By SHARON EBERSON
Actress Wiletta Mayer has been invisible in plain sight, without even realizing it. But that’s about change.
After 25 years as a performer, the Black actress has earned what should be the role of a lifetime. She will be the star of a big-budget Broadway play, billed as a repudiation of racial violence.
It’s not vaudeville, nor is Wiletta tasked with her usual maid’s role. She will not be carrying a tray in this one, as her director puts it.
She will, however, be ironing as a traumatic family event unfolds.
As hard as she tries to make sense of the play within Alice Childress’s still daring satirical drama, Trouble in Mind, it does not ring true to Wiletta.
Wiletta, accustomed to doing as she is told as a performer, this time has something to say, no matter the cost.
What was a bold damnation of the tyranny of white privilege in 1955 – the same year Rosa Parks sat down in the front of an Alabama bus and ignited the Civil Rights Movement – remains just as relevant and impactful today, in the powerful production now at Pittsburgh Public Theater.
To place Childress’s work in context, Martin Luther King gets a mention in the play, although his “I Have a Dream” speech was nearly eight years away when it was first produced, and August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which has much in common with Trouble in Mind, was decades away.
The repercussions for Childress were the dismissal of a planned Broadway transfer, which didn’t happen until 66 years later, to the tune of four Tony Award nominations. So much time had passed since its off-Broadway debut, Trouble in Mind was in the category of Best Revival.
Arriving backstage for rehearsals of the (fictional) new play “Chaos in Belleville,” Wiletta Mayer (Shinnerrie D. Jackson, the Public’s School Girls: or the African Mean Girls Play) enters rather humbly, despite her star status. When she meets cocky young castmate John Nevins (newcomer Vandous Stripling II), she readily advises him to bury his thoughts and “give them what they want.”
The indignities piled on her and other Black members of the cast are at least insultingly ridiculous and at times, gasp worthy, inspiring Wiletta’s slow burn and Jackson to embody each phase of her evolution.
We can almost see her spark ignited as her concerns are dismissed.
Childress doesn’t take aim only at the oblivious white men, although when director Al Manners (Joe McGranaghan) yells, “I’m in charge!” to make a point, it is as chilling a moment as any in Trouble in Mind.
Perhaps just as disturbing, veteran Black actor Sheldon, played with physical abandon by Garbie Dukes, is game for playing a Stepin Fetchit caricature, or whatever it takes to keep his job and avoid menial labor.
When Wiletta causes a backstage upheaval that threatens the project, Dukes’ Sheldon says, without irony, “Integrity is what got us into this mess.”
McGranaghan as the director and Daniel Krell as successful actor Bill O’Wray have the unenviable task of representing two sides of the white privilege coin: Manners, who has raised the money for a production that he believes to be high-minded, is outwardly condescending. His white-splaining why he is not a racist is a chilling testament to Childress’s experiences as an actress and playwright.
McGranaghan, a chameleon actor, has perhaps the hardest assignment in Trouble in Mind: to be overtly superior yet lay claim to his inherent decency. Manners’ speech about how hard it was for him to grow up hearing every derogatory name for those who were not of his own skin color or faith was stunning.
Krell, whose absence from early rehearsals speaks volume, nails his character’s pomposity and cluelessness. When Bill tells a racist joke, he can’t understand why he should apologize.
Hope Anthony’s Millie Davis would seem to be full of bravado, showing off her new clothes and accessories. But Millie, like Dukes’ Sheldon, needs the paycheck. The panicked expressions by Anthony and Dukes when it is unsure if the play will go on says everything about the struggles of Black actors to play demeaning roles, or, as Sheldon says, “go back to sweeping floors.”
(Image: Maranie R. Staab)
The two stage rookies who have come to get their first tastes of Broadway – Stripling’s Nevins and, cast as a blonde Southern belle, Emma Brown Baker – get more than they bargained for, as they must pick sides between the star’s uprising and the immovable director.
Martin Giles plays the poignant Henry, a former electrician who has stayed on as the keeper of the stage door, the theater’s ghostlight and its memories. His own memory is faded, but seeing Wiletta Mayer, he is reminded of an early performance, with the star bathed in colorful lights, and she is touched to see herself through his eyes.
Rounding out the formidable cast is Anthony Marino as the director’s assistant, providing some comic relief although he as much in servitude to his boss’s demands as the rest of the cast.
Childress has created a work with layer upon layer of humor and darkness, racial tension and backstage camaraderie, actors playing characters playing characters … it is, at times, chaotic, like the situations she has created on the page.
KJ Gilmer’s period costumes, against a set dominated by a wooden staircase, are par for their characters, such as Millie’s attempt at opulence, John’s sleek look, and Sheldon in a three-piece gray suit, while Bill is dressed in a brightly colored casual sweater.
Director Justin Emeka gets to the meat of each character and scene with a maestro’s baton, raucous here, soft and thoughtful there, then building to a crescendo.
Witnessing The Public’s production of Trouble in Mind, as the new administration strips away protections for citizens and funding for the arts and humanities, packs a particularly hard punch, as Childress wields the satirical weapons in a writer’s arsenal – humor, irony, exaggeration – to reveal the unavoidable truths happening right outside the theater doors.
Trouble in Mind is the perfect play for our times, or any time there is a need for “good trouble,” as the late John Lewis labeled the fights for civil rights, voting rights, gun control, health care reform and justice for all.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Pittsburgh Public Theater’s local premiere of Trouble in Mind is at the O’Reilly Theater, Downtown, February 5 – 23, 2025, with opening night Saturday, February 8. Tickets: Visit https://ppt.org/production/94381/trouble-in-mind or call 412-316-1600.
NOTES: To honor Childress’s legacy, each performance of Trouble in Mind will feature a preshow greeting by a Black female Pittsburgh artist. On opening night Saturday, it was Pittsburgh actress Brenda Marks. … The Public will offer a live and on demand stream of Trouble in Mind, streaming from February 21 – March 23, 2025, in partnership with the League of Live Stream Theater (LOLST).
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