At times, “Forever” — Dael Orlandersmith’s new solo piece about growing up with a violent drunk of a mother — is like the film “Precious,” only with songs by Patti Smith. You’ll either be shaken by the emotional violence or leave feeling guilty for not being affected.
Clichés aside, Orlandersmith, whose “Yellowman” was a Pulitzer finalist in 2002, is an evocative writer. In one particularly harrowing scene, she describes, in graphic detail, being raped by a a home intruder when she was 14. That she’s quietly sitting by a table in Takeshi Kata’s spacious but spare set hardly softens the blow. You have to wonder how she can relive that episode performance after performance.
That said, art as therapy isn’t always gripping.
The stroll down the memory lane of horrors starts with a trip to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, the resting place for Orlandersmith favorites like Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. The daughter of a South Carolina–born widow, Orlandersmith was an unlikely fan of The Doors, and was even harassed for carrying one of their albums in her Harlem neighborhood.
“Listenin’ to that white s - - t,” someone tells her. “I should beat your ass.” She taunted him back with, “Yeah, come on, motherf - - ker” — the kind of bravado that would help Orlandersmith find her adopted kin among CBGB’s punks.
The relationship with her mom, Beulah, never mended, even after the older woman’s death in ’89. Perhaps this show will bring Orlandersmith the closure her mother’s passing couldn’t give her.