 "Photo: Ryan Joyce")
This weekend, the Dramatics Society of Boston College presented the final production of its season, the provocatively titled No Niggers, No Jews, No Dogs, set against the backdrop of a small North Carolina town. In the play written by John Henry Redwood, a Jewish man named Yaveni (the delightful Nicholas Hanovice, A&S '10) has come to Halifax in 1949 to do research for a book of his that will be a comparative study of racism on the plight of the Jewish man to that of the black man. He pays the family of Mattie (Diana Mirambeaux-Saker, A&S '09) to allow him to observe their daily lives as source material. Tensions emerge between the two, who do not understand each other - Yaveni goes to a temple to worship on Saturdays and disrupts the Christian day of worship for the family on Sundays.
Things come to change one day, however, when Mattie's eccentric Aunt Cora (Grace Illingworth, A&S '10) frightens him, leading him to run back to their home in fear, where he overhears that Mattie has been raped. While the play focuses on Mattie's plight, who was raped by the same man as her Aunt Cora, whose family was destroyed and who now lives the life of a crazed hermit, the three's lives become inextricably linked, leading each on profound journeys that will forever change them.
Dogs was an interesting choice for director and president of the Dramatics Society Alessandra Brown (A&S '08) to have produced, because while controversial, the play is far from perfect. While the juxtaposition of the struggle of a Jewish man whose family was killed in the Holocaust with that of a black family in the South in the pre-civil rights era provides a fresh tenor in which to tackle such a common vehicle of predjudice, Redwood's writing does not trust itself.
Although Mattie's plight captivates the audience throughout the play, Redwood has written a cheap ending that wraps things up for her as if she were a stupid child in a candy store. Mattie, a woman who quotes Leviticus, talks of church eloquently, and does not allow her children to take the Lord's name in vain, turns out to be a heathen herself, a huge hypocritical mess of a woman. When Aunt Cora takes vengeance on the man who has brought so much harm to her family, while Mattie says she'll have to go to church to ask for forgiveness, she doesn't do anything. She just wipes the blood of her arms and calls it a day. The same goes for Yaveni, a man who has dedicated his life to reversing the effects of racism.
What Mattie does do, however, is rejoice that she can have her husband back. Aside from her children, that's all that really matters to her. Mattie's framed marriage certificate is all that matters to her. It seems unbelievable that a woman in this time period would be so simple-minded and submissive to her husband following the roaring '20s and with I Love Lucy about to debut two years later.
Redwood has made Mattie a weak heroine. Unlike Celie in The Color Purple or her predecessor Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mattie never gets the room to move on from her rape and to grow into a strong, independent woman. She gets a simple fix to her problem and chooses to maintain her life in the same manner, although the possibility remains that she may move to Cleveland if her husband Rawl wants her to. Gender is a vice in this play, which is metaphorically manifested in Rawl. When Mattie reveals her pregnancy to him, she does not do so to protect him. She allows him to call her a slut and walk out of her life quite simply. She makes a list of all the good that she has done for him, but it is meaningless in his eyes.
While those issues certainly taint the ending to an otherwise good play, Brown's direction found an honest, moving way in which to portray it. Her decision to produce it in the stripped-down setting of a black box theater brought so much to the intimacy of the play, making these larger-than-life characters believable. The subdued performance of Mirambeaux-Saker served as an excellent complement to this.
For a play written in 2003, Redwood's has created tantalizingly delicious female roles - something greatly lacking in the artistic community today. Natlie Koski-Karell, A&S '10, as Joyce, and Helida Silva, A&S '11, as Matoke easily stole the show with their wonderfully spot-on portrayals of younger females, allowing their voices and their bodies to transform in wonderful manners. Despite of her lack of dialogue, Illingworth also gave a moving performance as Cora.
In his role as Rawl, however, Kenard Jackson, A&S '10, did not do the same. He was an interesting choice for Brown to have cast as her leading man, considering that his physical stature pales in comparison to the size of the women of his own family. Although passionate, that juxtaposed with a youthful vocal delivery failed to make him completely believable as a middle-aged man.
With all its flaws, No Niggers, No Jews, No Dogs served Brown's purpose well - it provided a provocative manner in which to engage the BC campus in a dialogue of racism, even choosing to hold a talkback after each of her performances. The courageous decision of this well-budding director certainly did this, luring a large group to the theater on the night that I came, including a racially diverse audience that is atypical of BC theater.
Hopefully the conversation this show started will continue long past this weekend, providing a message to the community that the hateful prejudices that run rampant here will not and should not be tolerated any longer.
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