Like Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale, Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders tests the porous wall between storytelling and drama. Easily 80 percent of the play is revealed through direct address from Suzanne Alexander, a noted literary figure visiting her alma mater to lecture on violent imagery in her work. Played by LisaGay Hamilton, Alexander is a clinical yet cauterizing woman; the story she tells, festooned with chilling detail, is often punctuated by fleeting wisps of dialogue that materialize on stage like pinpricks of action, only to recede without warning back into suppressed memory. These flashes of memory, all from a half-century earlier, come from Suzanne’s early adulthood.
As a young black college student in the pre-Brown vs. Board of Education era, Suzanne made the error of becoming pregnant by the tightly wound, white English professor she revered, ultimately giving birth to twins. Despite the obvious consequences of her actions, Suzanne courageously returns to Ohio State, twins in tow, in what becomes a frustrating attempt to complete her studies. After all, it was the same professor who first discovered Suzanne’s academic potential in a paper about Tess of the d’Urbervilles—a metaphor if ever there was one. Tragedy begot tragedy as each twin is murdered in a separate act of shocking terror.
Hamilton’s Suzanne is cool to the touch—a distant, somewhat elusive figure who is thus compelling to watch. Indeed, Suzanne’s an enigma whose placid, unstinting face masks her raging multidimensionality—all of which is hard for an actor to convey in Ohio State’s slim, 60-minute frame. You come to respect the wisdom of a black woman in the early 1950s choosing complicity in covering up the deaths of her children instead of standing at the windy vortex of a public murder trial.
What gnaws at you, though, isn’t the cover up (in which Suzanne plays a relatively passive role) and it isn’t Ohio State’s fluid, filmic, jump-cut-jump-cut structure—one of Kennedy’s trademarks. It’s the use of the first-person. In fact, you begin to wonder if perhaps this isn’t Kennedy’s life being revealed for the first time, yet Suzanne’s character is unquestionably fictional: press materials for Theater for a New Audience’s production state that her story “is and is not based on Ms.
Kennedy’s own life.” Unaddressed speculation—coupled with Evan Yionoulis’ restless staging of the play—drives the drama, especially as you take in the photo exhibition at the rear of the theater illustrating “Adrienne Kennedy’s world,” including the fact that Kennedy did graduate from Ohio State. Like Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman and Alexander Portnoy, Suzanne is Kennedy’s alter-ego; her famous “Alexander Plays” ranks among the playwright’s finest work.
In addition to Hamilton’s beautifully measured performance, the acting of the cast is spare and intense: Saxon Palmer as bottled-up Robert Hampshire, the English professor who impregnated Suzanne and killed his kin; Cherise Boothe as young Suzanne, who uses wide, expressive eyes to communicate her character’s disappointments and humiliation. As Iris Ann, Suzanne’s best friend, Julia Pace Mitchell adds a flavor of levity to the play as a symbol of freshman innocence, while Aleta Mitchell, as Suzanne’s compassionate Aunt Louise, represents the steadying, benevolent influence that explains how Suzanne became a decorated writer. One yearns to see more of Kobi Libii as David, but we intuit, despite the darkness, a happy ending.
Through Nov. 18. The Duke, 229 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 646-223-3010; $75.
As a young black college student in the pre-Brown vs. Board of Education era, Suzanne made the error of becoming pregnant by the tightly wound, white English professor she revered, ultimately giving birth to twins. Despite the obvious consequences of her actions, Suzanne courageously returns to Ohio State, twins in tow, in what becomes a frustrating attempt to complete her studies. After all, it was the same professor who first discovered Suzanne’s academic potential in a paper about Tess of the d’Urbervilles—a metaphor if ever there was one. Tragedy begot tragedy as each twin is murdered in a separate act of shocking terror.
Hamilton’s Suzanne is cool to the touch—a distant, somewhat elusive figure who is thus compelling to watch. Indeed, Suzanne’s an enigma whose placid, unstinting face masks her raging multidimensionality—all of which is hard for an actor to convey in Ohio State’s slim, 60-minute frame. You come to respect the wisdom of a black woman in the early 1950s choosing complicity in covering up the deaths of her children instead of standing at the windy vortex of a public murder trial.
What gnaws at you, though, isn’t the cover up (in which Suzanne plays a relatively passive role) and it isn’t Ohio State’s fluid, filmic, jump-cut-jump-cut structure—one of Kennedy’s trademarks. It’s the use of the first-person. In fact, you begin to wonder if perhaps this isn’t Kennedy’s life being revealed for the first time, yet Suzanne’s character is unquestionably fictional: press materials for Theater for a New Audience’s production state that her story “is and is not based on Ms.
Kennedy’s own life.” Unaddressed speculation—coupled with Evan Yionoulis’ restless staging of the play—drives the drama, especially as you take in the photo exhibition at the rear of the theater illustrating “Adrienne Kennedy’s world,” including the fact that Kennedy did graduate from Ohio State. Like Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman and Alexander Portnoy, Suzanne is Kennedy’s alter-ego; her famous “Alexander Plays” ranks among the playwright’s finest work.
In addition to Hamilton’s beautifully measured performance, the acting of the cast is spare and intense: Saxon Palmer as bottled-up Robert Hampshire, the English professor who impregnated Suzanne and killed his kin; Cherise Boothe as young Suzanne, who uses wide, expressive eyes to communicate her character’s disappointments and humiliation. As Iris Ann, Suzanne’s best friend, Julia Pace Mitchell adds a flavor of levity to the play as a symbol of freshman innocence, while Aleta Mitchell, as Suzanne’s compassionate Aunt Louise, represents the steadying, benevolent influence that explains how Suzanne became a decorated writer. One yearns to see more of Kobi Libii as David, but we intuit, despite the darkness, a happy ending.
Through Nov. 18. The Duke, 229 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 646-223-3010; $75.
