THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 22, 1996 TAG: 9602200074
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 19 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater review
SOURCE: MONTAGUE GAMMON III
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
``Flyin' West'' displays some of the best acting to grace Norfolk State's stage in quite a few years and happens to be one of the more important scripts to hit town recently.
The importance is more sociological and historical than artistic. Playwright Pearl Cleage crafted her play carefully and tells her tale well, but she broke no new literary or dramatic ground.
She did shed light on a little-known, interesting part of African-American history. The town of Nicodemus, Kan., was settled exclusively by African Americans during the latter part of the last century. To judge by this play, the town remained exclusively black for at least two generations and could not have been the only such settlement.
Tens of thousands of African Americans, according to a program note, went west after emanicipation to claim the free land available through the Homestead Act of 1860. ``Flyin' West,'' set in the late 1880s, presents a story of four women who were among those pioneers.
Miss Leah, played by E. Jeanelle Henderson, is an elderly woman who was one of the first settlers in the Nicodemus area. She spends most of her days on a neighboring farm run by Sophie, a blunt-spoken young woman who seems never to be parted from her rifle. Tiffany N. Young plays that part.
Geshia Mills has the role of Sophie's younger sister Fannie, and Billie D. Wilbert takes the part of Wil, another young neighbor who is obviously enamored of Fannie.
These four open the play, and it is during their early scenes that the acting is especially marked by delicate characterizations and a sense of finesse. Director Clarence W. Murray Jr. guided them deftly.
This is not to slight the work of Faith J. Dukes or Robert Thompson, as third sister Minnie and her husband Frank, who appear later in the show. By the time they arrive and get the story's real conflict going, Cleage is writing in a less subtle manner, drawing their roles with broader strokes than she used to introduce Fannie, Wil and Miss Leah.
Frank, an arrogant light-skinned mulatto who has lived much of his life in London, is the villain. He abuses his wife, sneers at the others as rural hicks or worse, and finally threatens the ownership that Minnie, Fannie and Sophie share in their land. Thompson succeeds in making him thoroughly dislikable.
Dukes is completely believable in her role, but the character is so dominated by Frank that she doesn't get to stretch herself. She is primarily a victim, a textbook example of the abused spouse.
Sophie also has some limitations as the author wrote her. An adopted rather than a blood sister to Fannie and Minnie, she is meant to be forceful, determined and proud. That she makes believable and engaging what might be a stereotypical image of the independent woman who assumes a masculine role is no small achievement.
The delicate, familiar courtship dance that Wil and Fannie enact early in the show is a delicately sculpted delight to watch. They have an ease in their actions that enhances the whole play.
Henderson's strong, rich performance as Miss Leah stands as the spine of the show. While she is hardly ``frail,'' as one line describes her, she draws a complete, dimensioned picture of a remarkable woman who settled and survived on the wilderness frontier.
Cleage structured her play to suggest that it is based on oral history, and that the newborn baby who represents a final victory for perseverance and fortitude is the channel by which it was transmitted.
Speaking of scholastic activitites, this play should be required viewing for anyone with an interest in African-American history. by CNB