Bygone Glory

A PLAYWRIGHT'S reliance on stereotypes can provide an audience with immediate gratification, with the comfortable, simplistic vision we have grown accustomed to. It can, at the same time, leave us dissatisfied. This is the primary problem with senior Peter Lawson Jones's play. The Family Line. We know all of his characters through years of exposure: the garrulous old bartender who never forgets a customer's face or drink; a feisty, evil-tempered whore; a sweet, naive Southern girl, who came to the North to find a slightly better life; the malevolent hustler; the rising young black attorney. They are all charming characters, given to relaxed and easy banter that flows rapidly and naturally, but they all perch precariously on a tenuous line between reality and sit-com land.

The protagonist of Jones's play, on the other hand, eludes categorization to successfully that he baffles us. We are never quite sure whether to be charmed by him. Brad "Rainbow" Robert is a warm, yet spoiled and defeated, 25-year-old. A supporter high school basketball player, he has seen his dreams of making the pros destroyed by a racist college coach, and he now sweats it out daily, working in a plant with yet another coach-his white foreman. He sees little change of this rut. Clinging tenaciously dreams of glory days gone by, and glory days that should have been, he turns bitter and self-paying and in the end destroys not only himself with his inability to rope with reality, but also the lives of those around him, in anger and frustration over his aborted career he becomes obsessed with the dream of a son--a son who, presumably, will inherit his father's talent, and thereby fulfill his father's fantasies. But it turns out he and his wife cannot have a child. Feeling betrayed once again, he leaves her.

What is unsettling about The Family Line is that we are never quite sure who is to blame. Throughout the play we receive two conflicting messages. The man has been beaten, unjustly deprived of the success to which he had a rightful claim. Here the inequities of this society are clearly to blame. And yet because Brad is so brutal in his treatment of his wife, so selfish in his needs. Wallowing in such endless self-pity, the message that comes through even stronger is: pull yourself together, man. Go back to college and get yourself out of the plant; adopt a child. Society oppresses, yes, but self-pity oppresses more.

Despite the play's conceptual flaws, it is both extremely entertaining and moving. The actors are all fine (especially James Cannon as Brad, who is excellent), and the dialogue is natural and moves at a fast clip. Peter Jones, directing his own play, keeps the scenes tight and imaginative. What's more, there's the most terrifying bar brawl I've ever seen on a stage, which should be seen before somebody falls off the platform and breaks a leg.