An Overload of Angst

Fireflies – Northlight Theatre

Charles is a renowned Southern preacher whose heartfelt, powerful prowess as an inspirational speaker is unsurpassed. He travels everywhere delivering speeches and eulogies to bring hope and encouragement to his audiences and congregations. However, it’s Olivia, Charles’ dutiful, stay-at-home wife, who actually writes all of his orations and sermons and painstakingly coaches him on his delivery. On the surface they make a great team, but there’s something very wrong beneath the surface of their seemingly perfect relationship.

Gay African-American writer Donja R. Love has won several accolades and honors for his work as a playwright, poet and filmmaker. In this, his second in a trilogy of dramas that explore being Black and queer, we have another of his plays set during a particularly influential and important period in African-American history. “Fireflies” is set in 1963, somewhere in the South, during the height of the inflammatory Civil Rights Movement. Charles has just returned from Birmingham, where he delivered a very moving tribute to the four little girls killed in the bombing of a Baptist Church. The experience has deeply moved him since Charles and Olivia are expecting their first child. The trouble is, Olivia doesn’t want to bring another child into a world full of racial hatred, death and destruction. But this is just the beginning of the problems that exist between Olivia and Charles.

In this 90-minute, two-character play, Mr. Love unloads an awful lot of baggage for the audience to grasp. As each scene unfolds, it’s as if the playwright was working from a list of important issues and conflicts that he was checking off as he included each in his one-act drama. All these plot developments seem melodramatic and make the story difficult to accept as reality. In addition to dealing with the horrendous tragedies of the Civil Rights Movement and an unwanted pregnancy, the couple has to cope with problems of inferiority, egotism, sexual addiction, spousal abuse, adultery, FBI spying, LGBT matters, severe emotional difficulties, abortion and many other issues. It’s simply an overload of angst for a one-act play.

Mikael Burke has skillfully directed Mr. Love’s drama with plenty of empathy for both his characters. He’s carefully guided the actors’ performances toward a more realistic feel than the play might have dictated. His cast is excellent, handling each plot element with grace. Lovely Chanell Bell is beautifully understated, poignant and heartbreaking as Olivia, while Al’Jaleel McGhee is equally moving, self-absorbed and forceful as Charles. While complementing each other, these two talented actors are required to tap into every conceivable emotion possible in this two-hander. Their ability to seamlessly shift from joy to passion to sorrow to anger, all in such a brief amount of time, prompted me to picture the pair playing that quintessential sparring married couple, George and Martha, in Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

The technical work behind this production beautifully supports Mr. Burke’s vision. Christie Chiles Twillie has created an authentic sound design that evokes the time period through it’s music, while providing the horrifying ethereal sounds of bombs and fire, that occur inside Olivia’s mind. Scott Penner’s simple, uncluttered scenic design provides just enough details from a 1960’s kitchen to establish time and place, while offering the actors a roomy area on which to play out their story. An upstage exterior wall is comprised of a honeycomb of what appear to be hubcaps. But these are actually Lighting Designer Eric Watkins’ clever representation of the titular fireflies of Olivia’s dreams. To her, these blazes of light are the souls of African-Americans who have been tragically killed and are flying up to God.

Northlight Theatre’s latest production is thoroughly engaging and grips the audience’s attention until the very last moment. There are definite parallels, however, between Donja R. Love’s story of Charles and Olivia and the lives of much-revered minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his author wife Coretta. It makes one wonder why the playwright didn’t just write a biographical drama, instead. But I imagine that a script that painted one of history’s greatest Civil Rights activists in this questionable vein would be frowned upon. Kudos, however, to the talented cast, director and production team for bringing this thought-provoking play to life. It’s just that this short play simply tries to stuff too many issues into one, 90-minute drama. 

Recommended

Reviewed by Colin Douglas

Presented January 20-February 20 by Northlight Theatre at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, IL.

Tickets are available in person at the theatre box office, by calling 847-673-6300, or by going to www.northlight.org.

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