Dear Mr. Robert Trussell--
Beauty is truly within the eye of the beholder, just as poignancy is selectively sensate.
Your review of the K. C. Repertory Theatre's production of "Broke-ology,"-- KC Kansas' playwright, Nathan Louis Jackson's, "chef d'oeuvre,"-- though technically compliant with prevailing norms, misses the point, by reason thereof.
When I experienced the play during past Saturday's matinee, I was one of only a handful of African Americans among an otherwise packed house.
The universal power of the play's overarching theme cut through the audience like an electric knife. The standing ovation at the end was as much cathartic as it was celebratory.
What your review (KC Star, 3/2/2010, p.D2) misses is a four letter word, "love." This play was all about love. The love. Between man and wife, father and sons, people and heritage. Broke, yes. But, "Joie de vrie," notwithstanding. While you may have used the word, "love," in your article, I did not feel any love emanating from your review.
"Feel" is the leitmotif of "Broke-ology," Mr. Trussell. Feel what? The "montage of a dream deferred," to quote Kansas' poet, Langston Hughes. The house, itself, which was supposed to be "temporary." The energetic and pretty young wife's premature death, and her unfulfilled longings expressed even beyond the grave. The peremptory pregnancy of the stay-at-home son's girlfriend. The unrequited and threatened realization of the college-trained son's ambitions. The encroaching and terminal illness of dad, heightened by his sense of failure and obligation to his deceased wife whose love and spirit he covets. The feeling that all of them are trapped, or "stuck" in a nightmarish goo, dissembling life.
The neat solution? Medically induced suicide. Death was one of Shakespeare's favorite devices and his ghosts are iconic.
The play is every bit as powerful as Lorraine Hansberry's classic "Raisin in the Sun," spiritually and symbolically. Or "Was it just my imagination, running away with me?" The streaming tears in my eyes, and others', said otherwise.
Respectfully,
Larry D. Coleman Esq.
Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
