue and endurance of a warrior. Shrewdly, she colors Nina with the vulnerability and aching of an abandoned child. In John Earl Jelks’ hands, Kenyatta is sympathetic; cool as Sunday morning with flares of fury and regret. Not to be outdone is Harvey Gardner Moore as Damon, bursting with bravado and ideas. In Morisseau’s tongue, he is catfish frying in the skillet; he is a songbird crooning Steven Spritzer’s ideas on Social Junk and Social Dynamite.

“Sunset Baby” is not without flaws. At times it flirts with didactic preaching and the pacing falls short. However, this is nothing a few more audiences can’t fix. Nina Simone, the high priestess of soul, provides the soundtrack in what feels like too literal an interpretation. There are easy clichés at work -- like Kenyatta talking about 'the man in the mirror'. Still, in moments when Damon begs Nina to tell him she needs him, you fall a little in love with his sorrow and forget any misgivings.

Morisseau asks serious questions of us. How do we reconcile dreams with the realities of revolution? How do we forgive our wardens? How do we survive in a world where we are expected to be junk? How do we find our own liberation? Most interesting, perhaps, is when the men of the play admit their shortcomings. And perhaps most real is when a father can say he chose himself. Kenyatta chose the revolution.

Do yourself a favor, put on a coat, and head downtown and catch “Sunset Baby”.

Performances of "Sunset Baby" continue through December 15th.  For more information, check out our full event listing here: https://stagebuddy.com/listingdetail.php?lid=15454