UnReele

In just the few short years since he left Juilliard, Anthony Mackie has enjoyed a level of work most actors would envy.

He made his screen debut opposite Eminem in 8 Mile; debuted on Broadway in an uneven revival of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, with Whoopi Goldberg; starred in Spike Lee’s ill-conceived male fantasy, She Hate Me; appeared last year on Broadway in Regina Taylor’s Drowning Crow, which critics seemed to dislike primarily for being an all-Black adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull; and received Independent Spirit Award and Gotham Award nominations for the Sundance Award-winning feature Brother to Brother. Another actor on a never-ending search for a good part.

Unfortunately, Mackie doesn’t find it in his latest project. McReele, the world premiere of Stephen Belber’s new play, produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, is now in previews at the Laura Pels Theatre on W. 46th Street in New York. While it offers Mackie plenty of opportunity to display his versatility as a performer, it suffers from a meandering story line that tries to make too many points, the result of which is to make few of them well.

Darius McReele is on death row in a Delaware State Prison as the play opens, accused of killing a judge’s son during a botched drug deal 16 years ago when he was just 17. He has steadfastly maintained his innocence and has gotten the attention of a local newspaper editor Rick Dayne, played by Michael O’Keefe, who is interested not in McReele’s guilt or innocence but in an essay he has written. It seems prison life has allowed him plenty of time to think about what’s wrong with the outside world and he writes eloquently.

Dayne becomes fascinated with the charismatic McReele and convinced that the circumstantial evidence that put him away may be flawed. McReele provides leads to another man who may be the real culprit, and when Dayne takes up the cause, finally gains his release.

Post-incarceration, Dayne and McReele establish a relationship that allows the editor to hear more of the young man’s well-thought-out, albeit surprisingly centrist, political opinions. An arranged meeting with the state Democratic Party chair leads to an invitation to run for U.S. Senate against an entrenched GOP incumbent. And with that, this contrived mess of a story line wanders off.

To call this basic premise preposterous would be an understatement. Democrats are hard up for good candidates but no one would ask an ex-con--innocent or not--to run for office with no previous political experience. Further, playwright Belber (Match, Tape, The Laramie Project) never seems sure of what angle he wants to take.

Should he tell a story about a charming young man who may have a secret to hide? Is this play about how a carefully shaped media campaign can make a viable candidate out of anyone? Perhaps a tale about whether a politician is capable of actually saying what he means? Or whether a Black man is a sellout for wanting to leave the ghetto and move in power circles? Belber touches on all of these but never stays long enough to come to any conclusions.

The characters are one dimensional and thus difficult to feel any emotion towards. Tony Award nominee Doug Hughes (Doubt, Frozen) directs, but with only five actors and no more than four on stage at any one time, often leaves then standing in place for long stretches, as they deliver at times ponderously long bits of dialogue.

With the exception of O’Keefe, who gave a very wooden performance, most of the actors in this production did their best with inferior material: Jodi Long as Katya, Dayne’s girlfriend and host of a local tv news show; Portia as Opal, McReele’s wife, and Henry Strozier in multiple roles.

As a vehicle for Mackie, well, it never hurts to be a working actor. Having a play running Off Broadway should give him the visibility necessary to land his next role.

McReele, now in previews, will open February 24 and run until May 1.

Posted by bernie at February 19, 2005 10:56 PM | TrackBack