I am pleased that American Son has found its way to the Booth Theater on Broadway following its premieres at the Barrington Stage and then last season at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J. Sad and disturbing but also compelling, it remains on second viewing one of the more unnerving plays I’ve had to wrap my head around. With a new starry cast and a new director, the play’s message and its impact still resonate long after its conclusion. Christopher Demos-Brown's one-act play is driven by a long-standing social imperative made more acute by the current political climate. But it is explosive not only because of the imploding situation we witness, but because of the complex and diverse nature and behavior of its four characters, each of whom reveal through their often disquieting rhetoric aspects of their own shortcomings. Under the gripping direction of Kenny Leon, American Son goes to the heart of the matter with an unrelenting earnestness. Kendra Ellis-Connor (Kerry Washington), an African-American, is worried, impatient and close to frantic. She's in the waiting room of a police station in Miami-Dade County, Florida (simply evoked by Derek McLane). It is 4 am. She has reported that her just turned eighteen year-old bi-racial son Jamal left home that night in the Lexus registered to his father and not returned. Fearing the worst and not getting the answers to any of her questions from a polite and scrupulously conscientious rookie officer Paul Larkin (Jeremy Jordan) assigned to night-duty, her patience is at an end. Kendra is increasingly unnerved by her failed attempts to reach her estranged husband. The young white officer appears somewhat naive in dealing with a crisis. His efforts to not agitate her and stick strictly to protocol provide moments of humor. The officer unwittingly becomes a target for her frustration and her ill-advised digs and spurts of condescension. The arrival of Kendra's white and contentious husband Scott (Steven Pasquale), an FBI agent who left his home four months ago despite his devotion to their son, is welcomed but unsettling. Irish and volatile Scott soon enough finds himself immersed in an emotionally heated confrontation with Kendra that culminates in a physical altercation with the unflinching by-the-books African-American Lieutenant John Stokes (Eugene Lee). Stokes loses no time asserting his authority and taking control of the situation. That there is only a minimum number of valleys between the many peaks of emotional eruptions make this otherwise well-written 90 minute play a little exhausting. If Kendra's high-pitched tirades diminish our empathy for her, Washington’s emotionally centered performance is unquestionably as real as it is fierce. Best known for her lead role in the TV series “Scandal” and for her portrayal of Anita Hill in HBO’s “Confirmation,” Washington reveals Kendra as a woman who is both irretrievably abrasive and also unmistakably fractured by her failed marriage. Pasquale, whose impressive acting in a wide range of roles including Junk and The Bridges of Madison County, is terrific as the initially even-tempered Scott who becomes curiously and even a bit implausibly unhinged in dealing with the officers. A scene in which Scott and Kendra attempt to review and revive the chemistry that initially brought them together strains credibility. Jordan makes a fine return to Broadway after a six-years detour to TV as the inexperienced officer who decides to bend the rules and reveal there was, indeed, an incident. There is no pretense or posturing in Lee’s performance as the supervising Lieutenant who makes it clear that young black men need to "shut their mouth and behave" if they want to survive on the street these days. While we can sit back and admire the stand that an educated self-empowered black woman takes in the face of law enforcement officers, we all have to acknowledge the grim reality that racial equality is still far from our reality.
