Power, Will

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    ‘Memnon’ Review: To Fight or Not to Fight?

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    In Will Power’s play for the Classical Theater of Harlem, Eric Berryman stars as an Ethiopian king drawn into the Trojan War.The trappings of royalty don’t always send the intended signals. Take the gilded crown of laurels gleaming expensively atop the head of Priam, the king of Troy. He means the jewelry to underline his status, to augment his gravitas, but no such luck. Even gussied up, he is unmistakably a twit.His nephew Memnon, though? That man has majesty. As embodied by a gripping Eric Berryman in “Memnon,” Will Power’s Trojan War verse play at the Classical Theater of Harlem, he radiates the charisma, integrity and serious-mindedness of a leader. He has a sense of family duty, too.Not to be confused with Agamemnon (same war, different king, opposite side), Memnon has traveled all the way from Ethiopia, where he is king, to answer his uncle’s call for help. A great warrior, he is uncertain that he wants to join the battle, though Troy is a decade deep in combat and in danger of imminent defeat.Memnon has not forgotten the painful slights he has endured for being Trojan only on his father’s side: treated as “not fully Trojan, kin and not kin,” he says. Is a society that has always regarded him that way, led by a king who also sees him that way, worth risking his own life for?His moral wrestling is at the heart of the play, his blend of affection and alienation speaking to the present with bracing clarity.“It makes no sense, to fight for that which has proven time and time again that you will forever be other,” he says. “And yet, golden moments do I have. Good memories in Troy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Drylongso’ Review: Extraordinary

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      Cauleen Smith’s 1998 movie, set in Oakland in the mid-90s, remains a vivid and prescient feature debut.“Drylongso” is a Gullah-language-derived word rooted in the African American coastal communities of Georgia and South Carolina that, over time, has come to mean “ordinary.” Yet the artist Cauleen Smith’s newly restored and rereleased 1998 feature debut, about a young photographer living with her mother and grandmother in Oakland, Calif., is anything but. Or, rather, the ordinary here has value beyond the same ol’. It’s evocative, tender and rooted — all descriptions of Smith’s film, too.By day, Pica (Toby Smith) studies art. By night, she avoids her mother’s smoky card parties by wheat-pasting activist fliers. A television in the room of her neglected grandmother warns of a serial killer targeting young Black men and women. But Pica is already acutely aware of peril: The headstrong student has been taking Polaroids of young Black men and bringing them to her 35mm-focused photography course. She’s documenting these men because, she tells her professor (played by Salim Akil, who wrote the film alongside Smith), they are in danger of becoming extinct.Smith braids politics, friendship and romance throughout “Drylongso.” Pica befriends a young woman, Tobi (April Barnett), after witnessing her being violently kicked to the curb by a male companion. The next time Tobi and Pica cross paths, Tobi has gone incognito in male garb. A potential suitor, Malik (Will Power), rides his bike, hawks homemade T-shirts and asks Pica repeatedly, “When you gonna take my picture, girl?”Loss will intervene. So will art. It’s not a mystery why this quiet wonder was lost in the Black cinema boom of the 1990s. The movie is rough-hewn as an artistic choice but also out of financial necessity; its D.I.Y. aesthetic mirrors the found scrap Pica uses to make meaningful memorials. But with its themes of Black endangerment (for both males and females) and its nuzzling of many genres (horror, romance, buddy flick), “Drylongso” returns to us utterly, subtly, chidingly prescient.DrylongsoRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Theater

      Critic's Pick: 'Seize the King,' Harlem Theater's 'Richard III'

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      It’s a tale that Will Power intends as cautionary, with cycles of history and human violence in mind.Have you been ravenous, lo these many shutdown months, for the layered richness of live theatrical design? The Classical Theater of Harlem has just the thing to sate your hunger.Ambitious design is one of the hallmarks of this company, and it is an absolute joy to encounter it again in such fine form in Will Power’s “Seize the King,” a contemporary verse spin on “Richard III,” in Marcus Garvey Park.The brothers Christopher and Justin Swader, old hands at transfiguring the utilitarian stage of the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, frame Carl Cofield’s production with a set that is both monumental and minimalist, aglow with Alan C. Edwards’s canny lighting. In the gathering dusk, we gaze on its stony surfaces and square-edged sconces, and enchantment begins even before the show does.It’s a strange word, enchantment, to apply to the story of a duke so hellbent on his own sovereignty that he will murder the 12-year-old nephew who stands in his way — a tale that Power intends as cautionary, with cycles of history and human violence in mind.“The evil in men always resurfaces,” a narrator (Carson Elrod) warns at the start, as the stage walls fill with Brittany Bland’s projections of slave ships and war.Yet there is something inherently spellbinding right now about sitting outdoors in the dark with other humans, and the occasional blinking firefly, watching a performance unfold with doubling and dance.Alisha Espinosa plays Lady Anne, who marries Richard with close to no illusions after he courts her brazenly in her bath. Richard TermineI caught the first preview of the run, since the previous night’s show had been rained out. Because of that, some performances may have been a little tentative. So when I tell you that Ro Boddie, as Richard, lacks the charisma of a scheming antihero who seeks to draw us into his confidence — well, he may grow more comfortable in the role.The same applies to Alisha Espinosa as Edward V, the young heir to the throne, who needs to but does not bruise our hearts. She makes a far better fit as the calculating Lady Anne, who marries Richard with close to no illusions after he courts her brazenly in her bath — a makeover of one of the tackiest wooing scenes in Shakespeare. Kudos, by the way, for the costume designer Mika Eubanks’s neat trick of having Anne’s outfit in that tub scene stand in for frothy bubbles.This production is more adept overall at conveying the play’s humor than its heft: the waste of innocent lives in service of vain rulers, the need for vigilance against the resurgence of the vanquished.Yet the other three principal actors (Andrea Patterson, RJ Foster and Elrod), move easily between comedy and woe, and deliver Power’s complex verse with remarkable clarity. Especially in the scenes they share, they are fun to watch.Dance, a regular feature of Classical Theater of Harlem productions, is used here to extraordinary effect. Choreographed by Tiffany Rea-Fisher with her customary grace, it is woven more deeply than usual into the storytelling — as when we watch the death of the old king, Edward IV, enacted wordlessly — and into the mood of the performance. (Music is by Frederick Kennedy, who also did the very effective sound design.)Dance, a regular feature of Classical Theater of Harlem productions, is used to extraordinary effect. Richard TermineIt is impossible to fully separate the art of theater-making in this chrysalis-shedding moment from the relief we feel simply to be experiencing it. So I will tell you that I felt full in an unexpected way after “Seize the King.” To which, incidentally, admission is free.It was not perfect, and it did not have to be. It was live, it contained multitudes of beauty, and it felt like luxury.Seize the KingThrough July 29 at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, Manhattan; cthnyc.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More