YELLOWMAN
At the Manhattan Theatre Club, 131 W. 55th St. Through Dec. 15. Citytix, (212) 581-1212.
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OCCASIONALLY, a play arises that is so beautifully written and so compassionately staged that we say, “This is what theater is all about.”
“Yellowman” is such a play. Dael Orlandersmith’s piece has but two voices – Alma and Eugene, who tell us of growing up in the town of St. Stephen in South Carolina.
Alma is played by Orlandersmith herself, a big woman in a dynamic, large performance that com-bines a sensitive aliveness and a keen awareness of the wounds in the story.
Eugene – a slender, light-skinned man whose big black father resents his having his mother’s coloring – is incarnated in the passionate presence of Howard W. Overshown.
This is a play – directed by Blanka Zizka on a nearly bare stage – deeply entrenched in the African-American experience it records.
Though primarily concerned with light/dark bitterness, it is always conscious of the overarching oppression that scars the society it depicts.
This is a heartbreaking play rife with the pull of the past and the possibility of escape.
The Pulitzer Prize committee ought to be ashamed for preferring the empty gimmickry of “Topdog/Underdog” to the tragic power of “Yellowman.”