Theater Review: 'Dot' at Everyman Theatre (Dec. 7 - Jan. 8) - Entrepreneur Generations

Today, I was lucky to attend Everyman Theatre's production of Dot, a 2015 play by actor/playwright Colman Domingo depicting a middle class black family coming together around Christmas time, as they attempt to come to terms with their mother's swiftly progressing Alzheimer's Disease. As part of Everyman's amazing High School Matinee Program, I attended with my Drama students, and the students and all of us adults who attended universally loved the play,

This mother is the title character, the matriarch of the Shealy family; Domingo's stage directions say her kitchen is "Martha Stewart meets Claire Huxtable." As played by Sharon Hope, she is a spry and beautiful widow in her mid sixties who was diagnosed with the disease a year before. Her eldest daughter, Shelly (played by Everyman company actor Dawn Ursula) is a lawyer who has had to almost move in with her mom to care for her, because of Dot's increasingly dangerous forgetfulness (in the opening scene, she leaves eggs cooking on the stove too long to burn). The middle son is Donnie, played by Yaegel T. Welch, who arrives the night before Christmas eve with his white husband, Adam, and it's clear very early that the two of them are at a crossroads in their relationship; Donnie wants to start a family, while Adam (played by Rob Jansen) is still clinging onto his youth, with parties and fitness at the forefront of his mind. Arriving at the close of Act I, Paige Hernandez brings lots of humor to the play as the over-the-top young child, Averie. Rounding out the cast are Megan Anderson as a white neighbor and teenage sweetheart of Donnie, and Ryan Carlos Dalusung, an undocumented immigrant who helps care for Dot.

Spontaneous dance party w/ the 3 siblings:one of the funniest moments.

The play is jam-packed with so much that it's hard to figure out what to focus on for a review. In some ways, the play is messy, in that big and bold way that my favorite art is, and like real life is. Afterwards, for example, some of us wondered why the character of Jackie is in the play: could the story of the play have been told without her? Probably. But as a character in her own set of crossroads, coming home to reflect on her life only to find herself enmeshed in a different sort of trauma at home, as well as in a longing for her connection with Donnie, which she has never really replaced, she adds some layers to the proceedings. And we really feel for each of the characters, like Shelly, who does some really mean things to her mom while caring for her, but Ursula brings such a sympathy to the character that we never get angry with her; and Fidel, who makes us care about his somewhat unsettled subplot of political asylum and missing his mom something we care about even with all the immediate drama in the house. I loved the relationship between Donnie and Adam, which felt authentic and my suspicions that Domingo must be gay himself to write about gay characters with such perception ended up being true.

The Shealy family is loud, which is one reason I appreciated the quietest moments the most: a lovely scene in which Dot mistakes Adam for her late husband, and the two of them dance to a Judy Garland song while the rest of the family stands agape might be my favorite moment of theater in 2016. A scene between Fidel and Dot (their relationship is one of the most touching in the play) looking over some old photographs was beautiful, and there are touching scenes between Jackie and Dot and between Jackie and Donnie.

Adam and Dot dancing while Donnie looks on.

That's not to say I didn't like the loudness, though. Hernandez is laugh-out-loud funny as a fingers-snapping, sassy youngest daughter, who had 15 minutes of fame as a YouTube sensation before ending up in her sister's basement. She has a riff on chitlins that represents some of Domingo's funniest writing here, and Hernandez -- in a character that could have been too much -- humanizes the lines.

At the center of it all is Sharon Hope, who gives a remarkable performance. Give this woman the Baltimore Tony! I just thought her performance showed so much range, from the joy she gets with spending likely her last lucid Christmas with her family, to the pain of fading away in flashes. Vincent M. Lancisi's direction emphasizes the authenticity of the family; the characters speak over each other, curse (a lot), they yell, interrupt, and laugh throughout. We felt like we were in the house with them. Aiding this is James Fouchard's remarkable set design, which, at intermission, sees a kitchen space transform into the living room, making us feel like we shift over to the other room like we do on Christmas morning.

The kids loved the play. Some were vocally crying at different moments, whether it was the poignant moments between Dot and her family while her mind slips away, or the evocative moments between siblings or between Donnie and Adam. But there are so many laughs, too, from uproarious (a dance-party between the three siblings) to more restrained (an aurora borealis joke comes up a couple of times, and it's kind of cruel but it's also really funny). As for me, as someone who watched his own grandmother deteriorate quickly because of Alzheimer's Disease as well as being the nearly 40-year old white half of an interracial couple who goes to his partner's family and they make me feel like I'm part of the family, like Adam is here, I connected so much with it.

Colman Domingo has written a funny and touching play about accepting reality and coming to terms with ourselves, and has taken on a tough (and sad) subject with as many laughs as tears. Great performances and punchy direction make the 2+ hour run time feel like it flies by. Go see it. It closes on January 8th.

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2hn8XDK Theater Review: 'Dot' at Everyman Theatre (Dec. 7 - Jan. 8) - Entrepreneur Generations

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