The Black Rep starts the ‘21-’22 season off with a bang. Lynn Nottage’s Sweat is definitely a play that talks about lots of things we struggle with. Nottage takes on racism, classism, the perfidiousness of corporate management, all in one sweeping evening. Substance abuse is just a sort of garnish to everything else.
Alas, she hasn’t got a cure for those things, but that’s no excuse – at all – for not talking about them. Director Ron Himes, the founder of the Black Rep, has pulled it all together for an enthralling evening.
It’s a blue collar world in Pennsylvania, mainly a bar, where the action takes place. Three women, regular patrons, have worked in a local factory for decades. Two of them have sons considering getting jobs there. Life is thrumming along, although one woman has just finally thrown her husband out because he’s again relapsed with his drug use. A fair amount of alcohol is being consumed, but the bartender, who’s obviously known them for a long time, is unflappable. It turns out there’s a job posting for a manager. Much joshing bout who should apply, and eventually two of the three do just that. Only one, of course, can get the job, and since there are men applying too, the outcome is up in the air.
Cynthia (Velma Austin), the one who’s bounced her husband, gets the nod to leave her slot on the floor and move into the office. She’s Black. That factor isn’t a component for a while. As time passes and the plant looks more and more like it’s going to have some serious layoffs or shut down entirely, it raises its ugly head. Management is trying to hire replacement workers if the union walks out over the company’s demands – you’ll hear the word “scabs” used to describe the replacement workers, if you’re unfamiliar with the term. Tensions rise everywhere in the community. The people whose jobs are in danger seem in denial at first and then cannot understand why their one time friend can’t fix this, why the union is helpless
Austin, Amy Loui and Kelly Howe are the trio of women, and the rowdy group navigates the changing emotion of the time period – from 2000 to 2008 – extremely well. Blake Anthony Edwards is the bartender, a remarkable, graceful referee in an establishment whose walls hold everything from dancing to threats. Oscar, his right-hand guy, is Gregory Almanza, who fleshes out Oscar’s increasingly important story as the show progresses. Franklin Killian and Brian McKinley play the two sons, one more curious about the outside world than the other, but both wanting to protect their mothers. And A.C. Smith as the banished husband exhibits his considerable ability to go from charming to explosive in a nanosecond, as he has often shown Black Rep audiences.
David Simon, who created “The Wire” was discussing the late actor Michael K. Williams in The New York Times. And he said this:
It’s about the death of work, I told him. When legitimate work itself dies in an American city, I argued, and the last factory standing is the drug corners, then everyone goes to a corner...it’s about economics and the collapse of the working class – Black and white both.
This is a painful, important and truthful play. The Black Rep gives it full respect. Great work from all concerned.
Sweat
through September 26
The Black Rep
Edison Theatre at Washington University
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