Review: 'Detroit '67' is must-see local theater
Mention Detroit in 1967, and you automatically conjure images of burning storefronts and police in riot gear. These scenes create a provocative backdrop for “Detroit ’67,” a new drama about race and family that's set in a west-side basement speakeasy during the city's disastrous July 1967 riot.
First produced in 2013, this bold new work by Detroit native Dominique Morisseau caps the inaugural season at the Detroit Public Theatre in the Max M. Fisher Music Center. It's must-see theater.
The story doesn’t zero in on tensions between police and the black community in 1967, though they certainly existed. Instead, it focuses mostly on the way central characters Lank (Amari Cheatom) and his sister Chelle (Michelle Wilson) try to carve out a place in the city after their parents die and leave them the family home.
Lank, short for Langston, longs to be the first male in generations not to work at an auto plant. He wants to take the small nest egg his parents left, go into business with best friend Sly (Brian Marable) and open a bar of his own. This idea doesn’t sit well with Chelle, who thinks the weekend parties she and her brother throw are enough to keep some consistent income floating in.
The drama ignites when Chelle discovers Caroline (Sarah Nealis), a badly beaten young white woman, who is crashing on the basement couch. She is there because Lank and Sly found her stumbling along Grand River and offered her shelter. Though Lank knows his motives look suspicious, he says he feared Caroline would end up dead without his help.
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
Though she is vague about her backstory, Caroline makes herself useful. Even the cautious Chelle warms to her and offers her a job serving drinks at the club in exchange for a place to sleep. Things go well the first night, but the second evening is rocked by news of the riot, which began, according to most accounts, during a routine police raid at a west-side speakeasy.
“Detroit ’67” is the first in a trilogy of Detroit-themed plays by Morisseau, and each takes place at a pivotal moment in the city's history. “Paradise Blues” explores the bulldozing of the city’s Paradise Valley neighborhood in the late 1940s, while the 2008-set “Skeleton Crew” is about the last standing auto-stamping plant at the start of the recent recession. All three of Morisseau's plays have enjoyed off-Broadway runs.
The playwright says she wrote “Detroit ’67” as a tribute to members of her family — the way they dream, the way they speak — and as a way to fill in gaps in her education about the events of 1967, which are still characterized as “riot” or “rebellion” depending on who is telling the history.
The play doesn’t weigh in on the debate, though it definitely suggests an environment in which violence can occur. You feel the frustration of Lank and Sly, played Cheatom and Marable with an easy familiarity that suggests they've been best friends since childhood, as they talk about routine police stops and the limited opportunities they have as black men in the city.
This "Detroit '67" staging is a coproduction with Baltimore’s Center Stage, which means that the director (Kamilah Forbes), actors, costumes, and large pieces of the set have traveled halfway across the country. Michael Carnahan’s set design is a particular treat, realistically conveying a Detroit neighborhood basement, right down to the Tigers sticker on a red-painted support post. In between acts, two video screens on either side of the stage show home movie-style footage of Detroit in the mid-'60s. Lights from bar patrons' cars and, later, red-and-blue police flashers shine through glass block windows at the back of the set.
Despite the Baltimore connection, the show has plenty of homegrown Motor City cred. Marable and Wilson are both Detroit natives, though these days Wilson works primarily in New York. She originated the part of Chelle in the original production at New York’s Public Theater and also appeared in “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway.
Her Chelle is the show’s anchor, a strong and perpetually grounded woman who stands in sharp contrast to her funky, booty-shaking best friend, Bunny (Jessica Frances Duke), a character who provides some welcome comic relief. It's worth noting that despite the serious content, “Detroit ’67” is also consistently funny, thanks in large part to the chemistry between the actors, who have had time to make these roles their own.
More than a gimmick or a metaphor (see Lisa L’Amour’s 2010 “Detroit” for that), “Detroit ’67” effectively captures a community coming to grips with its history and its future. Its view of race relations is still timely, especially as the city debates the current hot topic of gentrification, a subject I hope Morisseau tackles in an upcoming play.
'Detroit '67'
Four stars
out of four stars
Through June 5
Detroit Public Theatre
Max M. Fisher Music Center
3711 Woodward, Detroit
313-576-5111
$20-$45