Dominique Morisseau‘s prize-winning Skeleton Crew and Intimate Apparel, an early work by Lynn Nottage, opened this past week at barebones productions and the Pittsburgh Playhouse, respectively.
By BOB HOOVER
It’s tough to find a better location for Skeleton Crew than across the street from the Edgar J. Thomson Works of U.S. Steel in Braddock, home of barebones.
The story unfolds in the breakroom of an automobile sheet metal plant in Detroit as the 2008 recession eroded the country’s economy, raising fears of the plant’s closing.
Credit the master designer Tony Ferrieri for the soulless, grim space where the four characters – Faye, Reggie, Shanita, and Dez – make their brief escape from the noise and monotony of the assembly line.
Tome Cousin, another Pittsburgh stage veteran, directs Skeleton Crew with assurance and a flourish that gives the characters distinction.
Skeleton Crew has echoes of August Wilson and Lynn Nottage, whose works painted a bleak picture of African-Americans trapped in a world that held them down.
Nottage’s recent plays, Sweat and Clyde’s, are set in a down-and-out Reading, PA., where factory jobs are disappearing. Morisseau’s Detroit Trilogy uses that troubled city as a place of frustration, racism, and violence.
The fine, barebones cast brings a down-to-earth realism and hard-earned wisdom to Morisseau’s rich, funny, and, at times, lyrical passages about working-class life with its uncertainties and search for meaning.
Faye, the 29-year veteran of the plant, is the heart of Skeleton Crew. Etta Cox, whose great jazz singing has entertained for many years, brings a world-weariness to Faye, the “mother” of the breakroom.
Reggie, the powerful Richard McBride, has a more complicated role as a foreman under the thumb of management. He and Faye have a history together, so he gives her a break from the rules when he catches her smoking a cigarette in the room.
She ignores Reggie’s poster, “No Smoking Faye,” on the bulletin board.
The two know the plant’s future is doubtful but keep the news from the single and pregnant Shanita (Saige Smith) and budding entrepreneur Dez (Brenden Peifer). Ironically, the two were in Quantum’s Hamlet, performed last year at the Carrie Furnace, a few miles away from the Thomson mill. Smith was Ophelia and Peifer, Laertes.
Shanita is the rare assembly-line worker who enjoys her job and wins high marks for her work. It’s all she wants to do. Dez, though, has plans to escape the line and start his own business. He also defies Reggie as management tightens the workplace rules, including no firearms. In the dangerous world of Detroit, Dez feels compelled to bring his gun to the plant. Finally, Shanita breaks the rules by opening her arms to Dez in the breakroom.
When Faye, who needs one more year for a better pension, faces an early exit, it’s Reggie’s job to make her sign the retirement deal. Then Skeleton Crew turns even more depressing.
I’ve left out the fifth character – Performer, played by dancer Mario Quinn Lyles. His automaton moves, mirroring the machinery of the plant, a reflection of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, are scene transitions. Lyles is a great dancer, but the transitions are distractions from the play’s humanity.
Skeleton Crew is a powerful, well-polished show that feels right at home in Pittsburgh’s own industrial world of management vs. labor, roles that have played out here for hundreds of years.
TICKETS AND DETAILS for Skeleton Crew
Skeleton Crew from barebones productions in Braddock has performances now through March 10, 2025. Tickets at: https://www.barebonesproductions.com/skeletoncrew
The limited four performance run of Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage from the Conservatory of Performing Arts at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, with a student cast and professional crew, focused on the struggles of Esther, a middle-aged seamstress, played by Jaylen Wilburn, to find love, acceptance, and a place of her own as a Black woman serving white customers in turn-of-the-century Manhattan. Illiterate and naïve, she falls for a marriage scam of the Panamain George (Desmon Jackson) which upends her quiet, protected life.
Playing out on a multi-tiered set design by Emmaline Naud, Intimate Apparel is also a multi-layered story. Its characters have their intimate stories to tell, from the earnest fabric store clerk Mr. Marks (Konstantin Kipshidze), awaiting a bride from his native Romania, the alcoholic Mrs. Van Burren, (Kaley Bender), trapped in a loveless marriage, prostitute Mayme, who loves more than Esther’s lovely undergarments, and Mrs. Dickson, landlady of Esther’s boarding house who understands the danger her boarder faces in her life with George.
Despite the play’s confusing and cliched nature, the Playhouse lavished its production crew, including Broadway veteran Annmarie Duggan, on lighting for Intimate Apparel.
TICKETS AND DETAILS for Intimate Apparel
Point Park’s Conservatory Theatre Company presents Intimate Apparel from February 21 – 25, 2024. Tickets at: https://playhouse.pointpark.edu/shows-events/conservatory-theatre/intimate-apparel
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Reviews
Esther was played by Jaylen Wilbourn! Who did an outstanding job.