Theater Review: an intense Kerry Washington shines in American Son

American Son

Written by Christopher Demos-Brown

Directed by Kenny Leon

Starring Kerry Washington and Steven Pasquale

Booth Theater, NYC

November 28, 2018

American Son, written in 2016 by (white) Miami playwright Christopher Demos-Brown, joins the recent parade of plays dealing with the continuing abuses of blacks by law enforcement. It’s an angry, intense single act drama (90 minutes or so) that focuses on a worried mom (the excellent, volcanic Kerry Washington) trying futilely to find out where her missing 18 year-old son is. 

The play is entirely set in the waiting room of the Miami police department, and features only four characters: the mom and dad (a mixed race couple), a young well meaning-but-clueless white police officer, and a seasoned-but- frustrated senior black cop. The play’s structure comes from gradually revealing the details of what happened to the missing son Jamal, who drives the drama yet never appears in the play, thus serving the time-honored éminence grise role. The playwright has a nice ability to pace the drama and build tension, never giving away too many clues at once, and maintaining a hyper-realistic tone and dialogue throughout. The unrelenting tragedy is unrelieved by any humor or subplots, so risks viewer overload, but the intensity is well matched to the single act and the fast pace, rather like a TV police drama. There are some interesting kicks in the drama that prevent it from simply being a “waiting for the police atrocity” drama. Mom is an articulate black woman from the violent Liberty City area of Miami, but is now a clinical psychologist, so a student of human behavior (not always her own, sadly). Dad is a white FBI officer, so can get more information from the Miami police than mom can--is this advantage because he is white, or because he’s another cop? The couple has separated, him leaving her their her son for another (white) woman, leaving both mom and son angry. Jamal, originally described to police by mom as a nerdy intellectual saint, has actually been acting out his anger by hanging out with street-type black kids, a big change from his mostly-white friends at his private school. Thus the playwright nicely spreads blame around for Jamal’s fate…parents, adolescent rage, police, racism and school segregation. Yet none of this seems overly preachy or heavy handed, and is seamlessly integrated into the play.

Kerry Washington, known for her roles in Scandal, Django Unchained, and (as Anita Hill) in HBO’s Confirmation, was terrific as the overwrought mom. 

She could move from deferential to volcanically angry in a millisecond, and was gripping throughout. Steven Pasquale as her conflicted and guilty husband proved a full match for her, and a good foil for her anger and anxiety. The direction was crisp and fast moving, rather like a TV show. The only thing I missed was more sense of character development. This was an almost entirely plot-driven show, with little time for analysis of the complex marriage or on Jamal’s evolution, and a bit more of that would have given the show more depth and space for reflection about the complex issues it raised. This made the very good but not great in the final evaluation. But I suspect the playwright was going for more of a Macbeth than a Hamlet-style tragedy here, and certainly succeeded in keeping me engaged. When the tragic outcome was quietly and matter-of-factly read on stage, there was a big audible gasp from the audience; the play succeeded in giving the Broadway audience a gripping evening, albeit unrelentingly intense and grim. Other plays like the recent Scraps by Geraldine Inoa were more effective in laying out the sociology behind police violence and the scars in the black community. American Son begins as a political play, but skirts explanations and morphs into a moving human family drama. It’s a very good play that you should see if it comes to your area.