"Too Heavy For Your Pocket" at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J. through May 19, 2019

Donnell E. Smith as Bowzie.

Although I previously saw this award-winning (2017 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award) play a year ago in New York, it made a lasting impression on me, one that made me eager to see it again now that it is at the George Street Playhouse. Although the play is well acted and remains worthwhile, the current production left me less than enthused. But more about that later.

As a graduate from the Yale School of Drama, playwright Jireh Breon Holder was inspired by his family history. He has created four closely connected characters caught up in domestic quandaries that involve misplaced passion and misguided loyalties amidst the encroaching socio-political changes of the time. Each is integral and well-defined  within a compelling narrative that is mainly revealed through a young man with a mission.

The action takes place in Nashville, Tennessee during the summer of 1961. This is shortly after segregation was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The play focuses on the relationship of two couples. At its center is Bowzie Brandon (Donnell E. Smith), an intensely motivated young black man intent on leaving his home, his wife and friends and leap into the burgeoning activities of the Freedom Riders.

These are the men and women, both black and white, who braved the backlash of racism by riding on buses through cities that did not welcome integration. Standing up to this resistance, the Freedom Riders were denounced as trouble-makers. They were assaulted by masses of intolerant bigots and also brutalized by the local police. Many are arrested, taken to filthy jails, beaten and staying for months unable to post bail.

The extraordinarily bright Bowzie has barely begun his first semester at Fisk University to which he has won a full tuition scholarship when he is recruited into a group of peaceful activists. His change of plans is not received well by his wife Evelyn (Felicia Boswell) or by their best friends Sally-Mae (Joniece Abbott-Pratt) and her husband Tony (Landon G. Woodson) who has been Bowzie's best friend since childhood.

While the play circles around the domestic anxieties of the pregnant Sally Mae and her philandering husband Tony, it is Evelyn's fear that Bowzie's commitment to the movement has replaced his concerns and devotion to her. Director LA Williams has certainly filled that circle with fine actors who do everything they can to inhabit their complex, warmly conceived characters.

There is also no lack in the play itself of a good mix of the comedic and the explosive. What becomes troublesome is the similarity of dramatic tone and resonance in their collective characterizations...not easy to explain as is why the play’s staging lacks imagination while its pace appears more plodding than penetrating.

Although the action occurs primarily in and around the kitchen setting it allows for other locations. More of a distraction rather than creating a feeling of home and kinship, the set, that includes a strangely impressionistic evocation of a roof, looks more makeshift than we are accustomed to seeing at George Street. It has been a long time since I felt that a set actually worked against the efforts of actors to inhabit a place. 

One gets the impression that this is a much better play than we are seeing. At its core, however, we do see how the Civil Rights Movement directly and indirectly enables four people to see their own personal light through sacrifice or self-determination or both.