Roberta Pikser
HONOR Gene Frankel Theatre The Gene Frankel Theatre is a black box theatre – no wings, no proscenium arch, no curtains except for the black curtain that serves as the upstage limit of the playing area. Much of the innovative work of the downtown theater scene of the 1970s and 1980s took place in tiny theatres such as this. Works that started downtown often went on to Broadway and many luminaries, such as James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, and Maya Angelou, started their careers in these small theaters of the East Village. When the audience for Honor enters the house, the stage is already set with a folding work table, a white board with some sort of calendar written on it, and a large clock showing the time as ten minutes to ten. At ten minutes to seven, our time, the clock is started. The show begins precisely at ten of the clock, which will show the progression of time for the next seventy minutes. When the show starts, we seem to have walked into a conversation that has been going on for some time. We are in a conference room of some big company of which the two actors are the legal department. One, an aging white man, Ludwig (John Blalock), is chief of the department; the other, a young African American woman, is his assistant, Ronnee (Alinca Hamilton). The two are waiting for Don, who used to be a vice-president of the company and now comes from time to time to give lectures to some of the staff. Today, he also has an appointment with the legal department. He is late. Ludwig clearly does not like Don, while Ronnee tries to find some good qualities in him. The corporatese language is hard to follow, but that is the point, or one of them – the use of language to obfuscate reality. When Don (Ed Altman) finally appears, full of himself and some sort of shamanic purity; he takes a great deal of time intellectually, or perhaps spiritually, preening. We eventually learn that Don has been on leave due to complaints made about him by another vice-president, a person who has been dismissed. The legal department has investigated the complaints, found them baseless, and wants Don to sign an agreement saying the matter is over and done with, and that Don will keep silent. He, on the other hand, to defend his honor, wants public statements made naming his accuser and exonerating him. The three go around and around, with Ronnee acting as peacemaker and, from time to time, showing us her disbelief at how the two men are carrying on. The play suggests that such a thing as honor is all but impossible, at least in a corporate setting, or perhaps that the concept is totally subjective, that no one really knows what it is. White male privilege is touched upon as one aspect of the elusiveness of the concept. Perhaps, as suggested by the insistence of the two men not to listen to each other, but to try to prevail, the idea of honor comes down to dominance. Those who truly sacrifice for their idea of honor are not dealt with. Honor is somewhat hard to follow, since the situation and the facts emerge slowly, through the jargon. Although all three actors have some amusing lines, only Ms. Hamilton carries that humor through, much of it in her unspoken reactions. Ronnee, as a female African American lawyer in a very white male setting, would logically have to knuckle under, or at least pretend to do so. However, writer-director, T. J. Elliott, has given Ms.Hamilton space to be the human. Because she keeps trying to actually deal with the two men, because she seems somewhat grounded in reality, because she is the only one who seems organized, Ronnee emerges as the character who is most sympathetic. Alinca Hamilton takes full advantage of this space and, acting with her body and face as well as with her words, letting the audience see her reactions, is quite funny much of the time, showing us the ridiculousness of the situation. Her interpretation gives the audience respite from the haggling of the other two, and offers us some space in which to think. |
| recordings | coupons | publications | classified |