There were several moments during the opening night's sold-out performance of the Cloverdale Playhouse's rendering of American Son when the audience was riveted into complete silence by the intensity on stage.
Deftly co-directed by Julie Janson and Tiara Staples, an estranged interracial couple's attempts to find out what happened to their son after a "traffic stop incident" are met with resistance from the authorities; they are forced to face their own biases and responsibilities both in bringing up their son and the challenges that race and gender bring into the equation.
Christopher Demos-Brown's tightly written 2016 script wisely does not choose sides; rather, it gives credence to each of the couple's points of view as well as to those of the nighttime duty officer and the Lieutenant in charge of the case.
Each of the combatants here -- parents African-American Kendra [Taylor Finch] and Caucasian Scott [Ethan Montgomery], Caucasian Officer Larkin [Hunter Stewart], and African-American Lt. Stokes [Eric Ware] -- imbue their roles with conviction, creating an ensemble that lifts the action to focus on present day concerns with racial profiling all too common in our news headlines, where simple traffic-stops escalate to violence and catastrophic results.
We never encounter the 18-year old Jared in question, but Demos-Brown lets us see him through the various lenses of the on-stage quartet. -- Is he the misunderstood rebellious teenager his mother posits, or the wunderkind his father groomed for success, or the street-hood suggested by the Officer, or perhaps the unwitting bystander that the Lieutenant considers? -- Somewhere, the truth might be found.
While we might get caught up in both parents' concern for their son, and be frustrated by the Officer's resistance to revealing information to them, the compelling entrance of Lt. Stokes late in the action drives towards its devastating conclusion. The tension is palpable.
The dialogue each character delivers is rich in both overt and subtle gender or race biased assumptions, pitting them against one another and challenging audiences to confront their own positions. -- The 90-minutes we spend with them ought to encourage serious conversations beyond the theatrical experience.
