Tree
Julie HÈbert’s Tree is a wonder of a play, sinking deeply into a kind of connective tissue that can unite even strangers. Now playing [inside]the John Anson Ford complex in Cahuenga Pass, the cozy space helps to transport audiences deep into the mystery and wonder of a Louisiana-born kinship.
The diminutive setting features an eclectic and lived-in looking living room, the home of a woman (Sloan Robinson as Jessalyn Price) who is slowly sinking into the detritus of her own mind. High above the central playing area, Miz Price’s bed thrusts forward, dominating the space below. One immediately realizes that this half-demented woman looms over everyone living there. She is cared for, alternatively, by her son, Leo (Chuma Gault) and granddaughter, J.J. (Tessa Thompson). Didi Marcantel (Jacqueline Wright), a young woman who has yet to negotiate her way out of graduate school, arrives unannounced and unwelcome. She delivers the shattering news that she and Leo share the same father, and he is her half-brother.
Under any circumstance, this might be upsetting news to a man who always knew someone else to be his father, but it is even more shocking because Didi’s father is a Caucasian and Leo’s mother is African-American. Never mind that this is a detail that might never have come to light as Jessalyn Price sinks deeper into senility; Didi informs Leo that she has come to claim her kinship.
A packet of letters found and lost connects the two families. In her father’s things, Didi has discovered letters from Jessalyn sent during the Korean war. Now she is determined to uncover the other half of the equation. But convincing a man who wants nothing to do with her, to question a woman whose mind is unsound, and to enlist the help of her newfound niece proves to be a daunting task.
HÈbert’s play unfolds with the fascination of a who-dun-it. And as each layer peels away, it reveals the deepening complexity of racial as well as profoundly human relationships. Director Jessica Kubzansky has enabled her fine actors to plumb these depths with sensitivity and finesse. Sloan Robinson sounds all the right notes in her evocation of a woman who made a steely decision in the segregated South. Chuma Gault as her son, displays the stillness that comes from a burdensome man, while Tessa Thompson as his daughter provides the link between worlds. Jacqueline Wright is feisty as the wounded and unlikable daughter of a cold and sorrowful man.
Brian Sidney Bembridge’s set accommodates the play by stacking Jesselyn’s bedroom on top of the more traditional space, and solves a difficult staging problem with the prow of a boat floating, instead of water, into the air on one side of the stage arch. His fix tries to mask a difficulty that originates in the script: that Didi’s atmospheric idylls in the boat exist outside time and space of the more traditionally structured central action, and seem to pull against the fabric of the play.
Bembridge’s lighting solutions are subtle and ingenious. Whenever Louisiana is invoked, mossy, swampy trees hover like ghosts against the deeply tinged backdrop. This atmospheric and dimensional stage picture disappears whenever we are thrust back into Leo’s Chicago suburban home. The rest of the production values are strong from Leah Piehl’s appropriate costumes and the wonderful original music by Bruno Louchouam to Jon Kellum’s props and set decoration.
For anyone who has ever wanted to straighten out his or her genealogy, this play affords a compelling glimpse into its rewards and possible consequences.
Tree begins a curated season of three plays at the John Anson Ford Theatres, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood 90068. It performs Thursday–Saturday at 8:00 P.M.; Sunday at 3:00 and 7:00 P.M. through December 13th. Ticket prices from $12.00 (students & seniors) to $20.00. Thursdays are pay-what-you-can. For reservations phone (323) GO1-FORD or www.FordTheatres.org.