Big White Fog

By TAD SIMONS

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MINNEAPOLIS A Guthrie Theater presentation of a play in three acts by Theodore Ward. Directed by Lou Bellamy.
 
Cast: Jonathan Earl Peck (Victor Mason), Rebecca Rice (Ella), Lester Purry (Lester), Bridgid Coulter (Wanda), Summer Tina-Marie Brooks (Caroline), Gin Hammond (Caroline, 10 years later), Larry J. Burt II (Phillip), Ty Jones (Phillip, 10 years later), Laurie Carlos (Martha Brooks), Marvette Knight (Juanita), Terry Bellamy (Daniel Rogers), Abdul Salaam El Razzac (Percy Mason), Andrea Kim Walker (Claudine), J.C. Cutler (Nathan Piszer), John Bottoms (Marx), Warren C. Bowles (Count Strawder), T. Mychael Rambo (Count Cotton), Saidah Arrika Ekulona (Sister Gabriella), Police Lieutenant (Bruce Bohne), Bailiff (Peter Schmitz).
 

When the Guthrie Theater announced last year that Penumbra Theater artistic director Lou Bellamy was going to direct Harlem Renaissance playwright Theodore Ward's "Big White Fog"-- the play's first professional production in 50 years -- Ward's name, much less his play, wasn't even a blip on most people's theatrical radar screen. The question then and now is, are we really supposed to believe that this heretofore unknown work by an equally undistinguished playwright is a forgotten African-American masterpiece?

Surprise. "Big White Fog" is a great American play. Not a masterpiece, perhaps, but a play that grapples compellingly with an important chunk of American history -- the years leading up and into the Great Depression -- as seen from the point of view of an African-American family struggling to survive in a country hostile to people with skin darker than a crust of bread.

It's intellectually challenging, emotionally complex, sad, funny, explosive and honest -- everything you expect from a great play -- and it is directed by Bellamy with the same exquisite integrity he usually reserves for the works of August Wilson, whose work echoes Ward's in many ways.

The play is set in the South Chicago home of Victor Mason (Jonathan Earl Peck) during the 1920s and '30s. Victor is a construction worker and local leader of Marcus Garvey's Back to Africa movement who is enamored of the idea of reclaiming his cultural roots. But, as black politics is the Mason family sport, there is no shortage of dissenting opinions about how the black man can and should get ahead.

Victor's wife, Ella (Rebecca Rice), and grandmother-in-law (Laurie Carlos) think Victor should shut up and keep working. Victor's brother-in-law, Dan (Terry Bellamy), believes that capitalism is the ultimate instrument of democracy. Victor's son, Lester (Lester Purry), who at the beginning of the play gets rejected for a college scholarship because he is black, is a budding socialist. Victor's daughter, Wanda (Bridgid Coulter), is a material girl who drops out of college to work at a drugstore. And Victor's brother, Percy (Abdul Salaam El Razzac), has put most of his faith in the bottom of a gin bottle.

Aside from the fact that the Mason family provides an elegantly structured prism through which to view the African-American experience of the '20s and '30s , it also provides plenty of ideological and emotional fireworks, especially when cruel, pragmatic realities start to set in.

Racism is the "Big White Fog" of the title, but lack of money is what sparks the play. A long labor strike deprives Victor of income for many months, setting into motion a domino effect of flared tempers, bitterness, resentment, compromise, disappointment, shame, futility and, ultimately, heartbreak. Slowly and inexorably the Mason family disintegrates as hope gives way to despair. Hard choices are made. Good intentions backfire. Then, when things can hardly get worse, the Great Depression hits.

The most startling thing about "Big White Fog" is how contemporary the play feels. Victor's anti-white rants about the need for an African homeland are echoed in the rhetoric of Malcolm X and, more recently, in the tirades of Louis Farrakhan. Dan's talk about capitalism as the cure for black social ills could just as easily come out of Newt Gingrich's mouth; and Lester's faith in the "power of the people" offers a prescient glimpse at the seeds of 1960s idealism and its evil stepchild, modern liberalism.

While the men argue, the women offer the reality check: The kids are sick, there's no money for medicine or food, the rent isn't paid, and 20 years of talk haven't changed a thing. Indeed, the basic schematic of racial politics hasn't changed much; only the particulars have.

This isn't really a Guthrie production: Almost the entire cast are Penumbra regulars, including Carlos, who flew in from New York for her show-stealing turn as the outspoken, no-nonsense grandmother, Martha Brooks. The play is devoid of Guthrie excess. The set is a large, smartly furnished brownstone; the action is realistic to the bone; the characters are the crux of the play's power; and, perhaps not so surprising, the results are brilliant. There may not be many unknown plays as good as "Big White Fog," but we are fortunate that this one was re-discovered, and can only hope that it now gets the respect it has long deserved.

Set, Douglas Stein; costumes, Paul Tazewell; lighting, Allen Lee Hughes; sound, Steve Bennett; stage manager, Jeffrey A. Alspaugh. Artistic director, Garland Wright; executive director, Edward A. Martenson. Opened, reviewed Sept. 22, 1995, at the Guthrie Theater; 1, 300 seats; $ 40 top. Running time: 3 HOURS.