White Privilege

Admissions – Theatre Wit

In Joshua Harmon’s most recent play, by the factious author of “Bad Jews” and “ Significant Other,” we meet Sherri Mason and her family. She’s the Head of Admissions at Hillcrest, a highly-respected New England prep school. Ms. Mason’s husband Bill is the Dean of the school, and their 17-year-old son Charlie is a promising student, who attends tuition-free because his parents are in high administrative positions at Hillcrest. One of Sherri’s driving goals is to increase the percentage of minority students in her school’s population.

As the play opens, Roberta, Sherri’s senior administrative assistant, is becoming frustrated by Sherri’s demands. She’s insistent that, in photographing the students for the upcoming registration catalogue, Roberta presents a picture of a diversity. Sherri really wants to show that her school is a friendly place for students of color and, hopefully, increase the school’s 8% minority population to something closer to 20%. Roberta argues that she’s included photos of Perry, Charlie’s best friend, who’s the son of an African-American instructor at the school and Ginnie, his lily white mother. The young man is, thus, lighter skinned and photographs as Caucasian. Sherri would like Roberta to take pictures of students who are easily identifiable as African American, Hispanic and Asian.

The plot also revolves around Charlie’s family and friends waiting to see if he’s been accepted to attend Yale University. After staying out long after he should’ve been home from school, we meet Charlie, who’s in a festering rage. He confesses that he’s been out in the woods for the past four hours screaming with frustration because he’s learned that he’s been deferred from acceptance to Yale, while his friend, Perry, has been accepted for the Fall term. Charlie then unloads all of his pent-up feelings, harshly criticizing, in a very long monologue, a system that seems unfair. He screams and swears, rants and raves, demeaning his friend’s intelligence and athletic ability, saying that Perry was accepted simply because he’s a minority. Sweating, spitting and red in the face, Charlie continues his tirade, attacking everyone in his world who he perceives to be a minority. He angrily complains that he’s been shoved in the corner to rot away with all the other undesirables.

Where this play goes from this point is slightly anticlimactic. There are no solutions offered to the problems; nothing really changes by the end of the play. But what Harmon does so well is to show how, despite a person’s claim of “not being a racist,” there’s a sense of martyrdom displayed every time a person of color earns a higher status in White America. However, in an unexpected plot twist, things go from bad to worse in this play.

Theater Wit’s Artistic Director, Jeremy Wechsler, directs this production with a great deal of sensitivity, igniting all the controversies, questions and vitriol that hides between the lines. He guides his talented cast to create, as in Harmon’s “Bad Jews,” some pretty undesirable characters. He’s focused the spotlight on Joshua Harmon’s scathing look at the hypocrisy that often occurs when it comes to creating microcosms that reflect the real world. White privilege and superiority rears its ugly head everywhere, from our current administration to small private schools. But this play at least inspires conversation to take place in which we can examine what’s really happening in terms of racial diversity in this country.

One of Chicago’s finest dramatic actresses, Meighan Gerachis returns to Theater Wit as Sherri. She’s the center of this play, as Sherri works hard to raise the percentage of diversity at her school, priding herself on how much she progress she’s made. But, when it comes to her own son, she’s as much of a hypocrite as anyone.

Kyle Curry is excellent as young Charlie. Despite being old enough to have earned his MFA in Acting, Mr. Curry is very convincing here as a high school student. The young actor skillfully holds the audience in his hands as he delivers one of the most scathing, hard-to-watch tirades to be found in contemporary drama. This is an actor to watch.

Judi Schindler is delightful as Roberta. As a member of the older generation, Ms. Schindler’s character hilariously attempts to be enlightened and up-to-date with respects to issues of diversity. Stephen Walker, whose considerable talents have been enjoyed at TimeLine, Red Orchid and other respectable theatres around Chicago, displays his character’s own personal frustrations as a father and the head of Hillcrest. And India Whiteside is strong as Ginnie, the mother of a child of mixed race, who’s dealt with problems that none of the other characters in this play can even imagine. 

This isn’t a perfect play, but Jeremy Wechsler’s production is every bit as powerful as any of Theater Wit’s other terrific professional productions. Laced with laughter, this play is very moving, yet quite uncomfortable to watch, at times. However, it’s bound to provoke lots of post-show discussion and will inspire audiences to think about what it means to create diversity in schools, the workplace and society. The lack of honesty that haunts our work toward diversity, in a 21st century that’s finally seeing a world of color, is what Joshua Harmon speaks about the loudest. It’s a shout that needs to be heard today.

Recommended

Reviewed by Colin Douglas    

Presented April 1-May 12 by Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, Chicago.

Tickets are available at the box office, by calling 773-975-8150 or by going to www.theaterwit.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.