Anna Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror is almost closer in tone to a film documentary than live theater. Two actors—the very talented Marti Gobel and Elyse Edelman—do a terrific job of bringing forth 26 roles in this 100-minute production. Under the direction of Marcella Kearns and C. Michael Wright, the women tackle more men’s roles than women’s roles, and switch races and ages, as well.
The actresses bring a “you-are-there” perspective to the audience in terms of a terrible, real-life event in 1991. In the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, a Hasidic man’s car was hit by an oncoming vehicle. Unable to stop the car’s momentum, he jumped a curb and killed a seven-year-old black child. As a direct result, a Hasidic rabbinical student was stabbed and killed by a gang of black men, in what appeared to be an act of retaliation. Although the most moving episodes focus on those closest to the tragedy—including the father of the dead child, and a relative of the Hasic man who died—the show starts on a broader note to incorporate ideas about identity, race, and even the role that hair plays in announcing one’s place in the world. One of the most amusing and telling anecdotes is by scholar Leonard Jeffries, who shares an insider’s perspective on Alex Haley’s book, “Roots,” and its subsequent filming for TV. Before assembling this piece of theater, Smith interviewed more than 100 people involved in the Crown Heights incidents and related events. She used their own words to create a series of 29 monologues that comprise this thought-provoking piece. Smith originally staged the work as a one-woman show, in which she played all the roles, including those of such notables as activist Angela Davis and the Rev. Al Sharpton. The two actors in the Chamber production move seamlessly about the stage, which resembles a montage of a run-down street scene, framed by two street memorials—one to the killed boy, the other to the killed Hasidic student. Lisa Schlenker’s set design incorporates carefully selected icons to represent the Crown Heights neighborhood in which the killings take place. In addition to donning scarves, hats and jackets to indicate a switch in characters, Gobel and Edelman also have perfected a variety of dialogues. Instead of Gobel taking all the black characters and Edelman personifying all the Jewish characters, they manage to switch it up in a new and provocative way. At first, it’s a bit unsettling to see Edelman posing as rapper Monique “Big Mo” Matthews, or Gobel “becoming” a rabbi, but it certainly gets the audience thinking about its own views and, perhaps, their prejudices. Perhaps the “fires in the mirror” alluded to in the title reflect one’s own experiences with the clashes between Jewish and Black cultures. This play’s overall goal seems to be exposing these prejudices so the healing process can begin.
