Playwright: Charles Smith. At: Victory Gardens Theatre at the Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln. Phone: 773-871-3000; $20-$50. Runs through: June 12
One day in 1930, in the Indiana town of Marion, a white man was shot and killed, three Black men were arrested, two were hanged by an angry mob, one was spared and a white woman was somehow involved. Of these facts we are sureor are we? No sooner do we become acquainted with one version of the events than it is contradicted by another, introducing a Rashomon-styled dialectic of conflicting reports.
Memory is a slippery creature. Studies have shown that individuals viewing the same event may come away with widely differing descriptions and that gullible citizens can be likewise psychologically manipulated into fabricating fictional occurrences. Human beings may may deliberately erase from their consciousness what is too painful to bear, or flat-out lie, for reasons noble or ignoble. Add in other factorspassage of years, rewards to be reaped, arguments over whether some things ought to be rememberedand it's hard to know just what to believe.
A lynching is a sight so terrifying to behold that writers habitually restrict themselves to painting us a single shocking picture of the grisly scene before quickly turning to related (and safely distant) topicsaggravating incidents, grieving families, bystander response, etc. However, playwright Charles Smith doesn't provide us with a tidy concluding statement to assure us that Truth Will Out and Justice Triumph. Indeed, the final testimony in his play is that of a character whose contribution to the brutality is speculative, lacking a deathbed confession. Instead, the initial exchange of flashbacks gradually gives way to an atmosphere of operatic emotion, climaxed by an account of the fatal execution in all its rural-gothic horrora progression meant, presumably, to render us so viscerally stunned as to be indifferent, if not oblivious, to the absence of a resolution to the nebulous questions raised.
Under Chuck Smith's expert direction, guest artist André De Shields delivers a Hoosier tornado of a performance, orating and sparring with Linda Kimbrough as his flinty (but always secondary) antagonist, while a bevy of capable young supporting playersin particular, the mighty-voiced Christopher Jon Martin and the quietly stoic Diane Kondrat, as a pair of concerned parentsskillfully anticipate the atrocities to come. So go ahead and leave your intellect in the cloak room at intermission, if you like, but don't forget to bring your hankies with you.