Honky by Greg Kalleres Free to Read

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A CurtainUp Los Angeles Review

Honky

"God, yous are so white" - Thomas to Andie

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Burl Moseley and Bruce Nozick (Photo:John Perrin Flynn)

Two teens foursquare off in a one-on-one basketball game match that is function dance, part rumble, and positively balletic. The bout ended, one pulls off his shoe, brandishes it like a pistol, and hisses "Sup now!" Nosotros jump quickly to the boardroom of the athletic shoe manufacturing company that fabricated the commercial we have just witnessed, and Greg Kalleres's in-your-face drama Honky is officially locked and loaded.

Equal parts satire and sociology, this very deft play tilts and pivots, keeping an audience both laughing and emotionally off-guard. In presenting the play's Los Angeles premiere, the consistently loftier-form Rogue Car Theatre has another winner. Gregg T. Daniel'southward product at the Met Theatre is not to be missed.

Kalleres creates a quintet of characters who are so pretzeled up in conundrums of racial definiteness, there seems little hope of any escape for them. . . or any of united states of america. Fortunately for the Honky folks at least, a researcher named Driscoll has engineered a pill designed to eliminate medically those inconvenient, intolerant impulses. The pill comes with some interesting side furnishings, just isn't the possibility of having a castigating Frederick Douglass in your kitchen worth the gamble?

The playwright seems to retrieve so and wow, do some of theHonky people need some heavy doses of Driscotol. Davis Tallison (played by Bruce Nozick), the president of the urban shoe company Sky Max, can barely put two sentences together without getting nether someone'southward skin. Since Heaven Max is being eyed past Nike for a possible acquisition, Davis's foot-in-mouth affliction is problematic, and he'll need some sensitivity training. His subordinate, Thomas Hodge (Burl Moseley), a young, well-educated black man, must deal with the fact that black teens are shooting each other to acquire the shoes he designed. His sister, Emilia, (Inger Tudor), is a therapist who listens to people confessing all mode of guilt. She claims race plays no office in her piece of work, but it kind of does.

The circle widens then tightens. Emilia's latest client, Peter Trammel (James Liebman), wrote the incendiary Sky Max commercial that has blacks and whites akin quite literally up in arms. Working through all kinds of guilt, Peter can't quite figure out whether to insult his therapist or fall in love with her. Then there'southward Peter'south fiancee, Andie (Tasha Amos), a privileged US>-magazine-reading blonde whose obliviousness to Peter's racial angst ("Killing people for shoes. What is this, the '80s?") has him reconsidering the marriage. But in Kelleres's tricky universe, Andie may not exist the dim bulb we look her to exist. All of the characters defy cultural expectations, including a couple of kids (Matthew Hancock and Christian Henley) who keep appearing on the subway in dissimilar incarnations during encounters with Davis, Peter, and Thomas.

Back in the early 2000s, Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx wrote a fairly ingenious song for the musical Artery Q titled "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist." Honky accepts the premise of that song and 1-ups it, effectively arguing that commercialism and racism are not only linked but potentially necessary bedfellows. Or maybe that's the statement of a person trying to prove he is not a racist. Kelleres leaves the question open up, but where sensitive language is considered, clearly there's no cure-all pill.

Regardless, nether Daniel's management, Honky is crisp, deeply funny and splendidly acted. Every bit Peter and Thomas, Liebman and Moseley shrewdly play out two different sides of the same set of neuroses. Both are comically gifted and convincing handbasket cases. Nozick steers Davis, the unapologetic visitor homo, away from villainy. His arguments are weirdly and unapologetically compelling, and you have no difficulty assertive the homo could sell a agglomeration of shoes.

Facing the effects of both Peter's neuroses and the effects of the drug Driscotol, Tudor's Emilia displays some remarkable composure. How she keeps herself from throwing Peter out of her office during their first scene together is a feat. Hancock and Henley do some seriously artful double duty as every stereotypical representatives of urban youth one could imagine. Hancock'due south depiction of a foul-mouthed, aesthetically finicky Douglass is a riot.

The play's shining star is Ames. Artless, vulnerable and possessed of peachy comic timing, the actress makes Andie Honky'south unlikely heroine. In a world gone topsy-turvy, the person who tin can deftly shove all the "heavy stuff" aside may be the one who doesn't need Dirscotol later all. Imagine that.

Honky by Greg Kalleres
Directed by Gregg T. Daniel
Cast: Tasha Ames, Ron Bottitta, Matthew Hancock, Christian Henley, James Liebman, Burl Moseley, Bruce Nozick, Inger Tudor
Scenic Design: Stephanie Kerley Schwartz
Lighting Design: Dan Weingarten
Sound Pattern: Jeff Gardner
Video/Projection Design: Nicholas E. Santiago
Choreographer: Eliana Fuller
Production Manager: Amanda Mauer
Technical Director: David A. Mauer
Stage Managing director: Ramon Valdez
Plays through June 12, 2016 at the Met Theater, 1089 North. Oxford Ave., Los Angeles. (855) 585-5185, world wide web.roguemachinetheatre.com.
Running time: 1 hr and thirty-five minutes, with no intermission
Reviewed by Evan Henerson

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