Washington is a city that often seems to lack a unified voice. From Anacostia to Capitol Hill, from Adams Morgan to Georgetown, there could hardly be a more disparate half million people. In the wake of last September, the question of a common identity for Washington has attracted new attention, and in its first show of the season, Arena Stage seeks to find an anthem befitting our impossibly diverse city.
In fact, what playwright Richard Montoya of the Chicano/Latino performance trio Culture Clash has unveiled, after months of interviewing and observing Washington residents, is a series of Anthems, a collection of dialogues that offers multiple and sometimes contradictory perspectives on life in Washington since Sept. 11. Rather than pretend to discern a unified voice in the District, Montoya wisely underscores Washington’s seemingly irreconcilable diversity, and not without a generous portion of irreverent humor.
For, despite its potentially weighty subject matter, Anthems is really a comedy at its core. Montoya himself sets this tone at the onset of the show, performing the one role he facetiously suggests is able to capture all of Washington: Tian Tian, the panda at the National Zoo. As Tian Tian tells the audience, he is both black and white, plus he’s an immigrant and (due to an evident reluctance to breed) probably gay.
From time to time, this humor borders on political incorrectness, thoroughly delighting the multiracial audience nonetheless. At a fundraising banquet, for instance, the Latino head chef, played by Ric Salinas, is summoned from the kitchen to give the guests an impromptu salsa lesson.
When black people dance to salsa, he demonstrates, no matter how upbeat the music, they laconically sway back and forth with their arms extended in front of them and their outstretched palms facing down. White people, on the other hand, raise their arms in the air and twist and twirl their fingers and wrists. In mimicking this dance move, Salinas cries, “What is this?!” meeting disapproval from the party guests but utter delight from the audience.
Montoya extends this irreverent but sometimes telling humor to the Arab-American experience as well. While trying to enter a Wizards game, Mohammed, played by Joseph Kamal, is stopped at security and ordered to empty his pockets, remove his shoes and even take off his pants. Meanwhile, a white man in an army jacket pointing a rifle and a young, punked-out black man waltz through security without hassle.
Serious issues, such as anti-Muslim sentiment, are also handled with a more somber touch. While a drunken, bigoted pair of men express their fears of Muslims and contemplate violence in one scene, a mild-mannered white woman in another turns around upon exiting the stage and says reflectively, “Did you know that Islam means peace?”
History is nicely woven into the text of Anthems. In one scene, a black power company worker (Shona Tucker), to the chagrin of her idealistic son, tells of a childhood dream in which she used to dance with Abraham Lincoln. On a tour of a colonial estate in another scene, Nikki Jean plays a young black woman who, despite her mother’s pleas to keep quiet, flatly and persistently asks the tour guide, “Where are the slaves?”
One entirely gratuitous dramatic device is the insertion of the playwright into the action of the scenes. In fact, Montoya indulges in a lengthy and unenlightening monologue near the end of the play. He shares a sort of stream of consciousness that would have been better left in his notebook. Montoya even refers to himself as speaking on an imaginary cell phone during a telephone call, pushing the Verfremdungseffekt – and hence, the play’s self-awareness as a play – a little too far.
The flow of the scenes, however, is artfully assembled. The lack of interruption between totally unrelated scenes achieves a sense that all these conversations, all these actions and all these lives coexist, overlap and even blur together. Sound, set and lighting design make this effect possible. Alexander Nichols precludes cumbersome scene changes with an effectively minimalist set and stark lighting contrasts, and Timothy Thompson selects sound and music that genuinely augment the action rather than just fill in dead air.
A remarkably versatile and well-balanced ensemble cast shows no trouble shifting characters and executing each role with precision. In particular, Tucker shows a tremendous repertoire, offering a brilliant performance as an older lady who takes her companions to a Metro station on the Green Line where the pitch of the train as it pulls into the station exactly matches the sound of Miles Davis’ trumpet. Tucker’s display of satisfaction and enthusiasm in this moment is subtle and touching.
Salinas also gives a stellar performance as the solo actor in a Salvadorean silent film, which serves as a parody of the immigrant experience. Delivered almost completely in mime, Salinas encounters a moat and an electric fence in trying to cross the border. Then he can only find work as a custodian after several potential white-collar employers slam the door in his face. Salinas performs the scene with dead-on comic irony, his “silent” film offering a resonantly irreverent anthem for a troubled city.
Anthems: Culture Clash in the District is playing through Oct. 13 in the Kreeger Auditorium at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St., S.W. Student discounts are available.
