There’s good news and bad news about Immediate Family, the new play at the Mark Taper Forum. Written by Paul Oakley Stovall, the ironically-titled dramedy deals with an all-too-familiar set-up: the coming out of a gay son to his straight, conventional family. The wrinkle is that the family is black and the son’s lover is white (and Swedish to boot).
The cliche aspects of Immediate Family are compounded by Phylicia Rashad’s over-the-top direction, especially where a neighbor named Nina Cole (J. Nicole Brooks) is concerned. Nina, a proud and feisty lesbian, has been coached to act in a crudely comic way that wouldn’t be out of place a 19th century coon show. Rashad also encourages some of the other actors to push the play’s humor by mugging unabashedly and outrageously.
As a result of these directorial excesses, Stovall’s sensitive and witty play often takes on the trappings of a sitcom, a cartoon. ‘Tis a pity, because there’s much to like about Immediate Family, beginning with Shanesia Davis’ performance as Evy, the elder sister in the upper-middle-class Chicago home of the Bryants. It’s Evy’s job to try and hold the family together, no easy task in light of all the internecine problems.
Tony (Kamal Angelo Bolden), the “baby” of the family, is a layabout who has knocked up his girlfriend. Ronnie (Cynda Williams) is an artistic step-sister (with a white mother) who has returned to the family fold to get married. Jesse (Bryan Terrell Clark), the pride of the siblings, the one who got a fancy education at Howard University and was supposed to write The Great American Novel, arrives from Minneapolis, where he is still trying to find himself.
Jesse has picked this visit to come out of the closet–and introduce his partner, Kristian (Mark Jude Sullivan) to the others. All of this takes place in a living room dominated by the portrait of his stern-looking preacher parents (lavish set by John Iacovelli).
Evy, who has the same religious values as her late parents, thinks Jesse’s homosexuality is a sin against God and tries to “reform” him (and persuade him to ditch his white boyfriend). The confrontation scene between Evy and Jesse is the strongest, truest thing in the production.
Immediate Family is ultimately about the battle for acceptance and tolerance in the Bryant family–and by extension in the world at large. The touching resolution of that battle is what gives the play its resonance and importance, values that manage to survive Rashad’s directorial over-kill.
