While playwright Cheryl L. West has a crucial story to tell in “Before It Hits Home” about African-Americans’ frequent denial of AIDS within their community, she falls victim to an odd paradox. As she centers on the brave tale of one man’s inability to disclose the truth about his bisexual lifestyle to his family, she peppers the drama with a host of obvious and overwrought conventions, which ultimately doom the rare — and necessary — story she’s trying to tell.
“Before It Hits Home” begins with a monologue by jazz musician Wendal (a fiercely tormented Javon Johnson), in which he talks about his sainted mother and his desire to return to her. A series of short, sometimes overlapping, scenes bring to light Wendal’s bisexuality as he vacillates between his live-in girlfriend Simone (Monifa M. Days) and his married lover Douglass (Aaron Todd Douglas).
The playwright resorts to cliches when Wendal gets tested at an AIDS clinic. Here — and in all hospital-related segments — he vents his frustrations on a timid nurse (played childishly by Min-aha Beeck) and a wise-cracking doctor (a droll Andrea Salloum). Meanwhile, the audience gets glimpses of the family he has left behind. Wendal’s mother, Reba, is indeed a beatific woman (the gracious Ira Carol McGill), but her husband, Bailey (Willie B. Goodson), displays a hard-headed macho streak. Also in the picture are Reba’s sassy best friend, Maybelle (a caricaturized Taron Patton), and Wendal’s young son, Dwayne (Jemelle Lloyd), who lives with his grandparents.
In one of the play’s more confusing moments, Wendal and Simone engage in a dancelike love scene that turns violent. Simone leaves him shortly after, and it’s unclear whether or not Wendal has told her he has AIDS.
By the second act, Wendal returns to his family. When he finally tells them the truth, they all treat him like a leper.
Despite sound insights into the devastation of his mother’s ordered world and the crushing loneliness of Wendal’s suffering, the drama stays at a feverish pitch, which lessens the impact of the successive revelations to the point of repetitive exhaustion.
Director Anthony Amiri Edwards elicits a simmering urgency from his cast and roots this staging in smoky silhouettes that subtly reinforce the conflicting themes of concealment and revelation. But the artists cannot solve the script’s melodramatic and discordant flaws or alter the clumsy way in which the conflicts are set up.These inconsistencies lessen the impact of a play with the potential for soul-searing drama.
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“Before It Hits Home”
When: Through Feb. 17
Where: Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Ave.
Phone: 312-633-0549
