Passengers traveling on ocean vessels are, literally, unmoored, rendered utterly bereft of any fixed point by which to orient themselves (unlike the illusion of equilibrium an airplane's floor offers). When every perception, waking or sleeping, becomes unfamiliar and, therefore, fraught with possibility, those struggling for a foothold in the nebula of nature's uncertainty can come to accept phenomena unimaginable on land—an ancient tribe of African sorcerers, for example, or a mysterious deity capable of blasting the senses of mortals.
Charles Johnson's epic historical novel Middle Passage integrates themes from Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Gulliver's Travels, Heart of Darkness—virtually every nautical yarn in western literature: our story begins circa 1830 when free-Black hustler Rutherford Calhoun flees New Orleans aboard a ship preparing to cross the Atlantic, only to discover that its destination is Africa, its cargo on the return voyage comprised of captive natives to be sold as slaves and its captain indifferent to human compassion for all living creatures, including his own crew. When good and bad, right and wrong, friend and foe swirl together like the ever-shifting sea, where is a person to anchor his allegiance?
Ilesa Duncan and David Barr III have put the recent two-year suspension to good use, paring away extraneous text in this third-time adaptation (the first appearing in 2016, and the second just before the theaters closed in 2020) to facilitate the action progressing at swifter velocity. To be sure, this concession to audiences of short attention spans is not without its price in terms of the copious densely textured narrative required to encompass Johnson's multicultural perspective, but more playgoer-friendly devices—R & D Choreography's contrasting fight techniques employed in a brief scuffle, or the Lifeline techs' rip-snorting storm at sea—succeed in conveying any necessary information missing from earlier drafts.
This expertise is manifested most skillfully in Shawn Wallace's original incidental score—first introducing us to Rutherford in a spoken-word soliloquy with the refrain "I'm so glad I'm free" then later reprised in a significantly different tone reflecting the wisdom acquired by our hero's experience.
