Northlight Theatre’s production of “bee-luther-hatchee” is a happy surprise, an exhilarating presentation of a play of modest but real virtues that holds your interest from start to finish through the power of its language, ideas and characters.
Playwright Thomas Gibbons, a white male, has taken as his central subject a black female, Shelita Burns, an attractive, intelligent career woman who has scored a coup in her publishing job by editing a best-selling memoir by a black woman in the South.
As the play opens, Burns is accepting a prestigious award for the book, stating with pride that this work by her reclusive, 72-year-old author is helping to break the silence that too long has stifled knowledge of the rich heritage of black life and culture in America.
Burns is at the peak of her career, on the way to an even bigger job by virtue of the work she has done on this book, which bears the quaint title of “bee-luther-hatchee.” But there’s a problem.
Though she has been profoundly touched, as a woman and an African-American, by the book, she has never met the author, Libby Price. When she tries to make a connection with her and present her with the award, she reaches a dead end.
Finally, in a neat stroke of theatricality that closes the first act, Burns comes face to face with Price, and the encounter nearly destroys her.
Originally produced in 1999 in Philadelphia, where Gibbons lives, “bee-luther-hatchee” has been staged here by Debra Wicks, artistic director of the Meadow Brook Theatre in Michigan. Her production is virtually flawless, unerring in physical detail and emotional truth.
Mixing scenes from the book with scenes from Burns’ life in its first half, the play develops in its second act into a fearsome, scorching debate, on the nature of truth in life and literature, between Burns and the white man who reveals to her the nature of Libby Price.
This raging encounter between white and black is saved from being a colloquy by Wicks’ dynamic staging and the superb performances of Shane Williams as the proud, angry Burns and Lawrence MacGowan as the rumpled, middle-age man who shatters her illusions about Price.
Clever in its spacing of little dramatic time bombs, Gibbons’ play is also consistently thoughtful and eloquent on subjects ranging from book publishing to journalism practices. (Beware of journalists, Burns’ friend tells her, “especially good ones.”)
Williams and MacGowan are the main event of the drama, but the portrayals by James Leaming, Karin Anglin and Penelope Walker as Price are essential factors in this riveting and rewarding play.
Also contributing to the impact of the story are the two-tiered set–one level for Burns’ life, the other for Price’s history–devised by designers Richard and Jacqueline Penrod, the lighting by Joel Moritz that smoothly creates shifts in time and place, and the persistent beat of Lindsay Jones’ original score.
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“bee-luther-hatchee”
When: Through March 11
Where: Northlight Theatre in the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie
Phone: 847-673-6300
